Linux users, a question.
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Linux users, a question. Is this just me?
To me, the original bargain with Linux and Unix was that although the quality of the user experience varied, I had the tools to solve any problem I cared about enough to put in the work.
But as I try the latest Ubuntu with things like systemd, snap, and Wayland, I feel like the bargain has changed. Now the UX is still quite uneven, but I no longer have the tools. The power is in the hands of small groups of developers who aren't interested in sharing.
Ring a bell?
@williampietri It means that Linux user groups and guides are more important than they have been since the 0.95 and 0.98 days; we're in what feels like a transitional and messy success period where the landscape is uneven when trying to stay up to date on newer releases of Linux distributions, or know what your hardware needs to be compatible. More balls are in the air, fewer in hand.
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Linux users, a question. Is this just me?
To me, the original bargain with Linux and Unix was that although the quality of the user experience varied, I had the tools to solve any problem I cared about enough to put in the work.
But as I try the latest Ubuntu with things like systemd, snap, and Wayland, I feel like the bargain has changed. Now the UX is still quite uneven, but I no longer have the tools. The power is in the hands of small groups of developers who aren't interested in sharing.
Ring a bell?
@williampietri This is part of what has driven back to the BSD's.
The desktop hasn't really gotten better there, but at least the tools haven't also gotten worse!
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Linux users, a question. Is this just me?
To me, the original bargain with Linux and Unix was that although the quality of the user experience varied, I had the tools to solve any problem I cared about enough to put in the work.
But as I try the latest Ubuntu with things like systemd, snap, and Wayland, I feel like the bargain has changed. Now the UX is still quite uneven, but I no longer have the tools. The power is in the hands of small groups of developers who aren't interested in sharing.
Ring a bell?
@williampietri @miah 100% same experience
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Linux users, a question. Is this just me?
To me, the original bargain with Linux and Unix was that although the quality of the user experience varied, I had the tools to solve any problem I cared about enough to put in the work.
But as I try the latest Ubuntu with things like systemd, snap, and Wayland, I feel like the bargain has changed. Now the UX is still quite uneven, but I no longer have the tools. The power is in the hands of small groups of developers who aren't interested in sharing.
Ring a bell?
@williampietri I’m not sure I agree.
I was a Linux user full-time 2004–12, then a Mac user. I returned to Linux on my personal laptop early last year and so I was dumped right into the Wayland/systemd world that hadn’t really existed when I left.
And… it’s fine? Certainly I don’t find Wayland any less user-friendly than X11 was. X had some horrible rough edges. It means some different choices but not worse ones.
As for systemd, it might not be the choice I would have made personally, but it’s grown on me. It enables things that weren’t possible with sysvinit. They’re not exclusive to systemd (openrc also now has per-user services), but it doesn’t feel like it *removes* user choice.
(There are other downsides to systemd, like the parts of it unrelated to service management. But those are optional, and as a service manager only I think it’s pretty good.)
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@williampietri I’m not sure I agree.
I was a Linux user full-time 2004–12, then a Mac user. I returned to Linux on my personal laptop early last year and so I was dumped right into the Wayland/systemd world that hadn’t really existed when I left.
And… it’s fine? Certainly I don’t find Wayland any less user-friendly than X11 was. X had some horrible rough edges. It means some different choices but not worse ones.
As for systemd, it might not be the choice I would have made personally, but it’s grown on me. It enables things that weren’t possible with sysvinit. They’re not exclusive to systemd (openrc also now has per-user services), but it doesn’t feel like it *removes* user choice.
(There are other downsides to systemd, like the parts of it unrelated to service management. But those are optional, and as a service manager only I think it’s pretty good.)
@williampietri Oh, forgot to add: I do recognise that maybe it's just that systemd and wayland are better than macos and so my tolerance is higher for bullshit. I can imagine I might have felt differently if things had been different. But they both give me so much more control than macos did that it's hard to feel too negatively about them.
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@williampietri I’m not sure I agree.
I was a Linux user full-time 2004–12, then a Mac user. I returned to Linux on my personal laptop early last year and so I was dumped right into the Wayland/systemd world that hadn’t really existed when I left.
