It was a specific choice. My PC is a little long in the tooth, sucks power, and is overly loud for where it was situated.
The pi is doing fine for my relatively non-demanding usage. If I do set up the old PC again, I’ll probably wind up installing Mint or something, rather than buy upgrades and crap to support Windows 11.
Is there anything else I should keep in mind for fstab if I want to, say, not keep track of my Downloads folder when snapshotting?
Just create a separate subvolume for it. Snapshots do not work recursively, so it will be left alone.
Mount options also only take effect on the first mount of the device. Since it looks like you only have 1 btrfs device - only / needs the options, really.
Mount options also only take effect on the first mount of the device. Since it looks like you only have 1 btrfs device - only / needs the options, really.
I think if you read through this you have pretty much everything you asked about. As for understanding what these sorts of commands do in the future I think ChatGPT is actually really useful for stuff like this with good documentation. Just ask what the commands do and it is usually quite helpful. Someone already said it but you have to want to learn this. If you want something easy to use and you don’t have to learn buy a Mac, you want great software compatibility buy a windows pc. If you want something that is more private and a community effort use Linux but unless you are using steam os on a steam deck it is not even close to being as user friendly as the others. I hope this changes but the current goals and mindsets of people in this community will prevent Linux from becoming easy to use and in the case of steam os you just need lots of money to make it an easy experience. There are a million other reasons that Linux’s current state is this way but this is the gist.
If you want something easy to use and you don’t have to learn buy a Mac, you want great software compatibility buy a windows pc.
That is very bad advice, as that may well not be a solution. There are people who want to use their computers without the ads, data mining and forced program defaults windows is doing.
That’s true that if people switch OS, they’ll need to learn a lot of new things. But don’t forget that not only sysadmins and adventurous people use Linux.
That being said, there are distros that give you a decent GUI frontend to the package manager, for example openSUSE
Well what you said is true but this depends on the person you are recommending it. I didn’t know the op and generally can’t determine how interested they are in computers. I have friends who are just so use to their current understanding of using a computer with windows they wouldn’t be willing to learn anything else at all. They didn’t find yast easy to use because yes you have a gui for installing things but they don’t know all the things they need to install and it isn’t the most simplistic gui. Again you aren’t wrong it’s just that I’m hesitant to recommend people to use it unless they want the benefits of using Linux and are willing to learn.
I made this thread because I try to learn/understand
I have a Macbook, it’s what I use the most. I used to have Win7 on my gaming rig but Steam dropped their support for it so my options was either to go with a newer Windows or try Linux. As all of the games I play seemed to work on Linux with just minor tweaks I thought I’d give it a try. So far I’m really happy with how to OS works once it’s set up but it’s the setting up part that’s really confusing to me.
The instructions on that page make it so that every time you run a system update, mullvad automatically updates as well. If you’re happy doing the updating yourself, you can download the deb file from here: github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app/releases
I just don’t get why on windows and mac I can download the app from their site, install it and it just works but on Linux I have to do everything thru terminal. It’s not that I can’t get it done but it just seems insane to me that it has to be this difficult.
You don’t have to do everything through terminal. You can use synaptic for example. What you have to do is to learn new concepts. If you want to do everything like in windows, use windows.
When you got your first smart phone, be it android or iOS, you didn’t know where anything was, so there was a learning curve.
But, in the same way as phones, there are built in “stores”. Those stores are called repositories, and they’re accessible in more than one way. You don’t actually have to use the terminal, it’s just usually faster since you really don’t type much more than you would entering a search in whatever GUI interface comes with your distro. Indeed, you can actually set up the commands in a notepad, change the package name each time, and copy/paste the commands, and you’re only a couple of seconds slower than opening the package manager, searching, scrolling to find what you want, clicking to install… See what I’m getting at?
Windows isn’t really faster than that. You have to go to a site, download, find the exe or msi in your download folder, then click in the various pop-up windows. And you can find .deb files that do the same thing as an exe or msi, just not for every program, because they’re an unnecessary pain in the ass. It’s extra steps.
