NvidiaGPU working
what world do you live in? I have even newer driver than that and it’s still buggy!
Fuck Flakpaks! There I said it.
lol wut? Proton vpn sucks on Linux.
Proton the gaming tool
Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this.
Skill issue
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I really, REALLY wish the Affinity suite would work on Linux. They are the only ones even remotely comparable to Adobe.
Yeah, it’s what I use these days and yeah, that’d be nice. It isn’t the all-in-one package you get with PS, but for casual use in photo editing it’s decent and there are alternatives for some of the other use cases of PS that are closer while still being a fraction of the cost when stacked on top of Affinity.
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I use gimp for pixel art for game textures and to make memes. It has tons of features that nobody knows about becuase they’re fucked by horrendous UI. But theres never been anything I needed to to but couldnt after looking up a tutorial on the internet. Valid points against gimp but lets not pretend people used to photoshop arent also kind of stuck in their old workflow habits and unwilling to relearn new software UI.
Theres photogimp but it hasn’t been worked on in a while.
Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
Another reason to use Gentoo: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-gfx/gimp
You can install 3.0.0rc2 or even git version.
Oh cool! Let me just spend three weeks crawling through wiki articles, setting flags in the config files, and patching out 15 different issues with various drivers then installing 20 dependencies compiling them all from source.
Hyperbole, but yeah no thanks I’ll take the L on some optimization and 2gb of storage space and some wierd file system locations for files to load a flatpak if old stable doesn’t cut it. you might want to be careful recommending gentoo to people they might not know better. Most Linux nerds don’t want to open that can of worms, but good for you if it works.
also goes for arch. its fun, it helps you learn, ive used it before but if you are a newbie you will break stuff. things will break too, depending on your setup. use it if you are ok with that.
Photopea was written by a single college grad, and it’s miles better than gimp. While gimp has more resources and manpowers. Something is seriously wrong with their team.
Photopea blows me away. You can actually follow along in a lot of PS tutorials just using Photopea. It’s got so many features implemented
Photopea uses rendering by browser. And probably doesn’t have plugin system.
And? so what? It doesn’t matter if GIMP has a plugin system. The UI is so shit you have to google everything to figure out how to use it and even then it’s still complicated.
Gimp has a few weak spots but it’s an incredibly capable tool and if you think phone apps can do things it can’t then I don’t think you know how to use it.
I can guarantee you that no app on or for your phone can do a fraction of what GIMP is capable of.
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To run Resolve properly, you apparently have to run DaVinci’s flavor of Rocky Linux 8.6. If you’re doing other things with that machine, this may be undesirable. And as far as I know, there’s no equivalent for After Effects.
I’m pretty sure Photoshop was better in 2003 than gimp is today
Even for hobbyist needs the feature set is basically a decade behind.
I mean, Gimp 3 ia looking pretty good to me. Maybe it’s not fit for a workplace (even though it depends on the workplace imo) but it’s definitely more than enough for hobbyists.
Would you mind citing some example of fundamental missing features?
Not trying to be a smartass, just genuinely curious
Can you make circles yet?
I love that copypasta
You’re telling me this free, volunteer-run feature full software isn’t almost as good as the multi-million dollar product from a multi-billion dollar company?
If this dude can edit his videos and images on Linux so can you Mr Van Gogh. https://youtu.be/lm51xZHZI6g
Yes, that’s what we’re saying. It’s fine though, I don’t expect developers to work miracles for free, they are doing an amazing job, but In the context of “Linux being ready” it’s important to recognize some honest truths.
But also, whenever someone pulls that card I just point at Blender until they go away.
Hell, there is such a widespread appetite for a PS alternative you’d think it’d be easier for Gimp than Blender at this point.
Or OBS. Or VLC. Or Kodi. Or Home Assistant. I can lists tons of FOSS apps that are better than alternatives developed by large companies.
Thank you. All of this libre software is amazing, and impressive as hell, but that doesn’t exempt it from having usability issues and other valid points of criticism.
Calling that out isn’t inherently anti-Linux or anti open source. I want all of these tools to improve to the point that there’s no fucking contest and they are the de facto standard (like blender is), but shit is going to have a harder time improving if people have blinders to valid criticism.
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Users do not care about how hard the devs are working for free. If the software doesn’t have the features, it’s not ready.
Really think about this. You’re saying two entirely contradictory things:
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Linux software is ready to compete with Windows
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Users cannot expect Linux software to have comparable features to Windows
How will it compete without comparable features? Passion and morals aren’t valued over effectiveness by most users.
Lmao. Windows does not have comparable features to Linux. I have to use Windows for work… it’s waaay behind Linux.
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gimp is ass sorry
GIMP’s engine is very good. It’s UI is cuntpuke.
Somebody write a QT front end for Imagemagick and you’ll probably see Linux adoption jump.
You’re telling me this free, volunteer-run feature full software isn’t almost as good as the multi-million dollar product from a multi-billion dollar company?
You’re describing the truth about Linux vs windows, except many Linux oses are better than anything ms makes.
I think Windows could be a far better OS than Linux if Microsoft gave a single shit. Instead they want to add AI and recall and various invasive updates.
The only thing windows has going is the market share.
