rant Enthusiasm Lost For Linux On The Desktop

[francescob]

*Shrug* my daughter's 4890 runs like a champ, but again, different systems and all that.

It could also be a different OS. There were problems on all sort of cards last year (see this article), then new issues came out with one of the Windows 8.1 updates this year. And then again with the Firefox 33 release last month. It was so bad I almost considered permanently switching to Chrome since AMD supposedly had already blocked all legacy AMD drivers (< 9.10, legacy are 8.97) on Windows 8 yet the issues kept popping up. Anyway it's not just AMD, Intel IGPs had all sort of annoying rendering issues too, only nVidia managed to stay out of that mess.

This is a reason to avoid AMD - not Microsoft.

What? I never said it was a reason to avoid Microsoft.

[123456789A]

well hubby has a radeon 260 and it sucks. it's not even good enough for an HTPC

 

Get Nvidia GTX Titan and you will be set.

[protocol7]

Get Nvidia GTX Titan and you will be set broke.

 

Fixed that for you :)

 

The 970 makes much more sense nowadays.

 

As for Linux the last hurrah may be SteamOS. Valve have the resources and the profile to fix it. Time will tell I guess but gaming is often mentioned as a reason to keep Windows when people talk about trying out Linux.

[123456789A]

Fixed that for you :)

 

The 970 makes much more sense nowadays.

 

As for Linux the last hurrah may be SteamOS. Valve have the resources and the profile to fix it. Time will tell I guess but gaming is often mentioned as a reason to keep Windows when people talk about trying out Linux.

 

They call it the Titan because after you buy one, you have to "tighten" your wallet.

 

Anyway, I know the card is nearly 2 years old now and there are more affordable solutions. Still, I like my Titans a lot, so sleek and quiet.

 

Back on topic, I don't think gaming is really what would drive Linux to be "successful" on the desktop in terms of market share. In my view, Linux already is successful for the simple fact that people are still using and supporting it for decades now.

[ToneKnee]

The problem with Linux is that it's fragmented to hell.   I think SteamOS will help on the GPU side of things as it'll make nVidia and AMD push harder with it's drivers but Linux from a Desktop point of view (It's awesome as a server) is still years away from being viable.

[protocol7]

Honestly I don't think anything will drive Linux to be a desktop success at this stage. But SteamOS should help widen it's adoption among gamers. Maybe even encourage some of the big publishers to start releasing their titles on it. And it should push AMD and nVidia to straighten out their drivers a bit.

[BetaguyGZT]

I'm in the same crowd as the OP. I have attempted a couple of posts over the past month or two and couldn't hit the 'Post' button because I couldn't sum up what I was thinking and feeling like the OP did.

 

Linux Mint seems to be the ONLY major Distribution at this time that is getting much of anything done, and occasionally I've been reading that the people working on Cinnamon and Mate (including Clem himself) keep getting the Development Tools broken upstream because of changes that are made without a proper vetting process -- so Clem and the Gang have to do their work with sometimes-broken tools that don't always do the job properly.

 

This is one example of many in the FLOSS arena, and one of the chief complaints I have, Stuff gets broken way too often. Change for the sake of change is DAMAGE.

[daorbed9]

I've had the same revelation like the OP about 15 years ago. 

 

Back in the late 1990s I used to be one of those who thought Linux was the bee's nipples, and Windows sucked. Which to be fair it did back then - remember Windows 98 or Windows ME?

 

Then Windows 2000 was released and it didn't suck. On the contrary. It worked just fine, all the apps I needed worked fine, drivers weren't an issue anymore. The latter two were definitely an issue on Linux, and still are to this day. As an example: Run Firefox on Linux and on Windows on the same hardware. See the latter run circles around the former in terms of performance.

 

The Linux community had its chance on the desktop. They blew it by producing sub-par desktop experiences as well as not getting the applications up to snuff. 

 

Actually I think the real problem lies in the god complex most programmer have.  They all think they know better, which is why we have a million different distributions.  This is what really hurts Linux.  There should be one package for binaries.  There should be one software center.  There is just too much fragmentation in a very small world.

[simplezz]

AMD user here (R9 270X). FOSS drivers work great. Virtually on par with the binary blob, but without all the stability headaches, slow updates, and bugs after an xorg update. Although to be fair, the Catalyst binary blob is pretty good these days as well. Haven't had any problems in a long time (years) with either.

