Definitely count these other DEs into my criticism. They’re part of the problem.

I love the free software ideals, but I think we’ve got a different understanding about what constitutes a good and a bad license. What many people seem to forget about software licenses is that there are these other countries besides America. They couldn’t care less about whatever judges rule over there. A good license is a dumb simple license that anyone can enforce in court with ease. A bad license is a convoluted license that crumbles like a house of cards in court. I read the GPL. It’s convoluted. It’s an opaque terms of service agreement riddled with legal boilerplate disguised as software license. A poor execution of the ideals I hold. I only use the GPL as a formality to say that I support the free software ideals, but I have zero confidence in enforcing the GPL.

Shame that we don’t have a proper copyleft license tho? GPL, as nice as the intentions are, is a license so convoluted that I’m not sure whether it’d hold up in court in my country.

None of the above. 64-bit, 64 bit, x86-64, 1000000 bit, amd or i772.

Let’s use Ubuntu for comparison.

• Ubuntu is more up-to-date than its spin-offs.
• Ubuntu will outlive Ubuntu spin-offs, including Zorin.
• Ubuntu offers paid support, whereas Zorin doesn’t.
• Ubuntu community is bigger than Zorin. More resources, tutorials, etc.

Zorin adds only the following value:

• More themes, primarily lookalikes, which is arguably a bad thing.

When people see Windows, they expect Windows. Installers, package managers, peripherals like printers, etc. are different from Windows. Pretending to be Windows makes people feel at ease for a moment at the expense of fundamentally misunderstanding what operating system their computer runs on, and it’ll trip them up eventually, probably sooner rather than later.

See macOS: It looks and feels different. People don’t mistake macOS for Windows. People who use Windows don’t expect macOS to behave like Windows, and vice-versa. But hey, let’s make macOS look and feel like Windows at first glance. Why can’t I run that .exe? What do you mean, I must use an app store? What is HDCP, and why does it prevent me from connecting this laptop to the projector?

For iOS that’d be questions like: Where is the Play Store? Why can’t I install that (Android-only) app? I think you get my point.

This is one of the reasons why branding exists. Yet many Linux distros would like to believe they can replicate the Windows experience through a miracle, and fool themselves into thinking that’s a good thing for Linux newcomers. It’s especially bad for people who don’t know they use Linux, like when they use computers at the office, library, etc. with a distro like Zorin.

We’re talking about Word documents, right? People hate when a line wraps in the information block, or their fold and hole marks move, each time anyone with LibreOffice touches their letters. Or their crop, bleed, registration, fold marks, color bars, and safety margins when they print anything professionally. Sorry people, but Word documents require precision sometimes. They look the same, even across several major Word versions. If LibreOffice can’t guarantee that, then you can’t use LibreOffice in an MS Office environment where precision is necessary, and this starts with letters.

I see you’ve never used a Lisp REPL before.

Force people to move to Wayland. Everyone that complains about Wayland breaking their setup knows how to install Xorg anyways. But most Wayland problems are software vendors not giving a shit. Make them give a shit by breaking their shit by default on most setups. 10 years was enough time to make your software work on Wayland. If your software doesn’t work on Wayland by now, then your risk management is shit.

Thank you.

I hate that most Linux brightness controls assume that humans perceive brightness linearly for some reason. I don’t want a flash bang in dark surroundings when I forget to use the slider. I don’t want to press my brightness up key a thousand times or resort to the slider in bright surroundings.

So yes, please merge this.

What about git add?

I worked on software that’s roughly as bug-free as a living bug. Intended behavior crashed the software. The master branch was broken, no way to compile the software without local changes. Devs hunted down suppressed exceptions to find out why everything crashes and burns on a daily basis. Unit tests are in the backlog, we’ll get around to it eventually.

Code reviews are ask whoever is available to approve your changes without looking at the code. Most seniors abused suppressed exceptions to use the Java Streams API, no proper technical justification. So my first official task was to unsuppress all exceptions. This caught many seniors off-guard, but made crashes infinitely easier to diagnose.

I would’ve done that even if it wasn’t my task. Shotgun debugging is hell. I don’t want to learn which component is most likely to fail silently due to retarded suppressed exceptions. Do your job properly ffs. Don’t shoot others in the foot. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot. You have absolutely no reason to shoot people’s feet. Stop it.

Java Applets!

I don’t know why this got downvoted. Google gives Mozilla a hefty paycheck to remain the default search engine on Firefox.

If people give up on maintainable solutions like Wayland, then there’s no way in hell anyone picks up Xorg ever again. My Xorg issues remain wontfix. Wayland issues are now wontfix. Nobody works on Wayland and Xorg. Linux desktop is officially dead. I either switch back to Windows or buy a MacBook. I won’t invest time into an ecosystem that’s destined to die a slow, but guaranteed death.

I’m sure a lot of people try to hold onto their beloved abandonware to keep their Linux desktop alive, but why should AMD, Intel and NVIDIA care about Linux desktop now that the Linux community doesn’t have enough fucks to give to maintain Linux desktop? May as well save driver development costs and drop Wayland and Xorg support from future graphics cards.

because everything works fine in Xorg.

… for you. I got the honor to try to find the correct match of specific NVIDIA driver version, desktop environment and compositor to get anything even remotely usable back when NVIDIA only supported Xorg. I was greeted with either an entire crash, black screen, graphical glitches, and/or screen flickering if I forgot to pin package versions. Connecting displays from right to left crashed everything, so I was forced to change my display setup to left to right. Of course, waking up displays from sleep never worked either. So don’t pretend that Wayland is a broken mess while abandonware Xorg is our Lord and savior.

Stop pushing people towards Wayland, let it happen naturally when it will be ready and better, and they’ll come. Trying to force adoption will just make people resent it.

Software vendors drag their feet to adopt Wayland as nobody forces them to adopt Wayland. Again, Wayland works fine. X11 features don’t work in Wayland. But Wayland isn’t X11. Xwayland solves a lot of these problems. Software vendors back then didn’t port their Windows software to OS/2 due to OS/2’s Windows compatibility. Video game publishers today don’t port their games to Linux in part due to Steam Proton. Software vendors today don’t port their X11 software to Wayland due to Xwayland. So the ideal solution is to force a critical mass to adopt Wayland, drop Xwayland, and let software vendors suffer from the consequences of ignoring 16 years of Linux desktop protocol innovation.

Some people including myself call Wayland X12 because Wayland is a subset of the X12 protocol made by the X11 maintainers, and as such is as close to an X11 successor as you can get.

It feels like “English is broken because my friend only knows German.” to me. English works just fine. Teach your friend English.

English is Wayland. German is X11. Friend is software.

But Wayland’s technical merits are relevant in a subtle way. Wayland is maintainable. Xorg isn’t. That’s it, the single most important technical merit. Everyone works on Wayland. Nobody works on Xorg. If people decide to use X11 today, their issues are wontfix with the solution to use Wayland instead. They can’t fix the issues themselves because X11 is an unmaintainable mess. Xorg is on life support with the only purpose to serve Xwayland.

If they don’t work, then clearly its broken.

Protocols are fine. Clients may speak one or another protocol. But protocols aren’t broken when clients designed to speak one protocol fail to speak a different protocol. It’s like saying English is broken because my friend only knows German, except English is Wayland, German is X11 and my friend is clients. Wayland is always ready to listen to clients that speak Wayland.

“What do you mean, tEcHnIcAl DeBt, CoDe MaInTaInAbIlItY? It works just fine. Get the feature done by Friday. Perfection is the enemy of progress!”

— A manager somewhere on planet Earth