[mrguyorama]

>It's not Linux's fault per se

It IS linux's fault, in the way that whenever someone new comes into the ecosystem and says "hey this important thing doesn't work well or is broken for me" and get accosted from all directions by crazy people who haven't touched mac or windows in 20 years who insist that what you describe isn't possible, linux is super easy to fix yourself (lol), and that ideas from computing in the 60s are unambiguously the best ideas ever made in computing.

The linux ecosystem doesn't even have a legitimate window manager. When people tell the linux world "hey there's an issue" the linux world always responds with "fuck off"

[__MatrixMan__]

I agree with everything you said except for the window manager comment. i3/sway puts MacOS and Windows to shame. I could get used to my work macbook if only it would let me move focus in more than one dimension (i.e. super+left/right/up/down instead of cmd+tab back in time).

MacOS is especially bad because they don't even try to address their deficiencies. They just bandaid over it with an app ecosystem and then don't give that ecosystem an API that's to sufficient to do the job (e.g. the limitations of amethyst and amphetamine re: focus control and lid closing).

[majewsky]

100% this. I'm using a Windows notebook at work, and I cannot go for a single week without running into some random window management bug. Despite it being the origin of its name, Windows is actually really bad at windows stuff.

And that's before we get into intentionally missing features like focus-on-hover.

[ChuckNorris89]

> I'm using a Windows notebook at work, and I cannot go for a single week without running into some random window management bug

Could you please share some details on all these Windows GUI bugs?

[majewsky]

From this week:

1. Every once in a while, when I move a browser tab into a new window, the window spawns entirely off screen. At least that's what I think. It's completely invisible, but I can focus it and bring up the Alt-Space menu, which shows up in a random screen corner. I can start moving it, but it never moves into view. I just cannot get a hold of it. Only fix is to close the window and try to get back to the open webpage manually. It feels like this happens most often with Youtube tabs where a video is playing.

2. I have FancyZones set up (using PowerToys, i.e. an official MS tool). When a window is snapped to one of these zones, and I minimize it and bring it up again, there is a chance that it has a baffling white border around it that sticks with it while resizing. Only fix is to maximize the window, then snap it back into the zone.

3. Something that I've seen from time to time with different applications (when it's with my browser, it may be related to 1, but it happens with e.g. notepad too): There is a chance that new windows open up in just the most baffling geometries. For example, Notepad opening up at ~6000px width, stretching across most of my two screens' combined width. Or, particularly irritating, browser windows coming up at what must be ~10000px width and height, with the top way above the top edge of either screen, so I can only use Alt-Space -> Maximize to grab a hold of it.

4. Windows spawning on one screen, but using DPI ratio of the other screen, so either cartoonishly small or cartoonishly large. The one that comes to mind the most is the Outlook calendar reminder popup, but I think I've seen other apps suffering from this too.

[ChuckNorris89]

Is that Windows 10 or 11? I haven't encountered any of those issues in Windows 11.

[notfish]

Can you explain more about the focus on hover feature being intentionally missing? I’ve never heard of this.

[saghm]

I'm not sure about whether it's supported on Windows (and why if it's not), but I think it refers to having whichever window the cursor is over being "active" by default. For example, if you have two windows open that both have a text input focused (like maybe a text editor and a browser), the more common window-management paradigm is to consider one of them "active" independent of the cursor. If the text editor is active, you need to "switch" to the browser to type into it (by clicking on it, alt-tabbing, closing the editor, etc.). An alternative way of doing things would be to have the text you type go into whichever window the cursor is over. I haven't tried out using this, but I do find this behavior noticeable when playing a game on one monitor and having a web browser open on the other. Often if something is loading, I'll switch over to the browser to read hacker news or something while waiting, but then when the game is finished loading and I switch over, I'll try to move or something and be momentarily baffled at the lack of movement until I realize that I just typed "w" or something into the browser.

[tcoff91]

I use Yabai on MacOS to do tiling window management and it works reasonably well, although not as good as linux window managers.

[nextos]

I think Linux is not less efficient than other major OSes. I am able to squeeze 5% more battery from a MacBook Air 11'' Late 2012 using Linux vs macOS.

This is possible because the machine is basically a pure Intel device, so in-kernel support for most hardware components is good. The key aspect is to implement fairly aggressive udev rules and to use no desktop environment, so that the CPU stays in powersaving states for as long as possible. This is where Linux really shines, as X plus a window manager is much lighter than anything else.