Could, true, but never has, never will. As long as it uses a janky non-standard kernel underneath, I’m gonna be hating on it.
Yeah. it’s dogshit but they certainly have the capacity to improve. it’s clear where their priorities are: milk users for profit
Nope. The way you interact with your computer, the DE, is way behind in Windows. Every major Linux DE runs circles around Windows. Every time I have to use Windows it feels like I’m wading through 3ft of shit in slow motion. Because I know how much faster I could do the same things in Linux.
I’ve been using the Gimp for decades to great effect. Git gud (pin intended). Also, all phone photo editors are garbage.
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Trim my toenails, obviously.
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Image editing.
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What else is the program for? I haven’t used Photoshop since the '90s.
Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
But once you leave Steam […] it gets a lot worse
Heroic Games Launcher is pretty great for games from GOG and Epic. You can run games with Proton just fine.
Lutris is also a great option, actively contributing to it. Got a slightly different focus than Heroic, but a lot more features as well. Basically a one-stop shop once you got familiar with it. Really needs more people that can contribute though given the huge amount of platforms and launchers it attempts to cover (literally all of them).
Agreed, but I think it’s important to note that that isn’t because of a shortcoming of Linux, it’s because those companies are incentivized to support platforms that are more suitable for enabling massive profits, that’s what it seems like to me anyways.
“it’s important to note that [insert speculation]”
Um yeah that’s why I qualified it how i did 🙄
It’s not important to note something that is speculative.
“It’s important to note that YarHarSuperstar probably doesn’t even run Linux.”
See?
That’s your opinion and you have the right to express it. I disagree obviously, that’s why if you’ll pay very close attention to the words I used, it says “I think” before I said that.
You start by presenting it as a fact “keep in mind that it’s not because of X, but because of Y” then specify that’s it’s what “it seems like” but don’t provide any proof of, therefore there’s nothing important to note about what you said because you can’t back it with a source.
Getting something brand new from EA is painful on any platform
Can confirm, bought my son a FIFA game on pc that caused so much trouble and confusion on windows with their activation bullshit that I ended up buying him an xbox
lutris works just as flawlessly nowadays using proton with minimal config.
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“Nvidia GPU working”
If the driver feels like it, lol.
If the gpu doesn’t burn
I know NVIDIA gets a lot of shit, but I’ve honestly never encountered a problem after using nvidia + Linux for well over a decade. Sure, it can be picky when it comes to kernel version, but deciding on a kernel that works well for you and the rest of the system is part of initial setup of a proper system anyway.
Same here. I really don’t know what people do with their machines. I’ve had numerous nvidia gpus for ages without trouble (and litteraly decades of linux).
Never on laptops though, maybe that’s where problems arise.
Laptops exclusively for decades here, so nope, that’s not it.
There may be a lot of reasons why the problems don’t apply to you guys. Perhaps you just use nouveau. Perhaps you prefer to not use cutting edge hardware. You might stuck to a distro that did an exceptional job. Perhaps it’s also a little bit of selective perception (you might fix something that appears tiny to you, but is a system breaker for others who intimately familiar with Linux).
What I can say is, after using both desktops and laptops with many different distros for about a decade and now helping my family at moving over to Linux, that there absolutely are a thousand ways for the Nvidia driver to break. On one machine it decided to stop working with Wayland after a kernel upgrade after working fine with it beforehand. On another one the driver utility of Mint failed to install the driver. And on my laptop the driver failed due to Nvidia screwing up their repo for Tumbleweed with faulty dependencies. Also, does “Nvidia repo went offline for half a day, preventing setting up a new system” count? (It’s hosted by Nvidia)
It’s good to hear you lucked out, however for many users and distro maintainers those drivers are an absolute pain. Assumingly also for Nvidia given they began working on a completely new driver.
Well, there goes my pet theory then.
For me, my crime was trying to use Wayland with an Nvidia card before the explicit sync support was added in.
For real?? 😓 I was rockin a 3080ti on a 4k panel for a bit there and Wayland was impossible to run on Debian-KDE. Like as soon as I got to desktop everything stuttered in slow motion, dpi was janky as hell, and wouldn’t respond to DPI config changes… And that was on a fresh install from Debian’s KDE installation media! 🤔 did ya’ll have to do any tinkering or was Wayland cruising for ya outta the box?
Had to sell that card as I got tf outta the US anyways (been maining my steam Deck on a dock, which has been fun!), but I’m thinking I’ll go AMD for my next build. VR & Wayland are way better on an AMD GPU, from what I hear!
For me it works all the time on x11, on Wayland I still sometimes have some issues though.
If the average person can not use your OS, it is not ready. Period.
For example:
Windows - Open File Explorer > Add Network Drive > Find/plug it in > Enter creds > Bam. Ready to go and will automatically log you in at boot. Very nice, very intuitive UI.
Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
In my own experience, I was able to get the hang of Windows with no one showing me how a computer ever worked, at the age of 10! Intuitive enough a child can do it.
On Linux, you have to read manuals/documentation, ask random (mostly rude) people on the internet, or give up because why the fuck would I want to go and enter 5 commands just to have something as simple as auto mount a network share? Not intuitive, therefore not easy to learn as you go.
