Don’t get me wrong. I love Linux and FOSS. I have been using and installing distros on my own since I was 12. Now that I’m working in tech-related positions, after the Reddit migration happened, etc. I recovered my interest in all the Linux environment. I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited. There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command. Sometimes I lack time and energy for troubleshooting and sometimes I just fail at it.
I usually end up in need of redoing a fresh install until it breaks up again. Maybe Linux is not good for beginners working full time? Maybe we should do something like that Cisco course that teaches you the basic commands?
It’s the same way Mastodon and the Fediverse is so damn frustrating to many people. They don’t want to have to think and just want shit to work.
I can’t say I blame them when it comes to going with what’s comfortable.
I used Windows and Linux while in school so it’s what I got used to. Whenever I use MacOS I feel incredibly lost
I’m fine with Linux and techy stuff for my personal life.
My work stuff has to work. Always. Enterprise solutions are the only way I can get that without a personal army of IT guys.
macOS and iOS both have their own feel that just isnt intuitive for me.
I’ve been a windows user forever and ever (well, DOS before that…) but iOS feels intuitive as fuck to me. I was an immediate Android adopter (HTC Dream/G1, then the successor G2 immediately when it was released) and when my partner got an iPhone, I played around with it for like five minutes before I was like “holy shit this is smooth.” I’ll never go back to Android (well, I couldn’t now anyway since I don’t touch Google services or products)
Next weekend I set up my first linux box since 2008, though, and I’m nervous. But excited.
This is oft repeated but is short sighted, it is NOT that people do not want to think, it is that they don’t have the time and energy to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks.
That’s exactly why I love Linux and hate Windows. Try something simple in Windows like setting custom keyboard shortcuts… insanely frustrating. I’m not sure you can even do it without 3rd party apps, but in Linux I can do it in 10 seconds.
On the flip side try to get Linux to play back audio at above 48,000 Hz without breaking absolutely everything that isn’t already at the desired sample rate.
In Windows it is 5 clicks.
The few times a have some minor issue on linux, it is probably audio related or related to working with multiple different screens with different refresh rates, resolutions, etc, so you probably have a point.
However, I did have various issues with audio and multiple screens on windows as well, I would say even more frequently. However, on windows those issues were generally resolved after a restart, on linux I actually had to do some troubleshooting.
Try and get the Focusrite Solo at 48k with Windows without using the awful software that comes with it, in Linux it’s literally plug and play. It goes both ways, that’s what Windows plebs don’t understand. All the issues Windows plebs complain about in Linux, are also present in Windows: driver issues, updates breaking userspace, etc.
Attacking people because there are valid criticisms of Linux, which you haven’t refuted at all, shows how utterly stupid you are.
Yes there are valid criticisms of Windows. No that does not give you a pass to attack people who use it, they have made their own choice.
One device, which you admit works with the correct drivers, doesn’t remotely compare to a glaring flaw with audio that I can find first mentioned in 2002 still impacting Linux today.
I haven’t attacked anyone… yet, but the cognitive dissonance of that first sentence, oh my! Do you have any self-awareness at all? I can’t imagine contradicting myself in the same fucking sentence, lmao, you’re straight up delusional my guy.
I explained why they are not valid criticisms and you’re missing my point that it goes both ways, but anyway… thanks for that opening sentence and confirming your opinions don’t merit consideration. I will no longer waste time conversing with you, not because you are ignorant but because you quite obviously lack critical thinking abilities.
Windows plebs
Yes you clearly meant that in an endearing sort of way.
It goes both ways, that’s what Windows plebs don’t understand. All the issues Windows plebs …
Does it make you a patrician to use Linux? Are you a father figure now to society?
We plebeians are just waiting on your glory to shine upon us, o high one.
Are you offended that I am calling your knowledge into question over invalid criticisms? Instead of being offended, maybe take the time and learn from it. At the end of the day, if you want an extremely limited OS that spies on you, it’s your life… but maybe you should reconsider participating in a Linux sublem.
Calling anybody a pleb means everything you say is discounted. You have an arrogance that’s wildly unhinged.
