[Colchester] 2021 is the year of the Linux desktop

[James Pain]

I love these xxxx is the year of the linux desktop threads. This is a great
conversation to have and recap where we've gotten to.

It depends on the user. For 90% of computer users, I'm not convinced linux
is the right choice yet. It still requires technical knowledge and
tinkering despite the best efforts of some distros. This is based on my
last distro-hopping session about 2 years ago. I'm overdue for another. I
think Mint and Manjaro have come a long way and their first-use user
experience is great, but they don't have the maturity of a distro like
OpenSuse or Ubuntu. MX Linux is a new addition to the scene but had trouble
running it on a VM to try it out.

For my use case, if I have one of my mega-privacy conscious moments and
want to try and disconnect from 'The Man' as much as possible (which I go
through every couple years) I'd absolutely switch out Win 10 for a linux
distro. However I won't be recommending it as a desktop OS for normal users
anytime soon though.

I'm overdue for a distro hop session. I might start a new thread on this
maillist when I do.

James Pain


On Mon, 11 Jan 2021 at 01:11, Wayland Sothcott via Colchester <
colchester at mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> No really this time. I know we've been saying this for 25 years but two
> things have crossed paths.
>
> Firstly Linux has got really really good. It's easy to install and use.
> It's very very capable. Few things even require windows any more and
> many that do run well under WINE or VirtualBox.
>
> Secondly Windows has been getting worse at every update, some even
> destroy your files. It's impractical to continue on Windows 7 and
> Windows 10 is creating more and more problems for people. With a great
> deal of effort it's possible to do a decent Windows install but then you
> find your efforts get trashed on the next update or some program refuses
> to run because it does not like what you did to Windows. Why is Windows
> 10 so difficult to network? Windows XP was pretty good at this.
>
> There are more and more examples where the user is delighted with Linux,
> Mint in my case. It still bugs me that I can't run MS Access on Linux
> but then it's getting easier to re-write such things. Moving the data to
> MySQL is a good start. You can then write a new front end whilst still
> using the old one.
>
> Yes we are at the stage where Linux is definitely a better choice than
> Windows, application requirements permitting. If all your programs run
> on Linux then you're better off with Linux.
>
> What are your thoughts on this?
>
> Wayland.
>
> --
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> Colchester at mailman.lug.org.uk
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