Linux

When you have a problem the solution is fragmented between distros, configuration, opinions, and time as solutions constantly change and they all have subtly repercussions. It becomes very overwhelming to figure out a solution and pick the right one.

Follow Steam's example and make a cohesive operating system with good default apps so the user experience streamlined.

Preinstall it on cheap laptops.

It's that ~~simple~~ hard.

Last time I was hired as a code monkey we used Linux with a dual-monitor setup. The setting would not, under any circumstances, see one of those 1080p monitors as anything more than 480p.

I spent literally half the first day of work looking for solutions, and eventually settled on running some random command i don't understand copied from the internet running on startup.

Linux is the coolest fucking OS, hands down... If you're a computer nerd. Otherwise it's inconvenient at the best of times. Many users click around in their OS of choice without fully understanding what they're doing, myself included. Try this in Linux and you're in for a really bad time.

I’m an artist who is never switching to linux unless they fix my major gripes (which seem like it’ll never happen just looking at the answers here lol).

Allergic to GUIs

• Devs and most Linux users act allergic to having intuitive GUIs. It’s already a pain to use a lot of small programs that don’t have them on windows. I’m familiar enough with using terminals for stuff but I am so incredibly disinterested in using it All The Time or even often.

Not having easy to access and understand toggles/settings are actually a friction point for most users—I think people who are tech inclined seriously need to remember and understand this. Needing to dig for a command to do simple things IS the OS getting in the way in my experience. I’ve seen screenshots of elementaryOS which seems to get this but my next issue is:

Software and hardware compatibility

• A lot of things I use for work like CSP, Adobe suite, Live2d, etc aren’t natively supported. I also don’t want to be risking encountering possible bugs or errors trying to get it to run them. Not all my games are from steam either, and I don’t know if those would run. There’s simply too many things I use daily that don’t have native support.

I also keep hearing about AMD driver issues which is no good for my pc.

Overall, as much as I hate windows and microsoft, it’s easier to put up and debloat the garbage that comes up over dealing with the issues above. Because when it works, It Actually Just Works. There’s more google-able tech support answers for it too instead of me needing to ask for help every time I encounter something.

Things that are easy to do does add up eventually, which again, is why needing to use the terminal often is not at all an ideal average user experience especially if this could be cut down with some mouse clicks. I think distros could address this if the devs actually care about the non-tech nerd user experience, but I don’t know if the software support/compatibility will ever be fully dealt with.

edited to fix formatting

I personally dont understand why mass adoption is a goal.

The "challenge" to bring users to Linux is simply making them want to use Linux. There are enough flavours and guides ranging from plug and play that anyone can use to build your own kernel and distro from scratch that anyone can find what they want in Linux... if they want it.

The truth is that for a not insignificant portion of computer users, the OS is a means to an end not a feature. Its "the computer". A laptop that comes with windows 11 is a windows 11 machine.

If you want the average user to move to Linux, create an desktop environment with the option to look and behave like either windows or Mac, have a software compatibility layer for both that can run at the same time, buy a hardware company and include the distro as default and sell it to the masses at a loss to undercut all other options. Flood all consumer electronics stores with them.

Outside that, its not going to happen and I dont know why people want to make a competition out of it. Linux doesnt suit everyone and it doesnt have to. We see less GUIs as a good thing, id rather dev time from the solo/small dev teams go towards the functionality not making it look pretty. The majority of computer users dont agree with that though, and thats fine. I like being able to add/remove from my OS, most don't and thats fine too. I like rolling updates, the uproar around windows updates with thousands of youtube videos dedicated to people stopping them indefinitely indicates many others dont. Our semi annual O365 update is currently rolling out at work, and people are freaking out that one of their outlook toolbars moved. Never mind its a 4 second fix to move it back, but can you imagine these people seeking out/installing/configuring/using a new desktop environment?

Its not an elitist thing. Id love more of my friends to use linux, but I cant make them want to use something. It either appeals to them or it doesnt. For most the appeal of a computer is the software it runs, and the OS is just a means for that.

The average user doesn't give a shit about what OS they're running. They also don't know what tools they need. I remember a client who dropped $700 on Photoshop because "How else can I resize my photos?"

Linux is to hard for someone who doesn't know why it's bad to install multiple antivirus suites. People who don't know the difference between a web browser and a search engine.

Linux will only ever be for hobbyist because they the only ones who give a damn.

The second that you have to google the more basic things...you have lost the audience

I'm currently trying to run a Sven Co-op server under Ubuntu Server. This has been a five hour chore of trial and error, dealing with library incompatibility, architecture incompatibility, poor documentation and Stack Overflow messes.

Im currently using about twenty tabs of documentation and support requests. At this exact moment, I'm trying to compile a 32 bit version of libssl 1.1.1, at which point I will be able to test again. If it doesn't work this time, I absolutely do not have time to continue trying.

So what's the challenge here? Nothing is simple and nothing is well explained. This is a three-step process on Windows that just works. On Ubuntu, the first step requires you to add a new apt repo and install support libraries, and beyond that, you're on your own to figure out the compat issues further down the line.

Edit: Can't make it work, it's just one thing after another. I'm just gonna do a fresh install of the whole OS, considering how much bs I installed chasing these issues, and then, idk, just not play a game with my brother I guess.

I think that is not a question Linux users can answer. I feel so out of touch with what the average joe needs and wants in an OS. Ask them.

