[pwg]

> Two decades ago I had a better Mac desktop experience than I have today.

Two decades ago was 2006. I have the same desktop experience today as I had two decades ago (Fvwm2) and have had the grid virtual desktop layout this author misses so much for the entire time via the Fvwm2 (and Fvwm before that) virtual desktops feature. One of the reasons I switched to Fvwm (I no longer remember when, but sometime in the mid to late 1990's) was the grid virtual desktops feature. So I've had gridded virtual desktops for longer than twenty years. Fvwm2's configuration has been tweaked and adjusted slightly along the way, but at no time did a corporate designer decide that I no longer should have a feature I had previously been using.

Proprietary software does not have your interests at heart, it has its stock price or next quarters sales numbers at heart, nothing more.

[keyle]

Yeah okay. But at least we have decent font rendering.

[SSLy]

so does linux since when infinality-lite was ported into fontconfig, harfbuzz, and friends.

[regexorcist]

Reading the article as a Linux user was almost infuriating. I can't imagine having my workflow, something I've refined for my needs over the years, taken away from me at the wish of a company. Before I switched to Plasma and Wayland I ran XFCE with the exact same config for maybe 15 years, unbothered by updates.

[Mashimo]

> I can't imagine having my workflow taken away from me

You never ever had a single software change its workflow?

[davkan]

People have been using emacs for how many decades? Or vim and terminal? Linux DEs rarely change entirely without the ability to run old versions, with the notable exception being gnome 3 which is still divisive to this day in large part because of it. And even then it was still possible to keep your workflows with MATE, the continuation of gnome 2. Libre office just recently implemented the ribbon and you can still disable it.

Radical workflow changes with no recourse is the standard in proprietary software, not so much in FOSS.

[Mashimo]

KDE 4.0 has entered the chat.

Jokes aside: yes, I can see how it's technically possible to never experience a workflow change. But also using the same tools at work, your kids school, family you help etc. I just find not very probable.

[davkan]

I think GP was more talking about having your main workflows changed out from underneath you not so much never having to interface with something outside it. I haven’t had the luxury of a non windows workplace but if I worked in a Linux shop I’d be matching my home workflows. I see plenty of anecdotes on here about users who haven’t worked outside of emacs in decades. Not a probable scenario though I’ll agree with that.

[Nursie]

> I can't imagine having my workflow, something I've refined for my needs over the years, taken away from me at the wish of a company.

The great Gnome 3 rollout did this for me... to be fair I guess that was a decision of the distributions, but it was in concert with the developers who decided to make a hard changeover, EOL the gnome 2 line there and then, and (deliberately?) scupper the possibility of installing both 2 and 3 on the same system.

Either way it sucked and that pushed me to Xfce, which I still use on linux. But it goes to show it can happen in FOSS.