Sidetracked

Desktop Linux isn't ready (and I'm tired of pretending it is)

Today I realized something. Desktop Linux isn't ready.

The day started off normal, I accidentally corrupted my root partition, so I installed Kubuntu as a quick fix.

I quickly realized, wow, Kubuntu lacks polish, and decided to install a new distro. But then I had to choose a distro. In my life, I've, tried many:

And today, nothing appealed to me. I loved Pop!_OS and COSMIC, but it's not feature complete, and there are other issues with that.

None of them are really a fit for me. I treat computers as a hobby, not an appliance, and while I enjoyed my time on Arch a LOT, and its probably worth revisiting, right now I'm in a spot where I'm reconsidering going back to Windows.

Right now, I'm in a very narrow middle ground. I don't want boring, locked-down, "just works" distros, heavy defaults, Snap, or distro-specific nonsense.

I also don't want constant maintenance, breakage, feeling like my system can collapse if I blink wrong.

I can run Arch, I had it going for 50 days and the thing that broke it? Me forgetting to check the news and installing a bad GRUB update, which then spiraled into 3 days of unsuccessful troubleshooting.

In some ways Ubuntu is definitely my favorite distro, It's rock solid because of GNOME, and it usually gets out of the way. I still hate apt though.

And it's the only distro, in my experience, where sleep and wake isn't russian roulette.

It's also a DE problem.

I'm a KDE fanboy, what can i say? I love Konqi and the Kommunity, and KDE Plasma itself. It's the kool desktop enviroment. Always bet on KDE.

But it also has all these weird little quirks, that GNOME does not, for example Plasma is adamant on not showing if you have unread notifications on the lock screen.

GNOME is rock solid and polished, but boring and more like a prison than anything. You need Dash to Dock and various other extensions, and it works well if you do, but it's just boring. And again, I treat computers both as a tool and a hobby.

True, that may be an oxymoron, but it also makes finding a distro even harder.

Another issue, on any distro other than Ubuntu, sleep/wake Russian roulette.

Sometimes it will wake perfectly, other times it will reboot entirely. And i like to just close my laptop's lid and pick up again instantly the next day and accumulate stupid large amounts of uptime. I want my laptop to be a laptop.

Pop!_OS (GNOME) has halted development because COSMIC reached epoch 1. Yeah I don't even need to say anything about that. COSMIC is incomplete. And so Pop!_OS isn't an option anymore for a tasteful Ubuntu fork.

And that made me realize, no distro offers what I want. I want to not be restricted and treated like an idiot, to have choice and control over my own system.

Desktop Linux is not ready for the casual user.

OK, maybe it is. I'm not normal, I treat computers as a hobby.

But do you really expect the average user to know how to install Arch just to get an OS that doesn't treat them like a goldfish? To know how to stop snapd from hijacking apt? To know why nothing seems to fit them well because most mainstream distros are all shit in their own ways? And how to fix that? Oh and also, even if you do notice snap hijacking, it ignores SIGINT while installing!

I love COSMIC and I hope it gets more feature complete, because I did test epoch 1 and the moment epoch 2 releases, I'm switching. But it's very much by Linux geeks, for Linux geeks. And so for a casual person who just wants to use their PC, yeah its not really very intuitive. And that's the best distro I've found.

Desktop Linux is conditionally ready for casual users.

And those conditions are narrower than the community likes to admit.

For a truly casual user, these things must be true by default:

Linux only meets this bar sometimes, and usually by accident.

Ubuntu gets close, not because Linux is ready, but because Canonical papers over Linux’s cracks with engineering debt.

And even that falls apart the moment someone steps even slightly off the golden path.

"to know how to stop snapd from hijacking apt?"

This part is more serious than people realize: A casual user should never even encounter this question.

The fact that:

…is proof that desktop Linux is still designed by people who know too much.

The problems from knowing too much

A system that’s ready for casual users doesn’t require:

Most mainstream distros and Linux THINGS are shit in their own ways.

Linux desktop development is fragmented along values, not users.

None of these start from: "What does a normal person expect from a computer?"

They start from a flawed ideology that's being sold as something else.

Casual users don’t care about ideology. They care that closing the lid doesn’t reboot their laptop.

Is desktop Linux "ready"?

For appliance users: Yes, if:

For even mildly curious users: No, because:

And dare I say it, Windows is the best AMD64 desktop operating system for casual users.

Windows isn’t elegant. It’s not respectful. It’s not fun.

But it has one killer feature Linux still lacks: You can be curious without being punished.

You can:

Desktop Linux is still built by people who like computers for people who like computers.

Linux geeks are terrible judges of casual usability.

Sometimes I just want to use my PC.

This sentence matters more than all the distro talk combined.

That feeling one of the reasons Windows still dominates, despite it's flaws.

It optimizes for:

Linux desktops, historically, optimize for:

Those are great values, but they’re not usage-first.

You shouldn’t need to:

…just to open your laptop and get on with your day.

Year of the Linux desktop

I hope and pray that this is not the year of the Linux desktop, and that it will not be anytime soon.

Because if this were "the year of Linux desktop" it would mean:

Linux desktop isn’t failing because it’s bad. It’s failing because it’s unfinished.

And unfinished systems shouldn’t be mass-adopted.

Here’s the most accurate description I can give:

And boring is what most people want.

Most people don’t want excitement from their OS. They want absence of friction.

I also have a Windows friend who wants to switch to Linux once they buy a new laptop, and we've been bickering about it for months and it's been great fun. But now I've realized I might just have to tell them that Linux isn't the correct choice.

And yet SOME people still tout it as such. My friend is a very small minority. They aren't expecting Linux to be like windows, they've been open to the differences, the way software is installed and ran, how problems are troubleshooted, etc.

But despite all this, Linux just isn't ready, and I say that as a Linux geek with Qt in their heart who has been on and off Linux since age 9.

No matter how open-minded someone is, a laptop OS must guarantee:

Linux cannot guarantee this, especially on laptops.

Not because users are dumb. Not because hardware vendors hate Linux. But because the desktop stack is fragmented and under-owned.

Desktop Linux’s biggest problem isn’t drivers, or DEs, or packaging. It's that the people who know it best are the least honest about its limits.

If I'm saying these things and actively being affected by them as a Linux geek, that's an indicator of how bad it is. Yes, I love computers. Yes, I love Linux, my heart is literally just a hollow space with Konqi in it. But sometimes I just want to use my PC, not spend hours debating which distro I want to waste my time on.

And yet every year, people say it's the year of Linux, I sure hope not. Desktop Linux is not there yet, not by a long shot. No matter how much we want to believe otherwise. Even while writing this, I decided to go back to Ubuntu.

I'm not just annoyed, I'm fatigued. I can't do this anymore! I'm sick of it! I just want to use a computer sometimes! A computer that respects my intelligence and allows me to make choices.

And this matters because Linux is my Thing™. It's been part of who I am since I was 9. It's why I advocate for FOSS. It's why I have Qt in my heart and Konqi stickers. I'll talk your ear off about any subject even loosely pertaining to Linux.

So when I'm the one saying I'm tired, that should tell you something.

If the people who love it most can't sustain using it, what does that say?

The fatigue isn't from complexity. I can run Arch and Gentoo. I can fix apt pins and snapd being a cancer.

But why should I have to, constantly, forever?

A prison of my own making.