I promise you, comparing the way Linux works now, and the learning curve it takes to the learning curve on windows back when it was a new experience (and I’m talking windows 95, the previous msdos shells were worse than that), Linux is way easier. And don’t even get me started on how shitty a user experience DOS was. Jfc, I’m dyslexic, and it was a nightmare. Windows 95 wasn’t a big jump better in dyslexia land, but it was at least better than DOS.
If you were used to something like mac only, and had never used windows, the transition would be similarly annoying. And, for me at least, dealing with installs on windows is more of a pain in the ass now that I’m used to package managers.
I did a clean install of Windows 7 on my media PC (and yes, you valiant security friends, it’s air gapped) maybe two years ago. From start to finish, including programs, took me about five hours.
My laptop that I run Linux mint on? An hour, start to finish. The only differences in the programs installed are in specifics, not in types. I plugged in my live drive, hit install, and was ready to start installing programs in maybe twenty minutes. My media pc is an old gaming PC, btw. Tons of ram, ssd, etc. The laptop is an old thinkpad. So it wasn’t like the laptop was better hardware lol.
Which seems tangential, but it’s pointing to the underlying ease of use once you’re used to the system. I’ve being doing windows installs since the nineties (and a little before, but only in classes), so it isn’t like I’m not experienced. I’ve only been doing Linux installs since about 2015.
Hell, my very first Linux install was Ubuntu on my dad’s old computer just to make sure I didn’t screw a box up that was in use. Even that, going from Ubuntu being ready to go, and having the programs set up to use was only maybe two hours, and that was mostly looking up the very process that’s been described by others in this thread and copy/pasting things in for each program.
So don’t get discouraged. If you end up really not liking it once you get past the learning curve, that’s okay, windows will still be there. You can go back to it. But, if you’re like me at all, once that learning curve is past, you won’t enjoy the extra hassles windows puts in the way.
I think a better way for the other user to have stated this, is learning Linux, while difficult at times, should be a fun and rewarding experience. I’m about a year in, and this is all easy stuff to me. One year ago? I would have been as frustrated as you are. But I persevered, I learned, and I got a sense of accomplishment out of becoming competent. I don’t really need to ask too many questions now, because the more I figure things out, the easier it gets to figure things out.
If you’re not into that, Linux might not be for you. But I hope it is, I hope you persevere and keep learning and find the same satisfaction from it that I have.
Welcome to the community. As you can see, there are some that are quite helpful and others that are … less so.
I agree with you that there should be a better way to do that. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure the Chrome deb file handled all of that for you. I’ve always been confused why every company that sets up their own PPA didn’t do that.
You should try Linux because you want to and find it interesting to learn. If you are doing it because other people told you to, you are going to have a bad time.
Linux isn't Windows with different branding. Things work differently, and if you take the time to understand why you'll usually see the logic eventually, even if you may not to agree with it. I think folks are bristling a bit at your implication that things are hard on purpose somehow. Many experienced users find the terminal easier to use and more efficient; it shouldn't shock anyone (including you) that it's going to feel awkward when you don't understand it yet.
Howtos tend to use the terminal because it's likely to work the same for everyone regardless of what other choices they've made with desktop environment, etc.
You can do nearly everything with a GUI if you choose.
One reason is that different distributions of linux do things slightly different. Would it be better if there was only one linux os? For some devs of third party software, probably, but diversity and freedom to fork software has been good to linux, and no one could decide what everyone else should use anyway.
So, each distribution takes the available software and package it to fit their distro specifics, and those packages go into their repositories. The benefit of using official repositories is that someone has gone through the trouble of making sure it will work on your system safely. There’s accountability and hopefully a bug tracker etc. When you download from a random website you have to trust them instead. Then… you have companies working outside of this model, usually they provide a flatpak or their own third-party repositories. Then you get all these extra steps, but it’s not how most distros prefer to handle software.
I can totally understand why the terminal seems confusing and scary right now, but it’s actually awesome for this kind of stuff because you can just copy and paste commands to do pretty much anything to your computer. Using a GUI often means having a bunch of screenshots that you have to follow manually to do something that a single command can do. Once you’re used to the terminal for these kinds of things GUIs can seem barbaric. Of course it seems scary before you know much about it because it seems like the fucking matrix, and you should only run commands from sources you trust (because they can do anything)… But it’s worth giving a chance, I think.
