So first of all, this is not a “help me like linux” post but desktop linux specifically and it’s not a “linux is shit” post either.
I run a whole bunch of linux servers (including the one that hosts the instance I’m posting from), the first thing I install on a Windows machine is WSL and I’ve compiled my first kernel about 20 years ago so that’s not the problem we’re facing here. I understand how linux works and considering the end of support for Windows 10 this is as good an opportunity as ever to fully make the switch.
My problem is more that specifically linux on a desktop still feels more like an unfinished prototype than like something I’d want to use as a daily driver. About once a year I challenge myself to try it for a while and see how it feels. I look around for a distro that seems promising, put it on a spare SSD, put it either into my Framework laptop or my gaming machine and see where the journey takes me, only booting Windows in an emergency.
And each time, I get fed up after a few days:
- Navigating a combination of the distro’s native package manager (apt, pacman, rpm, whatever), snap, flatpack and still having to set up the maintainers’ custom repositories to get stuff that’s even remotely up-to-date somehow feels even messier than the Windows approach of downloading binaries manually.
- The different UI toolkits, desktop environment, window manager and compositor seem to be fighting each other. I feel like even for something simple as changing a theme or the UI scaling, I have to change settings in three different places just to notice that half the applications still ignore them and my login screen renders in the top left corner of the screen but the mouse cursor acts as if the whole screen was used.
- All of that seems to be getting worse when fractional scaling is involved which is a must for the 2256x1504 screen in my Framework 13.
- The general advice seems to be “just wait until you run into a problem, then research how to solve it”. For my server stuff, this works really well. But for desktop linux, it feels like for every problem I find five different solutions where each of them assumes an entirely different technology stack and if mine is even slightly different I eventually run into a step where a config file is not where it should be or a package is not available for what I’m using.
- I do a lot of .NET programming and photo editing. I could probably replace VS with VScode or Ryder but it’s an additional hurdle. For photo editing, I haven’t found a single thing that fits my workflow the way Bridge, Camera Raw and Photoshop do. I’ve tried Gimp, Krita, Darktable, RawTherapee and probably a couple more and they all felt like they were missing half the features or suffer from the same unintuitive UI/UX that Blender had before they completely overhauled it with 2.8.
Sooo… where do I go from this? I really want this to work out.
Re: packages
What software specifically are you not finding in the repos? If it’s FOSS there should be a simple way of getting it. If it’s proprietary you kind need to pick your least hated option:
I’d pick one and stick with it as much as possible. Mixing several solutions is where things get confusing (for me at least)
Re: settings
UI scaling is a rough edge on Linux. Non-integer scaling (1.25, 1.5, 1.75, etc) doesnt always give perfect results on X11, and Wayland scaling only works on Plasma, Gnome, and the various compositors. Themeing isnt really a thing on Gnome, so only Plasma has both good scaling and themeing, and Plasma is especially guilty of the “settings in 3 places” phenomenon. If you want simple menus and good themeing you can use MATE, Cinnamon, or XFCE but then you lose wayland scaling.
I have run into the same bug with Display Manager not scaling on Plasma, but i dont have this issue on Gnome or on x11 desktops. Plasma may be the common denominator here.
Re: laptop
My advice is to try to like Gnome. It’s got the best scaling support right now. Disable all extensions, learn the keyboard shortcuts for window and desktop management, learn the touchpad swipe gestures, and pretend you dont miss themeing. If you can get past the initial apprehension, you might find a modern desktop with an elegant workflow. Add back in as few extensions as you can live with; each one is a potential source of instability/bugs but as long as you keep it to a small number you should be fine. I have 4 extensions currently enabled, and i wouldnt go too much higher.
If you end up hating it then Plasma is the next best option for your hardware. Plasma is in heavy development and still has lots of small issues, but things should improve over time
or you could try Hyprland
Re: photo editing
Curious about your workflow. I do a lot of wildlife photography as a hobby and I find just Darktable to be too much. I usually end up cropping, adjusting brightness and colors, and then exporting to a jpg.
What sorts of things are you doing with your photos? I dont think i have a solution for you, just curious. Also, can you run an older version of Blender? There might be a containerized solution for that already.
Thanks for the long reply, lots of stuff to unpack here that I might have to come back to later. Might be helpful.
So for now, let me focus on your question about my photography workflow. I mostly do event photography (discos, concerts, conventions) but also occasionally studio and travel stuff.
When I come home from a shoot, I copy my photos to a network drive on my home server (running Ubuntu) which automatically gets backed up to an off-site NAS. As a first step, I use Bridge to label which photos I want to edit for myself, which for a potential client, which not at all. Nothing special, just running through all RAWs and marking them with star or color labels. For the editing step itself, I start out with Camera Raw. First an overall pass with lens correction, cropping/straightening, brightness adjustments (exposure, contrast, blacks/darks/lights/whites), white balance, dehaze, curves, whatever the photo needs. Then, depending on the subjact, a more in depth pass with spot removal and masked adjustments. Automatic subject masking has been a great time saver. If I need to go even more in depth (usually only for photos that go to an exhibition), I start editing in photoshop. As a last step, I use Photoshop Image processor to bulk export JPGs in the needed size and quality, optionally with a watermark.
(for those familiar with Adobe’s tools, you might be wondering why I don’t use Lightroom instead. In the past I’ve had problems with accessing the same library from different machines. This could probably be fixed but my current setup works fine so I never bothered)
For long term library management, I run immich on my home server which lets me tag and filter my photos as much as I want.
As for the Blender thing, I think I phrased that weirdly. It was not related to a specific problem or my photo editing process. It was just an example for a piece of software that started out with horrible developer-user UI and got a lot better when they completely redid the UI in 2.8.