I just finished reading Thom Holwerda’s hilarious article on OSnews about being paid to use Windows 11 for a month from the perspective of being a “switcher” moving away from Linux. It’s a great read; I encourage everyone to stop right now and go read it!
In a nutshell, it’s truly amazing how bad the modern Windows user experience is when you’re accustomed to anything else:
- Missing drivers
- Black screens
- Broken sleep/wake
- Ads and intrusive AI in apps
- No visual consistency
- An update experience that’s fragmented, slow, and frustrating
My extended family includes a lot of Mac users, and I can tell you it’s barely better there. They suffer from:
- Limited hardware selection
- Devices that deliberately skimp on storage space to push people towards paid cloud storage subscriptions from Apple
- Ugly and low-contrast UIs
- Terrible window management
- Slow and unresponsive apps
- Poor integration with 3rd-party services
We’re ready
I’ve been saying for years that Linux is ready for normal usage. We often lament our bugs and failures, but under-estimate just how bad the competition is.
The reason why Windows and MacOS are so prominent is not because they’re better, but rather because of their inertia and wide distribution on retail hardware. If people can’t buy Linux computers in Best Buy and Mediamarkt, we’ll never get there.
Inertia takes care of itself over time with success. But we can do something about distribution: we can continue to make our software pre-installation ready. I’ve been talking about this since my first Akademy talk in 2018, and KDE has made amazing progress in just 8 years.
It’s clearly working, too.
Successes
This is why I get so excited about Valve’s new Steam Machine console/PC running KDE Plasma. Five years ago, I got excited about the Steam Deck. And I’m excited about Tuxedo Computers and Kubuntu Focus for shipping KDE Plasma on all of their computers out of the box. For an up-to-date list, see https://kde.org/hardware.
I hope that in due time, I’ll be excited about Framework Computer and Slimbook shipping a Plasma-based OS out of the box, too. 😎 And someday after that, Razer. I think they’d be receptive. And then Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Asus. I don’t believe this is far-fetched.
When people buy one of these devices, are they going to experience some Linux-specific bugs and annoyances? Yes, it’s inevitable. Nothing is perfect. But what we offer is good. Better, even. Better for users and better for hardware vendors.
What’s left
Is there more to do? Yes. We need a stronger 3rd-party software ecosystem, including Linux versions of more popular pro apps. A bit more Wayland work to close the remaining gaps. Operating systems that are safe and full-featured out of the box. Better documentation. More companies capable of offering professional support. And so on.
But all of this is happening! Isn’t that amazing? I find it amazing. Here we all are, offering the world a better option as some of the world’s largest companies are in stage 2 or 3 of the enshittification process. And we can help. It’s so cool.
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
It is actually quite easy, one changes EU product regulation so that electronic devices that want to get placed on the single market have to demonstrate their ability to run under a reference Linux system. Or, at least, that “tested for Linux” becomes an optional part of the CE marking routine. If you don’t want to win the badge, fine, then your competitor will earn it.
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That would be amazing. Maybe some of the KDE people who have touched the “EU politics” layer can look into it.
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This really resonates with me, as I personally haven’t had a single “it just works” experience across multiple Windows-preinstalled devices over the past few years.
On top of the LTT video you shared earlier, it’s cool to see more and more relatively mainstream tech reviewers – those aimed more at normal shoppers, not power users – have positive experiences with Plasma.
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KDE Linux sounds great. How will that impact developers when it comes to application development given that it is immutable. Is there an article that describes how to use it.
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I don’t love this word “immutable”, as I think it paints a picture of more restrictiveness than is actually the case. The dev story on KDE Linux is pretty well developed for KDE Plasma, KDE apps, and other apps that can be packaged as Flatpaks. Even kernel development works. See https://linux.kde.org/docs/#software-development.
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Broken sleep/wake plagues Linux too, even on desktop and without any proprietary drivers.
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Sure, it’s a tricky problem everywhere.
For what it’s worth, none of the 7 Linux computers people in my household have used over the past 10 years (9 if you include the Steam Decks!) have had any sleep-wake issues.
This is why it’s flabbergasting that a company with a trillion dollar market value seemingly can’t get it right as often as a bunch of passionate FOSS hackers can.
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So when we will get real restore of Plasma session (like in X11)?
And please don’t tell me about sleeping of PC, because everytime when I install the updates I need to restart my PC and this in case of Neon Test Edition happens almost every day.
eep/wake I met this also in near past. Now I try to don’t sleep my PC, and if this will happen then always I’m affraid if my PC will wake up. I don’t used prioprieraty drivers, My PC (laptop actually) works on Intel platform (including graphics).
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Once Qt 6.12 is released with support for the Wayland protocol, we can opt all KDE software that depends on that Qt version into it.
Other apps will have to opt in according to their own toolkits’ schedules.
