I’ve been using all major OSes for a long time. I have the most experience with Windows, I’ve been using it since Windows 95 and stopped at Windows 8. I’ve been using macOS for about a decade and Linux (in total) for about 5 years. I have started with Mandrake, moved to Mandriva, spent over a year on Ubuntu and recently I’ve been using Fedora as my daily driver. And honestly, I’m running out of patience.
Few days ago I ran into the gpu driver issue. Long story short, Steam games started to crash on directx issue. Games that were working few weeks ago. I admit, I was mocking around with GPU drivers in order to make Podman containers to access the GPU. But I did the fresh diver install and it didn’t solved the issue (also my GPU was not found despite all commands showed it was there). I don’t have much spare time and I would like to play a game, I used to play before, without spending hours/days fixing issue that didn’t exist last time I played it.
But it’s not only about games. I have two laptops, both running Fedora 40 KDE spin. Some time ago on one laptop the power widget stopped working. It shows “no power profiles found on a device”. But when I delete the widget and add it again, it works fine.
Other issue is with the general look and feel. There are many apps that don’t follow the OS look - lack of window borders/shadow, random icons that don’t match the system, flatpacks having issues accessing system configuration (e.g. vscodium not recognising zsh as a default shell).
Few more problems I had:
- on GNOME, some extensions where crashing without any reason
- some apps don’t respect desktop scaling
- bluetooth randomly dropping connections
- syncing files between devices is always a struggle
- you never know what’s going to break when installing updates
If you want a Linux like experience use macOS, and if you want to play games, stick to Windows.
Fucks around with GPU drivers for some reason
Experiences GPU driver issues
“How can Linux do this to me??”
My favorite implication of these kinds of posts is that windows somehow doesn’t ever have driver issues.
As I wrote, I did the clean install. Even if I didn’t do a thing with it, it would still break. As it did couple days ago.
“clean driver install”, which heavily suggests you installed nvidia drivers, probably from the website. That issue is entirely on you.
Fyi messing around with drivers can even cause permanent hardware damage.
You were fucking with your GPU drivers, lost access to your GPU, and you have concluded from that that “regular users” (who don’t know what a driver is or does) should not use Linux?
EDIT: Stick a “normal” user on a stable distro with a clean UI like Mint or Fedora, keep in mind they probably don’t know what a terminal is and will probably never use it, and they will be fine for almost all cases.
He listed just a few more things then that
As I said, I did a clean install and still all Steam games were failing on directx issue. Also, a “regular” user when switching to Linux will have to know what a GPU driver is in order to use it, event if it’s just for playing games. And the cherry on top - once I fixed the directx issue and I was able to play a game I wanted, the drivers update broke it. And despite spending days on fixing the issue, I got back to a square one.
If they use windows they also know what a GPU driver is, if they use AMD that’s better on linux, they don’t need to know what a GPU driver is. Unless of course the “normal” user need a rocm driver.
if they use AMD that’s better on linux, they don’t need to know what a GPU driver is.
Same goes for Intel, unless they need to use OneAPI.
You are not a regular user. My parents are regular users and they have been using Linux for years. They don’t know though. That’s a regular user.
I think Windows has a very poor track record for ui consistency as well. It feels like every Windows app wants to roll its own UI; Firefox, Discord, Steam etc. I know Discord and Steam also have those issues on Linux as well, but it feels like every Windows app wants to roll out it’s own window decorarions and theme.
Honestly, I’m pleased at how consistent most gtk based apps look.
Windows can’t even get their own UI right.
Look at the win10 control panel. Nearly a decade later and we still have to use the classic control panel to change settings.
If you want to edit macros in Excel, you’ll see a Vista window. Vista! In 2024!
Linux sucks, Windows is worse, MacOS is useless. We must conclude that those systems are not a good choice for regular users. I recommend a simple pocket calculator instead. No graphics drivers to worry about, no firmware updates, if it goes wrong you just press the reset button and it’s ready to go again in a tenth of a second, no need to do backups, you can get a pretty good one for $20, light weight, really good battery life. Much better in almost every way.
‘28008 3434’, can share memes on those things too, you just need to hold it upside down
sounds reasonable
Is Linux perfect? No
Is windows better than linux? No
Is mac better than windows? No
Are your specific issues a reason normal users shouldnt use Linux? No
I’m going to disagree with you on the “is Mac better than Windows” front - I think there’s good arguments either way though. At least with a Mac, the end user is still, mostly, who they are designing for. On Windows the end user is becoming the product.
Both products have flaws I dont like, so im ok with either stance tbh.
Fr, Mac does a much better job at serving their target users than Windows will (likely) ever do
Are your specific issues a reason normal users shouldnt use Linux? No
I cannot agree. Most of the users would be upset about bluetooth dropping connection or constant issues after running updates.
Thats literally happened to me on mac and windows both
But, are most of the users getting this Bluetooth problem? Has it occurred to you that that maybe this could be a you problem rather than a general user problem?
I’m getting these issues on Windows as well, to be fair.
While some of this can be a problem, I feel like using podman automatically disqualifies you as a regular user.
I think the more accurate title is “Linux is harder for medium power users who are already used to an operating system.”
I honestly feel I am unqualified to say how easy Linux distros are, as I often think to do things that a normal user wouldn’t, thus breaking my system in a way that doesn’t mirror what a regular user would experience.
Yes, that, in fact, is an unpopular opinion here.
Computers are not a good choice for “regular users”. Get them a locked-down iPhone and be done with it.