I get it, Linux people like knowing how their computers operate, they like ensuring everything is working the way THEY want to, and that’s awesome! What’s not awesome is recommending Linux to the general populace and then getting upset at them for asking why they can’t do something or why don’t they just do these steps to do whatever it is they are having issues with. Then, you have a person who doesn’t even know what a terminal is confused as hell because they were told Linux is so much better than Windows.
Until we get a more intuitive (GUI focused) way of doing what I would consider normal computer tasks, it will not ever be ready. That’s just the way I see it.
the average person doesnt know how to mount a drive on windows or even what that is or why you would want to, they just need to be able to open a browser
Very good point!
Example 2:
I need to drag this file into my browser to upload it to the website I’m visiting for whatever reason. I’m an average user that has only ever really needed a browser. My OS came with Firefox, but when I try to drag the file onto my browser window like I’ve always done, nothing happens. Is my computer broken?
No, it’s installed as a snap/flatpak that doesn’t have the “privileges” to do that, and I will never know that since I’m an average user who only needs a browser.
Your second example is a newish problem and Ubuntu specific. I had never had a problem with drag-and-drop and I migrated from Ubuntu before the snap thing.
You will always find an example of something that works “better” in one OS than other. Linux is not trying to be a windows drop-in replacement, some thing are gonna behave differently. Linux have some problems for an average user but a lot is just different UX design and others, especially hardware compatibility is because companies don’t care for it to work on Linux so the OS is always playing catch up.
A lot of “beginner friendly” distros are Ubuntu based though, so while not strictly requiring you to use snaps, it might install Firefox as a flatpak though, which doesn’t have the privileges to do drag and drop when I last used a flatpak based browser.
You can correct me if I am wrong of course, as I truly don’t know if it is still a thing or if I just installed the flatpak. I didn’t understand the limitations back then.
I wouldn’t know if this is still a thing. You are right about the integration problem of snaps/flatpak, it is specifically bad on Ubuntu because Ubuntu goes out of their way to shove snaps on you and hide the fact. Case in point Firefox, if you want a non snap version you have to jump through a lot of hoops, or at least was like this when a last installed Ubuntu for my wife laptop, it was the 22.04 I think.
In any case that is Ubuntu specific, but a shame none of the least because like you said, Ubuntu and derivatives are the more popular beginner friendly distros. but if I recall correctly some derivatives do remove snap so you don’t have to deal with it and its problems.
Flatseal helps with managing flatpak perms, but yeah it’s not at all intuitive
Right, but we are talking about the average user. One who only needs a browser. They wouldn’t even think about flatpak/snap/appimage, and would probably look at you like you are insane if you said those in the same sentence as “Your browser is a flatpak/snap/appimage, so it doesn’t have the permissions it needs to allow drag and drop”.
I am a Linux fan, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to snaps/flataks/appimages, had mostly been a Debian-based distro user in my younger years, so knew about debs and tars (bleh) and of course apt, but I mostly daily drove windows for a long time.
Came back to the Linux world on a whim on my extra old laptop to give it new life (same thing I had done back when I was like 12) -(EDIT: remembered) bounced around between distros like Fedora, popos, etc but ended up with EndevourOS as I knew I wanted to try an Arch based distro, it didn’t run as well as I’d liked and I messed up some package on AUR so I ended up wiping that after a few months and tried out Bazzite, very different then I was used to and is the only reason I’ve actually learned about appimages/flatpaks.
Then I turned my old gaming PC into a proxmox box, set up Ubuntu server and started playing around with docker (which made way more sense after getting to know container based programs from Bazzite).
Anyway, no point to be made there aside from… Flatpaks and the like are just a different way of doing things, which necessitates learning.
I get the point being made about defaults being important as a first user experience is extremely important if you’re wanting to keep a user, but there is something to be said for a little common sense that you have to be able to try to learn a little when you’re doing something new.
Alas, I work in a customer service adjacent role in fintech so I know all too well that users hate to learn lmfao
And many don’t seem to know how to find information, like when I ran into exactly that situation where I was trying to attach a file by dragging and dropping from dolphin into FF and nothing happening. So I immediately went to Kagi (at the time, have since switched to self hosted searxng) and searched “unable to drag and drop file into Firefox browser bazzite” and very quickly found my answer. Alas Google fu is a skill many are sorely lacking
That’s the distro’s fault, not linux. Same with your network drive. It’s not up to linux to provide a GUI for anything.
Also “intuitive” should not have to mean “windows-like”. It’s hard for people because they spend over a decade on a fundamentally different OS. Adding a single line to fstab isn’t harder than searching windows’ menus. It’s harder for you/others because you/they are used to it working that way.
I was not saying intuitive to mean windows like. I was using it as measurement of how easy it feels to learn on windows where most things are in just about plain English without as much of the technobabble.
Now that I’m more comfortable with Linux, the technobabble is at least understandable to the point that I can be a little more confident in how I navigate the computer and what not to do.
And you are right, of course. I am more comfortable with Windows, but that also gives me a little more insight into how Linux could be the absolute best of all worlds with a little conversation about the pain points and how they could be improved quite significantly.
It seems way too many people are the exact rude people I was talking about in the original comment. It’s a meme community. Your life is not on the line for Linux. I love it too.
