You can’t use PowerShell or CMD like you do with bash, there are problems also using different commands like SSHFS and other super useful tools, it’s like the WSL, they can say they have it, but it works awful. So what’s why I say it’s a pain…
I’ve used Linux on my private laptop for the past few years, never had any major issues. Work desktop is running Ubuntu, no major problems except for the odd bit of poorly maintained software (niche science things, so that’s not really a Linux issue). Laptop breaks, I get a Windows 11 laptop from work…and I’ve had so many problems. Updates keep breaking everything, and I’ve had to do a factory reset more than once since the recovery after those updates also always failed. Wish I had my good old Linux laptop back :(
Hell, i personally run into MORE issues on windows than linux which is why in 2020 when proton became pretty big news i made the final switch and have not looked back. I use windows in my work laptop cause work makes me, other than that i dont touch windows based systems and i live with more stability running mint.
Well, in the real world, Windows has won. It’s the default desktop OS. Whatever Linux distro is trying to take over needs to be just as simple to use, and needs to be designed so that most of the knowledge that your grandma has regarding her Windows computer can transfer over. Once that happens, and the only difference between Windows and Linux is the cost, then Linux will win.
Yeah, but XP was on the tail end of operating systems that still needed their users to understand what’s going on. Back then, you HAD to be “tech savvy” (at least relative to today) in order to get your computer set up. People understood what a file was. What a file format was. They needed to understand what folders were on their computer and how to get to them from different applications. The kind of knowledge that you’d think people still have.
Since then every single UX designer has been working towards making everything “just work”. So, at this point people just assume that technology is doing what they intend it to do in their heads. Everything auto opens, auto updates, auto installs, and auto syncs. In modern operating systems you don’t control over anything, but everything is done for you. Obviously that’s not really the case, but that’s the design. And now, most people don’t even have a desktop in their home. Most people do everything from their phone and use a tablet for anything that the phone is too small for. And because of that, many people coming out of school don’t know what a “file folder” even is. What it means to put a file onto a flash drive and move it to a computer. It’s old people nonsense to them.
I hope that we can bridge this gap, but I don’t know how that would work.
You make a very valid point, I didn’t think of that problem before. My mother learned how to use a PC back in 1988 when we had XT and Wordstar. It’s obvious that she understands the basics of OS and filesystems, but I guess that skill is now becoming quite fringe.
you use a system like mint and it is as easy if not easier to use that windows and the local application search bar actually works decently and doesnt bring up a bunch of useless fucking web results.
I guess the last thing is to get some company to install it on laptops and sell them at Walmart. Because the “normies” are not going to go out to install something themselves.
How about for gaming? I will admit that I haven’t tried a distro in almost a decade, but I was hearing that back in 2010, and tried to migrate to Linux in 2014 and EvE Online refused to work on either Ubuntu or Mint
I think if you come from Windows to Linux, there is a change of mentality as Linux works different from Windows, different apps and philosophy, for gaming, you should check the proton community here www.protondb.com/app/8500 and check what they say. Linux has a lot of communities, wiki and guides to get help, that’s what I miss on Windows… their official website s*cks a lot… never helped me unless for basic commands like “how to enable OpenSSH”… you will need to re-learn the OS basics if you plan to move to Linux.
I mean it’s to the point that if you’re willing to install an operating system (a smaller sunset of computer users overall) , you can go with Linux no problem
Well, is not super common for sure, but Dell sure sell the same laptops with Ubuntu pre installed, they’re a bit cheaper too. At least in here South america they do, pretty much every single computer they sell has a Linux option from the box.
But I also can’t think of any other big brands that also do that, so you have a point, Asus and Acer have some models, but they’re harder to find, even online.
Lol, my power supply on my desktop died earlier this year and I work from home, so I had to come up with something fast. Booted up my Raspberry Pi and connected it to my monitor, ran it as my Linux desktop for 3 days while I waited for the replacement. Did everything I needed and was able to handle my browser games to boot.
They have a point. I’m in the market for a new laptop and I have, so far, returned two of them.
First, I tried a Huawei Matebook 16. I was foolish, but I thought it was “easy”. No NVidia, no dGPU at all - just part that looked very standard. It was based on the info I had gathered from a few years of Linux usage: “Basically avoid NVidia and you’re good”. It was anything but. Broken suspend, WiFi was horrible, random deadlocks, extreme slowness at times (as if the RYZEN 7 wasn’t Ryzen 7-ing) to become less smooth than my 5 year old Intel laptop, and broken audio codec (Senary Audio) that didn’t work at all on the live, and worked erratically on the installed system using generic hd-audio drivers.
