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.
Yikes, that is why I hate tech forums. Too many times I’ve asked an informed question I’m unable to find via search and the first replier basically says “hey go FUCK yourself.”
I was trying to run my own personal-use instance of LiveJournal back 20 years ago when it was open source (and not owned by Russia). Just to see if I could, as is the spirit of a tinkerer.
There was a handful of paid staff as well as a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers, so I expected one of them to answer a low-priority newbie support request, not.. what I got.
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.
Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn’t mean we should reject interacting with everyone.
Corollary: Your personal aversion to corporations doesn't mean users have have any motivation or obligation to keep trying when we're getting pushback from both the software and those who maintain it.
Anyway, I'm not sure how you got that I reject interacting with everyone after my experience, but extrapolating my statement to that kind of extreme phrasing sure doesn't fill me with confidence about future interactions, either.
Hey there, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m not discounting anything you’re saying, I agree that it’s definitely a very real phenomenon, and didn’t intend to provoke a defensive response. I didn’t say that you were “rejecting interacting with everyone”, on the contrary, I’m saying that in the physical world you deal with people who act like dicks, but you specifically DON’T reject interacting with everyone. I’m drawing a parallel between that behavior in the physical world with how I believe we should also behave in the digital one.
I also did not say that I have any personal aversion to corporations, I owe most of my daily comforts to corporations, so I would be a hypocrite to say as much. But if I had said that “I don’t think we should stick our hands in blenders” that doesn’t mean I have a personal aversion to blenders.
I still can't really agree that the comparison holds; we try harder in real life because the bar for being a dick is (usually) higher. On the internet, when all it takes is a few easy sentences to be a dick to a faceless stranger whose reaction we don't have to see... to me, the response should be equally fluid, else we get bogged down being the only one putting in the effort and taking a constant beating to our self-esteem when we wonder why no one is bothering to hear us.
However, I appreciate you being chill about clearing up what you meant. I did initially miss the comparison you were going for and feel like I was getting cereal box therapy about not cutting people off (and thus staying in toxic communities) when that wasn't what you meant.
I hear you, perhaps there is a fundamental difference there with the digital world.
I really want to see some linux distro get to the point that users don’t have to wonder if something has gone horribly wrong for them. As much as I do disapprove of some of Apple’s repairability policies, and as much of a toxic human being Jobs was, Steve Jobs really was a visionary. He saw that if you paid attention to detail, you could turn a computer into something that “just worked” for people who weren’t tech savvy. Until that point, it was engineers selling to other engineers, they just couldn’t see the potential that technology had. As far as I can tell, the linux world has never had someone with such a relentless vision for user experience. I personally think it’s because the opportunity for profit just isn’t there, or at least no one sees it.
But there was a time when buying a windows license meant you got a copy of windows and that was it; now no matter what you do it’s full of ads and telemetry and constant popups about new features you never asked for. I would gladly pay the price of a windows license for a linux distro that was as thought out and usable as an Apple or Windows product in their prime, and maybe we’re entering a window (no pun intended) of time where that’s finally possible.
Currently my experience with 3D printing. It’s one thing after another, and the community, at least on Reddit and Facebook, fucking sucks. If I ask a question, it’s always “hey how about you go fuck yourself” or an essay that has zero relevance to what I’m asking. Made a post on Reddit the other day (I know, but have a single burner account until the 3D printing community here takes off more) and just asked to see some settings due to just constantly having issue after issue. Half of the responses were people just telling me they’re not fucking wizards and they need to know what kind of problems I’m having. I… didn’t ask for that whatsoever. I very explicitly just asked for someone’s slicer settings to compare to.
That's absolutely the worst help forum experience, when you're asking one question but everyone extrapolates the question they think you REALLY meant to ask and talks down to you about it.
And of course if you try to steer the conversation back to your actual question, you get painted as the unreasonable one placing all sorts of conditions on the generous free help others are allowed to bestow upon you.
