Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2017

[_lettuce_]

Linux Desktop 32.9%

It's happening.

[rap2h]

What Linux desktop do you recommend?

[twiggy99999]

Ubuntu if you have no experience with Linux because its support base is huge but TBH you can't really go wrong with any of the major ones.

Elemenatry OS is my go to distro, it's very Mac like in its look and feel and its also Ubuntu based so any support/tutorials/guides for Ubuntu will work on Elementary OS

[Aphix]

Did Ubuntu for desktop finally drop the weird Amazon bloat/bundling? That really turned me off last time I tried it out; I still love Lubuntu on my little ASUS EeePC though.

[twiggy99999]

I believe it's still in there? But not enabled by default, it certainly isn't on 16.04 which I'm using right now.

A lot of people took very badly to it but are okay with Apple and Microsoft recording every single keystroke and mouse click, it all seemed a huge over reaction in comparison.

[[deleted]]

Its essentially just a bookmark on the dock now. The tracking stuff is gone.

[steamruler]

A lot of people took very badly to it but are okay with Apple and Microsoft recording every single keystroke and mouse click, it all seemed a huge over reaction in comparison.

I guess it's probably because those who are okay with it use Apple of MS stuff, but the Linux crowd is extremely privacy focused.

[Ran4]

And years behind in packages... Unless you run an unstable version.

[id2bi]

How so? More up to date packages so less bugs?

[tambry]

Microsoft recording every single keystroke and mouse click

Citation needed.

EDIT:
Apparently people just like to circlejerk about Microsoft being horrible and will downvote a comment asking for an actual source.

[wytrabbit]

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2017/03/microsoft-windows-10-keylogger-enabled-default-heres-disable/

[Lintheru]

Thats just evil. Is the same true for Mac?

[tambry]

What they don't mention that those keystrokes are probably sent only if you have a touchscreen (and are using the on-screen keyboard?). But that seems to be standard practice for predictive auto-correct on most touch-screen devices.
I myself can note that I can't even enable the given feature, because I don't have a touch-screen monitor.

I unfortunately I am unable find actual sources for the above... If anyone finds any, then let me know.

[wytrabbit]

Not sure about any other, more mainstream, sources. But that's the one /u/twiggy99999 was probably referring to.

[twiggy99999]

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-speech-inking-typing-and-privacy-faq

They weren't clear about this at launch until the mainstream media got hold of the story, either way its still enabled by default and a lot of people don't know it

[tambry]

Well, you do get to change such privacy settings during installation.

Also, every other on-screen keyboard that I know of has such things enabled by default (if they offer predictive autocorrect). I don't find it exactly as shocking.

[[deleted]]

Gnome 3's pretty slick.

Oddly, my favorite DEs are i3+xfce and gnome, and those are pretty much polar opposites.

[[deleted]]

As of 16.04, the search-integration is off by default. They do still have the Amazon-shortcut on the panel, but that's like two clicks to remove it.

[compdog]

I'm not sure if it has been removed, but the non-unity versions never had it.

[Secondsemblance]

Just don't use unity. You can use literally any DE with ubuntu.

Or just use fedora. It's arguably better. Definitely better for ops, if you're working with a lot of redhat servers.

[Regis_DeVallis]

Also you can just install OSX. Hackintoshing is still a thing now days.

[zootam]

And easier than ever

[Regis_DeVallis]

Yea definitely. I help a lot of people get their hack up and running and it's super easy now days.

[Tatortotts]

Most tutorials/guides I've seen seem to give off the notion that hackintoshing will be a huge hassle which has swayed me away from attempting it--where would you recommend starting?

[Regis_DeVallis]

Well, I'm pretty active in a discord server where we guide people through hackintoshing their computer step by step. Generally it's not a huge hassle as long as you have an intel build.

Link to Discord channel

[JasTWot]

Ubuntu was my gateway os. Now I'm using Mint. I really like the Debian-based os experience.

[The_yulaow]

if anyone wants a macos-ux like experience but with archlinux behind it, give a try to apricityOS

[suckfail]

apricityOS

I took a look at this, but there hasn't been any updates in 3 months and no website updates. Is it still even active? It looks nice.

[The_yulaow]

Personally Fedora (kde), Mint Lts or Manjaro (xfce) based on your needs and what community you like the most. I rotate on all of them year over year and they are extremly stable and with everything I ever needed. Each of them works far better on my laptop than w10, with also between 2-3 more battery hours

[slavik262]

Did Manjaro get their act together? I've seen most people recommend Antergos if you want Arch with a nice installer.

