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.
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.
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.
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 l.
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, 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? Because I’m talking about the ability to fully customize all keyboard shortcuts. I can make my laptop sing for you without lifting my hands from the keyboard, and anytime I boot into Windows I feel like I’m weighted down with 80lb sandbags.
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.
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.
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.
Initial setup can be hard, and then, because GNU/Linux lets you do whatever you want, It’s not hard to bork the system if you’re using commands you don’t understand. The biggest realization for me was that if I want a stable system, I can’t expect to experiment with it / customize it to the nth degree unless I have a robust rollback / recovery solution like timeshift in place. Feeling very empowered after leaving windows, I have destroyed many systems, but truly, if you set up your system and then leave it alone, these days it’s not difficult to have a good experience.
But yea, you’re totally right: the userbase can be toxic AF, and there’s no one place you can go to learn the basics you really ought to know.
Initial setup can be hard, and then, because GNU/Linux lets you do whatever you want, It’s not hard to bork the system if you’re using commands you don’t understand.
But it borks itself. It doesn’t require my assistance.
Nope, it doesn’t. It always requires human assistance or random hardware failure. It’s either the user, the distro, package maintainer or upstream fucking up.
Personally I blame half on users for picking the wrong distro(not suited for beginners) and half on the linux community giving poor advice(use the terminal). Not everyone has the time or inclination to become a power user and if people wouldn’t be so thickheaded and recommending the same problematic distros over and over to these people it wouldn’t be such a mess.
I have a 80 year old neighbour whose old windows laptop was a mess and who was open to trying a new OS(because he couldn’t operate windows either anyway). I setup a MicroOS system for him, put a taskbar extension on it and showed him how to install software from gnome-software(which only has flatpaks). ZERO problems in half a year. He doesn’t have to do anything nor learn anything. He happily installed some card games, reads the few websites he follows and that’s it.
Nope, it doesn’t.
Yep…it does.
It’s either the user, the distro, package maintainer or upstream fucking up.
Yes that’s what I’m referring to.
So it’s people borking it and not the “system itself”. You have control over which people are involved in the software on your system ne it affects the likelihood of it ending up borked.
Agreed, you get to pick between a system that empowers you to do whatever you like, or an unborkable system. If you need something that won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot, you ought to be using an immutable distro.
For ages I blamed GNU/Linux for breaking when I was unknowingly causing issues. These days, I don’t fix what isn’t broken, and if I can’t help myself, I make sure I understand what I’m doing, write down any changes I make, and ensure I have a snapshot ready in case things don’t work out.
GNU/Linux may not exclusively be for advanced users anymore, but system customization still is.
Agreed, you get to pick between a system that empowers you to do whatever you like, or an unborkable system.
Yeah that’s not true. There is no such thing as an “unborkable” system. There are, however, systems that aren’t often borked by their developers, and systems that are easy or intuitive to fix when they do become borked, or systems that quickly ship a fix when they do become “borked” (this is Windows BTW).
The implication that any “borked” Linux install was somehow self-inflicted by the user is ridiculous.
No, no OS “borks” itself. You just didn
t realise what you did and why it borked your system in the end. This happens to Windows-Users too. I ended up reinstalling so many Windows machines and the user always told me they didnt do anything. I use Linux for about three years now and had to reinstall several times, because I made mistakes I couldn`t identify as mistakes at that moment. Sometimes Linux is complicated and you have to search for a solution. If you would have used Linux your whole life an switched to Windows, your experience would be very similar.I can’t agree as it happened to me quite a few times. The system updates, some things don’t work anymore. I turn off the computer, reboot it the next day and it works. All of that without doing anything myself.
Still, I love Linux and don’t picture myself going back to windows for my home computer. I just think we shouldn’t say Linux is perfect and the rest is shit.
Hey, the other day I set up a fresh Arch install in like an hour; it was easy as hell with Arch Installer in its current state. But that’s me - I’ve been running Linux for a while, so i might be a bit out of touch with what new folks have issues with.
That said, I think a lot of problems new users have with Linux really do come down to foolish mistakes, an unwillingness to read manuals, expecting Linux to work like Windows/Mac, or a combination of the above.
Not all problems, but many.Setting is up is always easy. Having it do what you need it to, day in and day out, without fail, is the hard part.
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.
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)
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.
the year of Linux ladies and gentlemen
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.
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
The command line is always going to turn people away from Linux. I’ve only had to use the command line to fix a windows issue once in the past 10 years while I regularly have to use it every time I have to work with Linux.
People like convenience and will almost always go with the more convenient option even if it’s not the best option.
Until the majority of issues can be solved using point and click (and help forums show that method over command line), Linux will always lag behind Mac and Windows.
Have at look at this: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
I found this to be invaluable when I was borking stuff all the time.
Every software generates errors, problems, and weird bullshit. The main difference I see in this regard, is that Linux usually explicitly tells you what’s wrong, and there is always at least couple of ways to deal with it. You have a range of solutions, you have paths to understand and fix the problem, or at least copy enough random commands from StackOverflow to either fix it or break it completely.
With other OS you kind of stuck. Either your problem has a solution someone already thought of, or there is nothing to be done.