What you are describing is not a situation unique to Linux - or even Windows. “Software is hard and it sometimes breaks”. My Windows 11 laptop that I use for work and to which I have made exactly zero modifications sometimes doesn’t recognize when I’ve connected external speakers. And I can’t disable hyper-v despite following all of the instructions. This is a corporate provisioned and managed system and simple stuff just doesn’t work.
X% of all things have bugs. Your mistake is in thinking that the percentage that you’re seeing are somehow special or related to the particular OS you’re running at the time. The classic “the grass is greener” fallacy. This is pretty evidenced also by the fact that you’re a classic “distro hopper” whose always looking for the perfect system rather than taking the time to understand the problems and deal with them as they come.
I’d be careful of pushing the narrative about computers not being a good choice for regular users. I’m going to channel a bit of Stallman and say that that’s how we end up without The Right To Read
That’s fair - I’m not saying users shouldn’t be able or allowed to use computers, but just that it’s been proven over and over again that most people simply don’t get computers. They should always have the option to learn what they can though.
tldr: Linux can have driver issues and programs or updates might not work as expected. So anything you can expect from any major OS.
Did you mean computers are a bad choice for regular users?
Something something touch grass. Bugs exist in all OSs. If my data sold & being advertized + tracked by a US-based company’s closed-source OS is the alternative, then I am just turning off the computer & starting a farm.
GPU doesn’t work after being reconfigured
On GNOME extensions crash
“I made modifications to my system and broke it”
Syncing files between devices is always a struggle
Syncthing?
Never know what will break when updating
Read your updates before you do them?
Bluetooth and scaling are not issues I’ve ever run in to, but I can’t say they’re not common.
Basically, this whole post reads as “I messed with things that I didn’t properly understand and I’m blaming my computer for doing what I told it instead of what I wanted”
Mate. Stick with Windows or MacOS. I don’t think Linux is for you.
I am looking through these issues and I cannot say that I can relate on almost any of these. Sorry to hear you have been having so many issues!
I do plenty of gaming and cannot think of a time where I have had GPU driver issues (despite the fact that I have Nvidia graphics on 3 out of 4 of my systems, which is supposedly more problematic).
My bluetooth works fine, and it has been literally years since an update broke something, bluetooth or otherwise (which I cannot say the same for Windows on my work computer).
I use KDE connect, SFTP, and SMB servers and I have never had any issues transferring files between Windows, Android, and Linux. What do you mean about that? (seeing other replies, it sounds like you are using iOS. That sounds like that may be an Apple problem and not a Linux problem, because Apple tend to be terrible about playing nice with other ecosystems)
The scaling is the one point I can sort of relate on. I think there is still some work to be done regarding DPI and scaling on Linux, but it’s not enough of an issue to make me want to switch operating systems.
As for GNOME issues and window decorations, that sounds like a GNOME problem. GNOME does things very differently to all of the other DEs and forces programs to manually define their own window decorations rather than allowing standard default icons like other DEs, so my understanding is that GNOME in particular tends to be a source of constant headaches for Linux developers.
And I’m not some sysadmin or CS major. If I have a problem, I do a web search. If I can’t find it there, I make a forum thread. I don’t post a rant saying that Linux is a bad OS, lol.
Also, on your SMB server you need to add a specific configuration to play nice with OS X…
https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Configure_Samba_to_Work_Better_with_Mac_OS_X
So yeah that’s on OP not reading through the documentation.
Your comment is a perfect Linux answer - it works on my computer :) And I don’t mean it as an insult. The problem here is that Linux, despite of all its advantages, is not for a global consumer.
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Yes, but my larger point is that you are doing the same thing, but in the negative. You are taking your specific problems and then putting forward the conclusion that they are the reasons why “regular” Linux users should not use Linux, as though these were universal problems. I am saying that I do not have those issues and that they are far from universal.
Yes, the modular nature of Linux is both a blessing and a curse. There is legitimate debate to be had on that. But that is not how your post frames the issue.
As stated above, not all of these things are even Linux problems. I would say that if iOS refuses to play nice with Linux but every other ecosystem works fine, the blame lies with Apple, not with Linux. It is not Linux’s job to fix the interoperability problems of other ecosystems. The GNOME problems are related to a specific subset of Linux users, and even before today I would have said that I would not recommend GNOME to new users because of how nonstandard it can be.
So we know these things work on one person’s computer (theirs) but not on another’s (yours). Such anecdotal experiences are not a reasonable basis on which to judge any OS, positively or negatively.
For your bullet points:
- Yeah, GNOME can be flakey with extensions. Almost no regular users will install extensions though. Windows also has tons of bugs and issues that users just ignore because it’s the “default”
- Regular users won’t care about desktop scaling. I’ve seen people using the blurriest, weirdest aspect ratios on Windows because they liked it that way
- Bluetooth sucks on all hardware and with all software, to various degrees.
- Syncing files is trivial with Syncthing
- MacOS keeps breaking my coworker’s setups with every update.
GPU issues can be hard, but that’s not really Linux’s fault. There’s a reason this image exists of Linus giving nvidia the middle finger:
That being said, it’s getting better. As of this year, nvidia has started putting some real effort into making things work with wayland.
EDIT: I’ve found nirvana with NixOS, speaking of GPU drivers. I just add a few lines to
/etc/nixos/configuration.nixand it goes off and ensures that the nvidia drivers are present. I also run lots of CUDA stuff on top of that and it all works about as seamlessly as possible.