The less reliance on others Linux requires, the better off it will be for general adoption.
Haha your second paragraph sums it up perfectly. A few folks did share their settings, but they were for completely different printers/hardware haha. Most of the online guides I’ve found are written under the assumption that you’re already a master at the hobby, and it’s strangely spread out in random little nooks of the internet - there’s not really a ton of centralized discussion forums. Maybe the hobby is way smaller than I thought, or maybe I’m just in way over my head, but I fix tech problems for a living - did not expect this to be as much of a challenge. Never buy a 3D printer if you value your sanity and living stress-free. Sorry, I just needed to rant for a minute haha.
Yeah 3D printers are fussier than I expected. Especially when printing anything involving supports and more specifically… small areas that need supports. I print a lot of stuff for D&D and have just started cutting things up into pieces with blender to print easier, then glue it together
I will say. My first thought was obviously to ask what printer you have, to see if I could send you my profile for you to compare (depending on the slicer you use). Then my second was to ask if you’re having issues and if so, what the issues are.
Only because sometimes a seemingly large issue could be a very small fix.
When I first started, I got it working great and then out of no where nothing would stick to the bed. I spent more time than I’d like to admit messing with settings only to realize it was the oils on my hands causing adhesion issues. Some 99% IPA fixed all my issues real quick haha.
That would be awesome! I’ve got an Ender 6 with a Micro Swiss NG extruder. I was printing decently with the stock hardware, but that stock extruder was a nightmare and kept slipping or completely losing grip on filament mid-print, so I upgraded to this extruder. Now I’m just trying to find that perfect spot to where it extrudes but doesn’t grind filament. I’ve been having some really messy prints.
I just had a feeler gauge arrive in the mail, so I’m about to use that to try leveling the bed more accurately. Everyone says to just use a piece of paper or something, but different paper is different widths haha.
I do have a PEI bed, so stuff sticks and comes off way easier now, but I would love to check out your slicer settings to get a good baseline! What kind of hardware do you have, and which slicer do you use?
Just using that outright probably won’t work. What I would do is load up the default Ender 6 profile that Cura has, and then adjust settings based on mine. For instance. You went from a bowden extruder to a direct drive. So you can probably copy my retraction settings as a baseline and adjust from there. You need far less retraction on direct drive extruders (i.e. 0.2mm-1mm for direct drive vs 5mm-8mm for bowden).
I would also look up CHEP and Teaching Tech on youtube. They have great videos on bed leveling and everything else related to 3d printing.
Most of the online guides I’ve found are written under the assumption that you’re already a master at the hobby
I’ve had exactly the opposite experience lol. Most of the stuff out there is dreadfully basic, and if you want detail like scientific comparisons of the strength-weight ratios of different infill patterns, good fuckin luck. Some chum on YouTube will have some half baked experiments and that’s as good as it gets.
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.
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.
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.
Most major distributions come with a software center of some kind. And with Flatpaks, AppImages, and gag Snaps, it pretty much is just click and install these days.
What’s wrong with snaps? I’m giving Linux another go so I’m still learning. I’m trying Ubuntu on an ancient iMac right now but I also have Pop!_OS in a vm on my windows pc to play with. I haven’t installed anything on pop but I noticed Ubuntu had snaps.
Snaps are proprietary to Canonical (Ubuntu). Historically, they were larger, slower to load, and generally slower overall to use With a good SSD and system, I’m not sure that’s the case anymore though.
Ohh. Thanks for that info. Proprietary stuff and forced ads are two of the biggest things pushing me away from windows right now so that’s good to know.
Am I wrong or is it easier to install software on Linux? The package manager basically figures out everything for you and you don’t need to hunt for an exe all over the Internet.
It is much easier, os long as that version is in main repo. If not, it can still be easy (run this one extra command), or you are gonna pull your hair out trying to figure out how to install some antique proprietary software on fedora, using an installing guide made for Ubuntu 16.04. :)
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.
