It's extremely easy for people to absorb what they do into their identity.
Not technically divesting myself of windows, but having it abstracted from my bare metal will give me a certain peace of mind and smugness. I think anticheat freaks out on one or two games I don’t play doing it like that.
The reason I gave up is because most games that I want to play but don't work is down to anti-cheat software.
Once Valve incorporated Proton, it was all over for Windows for me. I already used Linux (Debian/Devuan) full-time at work on my laptops and servers.
I don't miss Windows at all. Running Devuan right now on an AMD B450 with a 5600, 64GB RAM, and a 1080ti.
I will admit that video driver updates are a little more involved than on Windows, but since I don't have a mainstream Linux distro like Ubuntu, that's to be expected.
If you're willing to pair Linux with a gaming console, you get coverage that's more than good enough for me.
What that meant was that Windows was incapable of booting my computer (even though I have a perfectly functional external graphics card) but Ubuntu was able to do so flawlessly on the first install.
So any “You’re an idiot to use Linux on the desktop because XYZ” comments are super easy for me to brush off. It doesn’t matter what Linux doesn’t do or does wrong, it’s given me a working computer, something neither Windows or MacOS could.
¹ e.g. web, system development, backend, admin. KDE Plasma is both extremely usable and customizable. I haven't missed anything in comparison with Windows and Mac systems (in fact I always miss stuff when using the other systems).
² I switched my parents to Ubuntu a while back and it has been a surprisingly good decision (90% less support call about weird popup windows, missing icons, etc.) Linux comes with it's own challenges, but compared to 10 years ago most of the stuff just works now
They wanted Quicken and Quickbooks. They wanted easy document sharing with Office. They wanted easy access to scanners for photo conversion. So the Mac was the right choice.
I can see setting up a Linux machine for a less demanding audience, but it's a narrow use case.
It's still a nuanced decision and I agree with your original conclusion. That being said, if you're going to assist them with setting up any machine then I don't see why Linux would be particularly difficult (besides the Quicken-ing).
Also, the interoperability of Libreoffice is, in my experience, deeply flawed. It was a compelling option when Office was expensive, but now that the real deal is cheap I don't see many non-ideological reasons to use it.
As with others here, I have people in my life I provide tech support to. I have moved some off Windows to Linux and had those requests go down. There are others I would never recommend Linux for. My wife uses MacOS.
I use a bit of everything operating system wise. My most frequent daily driver is my wife’s old iMac but I run Linux on it. By default I would have left MacOS on it but MacOS was a massive pain actually. Many of the applications I want to run are a hassle to source and maintain on MacOS. A bigger problem was that the iMac no longer runs the most recent MacOS which means there are many other apps whose current versions cannot be run on it either. For me, moving to Linux on this hardware meant dramatically fewer problems, more focus on actual work, and easy access to a much larger and up-to-date universe of applications. I do not mean just Open Source either. Examples of applications whose latest versions only run on Linux include Microsoft Edge, Teams, Zoom, Slack, and probably a bunch more I have forgotten. I use a lot of Podman ( Docker ) containers and these work significantly better under Linux. I collaborate professionally and share office documents every day using both LibreOffice and Office 365 on the web. To counter your example, peripheral compatibility including my newer printers and scanners is better under Linux as well.
I honestly doubt I represent a less “demanding audience” than your parents. The percentage of the market that would be perfectly happy with my setup is probably not “narrow”.
I have no doubt though that running Qhickbooks would be a hassle for me.
And this I think is the key point of the “normies” argument.
My mother does not have demanding needs. What she does have are friends that will recommend things or send her stuff that assumes the same environment they are using. Her “techie” friends ( hardly ) may send her instructions on how to do things which again assume she is using the same environment they are. Unless you are a tinkerer, all this is just easier and goes better if you are using the same platform ( Windows for almost everyone ). The same could be said of Chrome vs Firefox though really. People buy iPhones so that their text messages to friends show as blue instead of green. For many people, the killer feature is “being the same”.
If you are a “normie” and you heavily rely on an platform specific application, switching is hard. Not because other platforms lack power but simply because they are different.
My wife’s friends and colleagues mostly use Macs and, because of her iPhone, she is a heavy user of the Apple ecosystem. MacOS makes the most sense for her.
If I completely switched back to MacOS or Windows at this point, I would hate it and have a long list of examples of basic tasks that are too hard or how they are not powerful enough for me. Many people who switch to Linux feel the same.
As above though, I use all the major operating systems regularly and, as a casual user ( what I am much of the time ), they are all fine.
I think Linux Desktop can be great for experts and beginners with simple needs. The inbetweeners are where it can fall short. With the added malus that the network effect favours the big operating systems.
When it comes to audio and video it is weird for me because at the same time there are some bread and butter plugins that I just won't get on Linux, on the other hand the customizability is off the charts. You want to automatically load a certain configuration when a certain device connects? Write a simple udev rule. You want to use three sound cards at the same time? No problem.
I can see how that kind of tinkering is not for everyone, but if a certain thing doesn't work on Windows or MacOS it often means there is no way to do it, while on Linux it often means you just need to spend a day or two on it if you really want that.
What things are you thinking of here that you cannot easily do on the current rev of MacOS?
It's not unreasonable to assume Linux is bad, it's only unreasonable to assume nothing has changed since the last time you tried it. Make of that what you will.
