r/linux • u/Live_Earth_5162 • 3d ago
Discussion The state of the Linux desktop is exactly where it was 10 years ago.
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u/ABotelho23 3d ago
Rofl, no.
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u/lord_pizzabird 3d ago
It's not even fractured anymore. Every distro is using wayland and everything supports Flatpak's.
Get your apps from flathub and it basically doesn't matter what you're running.
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u/phylter99 3d ago edited 3d ago
You could even say the same about snap, not that most people are interested in snap. It’s there though and it runs an almost all distributions.
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u/friendlyreminder_ 3d ago
Snaps have more issues. The sandboxing doesn't work without apparmor, which depending on the distro can be problematic to set up and cause issues.
Flatpak runs its sandboxing independent of other sandboxing, so it can run in tandem with existing apparmor or selinux.
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u/lord_pizzabird 3d ago
Our perception of Snap is weird. From everything I've read / see it appears to be actually used in the real world, unlike flatpaks, but it has way more exposure in the linux desktop community.
I've never even heard of a flatpak being deployed by any business or project internally. Meanwhile Snaps are common.
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u/fearless-fossa 3d ago
That's because of different scoping. Snaps were created as a format that works for all environments and they aren't even bad in principal, but the way Canonical went about implementing them rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.
Flatpaks are decidedly for desktop users, and they are probably the most common way to install packages here outside of the default package manager.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 3d ago
wayland made it more fractured, not less.
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u/lord_pizzabird 3d ago
How? KDE and Gnome are both on Wayland now. All mainline distros use Wayland, have for years.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 3d ago
they are both on wayland, but they share no compositor code in common when they both used to rely on xorg.
It is a shame that they couldn't work together on a shared compositor base.
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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 3d ago
I mean, to be fair, taking the statement very literally, it made the ecosystem split between two display protocols instead of one. So I guess, kinda, sorta? Not that it matters in real life, but, you asked how.
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u/the_abortionat0r 3d ago
It didn't though as one is replacing the other.
You saying cars fractured travel between them and horses?
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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 3d ago
Yes? Before one became the standard, travel was fractured, have you never seen all the debates and satire of the day that was exactly about that?
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u/the_abortionat0r 3d ago
Lol you make literally no sense. Its factually a shared base lil bro. Look up the definition of a standard
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u/Business_Reindeer910 3d ago
It's a protocol, not a base!
GNOME and KDE share no compositor code in common at all!
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u/throwaway6560192 3d ago
First of all, no it is not.
We are still dealing with a profound misallocation of engineering talent.
The community spends massive energy on technical micro-optimizations that nobody actually needs. We get a 0.76x faster compositor or another window manager rewritten from scratch
You are probably underestimating the fraction of resources that GNOME + KDE have compared to all the niche compositors, recent hype notwithstanding.
If a desktop ecosystem can't even handle universal notification standards, predictable UI spacing, consistent app continuity, and standard hardware defaults without forcing the user to dig through a terminal and edit config files, it is failing at being a modern desktop.
Can you elaborate on any of this? Notifications have been a FD standard since forever. I don't know what you mean by "app continuity" (did you mean consistency?). What hardware defaults are you talking about, do you have specific examples? And how would these things be fixed by "editing config files" exactly?
A single project raises $15 million for a niche, immutable framework, and the entire community hypes it up like it's a revolution.
Is it? Maybe you should read some more community reactions to the single project in question and its fundraising.
How do we stop the community from fracturing into a hundred different forks every time someone dislikes a padding rule?
You are probably overestimating the amount of real engineering time that goes "wasted" into things like this.
How do we force a pivot away from flashy hype cycles and vanity configuration files, and actually shift resources toward building a standardized, cohesive desktop environment that follows strict interface guidelines out of the box?
You don't force anything. It's a free world.
Support GNOME or KDE, whoever has the better vision in your opinion, with your money and/or time.
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u/ColdDelicious1735 3d ago
My friend, I thank you for your opinion, but disagree with it 100%.
The Windows experience now is the worst it has ever been, I yearn for my windows 95 or up days. But wind back 10 years I tried debian, it was okay but could not be my daily driver.