For this particular instance… often you can just download an application on Linux from a website and run it, but this is almost never the preferred way of doing things. Usually you install applications from your package manager, which is kind of like an App Store (but free), and the advantage of this is that 1) you don’t have to hunt down sketchy executables on the internet, you have a vetted source of safe packages from your distribution, and 2) you can easily update all of your packages. Having a one stop shop for all of your applications (or at least most) is really great, but it can be a little annoying when something you want isn’t in the official repos (like this), though it’s usually a fairly rare occurrence.
What annoys me the most with installing apps this way is that I have already installed several and while having been succesful I still have no clue what any of this does. What is sudo? What is apt-get? What is repositorie? What is package? I just don’t know what any of this does and blindly following instructions isn’t teaching me anything. When I try to looks for explanations or tutorial videos I’m just met with more jargon that I don’t undestand. GUI is really intuitive for me as it helps me to visualize what’s actually happening but playing around with terminal is really abstract and confusing. If I’m met with an error I’m completely stuck then. Only troubleshooting I can do is to make sure I typed the command correctly.
If you stick with it you’ll eventually start to understand what all the jargon means.
sudo is kind of like “run as admin” in windows. It runs whatever command as root(admin) instead of as your user. To use it you just add sudo in front of the command. Ex. “apt-get update” becomes “sudo apt-get update”
apt-get is the command that controls your Ubuntu Repository. “apt-get update” basically checks for updates for everything on your computer. Then “apt-get upgrade” downloads and installs all those updates. And “apt-get install <app/package name>” is how you install apps that are in your distros Repository.
A Repository is basically an app store for your distribution. Each Linux distribution usually has their own. And they have different software(apps) available in them. If a app you want is not in your repo there are different options to install it. That was probably the hardest part for me to understand when I started. But now days the easiest option is to use snap or flatpak to install something that’s not in your distros Repository.
As far as I understand, a package is just another way of saying app or software program. There might be a technical difference. But when you download a package you’re basically just downloading the program/software/app.
There are also package dependencies which is the other software that is required to run the software you’re trying to install. When you run “sudo apt-get install <package name>”. You will see a list of packages that will be installed. This includes all the dependency packages. Which are the packages that are needed to run the one that you’re trying to install.
Some linux distribution try to give you a GUI for everything. But its definitely worth learning how to do stuff in the terminal. Once you learn it you’ll realize why it is so much better than a GUI.
A “package” goes beyond library or app, basically by being part of a package management system:
I has a version number in a standardized format, which package managers can use to reason about dependencies
It declares its own dependencies, with version constraints. It will have entries like “In order to run I need a copy of jsonReader version at least 0.12.1”
I think that might be it.
Just in the same way both rice and bread come in a package at the grocery store, and both of their packaging has nutrition info, UPC barcode, and net weight printed on it. The packaging itself allows these goods to be distributed through a particular system.
The barcode is part of the packaging standard, and then the “package management” processes of retail use that barcode for their own inventory management, checkout, etc.
I realized there’s quite a bit more metadata that a package provides to its package management system. Here’s an example package definition, in the programming language Ruby: github.com/thoughtbot/…/factory_bot.gemspec
Oh good, you wrote basically the exact response I was going to give!
The only other thing I would mention is… if you don’t know what a command is, you can and should look it up! You can use the internet, but you can also try “man sudo” or “info sudo” and do a bit of reading. It might not make sense at first, but you’ll start building up a vocabulary really quickly.
And if you’re a real human, I have a recommendation: buy a dictionary. Once you can read simple words, move to coffee maker manuals. From there to children’s books. And so, maybe one day, you will be able to figure out how to read a basic “getting started with ubuntu” article or something. You just switched to a complete different operating system and act so entitled as in “where is the start menu, this OS is so confusing”.
The Linux community isn’t toxic, it’s the average non-linux user being as dumb as rock. And on top of that is also lazy.
You can, it’s up to the software vendor to make it simple.
Most of the software are FOSS and can be installed directly from your package manager. That works like the iOS app store/Android Play Store except it existed 10 years before mobile stores.
Google Chrome is an example of proprietary software (so not in distributions repos) that is as easy to install on Linux than Windows. Because Google managed to get a deb that will also update your repos.
