Additionally, what changes are necessary for you to be able to use Linux full time?
I got tired of everything taking so much effort. I was almost always able to eventually wrangle what I wanted out of the OS, but every change I wanted to make and thing I wanted to try needed so much searching and learning. I wanted stuff that just worked, even if it was “dumber.”
That, and some parts of the community I ran into were really prickly. One that was especially memorable: I was asking for help on a big-ish project with a lot of followers and helpers and didn’t expect the lead dev to answer my question, but when he did, he felt the need to make a snide as hell comment about how I have no business being there if I’m going to forget to start a service. On top of the exhaustion I was already feeling, I had a massive moment of “okay my guy, I guess I’ll just fucking leave then.”
Anyway, it just feels better being a poweruser on windows. I know enough to keep it clean, safe, and slim (like using powershell to disable the bits they don’t expose to a settings UI, for example) – to truly admin my machine – without having to work so hard for it day in and day out.
Unfortunately, those kinds of interactions are inevitable when the developer/user relationship is so close. And it goes both ways. I saw a thread just yesterday where a user reported an issue on github, a second user said they saw it too. Later the first user posted a workaround to the issue, and the second user came back with “took you long enough”, and that was the end of the exchange.
Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn’t mean we should reject interacting with everyone. Similarly, a community of user-maintained software is going to have some asshats, but that doesn’t mean we should hand our computing freedom over to one or two corporations. Just my two cents.
Yikes, that is why I hate tech forums. Too many times I’ve asked an informed/thought out question I’m unable to find via search and the first replier basically says “hey go FUCK yourself.”
I’ve found this same type of animosity and superiority all over tech forums in general.
You’re not wrong, but running Linux directly correlates to more time spent on “tech forums in general,” so it’s still a bigger problem with that OS than others imo.
It just doesn’t work. It’s a simple as that. Things are constantly breaking. When they do I look up support articles that are written in fucking Klingon and sent to the terminal to type in commands that always return some sort of generic error “command not found” or some shit because the solution is written for a different one of the 862700422 available distros.
I have no idea how to install all the different program types (flathub, db, appimage, etc.). Windows has exe. I click “install” and boom, it’s done.
Sometimes I try to remove software in the package manager and it acts like it is uninstalled but it’s still fucking there.
I can’t even select a file because there are no previews. Just a gazillion blue squares with names like “dlcosn_3947912947”.
And other reasons, but I digress. I don’t have time to learn a new career, I just want a computer that works.
I used Linux Mint for several years on a dual-boot laptop. I rarely found myself booting Windows. While there was a learning curve, Mint was fairly accessible out of the box and was generally a delight to use. Until it wasn’t. At some point, the drivers for my video card updated, and just flat broke everything. And I can’t really use a computer on which I can’t see the desktop. I waited. And waited. A fix for the driver may have eventually come, but after awhile, booting into Windows just became my default, until eventually I just wiped the Linux partition to recover the storage space.
It was fun while it lasted, and I may choose one day to give it another go for the fourth time. This wasn’t the first time I’ve had something like this happen. First time was with Fedora, and the second was Ubuntu. Each time, I had the same “it worked until it didn’t” experience, and each time it stopped working was usually some kind of broken driver making my hardware incompatible.
you don’t have to use all of the app containers things, pacman, apt or whatever your distro uses is often enough.
if you don’t have previews at all, your system is completely broken and fucked up
if you get a command not found, well you just need install the missing tool…
you don’t have to use all of the app containers things, pacman, apt or whatever your distro uses is often enough.
I don’t even know what these words mean.
if you don’t have previews at all, your system is completely broken and fucked up
What are “previews”?
if you get a command not found, well you just need install the missing tool…
…what tool!?
I’m constantly genuinely surprised at how Linux users are unable to grasp why people don’t want to use it.
Your points are all entirely fair. It also surprises me how quite a few people don’t get it.
And it’s not that many requisites to fix it either.
A) don’t break shit on updates. This is the worst thing that could happen.