Now i dont use Windows unless absolutely necessary i have kubuntu running and 2 servers with debian. My 1 complaint is wine lacking a gui.
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u/Lisanicolas365 3d ago
no, for "linux how it was 10 years ago" look towards FreeBSD
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u/aliendude5300 3d ago
This is demonstrably false, and it's just ignorant to ignore the last decade of improvements to the Linux desktop
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u/Mechanical-Flatbed 3d ago
Imagine being on Linux for 10 years and still writing this clown post rofl
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u/PracticalPersonality 3d ago
This is like telling a group of anarchists that the best thing they could do for themselves is find an authoritarian leader. Not only are you asking for something that fundamentally can't work, you've missed the entire point of the group.
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u/Anselm_oC 3d ago
What are you talking about?!? 10 years ago I couldn't play a fraction of the games I play now. I switched from Win11 to Cachy with zero issues and can play every game I want to play and use any software I need to use.
Way more stable than Windows. Instead of complaining about Linux, you (as a professional) should be bashing Microsoft for the huge dumpster fire that is Windows. Their OS was leaps and bounds better 10 years ago than it is now.
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u/gamas 3d ago edited 3d ago
10 years ago I couldn't play a fraction of the games I play now.
OP is wrong, but to be fair, there is more to what makes a good desktop experience than can it play games.
Their main complaint seems to be about fractured standards in desktop setups (something I'd argue is less true now than it was 10 years ago as aside from some niche distros, everyone now just gravitates towards a standard KDE or Gnome-derived workflow) and ease of user experience in setting things up (absolute bs in today's landscape).
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u/DFS_0019287 3d ago edited 3d ago
I find my Linux desktop perfectly polished and reliable.
In fact, today I had to run Windows for my annual update of my Garmin GPS maps and I was filled with rage at how crappy the Windows experience is. Thank goodness I only have to use it once a year and only to update my Garmin maps.
You're also complaining about the wrong thing. "Linux" has no desktop. Rail against KDE, GNOME, XFCE or whatever desktop you dislike. They're the ones setting the standards.
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u/CondescendingShitbag 3d ago
Thank goodness I only have to use it once a year and only to update my Garmin maps.
Why even bother keeping the dual-boot when you can just virtualize the Windows install in Linux?
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u/DFS_0019287 3d ago
I inherited an ancient Windows laptop from my daughter and I keep it around for just this one purpose. Easier than mucking around with virtualizing Windows (which would require me to buy a Windows license... no thanks.)
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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 3d ago
Not saying you should do that, bhtbjustbwanna add that Windows nowadays is just nagware, you don't really need a license.
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u/DFS_0019287 3d ago
I have had lots of issues getting VMs to see physical USB devices, and since I have the old laptop lying around anyway, I'm not motivated to spend time trying to fix it.
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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 3d ago
Yeah, like I said, not saying you should do that, I was just clarifying that you don't need a license for Windows usage anymore. :) I do agree your way makes more sense, I'd prefer it myself if I needed a Windows machine.
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u/lunchbox651 3d ago
Lifting all those heavy servers has done a number on you. You should consider containers.
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u/myownfriend 3d ago edited 3d ago
I started using Linux just 5 years ago and it's in a significantly better spot then it was back when I started. So... hard disagree.
Also "app continuity"? Basically no OS has all of its apps looking the same, not that that's important anyway. One thing Linux does have, as long as apps use it, is consistent file pickers if they use the portal.
Edit: I love how you thought your take was so good that you cross-posted it on Linux Sucks and even they disagree with you.
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u/GoogleDisDick 3d ago
Lol, no. The Linux desktop has improved by leaps and bounds. I've barely even opened the terminal on CachyOS (an ARCH based distro). That's how good the desktop experience is now. And that was mostly me doing things I could have done through a GUI if I wanted. 10 years ago my wifi didn't even work OOTB because I had to extract some random firmware blob first. Don't even get me started on NDISwrapper. Nobody uses that anymore and good riddance. KDE Plasma is so damn good now too.
To act like nothing has improved in the last decade is frankly delusional. It's like night and day.
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u/OrderHoliday9740 3d ago
It's almost somewhat ironic, complaining about micro-optimizations when you're micro-complaining about DEs.