I had a ~€1500 budget, but I raised it to buy a €1700 ThinkPad P16s AMD. No dGPU to speak of, sold with pre loaded Linux, boasting Canonical and Red Hat hardware certifications.
I had:
Broken standby on Linux
GPU bugs and screen flickering on Linux
Various hangs and crashed
Malfunctioning wifi and non working 6e mode. I dug, and apparently the soldered Wi-Fi adapter does not have any kind of Linux support at all, but the kernel uses a quirk to load the firmware of an older Qualcomm card that’s kinda similar on it and get it to work in Wi-Fi 6 compatibility mode.
Boggles my mind that the 2 biggest enterprise Linux vendors took this laptop, ran a “thorough hardware certification process” on it and let it pass. Is this a pass? How long have they tried it? Have they even tried suspending?
Of course, that was a return. But when I think about new laptops and Windows 11, basically anything works. You don’t have to pay attention to anything: suspend will work, WiFi will work, audio and speakers as well, if you need fractional scaling you aren’t in for a world of pain, and if you want an NVidia dGPU, it does work.
Furthermore, the Windows 11 compatible CPU list is completely unofficial arbitrary, since you can still sideload Windows 11 on “unsupported” hardware and it will run with a far higher success rate than Linux on a random laptop you buy in store now. Like, it has been confirmed to run well on ancient Intel CPUs with screens below the minimum resolution. It’s basically a skin over 10 and there are no significant kernel modifications.
To be clear: I don’t like Windows, but I hate this post as a consumer of bleeding edge hardware because it hides the problem under the rug - most new hardware is Windows-centric, and Linux supported options are few and far between. Nowdays not even the manufacturer declaring Linux support is enough. This friend of mine got a Dell XPS 13 Plus Developer Edition, and if he uses ANY ISO except the default Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 audio doesn’t work at all! And my other friend with a Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition has various GPU artifacts on the screen on anything except the relative Dell-customized Ubuntu 20.04 image. It’s such a minefield.
I have effectively added €500 to my budget, to now reach an outrageous €2000 for a premium Linux laptop with no significant trade-offs (mostly, I want a good screen and good performance). I am considering taking a shot in the dark and pre ordering the Framework 16, effectively swaying from traditional laptop makers entirely and hoping a fully customized laptop by a company that has been long committed to Linux support will be different.
Probably marketing speech for “an intern tested it once with the default setup and he reported there were no errors”
Broken standby on Linux
That is sometimes broken because of broken UEFI/ACPI implementations which the Windows drivers were made to respect and work around, but the Linux drivers who are often developed not by the hardware manufacture himself but rather 3rd parties who implement them according to the available docs/specifications, will then result in a semi-broken functionality because implementing something according to the specification doesn’t mean much unfortunately if there are quirks or bugs you have to circumvent as well. This improves over time though with more adoption of Linux. When you compare the hardware support of Linux today vs. 20 years ago, it’s become much, much better already due to more developers and users working on it / reporting issues, and also more and more hardware vendors becoming actually involved in the Linux driver development.
GPU bugs and screen flickering on Linux
Various hangs and crashed
Definitely not normal. But it’s likely that it’s just a small configuration or driver issue. Since you didn’t provide any details, I just leave it as “easy to configure properly”. I get that it would be cooler if it worked OOTB, but sometimes that isn’t the case. It goes both ways, as well. It’s hard to generalize based on few occurrences, but I also had problems long ago with a mainboard with its Realtek audio drivers on Windows which didn’t work. Don’t remember the details because it was long ago but I had to hunt for a very specific driver version from Realtek (wasn’t easy to find), and couldn’t use the one the mainboard vendor provided as the Realtek driver, nor the one provided by Windows by default. Anyway, of course Windows is generally better supported on most notebooks, I won’t deny that, but that’s simply due to market share, not because it’s somehow made better. That’s important to realize. If Linux had 80% market share, it would be the other way round, every manufacturer would absolutely ensure that their driver will work on all their distro targets and all their hardware models. In the Linux world, the drivers are sometimes made by 3rd party developers because otherwise there would be no driver at all, and so it’s better to have a mostly functional driver than none at all. And that’s also just because the vendors CAN ignore Linux based on marketshare. They shouldn’t, but they can, and it makes short-term financial sense to do so, so it happens. Of course, if they market some of their models as explicitly Linux-friendly, they should absolutely ensure that such things will work OOTB. But even if they don’t, it’s usually not hard to make it work.
