Why I am starting to hate Linux.
Selene ToyKeeper
nclug at toykeeper.net
Fri Apr 29 18:10:35 MDT 2022
* Brian Sturgill <bsturgill at ataman.com> wrote:
> A couple of days ago I ... Ubuntu ... snaps ... Good luck ...
> frustration.
Oh geez, I'm sorry you had to go through all that. It's really
less of a Linux thing though, and more of an Ubuntu thing.
Ubuntu hasn't been a good desktop OS since like 2010, and it has
been getting worse ever since.
Snaps are particularly egregious. I'd recommend staying away
from those entirely. I, and many other developers at the
company, tried very hard to fix snappy... but my changes were
rejected, my bugs were closed "wontfix notabug", and we all got
fired in a mass layoff because a major project failed and the
management decided to get rid of almost everyone who worked on
it. But they kept the top-level folks who designed the project
and steered the ship, while sacking all the grunts who warned
them they were steering into an iceberg.
I've been pretty happy with Debian though. Or, for those who
want a more complete desktop experience, Mint is good. Or, for
people who abhor systemd and don't mind having to write their own
solutions, there's Devuan.
Anyway, I've been using Debian since 1997, and have carried my
config and filesystems forward the whole time with no major
interruptions. I never really got into the whole "desktop
environment" thing though, and have been using just a window
manager with a bunch of extras and customizations as necessary.
I don't minimize windows, or even have a bar to minimize them to.
There are no icons or task bars or trays or anything like that.
Instead, I have a big grid of desktops, and I show/hide groups of
windows by changing desktops. Windows can also be grouped
together into a single frame with tabs, and tiled and floated as
necessary. Usually I have hundreds of windows open, and reboot
once a year or so when I upgrade the kernel. Almost all window
management is done with the keyboard, while the mouse is mostly
just used to toss focus between windows. I started using this
setup, approximately, in 1996 with FVWM, then eventually did the
same thing with Enlightenment, and in the early 2000s I carried
it to Sawfish, where it has remained.
It has been really nice not having to care about the constant
churn of GUIs as they come and go.
Anyway, I'm not aware of any OSes which ship with a setup like
mine, but I hear that "Pop_OS!" at least uses some of the same
ideas. Haven't tried it myself, but despite the dumb name, it
might be worth a look if you're shopping for distros and/or
interfaces.
-- Selene
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