I wish you luck, o wise patrician. May the glory of Rome shine forever upon you.
Try something simple in Windows like setting custom keyboard shortcuts… insanely frustrating.
You can set macro’s under Mouse and Keyboard center (though only in win11, welcome to 1995 Microsoft!) You can set a keyboard shortcut for a program under a shortcut’s properties (since at least a couple of editions ago).
Can you change Alt+tab and other defaults?
@somedaysoon @Cypher MS powertools allows some of those stuff, though not nearly as well. AHK is every easy to setup and get into even compared to some of the linux equivalents.
It goes either ways and one needs to find the way to make it work on either system. Often she exact same approach might not work in both.
it is that they don’t have the time and energy to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks.
Nobody wants to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks, but that’s exactly the reason why I almost exclusively use linux and get incredibly annoyed when I have to use windows (for business reasons)…
Sure, linux based systems often take up more time until you find the right system for your needs and for your hardware, you will have some effort to find alternatives to some software that you might be used to and depending on what software you need, linux just won’t be an option for you, but once that everything is set up, at least in my personal experience, things run a lot more consistently and expectedly in my personal experience.
Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just lucky, but I have been using linux exclusively for about 3 years now on a desktop, multiple laptops and obviously servers. Have I experienced any issues? Yes, there were small issues from time to time, but nothing that I would not have with windows. But in terms of day to day operations and performing basic tasks, linux has been the superior user experience for me without a doubt.
I used to believe that linux is great for servers, and sucks for desktops and laptops, but ever since I made the switch, I have completely changed my mind. I still use windows because I have to, but the most annoying part of switching to linux was that windows has become even more annoying to use.
This. I get a wild hair every couple years to daily drive Linux and there’s always something small but crucial that breaks within a day or so and there’s no way for me, a relative novice, to fix it.
Example: I picked up a old ThinkPad on ebay last year. I put Ubuntu on it and after a day or two the wifi just stops working. No error messages. Nothing. I tried digging into the settings via ui with no luck. Googling didn’t help because I couldn’t tell what was helpful, unhelpful, or would have been helpful but is five years out of date.
After a few days of trying to make it work, I just threw on windows and haven’t had any issues since.
I’ve always had the opposite experience, especially with hardware like older thinkpads. Trying to use windows, everything runs so slowly, I have to try to find the right wifi and sound drivers from the manufacturers website, and make sure you get the right driver version that works with Windows 10. Then windows update runs and overwrites your drivers with Microsoft drivers that don’t work.
Installing Ubuntu, everything works straight out of the box, don’t need to go hunting all over the internet for installer packages.
I have to try to find the right wifi and sound drivers from the manufacturers website, and make sure you get the right driver version that works with Windows 10.
Meanwhile these drivers don’t even exist for Linux
I’m pretty sure every thinkpad uses network adapters with linux drivers.
Sure, and ThinkPads make up like 1% of computing devices.
Fair, but the person above you was talking about ThinkPads… Laptops with network adapters that have no Linux drivers are very rare. In the large majority of cases network adapters have drivers in the kernel, and almost all of the rest have drivers that need to be installed after. I used to work at a PC shop where I would very often use a Linux live CD to test hardware if Windows was having issues that seemed to be driver related. 90% of the hardware we worked on were laptops, so I booted Linux on a lot of them. There was never a laptop that didn’t work out of the box on Linux. They certainly exist, but they are not as common as you think they are.
Whenever I’ve used an old Thinkpad with windows on it, it has been slow to the point of being unusable. Linux is much better in this regard, let alone after a few years of use.
Except can’t trust corporate clowns to keep shit working… Once they they obtain market share, they start doing weird things, recent example win11 where they make it less useable just because fuck plebs.
Yeah it everyone has a different line of what’s too far. Just like reddit, many knew things were getting bad but didn’t actually leave until recently. No doubt Microsoft will eventually piss me off enough to switch but for now I barely use my pc as is so it’s not worth the hassle.
Good news! Sh.itjust.works!
