Reflecting on my first year running solely Linux (as opposed to dual-booting), I think that this culture comes from the fact that, on Linux, problems can more often than not be solved. If not solved, then at least understood. When you want to change something on Windows, or something breaks, you have far less room to maneuver.
When I was a Windows user, I’d barely ever submitted a bug report for anything, in spite of being very tech-literate. It felt hopeless, as my entire experience with the OS was that if a fix would come, it’d have to be done by someone else.
Linux treating its users like adults, produces users who are more confident and more willing to contribute.
Is it even possible to report bugs to Microsoft without paid support? I always come across that Windows community forum where every solution to a problem is to update drivers, run sfc /scannow, etc. I doubt anybody on that forum can relay problems to Microsoft staff.
The Feedback Hub was introduced to fix this gap in user reports for Windows. Microsoft does actively monitor this. They respond when necessary, merge topics, deny or approve bugs/suggestions, etc. For their software, such as Terminal or VS Code, you can use GitHub issues.
Keep in mind, like most companies, Microsoft has guidelines on what employees can say when responding to any user feedback. This is why we typically see a lot of copy and paste. When it is more than that, wording is selective and you may not get more than one or two responses in total.
You can do the exact same thing in Windows, just think of the SysInternals Suite and its power. It’s just that people on Linux expect problems, while the overwhelming majority of people on Windows/MacOS is using their device expecting it to work and if it doesn’t they go do something else or buy another device.
Also this completely untrue notion that you cannot fix Windows or play around with its internals is very prevalent, to the point that it’s a meme, so people don’t even try.
But I have to fight the stupid OS to give me useful information. I have to install 3^(rd) party stuff. By default you only get this useless error reporting tool. Even if you report an error your likely to never hear from anyone and the chance of the error being fixed is virtually nonexistent.
On Linux the necessary information is usually readily available. The worst offender in my experience is Steam itself. You can get logs from games fairy easily. But if Steam misbehaves things can get more complicated.
I found bugs in Windows server products all the time, and there was no way of reporting them. If you opened a ticket (by paying, of course), they would never admit it was a bug. Half the time I got the impression I was the only person in the world that every encountered said issue, and that what I was doing was complete edge-case. Which was bullshit, I would investigate and find dozens of references (which never got resolved) because it was pretty much the only way to use X product feature.
Microsoft QA and support is utter trash. You can get better support in Linux on damn near anything by some rando on IRC or the specific product forum, or, gods forbid, Reddit. There is an almost 100% chance you can fix anything on Linux if you look hard enough, even if you have to go dig through the code. Nothing like that happens in the Windows ecosystem.
Also, the types of information you find are very different. On windows, you’ll find various forum posts about your problem, and some proposed solutions. Usually, nobody seems to know exactly what’s causing the problem, and that’s why the solutions are a bit random. Same goes for iOS related problems too.
On Linux, you might not need forum posts, because sometimes the error messages tells you what’s wrong and how to fix it. If that’s not the case, you’ll find posts about your problem, and usually there’s someone who explains what’s broken and what are the commands to fix it.
There’s none of that guesswork about trying 7 unrelated things to see if any of them magically solve your problem. It’s straight to the point. Your problem is caused by that setting over there, and here’s how to change it.
When it comes to closed-source software developed opaquely by for-profit corporations, particularly the huge, monolithic ones like Microsoft, I generally have the attitude that, if I do discover a problem:
They won’t take my detailed report
If they do take my report, it goes straight into a shredder bin (or a massive queue where low priority problems go to die, which may as well be the same thing)
If they do read my report, then it’s likely something they already are aware of
If they don’t know about it somehow, the issue is probably so low-priority and niche that it wouldn’t escape the backlog anyway
Probably not nearly as bleak as I make it out. But when you can’t see the process, how can you tell?
With open source projects, these things can all still happen, but at least the process is more transparent. You can see exactly where your issue is, and what’s been done to it so far, if anything. Other users can discover and vouch for your problem. And if the dev team takes pull requests, and you are willing, able, and permitted to contribute, you can make the fix yourself.
Also, with open source projects, I actually want to help the developer improve their project, whereas with Windows I simply do not care and won’t donate a second of my time to a large corporation for free.
That view bug has been sitting around since 2009, from what I can gather. But a file manager giving false filesystem state to a user is a showstopper. It violates the main purpose of the program. And risks data loss. Users may make errors based on false information.