B) There needs to be a clicky app store. Just one. No options. No pick your repos. No pick between flatpak and whatever else. Just a visual app store you click an app and it install. You click to remove it gets removed.
It’s seriously not that much you’d think.
Having that said. If you do choose to endure through the learning curve. It’s mostly worth it. But fuck. It’s such a dumb self imposed learning curve.
The biggest strength of linux, is also its greatest flaw and weakness.
Is that if people disagree with what a projects doing, they can split off, make their own version of the project, and now that has to compete with the other project, as well as the 5 others that are out there.
So things just keep diluting, and spreading out, when it should be going in the opposite direction for a good user experience.
I have no idea how to install all the different program types (flathub, db, appimage, etc.). Windows has exe. I click “install” and boom, it’s done.
That’s strange, I’ve always felt that installing stuff is a lot easier on Ubuntu than windows. It’s just
apt install <program>andapt remove <program>. Having to manually download and run an exe feels outdated in comparison.I can’t even select a file because there are no previews. Just a gazillion blue squares with names like “dlcosn_3947912947”.
Curious what distro you installed that had that issue. The only preview issue I’ve encountered was on win10 where I had to pay for windows to support H.265 to give me previews of H.265 files.
Things are constantly breaking. When they do I look up support articles that are written in fucking Klingon and sent to the terminal to type in commands that always return some sort of generic error “command not found” or some shit because the solution is written for a different one of the 862700422 available distros.
That’s a fair point though. If you aren’t willing (and most aren’t) to learn enough to be comfortable with the terminal, it can be very easy break something when you are forced to interact with the terminal.
I’ve always felt that installing stuff is a lot easier on Ubuntu than windows. It’s just apt install <program> and apt remove <program>.
😂 Except that you have to know exactly what <program> is, character for character, and usually includes some long string of numbers and letters where 1 character is wrong and you have to retype the whole damn thing. This is the opposite of easy.
Curious what distro you installed that had that issue.
Fedora/Gnome
If you aren’t willing (and most aren’t) to learn enough to be comfortable with the terminal, it can be very easy break something when you are forced to interact with the terminal.
Yes and the problem is you’re ALWAYS sent into the terminal for absolutely any kind of debugging.
Except that you have to know exactly what <program> is, character for character
Everything has [Tab] completion these days.
And double tab for a list of you really don’t want to search.
There will never be a world where average users prefer typing arcane command line shit over clicking on a button in a GUI.
Shit never works and I basically have to become a programmer and expert in CLI to get shit to work… until it breaks again. So after having to Google everything on how to do supposedly simple shit, I always end up going back to Windows and GUI’s because I don’t have time to become a developer.
I have to have a computer science degree to install a peice of software… I just wanna double click the installer icon. I don’t want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. And sometimes it’s different depending on distro.
There have been “app store” frontends for most distributions since at least 2012, and packagekit has the same CLI on every major distribution.
Everyone in this thread saying shit like that hasn’t tried Linux since 2004
"I don’t want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. "
I’m no expert, but isn’t it literally just apt get (name of software) to download and install through terminal?
I wouldn’t force the issue. Some people belong on Windows and I’d rather they don’t use Linux simply because I don’t want them complaining to developers that it doesn’t act like Windows. Linus Tech Tips already caused enough damage by doing exactly that.
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I have to have a computer science degree to install a peice of software
No you don’t, you can search on wikipedia what a computer science degree actually is.
Got a long one. I’ve gone back and forth a few times (I’ve landed on a dual-boot Windows 10 and Arch setup, maining Arch) (btw) and my biggest takeaway is this:
Mainstream Linux distros, like Mint, do have admittedly very polished basic experiences. The problem is, though, is that it breaks down as soon as you introduce it to unique use-cases or hardware features.
Linux, specifically stable distros like Mint, are already ready for mainstream use for people who use it for basic stuff like email, web browsing, desktop social media like Facebook, and so on. It’s also very usable for gaming, as we saw with Steam Deck, but still has issues primarily with adoption.
