"Why Linux Is Still Not Ready For The Desktop"

[duby229]

The "*.desktop" format that OSS desktops use is a real joke. A real bad one.

[TiberiusDuval]

I have to say, that for me Linux has been "ready for desktop" quite many years. Having used various linux distro's (and later PC-BSD) for my main desktop since 2010. Also friend of mine who may classed as Windows power user, nowadays uses Xubuntu, and is mostly satisfied with it.

I think most of those people comparing some Windows experience with Linux and whining then about it not being "desktop ready" use preinstalled Windows'es. Try installing some years old Windows, like for example 7 in new hardware, and yes you are going to need quite much set up with various drivers and so on. On other hand with for example Ubuntu, install os, install that closed source graphics driver if you really want, and you are good to go.

Then some people whining about "desktop readiness" want system working just like Windows, because they do not want to learn anything new. Sadly for them no Linux distribution is "free Windows-clone" and likely will not ever be. So for them Linux will not ever be "desktop ready".

[duby229]

Well, there does exist several distros which aim to be "Windows-clone". But, wine sucks ass. Wine will continue to suck ass as long as they keep trying to bend over backwards to make it suck ass.

[Kano]

You are really unfair to wine devs. It is a great tool that lets you use cool games, apps and tools without having to reboot. Even integrated into the browser it works via pipelight. Also winelib can be used to port games. It works pretty well for DX9 games especially the wine-staging variant with integrated CSMT (in case you have Nvidia). I do not understand why we still have to override dwrite (disable) to use Steam but basically you can try lots of (older) games...

[duby229]

I don't think I'm unfair at all. It is what it is, I just call them out on it. The truth is wine does suck. And it sucks because the wine devs try so hard to make it suck. Wine's not an emulator, ok fine, then they should use native API's when they are vailable. It may not be an emulator but it really sucks ass as a translator.

[Kano]

Did you notice that some games can run faster via wine/CSMT than native?

[duby229]

Did you notice that some games can run faster via wine/CSMT than native?

Not the benchmarks I've seen with gallium nine. CSMT doesn't render accurately AND it uses waaaaay more CPU.

Of course you can choose to use nVidia hardware, but that is exactly one of the biggest problems with wine devs.

[TiberiusDuval]

There may be such distro's though hiding underlying Linux completely would be some challenge. And unnecessary on my opinion. Let Linux be Linux, and Windows be Windows.

[bridgman]

Did you notice that some games can run faster via wine/CSMT than native?

I have seen that reported a number of times. Generally seems to happen with games where the DX renderer is more efficient / tuned / polished than the OpenGL renderer, but there may be other cases as well.

[dungeon]

I have seen that reported a number of times. Generally seems to happen with games where the DX renderer is more efficient / tuned / polished than the OpenGL renderer, but there may be other cases as well.

CSMT show fps increase only if you are CPU bound in XYZ game... Well, CSMT just saves some CPU time because it move OpenGL calls into a separate thread

CSMT is also same thing what nvidia use in their drivers with __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS variabile. It just move OpenGL calls out of main thread and that is it some games on some hardware may like it again only if you are CPU bound, otherwise there is no difference