Don’t get me wrong. I love Linux and FOSS. I have been using and installing distros on my own since I was 12. Now that I’m working in tech-related positions, after the Reddit migration happened, etc. I recovered my interest in all the Linux environment. I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited. There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command. Sometimes I lack time and energy for troubleshooting and sometimes I just fail at it.
I usually end up in need of redoing a fresh install until it breaks up again. Maybe Linux is not good for beginners working full time? Maybe we should do something like that Cisco course that teaches you the basic commands?
It’s the same way Mastodon and the Fediverse is so damn frustrating to many people. They don’t want to have to think and just want shit to work.
I can’t say I blame them when it comes to going with what’s comfortable.
I used Windows and Linux while in school so it’s what I got used to. Whenever I use MacOS I feel incredibly lost
I’ve been a windows user forever and ever (well, DOS before that…) but iOS feels intuitive as fuck to me. I was an immediate Android adopter (HTC Dream/G1, then the successor G2 immediately when it was released) and when my partner got an iPhone, I played around with it for like five minutes before I was like “holy shit this is smooth.” I’ll never go back to Android (well, I couldn’t now anyway since I don’t touch Google services or products)
Next weekend I set up my first linux box since 2008, though, and I’m nervous. But excited.
This is oft repeated but is short sighted, it is NOT that people do not want to think, it is that they don’t have the time and energy to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks.
On the flip side try to get Linux to play back audio at above 48,000 Hz without breaking absolutely everything that isn’t already at the desired sample rate.
In Windows it is 5 clicks.
Try something simple in Windows like setting custom keyboard shortcuts… insanely frustrating.
You can set macro’s under Mouse and Keyboard center (though only in win11, welcome to 1995 Microsoft!) You can set a keyboard shortcut for a program under a shortcut’s properties (since at least a couple of editions ago).
@somedaysoon @Cypher MS powertools allows some of those stuff, though not nearly as well. AHK is every easy to setup and get into even compared to some of the linux equivalents.
It goes either ways and one needs to find the way to make it work on either system. Often she exact same approach might not work in both.
it is that they don’t have the time and energy to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks.
Nobody wants to constantly fight their devices to perform simple tasks, but that’s exactly the reason why I almost exclusively use linux and get incredibly annoyed when I have to use windows (for business reasons)…
Sure, linux based systems often take up more time until you find the right system for your needs and for your hardware, you will have some effort to find alternatives to some software that you might be used to and depending on what software you need, linux just won’t be an option for you, but once that everything is set up, at least in my personal experience, things run a lot more consistently and expectedly in my personal experience.
Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just lucky, but I have been using linux exclusively for about 3 years now on a desktop, multiple laptops and obviously servers. Have I experienced any issues? Yes, there were small issues from time to time, but nothing that I would not have with windows. But in terms of day to day operations and performing basic tasks, linux has been the superior user experience for me without a doubt.
I used to believe that linux is great for servers, and sucks for desktops and laptops, but ever since I made the switch, I have completely changed my mind. I still use windows because I have to, but the most annoying part of switching to linux was that windows has become even more annoying to use.
This. I get a wild hair every couple years to daily drive Linux and there’s always something small but crucial that breaks within a day or so and there’s no way for me, a relative novice, to fix it.
Example: I picked up a old ThinkPad on ebay last year. I put Ubuntu on it and after a day or two the wifi just stops working. No error messages. Nothing. I tried digging into the settings via ui with no luck. Googling didn’t help because I couldn’t tell what was helpful, unhelpful, or would have been helpful but is five years out of date.
After a few days of trying to make it work, I just threw on windows and haven’t had any issues since.
I’ve always had the opposite experience, especially with hardware like older thinkpads. Trying to use windows, everything runs so slowly, I have to try to find the right wifi and sound drivers from the manufacturers website, and make sure you get the right driver version that works with Windows 10. Then windows update runs and overwrites your drivers with Microsoft drivers that don’t work.
