First time I ever seriously used Linux was for work, back when I was a developer. You’d have to pay me to use it again. I like gaming, but I don’t like wasting my time troubleshooting games. Nor do I enjoy debugging random crashes/black screens in random drivers. Sure, it’s fun, but if I’m gonna work for it, someone somewhere better be signing my overtime slip. Cause I get a few hours free per day, and I’d rather not deal with sigsegv anymore if I can help it.
Not to mention sound. My job as dev included using ALSA for some use cases. I don’t know if you ever had the misfortune to need to do that or how it went for you, but if I ever need to touch that shit again I will scalp Torvalds with a goddamn headphone jack.
I installed windows 11 when I bought my last PC. I figured I’d give it a shot, see if it’s as bad as all my dev friends say it is. You know how many drivers I’ve had to fix to make my games work? Zero. You know how many hours I spent debugging weird issues? Also zero.
There’s a reason windows has a price tag. And part of that reason is that it works better than free stuff. I’m a believer in FOSS, but if you’re a craftsman and you can’t hammer a nail without needing to adjust your hammer every few swings, you should find a hammer that’s not made out of silly putty and dreams.
Odd that you’ve had so much trouble with Linux. My experience generally had been that it requires more time on initial config, then it just keeps working unless you change something.
The issues with games usually arise because people try to run games made for Windows on Linux. Just like you can’t run Linux games on Windows (unless you use WSL, which is just straight up running Linux), you can’t easily run most Windows games on Linux.
Years ago I had the opposite issue. The printer driver would rarely work. When I switched to ubuntu for unrelated reasons the printer worked everytime. I suspect that this is very unusual and 99.999% of the time your scenario is more likely. Just wanted to share =).
I got my wife a netbook when they were popular. It came with Windows 7 Starter Edition. Shit was kind of slow, but it worked. I thought about installing Linux cause people say it’s lighter and faster. When I started looking up Linux there were so many versions. I can’t tell the difference between a Mint, Cinnamon, KDE, etc. As a noob (I’m still a noob) I don’t know which one to choose so I settled on Mint cause I liked the theme. After the install it was slower than Win7SE. VLC video playback was trash. At the time I was using Photoshop 6 and Gimp was a not so great alternative. In the end the experiment failed. The netbook ended up being donated to the sis in law (teen). Best thing about Linux is the ability to run it off a CD/thumb drive. I think I’m too use to Windows though… It’s not worth the headache to switch Operating System unless I have to. I won’t switch to Apple/iOS cause I’m use to Android. I currently run Win10 on my desktop/laptop and Win11 on my wife’s Surface laptop. I fucken hate how Windows is always asking me to sign on with their account. I probably switch to Linux if Windows ever goes full online subscription base.
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.
mostly because I had to stick on Windows for video games. and for now, the amount of effort I’m already putting into making Windows functional when it’s supposed to work out of the box, makes me scared of going back to Linux. Mostly a worry about changing so many habits and diving back into the unknown
buy hardware that’s supported. For some things (storage) virtually everything works. For others, (video cards, latest-gen wifi) you need to make sure it’s supported out-of-the-box. It’s not worth the headache of trying to get it to work unless you just like geeking out.
if some piece if software or hardware doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If you spend more than a half hour (or whatever your limit is) trying to get it to work, just say to yourself ‘not available on Linux right now’ and move on. Linix has way more access to beta and alpha-level stuff, and that can make it tempting to try to fix whatever problem. Just don’t bother.
That said, most of the systems I use Linux on, it just works.
Although I do use Linux (so should not respond here, I know), the reasons are probably similar to why Android vs iOS. They are different philosophies. No-one really is wrong, it is about personal fit.
Programmer and big Linux fan here. I use Linux for multiple servers/vm’s. For a while I also had Linux on my desktop and using a Windows VM with PCI-passtrough for gaming. It works. However I came to the conclusion I was only using the PC for gaming (on the VM), and doing all my programming on my MacBook. So basically the Linux part on my desktop was just useless. Although I want to, I don’t have any use cases for Linux on the desktop.
I could never get my bluetooth microphone to work under Linux, and I was having to input my password many times every day just to accomplish simple tasks. Couldn’t even make the password into a PIN, that wasn’t allowed for some reason.
If you’re talking about using sudo you can edit your sudoers file to make it so that whenever you use sudo in a terminal session you don’t have to use the password for the remainder of that session. It’s not an immediately obvious solution to most people so I’m not saying this to downplay your experience by any means, just letting people know this stuff is changeable
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.
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…
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.
well gnome software and epiphany app stores just work.
click, install, done.
they provide an option to pick the source to install from (package/flatpak/snap), but they both automatically pick the best one for you.