Bottom line, most of the time it’s way easier to install software on Linux than Windows (as easy as on iOS) but occasionally it’s slightly more complex.
I don’t understand. If I go to their site at mullvad.net the obvious choice to download their software is to click at ‘Downloads’ at the top of the page. It already autodetected I am running Linux and has me on the Linux tab.
Sure there are two download options but the first one says it works on Ubuntu and the second says it works on Fedora. You get a file you can just double click and install. Windows installation works the same way. You download a file and double click it.
You don’t have to use the terminal you don’t really have to know more about sudo than you need about Windows UAC, you don’t have to know what a package or .deb is anymore than what a win32 executable or an Windows’ .msi file is.
People giving you more complicated answers either did not check the website (because they presumed you did) or if they did they think you want more features such as auto-updating which in Windows also requires a more complex install than downloading a file and opening it.
Because it’s an asinine practice from which windows is moving away through winget, and which made the open source community to write a package manager for mac from scratch – homebrew.
And if you think about it for a second, you will realize that it doesn’t exist on Android and iOS at all. E.g. 99% of users only install from a centralized repository called “appstore” and nobody is ever downloading an executable installer.
Basically, you’re uninformed, and blatantly defending your uneducated way of installing software.
Homebrew is extremely insecure. It doesn’t verify package signatures, so its just as bad as the “just donloaf some sketchy untrusted binary off a website” approach
I don’t know about Mac, but on Windows the Mullvad app doesn’t auto update. If you want to do it Windows style you can look for deb files (which are like installers) or AppImages (which are like standalone executables).
Most pieces of software give terminal instructions for Linux because different people might use different package manager frontends, but literally every Linux user has a terminal. It might seem daunting at first, but giving users commands to run in their terminal is a lot more simple than trying to walk them through repo management through the GUI, or just telling them to figure it out themselves.
On Windows and Mac, you are doing a number of things implicitly that you don’t realize.
When you download from their site, you are expected to verify the integrity and validity of the install file yourself. You also have to take ownership of installing any dependencies yourself.
With the instructions mulvad is providing you, you are connecting to a repo and apt does all that for you.
Some installs don’t require dependencies, but some do. Long term, this style of install tends to be a lot simpler, you just have to learn it.
But more importantly and as others have stated. Linux is different. If you aren’t interested in learning a new workflow, you should stick with something familiar. That’s a choice you should make not because others said it but because you want it.
Not one more repository to add, sign, reload at each update. And can get compromised.
Not one more piece of software to run that may, or may not, run properly (looking at you ProtonVPN)
Just download the wireguard or openvpn configs to some desired exit points, load them into NetworkManager as described, and BINGO you have an integrated way of switching desired location, a visual icon in the taskbar confirming your status, and no extra hassle.
Did you know that qbittorrent can be told to only work if the VPN is on? There are places where it matters.
And to answer your question, no, that is not normal. If a piece of software isn’t available for your distribution, then consider finding another. Like, here, using NetworkManager to do the job!
PopOS and Ubuntu - really just found that I don’t like gnome. Nothing against it, I know some people love it but it is not for me. This would likely apply to any gnome distro, but those were the two I tried and immediately moved on.
Honorable mention: Manjaro because “it just breaks™” but it wasn’t something I noticed immediately and initially liked the os…
You are aware that you can have multiple DEs installed at once, right? Also many distros have multiple different choices for the default DE. I haven’t used it for probably over a decade, but I’m sure Kubuntu, the KDE version of Ubuntu, still exists.
I am aware the DE can be changed, but it was just an honest answer to OP’s question. I downloaded like 8 different distros and put them on flash drives and tried them all out and that was what caused me to move on. I didn’t have kubuntu downloaded to try, probably because canonical seems to treat them as entirely different distros.
ie, some distros have the DE options when looking at the download page or have you choose during the live boot which to use and include multiple in one iso. Ubuntu makes no mention of those separate downloads unless you explore their site a bit further than the download page. It’s a minor difference but makes a difference when you’re grabbing a handful of isos to try out, you might miss it and assume the one iso has all the options available when it doesn’t, or that it is the only option they provide.