new laptops and Windows 11, basically anything works
Only because the manufacturer HAS to ensure that it works, while he DOESN’T HAVE to ensure that Linux will play nice with that hardware as well. I recommend using either notebooks from Linux-specific manufacturers (I had good experiences with Tuxedo for example) or you continue to use the “Linux-centric” notebook models from Dell/HP/… and then simply troubleshoot any shortcomings these might have. I don’t know the model but it’s very likely that it’s a simple configuration issue. And I wouldn’t recommend using the manufacturer’s default OS. Especially not with Windows notebooks. Always reinstall a fresh, unmodified OS, and work from there. I’d even assume that if you leave out any vendor-specific software or kernel modules, your problems will probably vanish already.
I have effectively added €500 to my budget
That’s an unfortunate reality also in other areas. Smaller vendors can’t produce in mass quantities, and so they have to sell their stuff for more money, even though it seems counter-intuitive at first. But this is also the case with e.g. the Librem 5 mobile phone which is also very expensive (but a great option if you want a mainline Linux phone) [in this case, it’s very expensive becaue you not only pay for the hardware, but also for the software development time], or well anything which isn’t cheaply produced on a mass scale where you get volume discounts. So in a sense, if you want to change the status quo, you have to pay extra. So yes, buying a brand new Linux notebook isn’t cheap, unless you want to specifically use an older notebook where Linux also happens to run on. But on the other hand, buying a pure Linux notebook also should generally ensure that it will work well. Similar to how when you buy hardware from Apple, they will ensure that OS X runs well on it.
I don’t think that you can generalize anything from your or your friend’s experience, so it seems likely that your friend misconfigured something or installed something the wrong way, leading to such stability problems. General tip: stability issues are almost always driver-related. Same as on Windows. So first try to remove all non-essential drivers (kernel modules on Linux) and see whether that improves stability. And, of course, check the logs. In most cases, they will point out the issue. I’ve also installed Linux on several “Windows-only” (not marketed as Linux compatible) notebooks and it ran just fine without ANY stability or graphics issues. I have a Lenovo ThinkPad for work and it runs Arch Linux, it’s probably more stable than the Win11 it’s supposed to run with. At least among my colleagues who run Win11 on it, I’m the only one who didn’t yet have a driver or update issue within its lifespan. One of those colleagues even had to reinstall Win11 after a borked update. I also use Tuxedo notebooks (Linux-compatible by default) personally and they’re great as well. But of course I never use vendor-supplied software, so I’m not affected if such software behaves badly. I always configure my systems the way I want them, starting from a vanilla base.
Have you tried updating the kernel? If it’s been rated to work with a certain Linux distribution and it doesn’t work on yours then chances are that the distribution they tested with is using a newer kernel.
That being said new hardware can be quite problematic on Linux. I personally haven’t had issues with Huawei Matebooks provided I installed the newer kernels, but Apple Silicon was a nightmare.
I’ve thrown Linux on every laptop I’ve ever owned, and a couple of family members laptops as well and the past 15 years and haven’t encountered 1/10th of the issues they you have.
Complaining about broken suspend is funny because Microsoft basically killed S3 sleep in favour of the battery sucking S0. If anything it works better in Linux because you won’t open up your laptop to find that Windows Update fucking ran in the background while it was sitting closed in your backpack and rebooted.
I think your issue might be more of an AMD issue. They have a long history of buggy mobile hardware even on Windows.
I mean hell I threw Fedora on to my Intel MacBook Pro and the only real annoyance I had was not being able to reliably disable the SPDIF light in the 3.5mm jack.
I’m currently using the non-linux version of the XPS 13 2-in-1 and my OS experience is actually the opposite of your friends. I can install any Linux ISO without issue, but the standard Win 11 ISO refuses to work because it can’t detect any storage drives.
As far as daily driving Linux on it, the only things that don’t work are the fingerprint reader and webcam. It’s a bit of a piss off given that non-touchscreen version uses similar spec hardware that does support it but it doesn’t really affect daily use.
I’ve never had suspend work correctly on Linux. It’s always been buggy in Windows as well. You can boot from SSDs about just as fast as waking from suspend, so I don’t even try to use it anymore.
