this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I'm looking forward to the Year of the Linux desktop ™️
Right now, my Windows 10 installation is pretty bloatless and is easily revertable when an update wants to change things. However I'm definitely looking for a more mainstream Linux solution because I know these times won't last.
Check out Endeavor OS. I've been using it for about 3 months now as a full replacement to my old windows 11 set up.. everything I've needed it to do, with the exception of a few games has worked either right out of box or with minor tweaks. The forums are active and the Arch Wiki has answers to nearly every question you may have about the backbone of the OS. System updates are incredibly easy and are done on your schedule, not Microsoft's.
I use EndeavourOS and it's great, but for linux newbies or folks who just want a stable OS as a daily driver i'd recommend some other ones. I used POP_OS before switching to Endeavour and that was a solid one for me
I'll add another option that is great for people trying out Linux for the first time (though it's great for seasoned Linux folks, too): ZorinOS. It's based on Ubuntu LTS, but has a few beginner friendly options and features straight out of the box. Note that there is an optional "pro" version if you like to support development, but it's completely optional.
Here is an interesting link that a user can answer questions to refine Linux distro choices:
https://distrochooser.de/
Nice, thanks!
Irish, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorin_OS
No experience with Pop, but I've heard good things!
I daily drive it at work and it's perfectly solid, but I also don't do anything cuhRAAAAZY because it's a workstation. 99% of the time I'm just running Flameshot to take screenshots, a few Firefox windows with one or two dozen tabs total, a company chat program, and on rare occasions I'll use LibreOffice to open a file or do some very light image editing.
Fedora is my recommendation of choice. The default Fedora + Gnome workflow out of the box is absolutely flawless.
Yeah that's the beauty of it isn't it.. a lot of distros and desktop environments to choose from; there is a flavor for anyone!
For anyone switching from windows I recommend KDE Plasma as it'll feel closest to what you are used to.
Yeah, as a Windows user it's very intuitive and easy to navigate. My only problem with KDE Plasma, and this would not prevent me from using it altogether, is that there's this relatively large hover window that pops up if you accidentally swerve the mouse over anything on the task bar, and takes a couple seconds to die. Soooooo irritating.
This hover thing would probably take thirty seconds to turn off if I knew how, but it's hard to search for when I can't figure out what it's called, and "hover" doesn't get me anything useful.
If I could turn that shit off I would have zero problems with KDE Plasma. It's a legit great interface.
Right click on the panel (Not running application) -> Task Manager Settings -> General -> uncheck "Show Tooltips"
I will absolutely try this as soon as I have a Plasma DE loaded again. THANK YOU. Seriously.
If I may ask, have you tried MS Office on your Endeavour OS box, and if so, what version and what were your results? Seriously, if you have a minute, I'd really appreciate hearing your specific experiences with MSOffice if you've tried it on Endeavour.
I inquire only because MSOffice is the only reason I wasn't on Linux years ago, and any distro that can run MSOffice out of the box, macros included, I will install today. Not exaggerating: I have been trying out various distros for the last month, and MSOffice is literally the sole dealbreaker. I even have an Endeavour Cassini Nova LiveUSB ready to go; I'm on Zorin 16.3 Core right now for the same reason.
Let me know if you can, and thanks in advance.
I Don't use MS Office, unfortunately. You are going to have a lot of people say just try LibreOffice, but that does not work for everyone so I understand the hesitation.
Yeah, I've tried and still am trying, lol. I'm still going to move the rest of my stuff to Linux, regardless, but I need one box with an operable copy of MSOffice at least for now.
I'll definitely keep EndeavourOS on my list of distros to try, especially because it has all the resources of Arch behind it. That's a huge plus on its own. Thank you for taking the time to reply!
Right on and no problem!
Have you tried using OnlyOffice? It's pretty much a 1:1 recreation of Microsoft Office, there's a flatpak build. It's scripts are made in Javascript but it seems simple enough to convert a VBA script.
No, I have not. I actually thought you were talking about OpenOffice but looked it up to be sure, and no, I've never heard of OnlyOffice. I will definitely give it a shot. And thank you for the VBA conversion plugin as well, that will be awesome if it works for me. Much appreciated.
Libre office aint bad. If you want something like office365 check out nextcloud office.
I've got a windows 10 PC that I built as a gaming computer like 10 years ago. To be honest it spends a lot of time turned off because Linux has become much better for gaming using Proton.
However sometimes it is really useful to have a windows computer around. Being able to use Visual Studio for C# and C++ projects is particularly good given how much scaffolding their frameworks give you. Still, if I end up having the system being forcibly upgraded or when it leaves LTS it will probably end up being sold for spare parts.
We would need large companies and developers to start making their applications for linux and right now thats very hard because linux has 2500 different package managers and no one wants to maintain version of their apps for even the top 5 linux packaging methods, so unless that changes they will continue to make windows/mac only apps
Companies have got around this by only officially supporting one distro, like Steam with SteamOS (I think they also support Ubuntu). Steam also do static linking of the common libraries inside of ~/.local/share/Steam so that developers can be guaranteed to have something like zlib installed.
I think there is also an argument that linux distributions are converging due to systemd being ubiquitious. Although I personally don't enjoy using it and have substituted openrc on my Linux desktop, I can accept that developers can't reasonably support it and I would need to find a workaround to use their software.
we should have them support flatpak it seem to work on every distro i tried
The rise of Flatpaks will alleviate this issue, I think. Build a Flatpak for your app and you're good to go.
It's the decade of the Linux desktop over here.
Actually, yeah, that's a cool way to look at this. Imagine everything getting support over night. The only reason I don't use Linux is because a ton of the things I do on a computer require windows.
Cries in having to use office 365
cant use the web version?
For some word documents the layout is just fucked. Especially headers and footers seem to be problematic.
I had to do a video call with Teams and it worked in browser pretty well
I assumed that was all possible in their browser web app these days
Been and gone for me.
it may actually come now if this happens
Literally can't happen, at least not on the scale y'all like to imply, not in the way Linux is today. If your OS doesn't work with a ton of peoples' hardware at all, no wide adoption. Don't pretend this doesn't happen-- it happens all the time. I was never able to get sound working on Ubuntu with mainstream hardware. If your OS requires a ton of technical knowledge to get any basic hardware or software feature working, no wide adoption. If your OS runs any commonplace software in a glitchy, super-slow way, no wide adoption. Wide adoption of desktop Linux is just not going to happen until a distro has a well-organized, goal-oriented, QA-pushing non-profit such as Mozilla making sure it works for the masses, on almost any hardware.