Desktop Linux will always be in a state where it is great for technical users who have the expertise and time to fix and work around things. Because once you've done so, it is infinitely malleable. It will always be a miserable experience for non-technical users or technical users who don't have the time to fix the issues. Linux on the desktop only really excels when one party polishes the experience to be great and makes all the bit work togerther. E.g. like Google did with Android and ChromeBooks or to some extend Red Hat with Fedora (which is the best and most consistent Linux desktop experience).
Outside the desktop, little software is as successful as Linux. It's the substrate of the modern tech world.
Desktop Linux' success is like a hedge bet against Microsoft and OSX. It's just capable enough to be dangerous in a Mexican standoff between the three OSes.
Not to accuse you of shooting yourself in the foot, but a lot of these things are much nicer managed by complete desktops.
GNOME is certainly a tweak-lover's nightmare though, I'd recommend giving KDE a spin if you're brave. Qt applications and KDE should recieve fractional scaling support much sooner than GNOME (patch is already written/submitted), and generally the settings menu on that desktop is much more granular.
On the other hand, Pipewire has fixed so many small audio problems for me that I didn't even know I was having that I'm glad I switched over.
My biggest issue with Linux for mainstream is not Linux or its distros, but the guides online who are outdated, tell people to open a terminal for every little thing, tell people to add random software repositories that will definitely break something about the system within a year as a workaround without listing the implications, or are extremely condescending towards users.
Microsoft Certified Technicians and user forums will usually tell you to reinstall your OS every time an error shows up but at least they don't give detailed instructions on disabling all security on your computer, fucking up your bootloader config with a oneliner from 2009 that doesn't even solve anything or tells you to modify UEFI settings (like secure boot) for no reason at all.
People with no knowledgeable friends and family will find they get little support from help desks and other paid service centers and that's a big problem. Many normal people rely on external parties to help them with their computers when their printer decides to show some kind of error and computer service employees seem to only know Linux from their community college OpenSUSE server management course.
Back when I did helpdesk for a small ISP I had the occasional Linux user (often installed by friends or family because Windows XP stopped getting updates) and the problems I helped fix were all solveable by GUI settings and were documented in the internal IT knowledge base but still I got to do every single call because I "knew Linux". They did the same for OSX, whose users I also gladly helped to the best of my ability, but that's only because I bothered to Google and try because I'd never even seen a Mac. I've been gone for years but I don't think you'll get any support if you try to call that company with a Linux device today.
Strangely enough, this wasn't a problem for my coworkers when Windows released a new overhaul of all systems and settings. I remember when Windows 8 hit and everybody managed to sort out the terribly unintuitive GUI in a week.
My conclusion from this is that people have a very strange view of what Linux really is, based on something they've seen someone else do years ago. It's like basing all your opinions about Windows on someone managing a barebones Windows 2012 install through PowerShell. Several people were amazed when I showed them a screenshot of Linux running a GUI and the fact you could download Discord from a built-in software store blew their mind.
Firefox defaults to XWayland - you need to edit a setting to switch it to Wayland (MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1).
I am negative about linux on desktop because it has been a major disappoinment every time I try it.
Last two attempts - ever since I've built my 5900x desktop last summer I can't even get fedora to boot from stick without freezing. I don't have the energy to deal with such issues anymore - I've spent years rebuilding custom drivers, dealing with upgrade breaking my system, etc. Same desktop - windows just works - needed to download a few drivers manually - other than that - plug and play.
And MacOS is next level in that regard.
I dislike Windows choices very much but Linux desktop is just not an option if you want low maintenance/streamlined experience.
* Thorough and well thought through. Well written (unlike, say, Reddit)
* Polite, doesn't attack the person you're responding to or represent their position as ridiculous
However
* Entirely rooted in personal experience and often missing the broader point or use case being described in OP.
In this case I can see that you're describing why you yourself are negative on the Linux desktop (which is on topic), but responses like this miss the context of Steam Deck, Proton and imply that the issues found are never going to improve, to the point you are writing off the whole concept of a Linux platform for all use cases.
On HN this seems to appear a lot and is used very often to stifle tangential discussions. A thread about how many games now run on Proton will have at least one and likely many people writing a list of all the technical issues they've had with Linux recently and then either explicitly or implicitly saying that as a result Linux is not ready or not suitable for case stated in the article.
Linux on the desktop usually means a Windows replacement - historically, and the most relevant meaning to me personally.
The reason I'm not hopeful things will improve is same as always - not enough critical mass to get the momentum going. I was buying a PCIe wifi card a few months ago and wanted to check support for Linux in case I try again. There were zero options locally where I could reliably determine that onboard BT would work, and there were like 5 modern cards available.
I just don't see what commercial entity is going to push Linux desktop development ? Linux server is mostly a result of big players working together to commoditize the OS, scaling with commercial os on the backed would get prohibitively expensive immediately. Don't see where the desktop push will come from.
You can dock the Stem Deck using a USB-C hub to connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. This is a use case that is supported by Valve and Valve sells a first party docking station to facilitate this.
There have been multiple people citing on the Steam Deck subreddit that they regularly use the Steam Deck in this way and a few even saying they use it as their daily driver.
It's a laptop in a handheld form factor. That is all.
I think the first thing to note is going back to my OP in that I simply don't understand why people like yourself will go to such lengths to argue against Linux desktop, citing all the issues you've had with it when I don't see this kind of kick back against any other technology or even any other concept more widely. If people don't like something or don't think it'll work they'll either ignore the thread or post a much shorter response expressing doubts. I think the only thing that I saw get to a similar stage was crypto, but it seems like the crypto community split off into their own little world whereas the Linux communities still stay in a fairly close orbit to technical circles.