Batch renaming I use regularly by ingesting media from cameras, though typically at the command line.
remember the other several occasions where developers hated actually getting feedback from these linux users cause they actually would have to fix their shit? but not many actually did
cause i remember, they only care as far as money goes
I know this isn’t a real answer, but it’s what I use as a stop gap measure… I basically have a text file called buffer, and ssh into the VM on a terminal on my host, and paste into the buffer file.
I know it’s lame, but for simple text and stuff, it works. For things like files and pics, I use a shared drive.
If someone has a better answer… Please let me know!
Personally I never understood why file managers in linux refuse to do operations that require privileges. Guess what, if I have Nautilus open and want to move files into, let’s say, /usr/local, I don’t want to have to switch to the terminal to do so if I already have the stuff copied within nautilus. On Windows, I just get an admin password prompt if I try to do naughty stuff. On Linux, we have the whole polkit system, but no file manager seems to ever use it. Tbf, this is not a nautilus problem, as no file manager seems to do this.
Oh wow you can? I just switched to Nemo on Arch after using Thunar for a long time but I got annoyed at it for crashing a lot when I copy files to my FTP server. Very good to know!
I’m aware of nautilus-admin, but not only is it not maintained, imho it should be part of nautilus by default, and it has to open a new nautilus window when you use it. What I want is to drag and drop files to /usr/local and then get a password prompt to do the move. With nautilus-admin, I need to have the foresight to use “Open as admin” when going into /usr/local, but if I had that foresight then I might as well just start nautilus as root to begin with. Usually I just want to look into the folder, and only then realize I need to change something, which means a good old “go back up one folder, then search the local folder again, then right click, search for ‘Open as admin’, then get thrown into a new window, completely disorienting myself in the process”.
Honestly I don’t get why Gnome is standard for so many distros, if that’s your thing sure but I feel like KDE makes more sense as a default (unless you’re going for more of an apple feel)
KDE feels like an unpolished Windows desktop to me. I find it difficult to do things the KDE way when everything feels like Windows on first glance, but doesn’t 1:1 behave like Windows. It’s a disjarring experience for me, and probably others who migrate from Windows to Linux. I also think that Gnome has better touchpad gesture support than KDE, which makes Gnome the logical choice for companies that sell Linux laptops.
My recollection mostly had to do with the old way Qt was licensed, which affected how people wanted to include KDE in distros. Gnome managed to step into the void by leapfrogging other choices like CDE (way back!) and it managed to get wired into a few fast growing distros. Most notably, it was pulled into Ubuntu due to the Qt licensing on commercial distros, then many things based on Ubuntu, and here we are.
I’m sure there were other considerations about features, where Gnome had a good set of tools, but used to be lighter duty than KDE. There was also a window of time where Gnome was designed to be more touchscreen/tablet friendly while KDE stayed away from that style (good!).
Different licenses, different styles, different release times. A bit of “right place, right time, now the default” for Gnome.
I like KDE, but I’m mostly a Mint/Cinnamon user, and have been around since SunOS CDE systems, so it’s all better than that! I’ve got a couple of kids on Ubuntu/Gnome, mostly due to driver issues.
Some of this is correct, and some of it is myth. Source: I was there ;)
Qt way back in version 1 was merely “free for non-commercial use” and shipped with the source code. KDE was founded on that version. This was in like 1996, before KDE even had a stable release. Gnome was founded immediately in response, choosing GTK (the Gimp Toolkit) which wasn’t really ready for use as a full fledged desktop toolkit, but existed and the license was friendly. KDE and Trolltech formed a few agreements – the first was the creation of the QPL, an attempt to create an open-source compatible license for Qt, and the second was the creation of the KDE Free Qt Foundation (it said, effectively, if Qt were to become closed, the most recent version prior to that would be released under the BSD license).
However, the damage was done. Stallman and others would never forgive KDE for choosing a not-free-enough toolkit, and the Gnome devs were associated with redhat. That meant Redhat and Debian, the two biggest distros, defaulted to Gnome. Ubuntu just adopted Debian, ergo Gnome.
Qt would shortly thereafter be released under GPL, GPL3, and LGPL. There’s still a commercial license option, and that pisses a lot of people off for some reason. But it was never a risk to KDE or the community – not since before KDE 1.0.
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