Installing Ubuntu, everything works straight out of the box, don’t need to go hunting all over the internet for installer packages.
I have to try to find the right wifi and sound drivers from the manufacturers website, and make sure you get the right driver version that works with Windows 10.
Meanwhile these drivers don’t even exist for Linux
Except can’t trust corporate clowns to keep shit working… Once they they obtain market share, they start doing weird things, recent example win11 where they make it less useable just because fuck plebs.
Yeah but everyone has a different line of what’s too far. Just like reddit, many knew things were getting bad but didn’t actually leave until recently. No doubt Microsoft will eventually piss me off enough to switch but for now I barely use my pc as is so it’s not worth the hassle.
Remember that Android is Linux-based – so keeping that in mind, a massive amount of normal users use Linux on a daily basis.
I think the key is, operating systems are meant to exist in the background. If it’s working well, you don’t think about it at all.
This exactly. Services should always be background. The OS is a service, not a goal.
Eh, I dont mean to be pedantic, but OS shouldnt be a service. Its should be a product.
Windows 11 is what happens when you make an OS a service… and no one wants that.
I’d argue that a product with updates is indistinguishable from a service.
Remember that Android is Linux-based
People keep saying this without understanding that Android was forked with several billion dollars in funding and aimed squarely at “normal” users, and had a decade of development since then.
Most “Linux” OSes really don’t bother with this. How many times has someone sent you into the Android terminal to fix a problem? Literally never. It doesn’t even exist without connecting a PC. Because you don’t need it.
He is clearly talking about the problems with Linux the OS, i.e. GNU/Linux, not with Linux the kernel, which is what Android is based on. So Android users don’t count as Linux OS users. Besides that, I’ve been using Debian+KDE for over a decade as a daily driver and never had any such issues, It’s hard for me to remember a single issue of importance.
This is always a hilarious conversation because the diehard Linux users will lie up and down about how Linux has no problems and it’s just you that’s too dumb to understand how to use it.
Initial setup can be hard, and then, because GNU/Linux lets you do whatever you want, It’s not hard to bork the system if you’re using commands you don’t understand. The biggest realization for me was that if I want a stable system, I can’t expect to experiment with it / customize it to the nth degree unless I have a robust rollback / recovery solution like timeshift in place. Feeling very empowered after leaving windows, I have destroyed many systems, but truly, if you set up your system and then leave it alone, these days it’s not difficult to have a good experience.
But yea, you’re totally right: the userbase can be toxic AF, and there’s no one place you can go to learn the basics you really ought to know.
Initial setup can be hard, and then, because GNU/Linux lets you do whatever you want, It’s not hard to bork the system if you’re using commands you don’t understand.
But it borks itself. It doesn’t require my assistance.
Nope, it doesn’t. It always requires human assistance or random hardware failure. It’s either the user, the distro, package maintainer or upstream fucking up.
Personally I blame half on users for picking the wrong distro(not suited for beginners) and half on the linux community giving poor advice(use the terminal). Not everyone has the time or inclination to become a power user and if people wouldn’t be so thickheaded and recommending the same problematic distros over and over to these people it wouldn’t be such a mess.
I have a 80 year old neighbour whose old windows laptop was a mess and who was open to trying a new OS(because he couldn’t operate windows either anyway). I setup a MicroOS system for him, put a taskbar extension on it and showed him how to install software from gnome-software(which only has flatpaks). ZERO problems in half a year. He doesn’t have to do anything nor learn anything. He happily installed some card games, reads the few websites he follows and that’s it.
No, no OS “borks” itself. You just didnt realise what you did and why it borked your system in the end. This happens to Windows-Users too. I ended up reinstalling so many Windows machines and the user always told me they didnt do anything. I use Linux for about three years now and had to reinstall several times, because I made mistakes I couldn`t identify as mistakes at that moment. Sometimes Linux is complicated and you have to search for a solution. If you would have used Linux your whole life an switched to Windows, your experience would be very similar.