There is still some room for improvement with a custom kernel, a custom Firefox build or a better wireless card, the only non-Intel component. Broadcom Linux drivers are awful. Also Safari is a marvel in terms of efficiency.

[tpush]

> I am able to squeeze 5% more battery from a MacBook Air 11'' Late 2012 using Linux vs macOS.

> The key aspect is to [...] use no desktop environment, [...]

Is this satire?

[nextos]

No, it's not. Keep in mind in Linux, desktop environment means a big framework such as GNOME or KDE that runs on top of X or Wayland, i.e. a graphics server.

You can run bare X or Wayland, plus a window manager and cherry-picked daemons, to achieve the same sort of functionality e.g. desktop notifications, network roaming or device automounting.

My point is that bare X plus cherry-picked services tends to be much more efficient, because you don't need to pay a performance tax for the things you don't use.

[solardev]

Mac: Battery life sucks, let's make our own chip to make it better

Windows: Battery life sucks, we'll try to improve the software and maybe use a different CPU

Linux: Just turn off your desktop and recreate its functionality using a dozen command line daemons and selectively run graphics only when you need it. It worked in DOS, why not now?

lol and we wonder why desktop Linux never came...

I've seen a lot of Linux apologetics over the years, but this is the single funniest comment I've ever read on the topic

[darthrupert]

You're not understanding the point at all. The best Linux environments lose the complexity without losing functionality.

Sure, the setup might require some skill, but professional, high quality tools always do.

[bilekas]

This did give me a chuckle! I think the user base is different though from the OP.

[nazgulsenpai]

Not sure why you're being down voted when a lot of us just use X with a window manager instead of a full fat DE.

[solardev]

I feel like I'm watching cult members nodding at each other and wondering "why don't they get it, it's so obvious!" while everyone outside just backs away slooowly...

[nextos]

Me neither. Sadly, I think some users think no desktop environment means no graphics at all, or perhaps a very primitive graphical setup.

[jnk345u8dfg9hjk]

I'm an i3 elitist myself, but I think you're missing the point that not everyone wants i3

[TylerE]

No, it’s the “fuck off”

[pdntspa]

I think a lot of this boils down to the distribution you install, what kind of background services it runs, and how effective its energy tunings are.

As an example, IMO an idle computer should have all CPU save one or two at 0% utilization, and that remaining CPU(s) shouldn't be averaging more than a few percent, in short spiky bursts. FreeBSD or Debian are like this, but Ubuntu is not.

[adrian_b]

Yes, saying that a laptop runs "Linux" does not provide any useful information when talking about battery life.

I use Gentoo on a Dell Precision laptop and I do not see any battery lifetime difference between it and Windows.

However, I do not doubt that with other Linux distributions or with a Gentoo that has a very different configuration, the results would not be the same.

I think that it is very wrong to say that a laptop with Linux has a worse battery life than one with Windows, but it is right to say that in many cases a laptop with Linux needs an experienced user to configure it properly, in order to have the same battery life that it would have with Windows out of the box.

On the other hand, when installing Windows 10 Enterprise on embedded computers, I have encountered many cases when Linux had great performance in a default installation, while with Windows 10 I had to waste many days with tuning, e.g. with discovering that certain services must be disabled, until obtaining an acceptable performance.

[dr_kretyn]

I, for one, appreciate your comment. Will go and check if I can squeeze something.

[XorNot]

> and to use no desktop environment,

Why do people write comments like this as though it's reasonable way to use an everyday driver PC?

"I don't use a DE" - well then yes, obviously but you've also removed like 80% of the functionality to turn the thing into a dumb console. That's not what I want to use a computer for.

[nextos]

No, DE doesn't mean I have a dumb console. It just means it's a bit lighter. I have all services a modern desktop has, I still run X plus a window manager.

I imagine Xfce or even GNOME 3 can be tweaked a bit to be almost equally energy efficient.

[zwaps]

I see no evidence that anyone has ever achieved energy efficiency and battery runtime comparable to windows or macos machines using Xfce or Gnome.

Would love to see what it would take.

[NavinF]

> no desktop environment

> I have all services a modern desktop has

LMAO

I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo.

[dang]

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[nextos]

> I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo.

Before making offensive comments, have you thought about the meaning of my statement?

For example, a modern DE offers desktop notifications. I still have that by running a desktop notification daemon, dunst, despite just using X plus a window manager but no DE.

Linux is very much broken into small composable components, the same way Clojure is. To take this comparison further, it is extremely ignorant to claim you can't have the same functionality Rails offers just because you don't use a big framework (which is the equivalent to a DE).