As for PopOS I actually did look into changing to KDE and the popular wisdom at the time on message boards was that changing to KDE would possibly or likely undo most of the benefits of the tweaks and changes system 76 made. I don’t have any idea if that is even true, just what came up when searching a few years back.
I get your reasoning, a lot of “re-spins” are hidden away on many distros download pages, but saying something like “I don’t like Ubuntu because it uses Gnome” is like saying “I don’t like Fords because they come with radios”.
Regarding PopOS it probably is true because it probably all GUI specific things setup for new users, anything system level wouldn’t be changed.
I remember reading through that thread when it came out and those are extremely worrying points. Wayland has extremely deep core issues. #2 there alone is horrible.
There are and were alarm bells ringing all around btw with Wayland. From a software developing perspective the approach is terrible. You cannot solve super complex problems by throwing away 30 years worth of code and redoing everything from scratch. You’ll just run into the exact same issues again. Which no, haven’t gone away as the technology advanced as many people would like to believe, we’re still using displays and networking and keyboards and mice.
There is a lot of legacy in X but there’s also a lot of accumulated experience and battle-hardened code. The obvious path would have been to keep the good and remove the bad.
Wayland will eventually since those issues but it will take just as long as it took X, because that’s what happens when you start everything from scratch again.
This is filling me with deja vu because it’s exactly what some of us went through with X, trying to piece together a working desktop out of dozens of pieces. But when you point that out you get “ha ha grandpa that’s old stuff, this new stuff won’t have that problem because [insert magic here]!”
Keep in mind that when Wayland started it was supposed to be a mini-server, to be used for the login screen only. Then the idea came to make it usable for stable, controlled and simple devices where there isn’t a lot of user configuration or hardware variation.
How it got from there to “let’s use it for everything on the Linux desktop and ditch X” I’ll never understand.
Which no, haven’t gone away as the technology advanced as many people would like to believe, we’re still using displays and networking and keyboards and mice.
Do you mean not initially designed to support? Because at least for displays and networking (in the sense of being able to send X events over the network) that seems wrong, a network capable display server is basically X’s entire purpose? And for keyboards and mice there are extensions now, so x.org as a standard now very much supports those by design. Actually to my knowledge Wayland basically just forked their keyboard standard, the X Keyboard Extension.
XOrg is designed so a central server (mainframe) sends and receives data from smaller terminals, and that not only includes a heap of devices that haven’t been in use since the 90s it also has a ton of features that nobody uses. (See: X native fonts, X native widgets, X driver model…)
X’s way of handling events and sending draws to clients as such is somewhat convoluted. Once you start to really dig into it, it’s amazing how much people managed to stack on top of it until today.
Besides, modern day X over Network is a somewhat niche and possibly broken function
I mean xwayland is the best supported X implementation today, and will only get better. You’re not ditching everything when you maintain backwards compatibility.
Vanilla OS. I loved the idea of having access to so many packaging formats and package managers at my fingertips but maintaining the system, managing everything and keeping in mind all the things that I’m doing was just too much work for me when I just wanted a system that I can use without any hassle. I know immutable distros are quite the buzz these days but it just isn’t for me. That was also the time when I was trying to find an Ubuntu based vanilla GNOME distro
iirc the devs have added Disk Encryption support and it’ll ship in the next release (Orchid). I can imagine how confusing and frustrating that must’ve been!
Maybe I’ll give Vanilla OS another try when Orchid releases
And click the “download .deb” button (It says underneath “Works on Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+ (64bit only)”. As long as your Ubuntu is up-to-date, this will work fine)
you get a file (“MullvadVPN-2023.6_amd64.deb”) you can run just like on Windows (similar to MullvadVPN-2023.6.exe)
opening the file should open a GUI for installing the file
Keep in mind, to update Mullvad VPN, you would need to download a newer .deb file (after an update is released). It shows the latest version above the download buttons, below the “Mullvad VPN for Linux text” This is the same as how it is on Windows
Edit: This is not intended as good advice, just a simple way to install Mullvad VPN. The smartest solution would be to add the repo.
2nd Edit: While this is how Mullvad provides their software, it is never ideal to install random .deb packages or add third party repos without being sure that the ones who provided the package/repo is trustworthy.
It might not be good advice, but that was not what OP asked for.