Debian/Ubuntu almost never break on updates (unless you mess with the PPAs too much), but at a significant cost: some packages and software (especially desktop environments and system packages) being 1-2 years out of date.
you mentioned that file previews are broken for you, thy should just work, unless some component it terribly broken or missing…
also about the last part, package name usually matchess the name of the command, so for example if an online guide tells you to use the ffmpeg command and it’s not found on your system, usually that means that you have to install a package called ffmpeg.
some package managers and command line shells provide more helpful error messages, like: command X was not found, but here are some packages that provide this command, do you want to install one of them?
by the way, you mentioned that you tried using Fedora. common source of frustration is beginners trying to use apt on a system that doesn’t support or use it (apt is only used in Debian, Ubuntu, and their derivatives). Fedora uses dnf instead.
…but, as a beginner, you shouldn’t even worry about this, as most distros provide easy-to-use, graphical app store applications that can automagically install apps (from your package manager, Flatpak, Snap, etc, picking the source automatically if it’s unavailable in one of them) with a single click.
you mentioned that file previews are broken for you, thy should just work, unless some component it terribly broken or missing…
Uhhhhh nope, that’s just the way it works.
…but, as a beginner, you shouldn’t even worry about this, as most distros provide easy-to-use, graphical app store applications that can automagically install apps
Yes I have the “Software” package manager. At best it is extremely slow, at worst it just doesn’t work at all. But it doesn’t come preloaded with many repositories, I had to manually load flatpak.
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> and apt 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.
Install chocolatey in windows and get the best of both worlds…now for 90% of programs I can type “choco install foo” and it finds the exe for me and silently installs it in the background so I don’t even have to click anything
Apt does not have most packages you need anymore. You have to add custom repositories for everything. Which means you have to go to a website and still run a whole bunch of commands. Worst of both worlds. Other distros are not as bad, but between snap, flathub, etc. Linux package management is not in a good state at the moment.
Agreed. Try using apt install program name, not found. Search Google “how to download program name on Linux”. Get told you first have to add these 3 different repos or whatever in the terminal, then type in this command to download it. Why do I need to Google HOW to download a program? Nothing is ever simple with Linux. It’s absolute bollocks in that regard.
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.
assuming what you want is even on apt. if its not, then you gotta add the repository… and some stuff doesnt even offer that. So you gotta find and download the .deb file. or even compile it from source yourself.
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.
If it a program you are unfamiliar with, yes you’ll probably need to search for the apt name and copy paste. I much prefer that over searching a website, verifying it’s not a scam site, then download the exe, and then run the exe once the download is finished. After the first time, just add it to a .sh script and then you can download every program you need automatically if you ever need to set up a new instance again.
I guess it’s not for all, but worst case it’s hardly any more work than needing to go to a website to download the exe.
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.
My main problem is that I have "legacy" games that don't work on Linux as well as Linux ports and native Linux builds being worse than their Linux counterpart.
#limuxgaming has come a long way and I'm curious and excited to see where it goes, but ease of use simply doesn't have parity. I want one click installs with identical performance.
The bigger issue with the #linuxdesktop in general is that no distro actually thinks about it as a product. 1/2
As in, where things are, why they are there and how it works as a holistic thing, isn't being talked about.
Redesigns are graphic or graphic subsystems.
But nobody touches aspects of which settings make sense to put where, taking the education level of the user into account.
And there is no at least semi centralized group that organize that some setups actually work and are well explained. E.g. Sound, If you run into an issue there, good luck finding a support contact or manual.
I’m the opposite. No drivers required in Linux for me. Printer just worked. Wacom tablet just worked. Monitor colour profile just worked. Etc etc etc. Everything has just worked. However, I don’t do bleeding edge video cards, so maybe that’s an issue? I have no idea. Linux though for me, has never needed a driver.
This has been me as well. I switched to daily driving Linux after a week on windows 11. It hasn’t been 100% perfect but answers were so easy to find and implement. My shit works, and works well. More importantly it works exactly how I want it to.
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.
Not so, it was true for my 86-year-old mom. I installed Linux Mint and put the Chrome browser icon on her desktop, and that was all she used. She only checked e-mails and browsed like Facebook, etc. Every month or so when I went to visit, I’d just run the updater. Never broke and I never really had to do anything. The reason why I put it on, was her PC was getting old, and Windows was getting super slow. So it was win-win. She did not even know it was Linux.
If the only thing you’re doing is turning it on and firing up a browser, I can see that working for just about any device with just about any operating system…
Yeah, but Mint is completely free and doesnt come with much of the software bloat that might be confusing to an older person. It’s a simple user experience by design.
Not in my experience. They don’t know how to use the terminal and downloading anything shady online won’t install. No auto-updates, no bloat, nothing but what I put there. How would that not work?
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.
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