Shit ain’t working
Ahahahaha
I’ve resorted to just creating accounts for other people for them, updating the avatar and profile, following people and hashtags that might interest them, and then just handing them the login info.
Remember that Android is Linux-based – so keeping that in mind, a massive amount of normal users use Linux on a daily basis.
I think the key is, operating systems are meant to exist in the background. If it’s working well, you don’t think about it at all.
This exactly. Services should always be background. The OS is a service, not a goal.
Eh, I dont mean to be pedantic, but OS shouldnt be a service. Its should be a product.
Windows 11 is what happens when you make an OS a service… and no one wants that.
I’d argue that a product with updates is indistinguishable from a service.
An OS as a service does nothing but turn you, and your data and habits, into the product.
Remember that Android is Linux-based
People keep saying this without understanding that Android was forked with several billion dollars in funding and aimed squarely at “normal” users, and had a decade of development since then.
Most “Linux” OSes really don’t bother with this. How many times has someone sent you into the Android terminal to fix a problem? Literally never. It doesn’t even exist without connecting a PC. Because you don’t need it.
He is clearly talking about the problems with Linux the OS, i.e. GNU/Linux, not with Linux the kernel, which is what Android is based on. So Android users don’t count as Linux OS users. Besides that, I’ve been using Debian+KDE for over a decade as a daily driver and never had any such issues, It’s hard for me to remember a single issue of importance.
This is always a hilarious conversation because the diehard Linux users will lie up and down about how Linux has no problems and it’s just you that’s too dumb to understand how to use it.
Linux user here, also once upon a time a Windows admin. I think the most difficult thing for most users is not that Linux is difficult, but that it is different.
Take Pop_OS for example. For the average “I check email and surf the web” user, it works wonderfully. But most people grew on Windows or Mac so its just not what they’re used to. Linux is kind of the stick shift to Windows and Mac’s automatic transmission… its not hard to learn, but most folk don’t choose to make the effort because they don’t need to.
The following sums up my experience with Linux thus far: “It’s never been easier for the newb to jump right in, but heavens help them if they ever stray from the straight path”.
There’s been a lot of effort to make things easier for a newb (used to Windows and all that shit) to do what they need to do in most cases. There’s been all sorts of GUI-based stuff that means for the ‘average’ user, there’s really no need for them to interact with the command line. That’s all well and good until you need to do something that wasn’t accounted for by the devs or contributors.
All of a sudden, you’d have not only to use the command line, you may also have to consult one of the following:
- Well-meaning, easy to understand, but ultimately unhelpfully shallow help pages (looking at you, Libre Office), or the opposite: deep, dense, and confusing (Arch) Wiki pages.
- One of the myriads of forum pages each telling the user to RTFM, “program the damned thing yourself”, “go back to Windows”, all of the above, or something else that delivers the same unhelpful message.
- Ultra-dense and technical man pages of a command that might possibly be of help.
And that’s already assuming you’ve got a good idea of what the problem was, or what it is that you are to do. Trouble-shooting is another thing entirely. While it’s true that Linux has tons of ways to make troubleshooting a lot easier, such as logs, reading through them is a skill a lot of us don’t have, and can’t be expected of some newb coming from Windows.
To be fair to Linux though, 90% of the time, things are well and good. 9% of the time, there’s a problem here and there, but you’re able to resolve it with a little bit of (online) help, despite how aggravating some of that “help” might be. 1% of the time, however, Linux will really test your patience, tolerance, and overall character.
Unfortunately, it’s that 10% that gives Linux its “hard to use” reputation, and the 1% gives enough scary stories for people to share.
This is all fair complaints about Linux, but I don’t really feel like windows is much better. I’ve had windows break on me or family members a lot over the years. Sure I’ve had some Linux distros break with an update and fail to boot (namely Manjaro), but windows has broken itself with updates dozens of times for me. The whole reason I started using Linux at all was because windows was breaking so often on my computer that I needed to try Linux to make sure my hardware wasn’t defective.
