Surprising to myself, I have been a Linux user for over 12 years…

Through the many years I have bounced between and tried Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, Parrot OS, Linux Mint, Manjaro. I have tried Gnome, Cinnamon, XFCE, KDE, Mate, Deepin. And more. I have 3 computers, all using a Linux distro right now.

I love the idea of Linux - free, free as in freedom, free of telemetry. And well, I thought I would never entertain the idea of switching, here I am today, strongly considering Mac OS.

Lately, I have become extremely frustrated and tired of dealing with little bugs, crashes, versions, and dependencies. Not to mention notable UI issues. It is starting to hamper my productivity when working.

Right now I am using Ubuntu and I cannot drag and drop into VS Code from Nautilus, I can’t drag and drop from the default archive manager, I am experiencing screen tearing issues, one piece of software I use crashes often but not Debian and vice versa, I have to manually reset screen brightness when it dims after timeout, etc. I have experienced issues of similar nature across all distros I have used and I am becoming burnt out.

I think part of the issue is that there is a huge variety of Linux distros, different combinations of kernels, desktop environments, window managers, package managers, file managers, network managers, etc… Not to mention devices. There is too many variables, and too many projects to maintain.

Sorry for the rant, I have seen many similar posts, but I have been using Linux for over 12 years, powering through, ignoring and working around these issues and I am pretty fed up.

While I am conflicted, I am thinking Mac OS looks like a good middle ground.

Any suggestions? What has been the most stable distro and compatible for you?

  • klangcola@reddthat.comEnglish
    40·
    1 year ago

    I’m actually having the opposite experience (for the most part). All the little papercuts of yesteryear are almost completely gone, and it’s only looking better on the horizon. Of course your mileage may vary depending on use case and hardware…

    Some things of the top of my head:

    • Flatpak replacing 3rd party PPAs. Brand new software without dependency hell or breaking system packages? Yes please
    • Snaps and AppImages too
    • XDG Portals standards, making snaps and flatpaks play nice with confinement
    • Audio and Bluetooth? It “just works” now
    • Pipewire
    • Even gaming works really well now, with Proton, DXVK etc
    • AMD and Intel drivers baked in to the kernel
    • Wayland finally being production ready for many use-cases, and being adopted as the default, fixing so many of the ancient X11 issues (screen tearing, multiple displays with different scaling, refresh rate, fractional scaling) ( cries in Nvidia )
    • Nvidia finally changing their mind so Wayland on Nvidia can be a thing (I can’t wait 😊)
    • KDE Connect / gsConnect phone integration
    • Screensharing on Wayland even on legacy X11 apps becoming a thing through the new screensharing Portal

    The only problem I’ve had recently is Ubuntu’s forced snapification, and snap being very rough around the edges for Desktop apps (ahem drag’drop)

    • tajEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      This has been/is my experience over the last 5-10+ years. When I think about how far we’ve come since the early to mid 2000s… Man. My mind boggles. I still run Ubuntu on my server, for simplicity sake, but have become a fan of tumbleweed for my personal machine.

      I’m a long time Gnome user myself, and man has Wayland come a long ways. I can’t even imagine going back to X11. The last time I booted into a session to check if it would “fix” somet, I was immediately blown away by just how choppy and awful it is. Once you get used to Wayland X11 is just… Bad.

      • kspatlas@fedia.io
        5·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, i tried booting into X11 after using wayland for a while to compare them and i couldn’t bear the tearing, i guess this is alo the case with things like refresh rates

        • zbb
          1·
          1 year ago

          The only thing I haven’t figured out in Wayland is how to change the gamma. Any idea?

    • NCR Ranger@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      This kinda proves that the selection of software plays a notable role. You’re going to have a bad experience with buggy and old software.