Sure.
But “missing significant foundational and complex functionality is not really a bug”, it is a feature. I mean, I guess I could file a bug that says “won’t run ALL Windows software” and talk about how long it stays open.
As each of these dominos falls, it gets easier to add more functionality on top. I feel like they have made more progress in the past two years than they have in the 10 before that.
Given how slowly they move, the obvious choice is to bet against them.
That said…
It already works for some stuff. There are already people that have been able to use ReactOS to run legacy but vital applications. I cannot remember any details but I have heard of a few instances where businesses saved rather substantial amounts of money with ReactOS.
Similarly, there are certainly people that find it runs the particular applications they want and runs on the hardware they have. Some legacy gamers use it. But perhaps you have hardware that is only supported under Windows XP.
And, if people keep using Windows, it will eventually become usable enough to be a viable alternative. If it had Windows 7 level features today and ran modern apps, a lot of people would find it good enough to switch. It does not have to be better than Windows or support every Windows feature.
As slow as they are, they have gotten further than most people would have expected.
Ya. I feel like professional VFX has largely migrated off Windows already.
Photoshop is perhaps the canonical example of software that does not run on Linux and is actually needed by “professionals”.
Photoshop does not run well enough on Wine that I would expect a pro to run it this way. And, if you are a print professional, there really are no Open Source tools that do what you need yet.
But outside of print, I think it is more about familiarity than capability even with regards to Adobe alternatives. And there are alternatives UI options for things like GIMP if the Adobe metaphor works better for you.
Inkscape seems to be attracting some actual professional use. Scribus seems close to getting there too. The furthest behind is GiMP.
That said, I am impressed with the development pace of GIMP now that version 3 has finally shipped. And it seems that proper CMYK support is on their near-term roadmap. I could see them shipping something functional next year. I would say similar things about non-destructive editing.
It will be interesting to see if attitudes change towards GIMP after these issues are addressed. The UI also takes a lot of heat. Now that there is a consistent cadence of releases (it seems), perhaps that will see steady evolution as well.
This is a funny take given that for most of Linux history, the majority of Linux desktop user have been “working professionals”, largely IT workers and developers to be fair.
At this point, you cannot really make a blanket statement about who Linux is appropriate for. It is down to individual use cases and preferences.
I have been using Linux for decades and, while I have also used Windows and macOS, other operating systems are frustrating to use due to the many limitations. And I have been several kinds of “working professional” over that time at many different levels of seniority. But I recognize that this is because all my workflows and expectations evolved on Linux.
The “working professionals” you imagine likely have the same issue. It is not that Linux could not work, or even that it is not a better place to start. It is document compatibility and familiarity.
At this point, Linux “being ready” comes down almost completely to a tolerance for learning and change. Nobody says you have to change of course. But working differently does not mean that something else does not work.
There are of course still some software gaps. CAD is not great on Linux (getting there). Print graphics professionals (people with CMYK workflows) will hit real roadblocks. Some debugging tools available on Windows are worth the productivity for certain workflows. Pro audio too I guess though this not my area. And “office document” users may encounter display inconsistencies when sharing documents depending on which features they rely on. Perhaps the latter is what you mean.
As for gaming, it depends on what titles you favour. Some Windows games play better on Linux. Some worse. And of course some not at all.
When choosing software for a company, I consider something that cannot work on the Linux desktop or through the cloud disqualifying. I can think of few cases where that has been the wrong decision.
So when I install EOS for the first time, I should use the ISO from when the project was founded?
This comment is silly. The fact that every rolling release I can think of tracks against releases in exactly this way is not.
Of course they do. It is a silly comment.
Now that GIMP has finally released version 3, they seem to be moving faster. I hope they are able to get more positive mind-share.
For example, they are close to releasing 3.2 that already has lots of great stuff in it. It looks like 3.4 could address some really long running deficiencies like native CMYK.