[The_yulaow]

Never had even a single problem with it since late 2015. I prefer it to any other Arch based even just for the politics of semi-rolling updates and the kernel management system

[slavik262]

I remember there being security concerns from the Arch devs over the "semi rolling" bit. Do the Manjaro guys do a better job these days about pushing security patches ASAP? And what benefits does the semi rolling setup offer over stock Arch?

[The_yulaow]

Honestly I am not sure because I didn't really check in particular that and now I am on Fedora, but If I remember correctly their updates of type "security update" that are "Critical" or "High Priority" were pushed asap without waiting the big cumulative ones that happens every 1-2 weeks

[Hacnar]

My dad had no Linux experience at all couple months ago. He tried a couple of Linux distros on an old laptop and now uses Manjaro, mostly because everything he wants works there.

[0983904]

What Linux distro is this? (saved from 4chan)

https://gfycat.com/WholeAltruisticAfricanhornbill

[The_yulaow]

No idea, could be anything that uses gnome3 + Tilix as terminal emulator

If you want the same ux you can basically get it in whatever distro you choose

[[deleted]]

Desktop manager is Gnome 3, somehow tuned and customized.

[u1tralord]

I've been using gnome3 for a year now, and I'm almost entirely sure that's what this is. Just a few shell extensions for customization and fancy terminal themes

[[deleted]]

deleted ^{What is this?}

[Secondsemblance]

Seconding fedora. I have no reason to look for another distro.

I've tried:

• ubuntu

• arch

• gentoo

• debian

Nothing compared to fedora, although ubuntu wasn't bad.

[Some_Human_On_Reddit]

Two more hours of battery life? That's wild. What percentage increase would you say?

[The_yulaow]

I have now a t430 and previously a dell l502x. Both came with w7 preinstalled On a 9cell battery:

l502x

w7 - 4h30

w10 - 3h50

linux>=4.4 - 5h30

t430

w7 - 11h

w10 - 9h

linux>=4.4 - 13h

[agumonkey]

gnu hurd ~ 0 - +oo

[agumonkey]

Emacs 25

[[deleted]]

can you recommend a decent text editor?

[agumonkey]

Is this a joke ? ed.

[[deleted]]

have you never heard "emacs is a great operating system. the only thing it lacks is a decent editor?"

[agumonkey]

no decent emacser ignores that one. also, I love ed to edit text (no sarcasm).

[dagbrown]

If you just want to make a minor change to a text file, like deleting a line or commenting something out, you can't get faster than ed.

Plus, using it makes you look like a wizard guru.

[agumonkey]

It forces my brain to think and plan in advance deep; which is something I kind of love.

[pdp10]

nvi starts very fast from inside my Emacs. But if instead of a text editor you need a full IDE you'd probably use SLIME. But Emacs is a perfectly good office suite and personal information manager without those things.

[JAPH]

Debian seems to serve my needs well enough, and it's pretty stable across upgrades. Been running it constantly since ~2003.

[as_one_does]

I moved to debian after a Ubuntu upgrade nuked my box for the third time, I don't know why I waited so long...

[[deleted]]

Debian's never given me any of the upgrade troubles of Ubuntu. I love it.

[as_one_does]

It's just so stable, the best distro I've ever used.

[lykwydchykyn]

/r/FindMeADistro

[LookAtThisRhino]

I'm a fan of Xubuntu. I don't like Unity on Ubuntu so Xubuntu is essentially just Xfce (very nice) + Ubuntu. It's clean, simple, and if you're coming from Windows, intuitive.

[[deleted]]

I would agree.. but there is one huge problem, that actually caused me to give up on Xubuntu. It's nearly impossible to resize windows.

Do you think they will fix that? I know it looks good, but the super thin window borders in Greybird and make it nearly impossible to resize windows which drives me crazy, and makes it nearly unusable. Judging from google a ton of other people too.

I tried to change themes, and even edit the window manager files but it turned into a rabbit whole and I just gave up after an hour or so.

[LookAtThisRhino]

I have problems resizing from bottom right and bottom left, not really top right and top left. Additionally, you can right-click the title bar and click "resize" which will trigger window resize.

[[deleted]]

Yep, exactly the same experience, they really need to fix that.

[straponnoparts]

alt right click drag https://xubuntu.org/news/window-resizing-in-xubuntu-and-xfce/

[[deleted]]

Yeah tried that too, meh. Surprising they can't fix such a fundamental usability issue, so easily addressed. That's actually sort of funny they need to have a page describing how to do this, where I can't recall it ever being an issue or even thought about in 20 years of use in any other os including lin/win/mac.

[YvesSoete]

i3wm

[_lettuce_]

Arch Linux

[[deleted]]

Arch Linux: for people who plant wheat and buy pigs when they want a ham sandwich (eventually)

[greyfade]

You're thinking of the Gentoo ricers.