But if you have for example, a 2-in-1 laptop or a VR setup, things break down very quick. I had to configure my 2-in-1 manually and not everything works still, and VR is a joke if you don’t have a Vive or Index, and even that’s iffy. SteamVR is still extremely buggy and missing features.
Linux is, by design, configurable and open. This is both its greatest strength and weakness, because it allows users to set up their systems how they want, but only if they know how to. A truly “user-friendly” distro is simply not possible if you retain the configurability, which Valve knows, and is why SteamOS is locked down the way it is. This model is growing in popularity but it’s not quite here yet.
At the end of the day, I still use it despite these shortcomings because I feel it’s important. I should be able to look at the code and know what my machine is doing, and trust that it respects my rights and freedoms. This is why Linux, and maybe BSD, have to win. But for now, I still have a drive with Windows 10 because it’s just simply not a full experience yet, and that’s okay. For now
Basically visual arts software and some writing software. Additionally I have a free version of Ableton Live Lite 11 (so one music-making application as well) that came with my keyboard.
I mostly do photography, writing, and other visual arts type work on my two computers. I use quite a few photography and painting applications (Photoshop, ArtRage, Rebelle, Lightroom, Inspirit, and a few others; I’m also looking at BlackInk), as well as Scrivener and MS Office when I’m writing. I don’t know if any of those run well or at all in Linux or in Wine, etc. Also I stopped flirting with learning programming and there wasn’t much point maintaining a Linux machine after that. I think Linux is better than Windows all around, and I hate Windows, but it’s just because I use certain apps and from what I’ve heard and seen the Linux apps just aren’t as good.
TLDR, creative software that won’t run on Linux (to my knowledge, anyway).
Software. What’s a computer without software other than an over glorified calculator.
That was my first experience with Linux back in the early 2010’s and pretty much up to recently. However with changes to my workflow and Steam improving and sharing the improvements with Wine. My software library went from web browsing and office software t
99% of games, and all of my business software.
The UX experience needs some work under the hood. There is still a nasty tendency to over rely on the terminal to fix basic problems. (IBT=off for VM to work).
But its close enough that I can almost recommend it to my grandparents… Almost.
Linux is perfect for grandparents or non tech savvy family if you set it up for them. Once it’s up and running, there isn’t much of anything they can do to break it.
That is just a straight up lie.
It kept working.
Linux, every time, without fail, commits suicide after a few weeks/months. It’s never something big, always small stuff. A conf file which got fucked by a package. Init.d calls something stupid. Mbr bullshit.
And the same applies to get stuff to work. It’s not hard, but researching the issue and fixing it takes time. Those issues do not exist in windows.
It gets annoying. Windows, for all it’s shit has gotten more and more self repairing over the years.
I want to work. I want to play. Now, preferably.
Linux, every time, without fail, commits suicide after a few weeks
You must be doing something really wrong with it because on popular distros this is not really supposed to happen. If you encounter such issues report them to the devs. You probably want to try a more stable distro
They’re not doing anything wrong. This is my experience, as well as many many others. Why else would so many people and businesses overlook a completely free operating system? I’ve used all the “stable” distros.
If I reported issues to the devs, I wouldn’t be doing anything else, and it wouldn’t solve the problem I have TODAY. This is not a solution.
“Why else would so many businesses overlook a completely free operating system”
Well, they don’t. Plenty of businesses use Linux systems. It’s not (only) because it’s free, though. The issue of licensing often isn’t a factor that comes into play over having a system that just works. It’s easy to customize, flexible and comparatively secure. Your experiences with Linux are valid, but many businesses and individuals do use it daily and for good reason.
Well, they don’t. Plenty of businesses use Linux systems.
Well they do. Plenty of businesses (ie: virtually all of them) use Windows. Those are the ones I was referring to.
This is just nonsense. Linux servers are all over the place. Google has its own internal distribution of Ubuntu! I feel like you’re not arguing in good faith, here.