 

As for the bugs you listed Majestic, I thought you were using XFCE? Those are mostly Gnome 3 related. Gnome3 has always been glitchy for me. Conversely, XFCE's built-in compositor is solid as a rock. I get smoother flash performance on it than on Windows. 2D and 3D frame rates are consistent with the proprietary or the FOSS driver. That's the only problem with Nvidia. If their driver goes belly up, you're relying on the reverse engineered open source Noveau. In the long term, AMD's cooperative stance has yielded many benefits.

[binaryzero]

Instead of trying to find an Operating System that fits you best, why don't you just use the OS that fits the applications you use on a regular basis to best?

 

It's an OS, you're not suppose to know it's there - it's there to assist your applications in working. Linux, WIndows, OS X, OS/2, Unix, OpenVMS, MS-DOS - who cares? As long as the application you're using works. HOWEVER I completely agree with finding the right OS that helps your workflow, but to be honest, most operating systems are the same.

 

Face it, OS X and Windows will fit the majority of users. Then there's the users who like to tinker with their machines more than actually use them in a productive way - they'll spend all day trialing the best operating systems, and blowing their machines away time and time again. 

 

Enjoy computing in general, not arguing which OS is the best, because guess what? It's not gonna get you laid..

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

As for the bugs you listed Majestic, I thought you were using XFCE? Those are mostly Gnome 3 related. Gnome3 has always been glitchy for me. Conversely, XFCE's built-in compositor is solid as a rock. I get smoother flash performance on it than on Windows. 2D and 3D frame rates are consistent with the proprietary or the FOSS driver. That's the only problem with Nvidia. If their driver goes belly up, you're relying on the reverse engineered open source Noveau. In the long term, AMD's cooperative stance has yielded many benefits.

The primary issue is related to how the Nvidia driver is handling GLX double buffering (I think), which affects most compositors that use hardware rendering (such as Clutter, and Compton). The XFWM compositor works fine, but I find the amount of tearing that I get is quite distracting, and any attempt to use V-sync comes up against this driver issue.

 

Instead of trying to find an Operating System that fits you best, why don't you just use the OS that fits the applications you use on a regular basis to best?

It's an OS, you're not suppose to know it's there - it's there to assist your applications in working. Linux, WIndows, OS X, OS/2, Unix, OpenVMS, MS-DOS - who cares? As long as the application you're using works. HOWEVER I completely agree with finding the right OS that helps your workflow, but to be honest, most operating systems are the same.

Face it, OS X and Windows will fit the majority of users. Then there's the users who like to tinker with their machines more than actually use them in a productive way - they'll spend all day trialing the best operating systems, and blowing their machines away time and time again.

Enjoy computing in general, not arguing which OS is the best, because guess what? It's not gonna get you laid..

Two things, first is that Linux DOES fit me best for most cases except gaming, and even that is improving. I much prefer the Linux way to the Windows way for most stuff, hence why I use it, the issue is that I've had to go back to Windows and retrofit Cygwin and such because my experience with Linux is so broken that it's become intolerable. If it was functioning correctly, I'd be back to using it as my primary in a snap.

Second, I'm not arguing which OS is best, they all have their advantages, I'm simply facing a hard fact that I can't work with Linux (and specifically Nvidia's Linux support) in it's current state, which is a shame. Part of my enjoyment of computing is that I like to tinker, it's why I became a programmer. I know it's not going to get me laid :rolleyes:, but it's a part of computing as a hobby that I enjoy :).

[simplezz]

The primary issue is related to how the Nvidia driver is handling GLX double buffering (I think), which affects most compositors that use hardware rendering (such as Clutter, and Compton). The XFWM compositor works fine, but I find the amount of tearing that I get is quite distracting, and any attempt to use V-sync comes up against this driver issue.

That definitely is strange. Most compositors should be limiting/syncing the frames automatically without the need for VSync. Is it not possible to revert to a previous driver version until the issue is resolved?

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

That definitely is strange. Most compositors should be limiting/syncing the frames automatically without the need for VSync. Is it not possible to revert to a previous driver version until the issue is resolved?

Possibly, I tried rolling back already and failed hilariously (ended up chrooting from a LiveCD and re-installing the latest version of the driver to get back to a working OS), and I got bored trying to figure out how to do it. Admittedly I'd given up on that option out of frustration more than anything.