I’m sorry but having a conversation, debating and disagreeing isn’t being rude. People on linux willingly made the choice to move to it, so they are usually more knowledgeable about it, and therefore know enough to have arguments.
Honestly the “linux users are elitists/rude” thing feels like just a meme at this point. In a decade of using it as a daily driver, I can probably count on one hand how many times someone was actually rude when I asked for help.
Read through the comments on this very thread to add to those counts.
It’s okay though. This always happens when people have even a hint of Linux issues. It’s hard to be enthusiastic in a hostile community that just refuses to see that issues are still issues.
In a meme community for crying out loud.
This thread doesn’t have anything to do with troubleshooting Linux. It’s literally a debate.
clicking the browse button to select the file is a hell of a lot easier than opening the file manager, navigating your way through your files to find the one specific one, then make both windows small so you can select a file in one, and drag it over to the other.
And look, its also an example of how you turn nothing into a big, complicated, multistep imaginary issue.
you don’t need to make the windows, just alttab while dragging. and maybe you already have open the directory in another window so why browse there again in the browser’s file picker.
probably not a big deal, but definitely not a small issue either
We were talking about average users. It’s most definitely not an imaginary issue, unfortunately. I have seen it with my own eyes. It’s how they have always brought their stuff into the browser, therefore, it is what they’ve always done. Yes, there is a browse option, but that isn’t always going to be the most intuitive way.
Such a high level idiot would fail regardless of the OS.
You cant make an idiot proof system, because humanity just produces better idiots.
We were talking about average users.
I work in IT. I see average users all the time. They don’t even know drag and drop is a thing. One tool my employer is a distributor for heavily relies on drag and drop for a specific feature (adding and reordering favorites).
It’s like explaining eating soup with a spoon to a baby.
When I was on help desk I often talked about meeting the client where they were at in their technical skill level. Sometimes their technical skill level was “Can you click the icon in the bottom left that looks like a window with four pains, and then click the settings icon it looks like a gear”. If mounting a file share was involved I just remoted in, none of the people that called could handle those instructions.
Meanwhile my experience with automounting network drives with dolphin is
Open Dolphin > Add Network Folder > Enter creds > Check automount box > done
I haven’t had to use the terminal for anything in years. There’s some things I do in the terminal, but that’s because I like it better, not because there isn’t an intuitive way to do it.
The reason guides tell people to use the terminal is because it’s the same across DEs, not because there aren’t DEs that make it more intuitive.
Would I throw a random non techy friend on Linux? No, because it’s not what they’re used to. If they had no computer experience at all though I absolutely would.
I once wanted to change my mouse scrolling direction on Windows. In KDE it’s a toggle in the mouse settings and on Windows it’s some dubious registry editing (apparently). I think there are about as many things that are easier on Linux than on Windows as there are things that are easier on Windows than on Linux (assuming you’re using a modern distribution with a beginner-friendly, sensible configuration).
I mean, I was able to figure out how MS-DOS worked as a child just be flailing on the keyboard and reading the errors. It was “easy” because now I know it while Macintoshes may as well have been alien technology. A “mouse”?, moving windows?, you have to find programs and click on them instead of just typing?
You’re just used to Windows annoyances and not used to Linux annoyances, that’s all.
For example:
Installing and updating a program on Windows is a horror show compared to using a package manager. It expects average users to find, download and run executable files from the Internet and conditions them to approve elevation for anything that asks.
If Windows breaks, how do you troubleshoot it? Maybe Google knows, maybe rebooting fixes it, if not then possibly re-installing the entire OS. It’s so bad that if you work with Windows clients you probably already have an image of a Windows install because troubleshooting is so much of a pain it’s easier to just completely re-image the machine.
Don’t even get me started on how often Microsoft changes the layout of administration tools and system menus or their tendency to change the name of various system components for no logical reason.
I don’t think Linux is for everyone, but only because most everyone already has years of Windows experience and forgets all of the frustration and learning.
If you used Linux for just as long as you’ve used Windows, then editing fstab would seem as trivial a task as pinning an item to the
start bartaskbar, orlaunching a programstarting an app from thesystem traynotification areasystem tray.Yeah, this one gets me, but you are exactly right with “years of experience”. Something goes wrong on my GFs MacBook or Windows PC and she just googles fixes, something goes wrong on her Steamdeck and she hands it to me “I don’t know how to get around the desktop mode”…GOOGLE IT, LEARN, YOU ARENT STUPID! sigh
Installing programs through Windows is now (thankfully) more align with Linux.
winget install firefox > see two different forms, one from Windows Store (ew) and the one provided and hosted by Mozilla > winget install mozilla.firefox > program installs
When updating: winget upgrade shows available updates > winget upgrade --all updates all the listed programs
Not as good as Linux of course, but much better than the old method you stated. That point I will give to you, as it is still not simple for the average user. “Terminal? WTF is that?”
I generally don’t have any annoyances with Windows because it does the things I need it to. I don’t find a UAC popups as annoying, because it is supposed to help prevent people from messing their computer up. The same could be said for the average person on Linux running random commands they found online because the thing they were expecting their computer to do isn’t doing the thing.