As an example, my colleague and me bought the same bluetooth headset, and it didn’t work out of the box neither with his windows machine, nor with my Linux. He did the usual reinstall drivers - reboot - reconnect - google shit routine, didn’t find a solution, and returned the headset. I did my routine, found the patch for bt-pipewire app, applied it and it finally worked. Later he said “your Linux is stupid, you always have to do some complicated stuff with it, and my windows just works”, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of music I was enjoying with my new working headset.When I was a child we had basic computer literacy classes in elementary school. They showed you how to get around Windows and use computers a bit. Somehow, I doubt that those kinds of classes ever taught Linux.
But the real problem I think is that Linux distros also never had Microsoft’s budget to develop, assemble, test, and release the operating system + software suite. The fact that Linux is as good as it is in spite of that is really something special.
This is the most truthful answer. People learn and use System X all their life, its no wonder when a different System, let’s say System Y is presented, they have difficulties. System X!=System Y, never did.
Lots of things don’t have a GUI, if we expect users to eat up the CLI, the year of the Linux desktop will never come.
Idk if this is really true, I don’t what situations you need to use the command line in Ubuntu or Fedora that would affect more than 10% of users max. You install packages through the store, wifi can be managed through the gui, external drives mount automatically. Imo this should cover the use case for almost everyone.
Things you can’t do with a GUI:
- you can’t manage advanced power management profiles
- you can’t manage devices
- you can’t manage services
- you can’t manage firewall in GNOME
- Device Security is almost useless
- There’s no versioned backup system that does both user files & system snapshots integrated into the Desktop Environment and the DE settings app.
- There’s no DCONF equivalent for KDE (that I know of), the need for DCONF shouldn’t even exist.
- No integrated, easy to use & performant remote desktop software (VNC is not enough, RDP in GNOME just doesn’t work, Sunshine is a pain to setup)
I’m an Arch user, so I’ll talk about it below:
- There’s no real GUI for Pacman, Pamac is known for horrible stuff. Alternatives are very inferior.
- There’s no GUI for system updates integrated into the settings app
3rd party crap:
- Nvidia (nuff said)
- Flatpak (convenient, but it’s still a mess)
Props to:
- AMD, I love you guys.
The firewall thing is definitely a major oversight.
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Can you explain how category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive? 😅
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In my experience, users get frustrated with Linux because they think they know a lot about computers, but in reality just know a lot about Windows. These people are unwilling to learn new workflows and OS concepts, so they get frustrated and give up. Of course, this isn’t to say Linux can’t be genuinely frustrating, because it 100% can be, but I think Linux and Windows are equally frustrating if you know them both well.
It’s hard to say why your experience was frustrating without many more details.
Ubuntu LTS almost never does the things described without user intervention. E.g. breaking over time, apt not working. The most important thing I learned about Linux and Ubuntu was that I was breaking it. Once I drilled that into my head and began learning what not to do, it stopped breaking over time. My main system hasn’t been reinstalled since 2016. And that’s only because I was bored and reinstalled it at the time. Friends have Ubuntu LTS systems that they’ve had woking for over a decade, moved over several hardware configs during that time.
With that I have this advice for the newer users:
- Use Ubuntu LTS. Almost everything else has an extra level of complexity or several that aren’t obvious when you first start using them. Yes even user-friendly Ubuntu derivatives. Ubuntu LTS has an extremely large test base so defects are few. It’s also stable so the number of defects generally declines over time for a given release.
- Use the canonical sources of information for Ubuntu. Askubuntu.com, the Ubuntu wiki, the Ubuntu forums, man pages. The Debian wiki can be useful too. Arch’es wiki becomes useful when you begin to know what you’re doing so you can translate what’s there to Ubuntu.
- Don’t use YouTube for that or random sites that have SEOd themselves to the top of Google. Or ChatGPT.
- The first question you should ask when something breaks is “What did I do wrong?”. Trace your steps. Answer it. Fix it and don’t do it again. E.g. something that should work without sudo doesn’t, so you run it with sudo. A true classic.
I know many here won’t like me suggesting Ubuntu, but the reality is that throwing new users elsewhere is often a disservice to them. Even Debian, which I use too. The proliferation of “Ubuntu bad” across the newer slivers of the community has been just “bad” for those new users. There’s a lot of us that can help support new users but we can’t do that in places where the “Just try X distro instead” comments outnumber us 10 to 1. In addition there’s so much misinformation thrown around as fact that we just can’t compete. The D-K level is too damn high.jpg
Source: I’ve used Linux for 19-years and professionally since 2012, for more use cases than I can count.
i use arch btw, but have my upvote for “canonical sources of information”
Yeah, to sum up my experience as a Linux and Ubuntu user for 10 years in 2 short sentences:
With Windows I’m fighting against my computer and Microsoft’s bullshittery.
With Linux I’m fighting against my own incompetence.
And the second is just a matter of reading and experience which tend to increase with use over time. For me the result is these days my OS experience is boring AF. The good kind of boring.
I think it is a mix of closed mindedness and unfair metrics.
Like no one would say that Windows sucks because it cannot run Final Cut Pro, but that standard gets put on Linux all the time.
As far as intuitive that has to do with context. Going from Windows to macOS or in reverse is also going to take some getting used to.