Why would you throw away so much money for new and shitty hardware, if Linux runs perfectly on old robust devices, which can be bought for a fraction of what you invested?
Windows 11 and its goddamn picky-ass CPU requirements… What the actual fuck, Microsoft? Did someone over there drink a tall glass of stupid juice and think, “Hey, let’s royally piss off a chunk of our user base just because we can?” This is tech elitism at its absolute shittiest.
It’s like Microsoft’s throwing a party, and instead of a guest list, they’ve got some half-baked, cockamamie CPU blacklist. “Oh, you’re rocking a perfectly functional CPU from a few years ago? Tough titties! Go fuck yourself with a USB stick!”
This isn’t progress; it’s goddamn techno-discrimination. It’s like being invited to a buffet and then being told you can only eat if your fork is from the latest silverware collection. I mean, who’s making these decisions over there? A drunk leprechaun playing darts with a list of CPUs?
Look, I get wanting to advance, to push the boundaries of what’s possible. But this? It’s like serving someone a gourmet meal and then punching them in the gut for not having the right kind of fucking taste buds.
Windows 11, with its bizarre-ass CPU criteria, is a masterclass in how to cock up a product launch. Dear Microsoft, next time you decide to drop a steaming turd of a decision on your users, at least have the decency to hand out some goddamn air fresheners, because this shit STINKS.
it’s also a case of micros$ucks wants to completely dominate the market and remove any type of GNU/Linux OS competition. They don’t care about the users, they only care about $$$$$
I have some crazy theories about “why” this is happening, I’m not an expert though.
I think that enforcing TPM is part of the end-to-end attestation plans for the Internet: arstechnica.com/…/googles-web-integrity-api-sound… . TPM allows for a full stack, end-to-end, of hardware->operating system->browser trust chain to make sure you’re not rooting your own system to get around DRM.
This sells hardware as “never-linuxers” are forced to upgrade, and people who have been scraping by with old hardware are given an “excuse” to upgrade. I guess that results in profits for partners and also MS?
Maybe I sound crazy. At any rate, I’m really glad for places like Lemmy (and operating systems like Linux) existing, because I don’t trust any for-profit tech company not to ban Firefox/Linux users/Ad block/video streaming/etc.
I use Windows for work and gaming, MacOS for app development (mostly because I can code for iOS and Android in one environment), and ChromeOS for my daily browsing.
I just enjoy how chrome always works when I need to just browse the internet or buy something online without issue.
To be fair, Nvidia support on Linux has been historically quite poor, with users having to manually install drivers (something the average person shouldn’t have to think about). Though even that has gotten much better recently, with Debian now allowing forks to have proprietary drivers built in.
Can confirm, recently installed it on a friends’ dell G3 laptop and I was quite impressed to see that it recognized both the nvidia graphics card and the intel GPU without a hitch, and installed the nvidia proprietary driver directly from the live usb.
Then I installed it on my wife’s mother thinkpad x260, because she was bored with Windows “getting in [her] way” (her words, not mine) and wanted to try something else (70 years old grandma, main usage is web browsing, mails, some accounting on LibreOffice Calc, Zoom with her friends and… that’s all). Everything worked out of the box (well, the x260 is pretty standard by the way). I showed her how to upgrade, how to use her software, how to install or uninstall software from the package manager GUI, and how to use workspaces. She didn’t call for help once, and, for the moment, when I ask her about it she’s quite pleased with it.
I’m a Debian and OpenBSD guy but recently got a second hand thinkpad yoga X390 laptop and decided to give Pop a try on it. From touchscreen to touchpad gestures to automatic screen rotation in tent or tablet mode - everything works out of the box (except for the fingerprint reader, but well, we’re used to that). Basically it’s Ubuntu 22.04 LTS without the snap hassle and a recent kernel (6.4 right now). For what I tested it on, it’s always been a pleasant experience.
Of course, YMMV, and I might as well go back to my trusty Debian Stable + flatpak setup if things goes awry but right now I’m quite impressed with what they’ve managed to do.
I just checked Lenovo from Google Search. I only checked the British site, but if you select “No OS” instead of Windows 11 Home, it’s -90£ (115USD)!
Holy hell! I didn’t realize Windows license makes up such a big part of the price.
Now I wonder how much of the price it could be with the cheap Umax laptops sold in Czech republic and Slovakia. They start at €130 with Windows Pro license.
I would say Nvidia historically (10+ years) had great support for Linux.