Windows has never broken on me, so I do not have a good rebuttal for that. I can at least say that when Linux has been borked before on my own hardware, I essentially had to put the ISO back on the single USB I owned at the time just to reinstall the entire OS again, because again, I didn’t know anything about Linux at this time. While in Windows, if the computer doesn’t boot properly 3 times, it brings up the Windows Recovery menu that has in plain English what available options you have to get your install back in at least some working manner. Again, you must keep the average person in mind. You and I are not what I would consider average in this context.
Again, point to you for the changes to UI that Micro$oft introduce. Very, very, very stupid UI/UX redesign choices, and without an alternate avenue at that! (there are a few programs that try to replace some of the Windows UI to get it back to how it should be, but of course that can introduce entirely new issues…)
I’ve been knuckle dragging my way into Linux more and more for 15 years. That’s why I have such a strong opinion on what they could do better for the average people. UI/GUI is a must have to get people to even consider ditching Windows. That’s without even taking into consideration that most of the programs I run personally do not even have a Linux alternative, and Wine/Bottles/Lutris/Heroic can not remedy without loads of understanding what you’re supposed to change here and there for that specific program. That is a real nightmare in my view.
You are mostly correct that I am very much more used to the “plug and play and it just works” of Windows, but having to go and edit some config file somewhere on my computer, instead of it just being an option in the settings or in the file manager itself, is just insane to a person who just wants to set it and forget it, like I can do with Windows.
Obviously, my time with Windows is not the average either, so I can see your points. I love Linux, what it stands for, and how it is community driven. I want it to be better so I can finally delete Windows forever.
I still use and support the users of Windows.
I do like winget (and chocolate), but the software repo doesn’t have everything and so people are still conditioned into going online and searching for executable file to run as admin.
I can’t count the amount of times that I’ve had to reinstall Windows because a user was tricked into downloading the wrong file and infected themselves (and the rest of the network).
I’d say that if you had a brand new person who needed to learn an OS then Windows and Linux are very close in difficulty as of today. I prefer to use Linux because I like the amount of information and control that is afforded to me
But, I play video games, use VR and deal with applications that only support Windows so I have a Windows drive handy.
Sure, mapping a (Samba) network drive is easy, and possible via GUI, in Windows, but have you tried to use NFS?
You need a Professional license ($100) first of all, and even then, you can only use NFSv3. The Powershell
commandcmdlet to mount is a trainwreck: >!New-PSDrive Z -PsProvider FileSystem -Root \10.40.1.1\export\isos -Persist!<. It’s so bad that Microsoft implemented an alias, ‘mount’, so you can pretend it’s a Linux command and it translates it into Powershell-ese.Now you gotta upgrade to Windows 11 by next year, use a Microsoft account (Yes, I know the workaround) and let your computer’s contents be indexed and fed to Microsoft in the name of integrating an AI feature that’s complete opaque to the user.
I’m not a frog that likes to be boiled, so I deal with Linux problems which seems quaint by comparison.
Honestly, I don’t know what the difference is other than maybe Samba is easier to work with Windows than NFS? I have never had to use NFS, so there is that.
Yeah, I try to avoid talking about terminal commands, because we are trying to view it from the perspective of an average user. I brought those commands up just to show awareness of similar-esque methods you brought up. Even winget is not resistant to chicanery of some bad actor/s.
As for Windows 11, I’ve been on it since late 2022. It hasn’t caused me any distress, but that’s truly only because of the extra precautions I took when installing it. The workaround you mentioned, alongside of using ChrisTitusTech’s Winutil setup to stop as much bullshit as possible. Again though, an average user wouldn’t even know what’s wrong with Windows to begin with.
I mean atleast in terms of the troubleshooting I’ve had to do it’s much easier on Windows. Sure it can be more finicky but if I have a problem 99% of the time I google it and find someone else having the same problem and worst case scenario atleast reinstalling Windows fixes the problem. When I gave Linux a try the amount of times I googled something and either found an out of date solution that didn’t work or was just told that that doesn’t work and you can’t do that was annoying enough that I gave up and went back to Windows. If Linux works for you that’s great but acting like the problems with Linux are just people not being used to it is wrong.
Linux has problems but he is not wrong that a lot of it is not being used to the OS. Finding solutions on the Internet is like a popularity context, of course there is much more of it for windows but even on Linux there is much more for big distros line Ubuntu than other smaller ones.
Now reinstalling windows is not a solution or a good argument, it is saying the problem cannot be fixed. When I used windows that was also my go to solution and very feel things I solved by googling, but I guess in part because I was not as tech savvy as I am now. But I tell you, when I started with Linux I could find solution for all problems that I have that had solutions, now a lot have changed so you do get that some things are outdated but it is just a matter of paying attention if the solution is old or new (side not rant, sites that do not put date on the articles are the worst).
Oh yeah, I naver had to reinstall a Linux machine, maybe I lucked out and didn’t royally fucked anything, but I could always solve problems with the OS without a reinstall. I guess because more easily you can find and know where things changed, like what config files you changed and you can always make a copy. The works case is like booting a live USB and rolling back the changes if the OS does not boot anymore.