I think secondly this speaks to another comment I made elsewhere where the counter-arguments for Linux desktop are firmly rooted in personal experience. Here you're also explicitly saying that the issues you're having you don't think are going to improve.
But Linux had improved. It's improved massively in the last 5-10 years. 2 years ago I couldn't play Apex Legends. 5 years ago I couldn't play Direct X games without a lot of effort. 10 years ago I couldn't get YouTube or Netflix.
Things are improving and whilst your personal opinion may still be that Linux still won't be viable, the sheer number of people that comment in a similar vain means that there is a negative smog around Linux that stops or discourages more positive discussion.
So I'm not against Linux desktop - I'm just saying the people singing it's praises probably have different expectations from me so I'm trying to add another viewpoint (because it's always subjective experiences in these threads - I can't remember reading statistics about hardware coverage and similar news)
As someone who’s been using Ubuntu exclusively since 2008, this comment is bizarre. The pain point with pcs has always been compatibility and driver support. The Microsoft miracle was ubiquitous vendor support they enforced with their monopoly. Apple handles this by tightly controlling hardware and peripherals. Linux being the odd man out has always suffered.
The result of this dynamic has always been that Linux is best on previous generation hardware. So the question for the parent is; did you check support for the components used in your custom build? By explaining the history, I hope this question is received in a non hostile manner by the reader.
Maybe this advice or reality is lost today I don’t know. I find it to be annoying that many don’t know. Related to the way many dismiss the Linux desktop because they can’t use photoshop or application of choice; when cross platform apps have always been the exception.
I've got linux on half a dozen machines around the house, and all I do to install is decide whether to use ubuntu or debian, then run the install and get a working system spat out in little time.
Hackintoshes require a lot of thought and preparation and things like (for example) nvidia graphics cannot work, and intel wifi is problematic (I see there is an alpha driver now).
What "basic OS functionality" are you talking about that needs terminal commands, tutorials and config files?
Indeed, it’s FUD as if sent by bots from Balmers time, that are still running, inexplicably.
As for the basic OS functionality I couldn't get functioning in Linux Ubuntu when I had to use it for some weeks last year:
1. Installing software: In the Ubuntu App Store, most software just gave an error without details trying to install. You can't download files and open to install like in other systems. You have to mess with installing different repos and then use commands in terminal. But apt-get Firefox doesn't work, it has to be apt-get install Firefox. Or Yum if you're on another distro.
2. Dual displays with different DPI: I had to make some kind of xrander script with a 0.99999999 instead of 1 hack and run it on every boot to make this work.
3. E-Mail: I couldn't find a client that was good enough for my professional needs and had to resolve to using Fastmail in the browser. The same with Calendar apps; all the Linux options were very basic and not good enough for pro use.
4. Keyboard shortcuts are not shared by all apps like in other OSes, very hard to configure. In macOS there's Better Touch Tool that does absolutely everything.
I won't bring up hardware problems, since that can be blamed on the device manufacturer equally as on Linux, but these things above are already deal breakers to me. I tried other distros, but they were worse than Ubuntu to get to work.
Linux is great for server admins and programmers I believe, and I'm sure it's much better than Windows for a grandparent to browse and just use web apps. But there exists many power users and professionals who need a useful computer and are not able to recompile the OS or nano/vim in huge config files to make their system work. I'm one of them, and desktop Linux is not an option in its current state.
MacOS is not perfect, maybe not even great, but it has all basic OS functionality out of the box. If anything is bothering me or I need special functionality there is always well-polished software available to easily install to solve any problem. Sometimes free, and sometimes for a cheap price. Among many programmers and Linux enthusiasts it seems to be a crime against humanity to pay for software, something I never understood. If I can pay $10 to buy an app that fixes my problem, why would I waste my time recompiling and tinkering, dredging through dense Linux forums? Add to this all the incredible productivity software that can be bought in MacOS for a cheap price.
So that makes me wonder if Hackintosh is not a better option for power users who are not programmers?
That does sound like an issue. I don't think it's a common one though. I can't say I've had that problem with any of my Ubuntu installs. When was this?
> You can't download files and open to install like in other systems.
You absolutely can, but you shouldn't, we have repositories that handle those, publish updates etc, and everything is of known provenance. Download-and-double-click is a pretty broken model that encourages people to install compromised crap from god knows where and get their systems owned.
> apt-get Firefox doesn't work, it has to be apt-get install Firefox
Seriously, your complaint is that, in multi-function tool apt-get, you have to type "apt-get install firefox" instead of just "apt-get firefox".
This is not a reasonable complaint. You claim to be a "power user", but an extra word (which distinguishes between install, update and remove tasks for apt) is too much trouble? That doesn't sound very power-usery to me.
> Dual displays with different DPI
Yeah fair enough, this has been a problem area. Nvidia-settings will often do the job or you end up with a script. Wayland allegedly fixes this, but isn't suitable for nvidia users.
IMHO once you have your xrandr script though, you end up with a system that's better than either MS or Apple can manage, which displays things more consistently across your screens.
> E-Mail: I couldn't find a client that was good enough for my professional needs
Who even uses an email client any more? Everything's web based. Are there mail clients that provide more functionality than Thunderbird?
> Keyboard shortcuts are not shared by all apps
It's true, however they are consistent enough these days, especially within an ecosystem like gnome or kde, I barely notice.
