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> I can't really recommend any single distro, can't recommend even a single desktop environment as good for most people.

I can and do all the time: KDE Plasma + Debian Testing

KDE has its own problems, though they’ve been improving in recent years. Out of the box defaults still need some work for example, and settings can still be confusing and difficult to navigate for less technical individuals. It also still has some behaviors that aren’t found on other desktops that can put off switchers.

The best DE for switchers would be one that brings as few surprises as possible and has defaults good enough that the overwhelming majority feel no need to change them. Basically, there needs to be near-perfect clones of the two big commercial desktops that don’t try to be clever or shake things up in any way so the switch is close to seamless.

Debian Testing packages may also still be too old, depending on the user. Anybody having to work cross platform or collaborate with people using other platforms is going to wind up dealing with version mismatch issues, since commercial OS users have most of their apps auto-updated to latest without Testing’a lag.

[0] https://packages.debian.org/trixie/plasma-desktop

Debian Testing packages are not too old. They are mostly very nearly bleeding edge, if not they’re a month or so behind. Ridiculous you would blindly say Debian Testing is outdated.

Debian Testing KDE Plasma version: 6.3.5-1 [0]

Arch Stable KDE Plasma version: 6.4.3-1 [1]

[1] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/plasma-desktop/

Based on what I’ve found it varies greatly between packages. Some are just a few weeks behind, others months or years.

kbolino 333 days ago

Probably fine for most people, but not a good choice for low-hassle setup with "recent" nVidia cards (last ~10 years). That's almost all nVidia's fault, and I can't say any distro handles their cards flawlessly, but Debian is one of the worst: the drivers are (accurately) classified as "nonfree" and so not available by default, setup may require config file tweaking, and KDE Plasma prefers to support Wayland while nVidia prefers to support X11, leading to weird issues (more than usual, anyway).

bee_rider 333 days ago

Although gaming on Linux has come leaps and bounds, and is actually in a pretty good place with Proton and all that, it is still a hobbyist thing.

For most non-gamers (modulo some workstation users doing number crunching, but that’s pretty niche), the iGPU is the way to go.

kbolino 333 days ago

Yeah, it's kind of niche to find someone who has an nVidia card, uses it for gaming/compute, has some reason to run Linux, and is afraid to dig into config files etc. But Microsoft's behavior of late is creating some demand here, and I too get tired of having to fix things after random kernel/driver updates.

i80and 333 days ago

My experience is that distros with traditional package management can't be counted on to work over the long term without manual administrator intervention.

Debian in particular would not be my first choice, or my second, for people who can't do their own system administration.

(And this is a bit of the problem: nobody can agree on this stuff)

Nobody agreeing on this stuff is freedom and beauty. If you want a managed OS there are already many options.

You look at Linux as an issue because someone you know can’t do system administration, something Debian almost requires none of. I look at Linux as an opportunity to rip people off their safe OS and introduce them to something that works but allows deep customization when they’re ready.

You’re operating out of fear, I’m operating out of faith. I really don’t care if the user “gets it”. They barely get their mobile device.

This touches on a larger problem that I think we tech people don't address as much as we should. That the modern big tech OS (Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS) has a huge advantage, which is that it's managed. Actively supported by the vendor, well after the purchase. That, and the heavy restriction of the user makes the computer orders of magnitude more stable.

With Linux this is not the way. The closest I can get is unattended-upgrades.

i80and 333 days ago

I think Fedora Silverblue, Bazzite, et. al. is the right direction for linux on PCs. It still feels a little immature yet, but also I'm way more confident in the system's durability than I've ever been in the past.

encom 333 days ago

Based. I run the same setup myself, but "testing" does mean testing, and while it usually works fine, you have to examine apt output and make sure it's sane, before you update your system.

I don’t have problems unless I run apt-dist-upgrade before a release cut (which I never do). Otherwise things have upgraded without pain or issue packages are held back until they’re ready for testing using apt-update/upgrade

I don't think it particularly suffers from not having "good defaults", because it doesn't get adopted by word of mouth. And people are not shopping around The Best OS that they find, and sadly, they evaluate that Linux just doesn't have the juice.

Two things here.

One, OSs get adopted because of the package they arrive in. Laptops have Windows bundled, schools get computers with Windows on the cheap. Phones come with whatever they are integrated - often, not even a major upgrade is possible on them, let alone an alternative OS.

In my opinion, products like the Steam Deck are what get Linux adopted. They provide excellent functionality out of the box.

Two, PCs in this age thrive on interaction. Overwhelmingly, they are bought to interact with other PCs, either directly by network or through formats of specific software, like docx. Therefore, the functionality depends on how well they can participate in a network. This is where Microsoft really made it big with how ruthlessly they pushed Windows as an app platform and Office as the productivity software baseline.