They were officially releasing drivers with feature parity to Windows. To get real manufacturer supported drivers, for a GPU none the less, was a breath of fresh air. This was in the era of having to be careful what wifi card you choose.
Sure, you had to manually install the drivers, which was not the norm with Linux, but that was still the case with Windows too. It wasn’t until Windows 7 that “search for a driver” feature in Windows actually did something.
It’s really only been recently, with AMD releasing official GPU drivers for the kernel, that things have changed. If you were putting a GPU in a Linux computer 10 years ago it absolutely would have been Nvidia.
By the way, Ubuntu and probably most Ubuntu-based distros (like Linux Mint) also have driver manager (ubuntu-drivers) that handles drivers similarly to the “search for driver” feature. Except that ubuntu-drivers also let’s you select between multiple drivers and let’s you easily uninstall them.
Enough with the fan wars. Let’s be perfectly honest for once. Windows, Linux, MacOS - they all suck. Sometimes in similar ways, sometimes in different ways. But they all suck.
Windows users - I get you, you use it because it sorta works 40%, of the time and sucks in the way you understand.
Linux users - I get you, you know all of the arcane incantations you need to quickly install, update, and troubleshoot your os in a terminal window. It works - once you apply your custom bash script that applies every change you need to get everything exactly how you like it. But again, it sucks in the way you understand.
MacOS users - well I don’t really get you. You know what you’ve done.
We deserve better than this, guys. We deserve an os that just works, is easy to use, easy to configure, doesn’t require an IT degree to use, and that we can recommend to our grandma without a second thought.
Personally, I love that there are so many choices. And, while I don’t like Apple products, I’m glad the choice exists, so that people who do like them (like you) are able to enjoy them.
Macbooks just make really nice ssh terminals for accessing your Linux dev environment. Though these days there are decent options for Linux terminals with a similar form factor, they just don’t tend to be much cheaper.
Originally but afaik they rewrote basically the whole OS over the years and nothing of the original BSD remains. That’s what I heard but I never verified.
It’s barely recognizable if you look at it as BSD. People like to say that ChromeOS is not “acktually” Linux, but MacOS is waaayyyyy further from BSD than ChromeOS is to Linux.
Okay, this quote from the Wikipedia page made me laugh.
TempleOS received mostly “sympathetic” reviews. Tech journalist David Cassel opined that “programming websites tried to find the necessary patience and understanding to accommodate Davis”.
@eochaid@OsrsNeedsF2P yeah… I’m sorry but that’s like saying all screwdrivers suck. If you don’t take the time to learn how to use a tool you will always have a negative experience using said tool. You are never going to find an advanced technology that’s been dumbed down to the point where you can’t break it.
Except that there’s a ton of actual competition in the screwdriver market that has forced innovation and improved screwdriver functionality that it is essentially “solved”.
Even cheap screwdrivers are easy to use and will do the job, they just might break after a few years. Expensive screwdrivers add extra features and are built to a higher quality. You can absolutely look up reviews and find “the best” screwdriver.
You also don’t need to learn to use a screwdriver. They’re all built to be self explanatory. If they have advanced features that need explaining, they’ll include a manual that explains each feature at a high school reading level because that’s their target market.
Also, there is no locked in loyalty to screwdriver brands. If a brand releases a shit driver, they’ll get roasted. If a new contender puts out a screwdriver that’s better than the rest, tradespeople will flock to it.
I would love it for OSes to be treated like screwdrivers are.
Probably an unpopular opinion on here, but the OS I recommend for grandparents and parents is ChromeOS. It’s so locked down that it’s almost indestructible, and they almost never need any specialized software that you’d use Windows/MacOS for. If you’re savvy enough you can also use Linux on it in a container, which is how I prefer to use it for day to day stuff (in my case, data related workflows).
Yep. I’m in IT, so every time my parents’ computer “does something weird,” I get a call. Bought them Chromebooks a few Christmases ago and the calls have all but stopped.
As much as i dislike google, chromebooks are perfect for anyone tech illiterate that just need a simple web browser that works.
Every family member I've recommended a chromebook to has not needed additional tech support for it, which IMO, is a truly impressive accomplishment on google's behalf.
Lol Linux is easier than Windows, you don’t need to know any troubleshooting secrets or bash. Even the installation is easier
How many people do you know with Android phones that know bash?