You talk about having to fall back on the command line in Linux, but that’s also true on windows without 3rd party software. I’ve had to use windows command line utilities to fix drives with messed up partitions and to try to repair my windows install after windows update broke it. A couple weeks ago I had to help a friend on windows do checksums using the windows command line because windows doesn’t support that through the gui. Meanwhile dolphin on KDE let’s you do checksums in the gui from the file properties screen.
I honestly feel like Linux isn’t really that much harder or more prone to breaking than windows, people just have less experience with it. The smaller user base means there’s a lot less help available online as well.
Same! What pushed me to Ubuntu was that Windows broke like three times in major ways in the span of a few days. One time, Windows update… disappeared bootmgr.exe. Another time, Windows bug checked after a few minutes of use. Yet another time, Windows update broke the boot partition. idk if that’s exactly what happened, but point is the issues were big. How this happened in the span of like 3 days is baffling to me, considering I installed Windows from scratch each time.
I was typing an earlier version of my reply to you when it got lost in the aether. Sorry, but I forgot about this bit which I shall be putting in a separate reply.
people just have less experience with it. The smaller user base means there’s a lot less help available online as well.
I agree with this, wholeheartedly. However, I think those who use Linux are a self-selecting sort. This means, unfortunately, that the type of person who might be able to best help a “typical Linux newb coming from Windows” isn’t using Linux in the first place, or have already gone long past the point of being able to be in a mindset best suited to help.
What I just said, on the whole, isn’t exclusive to Linux and can be applied to Windows as well (maybe except the “go back to Windows” mantra, and possibly the RTFM culture of Linux—but then again, the general refrain of LMGTFY is common enough for one to argue that a similar complaint exists in Windows as well).
Having to fall back to the command-line, however, is generally a rare experience in Windows. I personally never have had any need to. However, that’s mostly because I was never a power user in Windows, and I’ve never had any experience like having to fix messed-up partitions. Windows have its own set of problems too, like the registry system.
Whatever my complaints about Linux might be, it doesn’t make Windows any better. I am still daily-driving Linux for a reason (or several).
The 90%, 10% and 1% thing I said at the end applies to Windows as well. It is a general rule of thumb I’ve mentioned to highlight that, the scary things oft-talked about Linux are a small percentage of what a user might encounter. And it’s even less, probably non-existent, if you stick to the “straight and narrow.”
People hate Linux because shows they aren’t computer experts, they’re just Windows power users.
Yeah, but you can’t expect every person using a computer to be a computer expert. In fact, you should expect most of us not to be.
Man 100%. If anyone wants to be a computer expert and is struggling, just stick with it and keep learning. You have to learn through experimentation and effort!
It’s just an attitude thing that some people’s egos are hurt when Linux confuses them.
I’m a devops engineer, so I understand Linux well. I actually used exclusively Linux all throughout university.
Linux works just as good as windows for 98% of my uses cases. And for the 2% that it doesnt, I can probably figure out how to get it to work or an alternative.
But honestly, I usually just don’t want to anymore. After working 8 hours, I’m very seldom in the mood to do more debugging, so I switch to Windows more and more frequently.
If this is my experience as someone who understands it, most normies will just fuck off the moment the first program they want to run doesn’t.
I think I am more than happy with the os. The bummer is that many of the alternative softwares do not have feature parity. The more you try to mimic the Windows workflow, the more you’ll burnout with minimal results. I’ve come to terms with it and just run a vm in gnome boxes for ms office and tableau and other stuff. However, many a times if I want something that could be done programmatically I’d definitely try a cli solution, so that cant be the same pro for everyone.
That’s exactly my experience.
I’ve been doing Linux since the early days when Slackware fitted a “few” floppy disks and you had to configure the low level CRT display timings on a text file to get X-windows to work, and through my career have used Linux abundantly, at some point even designing distributed high performance software systems on top of it for Investment Banks.