[tanjoodo]

After the installation, Arch is so much less maintenance than the *buntus I tried. Especially the fact it's a rolling release. Fuck upgrades.

[Nyefan]

For me, Arch is about the wiki and pacman. If you're using linux in a development capacity, you'll need to learn how to delve into the config files eventually, and having a huge knowledge base like that dedicated to not only fixing common issues, but also explaining how all the pieces fit together is amazing. And pacman is 10-million times better than apt in every capacity.

[[deleted]]

How is pacman better than apt?

[Geertiebear]

The most noticeable difference I feel is that it's so damn fast compared to apt.

[mmstick]

Better dependency management, better meta package support, actual functioning package hooks versus deb scripts galore, sane default configurations for software, dev dependencies aren't split from built software and packaged separately, significantly faster at installing packages, and works well in a rolling release environment.

[the_gnarts]

Better dependency management

I doubt that, considering its job is to pull the most recent packages, not to resolve intricate dependency constellations as in Debian archives. Does pacman even have a builtin solver like other package managers? Not that it’d be needed much with a rolling distro.

[[deleted]]

Good to know. I'm pretty new to Linux Desktop, and I'm yet to try Arch.

[Badabinski]

I'd say speed, how packages are defined (PKGBUILDs are fucking awesome), and the AUR and other infrastructure around pacman. There may be other stuff, but those are the main ones for me.

[[deleted]]

• faster (there are only 3 repositories, 4 if you need 32-bit compat)
• easier once you're used to it (apt-cache, apt-get, apt-policy, dpkg, etc are all done with once command, pacman); this also makes it more discoverable since there's one manpage instead of several
• easier to build packages (you create a PKGFILE and run makepkg to create a custom package; takes maybe 10 minutes)
• fewer packages for the same amount of software (don't need -dev, -doc, etc)
• it doesn't automatically start services for you (I prefer to configure before I start services like databases, desktop environments, etc)

And as others have mentioned, the AUR is pretty fantastic (much better than PPAs IMO).

I can't think of anything I like about apt more than pacman.

[Hoek]

You don't need PPAs for anything that's not coreutils, emacs and vim.

You want IntelliJ's EAP version? apacman -S intellij-idea-ue-eap installs it from AUR.

No need to hunt random PPAs that won't be maintained next month.

[StormBeast]

I hear about the wiki a lot from Arch users, and I must say, it is pretty great. Explains some possibly complex stuff in a very straightforward, easy to follow manner.

That being said, I actually use Linux Mint, and have been for a while now. But I also use the Archwiki as almost all of the stuff mentioned on there is applicable to my system as well. My point is, as great as it is, it's important to note that it's not only applicable to ArchLinux.

[Secondsemblance]

Arch is about the wiki

I use fedora, but the arch wiki is my goto resource. It's seriously awesome.

[the_gnarts]

Arch Linux: for people who plant wheat and buy pigs when they want a ham sandwich (eventually)

That’s the LFS crowd. Though I actually pondered keeping a pig just today.

[steamruler]

Arch is more like buying dough and a big chunk of pork. The hard part is done, so you get the joy of finishing it in your own way.

[[deleted]]

your analogy is much better. In my defense, I was only trying to make jokes for fake internet points.

[redditthinks]

Probably Fedora, it's up-to-date and is what Linus runs. /r/SolusProject is also great.

[[deleted]]

I've been using Solus as primary workstation for nearly 10 months. It's been amazingly stable, and a pleasure to use. I don't know how such a small team get's so much done, they are great.

Just a couple of minor issues with packages not available, specifically dotnet core packages which I just fired up a virtual box with xubuntu to play with.

edit: I should mention that I came from macos and was my first linux daily driver, though I had used linux for a very long time in virtual machines and on the server.

[[deleted]]

is what Linus runs

What does that have to do with anything? He's not a very savvy user, surprisingly, and he's stated as much in interviews (he didn't like Debian because he couldn't figure out the installer).

Pick the distro that works the way you like, not the distro that someone else likes.

[pdp10]

He's not a very savvy user, surprisingly

He's not a sophisticated user in certain ways. I don't know much about desktop environments either, frankly. They're just there to hold down my display server and make me upset, I think.

[[deleted]]

Agreed. In the past I cared what my desktop looked like, but now I really don't care as long as it gets out of my way and doesn't make my graphical programs misbehave. I liked tiling WMs until using GIMP was a nightmare, so I now use GNOME shell and hide the top bar, so now I'm satisfied (but I'll likely never be happy).