My comment was meant as a beginner-friendly way to install Mullvad VPN on Ubuntu, and not unsolicited advice telling them to learn something that should not be needed for daily computer usage. And while adding the repo might be the better solution, that would require the use of the terminal, and as multiple people have proven to me, that wouldn’t be a friendly way to introduce Linux to someone just starting out.
You don’t teach someone to swim, by dropping them in the middle of the pacific.
I’m going to post this thread anytime I get some random screaming about how Linux is soooo much easier than Windows.
On a more serious note, Wayland is a dumpster fire, and has been for many years now. I have up after spending a few hours dicking around in xdotool trying to get mouse gestures to work only to find out I should have been using the new ydotool…
Fuck all of that. Linux desktop really could use a benevolent dictator that has some vision and understanding what the average user wants.
This bullshit is the number 1 detractor of adoption.
Fuck all of that. Linux desktop really could use a benevolent dictator that has some vision and understanding what the average user wants.
It already has these. They're called Linux Distros. They decide the combination of packages that make up the end to end experience. And they're all aimed at different types of user.
Why are none explicitly aimed at the average Windows user? I suspect there's one major reason. The average Windows user is incapable of installing an operating system at all, and new PCs invariably come with Windows pre-installed. This isn't a sleight on them by the way, it's just that most computer users don't want or need to know how anything works. They just want to turn it on, and post some crap on Twitter/X then watch cat videos. They don't have an interest in learning how to install another operating system.
Also, a distro aimed at an average Windows user would need to be locked down hard. No choice of window manager, no choice of X11/Wayland. No ability to install applications not in the distro's carefully curated repository, plus MAYBE independently installed flatpak/other pre-packaged things. The risk of allowing otherwise creates a real risk of the system breaking on the next big upgrade. I don't think most existing Linux users would want to use such a limiting distro.
Unless Microsoft really cross a line to the extent that normal users actually don't want anything to do with windows, I cannot imagine things changing too much.
Your entire paragraph is correct in most ways and really games the issues when Linux desktop in a nutshell. None of that will work for the average user.
My point was, the next time I see someone scream just use Linux, it’s easy, I will post this.
It’s not easy, and it’s somewhat baked in due to the design goals. IMO it would be better if that were accepted instead of bashing windows and osx. I realize I’m off topic by the end there but I felt the need to elaborate.
I understand where you’re coming from but the point you make is fundamentally wrong. I consider myself to be a Linux newbie and I’ve never ever seen ANYONE suggest Linux as an “easier” alternative to Windows. Never. I’ve always seen people put clear warnings when recommending Linux and always making sure the person, who is the beginner, knows and is aware about all the shortcomings Linux has in certain areas and challenges one might face when trying to use Linux. Maybe there are some out there but you cannot take them as the caricature of majority of people who recommend Linux to beginners.
The comparison you make is not even apples-to-apples, maybe oranges-to-apples. Sure they’re both OSes but everything else about them is very different. Trying to use Linux as Windows ensures that you will have a bad/subpar experience. Now that last one is kind of becoming irrelevant (or less common) as more and more Distros try to be more beginner friendly but the notion still stands.
People bash Windows and OSX because of their clear shortcomings and failings in many areas and yes there are many who just think Linux is plain superior (they wouldn’t be wrong but they wouldn’t be right either) but I’ve not seen one person call Linux perfect. All those that use it know where Linux falls short and wholeheartedly accept it. I understand that you’re trying to make the general user more aware of the issues Linux has but your way to do so only generates fear mongering, not awareness. I’d argue most popular distros “Just work” for most use cases except (like you mentioned) gaming. All this X.org vs Wayland stuff is for those who wish to dig deeper into Linux, the average user will simply not care about it. All they care about is using their system without any hitches.
I’m going to post this thread anytime I get some random screaming about how Linux is soooo much easier than Windows.
What a ridiculous straw man. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody promote Linux but claiming that it’s easier than Windows.
This bullshit is the number 1 detractor of adoption.
That’s a trend I’ve noticed from Linux critics: they had some bad experience due to a use case that they didn’t feel was properly catered to, and because they had a bad experience, that’s the reason why more people aren’t choosing Linux.
