My biggest issue with Desktop Linux is the constant relatively minor bugs and missing basic features. Most are minor but there are so many it adds up to being more trouble than it’s worth. GNOME 40 looks ok, but do I still need to download an extension to prevent the dock from hiding, an extension that is poorly integrated with the rest of the desktop (drag and drop doesn’t work properly) and completely breaks after your first reboot if you use wayland? Have they managed to get rid of all the stuttering in every animation? Does KDE 5.21 finally fix the bug that has existed for at least 5 years where you have to go edit a random config file for it to work properly if your display runs at anything other than 60 Hz? Do mouse sensitivity settings work consistently on ANY Linux desktop environment yet or do I still need to dig around config files (different ones depending on the gui server). Can I use GTK apps in KDE without window corners and shadows looking like crap? How about vice versa?

My guess is that the answer to most of these question is “no” and will continue to be “no” and even if any of these things do get fixed there are hundreds more. Unfortunately I think this is a largely unsolvable problem because every linux distro or desktop environment is made up of scores of different projects which are in turn made of thousands of different components, most of which are all maintained by different groups with little or no communication between them. You do have cool projects like systemd that are unifying big chunks of the linux ecosystem under a more unified design, but that project also resulted in a gigantic backlash which has resulted in further fragmentation with many very smart people spending all their development time in ghettos like “debian but without systemd”.

This (lack of) centralized planning and structure has also resulted in a lot of what makes linux cool and interesting, but I don’t think a community organized in this way is capable of producing a desktop experience that can compete with what big companies like Microsoft and Apple are producing, there are just too many moving parts. Maybe some of these Chinese projects will eventually mature into what I’m looking for but Deepin was still pretty rough last time I tried it.