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.
That’s exactly why I love Linux and hate Windows. Try something simple in Windows like setting custom keyboard shortcuts… insanely frustrating. I’m not sure you can even do it without 3rd party apps, but in Linux I can do it in 10 seconds.
On the flip side try to get Linux to play back audio at above 48,000 Hz without breaking absolutely everything that isn’t already at the desired sample rate.
In Windows it is 5 clicks.
The few times a have some minor issue on linux, it is probably audio related or related to working with multiple different screens with different refresh rates, resolutions, etc, so you probably have a point.
However, I did have various issues with audio and multiple screens on windows as well, I would say even more frequently. However, on windows those issues were generally resolved after a restart, on linux I actually had to do some troubleshooting.
Try and get the Focusrite Solo at 48k with Windows without using the awful software that comes with it, in Linux it’s literally plug and play. It goes both ways, that’s what Windows plebs don’t understand. All the issues Windows plebs complain about in Linux, are also present in Windows: driver issues, updates breaking userspace, etc.
Those are common problems. What is not common is the complete lack of control and customization, the ads and telemetry data, and the dogshit workflows that Windows offers.
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.
Attacking people because there are valid criticisms of Linux, which you haven’t refuted at all, shows how utterly stupid you are.
Yes there are valid criticisms of Windows. No that does not give you a pass to attack people who use it, they have made their own choice.
One device, which you admit works with the correct drivers, doesn’t remotely compare to a glaring flaw with audio that I can find first mentioned in 2002 still impacting Linux today.
I haven’t attacked anyone… yet, but the cognitive dissonance of that first sentence, oh my! Do you have any self-awareness at all? I can’t imagine contradicting myself in the same fucking sentence, lmao, you’re straight up delusional my guy.
I explained why they are not valid criticisms and you’re missing my point that it goes both ways, but anyway… thanks for that opening sentence and confirming your opinions don’t merit consideration. I will no longer waste time conversing with you, not because you are ignorant but because you quite obviously lack critical thinking abilities.
Windows plebs
Yes you clearly meant that in an endearing sort of way.
I can’t say I blame them when it comes to going with what’s comfortable.
I used Windows and Linux while in school so it’s what I got used to. Whenever I use MacOS I feel incredibly lost
macOS and iOS both have their own feel that just isnt intuitive for me.
I’ve been a windows user forever and ever (well, DOS before that…) but iOS feels intuitive as fuck to me. I was an immediate Android adopter (HTC Dream/G1, then the successor G2 immediately when it was released) and when my partner got an iPhone, I played around with it for like five minutes before I was like “holy shit this is smooth.” I’ll never go back to Android (well, I couldn’t now anyway since I don’t touch Google services or products)
Next weekend I set up my first linux box since 2008, though, and I’m nervous. But excited.
I’m fine with Linux and techy stuff for my personal life.
My work stuff has to work. Always. Enterprise solutions are the only way I can get that without a personal army of IT guys.
This. I get a wild hair every couple years to daily drive Linux and there’s always something small but crucial that breaks within a day or so and there’s no way for me, a relative novice, to fix it.
Example: I picked up a old ThinkPad on ebay last year. I put Ubuntu on it and after a day or two the wifi just stops working. No error messages. Nothing. I tried digging into the settings via ui with no luck. Googling didn’t help because I couldn’t tell what was helpful, unhelpful, or would have been helpful but is five years out of date.
After a few days of trying to make it work, I just threw on windows and haven’t had any issues since.
I’ve always had the opposite experience, especially with hardware like older thinkpads. Trying to use windows, everything runs so slowly, I have to try to find the right wifi and sound drivers from the manufacturers website, and make sure you get the right driver version that works with Windows 10. Then windows update runs and overwrites your drivers with Microsoft drivers that don’t work.
Installing Ubuntu, everything works straight out of the box, don’t need to go hunting all over the internet for installer packages.
I have to try to find the right wifi and sound drivers from the manufacturers website, and make sure you get the right driver version that works with Windows 10.