[chmod775]

I feel like this argument would be moot if all had the same understanding of the terms they were using. People seem bit hazy on what that the term desktop environment actually describes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment

[TylerE]

This feels like someone saying: I don’t need a car with a roof, why doesn’t everyone just drive a go kart around?

[ilyt]

I mean I don't have icons on desktop but that's about only miss of feature (that I don't use on windows either). Alt + F2 for app launcher + rest of it in autostart and under few bindings for common ones. If anything it's faster than anything under Windows, although definitely a power user thing.

Also something like XFCE will still get you the graphical things to fondle without as much power usage as GNOME. The problem is really those (especially GNOME) pissing on performance and thus power usage

[pmontra]

This is not a text only console. It's how I was using UNIX workstations circa 1990. Boot to a script running startx to run X11 and a window manager (ttwm?).

What was I missing? Probably a start menu / launcher (but I guess it can be installed and run anyway) and a control panel for settings.

Which modern software won't run in such a setup? Maybe dbus? Systemd? I think a lot of GUI software would still run, some won't, daemons and servers probably would.

Is this something for the nerdiest 1% of the nerdiest 1%? Definitely. I won't do that myself because it's too much of a hassle and I'll probably have to revert to a standard DE to run some software I need for work, but it will work, mostly.

[midoridensha]

>The linux ecosystem doesn't even have a legitimate window manager.

The rest is largely correct, but this part is completely wrong. Linux has a bunch of legitimate window managers, most of them much better than MacOSX or Windows.

The problems with window managers on Linux are: 1) fragmentation: there's a bunch of them, all competing with each other, but with insufficient dev resources, so they all feel half-baked, 2) unreliability: because of #1, they have a lot of bugs 3) churn: with Gnome and KDE specifically, they keep throwing things out just as they finally make their product mature and starting over every so often, subjecting users to systems that are never really mature or reliable.

[Matl]

Interesting comment regarding the window manager, I had to use a Mac at work recently and apparently one has to use 3rd party tools to be able to snap windows. Coming from KDE Plasma I found this astonishing.

[solardev]

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous macOS doesn't have this out of the box. Then again this is the same OS that decided to make the maximize button turn into full-screen zoom instead. Cuz who ever needs more than one window at a time? lol

I love my Macbook, but really wish they'd borrow some ideas from Windows and Linux

[mrguyorama]

Important note, when I said "Window manager" I was actually bitching about the stupidity of X and Wayland both being pretty bad, missing functionality, or specifically for X, being so old the original ideas and ideology it was built with don't even make sense anymore. I guess that's "Windowing system" instead? Either way, I shouldn't have to know anything about any of that to use a damn computer. It should be a tool, not a lifestyle or ideology.

[Matl]

Wayland is not equivalent to X Server technically, X usually refers to the Xorg implementation whereas Wayland is a protocol with multiple implementations, i.e. by KDE, GNOME, Sway etc.

My experience with Wayland has been very solid within the last year or so I've been on it exclusively but it's definitely implementation dependent. You're right you shouldn't have to know about these things and I certainly get the sense that's the goal. I mean one disadvantage of a system being developed in the open is that things aren't necessarily 'released' as such when 'ready'. They're in the open for people to adopt/or not, many times still rapidly evolving.

I value this approach but it's certainly not for everyone.

> It should be a tool, not a lifestyle or ideology.

That's...a very subjective statement? I think free software definitely has its place as an ideology if you will, if people want to live by it and are willing to put with the downsides why not? Some people are in it to preserve general purpose computing for the next generation let's say. I see that as completely valid since nobody forces you to use their output.

But given how expensive the Apple ecosystem is, I would certainly not expect things like having to know that poll() will not work correctly after an update[1], if it's indeed just a tool.

Plenty of regular people have to get at least somewhat familiar with the Windows Registry for example.

Point is, in this industry these sorts of things happen and so you do end up having to know about certain internal inner workings of the system you're working on one way or another. It's obviously more of a case on a system developed in the open but not exclusively.

1 - https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/10/11/poll-on-mac-10-12-is-...

[ilyt]

please, windows can't even get alt+tab right... it just goes to whatever the fuck clown that wrote it thought would be good idea instead of previously focused window

Let alone arcane tech like "search in list of open windows"

[mrguyorama]

I'm sorry what? I've never ever ever experienced this, and I've used alt-tab daily since like 2006.

[shapefrog]

> linux is super easy to fix yourself

You just have to recompile the kernal.