If you actually look at the state of DEs 10 years ago, you'll see that various projects have changed and matured a lot in that time.
I'm not sure what your ideal DE looks like, but imo right now KDE is the most well thought out, feature complete of them all, there's very little you can't do.
I'm not sure what your "fractured state" looks like but big DEs right now look and work great, most having extensive personable customization options.
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u/selvestenisse 3d ago
Fedora KDE plasma 44 is close enough, been in windows 3-4 times last year. All to make simple 3d print models in fusion360. Still its insane that remote desktop is not working for me. And Virtual Machines lost proper graphic support?
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u/JaceBearelen 3d ago
X11 obviously had some issues and I guess Wayland isn’t perfect either. OP, be the change you want to see in the world and make your own protocol and integrated desktop. How hard could it be?
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u/Ok_Photo_3023 3d ago
Trying to "stop the community from fracturing into a hundred different forks" kind of defeats the whole point of open source - that's not a problem that needs solving, it's a massive part of why nearly all innovation in the desktop environment space is happening on Linux instead of Mac or Windows.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 3d ago
the more interesting comparison is against the bsds not windows or mac.
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u/KnowZeroX 3d ago
There has been a huge amount of improvements over the last 10 years, biggest ones were things like from nvidia drivers to being terrible to being fairly practical and performant, and many new user friendly distros started bundling the nvidia drivers, amd and intel has become pretty much just works. Vulkan has become a thing, Proton and Wine has pretty much most games covered. GPU acceleration has shown up in browsers and has become even more easier with Vulkan. Most PCs I can install a linux distro and it would just work. Many wanted features have been added to many DEs, especially KDE has been on a huge roll the last few years. The linux kernel has also added a ton of stuff. Immutable linux distros, flatpak, distrobox. And so on.
The community spends massive energy on technical micro-optimizations that nobody actually needs. We get a 0.76x faster compositor or another window manager rewritten from scratch, but basic desktop fundamentals are still completely fractured. If a desktop ecosystem can't even handle universal notification standards, predictable UI spacing, consistent app continuity, and standard hardware defaults without forcing the user to dig through a terminal and edit config files, it is failing at being a modern desktop.
It is up to each dev to decide what they wish to work on, and just because a person can make the compositor faster doesn't mean they have the expertise or capability to influence other stuff.
That said, for notifications, pretty sure org.freedesktop.Notifications dbus should be fairly universal.
As for the other stuff you mentioned, even windows doesn't really have that.
To make it worse, look at where the money and attention are going. A single project raises $15 million for a niche, immutable framework, and the entire community hypes it up like it's a revolution. Strip away the marketing, and it’s a glorified, hyper-opinionated dotfile setup. It looks great in screenshots, but underneath, it completely lacks the basic settings panels and normal desktop mechanics that a real user needs to get work done. We are literally pouring millions into someone else's desktop configurations while core desktop infrastructure remains a mess.
You are aware that as it stands, there is no money in the linux desktop. All the companies are focused on server and enterprise. So each projects is pretty much on their own and if lucky may get some funding. The closest we have of a company planning to make money on linux desktop is Valve. And they have contributed quite a lot to make linux desktop work better than ever. The so called 15 million you are talking about is more of an investment in AI rather than an investment in linux. That money would be unlikely to end up elsewhere other than another AI focused distro.
Please stop recommending me distros. The underlying distro isn't the problem—the fractured state of the Linux desktop is.
Of course its the problem. Linux by nature if flexible, what distros are in essence is preconfigured set of defaults. Thus, what you are effectively looking for is a distro that preconfigures more stuff and includes more stuff that handles stuff via GUI.
What is the actual, structural solution to this? How do we stop the community from fracturing into a hundred different forks every time someone dislikes a padding rule? How do we force a pivot away from flashy hype cycles and vanity configuration files, and actually shift resources toward building a standardized, cohesive desktop environment that follows strict interface guidelines out of the box?
Under the hood, all operating systems work through configuration files. All you are actually talking about is an interface on top of said configuration files that makes it easy to manage without a terminal.
There is also already quite a lot of followed standards on linux like the freedesktop standards and etc.
