Brittle is really the only way I can describe it. It's the only platform where simply installing something has rendered the system non-booting, there are hundreds or more of config files and often changing one will break another system. And I fully admit this might be self-inflicted, but its been my experience.

It's by no means a bad platform, but its not for me. I want a system where I need to do as little as possible to configure it, an I just want it to work. On my windows and macOS systems, I can completely wipe the machine, and be back up and running in a few hours.

This doesn't sound like any linux desktop I've used in the last ten years. Usually I pop a Mint usb in, go through the installer and come back to a system with almost all devices configured. Then it's just a matter of putting back my /home and there we are.

On a non-corporate Windows installation, that would just be the beginning, where I would be hunting for chipset drivers, graphics drivers, HID drivers, network drivers and any other devices I need, each needing separate hands-on installation.

Thank goodness that there's Ninite available now, otherwise all the basic apps that make up a Windows install would then still be another few hours of manual downloading and installation. And then there's restoration of your old Users directory, which is still a fraught process if you don't have a pretty good understanding of windows.

> On a non-corporate Windows installation, that would just be the beginning, where I would be hunting for chipset drivers, graphics drivers, HID drivers, network drivers and any other devices I need, each needing separate hands-on installation.

You haven't installed Windows in a decade.

Ten days ago, in fact, which is why I feel so strongly about this. If your hardware had drivers included on disk, great! If not, at best you'll get generic drivers that won't give you full hardware support.

Some devices that worked out of the box on Linux but required drivers on windows, just off the top of my head: Bluetooth USB dongle. USB wifi module. Logitech webcam. Focusrite audio interface. HP printer (actually this one required firmware on Linux too, so that's a draw). XBox 360 controller (required a driver on Windows 8.1. Maybe that's changed in the last few months with windows 10).

> Bluetooth USB dongle

I admittedly don't use Bluetooth and every time I've tried it's been a horrible experience.

> USB wifi module.

Mine works fine, no driver download.

> Logitech webcam.

Mine works fine, no driver download.

> Focusrite audio interface.

I don't have one.

> HP printer (actually this one required firmware on Linux too, so that's a draw).

I haven't used a printer in probably 10 years.

> XBox 360 controller (required a driver on Windows 8.1. Maybe that's changed in the last few months with windows 10).

Nope. Not on 8.1. Not on 10. There may be an optional driver for it (may be-- I've never seen it), but it's certainly not required. This one I can firmly say you're wrong about. (Unless you have like a Chinese knock-off Xbox 360 controller-- the brand-name ones work.)

I had a great experience the other day when I plugged in my ancient CanoScan LiDE 200 scanner I bought back in the Windows 2000 days, and it worked flawlessly in Windows 10, no drivers or software needed.

Well, we've established we have differing hardware and differing requirements from our computers.

The wifi modules were a generic device with a Ralink/Mediatek chipset, and another TP-Link branded device. I don't recall the specific webcam verson, it's an older Quick series one that really should have worked.

> I had a great experience the other day when I plugged in my ancient CanoScan LiDE 200 scanner I bought back in the Windows 2000 days

In general this is a situation where Linux shines, because hardware tends to remain supported much longer as long as there's someone willing to keep the driver compiling. With TWAIN scanners it's a lot easier of course.

This scanner works out of the box on any distro with xsane too.

If you practice a bit wiping and reinstalling Linux is generally faster. Since all the configuration is done with files you can clone a repo and run a script to have all your preferences restored. Win/Mac always seems to take a few days of use before everything is back to normal.

There are a lot more foot guns in Linux, but the ease of wiping and reinstalling makes those less problematic

Good heavens, what was it that you installed!

I believe it was Docker! Through apt-get on an otherwise standard debian distro in a VM.

Never did figure out what happened, I ended up just hopping over to a debian laptop and doing it there and it worked fine.

Are you sure you followed these advises: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

maybe you would had been better off with some flavour of Ubuntu, Debian is cool and all but it's not for beginners, although if you read into it first - it's one of the most stable systems you could use.

I used debian because I'm most comfortable with it as it was our choice of server distro at the time.

Still, worrying about reading guide after guide before installing routine software from a standard repo is not something I want to do in my desktop software.

Given, my experience is a couple years out of date, but back when I tried desktop Linux, the number of applications that just flat-out crashed was shocking to me. I can use my Windows desktop for months without seeing an application crash, and when it does it's usually a game or some other app built for entertainment and not serious work.

The Linux kernel is, I'm sure, just a stable as the Windows NT kernel and all that-- but the desktop applications are fragile as heck, and I know exactly what the grandparent is talking about.

(I am not and never will be a CLI user, and I don't like tinkering with bullshit-- I want my computers to just work the first time. To pre-empt some of the obvious replies I'm likely to get.)

If you ignore the CLI then uou ignore most of the benefits of Linux in the first place.

benefits such as spending hours trawling through forums trying to find out why stuff is broken with no answer, no matter what you type into a little text box?

Depends on your definition of "responsive". SteamOS (based on Debian) is widely criticized for running games at lower frame rates than the same machine running Windows for example. X11 is a dog in many regards, harming the Linux experience. Wayland can't come soon enough.

This has nothing to do with SteamOS, X11 or Wayland. Game performance on Linux has everything to do with the quality of the port and/or game engine and hardware drivers. For example, Rocket League performance on Linux is on par with Windows while Tomb Raider has 20-30% less. In any case, there is no perceivable difference if you have a modern $200 GPU.

BTW, X11 with DRI3 has the same performance as Wayland.

SteamOS is not a desktop Linux distro, it's a distro made for running Steam and it goes through their own compositor. You can boot into a GNOME session but it's extremely barebones compared to any regular distro, even the terminal is broken by default.

Next, there are a bunch of reasons why Linux distros run games slower than Windows. Most games are made for Windows in mind in the first place, so unless someone does a whole conversion of the graphics code base to optimize it for OpenGL, DirectX ends up wrapped or translated with loss of performance. This has nothing to do with how much the desktop feels "responsive", and it completely off topic here.

Wayland is not the Messiah and is not going to provide massive performance improvement. Already confirmed with the alpha/beta out. And it brings a ton of problems too since each application cannot access information from other applications (screensavers, screen capture programs would not work in Wayland). That's why they have the XWayland project.

And X11 is not a dog. That's a lot of history in it, nad it may be bloated, but it can still perform very well - there are a few games ported from Windows that run faster on Linux (Dirt Showdown is one).