Hence, in the end, what makes Linux really competitive today is the proliferation of web apps, because Linux has first class browsers, and the existence of Wine and its related software. Take these two away and the OS is not even talked about as an alternative to anything, just a specialty, or a curiosity.

Really, an alternative OS can do two things. It can either set the trend, which is not very likely, given that we are talking about alternatives. Or it can follow the trend, or "embrace" it, in MS lingo.

Netbooks had Linux pre-installed, and they became an OEM distribution mess, because OEMs can't stop to differentiate themselves.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_of_Microsoft_Windows#...

Some do come with Linux preinstalled, but there is a lot of mess in this regard. "Windows tax" was one of such things, the Windows bundling went so hard[0] that it was more expensive to buy a computer without Windows than with[1]. Absolute nonsense, that more or less stopped now. But of course we are well past the Windows platform establishing itself, so now the network effect is a larger contributor I'd say.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace/comments/4ewnoi/if_...

We all know about the Windows tax and Microsoft making Windows XP free for Netbooks.

OEMs making custom distros didn't help.

If anything that was the precursor of the Android distros mess that we got afterwards.

They also did the same with CP/M, MS-DOS and Windows since forever, including UNIX clones, why wouldn't they do otherwise with GNU/Linux.

As former owner of an Asus Netbook 1215B bought with Linux pre-installed, even that way wasn't without issues.

OpenGL support was always lagging behind what hardware was capable, GL 3.3 vs GL 4.1, hardware video decoding only worked during Flash heyday, and wlan drivers always had issues with hardware when doing large downloads.

OEMs were smaller than Microsoft, that was the problem I think. Valve seems to have success with Linux, which is maybe because of their niche, and size. Smaller players just don't get to be trendsetters.

Success in a relative kind of way.

Valve has failed to convince studios already targeting POSIX like environments like Android NDK and Orbis OS (PlayStation), to port their games to GNU/Linux.

Had to switch translating Windows games, as plan B kind of solution.

It remains to be seen for how long Microsoft will tolerate Proton, or just like it happened with netbooks, will drive other handheld OEMs to use Windows and thus in a decade from now people will foundly remember Steam Deck.

I went from being a UNIX/Linux zealot during the mid 90's, writing M$ on email signatures, back to Windows as daily driver, because I got tired of all fragmentation, hunting for hardware support, that in theory would work but the actual firmware on the bought device was already another incomplete version, and many other stories that I could share since starting with Linux Slackware 2.0 back in 1995 (first UNIX was Xenix in 1993, followed by DG/UX).

bethekidyouwant 333 days ago

How is gnome shell bad for the masses?

mixmastamyk 333 days ago

What does ”looks painfully dated” mean? I hope that doesn’t mean they avoiding bad ideas like hidden scrollbars or menus.

I think mint+cinnamon is fantastic, my only gripe is that packages get old after a release has been out a year or two.

edit: specifics please.

As someone who appreciates Cinnamon’s approach, it does have a number of rough edges that make it feel less smooth and polished than it could be, compared to even e.g. Windows 7 or OS X 10.9. The practical impact is minimal, but for someone coming from outside of the Linux sphere I could see it leaving a less than stellar impression.

rangerelf 333 days ago

I'm still waiting for specifics.

I've been running Mint for ... longer than I care to remember, many years, and it's been flawless for me. I see windows users around me raging when it decides to just freeze, or has weird twitchy behavior, and I just keep on going.

And no, I don't spend hours upon hours tweaking and troubleshooting until it's "just right"; Mint convinced me because it was 99% "just right" out of the box.

Compared to when I used W10 and earlier, it's been sheer joy. It just stays out of the way and lets me do what I need to do.

Windows absolutely issues like you’re describing, but that’s not what I’m talking about (though not needing to tweak and troubleshoot desktop Linux is very much a YMMV thing in my experience, and I’ve played with Fedora, Ubuntu + derivatives (Mint, pop, etc), and arch derivatives among others a lot over the years).

For Cinnamon specifically I’m talking more UX/UI/visual polish sorts of things. There’s little papercuts all over that don’t make much difference individually but give an impression that it’s not quite finished. It isn’t unique in this regard though, you see this in all the DEs to some degree. It really just boils down to a lack of attention to detail and/or unevenly distributed attention (some things have been heavily iterated on, others implemented just well enough to check a box).

Some of the newer Wayland tiling WMs are better about this and are a lot more detail-oriented, but well, tiling WMs aren’t my thing at all. I’m much more in the traditional desktop camp.