I think it depends on what problems you’re talking about as well. A lot of the problems I faced with Linux was with programs not working or certain features not being supported. Where as with windows the problems tend to be more of bugs or weird behaviors from the os itself. Sure you can say reinstalling isn’t a good solution as it’s annoying to do but if it makes the problem go away it is a solution. Meanwhile on Linux if a program isn’t supported and isn’t popular enough to have people figure out how to make it work it just doesn’t work and there is no work around other than either trying to figure it out yourself or just using windows. Sure you can maybe argue that that’s an experience difference as if you had experience with getting programs to work the figure it out yourself part wouldn’t be hard but if anything I think that shows that it’s not just a different set of experience but also generally requires more experience to be proficient with Linux versus being proficient with Windows. Although that probably comes down more to what you consider as being proficient.
I only say that reinstalling is not solving a problem in the context of troubleshooting and finding a fix. But yes, is not a good solution because it is a pain. I did so much reinstalling in my windows years that one of the best things I did was to learn to create a separated partition to use for data because it make reinstalling so much easier (it was back in the days of winME and it was an event to do a reinstall, we would usually go to a friend’s house with the HD or the whole machine just to be able to backup everything).
About the software it is like I mentioned (maybe in other comment) with hardware compatibility. If it is a windows first software, usually Linux support is done in “best effort”, so always lags behind. This is specially true to closed source software as the community can’t even help. In any case, one sad reality is that programmers usually are terrible at building and packaging software for release, and that is not a Linux only problem. The famous dll hell on older windows were due to terrible packaging. That is why docker is so popular, so people don’t have to bother with packaging.
For FLOSS software what I usually see is in software not on the distro repos and it not being compatible with the distro because the devs don’t build for it. With closed source/binary-only what I see the most is broken dependencies because they build it wrong, targeting the OS libraries instead of bundling everything with the package.
I have like the exact opposite issue. I’ve used windows for most of my life but it’s so so much harder to actually fix issues in windows compared to Linux
And for me, the big reason for this is because windows is a black box, Linux is not. You are always able to dig however deep you’d like in Linux compared to windows. Now, that might not be relevant for a layperson directly, but what it does mean is that someone else can understand the system component intimately and help you.
Meanwhile on windows the amount of “run this command that we auto-post to every issue report that doesn’t work” I’ve seen is ridiculous, and it never solved the problem. And then I try to dig into how to actually solve it, and really struggle so much more.
Also, Microsoft just sucks as a company. Recently I’ve wanted to clone a windows installation to an external drive. Should work fine, right? I could easily get that to work for Linux, and any issue that popped up I could fix. So, tried to use clonezilla, didn’t work. Ok fine, let me reinstall. Turns out Microsoft dropped support for windows on an external drive. Well that’s garbage and dumb, as I’ve used this to my benefit in the past. But turns out, people say it still actually works, you just need to use a third party tool. Which doesn’t inspire confidence, but whatever
And it did work in the end, but it took me many many hours of extra work of trying to figure out what the problem was, giving up, then looking for more information on alternate solutions, then finally finding something that worked, albeit with more work on my part
But if it was a Linux installation I’d have been finished in an hour probably, because I expect that cloning a drive would work without much issue there
The average person doesn’t use network drives or know what they are.
The real problem is if people can’t buy Linux laptops at Best Buy it literally doesn’t matter how usable or not it is because the average person doesn’t install an OS.
Mounting a network share is beyond the usage scope of the DAU you describe. They need a functional default desktop environment, working standard drivers for their standard hardware, and a browser. That’s pretty much it.
And let’s not pretend there’s anything intuitive about Windows distinguishing between accessing a network share, and mounting it as a virtual drive. This is just the staying power of “whatever I’m used to from an age when I had the curiosity and patience to figure stuff out”.
If my mother can’t tell the difference between Firefox and the OS, but can use Linux mint just fine, then so can the average user.
I work with windows for over 10 years, and use Linux daily for private stuff, including being a nerd and a gamer, and some side gigs for at least 8.
If something is weird, doesn’t work or breaks in Linux, I can usually find the culprit and help fast. It’s out there or it’s so obscure I need to puzzle it myself.
If something like that happens on windows, pray someone already had that issue or Microsoft decided to write an article about it, because nobody will help, and most search results point to bot responses about scf scannow, dism at best, and straight up reseting your system to factory defaults.
Point being, I like figuring out stuff in Linux, and I dread opaque bullshit Microsoft gets away with.
Even your network drive example, in my experience is a coin toss. So many variables, hidden settings, weird registry keys with no documentation. Yeah.
You are confusing the average user with the mids… average usage is equally easy to windows:
Open a file Edit a file Copy a file Open a browser
Most people i know does not care for anything else.
eh, depends on the situation.
I wanted to print a paper. Very simple, right? (cue collective sighs from all I.T.)On Windows it’s literally just “find printers on network” -> click mine -> print
on Linux id’ve had to input like 7 different commands depending on the distro and look through it.
I tried, got errors, got up, went to the family computer running windows 10, and printed from there.
There are situations where Linux is easier, but if you’re new to the UI and you Google something like “how to connect to WiFi Linux” (ie what a normal person would) you’ll get command line results that the person doesn’t understand and they’ll just give up
Printing is one of the few things that I find much easier and more reliable on Linux (and Mac) than on Windows. Automatic discovery of a printer has always worked for me. Both at home and at work. With printers from Brother, HP, Samsung, Epson and Oki.
