I’ve felt lousy about the internet, software, computers and technology lately. Recently I’ve abandoned a project of mine and that made me feel pret...
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I agree with the other commenter. ElementaryOS would have been a better choice. Not only is the design and UX very consistent but they have their own app store which favors apps written for their distro that follow their guidelines. Personally I like the Gnome HIG better though, but they are similar. It sounds like you gave up on gnome a little too fast. It is by far the most polished experience IMO. do Ubuntu and you get a stable easy to use gnome with a permanent dock. Personally I dislike docks so I turn it off. download gnome-tweaks to change back to the default gtk theme and it looks great.
regarding keyboard shortcuts that is easily configurable in gnome. If you want to go macOS like there is probably a way to configure super+(cxv) for clipboard actions. It might be simpler to just use something like autokey to get working though.
You could try out tootle for a native Mastodon client. Geary is a really nice mail client (with a redesign to make it adaptive for mobile that also just makes it look way better overall). Gnome calendar is great too. I like notesup for notes but unfortunately it was made for elementaryOS and currently looks a little broken on other desktops. Looks like dropbox has a native plugin for the gnome file manager too github.com/dropbox/nautilus-dropbox
Treat different desktops/distros like different operating systems. It just happens to be true that you can mix and match but of course you are not going to have consistency if you do that.
That's an interesting approach that I've never really heard before, to stay within the lane of a single distro's apps. But doesn't that severely limit you? The world of quality modern linux desktop software is pretty limited as it is, so if you only use the software written for a relatively new (comparatively) distro, doesn't that really lock you in?
I think for gnome and kde desktops it's pretty doable. They both have nice ecosystems of applications. If you value consistency you can get it for 99% of apps. The few special cases would be for complicated software like image/art software like Gimp/Krita and maybe media clients and text editors depending on how picky you are.
I think Elementary would be the only one I know of where you could kind of get "locked in" since in my experience trying run apps written for that distro on other platforms they tend to look bad if the author didn't test them off elementary. That said they are just Gtk apps, They just use a different style sheet and have their own library of widgets for certain things. Pantheon - the desktop environment used by elementary is available in other distros now too.
Cool! I think I'll spin up an Elementary instance this weekend and try to stick to only what they supply in their app store and see how the experience differs. Thanks for your detailed insight!
I have used desktop Linux since 1997, Red Hat, Mandrake, Gentoo and Arch several times on a dual boot desktop on and off and on several laptops. And I lately and for a long time have been where you are right now: really wanted to make Linux work on my (travel) Thinkpad X250. But with Linux it's a constant effort just to keep things running. When last year after a full update of the system (Arch Linux) all kinds of nuts and bolts started to fall off from under the hood and I really had to get some things done I capitulated. Wiped the whole system and installed W10. Total bliss: good graphics, consistency and a stable system. I won't go back soon.
Never had that experience with Arch, maybe you forgot to keep the system updated for a long time and then tried an upgrade? That is more or less sure to break things.
I tend to keep my Arch boxes running continually from kernel or certain security update to the next, sometimes months between reboots. My impression is that they are as stable as ocean trudging warships. And compared to Windows machines they are quiet, no fans racing due to telemetry whatever or indexing whatever or whatever as soon as I let go of the keyboard for some idle thinking. They do what they are told and never ever interfere with my work unless permitted to. No nonsense notifications, no Microsoft adverts, no nagscreen madness as soon as there's some update available.
And how do you cope with the UI? It is only partially possible to control from the keyboard so do you switch mouse hand periodically to keep burden on your arms and shoulders even? Is it even possible to get a good, customisable window manager under Windows without running one on a virtual guest OS?
Arch is known for its instability, if you don't want to care about your OS why not just pick Ubuntu?
I feel you!
Man, iMessage is a giant vendor-lock (probably biggest of them all) that's seamless and /comfy/ when you're in the Ecosystem, but turns into ugly mess once you step outside. It then makes you ask yourself if you want to use anything besides Apple products.
Moving to platform-independent tools is the key.
Developers are free to write their apps in however way they see fit, without any entity enforcing the rules. That's both the blessing and a curse in an OSS world.
You should have tried @elementaryos
Aside from a different coat of paint, what's different about Elementary OS.
I'm genuinely curious what things with that distro would solve some of my pain points.
Elementary aims to have a mac look and feel, so you'll get the consistency between apps (shortcuts, bars, color schemes, etc).
Pasting should work with ctrl + shift + v where ctrl + v does not.
Some terminal based tools might want to utilize
Ctrl-V, that's why not all terminals use it for pasting. UsuallyShift-Insertworks instead.