I agree that the vsync thing is weird. I get serious tearing with scrolling Windows and stuff. The Nvidia drivers have a new option which supposedly forced vsync, but it only works on the primary monitor, which is no good since I run a dual-monitor setup.

[Hussam Al-tayeb]

The issue with Linux is the fragmentation and duplication of effort. Fragmentation leads to rushed products and less man power per project since everyone is doing his or her own thing,

1) KDE and Gnome. Different developers with different approaches and ideas. I never had the chance to use Gnome3. Gnome2 was nice but it was stuck with old obsolete libraries such as bonobo/libgnome(ui). By the time things were ported to dbus and anything of important in libgnome(ui) was moved up to glib/gtk, the developers decided to redesign the desktop. In addition to that, there was the gdk/cairo thing and then gtk3 came out.

On KDE's side, qt3 was getting old and didn't support many new libraries. Qt4 came out and with it came KDE4. But there was still a lot of duplicated effort where Kdelibs contained better alternatives to functions in Qt4. Most of those improvments were upstreamed in Qt5. However, there are still problems in KDE. Akonadi framework still has some severe bugs.

 

Things just never had a chance to settle down and stabilize in the Linux desktop world.

Basically we are stuck in a state where we are always cleaning up our frameworks instead of concentrating on polishing the user experience.

2) I am one of the people who are really enthusiastic by systemd and wayland and that is because of the doors they open.

Wayland needs Qt5, gtk3, sdl2 or higher. older application can still run through xwayland. That means a lot of legacy applications won't have the full wayland experience.

nvidia's mainline driver right now only supports fermi cards and above with people using older cars on a long term support branch. That means if full wayland support in nvidia driver comes out now, only fermi cards and above will have it.

 

By the time wayland has replaced X11, we will be too busy porting applications to future gtk/Qt versions and there won't be many people fixing crashes and bugs appearing as a result of the switch to wayland.

 

KDE has a lot of potential if developers concentrate on fixing bugs instead of having to deal with the messy underlying framework. I am sure Gnome3 is as good too but I have no idea what kind of stability state it is in right now.

[binaryzero]

The primary issue is related to how the Nvidia driver is handling GLX double buffering (I think), which affects most compositors that use hardware rendering (such as Clutter, and Compton). The XFWM compositor works fine, but I find the amount of tearing that I get is quite distracting, and any attempt to use V-sync comes up against this driver issue.

 

Two things, first is that Linux DOES fit me best for most cases except gaming, and even that is improving. I much prefer the Linux way to the Windows way for most stuff, hence why I use it, the issue is that I've had to go back to Windows and retrofit Cygwin and such because my experience with Linux is so broken that it's become intolerable. If it was functioning correctly, I'd be back to using it as my primary in a snap.

Second, I'm not arguing which OS is best, they all have their advantages, I'm simply facing a hard fact that I can't work with Linux (and specifically Nvidia's Linux support) in it's current state, which is a shame. Part of my enjoyment of computing is that I like to tinker, it's why I became a programmer. I know it's not going to get me laid :rolleyes:, but it's a part of computing as a hobby that I enjoy :).

Well said :)

 

TBH, I was trolling abit lol.

[Art_X]

I know where the OP is coming from with his rant, I too have tried most distro's out there, but there is always something that goes wrong that causes me to have to fix it, or loot for a fix, be it an update to a library or something else out of my control and I spend more time fixing than using the system.

 

The main issue for me is lack of proper driver support, which to me is the number one thing holding Linux back, I to have decided to stick with Windows for the foreseeable future (even though I do not wish too) due to the latest Linux distro i tried locking up on me numerous times over a 3 day period, the only way I could fix it was to reboot the laptop.

 

From what I have seen Linux has a big issue with new hardware, again driver related and which is not Linux's fault but the hardware maker's, it has made rather large strides to be a usable OS, it just needs more support.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

Unless Microsoft allows xbox games on Windows...

Then SteamOS will die perhaps along with Steam

Gabe doesn't realise that Microsoft are still playing nice and keeping him around to promote gaming and healthy competition

I doubt Microsoft is capable of being this awesome.