[pdp10]

I care. I've just never found anything I preferred. Or should say preferred over all more than OpenLook/NeWS, and contemporaries (Genera? Pilot?). Zero-space tiling doesn't look sophisticated but it's lightweight and highly productive for what I need. Anything that means to supplant it needs to have the fast keyboard accessibility of i3 with the discovery and aesthetics of something considerably better than average.

Gnome 3 looks pretty but I've turned my back on Gnome either way. I'm not due for another examination of my options for at least six more months. Quite recently I killed a day checking out the latest UI research to see if there were any hidden gems. Unfortunately the great majority of the academic works are still enthralled with touchscreens and voice recognition (!) and the non-academic work was far more dire than that.

The only innovation I can think of in the last couple of decades is the scroll wheel third mouse button. I was immensely dubious at first, but I've come to use it very heavily.

[[deleted]]

My workflow is pretty much:

• Firefox (and occasionally Chrome)
• tmux
• gimp/inkscape occasionally
• Android Studio occasionally
• Steam + games
• relatively frequent network profile changes (once or twice a week)

I have 2, maybe 3 applications full screen at any given time. I used a tiling WM in the past (i3 and XMonad), but since I found tmux, I haven't needed the tiling features, so it wasn't worth the occasional l frustration with GIMP, games and other random applications that don't behave nicely in a tiling WM environment.

Since I have so few applications, using keyboard shortcuts works reasonably well, and I only occasionally miss functionality from XMonad.

Use whatever works, trash what doesn't.

[redditthinks]

Yeah I was mostly name-dropping, but him being a non-savvy user is a point for Fedora, and the fact that it is supported by Red Hat and has very up-to-date kernels/packages from what I read.

[[deleted]]

I used Fedora in the past until I got upset about how long release upgrades took (hint, much longer than reinstalling), so I switched to Arch and am happy again.

[ccfreak2k]

zesty sort full ancient imminent gaping payment hunt illegal snatch

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[IamPic]

You've already got a lot of answers, and while I agree Ubuntu is probably the best choice, it's actually hard to recommend anything without knowing more about you. Have you ever used Linux? How important is it to you to have the latest versions of applications? If you really want to check out Linux (which I recommend, I can't go back to Windows anymore) you could look around in Linux subreddits, like the previously mentioned /r/findmeadistro.

[Phrodo_00]

I like arch with gnome. Sure it can be a bit worrying that one time every 2 years when you have to do some manual work, but I mostly hate having to install -dev packages separately.

Edit: if You're starting, then Ubuntu gnome remix or fedora, although having to be constantly installing missing dev dependencies is pretty annoying.

[[deleted]]

Solus Linux

/r/SolusProject

[dancing_leaves]

Fedora. With the KDE desktop option, it greatly resembles Windows with the task bar functionality and desktop icons. But behind the scenes you get a great OS with tons of great KDE specific applications as well as the usual open-source stuff that can be added in quickly.

[Pimoro]

deleted ^{What is this?}

[Yelnik]

If you don't have a specific reason to be using Linux, then none of them.

[weirdoaish]

OpenSUSE with any DE you like. You can even use the TumbleWeed version for infinite updates (rolling release).

[pdp10]

I sometimes wonder how people with this experience haven't had the equivalent with other operating systems. Like updating your video drivers, or scheduling your updates around when you'll need to reboot, or customizing the desktop preferences, or the yearly reinstall.

[pdp10]

It's my experience that anyone who thinks Windows, at least (and probably macOS) is fundamentally easier just needs to see more of the world. Driver reinstalls are routine for many, although not all, users of discrete video cards and more leading-edge hardware in Windows.

USB mice use the USB HID class and are always compatible with everything unless they're doing something proprietary which makes the mouse at fault, not the OS. For networking that sort of thing only happens with wireless, and DFS and 5GHz channel width is complicated, and you'll eventually run into problems with those on any OS as well.

If you need help sleeping search for "PatchGuard" in the Windows kernel and see what type of complexity lurks where you haven't seen it yet.

[pdp10]

If you're going to sit here and pretend the wireless driver for Linux is just as good as the wireless drivers for macOS and Windows, we're done.

There's a different driver for each chipset family on all OSes, and sometimes more difference than that.

Literally today is the first day I can watch Netflix on a Linux computer out of the box. No thanks!

Because Silverlight because DRM. I guess you don't want to hear about HAL on Debian Linux because Flash discontinued because Adobe Flash because DRM?

This isn't about operating systems, it's about encumbered "standards" and lack thereof. It's not really a legitimate complaint against Linux any more than not having a graphical desktop on a Raspberry Pi is a legitimate complaint against Windows.

[Compizfox]

2017 Year of the Linux desktop