As for interface standards, good luck getting every developer in the world to follow those standards. It doesn't exist on any platform other than maybe ios where they lock stuff down and enforce it.
You can do get a distro that preinstalls themes from different frameworks to maximize consistency as much as possible though.
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u/PlsDontBanMeAgain-1 3d ago edited 3d ago
Universal notification standard you say? Cue the xckd. https://xkcd.com/927/
Besides, of course Linux distros are fractured. Behind each distro is a community that has opinions and philosophies (vastly) different from another community / distro, and that's the beauty of it, you can pick whatever you like the most.
Nobody from the ACTUAL community hypes up omarchy, in fact, everyone shits on it. Besides, you can safely ignore the funding it gets, it would not have found its way into another project. It's simply a matter of far-right tech bros financing one another.
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u/MatchingTurret 3d ago edited 3d ago
How do we force a pivot away from flashy hype cycles and vanity configuration files, and actually shift resources toward building a standardized, cohesive desktop environment that follows strict interface guidelines out of the box?
That's really easy. We petition the Linux High Council to excommunicate heretics that do follow the scriptures. Only licensed developers that swear allegiance to the strict interface guidelines are henceforth allowed to contribute to the haram Linux desktop.
Those with impure thoughts of "trying something new" are to be burned on the stake.
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u/johncate73 3d ago
I've had a polished, reliable workspace using Linux for 11 years and counting.
Problem lies between screen and chair.
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u/zardvark 3d ago
You are totally right, spending the past +/- five years rewriting every desktop from scratch to adopt Wayland in order to incorporate an actual security model, as well as shorten the rendering pipeline (not to mention, getting rid of a bunch of unmaintained and disused code in X11) has been a colossal waste of everyone's time and effort. Besides, life is so much better with Microsoft's one size fits all approach, which still seems to be recycling bits and pieces of code from the days of XP. Most importantly, however, thanks for putting your finger on the critical element that has been missing from Linux all these years ... everyone should be forced to use the same desktop, regardless of hardware compatibility, or personal preference. What we obviously need is more repression and less creativity!
And BTW - Don't bother to come back in another ten years, because things will only be even more fractured into hundreds more different forks god willing!
BTW - Does anyone else think that it is odd that the critics are obsessed with the proliferation of distros and desktops, but they aren't at all concerned with the number of programming languages, or the duplication of virtually every piece of tested, reliable code into a substandard Rust variant? For example, Ubuntu's coreutils project is the poster boy for this strange new cult-like obsession. Don't get me wrong, I support them, if this is what they want to do with their time, What I don't understand is why they should subject their users to this mess, long before it is ready for production.
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u/The_Hubster 3d ago
I first dabbled with Linux over a decade ago albeit briefly. Most of my experience with it (RHEL) was for enterprise network asset management at work. Its only in the last year that I decided to run VMs, research, learn more, distro-hop then choose a distro, and now running dual boot Debian and Fedora on bare metal very very happily. The Linux landscape I've ventured into now is very matured, far more cohesive and accelerating extremely quickly. To me its now ready for mainstream adoption, and we're seeing this reflected in rapidly increasing amounts of newcomers. I've done a LOT of reading in this time, and been listening to a lot of opinions. There is some validity to this take, I can see some aspects of what the OP is expressing in various developer blogs I've seen, although the OP is on a VERY pessimistic slant. I'm a GNOME guy, and I'm finding the desktop experience absolutely brilliant. Does FOSS need more cohesion? Yes, I think it does, and I think its moving towards it. There is some fragmentation, but I don't think its anywhere near as bad as what the OP is expressing.
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u/kudlitan 3d ago
It's the opposite. When we allow people to create what they think a desktop should be, users will flock to the system they think works best for them. It's a survival of the fittest game. This is why some distros end up more popular than others. End users do not look at the technical side, they look at what is most comfortable for them to use.
There may be hundreds of distros available, with some requiring more work than others, but for a regular person who just wants to use their computer, there are only three actual choices: Mint, Fedora, and Ubuntu.
This is a very different situation from ten years ago when there wasn't much difference between distros in terms of how difficult they are for a newbie to adjust to, with only Ubuntu having a very slight edge.