> need a useful computer and are not able to recompile the OS > why would I waste my time recompiling and tinkering
Yeah at this point I'm going with the other responder, there's quite a lot of FUD leaking into your post here. The idea that you have to recompile your OS or anything else to get a functional system is around 15 years out of date now and straight out of microsoft's old FUD playbook.
> dredging through dense Linux forums?
Just last week my windows 11 install (I keep it around for gaming) complained that it couldn’t activate a safety feature, memory consistency checking or something, due to outdated drivers. It listed drivers for hardware I no longer owned as being a problem. I ended up on a multi-hour trip down the google rabbit hole to try to fix that because there were no updates to those drivers and the official microsoft line is people should never uninstall any drivers, so they don't provide an interface to do it. Eventually I found some command-line tool, after dredging through a dense windows forum, that MS don't want normal users to know about.
So IMHO, windows is not suitable for the desktop user.
> So that makes me wonder if Hackintosh is not a better option for power users who are not programmers?
The idea that you can run a Hackintosh without messing around even more than a linux install, and without risking total system breakage on every update, is kinda funny.
This is why I felt the need to respond to you - setting up a hackintosh starts as an exercise in finding compatible hardware (because you can't just throw anything at it). Nvidia won't work. AMD cards will work, but you may end up having to do all sorts of odd stuff like device id spoofing (https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh/comments/y6yzue/drivers_...)
AFAICT this is the current state of the art guide to setting up a hackintosh - https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Install-Guide/installati...
Note how far you have to get before you even proceed to installation!
I love Macs, and have run hackintoshes in the past, but in general it's not an exercise for someone who's afraid to type the word 'install' in their apt command line to install firefox.
This was in 2022 using Ubuntu 20.04 I believe. Like probably many users I was following online tutorials / forums to try to set up my system and maybe I broke something, since it's all copy and pasting terminal commands. Tried to repair/reset but couldn't. I just accepted to use apt-get instead. I needed a working computer every day for my job.
Downloading apps would result in .deb files if I remember right, which would usually not install.
I imagine for a beginner-intermediate Linux user, having to resort to terminal and apt-get command to install software and get started is already too much, unless they have a special interest in Linux. If distro makers insist on terminal use, why not have some mercy and just call the command "install" instead of "apt-get" or "yum"?
Power users are not all programmers or sysadmins, they are also other kind of professionals who use computers effectively for work.
>Who even uses an email client any more?
Millions of people I would believe. The native Mail client in MacOS is really nice and integrates completely with the rest of the system. This saves a ton of time, and to me it's always nicer to use native software. And there are many high quality options to install if I don't like the one that comes in the box.
I haven't used Outlook, but it seems to be very powerful and integrated in the MS Office ecosystem. I know the Linux crowd prefers online clients, and I think it is because native clients are not good enough.
> Yeah at this point I'm going with the other responder, there's quite a lot of FUD leaking into your post here.
I've certainly been down that path where the advice/solution to solve my Linux problems is starting to recompile stuff. My apologies that I don't remember what it was, I believe it was for Bluetooth or sleep to work.
> Just last week my windows 11 install (I keep it around for gaming) complained that it couldn’t activate a safety feature, memory consistency checking or something, due to outdated drivers.
I haven't used Windows for many years, but if things are as they used to be, you can always reinstall Windows to fix it, right? With Linux, reinstalling never improved things for me. With MacOS I could never break the system to the extent that reinstallation would be necessary.
The reason why I'm even here talking about Linux is because Windows is a hopeless case, but why can't Linux devs meet their users half way and make things a little easier? Make some GUIs for common settings and don't throw people into the command line when scratching a little on the surface. Most of users don't want to learn terminal commands, the GUI was invented for normal users.
> The idea that you can run a Hackintosh without messing around even more than a linux install, and without risking total system breakage on every update, is kinda funny.
That's why I'm asking! OS updates would be out of the question on a hackintosh, but after getting an install with all basic OS functionality working would be golden - and could be a better option than Linux for many people. Maybe it could even be a job for people to turn PCs into hackintosh boxes, just like many people here are installing Linux for their grandparents?
> I love Macs, and have run hackintoshes in the past, but in general it's not an exercise for someone who's afraid to type the word 'install' in their apt command line to install firefox.
No need to get stuck on that idea. I'm just wondering if hackintosh would be worth the effort compared to making a well working Linux install, if after that you have an OS with a better user experience and never have the need to mess with it again.
Also to remember is that MacOS is made by a company that for profit reasons is hostile to users trying to install the system on other machines, making the process harder. For Linux there should be no reason making things hard.
So how has your hackintosh experience been? Could you use it as a normal Mac after having gone through the install process? Was there any problem with Apple ID accounts and such? I'm curios to know. Would it have been a computer that you could give to someone else and have them use productively with the caveat "Don't upgrade the OS"?
Edit: One thing I loved with Linux during my recent use was the fantastic looks of the Gnome user interface. Professional and friendly, super consistent. A new gold standard in computer GUIs, superior to MacOS.
You've done something very wrong at that point. Very, very wrong.
> No need to get stuck on that idea. I'm just wondering if hackintosh would be worth the effort compared to making a well working Linux install
Resoundingly no.
Before you fly off on a hackintosh flight of fancy, try actually reading the link I gave you above, it's a massively involved process.
I'm not going to bother going through the rest of your post. The recompilation stuff is many years out of date and there's just so much supposition in there.
> One thing I loved with Linux during my recent use was the fantastic looks of the Gnome user interface. Professional and friendly, super consistent. A new gold standard in computer GUIs
Now I know you're a troll.
