OP on r*ddit here
the best part is that if you want it too look this sweet it's all through gui menus and simple interfaces. You download themes through theme browsers in settings. It literally couldn't be easier imo.
OP on r*ddit here
the best part is that if you want it too look this sweet it's all through gui menus and simple interfaces. You download themes through theme browsers in settings. It literally couldn't be easier imo.
I actually agree with that, but I think on the desktops themselves it's been getting better recently with KDE 5.21 and GNOME 40. Applications are getting better looking as well, GTK 3 and 4 have been really good looking for the most part and while KDE and qt apps in general have leaned more towards the classic and dense design style, newer efforts towards convergence with the Kirigami framework and the (imo much better looking)MauiKit framework have been pushing KDE and it's apps toward a more modern and clean look and feel.
Somewhat seperate of all that though, there's been a lot of development on linux in china to help avoid dependency on windows and american services in general. Because of this a lot of new projects have popped up that aim towards a more general audience. Some of the most notable (and ones I enjoy the most) are Deepin which started out with a more MacOS look and feel but has found it's own style and it's pretty unique and really good looking right now. There's also Ubuntu Kylin and the UKUI desktop environment (unfortunately I can't access the websites for some reason) which is very inspired by windows but like Deepin it has somewhat branched off in it's own way. Lastly there's JingOS which has a lot of potential as a mobile linux desktop/distribution. It even has it's own device coming out in china at some point, but at the moment the system itself is still very early on and rough so we'll have to wait and see for that. Because these are all developed for normal people they are more simple and specifically avoid reliance on the command line for normal things.
I agree that linux has some trouble letting go of the past, but it is slowly doing it. Linux has a lot of potential still and linux gaming, which has been one of the biggest reasons people don't/can't switch over, is also steadily improving. The future of linux is bright. It's customizable, its secure, it supports more hardware than any other system ever, it can be as simple or brain crushingly complex as you like, it can be as stable or as bleeding edge as you like and best of all it's libre software so you can do anything you want to it, anyone can do anything they want to it, and you stand only to gain from that.
My biggest issue with Desktop Linux is the constant relatively minor bugs and missing basic features. Most are minor but there are so many it adds up to being more trouble than it's worth. GNOME 40 looks ok, but do I still need to download an extension to prevent the dock from hiding, an extension that is poorly integrated with the rest of the desktop (drag and drop doesn't work properly) and completely breaks after your first reboot if you use wayland? Have they managed to get rid of all the stuttering in every animation? Does KDE 5.21 finally fix the bug that has existed for at least 5 years where you have to go edit a random config file for it to work properly if your display runs at anything other than 60 Hz? Do mouse sensitivity settings work consistently on ANY Linux desktop environment yet or do I still need to dig around config files (different ones depending on the gui server). Can I use GTK apps in KDE without window corners and shadows looking like crap? How about vice versa?
My guess is that the answer to most of these question is "no" and will continue to be "no" and even if any of these things do get fixed there are hundreds more. Unfortunately I think this is a largely unsolvable problem because every linux distro or desktop environment is made up of scores of different projects which are in turn made of thousands of different components, most of which are all maintained by different groups with little or no communication between them. You do have cool projects like systemd that are unifying big chunks of the linux ecosystem under a more unified design, but that project also resulted in a gigantic backlash which has resulted in further fragmentation with many very smart people spending all their development time in ghettos like "debian but without systemd".
This (lack of) centralized planning and structure has also resulted in a lot of what makes linux cool and interesting, but I don't think a community organized in this way is capable of producing a desktop experience that can compete with what big companies like Microsoft and Apple are producing, there are just too many moving parts. Maybe some of these Chinese projects will eventually mature into what I'm looking for but Deepin was still pretty rough last time I tried it.
This is why you should use i3-gaps. Dev Certified(tm)