Edit: For reading at your leisure: A list of organizations that have adopted Linux for regular use
This is just nonsense.
No. It’s not.
Linux servers are all over the place.
Linux servers are run by IT admin. AKA people who know how to use Linux.
I feel like you’re not arguing in good faith, here.
I feel like you’re making up bullshit arguments based on angry words you read on the Internet.
Yeah, businesses that use Linux generally hire people who know how to use Linux. I don’t think you actually know what you’re arguing about anymore, but you can do it by yourself. Hope things get better for you in the future.
This thread is about Linux on the desktop, servers are not really relevant to this discussion.
That’s fair, but it’s hard to not bring up servers when someone is making broad statements like “businesses don’t use Linux”, though. In the scope of that particular discussion I feel servers are pertinent enough.
You are doing something wrong. Linux doesn’t blow up by itself… my grandparents and wife both run it for the past 5 years and haven’t had a single issue with it. So how is it that I know people that are completely tech illiterate and have no problems running it, but so many self-proclaimed “power users” here have issues with it?
Linux isn’t going to wall you in and prevent you from breaking it. That’s what I love about it, it gives you power and control over your machine, but if you don’t have the knowledge to wield that power, then you shouldn’t be fucking around with changing things. Stick with the package manager, and don’t fuck with system configs… unless you actually understand how it effects the system.
Why else would so many people and businesses overlook a completely free operating system
There are many, many reasons… not a single one is stability.
If you think that’s the case. Check some big forums for each big distro right after a point update to read the tales of woe and breakage.
My personal experience with this has been:
Pop_OS broke after an update. Unrepairable as far as I could tell. And I tried hard. Happened to multiple.people there was a reddit thread about it.
Fedora broke on an update. Not sure if repairable. I didn’t try. I had the most boring vanilla installation possible.
Arch has been unbootable twice over the years. And had to do many manual interventions. Both times it was fixable.
People are not lying to you when they say it breaks randomly. Just because it wasn’t your personal experience doesn’t mean it isn’t a common experience. You just have been lucky so far.
People are not lying to you when they say it breaks randomly. Just because it wasn’t your personal experience doesn’t mean it isn’t a common experience. You just have been lucky so far.
Your’e right people are not lying, they just don’t realize what they have done to break it. Linux is great because it gives the users full power… and that includes the power to break it. Windows babysits the user, and it doesn’t allow them to make changes that break it.
If you think that’s the case. Check some big forums for each big distro right after a point update to read the tales of woe and breakage.
So? A lot of dumb people use Linux too… just because dumb people break things doesn’t mean that Linux isn’t stable. There is a reason 90% of web and cloud infrastructure runs on Linux… because it’s a more secure and stable OS.
You just have been lucky so far.
Luck has nothing to do with it.
Your’e right people are not lying, they just don’t realize what they have done to break it.
I’m running a fresh Debian stable build for the past 2-3 days, with NO apt package installed(other than flatpak), no other modifications, vanilla as vanilla gets, only flatpaks installed.
So far: On first install, apt upgrade was broken… lol… yeah.
Other than that, it freezes on suspend, and I’m getting weird screen flickering that it’s really hard to troubleshoot so far, specially because when I turn on OBS it mysteriously just doesnt happen. Also steam doesnt open up sometimes, sometimes it does, depends on if you’re feeling lucky or not, it also doesnt respect the DE settings, so when it does open the scale is wrong, and everything is tiny.
And this is with a distro known to be stable.
Why don’t you explain to me why I have not had any problems running 3 servers for the last 5 years. And why I’ve not had any problems running it on 6 other machines of varying desktops and laptops? Why don’t you explain to me why 90% of web and cloud infrastructure chooses Linux because it is so reliable and stable? I do everything in Linux… everything, including recording in OBS and video editing in Lightworks, no problems.