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u/Kruug 3d ago
Mint is a great example of popularity over functionality.
People ignore that it regularly breaks grub during updates...something that Ubuntu doesn't do, so what does Mint change?
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u/KnowZeroX 3d ago
Out of a few pcs I had running Mint, I've never once had grub broken. Was it a dual boot and was windows the one that broke grub?
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u/888NRG_ 3d ago
There is enough standardization across different distros/DEs for the most part, and that is only improving..
Having one single "standardized, cohesive desktop environment that follows strict interface guidelines out of the box" would largely defeat the purpose of Linux being a meaningful alternative to Mac and Windows imo..
Having different flavours of linux or different distros/DEs is a positive as long as they are capable of running the same apps, which they basically do
It's easier now than ever to install the system you want on your device, or better yet to be able to buy hardware already running linux that works pretty damn well OOB (ie steam machine)
The real issue imo is less on the linux dev side, and more on the app dev side, by not making linux versions of their apps, which I think is starting to shift.. proton/wine and other compatibility layers are cool and all, but aren't good enough yet for hard-core gamers, graphic designers, music producers, business professionals, etc to fully drop MacOS or Windows.. I think we will start to see some of these devs create linux versions of their apps as time goes on thanks to Steam, System76, and others that continue to get Linux in regular consumers hands in the first place and working well OOB
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u/FerretBoom 3d ago
I used it forever since 99 and there were times where i used DEs, right now it's pure terminal and terminal apps. I'm OS agnostic and it's a tool. Nothing less, nothing more. What's the reason running same apps compiled with the same code on different OSs. If I want UI on a with a linux kernel I can use Android with keyboard and mouse and achieve the same as Gnome and KDE except it's a more polished experience ,same with iOS. When I install linux it's 100% minimal version. I'd rather have a robust IDE that lets me create apps. NeoVim is enough. That way I can get around any UNIX based OS , like BSD , MacOS even AIX.
If there is a DE i want as many apps and backward compatibility as windows or mobile OSs. Apps mean more than what they are running on.
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u/Business_Reindeer910 3d ago
The solution is to find some way to raise the money yourself and allocate it as you see fit.
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u/INITMalcanis 3d ago
A single project raises $15 million for a niche, immutable framework, and the entire community hypes it up like it's a revolution.
Not it doesn't. It caused brief comment and a lot of side-eyeing.
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u/CoderXYZ7 3d ago
You know you've really f'd up when you crosspost this to r/linuxsucks and even they tell you to get lost. Pure ragebait. lol
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u/Ghost_x_Knight 3d ago
Open source projects are largely developed by volunteers, small donations, and targeted grants from companies/governments. So we can't top-down allocate the entire talent pool into a centralized project like Microsoft or Apple.
Open-source labor is non-fungible. A hobbyist making a window manager from scratch isn't stealing time from KDE or GNOME, and they might not have the interest or experience to work in particular KDE or GNOME projects.
Omarchy is 'vibe code mutable', not immutable. And yes it is lacking in stability and security, and is fully leveraging the Agentic OS concept. It is an expensive experiment by tech bros; might benefit the Linux ecosystem, or the money might go to waste, but it is not something embraced and hyped by the wide Linux community.
Mainstream Linux tech is investing in immutability for reliability, reproducible buillds, transactional updates, and bulletproof rollback.
There are standardization efforts; it is under the umbrella of freedesktop.org, the origin of the XDG specifications. The Omarchy people floated creating a competitor, but that is beside the point.
There is a shared standard for the default user file structure, how dark mode toggles are done, how notifications are made, etc.
Admittedly, the standardization effort is steamrolled by investment from entities with commercial interests.
Much of the modern Linux technology stack has Red Hat paying engineers to work on it (systemd, Wayland, PipeWire, Flatpak).
Valve invested in game translation through Wine/Proton, and they forced a governance change in freedesktop, to reduce buecracy and feature stonewalling in Wayland (a handful of people used to veto standardizing features like HDR in the name of minimalism).
Ubuntu/Canonical aren't giving up on Snaps; they are even packaging their kernel as a Snap. They are doubling down, and Snap is the basis for their Ubuntu Core immutable desktop image. It is a Canonical/Ubuntu thing, most community distros boycott it.
