this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2025
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 21 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Don't desktop environments e.g., GNOME, KDE, fit the bill here? Sure they have their problems, but they are IMO about as polished as macOS or Windows.

[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (11 children)

I agree that GNOME and KDE are gorgeous and very polished in many ways. However, I have had some problems in GNOME, Fedora, or Open Suse:

  • fractional scaling is not immediately available in Fedora or OpenSuse, at least to users who don't know how to use the terminal [Edit: Thanks, DannyBoys for pointing out that Ubuntu may have fractional scaling enabled by default and that experimental fractional scaling on GNOME can be activated, at a battery cost]
  • the track-pad two-finger scrolling is painful (compared to a Mac) to me and to people who have used my laptop with Fedora or OpenSuse
  • sometimes it's hard for me to get software, especially outside of .debs. For example, in Fedora I had trouble getting Signal Desktop installed from a source that I felt comfortable with (maybe this speaks to my ignorance in how Fedora packages are set up and distributed more than the reality of insecurity, but even this is part of the issue: I couldn't find any reassurance). To be fair, Open Suse gave me that reassurance, because I understood that YAST was somehow more directly tied to the source (I could be wrong, but that was my impression). However, YAST's software download software is a far cry from the kind of UX that the GNOME Software app is or the Apple App Store.

Despite these problems, I do have to say that GNOME is absolutely gorgeous. It's precisely the kind of user-centricity that I want to see in Linux.

However, the end-users aren't the only users. There are also developers! For example, I remember listening to the developer of the Mojo language talking with Richard Feldman, and the developer said that the development of the Swift language made it clear to him that Apple is aggressively user-centric. I don't doubt that there are many problems with Swift as with Apple products in general, but I don't see that kind of discourse in Linux coming from the main maintainers. Instead, there seems to be a vanguard arguing for a better developer experience (such as writing kernel code in Rust), and they find loads of friction. Heck, key developers are leaving Linux!

Edit: Clarified what is strictly my interpretation.

[–] DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I've been using fractional scaling on my laptop with GNOME since I installed it about four years ago. It's a bit heavy on battery usage but it's worked as expected for all this time.

[–] snek_boi@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Oh. I see I was wrong. Amazing. I should look into that! How did you enable it? I did a quick search and found I just need to do gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"; is that it?

[–] DannyBoy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

I believe it was enabled by default on Ubuntu.

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