My Linux equivalents of traffic diversions
Sometimes I almost forget that certain issues on (my) Linux (setup) still exist because I've learned to deal with them differently.
Just to get that out of the way: I am using GNOME (Wayland) on Arch Linux, btw. 😜
One example ...
Today I accidentally double-clicked on a .flatpak file and was reminded that, like with Manjaro a couple years ago, my GNOME setup on Arch Linux opens such a file with the GNOME Software app, only to crash with a white screen and an endless loading indicator. 🫣
I had forgotten about this because I generally only work with Flatpaks in the CLI nowadays.
A few other such examples ...
- GUI installers for plugins (e.g. the ones by Audio Damage) are displayed with a generic icon and when double clicked open in GNOME's Text Editor app. 😜 They need to be executed via the context menu in nautlius ("Run as a Program"). I just reminded myself that similar things exist on macOS as well. 🤔
- Software that is only available as .deb (or .rpm) package and thus has to be manually extracted/installed (if you're not on a supported distribution, that is, which I am obviously not). 🤓
- Applications that are only distributed as AppImages, for which users then have to decide where to put them in the first place and manually create a .desktop launcher file for them as well. 🙃
- Another classic example is drag and drop between applications stopping to work after a while.
- And then something, that I believe is due to bugs in JUCE, perhaps in combination with Wayland. Audio plugins that lose focus after a few milliseconds, which is particularly annoying if you need to input your credentials to authenticate them. Sometimes this can only be achieved by copy pasting values. To be honest, this is worse in Bitwig Studio than, e.g., in Ardour, which is why I sometimes authenticate plugins in Ardour to use them in Bitwig Studio. 🤫😉
For me, personally, these issues aren't a problem, but I'm sure they would be for some of the less inexperienced Linux users.
I haven't investigated these issues further because I know how to deal with them.
I also don't know how other distributions, desktop environments, or window managers behave in situations like this. 🤔
Bottom line
Linux is already fantastic, but depending on the configuration, there is still room for improvement. However, when I consider how much my own Linux experience has improved over the last few years, I don't worry about such things. I am convinced that it will quickly become even better than it is today. 😊