Nowadays I just don’t have the patience to solve stupid problems that are only there because some moron decided that THEY are the ones that after 2 bloody decades of it working fine trully have the perfect way (the kind of dunning-krugger level software design expertise which is “oh so common” at the mid-point of one’s software development career and regularly produces amongst others “yet another programming language were all the old lessons about efficiency of the whole software development cycle and maintenability have been forgotten”) for something that’s been done well enough for years, and decided to reinvent it, so now instead of one well integrated, well documented solution there are these pieces of masturbatory-“brilliance” barelly fitting together with documentation that doesn’t even match it properly.
Just recently I got a ton of headaches merely getting language and keyboard configuration working properly in Armbian because there was zero explanation associated with the choices and their implications, thousands of combinations (99.99% of which are not used or even exists) of keyboard configurations were ordered alphabetically on almost-arbitrary names across 2 tables, with no emphasis on “commonly used” (clearly every user is supposed to be an expert on the ins and outs of keyboard layouts) and there were multiple tools, most of which didn’t work (some immediatelly due to missing directories, others failing after a couple of minutes, others only affecting X) and whatever documentation was there (online and offline) didn’t actually match.
(It’s funny how the “genious” never seems to extend to creating good documentation or even proper integration testing)
Don’t get me wrong: I see Software Architecture-level rookie mistakes all the time in the design of software systems, frameworks and libraries in the for-profit sector (“Hi Google!!!”), but they seem to actually more frequent in Open Source because the barrier for entry for reinventing the wheel (again!) is often just convincing a handful of people with an equally low level of expertise.
(anyways, rant over)
I work in devops as well and while Windows is easier and more convenient for many things, some processing-heavy tasks are better left to Linux. Doing generative AI stuff, for example, I don’t want to be loading a bulky OS on top of the task at hand.
I thought about dual booting, but it would make multitasking nearly impossible. So, instead, I’m using Linux whenever possible and I have a Windows VM I can enter at a moment’s notice or hibernate if I need the resources. And then there’s the MacBook, but we don’t talk about the MacBook.
My experience is the opposite but the same. I have been a sysadmin for 15 years in mostly Windows and Microsoft only. All my work tools are in Windows.
I actually boot to Linux when I’m not supposed to work since otherwise I just have anxiety or dread and then I’ll open teams, outlook, ncentral, prtg…
Also why I enjoy my switch. Can’t really do projects on it like I can on Linux, but I also am switched off from work.
That’s part of why I don’t use Linux, outside of my steamdeck which I rarely go out of game mode so doesn’t even count, I just want my shit to work and not worry about compatibility or “figuring it out” I feel like had I used it at a younger age I’d be more fine with it but I just can’t be bothered tbh.
There’s a lot of little things to you need to learn, that you don’t learn until actually messing around with in Linux which absolutely make or break your experience with Linux, and that Linux users will mock you for asking about.
For a lot of people windows just works how they want it, so when they’re convinced to switch by a friend/family member/youtuber they now have to relearn what was incredibly easy for them, which absolutely will cause frustrations regardless.
And a lot of Linux dudes get really defensive and elitist when you ask them to explain or help, like screaming that you’re afraid of the command line when you’ve just never needed to use it before. So the initial learning curve is rough, to het more or less what you had before(For an avg user)
Like. I’m sorry, but having an issue keeping you from using your pc, and only getting advice to read the documentation of the distro, when you could have just kept windows, is going to frustrate people
I’ve been exclusively using Linux for almost a decade now. I started in high school when the computer we had at home was painfully slow with Windows. At start, it did seem a bit hard to wrap my head around. I was a kid, and there was no one who used Linux to teach me. I guess the installation etc. are much simpler nowadays. And the online spaces are much less toxic.
Even after all that, the main reason, I believe, is that it’s different. If someone is using a stable distro like Debian, and just wants to do what 90% of people do (i.e. browsing, looking at documents media etc.), Linux isn’t really a hassle. The installation process might be daunting to some people. But after that, they don’t need to open a terminal ever if they don’t want to. My sister is basically tech illiterate, and she’s been running Mint for a few years now. Never heard any complaints. Only issue she had was when she deleted her
.configfolder. But I had set up a script that backed up dotfiles to her external drive, so it was easily fixable.People get frustrated because whenever something happens on Linux, and they go online, they see all these walls of text that they need to read, and commands they need to run. But they forget that on Windows and Macs, that isn’t even an option. Most of the time, you need to reset your system. Or, in the case of Macs, get it replaced. The frustration that people experience is caused by conditioning. They accept the inconveniences of Windows and Macs because they grew up with it. But since Linux is new to them, the shortcomings stick out much more.
