Linux

Yeah, I've heard really good things about Pop!_OS, especially for Windows migrants.

I love pop os.

Yeah, the rock-solid stability of Debian stable is definitely a huge plus. I thought I would be okay with less frequent updates, but I changed my mind when I realized cool updates like KDE 6 won't make it to stable probably until next year T__T. Even Nvidia 555 drivers probably won't even hit backports for a while. Clearly the responsible thing to do here is to add an Arch install alongside my Debian/W11 dual-boot 😛

Not using a DE sounds intriguing, I might give that a try once I find my feet on desktop Linux. I've been around *nix systems most of my career, but I haven't used a Linux desktop as a daily driver in like 15 years. It's funny how much has changed, and how much hasn't.

I think most users dont install windows period. It just comes with the computer. And if it breaks, they get a new one. Thats it.

Agree. Windows has almost a forty year “quirk bake-in”. All your relatives and non-savvy friends are NOT going to learn anything new (even mac) if they can help it.

The more droolproof linux can be the easier it will be adopted. Whether or not it mimics windows is a choice, but either way we’re losing computer literacy instead of everyone being computer literate. Sadly.

It’s not even that.

By and large, most industry standard softwares are only available on Windows and macOS. Take word processing for example. It doesn’t matter if there are open source alternatives that gets it 95% of the way there. Companies by and large would not want to run the risk of that last 5% (1%, 0.01% doesn’t matter) creating a situation where there’s misunderstanding with another business entity. Companies will by and large continue to purchase and expect their employees to use these standard softwares. People will by and large continue to train themselves to use these softwares so they have employable skills so they can put food on the table.

No one cares about how easy or hard it is to install something. IT (or local brick and mortar computer retailer) takes care of all that. Whether or not it is compatible with consistently making money / putting food on the table is way more important.

Until we have Microsoft Office for Linux; Adobe Creative Suite for Linux; Autodeks AutoCAD for Linux; etc etc. not even the janky “Microsoft Office for Mac” little cousin implementation but proper actual first party for Linux releases, it is unlikely we’ll see competitive level of Linux desktop adoption.

I gave up on Homebrew because it was difficult to install.

It just includes as a dependency the Mac command line developer tools, which can be installed pretty easily from what I remember.

And what I like is that it's a normal Unix style shell, with almost all the utilities you'd expect.

you have to drag the icon in to install things.

I mean that's about 100 times better than Windows' default of running an installer that isn't easily reversible.

High DPI screen support in Linux is still troublesome, especially between multiple screens with different DPI/resolution, especially between GTK and Qt programs

Hopefully the success of Steam Deck will push manufacturers to increase their investment into Linux driver development. Having only used Linux servers in the past decade or so, I was pleasantly surprised when I came back to Linux desktop and realized that there were no other drivers (except Nvidia) to install since everything was baked into the kernel! Incredibly convenient!

it'll be hard to top the built-in power/suspend/hibernate/resume behavior and its effect on battery life

Yeah, it's difficult to compete with a fully vertically integrated stack like Apple's, and they do lock down things so other software is always at a disadvantage. Hopefully Linux laptops become competitive so this improves.