Meanwhile these drivers don’t even exist for Linux
I’m pretty sure every thinkpad uses network adapters with linux drivers.
Sure, and ThinkPads make up like 1% of computing devices.
Fair, but the person above you was talking about ThinkPads… Laptops with network adapters that have no Linux drivers are very rare. In the large majority of cases network adapters have drivers in the kernel, and almost all of the rest have drivers that need to be installed after. I used to work at a PC shop where I would very often use a Linux live CD to test hardware if Windows was having issues that seemed to be driver related. 90% of the hardware we worked on were laptops, so I booted Linux on a lot of them. There was never a laptop that didn’t work out of the box on Linux. They certainly exist, but they are not as common as you think they are.
Whenever I’ve used an old Thinkpad with windows on it, it has been slow to the point of being unusable. Linux is much better in this regard, let alone after a few years of use.
Good news! Sh.itjust.works!
Shit ain’t working
Except can’t trust corporate clowns to keep shit working… Once they they obtain market share, they start doing weird things, recent example win11 where they make it less useable just because fuck plebs.
I’m a lifelong windows power user, and above average even in my industry for knowledge on technical expertise.
Nothing I know translates to Linux. Not the file structures, the commands, the permissions, the file systems.
You truly have to commit to learning an entirely parallel form of computing environment to become comfortable in Linux. And being frank, it is the most customizable and unique user experience out there, but it is also infinitely less user friendly. And for every time a 2 line terminal command fixes a problem and saves time compared with windows, there are dozens of instances where time is wasted for hours learning that command, its exact syntax and usage, and if it is the one you need for your circumstance.
Another user here recently said that it was when they were going through and compiling their own drivers to make their Webcam work and having to follow guides to make system specific tweaks that they just quit and went back to Windows for ease of use.
Linux is the OS of power users. Not even power users like me, but extreme power users who either have the time or training to learn that parallel system. All of which is easy if this is your job, but in many ways you are learning a second language of sorts.
I think you are right, but I also think it’s a bit more in the relearning side than on the “Linux is hard” side.
I also spent most of my time working on Windows. When I started to work with Linux, like the OP I spent many years with in the “use it until I mess something up and then reinstall because I can’t fix it” loop. But after a few years I really got into it. I haven’t done a misconfiguration related reinstall in many years.
But if you put me in front of a Mac, I wouldn’t even know how to copy/paste text.
But if you put me in front of a Mac, I wouldn’t even know how to copy/paste text.
I’ve had to troubleshoot router problems for a neighbor who uses Mac, and man was it a confusing experience. The UX is obviously Mac, so I’ve had trouble with it. But when I got to the command-line, it almost broke me. Why I was even in the command-line in the first place? I don’t even know! But it’s a confusing mix of familiar (from daily-driving Linux), and unfamiliar (different Mac-specific commands and syntax).
Someone else could probably point out what I’ve done wrong, but it still doesn’t make it not a confusing experience. It’s humbling, and the kids who’ve hung around me watching me try to fix their computer were even giving me tips (mostly on how to navigate the UI, helping me where to find the settings, etc).
Yeah, goes to show that one doesn’t know/learn “computers” but OS specific stuff.
I don’t know “computers”, I know Windows and Debian-like Linux.
yup, this hits the nail on the head for me. I consider myself very tech literate; I am my family’s IT guy. I even have Mint installed in a separate drive but I seldom use it unless I have nothing else to do for an afternoon. And the reason is that the more I know about windows (be it editing the registry, troubleshooting services, learning diagnostics tools…) the less comparatively capable I feel in a linux environment. It’s like moving countries after I spent my whole life learning this city and I could’t even speak my native language anymore. Yeah I know it works out of the box and there’s wine and I can make my UX the same. But, going back to my metaphor, that feels like moving to a different country and just not leaving my house and only talking to the people I knew back home. Yeah it would be the same if I severely constrict my comfort zone. You just have to learn a bunch of new shit and leave all you know behind and that’s just one distro. Because YEAH linux isn’t an OS it’s a whole family of operating systems. The nerd yelling that it’s a kernel is right in the worst way possible. I can learn Mint but I can form an opinion on Linux because I still wouldn’t know shit about Arch or Fedora or Gentoo or what-have-you. It’s all very daunting and what I have is functional. No, not “functional enough”. This does literally everything I want in less than 4 clicks, everything is plug-and-play, everything works out of the box (and if it doesn’t you’re sure as shit it wouldn’t work out of the box on linux), my knowledge on windows is applicable on every machine I find, it’s the system everyone expects me to have (I’m fucking sure the software my uni made me install for online tests wouldn’t have a Linux installer). It’s not just that the path of least resistance points to mac/windows, Linux as a whole also has very potent repelling field. I still want to learn it but not because I see any practical value/utility in it.
