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by darpa_escapee
3069 days ago
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> I kind of hate Linux as a desktop now This is unfortunate. I've been using Linux and suffered, for the lack of a better word, with its warts since 2002. There was a period between 2013-2016 where Linux was great as my main operating system. It was more stable than OS X and was much better for development. Is hardware support your main issue with desktop Linux? |
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The software (especially Ubuntu's desktop) is lacking basic features from even 10 years ago. Maybe there's a way to get it to do what it used to do, but I can't figure it out, and I'm not going to research for two days to figure it out. I just live with a lack of functionality until I can replace this thing.
Not only that, but things are more complicated, with more subsystems applying more constraints (in the name of compatibility, or security, or whatever) that I never asked for and that constantly gets in my way. Just trying to control sound output and volume gives me headaches. Trying to get a new piece of software to work requires working out why some shitty subsystem is not letting the software work, even though it is installed correctly. Or whining about security problems. You installed the software, Ubuntu, don't fucking whine to me that there's a SELinux violation when I open my browser!
Hardware is a big problem because modern software requires more and more memory and compute cycles. All of my old, stable laptops can no longer perform the web browsing workloads they used to. Browsers just crash from lack of memory, or churn from too much processing. If you don't use modern browsers, pages just won't load.
Aside from the computing power issue, drivers are garbage. Ignoring the fact that some installers simply don't support the most modern hard disks, and UEFI stupidity, I can't get video to work half the time. When I can, there are artifacts everywhere, and I have to research for three days straight to decipher what mystical combination of graphics driver and firmware and display server and display configuration will give me working graphics. Virtually every new laptop for several years uses hybrid graphics, and you can't opt-out or you get artifacts or crashing. Even my wifi card causes corruption and system crashing, which I can barely control if I turn off all the features of the driver and set it to the lowest speed! Wifi!!! How do you screw that up, seriously?
Modern Linux is just a pain in the ass and I'm way too old to spend my life trying to make it work.