I started using Linux Mint on my Framework laptop. That's 99% of my desktop usage. I do have a gaming PC that's rarely used that I keep for windows. Mainly for the odd game and/or the odd windows thing but it's pretty rare since nearly all my gaming is now on my Steam Deck.

There are still so many issues around Wayland and fragmentation. Gnome is the most popular and has lots of issues and sometimes is downright user hostile. Luckily some of the distributions try to revert some of the insanity sometimes. But there are still many protocols and portals needed and much more standardization.

There is no such thing as "desktop Linux". What we have instead is a large collection of distros, each with its own UX, unlike Windows or macOS which present a relatively unified platform.

I switched to Linux many years ago because a new laptop was unusably slow under the Windows Vista it came with, and I have not looked back since, yet I'd never recommend Linux to "the masses". Linux can work well for people who just browse the web and read email. Beyond that, the experience quickly becomes dependent on having a knowledgeable person nearby to help with choosing software and supported hardware or troubleshooting it.

To me, articles like this show how disconnected many technically inclined people are from average users' experience. Things like bloated software or aggressive advertising may be annoying to us, but to most users they are just part of using a computer.

Proprietary, closed user experiences are like microwave home dinners. There’s every reason to hope they can be good, it is very common for them to be crap, and while its possible to hack your own microwave meals you will be doing so in a sub optimal environment with limited options.

An open, modular, diverse UX is like having a stocked kitchen of staples, pans, tools, fresh produce, and a stove. You add a toaster oven, smoker, water bath, grow a kitchen garden of your own, find local butchers and fishmongers. Over time you build up a small collection of both your own and others’ recipes and books and articles on food theory and trends. You can also have a microwave of course, but you’ll use it in many different ways than before.

It’s harder work but so is walking instead of driving or reading instead of watching TV. It can seem irritatingly virtuous to some that you put this extra effort into your daily life but they’ll be swayed when they see you serve up a ZFS snapshot to temporarily test an edit over 20GB of data, or pop up a new niri workspace to track and purchase concert tickets, or dive into editing your journal in a custom distraction free mode you put together showing only your editor and this week’s GPS logs.

You aren’t making everything from scratch, but you do make a few ingredients yourself — pickles and bread in the kitchen and scripts and local web hacks on your computer — and you certainly have complete control over the finished product in a way that simply isn’t possible with a microwave and a boxed lasagna, or a copy of Windows 11.

You don’t even have to cook! You can have pre-made microwave meals with a Linux desktop. They still taste better because they were made with love by a global network of friends and family instead of by Nestlé, Kraft, and Heinz.

I installed Ubuntu in October just to play around with AI models (python and CLI in general was so hard to deal with in Windows) and I realized that I didn't ever need to boot back into windows, not for gaming, not for anything. It was really relieving.

I do what I can by serving webapps from my Linux server, or using command line, but I haven't had much success with a Linux RDP or VNC server that can compete with MS RDP for performance. If I could do that I'd switch fully. Does anyone have recommendations?

Are there any alternatives to Lightroom that are not as complex or overwhelming as Darktable. I understand that people say it’s more powerful, but it also looks like it has a steep learning curve I’m not particularly interested in tbh.

Maybe Microsoft knows Windows is terrible and won't last forever, so their short term goal is to exploit their marketshare as much as possible to grab as much cash as they can until the market moves to something else.

I switched to Linux from Win11 a few months ago, because of all the CoPilot junk. Not sure what the native vs. HTML UIs is all about, though. Are the HTML UIs slower, or is it a question of developers' time?

Funnily enough today windows pissed me off with a random breaking bug (no login screen yay) so now only have Ubuntu installed. Only one application I use that's windows only anyways and can use a VM for that, so sayonara...