Each one to their own. If this is the face and the conduct of the Linux community, then good luck I guess. Why take it as a personal insult that a stranger has a different opinion than you on GUI look and feel? I looked at your link, yes I know it is a complicated process.
Good luck to you, I'll not engage further.
If you compile custom drivers for your operating system, then maybe it breaking at some future upgrade shouldn't come as a great surprise? Presumably you know what you're doing and find these things fun and rewarding in their own right.
I've tried linux 3 or so times over the years, always the "friendly" distros.
I've dropped it each time because while yes, things do work, they tend to STOP working. Drivers, updates, compatibility lag, whatever it is, linux often has me "under the hood" trying to fix stuff that is literally never an issue on another OS.
And i say this as someone who wants linux to be a thing. It's unquestionably healthy for linux to be a real option, ESPECIALLY given windows penchant for trying to sneak in more and more tracking and ads, but even as someone decently techy, I have frequently found linux to feel like gambling, with a question of "will it work today, or am I about to go on a 10 min to multihour rabbit hole hunt to fix something"
I've used Linux on the desktop since 1994. In all that time I recall one breaking update on Debian affecting the wireless network driver. I've used Ubuntu since 2006 and never had any issues like you describe. That is across multiple machine types from Dell, Lenovo and HP. The same is true for my wife who is non-technical and has no issues using Linux (Ubuntu).
As another case in addition to the multiple I mentioned already, I'd vouch for the majority of Android phones running fine without issues caused by new updates, I mention Android since there are people who use their phone exclusively for computing, and oddly.
Summary, use Ubuntu on the desktop, pick a decent manufacturer like Dell, HP or Lenovo (I prefer Dell and/or Alienware from Dell or Lenovo) and maybe pick one that sells with Linux or made for Linux to further enhance your success. I've heard System 76 makes good systems too.
There is a learning curve to do everything and i do occasionally switch to windows for some games. I am a senior engineer as well.
I think the biggest thing holding linux desktops back is not technical really it's a human element, like the services to talk on a forum, having things setup ahead of time for the user etc...
Windows has a learning curve which people went through if you want to switch to Linux you need to learn. Just as if you start on Linux and wanted to switch to windows you'd have a learning curve.
Some will trot out their anecdotes that they've never experienced even one issue in decades and others will have showstopping issues at the installer. Both will be right. Anything that doesn't ship with Linux preinstalled is a total crapshoot in my experience of 25 years of using Linux on desktops and laptops. Chromebooks and Android and SteamDecks prove it can be reliable, but it takes coordinated manufacturer effort. Anything else is always a gamble of current support or future updates breaking something that previously was working.
Linux issues aren't necessarily harder to solve than Windows issues, but since software compatibility still remains the motivation for average users to switch still remains minimal, and if you recommend the switch you instantly become that person's IT support.
The LTT videos where they try to game on Linux and experience a range of interesting issues that require semi-advanced Linux-fu to fix is also a good illustration of this.
I've only ever tried Ubuntu based distros (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, KDE Neon), so maybe that's the problem, but I doubt it, seeing as everyone always recommends Ubuntu based distros for beginners. Or maybe it's cause I have an Nvidia GPU, which might've been the cause for the worst problems, but Nvidia is really popular, so it's not like other people wouldn't experience those issues.
Also, you say "Linus Tech Tips is a jack ass channel" in reference to their Linux videos, are you saying that those videos are wrong or misleading? Because the videos showed you all the issues they ran into (and I found that their experience was almost identical to mine, having to spend days troubleshooting various issues, until finally getting it working properly). Are you suggesting that they lied about the issues that they came across? Cause to me it just seemed like a video showing their experience, it didn't seem biased or anything to me at all.
Whenever someone says that they've never had major issues with Linux, I wonder whether we're even talking about the same thing. Did I accidentally download the wrong thing or something? Cause I can't imagine how someone would be able to use Linux and just happen to never come across them.
I wonder why launching a terminal to fix something on Linux is seen as esoteric, but editing registry entries in Windows isn't.
Listen, if you're using Linux and you've never spent hours trying to find out how to install something or fix a problem deep in some obscure configuration file somewhere, are you even on Linux? Don't lie to yourself: you use Linux exactly because you enjoy doing that and pretending like everything works and you never have to fiddle with anything is just dishonest.
This is different from parent's statement that "things stop working".
I definitely spent countless hours with tweaks and fixes (although the pattern is radically different between desktop and laptop systems), but I've essentially never experienced that any component "stopped working".
There is only a single exception - an ethernet card that required a 3rd party package, and an update was buggy (later, the driver got upstreamed).
Based on my old desktop experience with Windows, it was actually inherently more unstable than Linux, as installers could do whatever they wanted - in Linux, package managers track the changes in the file system instead (to a large extent but not fully, although in worst case, excluding packaging bugs, the leftovers are just data).
- Going from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10 broke Xorg (maybe a problem with the AMD drivers, I lacked knowledge at that time to look into fixing it).
- I have occasionally gotten kernel panics under OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I seem to recall a time when watching videos on YouTube via Firefox would reliably cause it to happen, I don't remember at all how I fixed it at the time; maybe an update or running from a snapshot... or was it under Arch and I installed the LTS kernel?
- And a problem of my own making: around the time when the KDE project started transitioning to Plasma 5 I was going back and forth between Arch and OpenSUSE TW and wound up trying Plasma 5 before it was really ready for use and I had a difficult time for a week or two.