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Calling this suffering is quite a stretch. On the other side, we have ridiculously bloated laptop lineups, where it’s hard to find a model that doesn’t suck. Last year I was looking for a laptop and it was over 60 models for ThinkPads alone (not even whole Lenovo lineup) and that’s before a configurator. I would love to have a solid go-to option for a laptop outside of Macbook world, i’m not even asking for pre-installed Linux, I can do the thing myself. I ended up buying my first Macbook almost because their lineup is small enough to understand why they have it this way (but also because their hardware is still quite reliable, unlike my previous HP-Ryzen laptop where it took two years to fix the firmware from randomly crashing the machine). macOS is also still more stable than Linux with Plasma for my uses, sadly.
And don’t get me started on ugly inconsistent UIs when I see GNOME apps in Plasma, right from their icons.
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As you can see, I’m well aware that more choice isn’t always better. The PC OEMs are just making terrible decisions with their product lines here. But there’s such as thing as too little choice as well!
For example, Apple sells zero laptops with a halfway decent level of keyboard tactility, a physical delete key, a touchscreen, an in-screen or in-touchpad Wacom tablet, a 2-in-1 form factor, replaceable storage, or replaceable RAM.
The soldered storage in particular is a problem for literally every Mac user I know personally. Literally every one. They run out of space and then they’re just stuck, with the only practical non-nerd option being to buy a subscription to iCloud drive. Works out great for Apple, right? Skimp on disk space to offer a lower sticker price, prevent you from getting more on your own, and then push you towards their own cloud subscription service.
To me this kind of thing is just… bad. When you experience it, you feel used and abused. Taken advantage of. Victimized. Knowing that the company is going to pull this kind of thing on its users outweighs a lot of positive traits to me.
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I’m not sure how replying works here, but I hope this message lands in right thread.
I can’t say much about keyboard decency since most of keyboards are fine to me, be it my little Logitech K380 or my mechanical keyboard or Apple’s keyboard, though I really like their layout, cmd key is positioned so much better than ctrl for a frequently-used modificator key. I even tried to replicate this in KDE with swapping Ctrl with Win/Super, but it’s far from perfect anyway. To me, this is even more important than a dedicated forward-delete key.
For touchscreens and tablets, they could solve it with iPad if it had a real OS, but they don’t want to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Storage is indeed a problem, however I don’t believe iCloud can barely help me with that. No cloud will help with space for VMs, or for local AI models (I can just delete and redownload them then) or for games. Is this bad? Sure it is. Nonetheless I remember that last time when I had a laptop with unlimited storage it came with unlimited failure modes both in hardware and software.
I don’t think there is or should be a single solution. I have a Macbook as laptop, and I have Linux machines at home and at work, and I treat them all as tools for specific problems, because not everything Mac does well can be done just as well on Linux/KDE and the reverse is true too. For Linux, not all of my boxes are running KDE, because while I like and advocate for KDE more than any other DE, it is also the most unstable DE I use, like even Windows 11 UI was more stable before I stopped using it at all two years ago. And then there is remote desktop which is just miserable on KDE, though I guess it’s also Wayland’s fault.
So in the end, different tradeoffs for different tasks.
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Not yet on pair with Windows, but the gap is steadily shrinking.
I have for long believed two primary factor is keeping majority of private users from switching;
For proffessional use, MS Office eco-system is light years ahead of LibreOffice / OnlyOffice. This will be the toughest challenge, and would be the determining factor for Linux to overtake Windows.
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There’s one (very niche, geeky) feature from OSX which would be amazing to add to KDE, and that is the way session restore works with terminal.app : you get your windows back. With the correct directory. With the correct history.
Almost everything else is better on KDE.
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I’m so tired of KDE’s virtue signaling and is honestly pushing me away from further promoting KDE.
It was just pride month. You did this whole history outlook on queer computer scientists. I was super excited about it. And now you, representing KDE, are once again trying to cozy up to the Framework nazoids who’d rather pay DHH over KDE for the chance of having KDE be the flagship DE on the certified pro-racism laptop. Just choose already, stop fencesitting.
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You seem to be confused. Framework does pay KDE; they became a patron (see https://ev.kde.org/supporting-members). And they don’t pay DHH (see https://frame.work/fi/en/blog/framework-sponsorships). The kerfuffle last year, as far as I can tell, was the result of really bad corporate communication, and not some secret pro-fascist plan in the company. At least, I’ve seen no evidence to support that assertion. If anyone can offer up actual evidence (no vibes, no “they should have known better” or “they should have apologized”), I’ll re-evaluate. Until then, I’ll continue to be happy about Framework.
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I never have any of those problems with Windows. I’ve honestly had a lot more trouble with linux. BUT…. one reason I like KDE (and in linuxland, only use KDE) is because I don’t have to think about it when I go back and forth between Windows and KDE desktops. Things are in the expected place, work close enough to as expected, and don’t constantly annoy me. And there aren’t big gaps and holes in the functionality, either. So, big win for KDE whenever I use linux.
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