João Costa's avatar
João Costa
@JD557@blog.joaocosta.eu

With Windows 10 reaching EOL and with all the hype about Steam on Linux, I finally decided to format my old desktop and install PopOS.

I haven't seriously used desktop Linux in a while (almost a decade), however I used PopOS in a VM a while ago and was quite happy. I also wanted something that "just works", and PopOS promised just that.

Overall and I've got to say... I'm a bit disappointed with the current status of desktop Linux. I've got everything working now, but there's no way some things would be acceptable for a non-technical user.

I was mostly surprised with Flatpak and the amount of tweaks that I have to do with Flatseal... For something that seems to be the recommended install method in the Pop!Shop, I would expect most things to just work 🤷 . Instead, by default:

  • Steam doesn't let you setup alternative install directories

  • VLC doesn't have GPU acceleration

  • Syncthing (via Syncthingy) cannot run in background mode

    Also, getting Steam to install games to a separate drive was such a pain in the ass (mostly because steam silently fails, but also due to some quirks with auto-mounting)...

    Hopefully things will get better in the near future, but 2024 is clearly not yet the year of Linux desktop. 😔

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@vascorsd@mastodon.social @nki@dtth.ch
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vascorsd
@vascorsd@mastodon.social

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@JD557 nice having one more joining the linux front 😉.

Flatpak is being pushed in some places as "the way" to install apps, but clearly somethings with it have bad UX.

I find it useful for some particular things only when required and for all the usual applications just installing with the traditional package manager.

It's a nice use case for proprietary apps, for when wanting different versions of certain apps or things like that.