I also wound up wrecking an Intel NUC the day I got it by putting it to sleep when it had an issue that suspending to RAM would wreck the thing, but that's more of an Intel failure than a GNU/Linux failure.
Anyway, I used Windows from version 3.1.1 until I wrecked my 7 install in 2012 so I've seen plenty of blue screens in my life, and I remember the iMac I used Yosemite on hard rebooting every time I started a Xubuntu VM in VirtualBox, so I have no issue just using GNU/Linux even if I do encounter some warts every now and again.
no, on other OSes you just cannot fix it. e.g. for instance on my computer I have a win32 install and for some reason on it the ethernet network speed seems locked to 100mbit-ish while on linux I get my gigabit ethernet performance. what can I do to debug this on windows when i tried the usual install / remove drivers, etc etc ? absolutely nothing, I just learn to live with the issue like most people on that OS.
If they’re running Linux, they can’t even do those things.
If they can't login or the screen breaks they run to geek squad. Under no condition will they claim manufacture warranty on an internal part without a techie recommending this and removing the card/part for them
But the reason I'm on windows in the first place is that I left Linux several years ago when I bought a second monitor and Linux would sometimes work great but sometimes fail to display anything on either of them at startup. That just was not useable. I tried again about a year after and same issue - I would like to go back to Linux but I don't have time to roll the dice on being able to start work in the morning or have to ssh in from another device to figure out what happened to my display.
I know some use cases are different than mine so I wouldn’t know them, but I always wonder when I see people complaining about things like battery life (I consistently have at least double or more for Linux than on Windows for the same workloads across laptops, both 32 (aka old) and 64 bit), missing or broken drivers (I don’t use gpus locally) etc.
My non tech acquaintances have issues with Windows all the time but they just ignore them. Seems when installing Linux people suddenly want perfection?
I got an espresso machine last year. I was looking for a grinder. A huge chunk of online coffee folks suggested buying a weird grinder from China and swapping out burr sets and and and and ... and all I wanted was a turnkey grinder. I just wanted coffee. I didn't need to make a hobby of the equipment itself.
This also exists with motorcycles. I just want to ride a motorcycle. I don't have any interest in the endless mod culture of motorcycles.
And so Linux on the desktop. Linux on the desktop is great if you enjoy having to actively sysadmin your work environment, but it's shit if you just want to get some work done. The people who run it full time are people, mostly, who like the hacking part of the hobby in addition to the using part of the hobby. And I don't see that changing.
There was definitely a window in the late 90s when this could've been different, but then Apple moved to OS X, and I think that window closed forever.
My wife who is non-technical uses it to get stuff done, all that she ever did on Windows, no issues after years of use. I know of other non-technical users who use it without issue. They probably know many who use it without issue. So your case seems to be isolated and unusual.
If you never use WiFi or two screens then maybe you shouldn't dismiss other people's issues with Linux as being unusual.
I actually laughed. "It's fine! Just don't do things that most people do all the time! In fact I think those things are dumb!"
Whoops! How stupid of me. This is Linux, I'm holding it wrong. Unplugging a screen from a sleeping Linux computer is not reasonable user behavior, so an unresponsive black screen it is.
Yeah, I probably could have restarted the UI service manually by hopping over to another shell but it's flat out faster to hard reboot. Linux is still a 3rd tier desktop experience.
Im using pop which is a Ubuntu flavor. I’ve had one problem upgrading (some package was ahead of where it needed to be..). It got resolved with a few terminal commands. (I think because I installed steam..) it’s not perfect, the software installer could be better, but man it’s pretty great. Window managers are fantastic.
Honestly after some adjustment I’m staying here. I’m not dependent on any one company and I feel the OS is respectful unlike the commercial offerings.
I donno what work you want to get done but I've been getting work done on Linux for over 15 years without any issues unless they were my own creation by messing about/tinkering with what was provided out of the box by the distro - for those cases, I knew I was into risky waters and was willing to accept the risks (as it happened, I was always able to overcome those and never lost any data etc).
If you do a fresh install and do things like, use web based apps, manage documents/worksheets (say using Libreoffice) and maybe run your business application, I don't know why things would go to shit. Keep your base software changes to security fixes and don't upgrade unless you have to - things should basically chug along.
My current laptop is an HP Envy from Costco and I was kind of shocked that everything just worked, even the fingerprint reader.
And then it happened - one day my brightness keys quit working. Why? I have no idea and haven't spent time to find out. You are correct, it still happens, but it has been rare for me where it used to be common.
This isn't to say that your complaints aren't valid or that you're misrepresenting your own experience, but it doesn't further the discussion and depending on the context with which you are raising it can be seen as a disingenuous way of trying to discredit or undermine Linux as a viable option.
That is to say, in isolation your comment is fine. If a thread on a topic that is related to the Linux desktop only features people citing their unspecific list of issues with desktop Linux then it stop being a reasonable good faith discussion and starts becoming ideological Linux bashing.
- Fedora Silverblue wants to reduce software reliance on the OS as a runtime. Relying on Flatpaks allows you to freeze most dependencies in-place and have a fully reproducible (if a bit redundant) runtime environment.
- NixOS wants to eliminate software reliance on the OS by removing the OS altogether. A default NixOS install only has a symlink to sh in the /bin folder, everything else needs to be dynamically loaded by the package manager through the Nix Store (big nuclear soup folder with hashed/labelled package tarballs).