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.
Remember that Android is Linux-based
People keep saying this without understanding that Android was forked with several billion dollars in funding and aimed squarely at “normal” users, and had a decade of development since then.
Most “Linux” OSes really don’t bother with this. How many times has someone sent you into the Android terminal to fix a problem? Literally never. It doesn’t even exist without connecting a PC. Because you don’t need it.
He is clearly talking about the problems with Linux the OS, i.e. GNU/Linux, not with Linux the kernel, which is what Android is based on. So Android users don’t count as Linux OS users. Besides that, I’ve been using Debian+KDE for over a decade as a daily driver and never had any such issues, It’s hard for me to remember a single issue of importance.
Most people stop trying anything technical as soon as it does not work as they expected.
As soon as something unexpected happens or something expected doesn’t happen, they drop it.
While Windows is like that for me and my needs, for them it is Linux.
That’s a flaw with the people, not the OS.
Don’t think like that. People are people, they will not change. Accept them and yourself.
Oof, no. Some people are people. Have you met people? Do not recommend.
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.
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.
Most of the comments here are talking about the x% of time Linux gets messed up it can be really intimidating for new users and getting the right help can be a challenge, or simply more time than it’s worth.
I think this is true, but I think there’s another thing that irks people:
Software Compatibility
The general public primarily interacts with their computers through established applications that commonly aren’t available on Linux w/o intimidating work around (if at all).
A noob who switches to Linux isn’t going to know the limitations up front, and the second they decide they want to learn Adobe Premier for work, they’re kinda fucked. They’ll either spend hours/days of online research trying to figure out if it’s even possible, or they’ll ask for help only to have someone tell them they’re wrong for trying and to use some FOSS alternative because Adobe is an evil megacorp.
It’s a recipe for frustration.
The last part is a real issue. You can pretty much guarantee, that whenever you ask for help/talk about issues with Linux anywhere online, some helpful Linux zealot will be there to tell you what an idiot you are for having issues with Linux. Most of the time, these guys have been running Ubuntu off a Life USB stick for a week or two so far.
That last part is my experience when I tried installing a “non-supported printer” for my computer. I wanted to hook up into a computer my brother bought, and ended up in the printer model’s manufacturer’s page and having to choose between an Ubuntu driver and a Debian one. I use neither.
I eventually found my way to the AUR repository (because btw, I used Manjaro at the time—go figure what’s wrong in this scenario, lol!) and even ended up on some random repos for similar models. There were a lot of conflicting advice: like using a driver for a similar printer, or making my own package for my printer model.
I ended up deciding that I somehow have to make a package for my printer model, and having asked around for advice on how to do this, I was met with “why even brother with that printer brand?!” And I was like, “because that’s what’s available to me! And I don’t have enough money to buy a different one! I just want this to work!!”
The following sums up my experience with Linux thus far: “It’s never been easier for the newb to jump right in, but heavens help them if they ever stray from the straight path”.
There’s been a lot of effort to make things easier for a newb (used to Windows and all that shit) to do what they need to do in most cases. There’s been all sorts of GUI-based stuff that means for the ‘average’ user, there’s really no need for them to interact with the command line. That’s all well and good until you need to do something that wasn’t accounted for by the devs or contributors.