On Windows however, the same printers only works for about 30% of print jobs. My family’s Samsung printer only printed from my arch and fedora workstation.
At my office recently our print server kicked the bucket and windows user couldn’t print anymore. Mac and Linux users (both use CUPS) had no issues talking to the printers directly.
Just anecdotal evidence ofc.
I set up my dad’s driverless network printer on linux the other day with ease. And it’s not even a newish printer. This problem was solved long ago
You have a solid point there, printing is generally a pain in the ass, also scanning… Thank god brother exists.
This is a little bit depressing but, as stupid as it sounds, most people in my job can’t even set up a printer anyway.
Both googling and the UI are imo just a small adapting hill. Maybe i have spent too much time on linux, but I think most linux GUIs are far more intuitive than window’s ones (Idk how mac feels like).
Googling is just about getting the correct keywords.EDIT: nope, you are right. I looked for “debian 12 wifi connect” and its gibberish for any unliterated.
Windows UI today feels like KDE plasma from the upside down, populated with horrible and undertested decisions.
Think of setting an OS for your grandma, do you think that it would be easier for her to have a win10/11 over, idk, a debian+plasma5/6?
Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
I put into the dolphin path sftp://myusername@remoteip.address. Then I give it my password, and check the box to save it. Then I right click any folder in the destination and do “add to places” and in the future I just navigate to it like a local folder.
I guess I’m supposed to do it a harder way? I’ve done essentially the same but with smb:// when forced to work with a samba share like an animal.
Why is automounting at boot without credentials a necessity and intuitive for you. No, I would expect it to mount exactly once and to require me to input username and password before I mount my porn collection so that my sister does not see it.
I don’t get why you claim that windows does this correctly and Linux does not. It would be the opposite for me.
Besides, the important point in this example is to actually mount the folder to do your job. In your example, both systems do this equally well with an equally well UI, before your automounting nonsense.
Because that’s how I want it to behave.
My network share is for file backups, and storage. I don’t want to enter my 10-15 long password to mount my NAS AND my 4 dedicated HDDs that reside in my desktop machine at every boot. That’s just ridiculous in my use case.
It’s this type of mindset why I feel the need to bring these issues up, because while you think that’s a great idea, I find that inconvenient. Vice versa for how you feel. Options are never a bad thing to have.
For example, if I have a program that is backing up files to a cloud, files that are being held on the NAS, I would have to remember to mount the NAS before that program can do it’s thing. So, every boot, you expect me to go into Dolphin and manually mount each and every drive that I may need? That does not make sense at all to me, personally. I’m glad it works that way for you though!
You know, you can have the same options in both systems. One has the default behaviour A, the other has the default behaviour B. You prefer A. I prefer B.
How is one of them better?
It’s simpler that all that. Turn on new computer, open browser, install steam, install games, play games. Anything more complex than that makes it unusable. People have zero time to deal with even a slight hiccup. It is annoying to watch as people are getting into steamOS on Steamdeck and every little thing is the end of the world. I have seen “oh, to get that one to run smooth you gotta set the FPS locked to 30” met with “nah, I ain’t got time for all that, I’ll play it on the Xbox”.
I don’t know what the fix is, outside cloning windows GUI and making an ultra safe and familiar entry Linux (the replies will be various lists of “just use x,y,z” and “get this one and technobabble the dilithium crystals into the frondulator” and that just pushes people away instantly…there has to be a tiktok-dumb entry level OS before any real migration happens.
There are entire distros that exist just to be a gaming desktop, they come with Steam installed and configured as a default so you just boot, login to Steam and install your games. All of the weird wine/proton stuff is handled automatically by Steam and if you have any problems, you can go to a single site (protondb.com) and see what settings you need to change.
The entire installation process is just as simple as Windows: click the drive you want to install on, choose a username and timezone, let the bar fill up and reboot.
Average people don’t even use networked drives. What are you talking about?
They’re happy with Chrome and Steam.
If the average user
Proceeds to describe a task average users never perform.
And no, you having been a smart child doesn’t excuse you being an obtuse adult.
I think the hard disks thing, looks like gparted kindve, can add fstab entries automatically for you.
I could be wrong
Thunar + (i think) gvfs does fine with network drives, it mounts them as soon as I try to click on them. If I wanted otherwise I wouldn’t use the tool that’s meant to show me files when I want to look at them.
When administrating (an admittedly horribly set up) computer system I hate that Windows automatically saves the address without asking because then after turning the protections back on after installing a program from there, the users still see the network drive and want to play around with it.
While I agree linux has some pants on head stupid shit that needs to change, like right click new file being something you need to diy for some reason on fedora, linux now is better than windows was when I was 10. Most things work, you don’t need to troubleshoot. I remember spending more time troubleshooting games than playing them back in the day on windows while linux desktop didn’t even exist at the time.
There are some issues to work out but majority of them are things that are done differently on linux and you hate cause youre used to windows bullshit.
I didn’t think Linux had enough ads and wasn’t commercialized enough but then I tried Ubuntu.