If stuff actually gets released, they may not only attract users but developers which is what they really need.
Lots of nice changes in this release. I see lots of the things people complain about.
I am not a GNOME user myself but since Niri uses XDG-desktop-portal-GNOME, this looks like a release to look forward to.
I have mixed feelings about Zorin.
They are doing a great job of promoting themselves and in attracting converts from Windows. It seems like a nice enough distro as well that users are likely to have a decent experience with.
On the other hand, they are charging money for a “pro” version that mostly just bundles software that users could get for free. My first reaction to this is that it is exploitive, both of uses and software devs.
But then I remember that they also offer support and I think that introducing people to software they did not know about is also a service.
And if they use the money to do all of the above, the Linux ecosystem benefits. So, perhaps they are not that bad.
Perhaps the best thing about them is they make it harder for truly scammy “windows” distros like Wububtu to take hold.
If they start to make “real” money, I do hope they share some of it back with the projects they leverage.
That is pretty limiting solution though.
First, you can only have one libadwaita library installed. So, if GNOME is already on a system, installing another DE alongside it will create a conflict.
Second, livadwaita is not designed to enable third-party theming. It surfaces the capabilities desired by GNOME, which is less and less all the time. That limits what others can do.
Do you mean by supplying your own version of libadwaita?
Absolutely GNOME.
GIMP just finally finished their port from GTK2 to GTK3 a few months ago. GTK4, released 5 years ago, has literally nothing to do with them.
Like GNOME, I think that GTK is one of those projects that now says that the letters do not stand for anything.
I imagine that the XAML output by this app would work with Uno Platform. If XAML Studio itself can be made cross-platform, this would create a fairly nice cross-platform C# story.
It is pretty easy to point out how long we have been researching fusion. That said, few of the skeptics will highlight just what an explosion of private capital we have seen in recent years and how different that is to previous decades. They will not show you the previous times in history when we have seen similar patterns.
Sure this capital is speculative. And most of them will have picked the wrong winner. But history tells us that this is what it looks like before a technology succeeds. Not 30 years before. More like 10. Which means saying 5 is ambitious but not exactly crazy.
Fusion does not belong in your list. First, some of them exist. You can buy a 3D printer with bitcoins. Of those that don’t, none has more than perhaps one resource unconstrained backer. Not a lot of people think we are colonizing Mars anytime soon. Fusion has billions of dollars of private capital chasing it as this point.
The situation may be closer to Quantum Computing than your examples. And I would say there are more physical unknowns in quantum computing. Because we do not have a quantum computer we can see in the sky everyday.
Your list looks funny in another way. Did you know that a company just launched a solar power satellite to do AI in orbit. It is up there and operational. They want to build a solar powered AI data-center in space. Whether you back such and idea or not, you cannot say something is impossible that has already been done.
And sometimes things work out differently than intended. For example, the technology developed or fusion stelerators is being use for drilling. One use may be to drill geothermal power vents. Who knows, maybe fusion power research will inadvertently make geothermal so cheap that fusion reactors no longer make economic sense.
It has really only been a problem since GTK4. A lot of the rest of the GTK universe has stuck with GTK3. Now we are seeing people come up with alternative versions of libadwaita.
We should end up seeing a fork on the GTK side with GNOME going one way and everybody else another.
I always preferred GTK and its ecosystem. But GTK is more and more positioning itself as just a toolkit for GNOME. And GNOME is more and more going not only going its own way but also not concerning itself with compatibility beyond what I will call the Red Hat Linux platform.
So I can certainly see why anybody outside of GNOME would consider migrating off GTK. I mean, this is basically how we got COSMIC as well, based off the Iced toolkit.
I agree. I wish Flatpak used a proper package manager. You install one Flatpak and you need the entire freedesktop sdk even if you use a fifth of it. Install a second Flatpak and maybe do it again.
Does Kubuntu not use snap?
If you like Paint.net, try Pinta.