Personally I'm taking another kick at Linux desktop in advance of Win11, I installed Mint with Cinnamon... and I gotta say, I'm kinda disappointed how many pain points there still are. Type in your admin password every 5 seconds just to install routine updates, ugly-ass GRUB screens, confusing UI, and SDL2 games being half-broken with resolution-switching and audio. Installing software still involves bouncing around figuring out if I want the Flatpak or to add a new Apt source or what.

So I'm assuming these "5% desktop market share" aren't using that kind of distro.

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akho a day ago | parent [-]

You installed a distro that aims to preserve suckage for future generations, and even developed an entire DE out of pure aversion to change. It’s often recommended by change-averse Linux users…

Successful Linux-based OSes have unattended atomic updates and user-friendly app installation. That includes ChromeOs and Android, as well as modern atomic desktop distributions. Fedora Silverblue, Bluefin, Bazzite.

edit: however, market share is probably coming from legacy distributions. That’s largely a sign of how bad Windows gets, and how desktops/laptops become more niche.

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Pxtl a day ago | parent [-]

Ah, I had no idea Mint Cinnamon was about "preserving suckage". I remember when Mint launched it was all about "Ubuntu but easier, like non-free stuff included" and my understanding was Cinnamon was their own DE built to follow familiar UI patterns and customizability instead of Gnome's opinionated stuff.

Didn't realize that it was also for grumps who wanted bug-compatibility in their workflow.

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akho a day ago | parent [-]

Mint, afaik, offers a choice between Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce. These are all DEs built and maintained to preserve a particular workflow based around hierarchical “start” menus, menu bars in applications, and desktop icons — the Win’95 style. This particular selection is very indicative of a preference for a particular era.

Which is fine if that’s your preference, too. However, you shouldn’t expect your experience to be significantly different from what it was when that desktop experience was fresh when you choose a product made by people with such strong preferences.

Again, Bluefin and the like update (atomically, with a rollback option) when you turn your computer off, with no interruptions or sudoing; app installs are through Gnome Software (for GUI stuff; through brew otherwise), without a need to enter passwords. You pay for that with some customizability, but it’s rock solid if it works on your hardware.

	▲	Pxtl 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Honestly, I just wanted a decent taskbar, and assumed an opinionated DE would get in my way on that front.