Terminal isn’t any more necessary on Linux than Windows but the commands are simpler
The downside of Linux is that it’s free, that means they can’t afford to pay manufacturers to include their OS at the same scale as Microsoft. Thus Windows will have more users and be a more profitable ecosystem to target software for
Equating Android and desktop linux isnt very accurate. Terminal on android is very limited compared to linux. Many common softwares are still installed with commands and occasionally need maintenance and most are done via commands.
Recently helped a few setup ubuntu as dual boot. Installation isnt always smooth and most accompanying software stores are buggy or dont have many commonly used softwares.
Been using Ubuntu on my desktop for a couple of years, following a couple years use of WSL (so I’m very comfortable using the terminal etc)
Off the top of my head, some of the stuff I ran into almost immediately:
the package manager has been essentially unusable - the home page will work okay, but trying to view or install any applications through it, it just hangs forever. So I just go and use apt-get, but that’s not what I’d call ‘easier’ or ‘just works’
Firefox windows regularly break - the contents of the page still work fine but I can’t resize or move the window, have to close it and open a new one. This happens multiple times a day
only way I could get the discord app installed was with a .deb (since the package manager didn’t work), so as soon as it’s out of date I just get a message saying “you need to update”. So I have to use it in the browser
speaking of discord - I like to use push to talk. Guess what, push to talk is impossible with Wayland. Supposedly this is a feature, not a bug
also couldn’t get vnc working to remote home while travelling, due to Wayland. Maybe if I persisted with troubleshooting I could have got it to work, but it took me 30s on windows.
installed zoom - it won’t launch from the gui, I have to launch it from the terminal. Also, ‘join this meeting’ web links don’t work, I have to copy paste them into the app
There’s plenty more quirks I run into all the time but thats just shit I run into with a clean install and very typical hardware.
I love interacting with Linux through the terminal - I hate interacting with it through a gui. That’s not my definition of easier lol
The OS I direct the technologically-illiterate to when I don’t plan on supporting it myself is invariably iOS. Boomers don’t need anything more anyway.
When I worked as a IT Tech at a University years ago we had a lot of MacOS users who believed they could just pick it up and use it like their iPhone. It was absurd how well their marketing worked because those users either forced themselves to learn it or dropped it and went back to Windows.
I know a lot of iOS users who have iPads and iPhones but still have windows PCs because they don’t have to worry about compatibility issues.
I’m one of those guys, IOS phone with windows PC. There really isn’t much out there that is as convenient as IOS, but theres no way I would use a Mac, as compatibility issues and more expensive hardware will ultimately hurt functionality.
It sucks in the way you understand and know because nothing else even exists. No one is interested in having to cater to their walled garden unless there’s money to be made. Meanwhile both Linux and Windows have many open source projects and hobbyists working on things. So you might get a mac driver for something you buy but most of the time macos is an afterthought at best in many hobby projects. Also lol mac gaming is a joke. Even Linux is getting better support now than macos in that regard since the Steamdeck.
I haven’t used macOS in years, so now it might actually be the golden pie in the sky “it just works” OS that Apple’s fans have always pretended it was. But Apple’s condescending “we know what’s best for you” attitude that they take into iOS (and nearly everything else they do) puts me off from giving them a second chance.
Yeah it was just a joke because I love to piss off the MacOS guys. But its like a brotherly teasing. Like, I love you guys, but I gotta rib you, you know.
I think Apple’s biggest sin is that everything works as long as all of your hardware, software, and co-workers have an apple emblazoned on their back. But the moment you have to work with anything or anyone that doesnt use Apple, you have problems. And Apple seems to encourage this because it gets their users to dread working with Windows or Linux users.
The sad thing is that I like a lot of their software. But using their OS is like having Steve Jobs standing over your shoulder and smacking you on the head when you try to shift outside of their intended workflow. I keep running into situations where Windows and Linux would let me go left or right (after finding a hidden and misnamed switch or running a well researched and crafted bash command), and MacOS just put a roadblock on the left because fuck you we said no.
I know that my ideal of a perfect OS is unrealistic. MacOS is more stable because it’s more rigid. Windows and Linux prove that the more flexible you are, the harder it is to use. But settling for one option and looking down at everyone who chose different isn’t going to help. We should all keep criticising our chosen option and root for others that are criticising their own. Because it seems like Apple, Microsoft, and the Open Source community are all in a rut, safely ignoring basic fucking usage issues because of an implicit assumption that their user base isn’t going anywhere.