I recently gave up on daily driving Pop OS. About 6 months ago I got a new laptop with Windows 11, which for various reasons I am not a fan of. I decided it would be a good time to try an experiment and install Linux. The biggest issue right off the bat was lack of hardware support, the fingerprint reader and the speaker amp are not supported. I spent a bunch of time researching and seeing if I could make them work but apparently it has to do with the kernel and isn't really something I can fix. This didn't seem like a big deal at first because I can get sound out of the headphone jack or via bluetooth, and while it was convenient to login via a fingerprint reader, it wasn't something I really felt like I needed. Since then I've become much more reliant on biometric authentication, it's just so much more convenient to be able to auth bitwarden with my finger instead of having to type in a password. More recently, I started using Proton VPN and the client is pretty crap in Linux. Switching over to Windows 11, I can login with my finger, all of my passwords are a finger print away, Proton VPN works natively with wireguard and is generally much more reliable and easier to use. It's just a much better user experience, there's nothing weird and janky to deal with, I don't need to mess about in the command line to do basic things. I really loved Pop, and I'm sure I'll boot back into it, but I'm daily driving Windows 11 until I can sort out the hardware issues and get Proton VPN working better, and I think both of those issues are out of my hands so all I can do is wait.

I found repartitioning the harddrive by far the biggest hurdle. That's a complicated and scary process that can delete all your data if you hit the wrong button. Picking the right partition sizes is another problem, as the Windows default EFI partition for example is far too small to be used with distributions that put their kernel on there (e.g. NixOS), but there is nothing warning you about that and resizing it, is complicated since there is a Windows partition in the way. The solution already existed in the form of Wubi, which made your whole Linux installation a file on your Windows partition, but that got sadly abandoned.

Next biggest problem is the boot manager, they still suck and are far to brittle. I'd wish we got rid of boot managers as is, and instead just booted into a mini-Linux has boot manager, that could not only be used to fix bad boot configuration, but also used as full recovery system. Having a full OS as boot manager means you can update and change the whole OS without fumbling with USB sticks and stuff, you can even update or switch distributions remotely. It's an extremely powerful setup, that as far as I know, none of the popular distributions uses.

Finally, just having stuff work. My amdgpu driver still crashes regularly. There is always some obscure crap I have to configure to make things work. And I regularly have to search the Internet to find solutions for my problems. Can we have some (opt-in) Telemetry here? A tool that can scan my hardware and error logs, tell me what I have and tell me if it works in Linux or direct me to an bug tracker with workarounds? ProtonDB for hardware, kind of. Why do I still have to do that manually?

Another big hurdle of course is just the software, even if everything runs perfectly on the Linux side, moving all your software over is always a big hurdle. Wine/Proton helps a lot, but still fiddle for stuff outside of Steam. Not really seeing any easy solution here. Something like Xen installed by default that lets you switch OSs without dual booting might work, or a VM that can boot into your actual Windows partition, but no idea if that would work well enough to solve more problems than it creates.

All that aside, the problems for new users are a bit overrated. Installing Linux is something you do once or twice, that process of course needs to work well enough to function, but it's far more important that the OS works well once you are past that point. If the OS fails in daily use, that's when people abandon it. Enduring a shitty installer for a weekend is not really that big of a deal in the bigger picture, if the OS you'll end up with is actually worth it.

Little aside: Why the f' is 'parted' not the command line version of 'gparted'? As far as I know, there is no command line tool left that allows you to move and resize partitions via command line in a single UI. That functionality was ripped out of 'parted' years ago, so you are stuck with manually fdisk, ext2resize, etc. which is not fun at all, since they all take sizes in different units and have different UI.

Probably just hardware compatibility and me specifically NVIDIA x) once you get the kinks sorted out it's a pretty stable experience

How to make Linux better:

Better quality control eg. no more issues like Ubuntu shipping a broken version of systemd that wont allow the system to boot.

Prioritize performance over FOSS purity in newbie friendly distros. A graphics card driver that gets 1/30th the FPS should not be the default for a 1,000 dollar graphics card. Anyone that wants the FOSS driver can install it if they want.

Avoid homogenization of software features. i.e. better support of the feature outliers. eg. KDE does not have an option to adjust contrast of scrollbars without a theme that specifically has that contrast. This makes it harder for the vision impaired like myself to use software.

it need to work like how your microwave works. You don't don't have to know ANYTHING about how any thing related to computer. Just click stuff to make it work. Also get more companies to ship things with Linux

Off the top of my head things that Ive run into over the years that would have caused 99% of computer users to throw Linux in the bin:

*Having to edit xorg.conf to set the graphics driver

*A typo in the sources list that prevented any packages from downloading (distro upgrade)

*A bug in systemd that resulted in the OS not booting (fresh install)

*The wrong graphics card driver being selected and not being installed correctly because Ubuntu kept back 5 packages necessary for it to function (fresh install)

*A bug in how Ubuntu handles the disk platter that causes hard drives to fail far more rapidly than they should (that bug has been there for years and probably ruined a few hard drives)

*Having to recompile the wifi driver after every upgrade (broadcomm chipset) before the driver was included in the kernel and having to reinstall the OS after the driver was included in the kernel because something went wrong during the upgrade. ie recompiling didnt fix anything and the native driver wasnt working either.

*failed drive encryption

*grub being installed incorrectly (no boot)

*dealing with UEFI to maintain a dual boot for programs that cannot be emulated or virtualized effectively (lag sensitive non-native games)

*Audio output defaults being incorrect (no sound, no mic)

But the one thing that above all else, will drive newbies away is how the general linux community tends to respond to things.

I'd say its probably, among other thigs, hardware compatibility issues.

Running Linux on a mashine, most notably portable, that is somewhat recent and is not specifically built with linux in mind is, imo, almost certainly going to cause some, for the average user unfixable, issues. Things like wifi, bluetooth, audio, etc. not working due to missing or broken drivers.

The best way to fix that would be official Linux support by the OEMs, which realistically is never going to happen. Or extremely time consuming reverse-engineered community drivers.

Many comments here largely underestimate an average non linux user.