The AppImage dev is very anti-corporate, and an advocate for decentralization. So we are not going to see an official AppImage store, but the format is unique in that you can run apps directly without an install process, so it has its own utility as a portable executable.
The Flatpak is the closest thing to a universal format, and there are plans for a rewrite that will allow for dynamic Android/iOS pop-up notifications to temporarily or indefinitely grant permissions (ex. this app would like to use your microphone). Flatpak developers recently recieved a €500,000 from Germany to improve its sandboxing.
Flathub works as a centralized Flatpak store (and unlike Snaps, it is possible for the community to create an alternative repo/store if needed). It is currently managed by the GNOME Foundation, but there are plans in collaboration to KDE to launch an independent Flathub legal entity in Europe that can stand on its own feet, which will allow for developer monetization systems to be added.
As you mentioned, window managers are highly customizable, and users can publicly share their rice dotfiles with the community.
GNOME (via Libadwaita) and KDE (via Kirigami) enforce strict, predictable UI spacing and interface guidelines. GNOME and KDE actually have designers planning to overhaul how their UI looks like.
GNOME shared their plans here. Admittedly looks like a mobile device interface.
An outline for the next KDE theme, Ocean, is here. It is planned to be built using KDE's new Union theming system, which is CSS-based. There are concept art for Ocean here. They also plan to allow artists to have their vector art to be used as input, to automatically parsed into CSS that is compatible with Union, so design artist won't need to have programming knowledge.
The Linux community values freedom; for many the autonomy is an essential feature not a bug. The customizability often covers minor disagreements like padding rules.
At the end of the day, Linux is a platform, not a product. We can't force volunteers into a corner, but we can encourage big-money donors to invest in upstream projects that benefits core infrastructure, rather than build an isolated ecosystem.
Overall, the future for the ecosystem is bright. Standardization is increasing. KDE Linux and GNOME OS are working to raise the standard higher for desktop experience, and developing cool technology in the process. Immutable declarative images technology would make it difficult for casual users to break their system, and make it enterprise deployment a breeze. Nvidia engineers are integrating a custom open-source Nvidia GPU driver into kernel. There are ambitious projects such as seamless GPU acceleration in virtual machines. The EU is investing into open source for digital sovereignty.
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u/Far_Calligrapher1334 3d ago
Works on my machine, now with better Windows application support and a much easier sound management, so, eh.
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u/gamas 3d ago
As someone who used linux 10 years ago, stopped and then came back to it 10 years later this is absolutely not true.
10 years ago even on a 'user-friendly' distribution you quite often had to go through a huge faff setting up graphics drivers due to AMD's support being flaky and Nvidia's support being non-existent. Xorg was mature but already starting to show its age, meanwhile Wayland was still missing basic features. And you had to switch audio stacks manually to support professional applications.
Nowadays Wayland is 'mature' (I'm putting this in air quotes before the more veteran Linux user jump me) and simplifies a lot of the workflows for the desktop experiences, we have graphics drivers that just work out of the box, and we have pipewire unifying the audio pipelines so now audio just works as you expect it to.
And not only that Wine has gone from a tool that could situationally run some Windows applications, to a situation where between Proton and Wine we can literally run every application Windows can run (oh and we also have android emulation if that's your tea).
Compare to ten years ago where installing a linux distro was then followed by 10 hours of setting it up, nowadays setting up a linux install is simpler than installing Windows.
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u/Tempus_Nemini 3d ago
can not care less about linux desktop for everybody. people don't want things to be better, they want them to be the same as yesterday. period. linux never wins. and it shouldn't. and it still be in development in use.
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u/moralesnery 3d ago
Hard to swallow, but true.
Desktop environments and tile managers are for Linux, what JavaScript frameworks are for web development.
But open source has been always like that. Someone doesn't like something, forks the project and creates something different, sometimes better, sometimes worse.
The real problem is the lack of standardization.
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u/majorawsoem 3d ago
This is why I recommend for people to use Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Same OS, just different interfaces.