All of a sudden, you’d have not only to use the command line, you may also have to consult one of the following:
- Well-meaning, easy to understand, but ultimately unhelpfully shallow help pages (looking at you, Libre Office), or the opposite: deep, dense, and confusing (Arch) Wiki pages.
- One of the myriads of forum pages each telling the user to RTFM, “program the damned thing yourself”, “go back to Windows”, all of the above, or something else that delivers the same unhelpful message.
- Ultra-dense and technical man pages of a command that might possibly be of help.
And that’s already assuming you’ve got a good idea of what the problem was, or what it is that you are to do. Trouble-shooting is another thing entirely. While it’s true that Linux has tons of ways to make troubleshooting a lot easier, such as logs, reading through them is a skill a lot of us don’t have, and can’t be expected of some newb coming from Windows.
To be fair to Linux though, 90% of the time, things are well and good. 9% of the time, there’s a problem here and there, but you’re able to resolve it with a little bit of (online) help, despite how aggravating some of that “help” might be. 1% of the time, however, Linux will really test your patience, tolerance, and overall character.
Unfortunately, it’s that 10% that gives Linux its “hard to use” reputation, and the 1% gives enough scary stories for people to share.
This is all fair complaints about Linux, but I don’t really feel like windows is much better. I’ve had windows break on me or family members a lot over the years. Sure I’ve had some Linux distros break with an update and fail to boot (namely Manjaro), but windows has broken itself with updates dozens of times for me. The whole reason I started using Linux at all was because windows was breaking so often on my computer that I needed to try Linux to make sure my hardware wasn’t defective.
You talk about having to fall back on the command line in Linux, but that’s also true on windows without 3rd party software. I’ve had to use windows command line utilities to fix drives with messed up partitions and to try to repair my windows install after windows update broke it. A couple weeks ago I had to help a friend on windows do checksums using the windows command line because windows doesn’t support that through the gui. Meanwhile dolphin on KDE let’s you do checksums in the gui from the file properties screen.
I honestly feel like Linux isn’t really that much harder or more prone to breaking than windows, people just have less experience with it. The smaller user base means there’s a lot less help available online as well.
I’ll challenge your point with an analogous question:
Why can’t everybody speak French?
Because you have to know a bunch of extra letters to make basic sounds.
This is like asking why manual or automatic is frustrating. You mostly use the thing you have grown up with and that’s it, particularly when you got bills to pay and there isn’t much free time unfortunately. If you put it into perspective, a massive amount of users already hold Linux in their hands and everyday life: Android. Nah let’s get back to computers.
IT class back in college taught a wee bit of Linux. I was one of the few who were interested and did what the teacher said, the rest played Hearthstone. Linux Mint is what intrigued me since high school. A wonderful OS that brings life to laptops too slow for Windows 7. But I’m still the cozy and unbothered person who sticks to Windows on their main machine. I just want to relax after a good days work and play Forza Horizon 5. However I do enjoy my Linux laptops that won’t run red hot just because of Windows Update, Defender, telemetry and other garbage. My love&hate about Linux is that there are so many distros to choose from. There were times when x is better than y and it was(still is) the devils circle: distro hopping. Today I’m cool with Ubuntu derivatives like Mint and Pop, along with Fedora and Suse, since a decade of having at least one Linux PC I still don’t find joy in advanced stuff like Arch. Anyway use the thing you are comfy with and don’t let anyone judge you, live your life. <3
Some of us like it to work, some of us like to make it work :)
The zoo of system software on Linux is a real issue.
For Windows, if you are the local family admin, if someone asks you how to solve some issue, there are only two possible (and quite similar) options (Win10 and 11). You can either point them to the right location in the settings if you know it by heart, or you just fire up your PC and tell them each step.
If it’s Linux, you first start with the question “What distro are you using?” and then they answer something you maybe have never heard.
The Linux community doesn’t understand what “just works” really means.
Whether windows or mac, I plug my machine to the docking station, and it just works.
With Linux, every day a different problem. Out of the blue, screens just stop working. Resolutions change. Every restart different behavior. Zero consistency.
