[quantumsolace]

This "year of the Linux Desktop" joke is getting a bit tiresome. What is missing exactly?

Sure the desktop is a bit ugly. But pretty much everything works out of the box. If MS released a native Office for Linux I could get rid of my Mac.

[pjerem]

tbh, the last decades have been « year of Linux on my desktop ».

Linux is already totally ok for a vast majority of usages (and even gaming is less and less an issue).

At the end of the day, who even cares of Linux market share on the desktop ?

Because this hides an insidious and bigger issue : PCs, even if it’s a 1% market share os, HAVE alternatives OS. Other modern platforms don’t.

I’d rather prefer « xxxx is the year of the 1% Linux on phones » than any evolution on the desktop which would have pretty much no impact on a Linux user day to day usage.

[ogogmad]

Have you tried running Office over Wine?

Have you tried LibreOffice? Admittedly, I don't have to share complicated MS Office documents with other people, but I do like using LO.

[edit] Actually, there are some things about LO I'm not sure about: For instance, I don't know how to use their formula editor, and when I tried using it, I got confused and found another way of inserting mathematical symbols into my document. Also, I don't know how good the spell-checking is, since I don't have a spell-checker working on mine. So these are some caveats in my endorsement of LO.

[type0]

> I don't have to share complicated MS Office documents with other people, but I do like using LO.

If you do share documents, Excel files especially, you'll quickly find that people using MS Office wouldn't like you using LibreOffice.

[ogogmad]

I used it with some financial records from my bank, which were in Excel format. It worked fine for me. But these might not count as complicated Excel documents. Also, I never shared any of my changes with other people.

[BrightGlow]

The best solution there is to not send an Excel file. The most portable way is to export the data to CSV and send that.

[cassepipe]

Especially with the new HUD functionality in LibreOffice to find useful commands super fast : https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LibreOff...

[quantumsolace]

I appreciate all the effort put into LO, or any complicated and sophisticated free (as in libre) project. I despise LO. I use gnumeric when I need a spreadsheet. Or grab my Mac.

I haven't tried running office in wine in over a decade, although I've realized they've achieved great things (by the games they support). I don't game, and all I need the Mac is MS Office, so I never tried again.

[selfhoster11]

I don't think it's a joke. I consider this concept a milestone, an "are we there yet" check for whether Linux is actually ready to use as a desktop OS. So far, the answer has been varied.

[rreyes1979]

Good calendar apps with solid integrations to Google Calendar, Zoom, Microsoft 365 Calendar, etc are missing. Using Fantastical on Mac. Have not found anything close to it for Linux :/

[arepublicadoceu]

> But pretty much everything works out of the box.

Things that didn't work out of the box "for me":

- Using multiple displays with mixed DPIs without wayland.

- Using wayland with nvidia (Even with the latest driver that supposed to give a half-baked support for it)

- On my HP laptop when I close the laptop lid, instead of suspend, it will turn airplane mode on. The only fix is to remap the key that send airplane mode to suspend.

- Multiple functions keys doesn't work, They don't even send keycodes so I can remap it.

I had to delve deep into Arch Wiki to fix most of my issues, at that point, I just gave up and installed windows 10.

Yeah, "everything works out of the box" should always be replaced by: "everything worked out of the box for me".

[BrightGlow]

For the first one, you should probably be using Wayland. X11 is considered an obsolete legacy window system, it's simply not going to stay relevant for modern uses.

For the second one, I don't have any tips for you, nobody can fix that but nvidia.

For the third and fourth one, you might be able to get someone to fix that if you search around for long enough, but it will take work.

Next time you buy hardware you may want to make sure it's supported with your OS first. Sadly that's still necessary in this day and age.

[lordgroff]

I find ugly very... subjective. Which DE are we talking about? Windows 10 vs GNOME? I pick GNOME personally, I think it's much easier on the eyes. I don't find Mac OS particularly amazing in comparison either. And even the highly "inflexible" GNOME lets you customize its look a hell of a lot more than Windows or Mac.