Every so often i start believing all the posts about how Linux really made a lot of progress, and the desktop experience is so much better now, and everything is supported, and i give it another try.
I’ve got a small intel 13th gen NUC i use as a small server, and for playing movies from. It runs windows 11, but as i want to run some docker containers on it, i thought, why not give Linux a try again, how bad can it be. (after all, i’ve got multiple raspberry pi’s running, and a synology diskstation, and i’m no stranger to ssh’ing into them to manage some stuff)
Downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop (23.10), since it’s still a highly recommended distro, and started my journey.
First obvious task: connect to my SMB shares on my synology to get access to any media. Tough luck, whatever tool Ubuntu uses for that always tries SMBv1 protocol first, which is disabled on my synology due to security reasons. If i enable it on my synology i get a nice warning that SMBv1 is vulnurable and has been used to perform ransomware attacks, so maybe i’d rather leave it disabled (although i assume that’s mostly the case if the port were accessible from the internet, but still). Then i thought “it’s probably some setting somewhere to change this”, but after further googling, i found an issue that whatever ubuntu is using for SMB needs a patch to not default to SMBv1 to get a list of shares… Yeah, great start for the oh so secure linux, i’d need to enable a protocol that got used in ransomware attacks over 6 years ago to get everything to work properly… (yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)
Then, i installed Kodi, tried to play some content. Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it’s not switching to the refreshrate of the video i’m playing. Googling further on that just felt like walking through a tarpit. From the dedicated librelec distro that runs just kodi that has special patches to resolve this, to discussions about X not supporting switching refreshrates, and Kodi having a standalone mode that doesn’t use a window manager that should solve it but doesn’t, and also finding people with similar woes about HDR. I guess the future of the desktop user is watching stuttering videos with bad color rendition? I’d give more details about what i found if there were any. Try googling it yourself, you’ll find so little yet contradictory things…
Not being entirely defeated yet, i thought “i’ve got this nice GUI on my synology for managing docker containers & images, let’s see if i can find something nice on ubuntu”, and found dockstation as something i could try. Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and … “no app installed for this file”… google around a bit, after some misleading results regarding older ubuntu versions, i found the issue: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/install-deb-ubuntu-23-10-no-app-error
Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn’t replace it yet. Wouldn’t want a user to just be able to easily install files! what is this, windows?
For real, i see all the Linux love here, and for the headless servers i have here (the raspberries & the synology), i get it. But goddamn this desktop experience is so ridiculous, there has to be better than this right? I’m missing something, or doing something completely wrong, or… right?
I figured out all the issues myself, as repeated here, i’m a professional developer with some headless raspberry pi’s & synologies i know how to manage.
This is a rant on the abysmal state of the linux desktop (stable OS just losing random crucial features, relying on a vulnurable protocol for basic functionality, supporting nice to have features such as HDR & variable refreshrate (which are both decades old) being an absolute nightmare).
Hence the title being a complaint about the linux desktop being an absolute nightmare and total crap, and not “help me, i’m stuck”. I was not stuck, i can figure out the workarounds, but i was appalled at what i saw, i expected issues & struggling, but this was way beyond & below what i could even imagine.
Also evidenced by the dozen of distros i’ve had recommended so far, and conflicting advice (i absolutely do, and do not need wayland for variable refreshrates, depending on who you ask).
This is just a nightmare ecosystem to participate in, and that’s what i wanted to get across, and i think i succeeded pretty well :).
so if that’s the grande finale of yours, trying to leave your comfort zone - and you consider that as satisfying … well - i wish you all the best for your future endeavours
there are plenty of options in linux - you just gave up because your desired usecase wasn’t working out of the box … and instead of risking to learn something you decided to spread negativity and even worse, you spread incorrect information to others … hope you had your fun with that
quote: “but this was way beyond & below what i could even imagine.” - mate, you complained about not having a GUI for doing
apt install XYZ.debthe whole eco system would be so much nicer, if people would resist to spread negativity and instead become a part of the solution rather than the problem … you say, your an dev - you found some workarounds … great, what blocks you of writing some guides to some of the issues you ran into - or even do some PRs to get rid of the problems you faced
its so easy to expect that this wonderfull opensource world is doing everything what multi billion $ comanies are doing and then complain about whats not working (perfectly on first try) instead of apreciating the thousands and thousands of hours ppl are investing to get things going and having a chance of getting out of the walled gardens of windows/macOS - and if it comes to my experience - they did not only come close - they 100% replaced windows