Linux

The Linux community doesn't understand what "just works" really means.

Whether windows or mac, I plug my machine to the docking station, and it just works.

With Linux, every day a different problem. Out of the blue, screens just stop working. Resolutions change. Every restart different behavior. Zero consistency.

I'm not 17 anymore... I don't have the time to keep tweaking. I need to be productive.

So what do I do? I SSH to a Linux machine whose desktop environment I don't wanna see, and code remotely. Most productive setting.

You asked. Here's the answer.

That's more or less my experience too, my installation slowly breaks over time til I'm fed up and reinstall everything. Not sure what I'm even doing wrong if anything at all.

Learning cli tools takes time. My advice: don't do anything unless you are %100 sure what you are doing or you know how to revert whatever you did. When I first started using Linux I used to mess everything up by trying to solve my problems copy-pasting commands blindly. But in time I wanted to know what those commands were are, what each argument did etc. Apart from the cli tools, one can still mess things up with GUI apps if you edit system files blindly. Now this happens for people who want to dive a bit deeper. If you want a less risky swim, there are immutable distros where it's less likely to break things.

I still keep track of what I install and what I change on my system. That helps a lot too.

The solution is immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue. Immutable distros are almost impossible to break. The base OS cannot be changed - all your system customizations live in your home folder and containers. And you can always rollback to a previous system snapshot if desired. https://fedoramagazine.org/what-is-silverblue/

I used to have the same problem where after tinkering, my system would eventually break and I would need to reinstall Linux. I absolutely love Fedora Silverblue but there are others like VanillaOS for an Ubuntu-based variety.

This sounds like an Ubuntu problem, sadly. Ubuntu is, in my experience, a mess of a distribution. Debian works almost flawlessly and I think you'll have less issues with a properly run distro.

@leninmummy I've found that many new users can't be bothered to learn new things and don't understand enough about their situation to explain the problem they're having. What they are looking for is someone to simply give them the answer so they can carry on. Many times they'll wind up looking for an answer to a generic question related to, "this doesn't work", and find a generic answer that doesn't work or breaks something when they copy and paste it to their system.

As a mostly windows user, I've tried a few times, using various distributions. When buying my last pc and installing a popular linux distribution, it did not recognise my network card at all. Researching online told me I had to compile the drivers myself, since my distri did not have any shipped with it yet. ...which is pretty hard, having no internet access because of the network card not working. To be fair, that was ~8 years ago.

For non-tech users, I feel like some parts are still pretty hard to diagnose. If an issue arises you mostly have to touch the command line and I can understand people being scared of it, having to edit plain text files, or type and enter commands that aren't descriptive, much less finding the right command by guessing. It certainly improved, with GUIs being available for most stuff, but if you want something specific, is still feels pretty rough on the edges sometimes, from the eyes of a normal user.

If you mostly need your basic apps, like browser, some office apps or a music player it works great, though.

I love using WSL, and am pretty used to (and prefer) the Linux terminal experience.

However, I wasn't able to switch from Windows. I've always ran into issues that I just wasn't able to solve.

You want your work email and Teams? Too bad, Teams are no longer build for Linux, but you can use this shitty webapp or whatever it was. Want your mail? Sure, there are apps that can connect to exchange, but too bad - your domain policies don't allow you to use them, so you're stuck with O365 on web.

Ok, web it is. Now let's connect to VPN so I can start working. Oh, too bad, your company uses Checkpoint mobile, which dropped client support for Linux. And while it looks like there is some obscure way how to get it working through IPSEC or whatever, I never managed to get it working - and I think it also requires the VPN server to actually enable support for it, which I'm sure our company doesn't have. And then there's also the fact that we just use Word and Excel for most of what we do.

Well then, I guess I'm not going to be able to switch to Linux for work. But I can at least use it for my PC at home, where I just need to be able to develop Unity games, and the rest should be all right.

After spending few hours trying to get my project to build, finding out that you just can't use certain kind of video formats on Unity on Linux, and running into issues with both the Hub and the Editor just throwing random UI errors, I've just given up. Especially since there are things like multipass or WSL, and I only ever need linux for terminal anyway, where I never had any issues.

Most of the comments here are talking about the x% of time Linux gets messed up it can be really intimidating for new users and getting the right help can be a challenge, or simply more time than it's worth.

