Desktop Operating Systems

What's the best desktop operating system? Things I don't like: 1. Desktop Enviroment's, I prefer tiling window managers. 2. Xorg, Wayland if far superior in comparison to Xorg, it is a lot simpler, more secure and faster, it reduces if not eliminates screen tearing. I think that wlroots is good enough and window managers like Sway, Hyprland, Raver and newm are really great in terms of usability. 3. Generic x86_64 architecture, it is 10-30% slower than x86_64-v3. 4. systemd, it is way more then I need, I use it as init system and for init system systemd is bloated, it's more of a suite. 5. GNU core utils, GNU userland is bloated, for example VIM, NeoVim has more features while having only 70% of VIM code. Artix Linux (https://artixlinux.org/) is good, is supports custom init systems and since it's Arch Linux based it also supports Wayland, but they compile their binaries for generic x86_64 and not x86_64-v3, and also they use GNU core utils. Chimera Linux (https://chimera-linux.org/) is also great, it uses their custom init system called dinit and don't use GNU, but also compiles their binaries for x86_64, and they use GNOME which I don't like. OpenBSD (https://www.openbsd.org/) is great, but you have to do a lot of customizations to make your system function properly for desktop, BSD's don't support Wayland well and it uses x86_64 binaries. Currently I use CachyOS (https://cachyos.org/) which is awesome, it compiles binaries for x86_64-v3, have custom kernels with better schedulers and automate other optimizations like auto nice'ing processes, but they use GNU, systemd, have soykaf tone of useless packages and is created with KDE in mind.

None of them are good, but Windows is the best in terms of functionality vs inconvenience. WSL, while not seamless, helps fill a lot of functionality holes. I haven't tried MacOS though, so that might be better. Things I don't like: Fragmentation, extensive set-up time, trouble shooting, reading manuals, inconsistent font rendering, bad defaults, instability, backwards incompatibility.

Alpine Linux is really nice. I would use it myself if I didn't make a bad decision long ago and gotten an Nvidia GPU.

>>65088 >None of them are good Agreed. I have tried windows, mac and many linux flavors. It's about settling with some cons but ensuring that the pros benefit what you do. >Fragmentation, extensive set-up time, trouble shooting, reading manuals, inconsistent font rendering, bad defaults, instability, backwards incompatibility. Also agreed. I settled for Fedora. I work in IT and this met my needs while the cons are manageable.

>>65088 I got back to arch after half a year on W11 where it had problems with > usb-c hubs to hdmi/dp > screen blackouts and reload at random moments > wsl being retarded, not having snap or systemd > being slower At least there is chocolatey now which makes package management usable

>>65087 >What's the best desktop operating system? If you're a hacker: the one you make using simple but powerful tools you can hope to understand in their entirety at some point. In my case: Gentoo nomultilib, bspwm, sxhkd, lemonbar, st, dmenu, aerc, calcurse, sfeed, nsxiv, bwrap, catgirl, emacs, mupdf, etc... and a lot of my own programs and scripts (own music player, manga reader, status bar framework, etc...). It is VERY comfy, at that point, because I know enough to fix what breaks and improve what needs it. I may try StumpWM at some point. > Xorg, Wayland if far superior in comparison to Xorg, it is a lot simpler, more secure and faster >simpler No. Wayland is simpler, but Wayland with all that's needed to reach feature parity with X11 isn't. There has been enough discussion on this board about this, anyway. >VIM, NeoVim has more features while having only 70% of VIM code. Vim isn't GNU. But yeah, code cruft is never nice. >Arch No. Not serious enough and PM isn't powerful enough to help against dependency hell. >Chimera, Cachy Literally who? Only script kiddies use unstable soykafe with a bus factor of 1 or 2. >OpenBSD If you can get by using only base and don't care about performance, great. >>65088 I may have agreed with you if you were talking about Windows 7, but I was forced to use 10 at work for the first time since years and it was the worst computing experience I ever had in my whole life. >>65099 I use Fedora at work, but Gentoo at home. So much less issues (even had to recompile terminus-fonts because the terminus-fonts-legacy-x11 package is fuarrrked) because openrc and the "usual" tools are simply less complex than systemd, no initrd/initramfs needed, better package manager (though dnf is suprisingly good), less installed freedesktop jank, etc...

As a side-note, tiling window managers don't appeal to me. I very rarely want my screen to be split into more than 2 sections, and there's practically no applications I want to automatically split my screen when opened. Yeah, most have a floating mode, and you can keep full screen applications in different workspaces, but if used like that most of the time, there's no point. >>65100 >>65102 I think a lot of problems people have with Windows are hardware based. It's not reliable on old hardware.

