Comment by vbezhenar
4 days ago
I'm asking for Android-based desktop.
Windows is so bad, that I've lost any hope for it to recover.
MacOS is not that bad, but it's tied to Apple hardware and I don't like it. Also it's not getting better either, new releases bring more bloat and features I didn't ask for.
Linux is what I use, but I also lost hope for it to ever become polished experience. Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good. I can navigate Linux bugs and workarounds, but I'd prefer not to.
Expecting some new unknown operating system to appear and be ready is foolish, it won't happen.
So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future. Linux have good support for desktop hardware. Android have good polished stack for applications. Developers know how to write apps for android. Security story for Android is miles ahead that of desktop Linux. So I totally see that Android Desktop could actually be a good thing, with Google sponsoring its development. And if Google will put too much bloat in it, its open source nature would allow for volunteers to build better distributions of it.
It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase and their preferences,, why continue to use it instead of KDE or any of the other 10 DE environments?
> It's pretty openly known that GNOME is hostile to its own userbase
It's pretty openly in bad faith to assign malice to open-source developers.
GNOME does in fact have a long track record on this point. Decades old.
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Dunno, Gnome hasn't been hostile to me.
I'm sorry, but there are MANY users of GNOME who are happy with the direction. I'd personally choose GNOME over any desktop environment on any OS.
I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me. I want opinionated software. I don't like GNOME, but it's the lesser evil and I learned to deal with its issues.
Also I don't like that KDE does not have its native launcher. I need to install some SDDE stuff which works under Xorg or something like that and looks ugly. Pretty weird stuff all that. GNOME just have GDM which just works.
My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project.
There are no other 10 DE environments. GNOME and KDE are the only two mature ones. Rest are either obsolete, especially with Wayland conquering Linux desktop, or for weird use-cases, like tiling WMs. I'm used to traditional windows managers, I don't want tiling WMs.
This is an honest question, not trying to get into an argument...
> I don't want extensible software. KDE is terrible in that regards. They have miriads of options, that's too much for me.
Why not use the default provided then and take the defaults as opinionated? That's what I do actually. I might change very few options, but I generally use the defaults. It's not that you have to configure kde before it becomes usable, the defaults are pretty ok.
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Lots of opinions that are less than idea in gnome. But the only one that really breaks me is lack of typeahead in Nautilus.
I just want to type D, enter and open Documents/, how hard can it be. It's been almost a decade since they removed it, and I still can't use vanilla Nautilus.
I always end up with Nemo or a patched Nautilus.
rant aside, the rest of gnome seems fine. Don't love it, but also don't hate it. I can add my own shortcuts with rofi/dmenu.
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> My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want. It doesn't exist, unfortunately. May be I should try to write is, as I complain about it so much. Just have no idea about scale of such a project.
Have you ever tried Icewm?
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Cinnamon DE (linux mint) is stable, mature and miles ahead of gnome
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> My ideal environment would be Windows 95-like WM with zero configuration options which just works out of the box the way I want.
Why would we have any reason to believe that there would ever be a super-opinionated desktop environment that would be good? The examples we have -- which notably DO NOT include Windows 95, which had a zillion tiny knobs, many in the UI, but others requiring dropping to the registry (which is no different from screwing with confirmation files)... and, frankly, doesn't even include macOS, the system with some of the best customization of key bindings and the most universal automation -- are mostly bad. Put in the day or two of effort to make something that isn't opinionated work the way you want, and then reap the rewards for the following few decades of your productive career.
But you don't need to configure kde to use it, you can just use the defaults for everything, nobody is forcing you to configure stuff. It is not some exotic tiling wm where you have to set up everything.
XFCE is plenty mature and very stable
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Help me understand your two posts. From your earlier post you don't like GNOME because it's make different choices about what to support, and here you're saying you don't like KDE because it isn't opinionated enough.
Is the problem that you don't want choices as long as the maintainers always makes the same choice you would have when taking options away?
Cosmic.