I’m not 17 anymore… I don’t have the time to keep tweaking. I need to be productive.
So what do I do? I SSH to a Linux machine whose desktop environment I don’t wanna see, and code remotely. Most productive setting.
You asked. Here’s the answer.
@TheQuantumPhysicist
@leninmummy
This is another one of those things I’ve heard about but not experienced, I use my computer every day and haven’t had any issues in over a year at this pointTry using screens with different resolutions at the same time. Always gave me trouble. In my case was always using a horizontal one and a vertical one together. I’ve had framerate problems, tearing, artefacts (parts of the vertical screen wouldn’t update while the other 2 worked fine). From time to time, X will forget my monitor configuration too after a reboot / unplugging the dock / waking from sleep. All that with 2 laptops from different brands using different docstations, one with XFCE on Ubuntu and the other with KDE on Arch. I got it mostly working, but it’s still troublesome
That 40 year old X protocol might be the issue here, use wayland for multi monitor with different resolutions.
Yup, I suspect that is indeed the issue. Haven’t tried KDE in wayland yet as I’ve seen some people saying it’s still a bit rough. Will give it a try anyway. May give sway another shot too
Well, bugs don’t spread evenly. Depending on your hardware, the software you run and your use cases, you might have no issues or really bad issues.
you hit the nail on the head. When I first got into linux I was watching some youtube video about I think the pine phone and the person basically came to the realization, and you can see the sadness on his face, that people want their computer to work like an kitchen appliance. Plug it in, press button, it does it thing. No need to learn about how it works.
That’s my answer too. I went a month with just trying to make basic things work. Had to go back to being productive. Now, I bought another drive and I spend time whenever I have it. Once everything works as i need it to, I’ll switch full time.
For many it is simply frustrating because it is not Windows. Just think about how many people have a hard time already to get the most simple things done on Windows. Can you imagine those people to switch to another platform? Those people who cannot find their banking app anymore when something moved the icon on the desktop to another position?
I have the opposite problem, I find windows or other OSes to be so full of stuff, (feature ritch) but lack low-level “i just wanna poke at this briefly” capability, the (possable) reason why most Raspberry Pis run Linux is because its so easy to address linking this thing to that one. Ive used linux so long that ive become used to
- its tree mounting scheme
/foo/mountpointFolderon/dev/disk/by-label/C drivewhere symlink resolves to/dev/sdcrather than a linear oneC:/on*internal concept*rather than a
(more...)
in Linux’s model, the mount system defines the source to be any file with the specified filesystem data in it. The Mountpoint (target) can be any (usually empty for safety) folder.
- symlinks on windows are discouraged so heavily. I looked it up and still don’t know how to make them. on Linux, its easy,
how to
do
ln -s filePath pathToNewLinkor in a GUI file manager, right click find “new” submenu click item with a link as the icon and a name likw “link”,it makes a thing that acts almost just like the thing its referencing. in a GUI file manager, you can navigate into a symlink where reference is
.and not get anywhere to great confusion. on windows this odd support for but insistence on not using a “basic feature” is mind boggling.- linux with things like Fuse (Filesystem in userspace) allows literally anything and everything to be a filesystem, more non real folders to make a new user’s head spin.
(more...)
virtual filesystems that have files and folders that are actually this OS construct that’s stored in RAM or a view of folders not representational of how their literally on disk. (Fuse filesystem reading and proxying your multimedia organizing it into folders by artists)
all of these things are about having flexible references and easy access to computer resources, On windows I find myself wondering why I cant open this text based file real quick without needing to go online and get some software that will specifically handle it.
there are very few APIs you can touch in an ELF program (think EXE for Linux) that you cant with a Bash script and relevant programs. I get on windows and all the EXEs have have even more cryptic names than linux and no help menu or offical e-book and are at the mercy of the internee’s answer (whats lsass.exe). it all makes me go, screw it! if I want to access the Raw C drive to do a non off the shelf task, I need to make it myself which means learning their programming framework.
You are preaching to the choir here. I use Linux since Kernel 0.97.something.
