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by cossovich 2675 days ago
I've been using Ubuntu LTS versions since 12.04 on Thinkpad T and X series laptops and I'm a very happy camper - out of the box Ubuntu doesn't suck for me, it "just works". I moved from OS X on latest Apple laptops to make my daily job (interaction design + web development) more productive (e.g. workstation running the same OS as servers, tooling etc) but now it's my preferred OS + hardware combo from a end-user perspective. I have to switch back to an Apple machine for testing and pairing with co-workers at least once a week and between the new Apple laptop keyboard, the random reboots (awaking from sleep), shitty web font rendering and intermittent errors relating to Apple ID, I don't miss it. I really loved OS X quite a few years ago but between the latest hardware (don't get me started about cords/dongles needed for a 2018 Macbook Air) and growing list of OS X quirks I'm always happy to return to Ubuntu 18.04 on my Thinkpad T450s.

I think many of the points raised in the article affect people making desktop software for Linux rather than end-users of desktop Linux. It seems like a global list of issues for the entire desktop Linux ecosystem - which is totally valid but I think a more accurate title of the article might be "Why developing desktop software on Linux sucks" or "Why creating a desktop Linux distribution sucks" because I think my desktop Linux setup rocks!

2 comments

Just an aside, at a previous job, I worked with devs that used Macs, where I had a Linux VM on a windows laptop (and we deployed to Linux). Numerous times, I found bugs in coworkers code because they ignored case sensitivity in filenames. Yes, OS-X is BSD and unix based, but by default, the file system is cases-insensitive, like Windows, amd apparently if you make it case sensitive, you can brake a lot of popular Mac software.
What file explorer do you use? Nautilus pisses me off. I'm 100x more productive with Explorer on Windows.

Some features I'd like:

- Being able to open the context menu for the current folder, even if there are enough files to fill the view, without going up a level - Being able to jump to files/folders in the current directory by name without opening search results - Being able to add functionality to the context menu

> Being able to open the context menu for the current folder, even if there are enough files to fill the view, without going up a level

You can, the windows context menu key/Shift-f10 work. If you have something selected, deselect it with Ctrl-Space before.

Some items in the context menu have shortcuts of their own (new folder: Ctrl+Shift+N, file/folder properties: Alt+Enter or Ctrl+I, rename: F2, etc).

> Being able to jump to files/folders in the current directory by name without opening search results

Not a solution, but a workaround: disable recursive search, and treat search as filtered down list. (I consider this one annoying too).

> Being able to add functionality to the context menu

Extensions can add menu items into context menu; for example, syncthing-gtk does exactly that.

Try Dolphin.
Yep ^
Thunar and SpaceFM work pretty well for me. PCManFM is also another good option. They're all fairly light-weight.