And… it’s fine? Certainly I don’t find Wayland any less user-friendly than X11 was. X had some horrible rough edges. It means some different choices but not worse ones.
As for systemd, it might not be the choice I would have made personally, but it’s grown on me. It enables things that weren’t possible with sysvinit. They’re not exclusive to systemd (openrc also now has per-user services), but it doesn’t feel like it *removes* user choice.
(There are other downsides to systemd, like the parts of it unrelated to service management. But those are optional, and as a service manager only I think it’s pretty good.)
@benjamineskola I see what you're saying, but with Wayland, for example, my IDE's makers, JetBrains, have spent a year or two trying to work with Wayland's much stronger limits on window placement to get the UI as good as it is under X. And I had a number of cli tools for managing windows that are hopelessly broken now because Wayland is more of a sealed box. Searching, I can find years of complaints about both of these issues from users and app developers.
So for me, Wayland has been straight worse.
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Linux users, a question. Is this just me?
To me, the original bargain with Linux and Unix was that although the quality of the user experience varied, I had the tools to solve any problem I cared about enough to put in the work.
But as I try the latest Ubuntu with things like systemd, snap, and Wayland, I feel like the bargain has changed. Now the UX is still quite uneven, but I no longer have the tools. The power is in the hands of small groups of developers who aren't interested in sharing.
Ring a bell?
Slackware..
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@benjamineskola I see what you're saying, but with Wayland, for example, my IDE's makers, JetBrains, have spent a year or two trying to work with Wayland's much stronger limits on window placement to get the UI as good as it is under X. And I had a number of cli tools for managing windows that are hopelessly broken now because Wayland is more of a sealed box. Searching, I can find years of complaints about both of these issues from users and app developers.
So for me, Wayland has been straight worse.
@williampietri Ah, so, I’ve mostly prefered tiling window managers. So, on the one hand, I don’t want programs to be able to position their own windows, and on the other, I’m pretty used to window positioning being broken as a result
I recently saw mention of a Wayland protocol extension for allowing apps to control placement of multiple windows relative to each other, I wonder if this would improve the Jetbrains situation?
I know one of the big criticisms of Wayland is that certain features have only been added later that should have been ready *before* it was considered ready for adoption / made default. Of course there are differences of opinion on which features are vital ones. Perhaps in some cases the tradeoffs were felt to be justified; perhaps in some cases that decision was made the wrong way.
I do get the impression that it’s constantly improving though. I hope it can address the remaining concerns people have.
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Linux users, a question. Is this just me?
To me, the original bargain with Linux and Unix was that although the quality of the user experience varied, I had the tools to solve any problem I cared about enough to put in the work.
But as I try the latest Ubuntu with things like systemd, snap, and Wayland, I feel like the bargain has changed. Now the UX is still quite uneven, but I no longer have the tools. The power is in the hands of small groups of developers who aren't interested in sharing.
Ring a bell?
@williampietri I'm contemplating moving back to Linux, was an Ubuntu user, now Win11 (because it was easy but now it's AI compromised). However I quickly realised Ubuntu had gone down a very weird and unpleasant path so I'm looking at Mint. No idea about the details re Wayland and so on but is just feels like Mint is a more logically managed distro than Ubuntu is these days.
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Linux users, a question. Is this just me?
To me, the original bargain with Linux and Unix was that although the quality of the user experience varied, I had the tools to solve any problem I cared about enough to put in the work.
But as I try the latest Ubuntu with things like systemd, snap, and Wayland, I feel like the bargain has changed. Now the UX is still quite uneven, but I no longer have the tools. The power is in the hands of small groups of developers who aren't interested in sharing.
Ring a bell?
@williampietri yeah, Linux is getting there. On the other hand, it has a good headstart on the shitty desktop experience!
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@cmccullough it’s not just Ubuntu though. Both gnome and kde will require systemd and wayland very soon. This in turn will make systemd and wayland default on all distros. So if you feel systemd is restrictive or opaque you’ll have nowhere to go.
Yes, you can build your own distro in principle but who’s got time for that? Especially is upstream is choked. Red Hat and Canonical are finishing corporate capture of the base system and are not interested in supporting any dissenting views on the matter of choice.
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