I live in a mixed OS household. My wife and I both use windows and Apple machines for various purposes (my wife’s work requires both, my mac is just for dabbling) and I have some linux boxes for streaming or storage or whatever. And while that gives me the benefits of all three, I also have to deal with the problems of all three. And its a lot, guys. Not to mention they all refuse to work together.
It depends. It could also be a better idea to introduce a sort of “IT driver’s license” for everyone to have basic understanding/skills to use their devices. Sure, modern software stacks are ridiculously complex and no one understands every detail down to each machine code/assembly instruction, so there’s always a big amount of abstraction or simplification needed, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to request that someone with literal zero knowledge whatsoever should be able to perfectly use an OS or device. That’s also not even possible. I see it with my mother, she started from zero knowledge but she had to learn some basics to be able to do the few things she needs to do. Of course she uses Linux. No prior Windows knowledge means a much easier start with Linux of course. She wouldn’t have been able to use Windows either with zero knowledge. So this is a point that some forget: even Windows users need knowledge to be able to use Windows, and they probably already earned that knowledge in much earlier years. This Windows knowledge also works against you building up Linux (or even OS X) knowledge because Windows works quite differently from a Unix-like OS. This is not irrelevant: a Windows user who spent like 30 years in Windows has a much harder time learning Linux, than someone who didn’t have that. But, again, not really the fault of Linux that you indoctrinated yourself with Windows-only MS product specific knowledge over the last decades. This is probably the biggest problem there is, because almost everyone on the planet has already acquired some amount of Windows knowledge in the past. This works against you when trying to switch. Windows knowledge is mostly Windows-specific. When learning about IT, you should make sure that you learn things in a preferably OS agnostic way. Which is also the reason why schools etc. should never teach “using MS products”. They should always teach fundamentals, irrelevant of what you use afterwards. And those fundamentals should of course not be taught using commercial products, but rather open source software.
Then there are some fantasies which MS and Apple could establish in the broader population which aren’t true, for example that CLI/terminal usage is archaic and has no place on modern desktops anymore. CLI usage will always remain as a fast alternative to a lot of tasks which are hard or even impossible to do via GUI. Even MS has realized this and introduced Powershell, a new terminal, and winget, for example. As well as WSL (which was originally and still mostly is being used to have access to powerful Linux-based CLI utilities). Yet still a lot of people seem to think that CLI is obsolete or that it’s “hard”. Sure, if you do some scripting or complex one-liners, it can be too hard for someone without strong IT knowledge. But most commands are really basic and easy to understand. Even my mother is able to use basic commandline utilities, and she even prefers it sometimes over clicking around in the GUI. To claim that this is impossible or too hard to learn for a Windows user is, I don’t know. At least untrue. Probably even an insult to your own intelligence. And the main reason why most Linux users suggest doing things via commandline is that this is an almost distro- and desktop-independent way of doing things.
Also, not a big fan of the “fan” label here. Regardless of whether or not you like Linux (I like Linux as an OS more than Windows, because I think the Unix-way is better, but it’s also about so much more), I see a neutral, free/libre open source (FLOSS) operating system as the base for our digital lives as a necessity, and so I see Windows or OS X as intrinsically worse. I don’t see it as a kind of war between different products on equal footing. One product denies you any rights and control (and in more recent times, also extracts even more value and data from you than just the price you paid for the license to use it), and one that gives you full rights and control (and pretty much never extracts any more from you). It’s not OK that we use our devices for so many things in life nowadays, that all aspects of your life are being done via digital means nowadays, and yet the most popular operating systems are still 100% proprietary black boxes fully controlled by big US companies. This needs to change, and it should have happened a long time ago already. And Linux is simply the most mature and most well supported FLOSS operating system out of all of them. I actually wouldn’t care if it would be FreeBSD or OpenBSD or whatever instead, but I see Linux as being the most mature, well-supported and mainstream-viable option here. I only care that it’s not a damn black box I don’t have any real control over.
We need (almost) everyone on such open technologies like Linux, because the future (or even present) for Windows users looks like this: no control, no privacy (plus AI being trained on your work/data as well), big vulnerability when (not if) MS gets hacked (and they’re a huge, juicy target, and we already saw them being compromised twice in the last couple of years), pricey subscription to MS’ services which continues to get pricier once you’re successfully vendor-locked-in (once all your servers, desktops and data is in MS’ cloud, you won’t be able to easily leave their services anymore, so they are free to increase prices until it hurts you). Even if you happen to like the offering MS gives you, does that really seem like “the future” of computing to you? To me, that’s backwards. Or mainframe history repeating itself. Moving into proprietary clouds with vendor-lock-in only really benefits the cloud provider, which is why they want all users to join the “party”.