TL;DR: For the average user, the OS doesn’t matter (they should probably still use Linux for increased privacy). For the power user, unless some specific applications they need are missing, Linux is always the best choice. The frustration is mostly due to conditioning.
If someone is using a stable distro like Debian, and just wants to do what 90% of people do (i.e. browsing, looking at documents media etc.), Linux isn’t really a hassle.
I see this point repeated a lot, it’s just not true.
For example sudo apt upgrade is broken currently on the debian live images.
Imagine you tell someone “if you want stable, go debian” they hear it and install it and literally first apt update upgrade it’s borked.
There isnt a distro that isnt a hassle, that doesnt exist.
Why would you be running apt upgrade on live images?
I’m confused about this question.
If you install debian through the live image. The apt upgrade of your installation will come out of the box broken.
I haven’t seen anyone mention this problem, and I’ve recently installed Debian and didn’t have this problem.
I linked it elsewhere. It’s a problem if you install from the live image. If you want I could find the link again for ya.
I ended up finding it after replying. Definitely an unfortunate issue, but the replies say it is fixed and the updated ISO will not have it.
Why is that an issue for a desktop user?
Because you can’t update your system at all. How’s that not a problem?
… from a live environment. Thats not a problem because almost no one does that, and certainly not a problem because no one relies on updating a live environment for their desktop usage.
That’s not it. If you install on your hardware with the live image. Apt upgrade is broken. On your hardware. Not on the live image.
Ah, well that is a serious issue! I’ve never experienced a bug even close to that bad on distros with a reputation of being less stable than Debian, so that surprises me.
Have at look at this: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
I found this to be invaluable when I was borking stuff all the time.
the year of Linux ladies and gentlemen
My first experience with linux was Ubuntu. Sue me, it was listed under most “most user friendly distro” listicles when I wasn’t smart enough to realize those were mostly marketing.
It worked fine for my purposes, though it took getting used to, but it would wake itself up from sleep after a few minutes. I would have to shut it off at night so that I wouldn’t wake up in a panic as an eerie light emanated through the room from my closed laptop. I did my best searching for the problem, but could never find a solution that worked; in retrospect, I probably just didn’t have the language to adequately describe the problem.
Nothing about the GUI was well-documented to the degree that CLI apps were. If I needed to make any changes, there would be like one grainy video on youtube that showed what apps to open and buttons to click and failed to solve my problem, but a dozen Stack Exchange articles telling me exactly what to do via the terminal.
I remember going off on some friends online when they tried to convince me Linux and the terminal were superior. I ranted about how this stupid sleep issue was indicative of larger, more annoying problems that drove potential users away. I raged about how hostile to users this esoteric nerds-only UX is. I cried about Windows could be better for everyone if the most computer-adept people would stop jumping ship for mediocre OSes.
I met another friend who used Arch (btw) within a year from that hissy fit, and she fixed my laptop within minutes. Using a CLI app nonetheless. I grumbled angrily to myself.
A few years later and everyone’s home all the time for some reason, and I get the wild idea that I’m going to be a(n ethical) hacker for whatever reason. I then proceeded to install Kali on a VM and the rest is history.
The point being that some people labor under the misguided belief that technology should conform to the users, and because we were mostly raised on Windows or Mac, we develop the misconception that those interfaces are “intuitive” (solely because we learned them during the best time in our life to pick up new skills). Then you try to move to linux for whatever reason and everything works differently and the process is jarring and noticeably requires the user conforming to the technology–i.e. changing bad habits learned from other OSes to fit the new one. The lucky few of us go on to learn many other OSes and start to see beyond the specifics to the abstract ideas similar to all of them, then it doesn’t matter if you have to work with iOS or TempleOS, you understand the basics of how it all fits together.