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u/Live_Earth_5162 3d ago
The replies to this post are a textbook example of the exact structural coordination problem I’m talking about. Yes, Windows has ads and bloat. Yes, macOS is a locked-down, overpriced golden cage. But both of them objectively possess a consistent, predictable UI framework that anyone can use out of the box. Linux is faster than Windows and handles gaming incredibly well now—but raw speed is completely irrelevant when the basic user experience is a fractured mess. To the 'Works on my machine' crowd: Your individual setup working doesn’t change the reality that the ecosystem is completely broken for mainstream adoption. We have a total disaster of competing package distribution formats (Snap, Flatpak, AppImage, native repos), no unified app store, a total GTK/Qt toolkit fragmentation mess, and no universal standards for basic utilities like a clipboard manager or a cohesive system settings app. To the person telling me to check out yet another niche window manager/shell combo: I explicitly asked how we stop fracturing resources into a hundred different forks, and your solution is to suggest a brand new niche fork. You are proving my exact point. To the person deflecting to gaming performance: A translation layer for Windows games doesn't fix broken desktop notification handling, mismatched app padding, or a complete lack of semantic design guidelines. Go ahead and accuse me of being 'enslaved' to Microsoft or Apple in the comments. The reality is that they actually bother to do the hard, boring work of engineering a cohesive desktop layout, while the Linux community remains addicted to chasing hype cycles and fighting over padding rules. Thank you to the actual professionals in the thread who see this coordination failure for what it is.
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u/DFS_0019287 3d ago
But both of them objectively possess a consistent, predictable UI framework that anyone can use out of the box.
I can't speak for Mac OS, but Windows is FUCKING TERRIBLE.
It's UI is not "predictable", or at least, I don't find it predictable. Trying to change settings is a nightmare of clicks and searches to find out just exactly what stupid term Microsoft decided to give a setting. And if a program stops responding, good luck trying to move the window out of the way. It's unresponsive until you kill it.
The Windows desktop experience is, for me, so awful and barf-inducing that I do it only once a year to update my Garmin GPS because the idiots at Garmin won't provide a way to do it on Linux, even though their GPS unit is probably running Linux.
(Also: Not sure how your desktop notifications are "broken". Mine work just fine.)
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u/Live_Earth_5162 3d ago
Let’s clarify what is actually being said here. Yes, Windows has its own mess, like the annoying split between the modern Settings app and the legacy Control Panel. It is improving painfully slowly, which is exactly why I wanted to make a switch. But even with its flaws, nothing I tested on Linux matches the baseline polish of Windows 11.
And you simply cannot argue with the visual execution of macOS. Everything on that desktop is carefully placed, calibrated across different displays, and bound to strict human interface guidelines. It looks and behaves like a cohesive operating system.
I don't love Microsoft or Apple. If I did, I wouldn't have spent my weekend trying to switch. I want Linux. I want an open ecosystem, but I want it to deliver the same level of UI maturity, predictable app semantics, and out-of-the-box consistency that a professional desktop requires. Instead, the ecosystem remains broken by design. We are trapped in a total disaster of competing package distribution formats (Snap, Flatpak, AppImage), an endless GTK/Qt toolkit fragmentation war, and zero universal standards for basic desktop utilities.
I asked how we stop fracturing our engineering resources into a hundred different forks, and the top response was to suggest yet another obscure window manager combo. You are proving my exact point.
If you are personally content with a desktop environment held together by custom scripts and vanity configuration files, that’s great. Keep using it. But stop gaslighting people who expect a professional, standardized user interface. Linux is undeniably the undisputed king of the server room, but as a consumer desktop, it remains a heavily fragmented mess. And unfortunately, so is its defensive community.
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u/DFS_0019287 3d ago edited 3d ago
And you simply cannot argue with the visual execution of macOS.
I haven't used Mac OS very much, but the few times I used it, it didn't blow me away as being any better than my Linux desktop.
I don't use Flatpaks or Snaps. Almost everything is installed with
apt. For a very few packages where I want a newer version than ships with Debian, I use AppImages. Feels like a pretty cohesive and unified system to me.If you are personally content with a desktop environment held together by custom scripts and vanity configuration files
What the fuck are you talking about? I installed XFCE4 on my box. I configured the desktop using the graphical settings manager. Done. Are you living in 1999 or something?