Fuckin gottem 🤣🤣 bullseye!
This isn’t really how this format works but ok
Unless computer companies include Linux with their PC’s, it will never get general adoption.
No average user will follow instructions on how to boot Linux distro installer, especially when there are multiple steps needed to do so, such as on UEFI systems.
TBH, so many people I know don’t even know how to use Windows. Or even a browser. iOS or maybe Android is their PC, all through apps and feeds.
Like, if I explained laptop BIOS access for installing Linux, I’d lose them before I even started.
iOS or maybe Android is their PC, all through apps and feeds.
So they’re already using BSD and Linux.
Linux in the meme’s context has little relation to Apple or Android, unfortunately.
Can you use HDR in KDE? Only desktop Can you use HDR in game? Only with gamescope with dozen flags Can you use native wayland in proton? No unless you go through complex hoops.
“Finished” isn’t worth a jack shit if it doesn’t work out of the box
“Finished” is a relative concept that dependa on an individuals needs and wants. I don’t care about HDR. I’ve been able to play every game I want virtually without a hassle for more than a decade. Wayland is nice but ultimately I don’t care.
Linux has been finished for me since some time between 2011-2014.
I have been using hdr in kde for a few weeks now. I recently got a Dell oled monitor, and it has been working surprisingly well out of the box with hdr on plasma. I’m on Nobara btw
Double space
Before single newlineProton in Wayland works well in Ubuntu out of the box. I don’t think it matters if it is native or an X11 compatibility layer, since the games I played ran better than they did in Windows 7.
Don’t worry guys, we’ll never have VR
I can’t tell if this is flippant?? steamvr works great for what I’ve used it for (mostly beat saber and taskmaster VR). using Nobara 40 rn
It’s just not competitive with the quality of support on Windows. It’s bad enough, comparatively, that if you’re a heavy VR user it’s worth keeping a Windows install just for that use. There was a long post on /r/linuxgaming a few weeks back rolling up all the issues into one post, I’ll try to find it. One of the best comments in the post was by a top-ranked Beatsaber player actually; he said that latency among other things was the reason he has kept dual booting – only using Windows for VR gaming. I know that I just gave up on playing Elite: Dangerous in VR successfully because I didn’t want to fuss with dual booting.
ahhh yeah I’m not good at beat saber at all, I just think it’s fun. it’s easy for my smooth brain to just be happy that vr works at all 🤣
Yeah not sure of their setup, but I had a big list of mandatory things that needed to work before I erased my windows partitions. VR was one of them. More specifically VR full room and VR sitting with my HOTAS and wheel setups. Everything game related works perfectly. Some VR applications I haven’t gotten working or found replacements for like Virtual Desktop. (If anyone has any suggestions, that’d be amazing.)
But long story short, VR works and it works well. I’ve played on both an Nvidia 3090 and an AMD 7900 XTX. I’m using Ubuntu 24.10 with Gnome Wayland.
On occasion it complains about gnome not supporting vr. I just reboot and it works fine.
Did you get audio working? I could never get sound out of the headset.
Yeah same here! I had a brief moment where I thought the audio coming out of my remote desktop on my phone was the headset… Dreams shattered 😭
We have: https://lvra.gitlab.io/
Ah shit this rules! Cheers, yo!
Have you guys decided which distro is the ready one?
At this point it should be obvious, btw
Obvious to whom exactly?
Hint: the answer lies within the last 3 letters of their post. And is probably a joke.
it may have been an obscure reference to the “btw I use Arch” meme
Can someone explain to me like I’m a Windows user why Arch is so great? You know, over something like Ubuntu.
If you’re a “well acktchually” type of nerd who adores exceedingly granular control over things like choosing from twelve different versions of a driver via a command text box, then Arch is for you.
I say this as a user of an Arch-based OS; EndeavourOS is probably the closest to user-friendly as Arch gets but it still requires some nitty-gritty. Don’t worry too much about which choices you pick during installation though since it doesn’t really matter as much as it pretends to.
KDE Plasma is a desktop style close to that of windows that Arch usually defaults to, where Ubuntu’s typical desktop style is closer to Mac.
That said, once you get past the pain in the ass hurdle of figuring out your big basics in the command line, installing packages (programs/apps) is pretty easy. You can also use something called Flatpak which is like an App Store and usually easier for installing stuff.
This started out as a joke but turned into an essay. Thanks for bearing with me.
Basically you understand your installation better when you’re the one who assembled your installation.
Distros like ubuntu ship with a bunch of preinstalled software. This means less setup for you to do but in the end you’ll end up with some stuff you don’t need or understand the purpose of.
And ofc arch is the opposite. It ships with the bare minimum and then everything else is up to you to set up
Enlighten me.
Is it Zorin?
Everyone loves to shit on Zorin but I like it. Fedora is way too slow with updates for me. Mint is nice, but Zorin feels more cohesive with its UX.
Mint? Arch? Anything you like
Redstar?
Hanna Montana Linux
Yes sir
Not yet but I’d at least narrow it down to Arch and Fedora. I don’t think either of those is a bad choice.
Lol, Arch Linux is good to learn quickly if you like that. Suggesting it to non-experts however is an act of sadism. 😅
