this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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The fundamental issue is that the desktops themselves are inferior products. Linux desktop developers spent years arguing which bad solution is better for a solved problem.
The gap is closer now but that's only because Windows is killing itself.
So, what is the solved problem supposed to be? The link doesn't really tell me anything except that it about a customisable titlebar or something.
That's a weird thing to present as an absolute truth. As someone who has exstensively used both Windows (3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10 and 11) and macOS (from 2011-2022), and now using KDE Plasma on my daily driver laptop, GNOME at work and Cinnamon for my living room machine: all three Linux DE are superior experiences.
Surely there are people who would prefer Windows and macOS over them, but it is highly subjective.
Huh? Linux has had the superior desktop experience for over a decade.
Windows just recently managed to get the basics like an actual clipboard, tabbed file management.
What is an "actual clipboard"??
Selectable, historical, you know actually useful.
Windows 10 introduced a half ass attempt that finally worked with all programs and could be considered functional.
Edit: to add an example look at this post on windows help by a Windows 7 user:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2660614/access-clipboard-windows-7
I have clipboard history enabled but holy is that an actual security nightmare.
IMO not a good requirement to have.
As always the security is with the user. No clipboard is just unusable.
And we are talking windows here, security was never important apparently until windows 10 anyways.
In fairness X11 was a threat right? That is one of the reasons Wayland broke so much.
As for the clipboard, kde applications can have a setting to say "this is a secret" and you can set to won't clip. But passwords are so out of favor I am not sure it matters. If you had a keylogger running you are screwed, if you had an application harvesting the clip board I suppose that isn't great, but how would it know what application/service/etc requested the contents?
there's no "no clipboard", what are you talking about? there's been a clipboard in any OS since XP that I have used
what? have you heard about 7?
I doubt that's a setting, it's just how it works. It's not like it's KDE specific behavior,even windows 10 is doing that.
I won't even comment on the rest, but it's bullshit
Windows did not have a functional clipboard. Go look at all the complaints over the years.
Windows historically had only a single-item clipboard and no built-in UI/history.
A separate one shipped with MS Office that let you store something like 12 to 20 items. Why? Because windows sucked and DID NOT HAVE ONE.
Windows itself did not get a built in Win+V searchable/historical clipboard until windows 10.
Yes, better than XP, still not good. I am not going to do your homework, but Windows 10 was the first release that really focused on isolation, secrets management, and virtualization of applications for system wide and user protection.
Just as well, you don't know what you are talking about anyways.
I understand that you personally want a fancy clipboard with lots of features; but for me, I actually explicitly deliberately only want a single item clipboard. I want the predictable simple certainty of what is and what is not stored in the clipboard. And if I ever had a multi-item clipboard with a UI interface, I'd be calling that confusing bloatware and looking for how to delete it.
So I don't think we should rank each OS by how fancy its clipboard is.
I want a basic clipboard. That is what it is. You can use it however you like, so that is choice. What is stored on top is last in, just like any clipboard. And you could set it to 1 if you want to only have one item.
I find it so weird that you call functionality "confusing and bloatware" and want to delete it. I have a hard time understanding what you actually do with a computer then. It has been part of my workflow since the late 80's. I would think a clipboard, that windows finally included is not "confusing and bloatware" due to popular demand.
I mean do you not use a GUI at all? You sound like maybe a terminal only experience is right for you. Speaking of which, windows lack of terminal history ALSO is so damn annoying. Another feature they recently got (see the trend?). Although it STILL does not have persistence.
In any case, since so many people asked for it, and Microsoft finally added a half functioning clipboard, I would think that it is ONE of a hundred plus reasons why the windows desktop is FINALLY catching up to a linux one. Which was the whole point of the discussion. You may not like a feature, which is fine, but a lot of people do. Until recently microsoft didnt have it but now does, I think it is fair to say Linux was ahead of Microsoft on features in the DE.
Sure. I agree with that. But I think you're seeing this in reverse of the point I was trying to make. My point is that you might think this feature is mission critical, but a lot of people do not. The purpose of my previous post was to imply that you are over-emphasising its importance.
Am I? There certainly are windows users that have no idea they want it (just like right click wasn't a big deal until it was).