I’m not a big fan of Stallman in general, but his fundamental propositions e.g. that FLOSS software is intrinsically better than proprietary black boxes, is true. I wonder how long we still need as a society, to arrive at that realization. I assumed that the Snowden revelations as well as the desaster that Windows 10 was for privacy, would have already started a change in thinking about such things. But that probably wasn’t enough (strangely). I’m not sure what else would need to happen, but I guess something like first MS shoving all their users into their cloud, and then MS being hacked (again) but this time with malicious auto-updates being pushed to all MS software users as well, impacting tons of businesses. Then, maybe, people will start thinking whether this was such a great idea to begin with to play along with what MS envisioned as the “grand future”. Unfortunately I see parallels with the human behavior concerning climate change here as well. It’s like we have to first destroy our climate and suffer the consequences, before we realize it’s a bad idea and we should do it differently RIGHT NOW. We are just incredibly short-sighted and we only learn AFTER disasters, which were even announced long before. It’s tragic.
And for those people who know or think they could start using Linux but still use Windows because it’s more “aesthetically pleasing” or whatever else irrelevant aspect they make up to “justify” still staying on that sinking MS ship in 2023, please reconsider your priorities.
This is a pointless argument even saying that everyone sucks, linux runs worse on the desktop because it doesn’t get even 1/10th the investment from consumer hardware manufacturers compared to windows or mac to make it compatible. nevertheless linux is undoubtedly less difficult and more efficient to integrate than windows, for example the steam deck is done very well but it could be done better since KDE, wayland and arch do not have the same number of employees as microsoft.
I know hardware compatibility has massively improved, but back when I was messing with Linux in high school compatibility was a huge issue. I managed to end up with two laptops and some desktop hardware that were truly difficult to get running. It’s like I somehow found a list of incompatible hardware and chose the worst options.
The most frustrating were an evil Broadcom (I think) wireless card and an AMD switchable card (they did actually make a few). That graphics card wasn’t supported for very long and was a bother even in Windows.
Edit to add: I was just saying that to point out why some people might have that opinion, even if it isn’t valid anymore. I’m actually thinking of jumping back on the Linux bandwagon.
To be fair… Mac works 90% with Mac hardware. It’s third party things that can screw you up… Like that pesky “USB” everyone is talking about. Who knew reading the official documentation and creating a USB driver for your own chipset would break all the USB devices not made by Mac? Who would have thought? At least there is an Intel emulation layer you can run in…
Linux will be my next OS. Win11 is a nightmare, and now with the huge progress Linux has made in the gaming space, is just a no brainer.
I’m not very experienced with it yet, but I did dial not it for a while back in college, back when Ubuntu’s Feisty Fawn was the newest shit, and Edgy Eft was the more established version. I didn’t do a whole lot with it, because I mainly used the PC to write papers for classes and gaming. And Linux gaming back then was mostly non existent.
But I did ok with using it for browsing and research and using LibreOffice to write the document. Actually had to manually write a cfg file to get the extra buttons on my mouse to work like they were supposed to.
Long story short, I don’t have much knowledge of it these days, that was back in 04-06ish. But I know enough to know how to look for what I need. And I have a friend who’s already made the switch for the same reason. I’m just paranoid to switch to it completely, as I’ve never done that, but I think I’ll be building a new rig soon anyway, so I might just start fresh with Linux for that.
Either way I’ll switch by the time Win10 ends support. I will not be installing 11 on anything of mine. I’ll probably still have family that will need it, but I’m not doing it.
Those Broadcom wireless cards gave me PTSD. The only way I got one of them working was compiling the raw firmware blobs into my kernel on a Gentoo stage 3 install… I shutter imagining administering that system as my daily driver. It was a good learning experience but I’m not cut out for that level of effort just to surf the web, open some documents, and play DOOM.
Just the other day I was posting complaining about a thing I was trying to do that should have been simple but Linux made really hard for some reason. Still prefer it to Windows tbh.
Oh, that’s why I moved from W10. My audio card refused to work with this OS. The solution: go back to W8.1 which I just skipped as hell. I could never get rid of that problem in W10, BSOD as soon as it rebooted into W10. No matter what I tried, couldn’t debug the problem. Fuck it, Linux may be complicated, but at least you end up knowing what’s going on. I can’t go back to not knowing.