I think this is true, but I think there's another thing that irks people:

Software Compatibility

The general public primarily interacts with their computers through established applications that commonly aren't available on Linux w/o intimidating work around (if at all).

A noob who switches to Linux isn't going to know the limitations up front, and the second they decide they want to learn Adobe Premier for work, they're kinda fucked. They'll either spend hours/days of online research trying to figure out if it's even possible, or they'll ask for help only to have someone tell them they're wrong for trying and to use some FOSS alternative because Adobe is an evil megacorp.

It's a recipe for frustration.

I don't know what average people could do to break their system, considering nowadays, it is practically impossible to break anything if you are using Software Management tool your Distro gave. I don't say I don't believe you. Something could break. But I suppose you are trying to do something that average Joes would not attempt.

I installed Linux on my coworkers, friends and families, and nothing break. Heck, I even gave my friend Arch Linux. I told them to only install thing from the Store and never touch command line without talking to me first. It's been 6 months.

Linux for average people is been there. It's ready. OnlyOffice is just like Ms. Office but Open Source. If you are willing to learn, LibreOffice is far better than Ms. Office. Linux supports all browser. KdenLive and Krita work better in Linux. GNOME is way easier to navigate than Windows, with superior gesture and beauty Windows could only dream of.

Windows has its perk, but saying Linux is hard is no longer true.

Most people stop trying anything technical as soon as it does not work as they expected.

As soon as something unexpected happens or something expected doesn't happen, they drop it.

While Windows is like that for me and my needs, for them it is Linux.

While I'm fine with Linux most of the time, the few times I got frustrated with Linux was when I was following instructions and getting different results because either information was wrong or there were steps that weren't included. A few examples I can think of are:

1. There are a lot of games that I've played (mainly from Itch) that offer a Linux version, but that version isn't tested and often times has mismatched libraries. In one case, they forgot to bundle the Linux version with the game's assets and only included the executable.

2. A lot of Linux installation guides just tell you that you can just install the distro from it's LiveCD. Maybe this is the case for some computers but every computer that I've installed Linux onto required some extra steps. I've always had to disable secure boot and then re-enable it after installing but I've never seen a guide mention that, just some random answers on askubuntu that suggested it. They also never mention that you should use the LiveCD to make sure that everything is working properly.

3. There are some emulators that I've never gotten the Linux versions of to work properly and I can only get the Windows versions to work properly. PCem keeps telling me it can't find any bios even though I put them into the specified folder. Mesen (the pre-Mesen2 version) runs but I can't change any of the settings and the only documentation that exists is for the Windows version.

I have the exact opposite problem. Windows is an unstable bloated mess I don't understand. Linux just works.

I use a Mac for work, and it's alright, but it's got it's janky parts (key bindings, and being forced to drag and drop things for instance)

I use a MacBook, a Windows PC, and Linux (school, games, work). A MacBook is by far the easiest to use, windows is a close second and Linux right behind it. Linux can be easy to use, but when stuff goes wrong, I think Troubleshooting for the average person is where it’s a bit harder. Just in general, people tend to freak out the moment they have to mess with the terminal, and memorizing commands isn’t as easy as visually remembering where to click for most people. That’s not to say that Linux is super hard to learn, I think windows and MacOS just offer a way of doing things that sticks much better in the memory than a line of commands.

I love all 3 and I believe all 3 have their strengths and weaknesses and I’m damn glad that we have choice! (Though right now I’m rooting for Linux a bit more due to the Steam Deck bringing a lot more attention to linux gaming)

It's really easy to find outdated non-working answers due to stack overflow refusing to allow new questions.

There's also a bunch of elitists trolls that attack people for asking questions.

It requires active user participation. Windows, Mac, iOS and Android will all "work" even if you have no idea what you are doing and no plans to to learn. Just keep running the apps or downloading .exes from cnet.

You can stumble your way through Linux as well but it's a lot less forgiving. If something doesn't work immediately it's up to the user to search the relevant keywords and see if there is a is a fix. That can be frustrating if you aren't so great with a search engine, you don't know what the relevant terms are or you don't know how to implement a fix that is not for your exact setup.

The sky-high barrier to entry was a MAJOR problem for me.