I feel like it’s pretty obvious I was exaggerating. There’s just extra steps that I’ve always had to take. It’s never been simple for me. A lot of terminal commands in not familiar with.
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.
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.
Necessity. When most of the software you use is reliant on Windows it’s hard to make Linux your daily driver. That being said, the changes needed to make it worth it are already done in limited contexts. Steam deck is pure Linux, the user interface and everything is implemented in a way that the user does not have to deal with the complexity, but the underlying mechanisms for doing wonky shit is still there if you want to mess with it. It’s kinda the best of both worlds in that sense.
If we wanted a desktop experience to replicate that, you would just have to do the exact same thing. Abstract the user experience such that the layperson does not need to engage with the complicated bits, but leave them there for those that do want them. And arguably that is being done with some distros, but it’s just not quite there yet.
Steam works flawlessly with Linux now. If you have an Nvidia GFX card then you can even get a Pop!_OS install with the driver pre-configured. It’s pretty rad!
Necessity for me, too. After three years of using Linux, I went back to school and it was needlessly difficult trying to get everything to work together. The nail in the coffin was when I had to use some proctoring software and I couldn’t use a virtual machine. I just went back to Windows.
If I didn’t have to use Windows, I’d probably still use Linux. I really enjoyed how snappy it was.
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.
So, I’ve been running Linux as a desktop for a number of years, never had a problem of it dieing weekly or monthly. I’ve had my share of “ah shit, I should restart because some package updated and tings got a little spooky”, but never out right ded.
In saying that, I’m used to this modus operandi, and how to fix these things, but I’m curious as to why you were having weekly/monthly issues. E.g. were you running the latest distros, and not LTS versions?
A comparison with windows is that they control the whole OS, and on theory everything is LTS. Linux gives you those freedoms, and also those problems if you choose to use them etc.
This, and gaming. Linux has come a long way, but has a long way to go. Linux seems to be a long string of hicccups that need to be solved, instead of something that works for me. Although the POPos distro was by far the smoothest, it still became troublesome trying to play games on it.
A few years ago I installed Ubuntu on a laptop, used it a bunch of times then it got put away for a year or so. When I booted it back up it told me the OS was out of date and needed to be updated. When I tried it gave me some errors. I searched online and basically I couldn’t update because it was too old. I needed to update in stages but the next release was also out of support.
I realised I don’t use it enough to care. I installed windows on it.
I do use Linux at work and on things at home like routers, retro gaming, etc. They’re not really comparable though.
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.
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.
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.
Again, Linux gives the user full control over it, and that includes the ability to break it… again, many people can not wield that power properly.
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.
You’re right, they are not technically lying, they are just too dumb to realize the thing they did to break it. When immutable distros become more popular, those people will be less likely to break things.
You just have been lucky so far.
It has absolutelynothing to do with luck. Don’t get me wrong, some Linux distros are known for updates breaking them. Arch based distros are infamous for it… but those are bleeding edge, rolling release distros. Distros based on Debian? Redhat? Never fucking break… there are reasons 90% of the top web and cloud infrastructures run on Linux: security and stability.
And Windows breaks all the time with updates… multiple times Windows updates have deleted peoples’ user files. That’s the most erogenous thing an OS can do… delete important user files.
“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.
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.
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.
My PC only gets used for gaming and I was fed up of switching into Windows for every other game. I WANT to use Linux but game developers just aren’t allowing me.
You should look into VFIO. I was in the same place where I wanted to have a Linux desktop but I don’t want to dual boot to play games because that shit is CRAZY annoying. However, there’s a way to virtualize Windows inside of you Linux desktop and get 99% of your GPU’s performance due to VFIO. I think if you use Kubuntu specifically there’s a really strong guide for setting it up, although admittedly it’s not trivial. Good luck!
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 =).
The best thing about Windows is that if there is something you want to do, either there is a detailed guide online for the specific issue or someone went a step further and created a simple tool to accomplish that task. Windows is stable/reliable/accessible.