There are a lot of forum posts and questions asking Microsoft for it.
But what about numbers? Honestly I don't know and probably cant know how many people would be interested. I also don't know what a threshold of users would be to say, yes this might be important. 10%? over 50%?
What I do know is that just one third party tool for windows has been around since 2003. So 22 years of interest.
I also know that they have had at least 500 downloads a week pretty consistently year over year at source forge, with another estimated 50,000 users that have gotten it from the Microsoft store.
Modern ditto as an extention to the current windows clipboard is on github with 5.7k stars and active.
Seems to me there are a lot of users who like to have clipboards. Maybe microsoft made the right move to put in what I consider basic functionality to their desktop as a large number of users were looking for it.
And that is only Ditto. There are a lot more like CopyQ and 1clipboard.
Do you not know what a clipboard is? Did you not use linux for years and when you had to deal with the windows desktop it was easily in the top 10 of really annoying things a computer should be able to do?
In windows 10 they finally got a resemblance of clipboard. The bare minimum.
Meanwhile, Linux had a qr reader/writer, full object cut and paste, actions, white-space trimming, history length adjustment, persistence between sessions, blacklisting, clipboard editing, functions, search, sorting, should I keep going?
You can find multiple complaints over the years about how bad windows was at this.
You need me to spell out what I said? Windows did not have a clipboard. That is it. You could enable one separately for word/excel for awhile.
Otherwise the system got one slot. ONE to hold text. That was it. And there wasn't even a way to look at the contents for a very long time.
I was explaining what I mean. What more could i say?
You are highlighting exactly what I am talking about: Linux has had a ton of features for the desktop for years (better right click context menus, better network protocol support, better nearly everything) but windows people didn't so they don't even know why using windows was basically living in the dark ages until Windows 10 started to get some worthwhile features. Windows 11 was the first to actually get a nearly functional file manager for example.
I mean you are thinking QR read/write is not a useful clipboard feature?
So this
Worth pointing out that there are no viable citations on that page, all I remember is that it kept functioning like a win 3.1 and not integrated as the sentence above suggests.
Also gone all together in 7: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2660614/access-clipboard-windows-7
And even when the clipbook was there, I would not call it functional by any means.
Yes tabs in Windows 11 filemanager. Still no split screen, but at least you can keep file management in a single window.
Do you just immediately turn off every feature a desktop environment gives you? I have no problem if you simply use Sway or something that lets the DE get out of your way. But if you are going into a discussion about the features of two DE's and say I never liked having choice, I just turn it all off, whats the point? Seems like a stupid argument to be had.
Stuff linux had that windows didnt for YEARS: Virtual desktops (I am sure you hate those, I have used them since Amiga days), linux technically has two clipboards and ways of selecting paste, windows still cant do single clicking effectively, colors and other file visualization, alt-drag anything, muti taskbars, keyboard tilling managers.... and on and on
YOU may not like it, but the fact is windows was featureless compared to Linux.
Fanboy? Facts are fanboy now?
I notice people who say "bud" in online discussions are either trolls or assholes. Which one are you? You contribute nothing, hate everything, and use "bud" in a discussion.
Yeah it all fits. Also, new account right?
So Wikipedia work for you?
Yep.
Powertoys could give you a simulation in XP but it really wasnt user friendly or worked, or even came with the OS.
So quit your bullshit.
And who is the fanboy here?
Maybe you should just turn off the computer. It seems to annoy you.
Displeasure? I have to manage windows and azure environments and believe me that is displeasure. At least I get to do it all from a reliable Linux environment.
If you don't like clipboards than ok, you can turn it off. For those of us the like them, it's an option windows never had until recently.
Yes shit. No decent file manager. No clip board. No internet protocols built in. No state awarenes and on and on. Win 11 is starting to get there but they are so busy going worse at the same time it's pointless.
Windows still doesn't have an nvme driver for goodness sake.
I have described them over and over, but you hate them or something and are annoyed so I guess having options is not for you.
This is all started with a discussion about the Linux desktop being less than windows historically. Clearly that is not the case when one is feature rich and the other has been playing catch up for years.