- its tree mounting scheme
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.
Using it since I was 12
People have been using X since that age so anything different is going to be jarring. Just the smallest roadblocks can put people off of stuff. Why bother learning something new when the old thing works?
Why bother learning something new when the old thing works?
When I was younger, I would have read this and agreed: people are resistent to change, and that holds us back.
Now, I read this and agree: why do we worry so much about having the newest and shiniest when what we have still works? Seems like a waste of time and resources
Because learning is a good thing.
Sure, but people don’t just randomly decide to learn something unless they want to learn it or they think it is useful. I can’t drive a manual transmission car. Car enthusiasts may explain to me while they’re blue in the face why they’re better but unless I actually want to do it I want do it even though “learning” is a good thing inherently. That’s how folks who don’t understand Linux view it. The goodness of “learning” is not enough to get them to want to do it.
Not wanting to learn is just boring and lazy.
There’s a difference between not wanting to learn anything and not wanting to learn a new operating system.
That’s a very boomer like attitude. Learn or get left behind.
Go learn why they don’t want to learn some incredibly niche OS then.
Niche, huh? Linux dang near runs the world. Not being a primary gaming platform does not make it niche.
Linux user here, also once upon a time a Windows admin. I think the most difficult thing for most users is not that Linux is difficult, but that it is different.
Take Pop_OS for example. For the average “I check email and surf the web” user, it works wonderfully. But most people grew on Windows or Mac so its just not what they’re used to. Linux is kind of the stick shift to Windows and Mac’s automatic transmission… its not hard to learn, but most folk don’t choose to make the effort because they don’t need to.
As a linux noob, I can’t give some in depth explanation, but I can empathize over troubles troubleshooting 😭
I mean, to first acknowledge the base difficulties of just getting used to a new operating system that doesn’t want to hold your hand, all the troubleshooting advice being splintered across multiple distros and updates, and most software just not being designed to be compatible with Linux, it’s impressive there are distros that manage to be beginner-friendly-ish in the first place.
For instance, when I was setting up Ubuntu, the following didn’t work out of the box:
- The general need to reinstall every program you use
- The microphone
- Switching between Windows and Ubuntu led to a weird time difference on Window’s part (it still does)
- My fingerprint sensor stopped working (I don’t even think this is fixable)
- My brightness hotkeys stopped working (they still don’t)
- touchpad scrolling was really fast (I honestly just got used to this rather than fixing it)
- Increased the icon size of a lot of things
- Set up night light settings
But more than that, I’d say one of the hardest things about Linux is that it is so customizable it inspires me to find a solution to issues I would’ve just ignored on Windows. For example:
- I moved the time bar from the top of the screen to the bottom
- Set up my own searx instance (though I hardly use it, if anyone knows how to run a set of code on computer startup please lmk)
- Installed wine, Lutris, and software to support Linux gaming
- Set my wallpaper to rotate between a bunch of landscape photos
But ig that’s just my 2 cents. Really I wrote this to feel proud of myself for all the troubleshooting I’ve done 😭
Edit: I frfr love all yall who responded to this with genuine advice, what a great community
Here’s how to fix the time issue. Problem is by default Windows saves the time to the hardware clock in local time, but Linux saves it as UTC. You can make Windows also save it as UTC by changing a registry setting:
For 64-bit Windows, open regedit then browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\TimeZoneInformation. Create a new DWORD entry called RealTimeIsUniversal, then set its value to 1. Reboot the system. The clock should now be in UTC time.
There are many ways to run code at startup. cronjobs and systemd are common ways to handle this. I have also had things start automatically with my desktop environment which comes later in the boot process.
Switching between Windows and Ubuntu led to a weird time difference on Window’s part (it still does)
Google how to set your windows clock to UTC. You can maybe do the reverse and set linux to localtime, but I find it much cleaner that the system clock is in UTC as it’s an objective and stable standard, unlike localtime which can change with daylight savings or if your move.
Fingerprint sensor stopped working
File an issue to libfprint, your fingerprint reader probably isn’t supported yet.