My pessimism is that with their coming clamp-down on external sources for -installing- "sideloading" apps https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45736479 this os may be somewhere between macos and ipados in terms of freedom in the coming years. I have hope that Valve's operating systems and unified platforms will provide a way not only for macos/windows users to move on while retaining compatibility, but for the company to make the transition to arm (as they are with deckard) and retain total binary freedom.
Home computers are inherently more open to sideloading. So I don't see a scenario where they would close it. But may be I'm spoiled by x86, wouldn't be surprised to find out that ARM computers would not be open to boot unlock and all that stuff.
Just think about how few Android devices have an open bootloader right now, there's no reason to think it'd be any different on larger hardware.
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If you're not accustomed to it, arm computers have no BIOS/UEFI boot selection and usually require a custom bootloader to load a new OS. I remember many fun hobby projects of old with x86 where I could take an old x86 appliance and put in a clean linux disk to use the hardware however I wanted, nowadays your OS needs to be signed, and because the root is owned, the software can be limited to that what the OEM or OS company desires, much like what MS is trying to do with TPM2 and Win11. Of all the ARM phones I've seen, perhaps 10% support bootloader unlock, and that's only with a certain carrier, the problem is that it's not a unified platform, support has to be implemented per-device, so even if the bootloader is open, the OS may not be up to date (as many have noted with dodgy third party arm boards)
We used to call installing software on our own device, installing.
MacOS requires dropping to the terminal to install unsigned applications. There is literally no need for this, except to ensure apple profits.
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Depends what you mean by security, if by security you mean sanboxing of apps sure, if by security you mean that you trust what's in your OS and you can control it, it's worse than desktop Linux.
Security isn't just about technical features but also about trust, while I trust my Linux desktop, I don't trust my Android phone with the Play Store running as high privilege, advertising id in the OS and unknown manufacturer additions.
But that's more like talking about a particular distro, like I wouldn't trust North Korea's Linux distro either, compared to Debian.
Meanwhile something close to GrapheneOS running on desktop sounds fantastic.
Perhaps you may like Qubes OS.
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Windows is bad because it has opinions about advertisements and AI.
MacOS is bad because it has opinions about what hardware you should use.
Linux is bad because it doesn't have opinions.
No opinions? Have you ever read a code of conduct? :)
Isn’t Valve having a go at making Linux more consumer friendly?
> Just recent months they introduced another bug to GNOME which probably will not be resolved in years. No big company wants to invest in desktop Linux and without investments it's just not good.
Classic straw man: a single GNOME bug doesn’t mean all of desktop Linux isn’t worth investing in.
Developers have been writing Linux desktop apps successfully for decades. Moreover, who cares about polished desktop apps when most apps are just web apps that look the same on all platforms?
For the record, I despise web apps.
What's the GNOME bug?
I'm using shortcuts <Super>+1 ... <Super>+4 to switch between virtual desktops. Let's say there's Xwayland application launched on desktop 1 and I'm on desktop 4. Vscode for example. Now I press <Super>+1 to switch to desktop 1. At this point, vscode starts printing "11111111" until I press Esc.
This bug manifests both for vscode and Idea. I configured these apps to run under native wayland, but they're not ready and other bugs manifest (e.g. no border around vscode window), which are less annoying, but annoying nonetheless.
Interesting. I sometimes get similar behaviour on KDE / wayland, usually it is "2" or "3", and it seems to only affect electron apps. Always thought it has something to do with a dodgy ps/2 to usb converter I use to attach my old mechanical keyboards. I think it does not happen if electron apps are started with "--ozone-platform=wayland" but not completely sure, and I have no reliable way to reproduce or somehow trigger that behaviour.
try cosmic desktop since it was made to be similar to gnome - it's maintained by system76 and is shaping up to be one of the most polished desktops out there, gnome has been feeling like it's going downwards for a while. I can't comment too much tho since I am too used to KDE at the moment and tiling support is just not there yet compared to KWin.
Oh wow that explains a ton of problems I was having before I switched to KDE.
Are you pretending android doesn't have bugs?
> So Android is the only operating system that could realistically be ready in the foreseeable future.
Ready for what ? Working with files on Android is ... interesting. Real app support on Android (shells, compilers, CAD/CAE) is ... interesting and the UX is... total crap.