So tell me, why is it only certain users that seem to have a problem with Linux? Why do you think that is? Because it seems to me the really basic users get on fine with it, and the really advanced users get on fine with it. The only people that have problems are Windows power users that have no fucking clue what they are doing, but try things anyways and break things.
Broken bootloader.
I really, really want to love Linux.
Mate introduced me to Red Hat in the very late 90s and I keep trying various distros every year or two - last time was about 2020 so my views here might be a bit out of date now…
When Ubuntu launched I truely believed this would be the start of genuine transformation. While I do see the overall progression in modern distros - installing them is easier than ever - but at its core, it just doesn’t seem to truely improve when it comes to usability and user friendliness. As others have said, small changes or issues might require hours of research or a game of copy/paste/pray with commands found on a long lost forum page.
MS make plenty of mistakes and dumb changes but windows has had significant improvements over the years both to the interface but also functions:
W2k/XP dragged us kicking and screaming out of DOS and into the modern era.
Vista made much needed changes to security/driver issues - but it was still a slow pig - particularly updating.
Win7 fixed what Vista should have been - faster, cleaner and simpler, BSoD mostly a thing of the past now driver manufacturers have caught up from Vista fixed updates a bit.
Win8.1 improved boot speeds, had a lot of good under the hood changes that improved deployment and self-repair, good tools for power users (we just don’t talk about that start menu)
Win10/11 greatly improved the updating process - still far from perfect but significantly faster and more reliable. No longer the upgrade lottery it was in XP - 7 era.
Not wanting to start a fight here, just my perspective - unfortunately, every time I install Linux, the visuals look good but it always feels like a fancy modern skin over top of something akin to Win98. Sure, it’s fast, secure as a MF and not riddled with modern bloat but genuine advancement of the platform feels absent.
Maybe it’s because I don’t live elbow deep in Linux like I have in windows desktop for the past 20+ years. I do know that it’s versatility and power is incredible - from phones and Pi’s to world class infrastructure, so maybe that’s it. It’s designed for maximum power and flexibility that it’s not really suited as a general purpose desktop for the masses like windows. It might always remain as a oddity at the desktop level, insanely powerful in the right hands and just a little too complex and less refined to appeal to those not willing to go deep into really learning it.
Quite simple: When using Linux, I tend to play around, try different stuff, switch distros every couple of month… When using Windows or MACOS, I just use it as is and don’t try to break stuff. And while I could use Linux quite easily without breaking it, my inner child prevents me from using it this way…
Tell me your parents were upset at you when you were eight, for dismantling appliances, without telling me your parents were upset at you when you were eight, for dismantling appliances
The anticheat for a game I liked to play with my wife didn’t work on Linux and playing in a VM barely worked due to the game’s outdated spaghetti code. It was more important to me at the time because the game was how I met her and at the time we weren’t dating yet, she was just a friend I was crushing on big time, enough to reinstall windows for her.
We don’t even really play it anymore, so maybe I’ll switch back to Linux. I still got mint installed on dual boot, just never thought about starting it up until now. I always did like how a couple of terminal commands could fix like, 99% of issues whereas windows says “Noooo… You have to reinstall me for the 20,000th time! It’s the only way!”
The reason you switched back to windows is dating girls?
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I tried installing Zorin amd Pop_OS on my laptop, but the mousepad gestures, bluetooth, speakers, and a bunch of other small things didn’t work.
I just don’t have the time to tinker with it. I have an hour or two of free time a day and it’s hard to convince myself to spend it trying to get linux to work whenever I have windows that just works.
Plus, i found that people just weren’t helpful. Unlike some people, i didn’t come out of the womb knowing how linux works. I did research and fixed what i could, but some things i could’t fix. People were rude, condesending, and just not helpful whenever i would ask a question
Just not worth it for me at this moment
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I definitely felt that. It’s demotivating to feel like you’re being looked down upon for trying to learn an OS that they themselves promote so much
My employer 😢
See, I sometimes complain about having to use a Mac (the hardware is fine, the OS, meh), but you have reminded me that it could be worse. Thanks for your suffering.