TL;DR Category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive
My Category theorist friend is always trying to explain how I should try to interpret all my research using category theory instead.
Can you explain how category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive? 😅
Category Theory is an attempt to understand all of math (including conputer science) as simply different instances of abstract conceprs, called categories. The way I’ve managed to understand OSes as abstract systems rather than entirely unique beasts is how I imagine category theorists must see all of computer science
It’s a freeing paradigm shift once you realize that your understanding is broad enough that you can transfer your knowledge from one OS to another, therefore the joke is that since Category Theorists have the broadest knowledge, they must deal with the least amount of frustrations learning a new system
For most people computers are just the same as cars. People want a car that will drive them from place to place, are easy to refuel, easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for anything difficult or that requires specialized knowledge. Same for computers. Most people want a computer to navigate the web, install the apps they are used to and that their friends use, is easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for any involved work.
Even the friendliest of Linux distro don’t check all those boxes. You cant get ready support from a repair shop, many of the apps are different or function differently, and it doesn’t receive all the same love and attention from major third party developers as Windows does.
Most people could learn to use Linux; it’s not that hard. Most people could learn to change their own oil. But for most people, it’s not worth it. For most people it’s not the journey, it’s the destination and cars and computers are just tools to get there.
Honestly, I wouldn’t mind being more knowledgeable about cars. I’m just afraid to touch anything, because I figure I’ll break it and incur a massive bill to replace whatever part I broke. PC operating systems carry no such risk; you can give up on whatever you’re trying and reinstall your old OS at any time without paying anyone anything.
Even PC hardware isn’t that risky to tinker with. It’s an order of magnitude cheaper than a car; lots of people have old, obsolete, but perfectly functional PCs lying around that they’d like taken off their hands; most components are within easy reach; and the component that isn’t within easy reach (the power supply unit) is pretty tough to break.
To expand on this metaphor:
Windows and Macs are like automatic cars, for all the people who just use it to get to a destination, it’s the obvious and easiest option.
However, some people want manuals. Maybe they want it to race in the car (coding, resource intensive tasks, speed of computer, etc.). Maybe they just like the feel of a manual. Maybe they want to be able to control when the gears change more. Maybe they want to optimize the car for just one purpose. There are many reasons people might want a manual instead.
To use your car analogy, using Windows is like using a car that has the hood welded shut and can only be opened with a special key that only the auto manufacturer has.
You can’t repair it yourself. You can’t just take it to any expert to get it fixed. Only the manufacturer can fix it, because the source code (or car hood) is closed.
That’s not really a fair analogy, Windows isn’t that locked down. It’s more like the hood is open and for general maintenance you’re fine, but all the parts are proprietary so if something breaks, you can only go to one manufacturer who controls the entire supply chain for that part. However, the parts are generally okay quality so for most people who just drive A to B, they’re unlikely to encounter too many issues.
Linux is a kit car. You can pretty much build it yourself or have one preassembled but either way you can rip any part of it out and replace any component with anything you like, entirely within your control. Most people wouldn’t have the competency to build one themselves because most people don’t really know how cars work but for those that do, it’s the dream.
I genuinely don’t believe that one approach is better than another, but I do believe that the majority of folks out there want something that “just works” and Linux is usually not that option. Not on the desktop.
What about Ubuntu? Pop OS?
Most of the distros I’ve tried “just work”. It connects to my wifi, I can go on websites, I can read my email. What are you trying to do that isn’t working?
You are pretty lucky if you haven’t experienced any issues. For most people thogh spots are gonna be:
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Gaming. While a lot of games work perfectly a lot also don’t work (mainly if they have a
kernel level anticheatrootkit) -
Nvidia. Do i have to say any more?
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Wifi. Often wifi cards just don’t work or work very poorly.
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Laptop specific features. Stuff like a MUX switch, ambient light sensors and fingerprint scanners very often have no drivers for linux.