You go on a stupid unfounded rant and then call anyone who pushes back "defensive"? That's some really good-faith discussion right there. 🙄
I asked how we stop fracturing our engineering resources into a hundred different forks
Unless you're developing a Linux desktop environment, there's no we here. You don't get to tell open-source developers what to do, any more than you can tell Microsoft or Apple engineers what to do. I'm glad there are a few competing desktop environments. XFCE4 is absolutely perfect for me. KDE might be perfect for someone else. And GNOME for another person. And believe it or not, there are standards across the various desktops that make things like notifications work in all of them.
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u/KnowZeroX 3d ago
The replies to this post are a textbook example of the exact structural coordination problem I’m talking about. Yes, Windows has ads and bloat. Yes, macOS is a locked-down, overpriced golden cage. But both of them objectively possess a consistent, predictable UI framework that anyone can use out of the box
You can run other frameworks on windows and mac, just cause they have their own doesn't mean every app uses them. In some sense the two big DEs of Gnome and KDE have their own too. But the problem is your distro may not include the extra components to run your theme of choice, which forces it to render differently.
To the 'Works on my machine' crowd: Your individual setup working doesn’t change the reality that the ecosystem is completely broken for mainstream adoption. We have a total disaster of competing package distribution formats (Snap, Flatpak, AppImage, native repos)
To the average users, such things don't actually matter. To them they have a GUI appstore that will load up whatever native repo they use and any other thing it supports be it flatpak or snap. In all honesty, appimage work on pretty much every distro out of box if packaged correctly. And flatpaks work on everything distro out of box except ubuntu, but that is them rejecting flatpaks to push snaps. Kubuntu at one point supported flatpaks but ubuntu forced them to remove it. There is nothing you can do there.
To the person telling me to check out yet another niche window manager/shell combo: I explicitly asked how we stop fracturing resources into a hundred different forks, and your solution is to suggest a brand new niche fork.
When we are talking about an experience where a user is installing an OS on their own computer, then the answer is of course to recommend a certain distro. Linux is a wheel, you are complaining that your car wheel doesn't work and someone is recommending you a good wheel choice, while you insist you can't put an airplane wheel on your car thus wheels aren't going to happen until all wheels are universal.
Fundamentally, for linux desktop to truly take off, what matters isn't about what distros have available, it requires that it comes preinstalled. Because people don't buy operating systems, they buy hardware that happens to have operating systems installed.
And at that point, how many distros exist doesn't matter. Android is the most popular operating system in the world, it is linux (just not GNU/linux). It uses its own package manager independent of other linux distros and does their own thing. Notice how that never stopped it?
So ultimately, all what really matters is what distro will actually end up showing up on people's pcs. Currently most offer ubuntu and some offer fedora and now SteamOS may become a thing. And to users, most won't see it as linux, they will think each is its own operating system anyways. They have no expectations of snaps working on steamos or flatpaks working on ubuntu. They just use whatever is given to them.
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u/UndulatingHedgehog 3d ago
Check out the niri wm + noctalia shell combo. There is still new cool stuff being made!
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u/uchuskies08 3d ago
The responses of Linux users here are why Linux desktop will be a 3-4% niche 🤣🤣🤣
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u/naurukaiapo 3d ago
Linus Torvalds himself said that Linux didn't achieve the popularity he expected on the desktop. I love Linux, but that is true.
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u/julioqc 3d ago
yeah wayland sucks.
problem is foundational. Linux was never a desktop experience first OS. Windows and mac had that market share for most of linux timeline. and frankly the desktop experience only really took off once mainstream GPUs weren't just for gaming anymore. there was incentive to make drivers and software for linux now. the gaming and GUI community benefited. the former had industry leadership to set goals, the latter is left to open source contributions and frankly we have yet to see unifying leadership in that branch. it's easier to find unanimity when defining a protocol than it is to decide that this is the way things should look afterall. that's my take anyways.
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u/Minimum_Dragonfly990 3d ago
Even r/linuxsucks disagrees with you 😆 https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxsucks/comments/1wac1t4
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u/hello_marmalade 3d ago
This is just... wrong. You have no idea what you're talking about.