[Barney T. Administrators]

The usability and enthusiasm for any Linux (desktop) distros is totally based on the user. I have used Linux since RedHat 7 and, while I appreciate anyone's choice for their own OS, my distro is completely satisfactory to me. Can  I do everything? No. Can any distro do everything with all sorts of software? Probably not. But for 9/10ths of the things that I need to do, it is satisfactory for me.

 

That said, I use OS X as well as Windows 8.1. All have their strengths and weaknesses. I appreciate this opinion post from the OP. Hopefully this thread will not degrade into another immature "my distro is better than your distro" or a Windows vs. Linux bashing. In those posts, no one ever gets convinced and everyone leaves with hurt feelings.

[BetaguyGZT]

The usability and enthusiasm for any Linux (desktop) distros is totally based on the user. I have used Linux since RedHat 7 and, while I appreciate anyone's choice for their own OS, my distro is completely satisfactory to me. Can  I do everything? No. Can any distro do everything with all sorts of software? Probably not. But for 9/10ths of the things that I need to do, it is satisfactory for me.

 

That said, I use OS X as well as Windows 8.1. All have their strengths and weaknesses. I appreciate this opinion post from the OP. Hopefully this thread will not degrade into another immature "my distro is better than your distro" or a Windows vs. Linux bashing.

I'm in this club. It mirrors what I said recently in another thread on that same topic.

[simplezz]

I don't view drivers as a major issue any more on Linux. These days 95% of systems work OOTB without any user intervention. There will be bugs here and there, and things may break from time to time. I don't see that as a problem exclusive to Linux though. Software is imperfect.

The good news is, GNU/Linux has come on leaps and bounds from its earlier years, and like the other major OS', is now very user-friendly, requiring little to no technical knowledge to get up and running with distros like Ubuntu, Mint, SuSE, Fedora, etc. Without the headaches of OS rot, malware, viruses and other nasties, this makes Linux very reliable and stable. Not to mention the fact that it's highly customisable and has a great selection of easily accessible and high quality free software.

In summary, I disagree with the contention that GNU/Linux on the desktop is any more difficult or problematic to use than other OS' these days.

[Shiranui]

I used to like Compiz's wobbly windows.

[(Account no longer active)]

If you want a 'classic' Linux experience, forget about GNOME and KDE. Use LXDE. GNOME and KDE have just become eye candy.

 

Modern Nvidia cards and Linux are still a bit flaky. I'd suggest Intel graphics for Linux. Release the source Nvidia!

 

Being able to manage other PCs via SSH is awesome. That's why I prefer Linux when it comes to networking.

[JustGeorge]

If Linux Mint could seamlessly join a Windows Domain/Active Directory and run MS Office, I'd switch a boat load of high risk PC's @ work to it in a heartbeat. When I say "high risk", I mean PC's used by mindless people who love emoticons and carry a towel to wipe up the drool they leave on the floor wherever they go. Just the thought of eliminating virtually all malware threats on these machines is a religious experience for me. Office online is nice, but you can't browse and open a file locally. You have to upload to OneDrive.

 

Something I've noticed in playing with Linux is that it doesn't seem to tolerate a hard shut down very well. On the machines that its happened, its dog slow on boot afterward and suffers from other little problems here and there. I'm sure this could be fixed, but I've not spent the required time to learn much troubleshooting/repair of Linux because its not a viable option at this point.

 

I'd give it a serious long term whirl on my personal machine if it ran...(don't hate) all my favorite console/arcade emulators as good as Windows. Silly I know.... Dual boot wouldn't work for me. If I'm going to learn something, I gotta live it.

[COKid]

Well, to each their own. I'm more than happy with Debian running Xfce. When I need a Windows program, I simply crank up VirtualBox within Debian. I couldn't imagine going back to Windows full-time. Ugh!

[TruckWEB]

A long developpement delay between XP and Vista and the flop that it was as given Linux Devs plenty of time to give us something that "just work".  Instead it's the adoption of OS X that grew in that period.  Then we got Windows 7 and it was bliss again, until Windows 8...  

 

I guess Linux had lots of time to become good.  But the lack of interest of the what, 92% of Windows users?  Is not forcing any devs to bring good apps to Linux.  The only major thing that happened with Linux is SteamOS but even that is a little bit stale...

 

I've tried many distro, but with my dual monitor setup, sound card, video, ... I've ran into problems like all the time.  Enough to make me WANT Windows back on my PC.

 

To each their own.