I’ve never used mouse gestures. I’m willing to bet most users don’t. People aren’t picking up Linux and going “Aaarrrgghhh! This sucks, because I can’t program my mouse gestures!” This sounds like a power user feature. Catering to power users so that they don’t badmouth you online is not a good UX design strategy.
The fact that you don’t think people use gestures is enough for me to believe you don’t have interactions with normal users. People love their touch pads.
Have you guys fixed your graphics stack to keep up with current High-DPI and HDR displays yet? No? LOL happy new year of the eyesore desktop to you too
What are you even going on about? Proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers updates are released at basically the same time as the windows version, and amd has always worked flawlessly. I have 2 2k 144hz monitors with HDR and both work and look just as good on Linux as on Windows.
The only issues with high dpi monitors is that some apps don’t both detecting the monitor dpi and need to be adjusted manually… but there are very few that that is still an issue for, and windows has the same problem because it’s an app problem not an OS problem
Some apps? “Very few” apps? Buddy, you either aren’t running much software at all or are delusional. Entire Desktop Environments to this day have ass fractional scaling that can’t render things correctly without eating up resources and making them look horribly blurry. Fonts look terrible and have bad kerning even with all anti-aliasing settings correctly set. Even colors are dull across the board by default. Not to mention there will always be random glitches and your graphics card fan will always be on full power unless you turn it off because of shit throttling even with official Nvidia drivers.
Just try using browsers and file managers between Linux distros and Windows on default settings on medium-tier, 5-year-old machines side-by-side, the difference will be starkly visible - from responsiveness and animations to general look quality.
Why come into the Linux community just to start an argument? It’s not 2010 anymore, the brand faction internet tribalism is so bloody tiring these days.
It’s not just to start an argument. I have tried so, so hard to shift to Linux. Nuked perfectly working setups just to take the jump to the “free” side (including Arch, btw).
It all only ended in frustration and disappointment. So everytime people toot “year of the Linux desktop” it only makes me laugh.
Stating problems you’ve had as if they are things that will effect everybody makes you looks very silly. I could do the same thing by stating that Windows is garbage because it doesn’t boot with rebar enabled and it bluescreens non stop. It’s also consistently slower to boot, open any software, and less responsive overall. The default file manager is also pathetic, and the software management is frustrating.
It sounds like you had some significant problems with your setup, but the way you’re describing it, it sounds like you didn’t properly troubleshoot it.
GNOME and Plasma both have great fractional scaling support with Wayland. I have never had whatever problems you’re describing with font rendering. On my machine it looks slightly better than windows, and slightly worse than MacOS. I used an Nvidia GPU with Linux for 4 years and never had any performance problems with the official driver.
Please realize your experience isn’t the be-all and end-all that decides whether using Linux can be a good experience.
Flatpak is the primary way that apps can be installed on Fedora Silverblue (for more information, see flatpak.org). Flatpak works out of the box in Fedora Silverblue…
Just seems very odd to distrohop for one main reason (flatpak in this scenario), without even checking if that reason is available in your current distro…which it is, out of the box.
Yeah, I’m not saying it’s hard, just illogical. To me, it came across similar as: “I’m moving to this other distro because they have Firefox.” Your current distro also has Firefox, so why are you moving again?
For sure. I just meant that it’s just putting in a command and waiting for a bit, so I could understand doing it on a whim more than if it was a full reinstall. Doesn’t make any sense but it’s also not a big deal.
I actually really like Chrome OS myself. For the people around me who are less tech literate, Chrome OS is actually great. It’s quite easy to support. It’s fast, and it’s got a really good ecosystem now thanks to all the integrations.
Which had me wondering for the first time I hearing about “The Year of the Linux Desktop”, what percentage do we have to hit for this to be the year?
Imo it’s more of a list of things that need to happen, like some mainstream games, apps and devices getting 1st-party Linux support. I suspect this to start happening around the 20% mark, but ofc that’s just a guess.
I think the 1st-party device support is a little trickier on Linux than on Windows, which IMHO hampers the widespread adoption of Linux on the desktop.
The reason it’s trickier is that the Linux kernel has no stable API or ABI — which is ultimately a good thing ( www.kernel.org/doc/…/stable-api-nonsense.rst ), but for closed source drivers presents a problem.
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