Both OSes have some rough edges that make them hard to recommend, but it does suggest a silver lining for Linux packaging in the future. It's definitely a problem, just more of a distro-specific one rather than a Linux-specific one.
Like I said in another reply: do you have details on what happens when things break. I have never seen it myself and maybe the community can prevent it if they would know.
To be fair, these laptops were quite old and I installed windows on another identical laptop, but Windows had totally broken Bluetooth and you couldn’t change the display brightness, which was way more annoying than the relatively minor Ubuntu issue with RAM. I never managed to fix those issues on Windows, so I’m not bashing on Linux here.
Eventually I bought her an M1 MacBook Air. She hasn’t complained once.
The worst part is that when they do stop working, I have forgotten the horrible kludge of steps I had to go through to get something working the first time around. Of course the answers are out there, but finding the one answer that worked on the distro I used? Needle, meet haystack. I feel this is due to a reliance on CLI to do almost everything. CLI wouldn't be so problematic if those steps worked on every distro. This is the reason that fragmentation is holding LoD back IMO.
And over 25 years of Windows updates, I've had breakages too. And I've had disastrous upgrades from XP->7, and 8->10. I'd say I get one bad driver update with Windows every couple of years or so. Windows just seems to not break the main things like the desktop.
On the other hand, I've run a linux desktop for quite a few years: Arch/sway for 2yrs, Ubuntu/kde for 4yrs, and Fedora/gnome for a year. I had zero problems with Arch, a few problems with Ubuntu, and zero with Fedora.
The year of the linux desktop is now largely irrelevant because so many people are using other devices. Still, developers are now using it as their primary driver, as you can develop for the web or for Android on it.
I did the same thing, it wasn't until I used Arch Linux that I really started to understand Linux. It turned I wasn't looking for a wannabe-MacOS distro, I just really liked a minimalist Gnome 3.12+ (when Gnome hit the sweet spot) or i3 based Linux that had zero background processes, installed programs, or anything that I didn't opt-in to. If you want MacOS just use MacOS.
On Arch I could run `top` and know what everything is which had amazing performance and battery benefits.
Also learning Linux deeply (ie, the directory structures and meaning of /usr /etc, logging, managing services with SystemD, managing diskspace size, proper bash scripting w/ all of the unix tools, etc) really helped me at my job as a programmer ssh'ing into servers.
MacOS is generally very stable, of course, because they also control the hardware, but I have experienced unexpected reboots on MacBooks.
I find windows pretty frustrating and opaque, I certainly don’t know how anyone could work on it effectively. Having to find and install third party software packages just to get hardware going is a right nightmare. Recently my windows 11 (I knew it around for gaming) was complaining that it couldn’t activate a safety feature, memory consistency checking or something, due to outdated drivers, and listed stuff for hardware I no longer owned. I ended up on a multi-hour trip down the google rabbit hole to try to fix that because there were no updates and the official line is people should never uninstall any drivers!
All I’m saying is YMMV, maybe you just grok windows but not Linux. It’s not universal though.
Yep, exactly this. A portion of the Linux Desktop community is so high on its own farts that it can't tolerate the idea that people might have legitimate reasons for not using Linux as their desktop. If you have a problematic use case, their suggestion is to get a different use case.
If you want to chastise me for echoing parent's sentiment then that's fine. I'm used to getting grief literally any time I complain about anything in Linux. Remarkably, the same is not true when I complain about Windows. Funny that.
In 2023, you should not try as many distros as possible. They are all similar enough. You should try hardware designed for Linux, instead of one forcing Linux developers to reverse-engineer WiFi and suspend to make it work. Ideally, try it preinstalled. I am happy with my Librem 15, no tinkering is ever required.
It's funny because this is, in fact, my reason for dumping Windows and macOS.
The only difference is that I can't open the hood if I'm on Windows or macOS. So, if something breaks there, I'm simply screwed.
Between forced upgrades on macOS (sure, you can keep your OS back, but things like XCode, for example, will do their damndest to force you to upgrade) and random "Windows Update" stupidity ("Nope, no work for you! I must spend 30 minutes upgrading. Oh, by the way, do you want to upgrade to Windows 11 and we put the GTFO button in 6 point italic on your other monitor and we'll harass you again tomorrow.) I finally decamped for Linux permanently and haven't regretted it one iota.
I'm sure for some people it works perfectly, and I haven't tried for at least 6 years, but I was damn annoyed after the last time I lost a week to a laptop with no WiFi, 45 minutes battery life (instead of 5 hours in windows), and no external monitor support. I was sure (at the time) to tell other people of my issues, so they were aware, if they were being told how awesom a Windows replacement Arch (or whatever) was.
KDE isn’t exactly new, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to here.
KDE has had a similar level of investment and polish and I believe has now crossed a threshold where it is comparable in usability and smoothness to Windows or Mac. It now uses Wayland which means that it solves a lot of the janky issues inherent to X. KDE is not new, but it is much better to the point where I feel unless you've used it in the last 2 years you wouldn't be able to fully appreciate.
I think the article linked and my original comment both take issue with the number of negative comments here. People like yourself seem to be taking them as a general barometer at best or at worst a complete indictment, when many of them see to be citing issue that haven't been seen for years.
Specifically, my OP was complaining about how people are so free to spin off these lists of issues without any qualifying context which I believe leads to this misleading representation of the current state of things.
The thing about long-time Linux (on the desktop) users is that they've got so used to how bad it is, they think it's good.
