As Torvalds pointed out in 2019, is that while some major hardware vendors do sell Linux PCs – Dell, for example, with Ubuntu – none of them make it easy. There are also great specialist Linux PC vendors, such as System76, Germany’s TUXEDO Computers, and the UK-based Star Labs, but they tend to market to people who are already into Linux, not disgruntled Windows users. No, one big reason why Linux hasn’t taken off is that there are no major PC OEMs strongly backing it. To Torvalds, Chromebooks “are the path toward the desktop.”
The fundamental issue is that the desktops themselves are inferior products. Linux desktop developers spent years arguing which bad solution is better for a solved problem.
The gap is closer now but that’s only because Windows is killing itself.
So, what is the solved problem supposed to be? The link doesn’t really tell me anything except that it about a customisable titlebar or something.
That’s a weird thing to present as an absolute truth. As someone who has exstensively used both Windows (3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11) and macOS (from 2011-2022), and now using KDE Plasma on my daily driver laptop, GNOME at work and Cinnamon for my living room machine: all three Linux DE are superior experiences.
Surely there are people who would prefer Windows and macOS over them, but it is highly subjective.
Huh? Linux has had the superior desktop experience for decades.
Windows just recently managed to get the basics like an actual clipboard, tabbed file management.
What is an “actual clipboard”??
Selectable, historical, you know actually useful.
Windows 10 introduced a half ass attempt that finally worked with all programs and could be considered functional.
Edit: to add an example look at this post on windows help by a Windows 7 user:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2660614/access-clipboard-windows-7
I have clipboard history enabled but holy is that an actual security nightmare.
IMO not a good requirement to have.
As always the security is with the user. No clipboard is just unusable.
And we are talking windows here, security was never important apparently until windows 10 anyways.
In fairness X11 was a threat right? That is one of the reasons Wayland broke so much.
As for the clipboard, kde applications can have a setting to say “this is a secret” and you can set to won’t clip. But passwords are so out of favor I am not sure it matters. If you had a keylogger running you are screwed, if you had an application harvesting the clip board I suppose that isn’t great, but how would it know what application/service/etc requested the contents?
there’s no “no clipboard”, what are you talking about? there’s been a clipboard in any OS since XP that I have used
what? have you heard about 7?
I doubt that’s a setting, it’s just how it works. It’s not like it’s KDE specific behavior,even windows 10 is doing that.
I won’t even comment on the rest, but it’s bullshit
Windows did not have a functional clipboard. Go look at all the complaints over the years.
Windows historically had only a single-item clipboard and no built-in UI/history.
A separate one shipped with MS Office that let you store something like 12 to 20 items. Why? Because windows sucked and DID NOT HAVE ONE.
Windows itself did not get a built in Win+V searchable/historical clipboard until windows 10.
Yes, better than XP, still not good. I am not going to do your homework, but Windows 10 was the first release that really focused on isolation, secrets management, and virtualization of applications for system wide and user protection.
Just as well, you don’t know what you are talking about anyways.
No but seriously, what are you talking about?
Do you not know what a clipboard is? Did you not use linux for years and when you had to deal with the windows desktop it was easily in the top 10 of really annoying things a computer should be able to do?
In windows 10 they finally got a resemblance of clipboard. The bare minimum.
Meanwhile, Linux had a qr reader/writer, full object cut and paste, actions, white-space trimming, history length adjustment, persistence between sessions, blacklisting, clipboard editing, functions, search, sorting, should I keep going?
You can find multiple complaints over the years about how bad windows was at this.
Can you not just explain what you mean? You’re spending a ton of time not explaining it. Just explain what you mean. What feature was added in 10 that makes it a “real” clipboard?
Some of the Linux things you listed aren’t clipboard things (qr?). Others I don’t care about (persistent between seasons, sorting). Others that do exist in windows if applications implement it (objects). And a bunch of stuff I don’t know what you’re even talking about (functions?). White space trimming does sound nice but I know that isn’t in windows 10, so what exactly are you talking about?
You need me to spell out what I said? Windows did not have a clipboard. That is it. You could enable one separately for word/excel for awhile.
Otherwise the system got one slot. ONE to hold text. That was it. And there wasn’t even a way to look at the contents for a very long time.
I was explaining what I mean. What more could i say?
You are highlighting exactly what I am talking about: Linux has had a ton of features for the desktop for years (better right click context menus, better network protocol support, better nearly everything) but windows people didn’t so they don’t even know why using windows was basically living in the dark ages until Windows 10 started to get some worthwhile features. Windows 11 was the first to actually get a nearly functional file manager for example.
I mean you are thinking QR read/write is not a useful clipboard feature?
As someone who has had the displeasure of using Linux for over 15 years (and yes, it was really pretty fucking bad back then, sorry fanbois), I actually turn off kde’s clipboard manager because it annoys me, which is why I’m so confused. Windows have also had a clipboard manager for forever. I never used that, and don’t use the modern version, because it annoys me.
You still haven’t said what was added in windows 10 that was supposed to be so life changing. You also added some new claim about the file manager changing in some undescribed way. You seem to have this belief that everyone else has the same experience as you and is interested in exactly the same things, and so it’s self evident when a new feature transforms a tool from “shit” to “ok”. However, I literally can’t think of anything they added to the file manager or clipboard in recent memory that has changed my life in any meaningful way. Since you don’t seem to be able to describe the features you’re talking about, I’m out.
For those curious, the Wikipedia page for the old version was able to answer my question: Microsoft added this feature, specifically a history viewer, which I must have promptly turned off 10 years ago and forgotten about. I’m guessing but we will probably never confirm that this guy is talking about tabs in the windows 11 file manager, something else I immediately turned off because it’s stupid and doesn’t really add anything to the usability of the system.
But, on the flip side, they’ve also had gnome for over a decade. Balance in all things.