To run Linux it would need to be just as easy to install, be as compatible with games as Windows, and not have to involve deep dives into Linux user forums to accomplish basic stuff.
With the main intention of Linux, outside of just not supporting Apple or Microsoft, is to be able to customize your OS experience. I don’t have time/patience/desire to do that. I want my computer to be there ready to open a game launcher and launch that game without issue. That is true about Windows 99.8% of the time, I have not had that same experience with Linux.
The best thing about Windows is that if there is something you want to do, either there is a detailed guide online for the specific issue or someone went a step further and created a simple tool to accomplish that task
My experience is the opposite. Whenever I run into a weird problem on Windows, half of the time I can’t find an answer anywhere. And when I find an answer, it often seems really sketchy, like deleting a specific registry key, without explaining WHY it is required.
I also had some problems, where I couldn’t find anything with Linux, but less so than on Windows.
I guess it depends a lot on what you do, I don’t play a lot of games and don’t need any Software that’s supported only by Windows.
ArchWiki is my first point of contact after experiencing an issue. Its an amazing resource.
I’m surprised Windows default troubleshooting solution has been to employee people who spend their time answering questions on forums, often just copy/pasting answers which often don’t apply to the question being asked.
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.
I found navigating overly complicated at times. The command window uses all the little archaic squiggles around the edge of the keyboard and one missing space will do you in.
For me, the wifi connection always seems sketchy. I currently still have a Linux PC connected to my TV. It’s only used for surfing the net and every time we use it to exercise to a YouTube channel, I might as well walk away and do something else before it can get in. I really should change my distribution on that and see if it helps.
When I got really serious about it and was having all kinds of issues the community asked for my hardware list and when I posted it, the response was, “Oh, all that stuff is too new, you have to wait for someone to write drivers for it.” I always build my own computer and I don’t like the idea of a let down when I turn it in for the first time.
There’s a lot to like about Linux and I always want to free myself from the Microsoft shackles, but every time I do, it just doesn’t work for me.
I’m sorry, I’m not really proficient with Linux. I probably used the wrong term. I meant where you type all the sudo commands and stuff. I’m more of a mouse user due to windows.
Yes, they knew that, you described it fine. They were asking if Window’s equivalent, PowerShell or CMD is preferable. Though they fail to realize that most Windows users will never need to use either of those tools under normal operation, even if they could choose to use them to simplify some tasks. The terminal in Linux is encouraged, whereas equivalent(-ish) tools in Windows are optional and really only required for Sys Admins.
Depending on your Linux distro you can manage entirely without using the terminal, there are plenty of graphical package managers. My point is that if you do need to do command line stuff then a bash terminal is much more user-friendly than the horrors of cmd or powershell!
Oh, I’m certainly not arguing with you. I have to use Windows for work and hate it. Been daily driving Linux for years on my own PC. I should find out if I can get WSL up and running on my work machine. I’ve been contenting myself with git bash thus far. PowerShell is at least better than CMD, but truthfully I’ve never really put the effort in to learn it properly since I very rarely need to do anything complicated on the command line in Windows.
I’d definitely recommend WSL, wasn’t to hard to set up on my own machine so unless you’ve got a locked down work machine then probably worth the effort
Funny thing just happened. Started working on a new project at work and in order to get properly set up I have to get WSL up and running. How convenient, and more than a little coincidental with the timing.
Your wifi issues sound like a network card with poor support in the kernel. I think hardware compatibility is one of the most understated sources of user friction in Linux. Nearly anything modern will work but only a few vendors’ network drivers are really as performant as their windows implementation.
Not much you can do as a user unless you want to become a driver developer and/or reverse engineer.
I find the community can be toxic at times; instead of helping newcomers or treating each other nicely, the community can be toxic and alienate the people they want to use Linux.
Microsoft "community" is a bunch of salarymen who's job is to try to empty your pocket and boost the company profits at your expenses. Linux community is people helping you for free.
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.
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