I see this argument in every thread about Linux. There's always this one magical user where everything "just works", has had 0 issues and everything's just dandy.

The funny thing is, it's not the year of the Linux desktop, but it's increasingly not the year of the Windows desktop anymore either. "Linux is shit, and Windows just works" is becoming less true as we go; so Linux being bad stops being as convincing an argument when Windows is frustrating in different ways.

I’m not going to lie and say Linux is problem free, but “barely works” is a massive exaggeration. Linux works just fine. Windows isn’t problem free. I use windows for work and it’s often a roll of the dice whether my monitors will got to sleep properly, or if windows will deign to recognize my keyboard on boot.

Linux is not a 0 issue OS, but I use roughly the same methods and reasoning to get it to workable state as I might on Windows 10 and I wouldn't say it even takes much longer. Linux is surely cheaper. The difference is, Linux can keep growing in the direction you want and choose.

What are some specific issues? Most of the stuff I hear is either hardware related or some software someone used on Windows doesn't exist on Linux. For hardware issues it depends on the hardware you're using. Since most drivers aren't open source, full Linux support often comes a while after it's released. I don't use the most recent hardware and haven't had a problem where something doesn't "just work" in years. I don't even remember the last time. Not being able to use cutting edge hardware is a price I'm willing to pay because it actually saves you money. This is also why there is a big push for open hardware.

There's 3 categories in my experience:

- Hardware support - if you don't have any special needs, it tends to work well, but as soon as you go into exotic stuff like digitizers or DP daisy chaining, GPU switching, or you are just plain unlucky, expect a world of hurt

- UI Papercuts: There's a ton of these - like extracting files in GUI is by far the least intuitive under GNOME compared to other OS's, no thumbnails, pdf reader can't be set to exactly how I like it, and made to remember it, etc. - every DE has its own niggles. The fact that every DE has its own set of apps - if using GNOME it comes with its own pdf reader, god forbid you use a third-party one, creates a strange culty feeling among app devs. Also, closed source, monetized apps are reviled, even if they solve a problem better than anything open source.

- Development experience: Ironically terrible. Binary compatibility is nonexistent, compiling stuff generally involves apt-geting (or equivalent) packages and hoping you have the right versions in the repos. Some of the stuff in the repos doesn't even work (insta-crashes), due to being built wrong.

4k + 1080 monitor on nvidia gpu is very difficult to use (wayland doesn’t support nvidia until very recently, I’m not even sure if it is merged yet). X doesn’t support per monitor dpi, and fractional scaling per monitor is buggy on most distros.

Ubuntu keeps forgetting the sound devices output I set, and I have to config it every single time the machine comes back from sleep (I’m using sound via hdmi on my monitor, I’m guessing it has something to do with the monitor sleeping in different way).

And the usual, sleep/ suspend doesn’t work. There are 50% chance of my 4k monitor doesn’t come back up after sleeping, and I have to unplug and replug it in for it to work.

Last time I tried updating Ubuntu on my parents' PC, it completely fell over because it tried to throw up a dialog on a console in the middle of the update, even though I was doing a GUI update. When I killed that (uninteractible, permanently froze the update) process, the system autorebooted in a desktopless state. Now, I knew to use `dpkg --reconfigure` from a root shell to fix this, but a layman would have been stumped and had to reinstall. 2021 at least was not the year of the Linux desktop in our household.

(Let alone the dozen of small KDE issues we've had over the years. It's really easy to get that desktop in an uninteractible state if you click the wrong things.)

>What are some specific issues?

Hardware support.

Broken UI experience.

Poorly designed subsystems. See PulseAudio.

Cognitive overload. Thousands of distros with tens of desktop environments using different toolkits. Each desktop environment has its own suite of software. So instead of having a solid set of great working apps there are tons of poorly made apps.

If you need to use Visual Studio, Photoshop, Lightroom, 3d max, Autocad, Premiere Pro, Ableton Live, Mathcad etc., you are out of luck.

>What are some specific issues?

the gnome filepicker has no thumbnails

In Gnome I cannot add certain binaries to the dock unless I edit a file and point to it. Basic feature that both MacOS and Windows support.

I guess I'm the second magical user.

I wouldn't say I've had zero issues or that everything just works, but things tend to fail less often or in less inscrutable ways than Windows or MacOS.

I have concluded that these are the same kind of people who say that they completely disable javascript in the web browser and are better off for it. A decade and a half ago, they'd tell you that they browsed with Lynx and were able to do everything without issue. It's self-delusional autistic commitment to a bad take.

I'm sure if you pressed on them on the specifics of various things, they'd explain their convoluted process of setting up various bits of hardware, that they only buy peripherals known to be compatible, their herculean efforts in making essential proprietary software work (Zoom, Teams, etc.), how they really don't need Microsoft Office (hope you never have to exchange documents with them), that they don't care for the fingerprint reader anyway, that they disabled sleep mode, etc.

>they don't care for the fingerprint reader anyway

does anyone actually use those? i've always thought they were a stupid gimmick

Most newer fingerprint reader models work well on Linux. I have a Mac and a Windows laptop for the few times something doesn't work on Linux. which is vanishingly rare these days.

Just try preinstalled Linux with support. Works for me.

Hi I'm another magical user

> "I don't have a variable refresh monitor, I don't have an HDMI surround sound setup, I don't own any game pads, the only game I play is Doom 1 from 1993."

It really depends on what your GPU manufacturer is. You can't blame Linux for the shit show that nvidia releases as drivers nowadays. Game pads works fine. You are being disingenuous.

Issues on Linux exists. But, ironically, in 2022, simple things like sound, bluetooth, or even memory management works better on Linux than on my Windows laptop where I'm never sure my headset will be detected when I plug in on a daily basis.

I genuinely don't think game pads work fine even on Windows. The XInput thing really screwed it all up.

I play the latest games on my high-end GPU I sold a kidney for, watch 4K movies, use a Sony DS4 gamepad via Bluetooth, with two 4K monitors at 200% scaling and an external USB audio interface with standalone microphone and automated compression, equalization and noise cancellation setup.

You were saying?

Somehow 7.1 HDMI audio from a home theater receiver is more exotic than external USB audio.

Didn't hear anything about a variable refresh monitor.

Gsync works really well on Linux. I was playing Elden Ring the other day with it, overall a smoother experience than Windows because of Proton optimizations: https://www.ign.com/articles/valve-explains-how-it-fixed-eld...

Not the parent comment but I'm getting random freezes on two different machines with different guts; sometimes system resumes and sometimes it requires a hard reset. Doesn't matter if its Manjaro or Linux Mint or Fedora, or which kernel I'm using.

My GPU is no longer supported and I couldn't revert to last working Nvidia drivers in Manjaro because things were changed. Not sure how the open source version is capable of rendering 3D or compatible with Lutris/Wine.

It's not the "barely works" in my case but there are issues around that are giving me a feeling I'm using Windows 98 and ME again.

I can see 3 possible things there 1) Nvidia being Nvidia If both PCs have Nvidia... Back when I had Nvidia, I had exactly same problem. Random freezes, no matter which distro/kernel, sometimes needed reset. 2) RAM issue As much as its unlikely on both machines, testing RAM doesn't hurt 3) Hard drive degradation Similar results as in 1), but buying new disk solved the issue.

One machines has mentioned Nvidia GPU, the second is ATI, RAM is also different on both machines and tested already. The issue occurs on both SSDs and HDDs.

Last time I tried Ubuntu it exclaimed I'm not "the owner" of my external hard drive and wouldn't let me access my files. Very fundamental basics completely broken somehow.