news
GNU/Linux on the Desktop/Laptop: Recent Coverage by Valnet
-
XDA ☛ I gave Linux one final shot at being my daily driver and it finally stuck thanks to a few small fixes
I've lost count of how many times I've tried to make Linux my daily driver, and I've lost count of how many times I've gone crawling back to Windows, leaving my Linux partition to collect dust. For one reason or another, I'd always give it a couple of weeks, and then I'd stop booting into it because of a few small annoyances that were outside of my control. Nvidia behaving badly on Wayland and a desktop that couldn't drive a 4K HDR high-refresh panel without compromises were my main gripes, and now that those things are non-issues, I'm able to use it daily and not long for Windows.
-
XDA ☛ I stopped distro-hopping after Linux finally standardized on what actually matters
I've been a distro-hopper ever since I started using Linux over two decades ago. Back then, it was sometimes to get a stable experience on the hardware I had, but also to get specific packages or desktop environments without having to learn how to code. Linux users were passionate about their choice of desktop environment (DE) — and generally still are — telling you exactly why in great detail. But things evolved, and the fringe has become more mainstream.
I've had a lot of fun in the years since, and while the year of the Linux desktop may never come, the ecosystem has mostly agreed on sane defaults and standard features, so you can switch between distros based on preference and not needs. That's a good thing, because the general public doesn't want to tweak and fiddle to get a workable operating system, they want predictability.
-
XDA ☛ I’m ditching Docker Desktop — just not for every workflow
Windows has been my main workstation for years now. I jump around Linux and macOS from time to time, but I always come back to Windows, my comfort zone. Docker Desktop has been my default container solution on Windows. As an indie developer, my workflow heavily relies on Docker Compose stacks. I've been keeping myself updated with WSL's progress, and it has made Linux development much easier on Windows. Docker Desktop, though, hasn't changed. Microsoft's new WSL Containers feature, announced at Build 2026, aims to blur that line between the two. With the new wslc command, I won’t have to rely on a separate application to fire up a container.