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We need the equivalent of what Android is for phones, but for the desktop. A preinstalled, very opinionated OS that completely eliminates issues 2-4 and is supported by a major corp. We need someone like Valve to take things a tiny step beyond some combination of a Chrome book and the Steam Deck.
Dell had a Linux line some years ago where everything worked out of the box, never got the popularity needed to keep it alive.
System76 has Pop!_OS so that they can provide great out of the box experience with their computers, but they are not as big as other vendors.
A good way to really get a product like that to mass market is to make it available in general stores (Walmart, Best Buy, Etc.), the problem is that most of those customers will not understand why their system is so different and they cannot install that MS Office 2003 they have always used, or that Norton Antivirus that their cousin’s son recommended to them 10 years ago that was working fine on their old computer.
And then you have the younger generations that use every other device but a computer. They’d rather do all their school and college work on their phones and tablets rather than open a laptop, if they even know how to use a computer (you’d be surprised how many don’t even know how to use a computer).
I hate myself for saying this, but the only way forward is to treat PCs like a highly moddable console. They need to come with some “exclusive” software that only makes its way to other platforms at a later date. They also need to be built for a specific purpose (e.g. media centre, gaming) with the expectation that most people won’t want to leave the comfort zone.
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It’s been more than a couple years since Ive tried using Linux (back when I used it as my primary os).
My experience have been mostly with ubuntu-based OSes like Mint. First laptop I installed Linux on, the audio didn’t just work. It didn’t work at all for a while, despite trying many fixes. Otherwise it actually did work decently well. On my next laptop, it would just one day no longer boot or login for some reason or another and I’d just have to do a clean install because I didn’t know how to fix it. That happened maybe every other month? On both laptops, the two-finger scroll behavior had settings to change how it behaved in the default installed software, but on Linux it was always finicky getting it to work the way I wanted.
Also installing things is a lot more annoying for stuff that require command line vs just clicking it and telling it to install.
If you want a fair comparison between Windows, MacOS and Linux then I think its wrong to compare distros that don’t come pre-installed when you buy your device.
Not one single MacBook owner had to install their OS and configure drivers etc. None of my family, friends or coworkers had to install Windows on any of their PCs (I know that some people do but not in any of my social circles).
Consider Pop_OS from System76 or Tuxedo OS from Tuxedo Computers, they have identical user experiences as Mac or PC:
Step 1: Buy computer Step 2: Turn on Step 3: Answer some one time setup questions Step 4: Get on with your life
If you have the opportunity to build your own PC and fresh install an OS from scratch then when you come across a problem that you don’t have experience with you will be understandably frustrated.
Specifically Windows has the advantage that hardware manufactures always make drivers for Windows. If your hardware is supported then the Linux OS installation is not very different, but when the hardware is not plug-and-play then configuring Linux becomes its own kind of frustration torture.
TL;DR Get your computer with the OS already installed, then Linux is no more frustrating than a Mac or PC. Install Linux yourself and your mileage may vary.
There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command
I’m not sure what you were doing to break apt, but it was probably something pretty funky (or at least adding a bunch of repos without really thinking about it).
The thing with Linux is that it doesn’t stop you doing stupid shit as much as Windows. If you know what you’re doing, that’s a really good thing. It’s really annoying when your OS stops you doing something for your own protection if you know that you’re not going to break anything. Simple example: Windows locks any file that’s open, Linux doesn’t. That’s really convenient, but you can screw things up badly if you’re not careful.
If you’re a beginner, I would suggest sticking to the GUI, i.e. control panels, software installed, etc. in Ubuntu. If you ever go into command line, be really careful, and understand what you’re doing. Definitely do not copy and paste commands you find online without understanding them reasonably well. Ubuntu puts in pretty good protections in its graphical tools. You’ll be able to do whatever you need to do, but shouldn’t break anything. Over time, you’ll pick up some knowledge and be able to do more in the command line (etc.) without breaking things.
I’ll shout out chatGPT for being a huge help explaining Linux commands or how to do certain things on Linux. If you have a guide you are following chatGPT will do a great job explaining the steps if you don’t understand.
That might explain why so many have their systems “breaking over time”. 🤭
