this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2023
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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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Rewriting nouveau’s Website (drivers for NVIDIA) (tesk.page)
submitted 1 year ago by petsoi@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 101 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (19 children)

Why has a submission about nouveau's website devolved into Gnome/gnome devs bad, gib upvotes lol

Man I couldn't be a Linux dev. Giving up your time to do highly skilled work for free, then you get roundly hated for it and called a piece of shit by the very people who are benefitting from your free work lol. It'd burn me out pretty quickly.

E: the other comments appear to have been removed. It was just a circlejerk about Gnome devs being evil, and mocking the dev here for having mental health struggles related to the amount of hate they receive.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 22 points 1 year ago (16 children)

Gnome I think is the best hope for mainstream adoption if that ever actually happens

Shows off a lot of the advantages of Linux desktop without needing to spend hours configuring it for it to look nice and work great

[–] ForbiddenRoot@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

best hope for mainstream adoption

I feel for that the default Linux DE will need to have an UI closer to Windows, due to user familiarity with the traditional desktop metaphor. Maybe Cinnamon or even KDE are more suited in that respect. Neither need hours of configuring either. Personally, Cinnamon with Wayland support would be perfect for me (and I suspect a whole lot of Windows migrants as well).

Gnome is nice of course in it's own minimalist way for many,but the workflow is very different from other OSes and I think many find it too minimalist requiring extensions to improve usability therefore. However, there isn't a stable mechanism for extensions causing breakages between versions, which can be very irritating. I don't know if that's now changed now though, because I have been reading about a major change in the extension mechanism in Gnome 45.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think that's what makes it great for newcomers though. If you show them something pretending to be windows they'll think why not just use windows, if you show them something better they might be more impressed

Coming from Windows gnome was pretty intuitive for me, it's got much of the same workflow still even if buttons are in different places

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[–] Flatfire@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe I'm missing some of the nuances between KDE and Gnome, but I've enjoyed the out of box experience with KDE far more than Gnome. That said, perhaps I've simply timed my switchover to Plasma such that I missed its teething pains. I say this as someone who used pretty much exclusively Gnome over the years.

What would you say sets Gnome apart?

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The launcher is quite nice to use, fast and search oriented (I never used any of the start menu on windows besides the search bar anyway so the fact it's the main focus is nice)

Virtual desktops (only on Wayland) are very well implemented and feel very smooth, three finger swipe works a charm, with the forge extension it tiles servicably as well

Also just one of the nicest looking DEs imo. I have since switched to hyprland because I wanted first class tiling support but I have my system UI looking very similar to gnome's, using mostly gnome's applications

Having used gnome on Ubuntu a couple years ago I have to say it has come miles recently (also Ubuntu's gnome in my opinion is not as good as vanilla gnome) - it feels very clean and intuitive out of the box

[–] Flatfire@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The launcher is a fair point. Though for me at least, not having the spotlight-esque search hasn't been a problem. Appearance is an odd one, since the best part of Both Gnome and KDE is the wonderful flexibility in visual customizability. At the end of the day, I suppose I'd happily use either. Right now, I think Plasma's big features for me has to be window snapping and, once 6.0 releases, hopefully HDR support.

[–] flashgnash@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago

I don't think gnome is particularly customizable visually, you can change theme and use extensions if you really want to buy their main focus is making one really good UI and I've gotta respect that

At least in my opinion gnome looks far better than KDE out of the box, KDE just looks like windows to me

Gnome has fairly good window snapping as well I think and stuff like pop shell and forge for tiling

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think several DEs could see mainstream adoption.

If the team that works on Cinnamon got a little bit more manpower and were able to implement larger changes such as adopting Wayland, I think they'd have a chance. Wouldn't hurt to make the default theme a bit nicer too. I think the main thorn in Cinnamon's side is the development pace and the fact that it would probably be viewed by the average person on the street as a weird Windows clone.

Plasma's largest obstacle to mainstream adoption is bugs and instability, but in fairness it has improved a lot over the past couple of years. Seriously, compare 5.27 to any Plasma 4 release or any Plasma 5 release before like 5.16 - it's night and day. Kwin still crashes and takes all your programs down with it, though. That's a showstopper, but will be fixed in Plasma 6.

Speaking of Plasma 6, the fact they keep pushing it back probably means they want it stable from the beginning. KDE are doing a good job putting the "KDE is buggy" statement to bed.

I guess I agree that Gnome as it stands is the most appropriate for widespread adoption. It's extremely polished and beautiful, it has comparatively decent accessibility features, it's extremely stable despite being a frequently updating distro, it has amazing gesture support (better than MacOS even, imo), it's decent in terms of touch support, the GTK4/Libadwaita app ecosystem is healthy, etc. but it's not completely without issues.

Unfortunately this is all academic though until big laptop OEMs start actively pushing for Linux on their devices.

[–] lemmyvore@feddit.nl 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Counterpoint: I don't think any Linux DE will ever see mainstream adoption.

It has nothing to do with how good they are. It's not related to software support either. They could support every piece of software ever made; Linux supports 90% of games for Windows and emulators for dozens of other platforms and it still hasn't attracted more than like 2% of gamers.

It's related to what OP said: to gain mass adoption you need to put up with a lot of bullshit. It takes a company with some financial gain to do that, and paid developers. Volunteer contributors will eventually say "screw this" or go mental like Torvalds.

There's no company that can do this. They tried and failed, because Microsoft. Apple and Google had to create their own platforms from scratch to get away from it.

[–] Patch@feddit.uk 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

ChromeOS is Linux, and it has pretty decent penetration.

And I know what you're going to say: "But ChromeOS isn't proper Linux". But it's a desktop OS based on Gentoo, built on the Linux kernel and, GNU coreutils and bash (although not GCC, as far as anyone can tell). It certainly has all the hallmarks of being GNU/Linux (or something very close to it).

The fact that it doesn't really resemble any "mainstream" Linux distro is kind of the point. It's a locked down corporate product with a minimalist front-end locked into a bunch of commercial web services, and that's exactly the kind of device that sells volumes.

Mainstream Linux is a tough sell. It was a tough sell 15 years ago when PCs were still the king of personal computing. In the post-smartphone, post-iPad world which we're in now, we have to accept that that's never going to be the device your grandma uses to check her email.

Plenty of Linux distros aren't just volunteer-based, and are instead made and supported by for-profit companies. Red Hat/Fedora is made by the big blue, IBM themselves; it doesn't get much bigger than that. Ubuntu, SUSE, Manjaro, all for-profit commercial outfits. None of these are failures, it's just that their products aren't targeting the market for cheap commercial laptops. You can buy Ubuntu preloaded on a laptop from Dell or Lenovo, but they're targeting IT professionals and data scientists and people who work with Linux servers. Or they're targeting fleet deployments of 100s of devices in municipal organisations. There's a good market there, it's just a different market.

[–] Sentau@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

go mental like Torvalds.

What! I missed Linus going crazy¿? When did this happen¿? Do you have any videos¿?

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

100% agreed. I'm only talking about what I think is the most likely in some fantasy land where manufacturers start pushing various distros/DEs.

In reality it wouldn't happen unless a behemoth or a coalition of hardware OEMs put significant money into making it happen.

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[–] TeryVeneno@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago

Yay the comments were deleted. They were being very toxic

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

As a maintainer of several open-source projects, it's definitely rewarding and challenging at times.

[–] danielton@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 10 points 1 year ago

Hey, all I want is for Linux hardware vendors to stop selling nvidia's trash!

[–] shotgun_crab@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Good thing these comments were deleted, there was no need for that

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[–] interceder270@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Here it comes...