When I was seriously considering installing Linux, the first issue I ran into was the lack of tutorials - or, more accurately, the bewildering array of tutorials. You couldn’t just search the term “Linux tutorial” and expect an answer that was specific enough to your case to actually be useful. There was (and is) a wide variety of distributions, each with their own unique behaviors and requirements.

If you were looking for help with the Windows or Mac OS, all you needed was the OS version number, plus maybe some basic hardware info, and most of the time you were good. With Linux, answering even the simplest question required a focused, concentrated effort, and there was still a decent chance a beginner wouldn’t have enough background knowledge to understand the answer. Generally speaking, beginner-friendly tutorials were often too broad to be useful, and specific tutorials tended to assume knowledge that a beginner didn’t have.

Unless you had someone standing by who was willing to be your Linux Yoda, starting out was very difficult. I didn’t know such a person, so I just gave up.

Granted, this was several years ago, and things may have changed. I’m speaking from my own limited experience.

The first step is to make sure your hardware is supported. I've found the linux hardware database to be invaluable getting new systems configured. The site is overwhelming at first, but the easy path is to just click the big 'Probe your computer' button and follow the instructions. Once you've done a probe, you'll get a web-page with a listing of all your computer's hardware and the support status. Even better, you get links to additional drivers or kernel modules required to get stuff working which isn't supported out of the box.

I'll challenge your point with an analogous question:

Why can't everybody speak French?

Using it since I was 12

People have been using X since that age so anything different is going to be jarring. Just the smallest roadblocks can put people off of stuff. Why bother learning something new when the old thing works?

This is like asking why manual or automatic is frustrating. You mostly use the thing you have grown up with and that's it, particularly when you got bills to pay and there isn't much free time unfortunately. If you put it into perspective, a massive amount of users already hold Linux in their hands and everyday life: Android. Nah let's get back to computers.

IT class back in college taught a wee bit of Linux. I was one of the few who were interested and did what the teacher said, the rest played Hearthstone. Linux Mint is what intrigued me since high school. A wonderful OS that brings life to laptops too slow for Windows 7. But I'm still the cozy and unbothered person who sticks to Windows on their main machine. I just want to relax after a good days work and play Forza Horizon 5. However I do enjoy my Linux laptops that won't run red hot just because of Windows Update, Defender, telemetry and other garbage. My love&hate about Linux is that there are so many distros to choose from. There were times when x is better than y and it was(still is) the devils circle: distro hopping. Today I'm cool with Ubuntu derivatives like Mint and Pop, along with Fedora and Suse, since a decade of having at least one Linux PC I still don't find joy in advanced stuff like Arch. Anyway use the thing you are comfy with and don't let anyone judge you, live your life. <3

Linux can be frustrating simply because it is so powerful and versatile in the way Windows is not. Unlike Windows, Linux is not a one size fits all approach. It's designed to be customized highly.

I think newbies would be better off with Linux Mint which pretty much works out of the box. This lowers the barrier to entry. As the newbie advances in their knowledge and skill, they can begin to tinker.

It's also not easy being a newbie and getting learning support isn't always easy. A lot of us sysadmins have a tendency to forget from whence they came.

It sounds like you have the time to diagnose Linux issues, that's my main holdup. Even basic stuff takes a lot of time to learn since there's often not a simple gui to toggle a setting and see if it fixes an issue.

I remember feeling really limited on GNU/Linux; for me, it was the desktop environment. Switching to KDE Plasma gave me back the kind of power and usability I was used to from the GUI.

Besides that, always be sure you're following tutorials for your specific distro, and a recent version at that. In my early days, I borked my system many times by pasting commands I didn't understand meant for other distros or older versions of the distro I was running.

On software, I would recommend trying to find FLOSS replacements wherever possible. People often sell Linux as being able to run most windows software, and while that's true, you'll almost always have a better experience after taking the time to learn a FLOSS tool written for the platform. Even with proprietary native applications, companies often consider GNU/Linux an afterthought and the experience suffers. If you're using KDE Plasma, for example, try finding a KDE app at apps.kde.org.

For a distro billed as beginner friendly, I always had issues with Ubuntu too. The most trouble free distros I've ever used were Manjaro (which I still use to this day on machines I want to just work out of the box - ignore the hate), and Mint. Manjaro comes with an official KDE Plasma verson too.