>>65103 >I very rarely want my screen to be split into more than 2 sections With 16:9 "big" screens (27" 2560p here), 3 is what I most often ends up with. >and there's practically no applications I want to automatically split my screen when opened Text is easier to read when it's not taking the whole width, so stuff like PDF reading or web browsing is nice in half a screen. And when you're actually doing something (e.g. programming) your often want a browser nearby to search stuff and a terminal to do some man or run something. >Yeah, most have a floating mode, and you can keep full screen applications in different workspaces, but if used like that most of the time, there's no point. Why would there be no point? Even if you use tiling less than half the time, it being automatic when you need it is nice. >I think a lot of problems people have with Windows are hardware based. It's not reliable on old hardware. No, I was talking about software. Ads everywhere, including in their PoS Edge, no more Windows classic theme to avoid visual clutter, too many menus scattered everywhere with a mix of "modern" and NT or pre-NT style (especially "advanced" parameters), needs a whole week of fiddling with the registry to disable retarded soykaf like the resource hog known as Defender or Cortana or enable basic stuff like showing file extensions and allowing the creation of symlinks, still not customizable enough, the whole Windows Store/chocolatey/nuget/appget/MSYS2/scoop soykafshow is still miles away from even basic PMs like Pacman or apk, still lacking basic soykaf like a way to create a ramdisk or tune the I/O scheduler (i.e. ionice), NTFS is a good joke compared to APFS and modern UNIX FSes (ZFS, BTRFS, XFS with LVM/dm) and a general bloat/technical debt induced decay that can't be solved without starting again from scratch (stuff like https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2022/09/29/why-modern-software-is-slow-windows-voice-recorder/). There's just no end to the small~medium issues.

>>65092 seconding this. i've been daily driving alpine for roughly 6 months and it's super comfy. the setup kinda is like kicking dead whales down the beach, i swapped out openrc for runit, and compiled my own kernel, but it's pretty good when you get it working

>>65105 I just switched to alpine. There were a few tricks I had to learn (BOOT_SIZE, LVM_SIZE, and setup-desktop) but from computer off to working alpine desktop is literally less than 10 minutes. Even faster than openbsd. So far really enjoying it. I don't really miss systemd.

>>65104 I've got a 1920x1080 14" screen. >often want a browser nearby to search stuff and a terminal to do some man or run something I just alt+tab. Probably less efficient, but I prefer that to splitting my screen up into parts, since I'd still mostly be using one application, with the others only occasionally being needed. >Why would there be no point? A stacking manager with some tiling, makes more sense than a tiling manager with some stacking, when I only want tiling like 5% of the time, if that. >I was talking about software A lot of what you list after this is stuff I don't care about, like making ramdisks, or tuning the I/O scheduler. Enabling visible file extensions, can be done with a single button in the file explorer, so I'm not sure what that's about. Turning off Defender and Cortana was also not particularly difficult, and according to task manager, they aren't running or taking up any resources. Not removed from my system, but not getting in the way. I agree that the UI has become an inconsistent mess. Linux is no better in that regard though, unless you use something like Gnome, or configure everything through text files and the command line.

>>65107 >Turning off Defender and Cortana was also not particularly difficult Last time I checked, updates would automatically turn them on again. Maybe it's not hard for seasoned Windows suckers, but it's certainly not "just push a button" easy. >I agree that the UI has become an inconsistent mess. Linux is no better in that regard though, unless you use something like Gnome, or configure everything through text files and the command line. Well yeah, text files. It can be quite painful on Linux too (dotfiles everywhere, X resources, GNOME's dconf soykaf) but if you stay simple and modern like I do, most user programs now obey XDG and system ones usually stay neatly in /etc.

>>65106 my boot time is 8 seconds including efi and luks! you can cut down a lot of time by building a static kernel so udev doesn't do very much at boot; everything that needs to be loaded is already loaded additionally, efistub will save a second or two from grub >>65107 i also have a 1080p 14" screen, i prefer tiling on it. >I'd still mostly be using one application, with the others only occasionally being needed. consider the "deck" layout in dwm

>>65108 How would you go about changing your gtk theme, and making sure it looks like qt programs and vice versa? Do you 1. avoid anything gtk or qt like the plague 2. accept the defaults, which look different 3. install a 3rd party theme changer 4. manually edit both?

>>65113 qt can follow gtk2 themes with a package but i haven't tried it in a while. i use zero qt applications on a regular basis

>>65113 As you probably guessed, most of my GUI programs don't have menus or decorations (pure Xlib/Xcb or GL), so I don't really care about mismatch anymore. For gtk, I just use set GTK_THEME and GTK2_RC_FILES in my .zprofile (bluecurve ftw). I have almost no Qt applications (RPCS3 has its own theming and isn't made to be looked at very long, Libreoffice is used only when I have to open the odd MS Office file).

>>65115 Starting from a bare bones tiling window manager, and then learning how to use it, plus going through the process of configuring everything with text files, is what I would consider excessive set-up time.

>>65116 >plus going through the process of configuring everything with text files You don't usually go from GNOME to that kind of setup in one step. >what I would consider excessive set-up time. It's only once, and people who like to tinker aren't annoyed by that setup time, as long as they feel there's something to get at the end.

Whats the name of the clock used? Looks sick af. Can you run it on GNU/Linux or BSD?

>>65132 it's catclock, and there are various ports of it to unices

>>65133 >there are various ports of it to unices Well, to be pedantic, the Plan 9 version is a port of an X10 program which, as far as I know, is the original one.