Install Ubuntu/Mint/Pop/etc on a 3-4 year old laptop and.. Great, it probably works now! That is better than things were 10 years ago. It'll even connect with your Google account, etc. Wow! Looks slick.
Close the lid. Open it again. Hmm. Blank screen. Fans going crazy though. Wait a while. Hold down the power button, start it up again. Spend 3 hours googling and trying things (and in the process, 'sudo'ing all sorts of stuff which appeared to do nothing but may be breaking things even more). Give up. Try to remember to power down instead of expecting sleep/suspend to work.
Let's listen to some MP3's.. Oh.. Sound doesn't work! [Spend all night trying multiple ways to make sound work] Yay, sound works, unless it doesn't, in which case reboot. Good enough for now.
Time to do some actual work. Plug in a couple of monitors. Hm, resolutions are a bit weird, let's go and change those in the easy GUI config screen and whaaaAAAT?!
I don't think there's any need to go on.
Just as surprising to me was walking my dogs down my street a couple months ago, and hearing one of my neighbors loudly talking about software that is free from corporate and government interference, and that you can see the source code for such things. And it wasn’t the neighbor that was getting rid of his rack-mountable equipment in a garage sale because he is retiring. Most of the neighbors tinker with cars and off-road vehicles.
But I have great faith in Linux; partly because I have a lot of faith in the "Linu" part of "Linux."
Despite his acerbic reputation, Torvalds is one hell of a coder.
> The main sentiment in your comment which I don't think I've seen addressed in other comments is the fervency of the people attacking the mere notion that Linux is not a viable option...but I'm often surprised with the confidence and sheer malice of people who will attack any notion of Linux not being a viable desktop.
> I've seen it on HN, I've seen it in Gaming subreddits, I've had it in non-technical subreddits and I've had it in real life. People just have no qualms shitting on anyone who expresses problems with linux and it confuses me that people care so much and have so little consideration for the opposing point of view.
You can see it up and down this thread, anyone who expresses frustrations or compatibility issues immediately gets 3 replies to the effect of "You're wrong, I've been running linux since 1954 and it works perfectly and no issue like that exists".
I like linux. I maintain a cluster of linux machines at work, and have 2 linux boxes at home because it does things that windows just can't. But those 2 boxes take up about 90% of my "tech support" time.
It seems like a topic that is really deeply seated for this audience, but the fact that it is so deeply seated is a blind spot that doesn't seem like people have the ability or the interest to examine.
And that's if people are being reasonable. I've had plenty of insanely nasty interactions (not that it's unique to linux, but the ratio sure is higher) and it's the only time I've ever been told "well why don't you just write your own driver".
Hell the most simple, concrete, easily documented example in recent times was Linus' attempt to use linux as a gaming platform, where when trying to debug a basic issue, he nuked the machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0506yDSgU7M
This entire series is an extremely well documented example of what many "mid level" users experience is going to be, and 10 minutes into that video, in attempting to install steam on PopOS, a distro designed for gaming, he uninstalls his desktop.
This is SUCH a red flag for anyone who's ever worked UI/UX. Seriously, look in detail at what he did about 10 min in.
1. Installs PopOS for gaming.
2. Trys to install steam, it fails with a complicated error that is of very little help.
3. Some amount of time spent on offscreen research.
4. Comes up with sudo apt-get install steam as an answer.
And if you're moderately techy at all, that seems like a perfectly reasonable answer (still not the "just use the installer that was SUPPOSED to work but it doesn't seem malicious). Sudo for admin, apt-get is the cli everyone uses, and then just install steam right? Cool.
5. You then get a couple of pages of heavy technobabble if you're not a common linux user with a "type yes you really want to do this prompt". That's a red flag, but again when the CLI entry basically translates to "admin install steam" yeah you're not really expecting it to then uninstall your desktop.
Now the pinned comment on the video is "this has been fixed and shouldn't be possible anymore". And there's TONS of comments saying "oh well he should've done x or y first", but this has been my and many other people's experience with linux for decades, and we're all tired of going in circles.
This video series was a wonderful example of all the little "oops" and "gotcha" moments that I think a ton of linux users just handwave away, or don't even realize they're naturally preventing by having just adapted (well of course i ran a system update after the install? Don't you?). I spend a lot of my job looking very carefully at how people do things, because what most people think is a 4 step process is actually a 10 step process where they just assumed 6 of those steps were obvious, and that's what it has always been like to try and learn linux for me.
I'll try it again in the future I'm sure, but this semantic argument nonsense when there's so much evidence of linux flaws floating around gets old. I don't want to have to write an essay on my childhood traumas and motivations and how that led me to linux every time I try to use an OS. I want it to work, and when it doesn't work, I want the solutions to be easy to find and implement. Not based on what configuration of OS, hardware, versions, and phases of the moon.
Some of that is not directly linux's fault, being unpopular makes it harder for them to support all hardware, but that doesn't matter to the end user.
- Windows will have better support in most cases. - Linux users might need to be more technically savvy in most cases. (although most PC gamers are probably technically savvy enough to _use_ linux.) - Windows will usually (but surprisingly not always) get somewhat better performance than Linux in gaming. - etc.
A more nuance discussion might then state that all things being equal, Windows is usually the better gaming platform, however Linux is perfectly viable, particularly if your operating system concerns come before your gaming concerns.
I've seen it on HN, I've seen it in Gaming subreddits, I've had it in non-technical subreddits and I've had it in real life. People just have no qualms with shitting on it and it confuses me that people care so much and have so little consideration for the opposing point of view.