Hey, the other day I set up a fresh Arch install in like an hour; it was easy as hell with Arch Installer in its current state. But that’s me - I’ve been running Linux for a while, so i might be a bit out of touch with what new folks have issues with.
That said, I think a lot of problems new users have with Linux really do come down to foolish mistakes, an unwillingness to read manuals, expecting Linux to work like Windows/Mac, or a combination of the above.
Not all problems, but many.
Linux user here, also once upon a time a Windows admin. I think the most difficult thing for most users is not that Linux is difficult, but that it is different.
Take Pop_OS for example. For the average “I check email and surf the web” user, it works wonderfully. But most people grew on Windows or Mac so its just not what they’re used to. Linux is kind of the stick shift to Windows and Mac’s automatic transmission… its not hard to learn, but most folk don’t choose to make the effort because they don’t need to.
The following sums up my experience with Linux thus far: “It’s never been easier for the newb to jump right in, but heavens help them if they ever stray from the straight path”.
There’s been a lot of effort to make things easier for a newb (used to Windows and all that shit) to do what they need to do in most cases. There’s been all sorts of GUI-based stuff that means for the ‘average’ user, there’s really no need for them to interact with the command line. That’s all well and good until you need to do something that wasn’t accounted for by the devs or contributors.
All of a sudden, you’d have not only to use the command line, you may also have to consult one of the following:
- Well-meaning, easy to understand, but ultimately unhelpfully shallow help pages (looking at you, Libre Office), or the opposite: deep, dense, and confusing (Arch) Wiki pages.
- One of the myriads of forum pages each telling the user to RTFM, “program the damned thing yourself”, “go back to Windows”, all of the above, or something else that delivers the same unhelpful message.
- Ultra-dense and technical man pages of a command that might possibly be of help.
And that’s already assuming you’ve got a good idea of what the problem was, or what it is that you are to do. Trouble-shooting is another thing entirely. While it’s true that Linux has tons of ways to make troubleshooting a lot easier, such as logs, reading through them is a skill a lot of us don’t have, and can’t be expected of some newb coming from Windows.
To be fair to Linux though, 90% of the time, things are well and good. 9% of the time, there’s a problem here and there, but you’re able to resolve it with a little bit of (online) help, despite how aggravating some of that “help” might be. 1% of the time, however, Linux will really test your patience, tolerance, and overall character.
Unfortunately, it’s that 10% that gives Linux its “hard to use” reputation, and the 1% gives enough scary stories for people to share.
This is all fair complaints about Linux, but I don’t really feel like windows is much better. I’ve had windows break on me or family members a lot over the years. Sure I’ve had some Linux distros break with an update and fail to boot (namely Manjaro), but windows has broken itself with updates dozens of times for me. The whole reason I started using Linux at all was because windows was breaking so often on my computer that I needed to try Linux to make sure my hardware wasn’t defective.
You talk about having to fall back on the command line in Linux, but that’s also true on windows without 3rd party software. I’ve had to use windows command line utilities to fix drives with messed up partitions and to try to repair my windows install after windows update broke it. A couple weeks ago I had to help a friend on windows do checksums using the windows command line because windows doesn’t support that through the gui. Meanwhile dolphin on KDE let’s you do checksums in the gui from the file properties screen.
I honestly feel like Linux isn’t really that much harder or more prone to breaking than windows, people just have less experience with it. The smaller user base means there’s a lot less help available online as well.
Same! What pushed me to Ubuntu was that Windows broke like three times in major ways in the span of a few days. One time, Windows update… disappeared bootmgr.exe. Another time, Windows bug checked after a few minutes of use. Yet another time, Windows update broke the boot partition. idk if that’s exactly what happened, but point is the issues were big. How this happened in the span of like 3 days is baffling to me, considering I installed Windows from scratch each time.
I was typing an earlier version of my reply to you when it got lost in the aether. Sorry, but I forgot about this bit which I shall be putting in a separate reply.
people just have less experience with it. The smaller user base means there’s a lot less help available online as well.
I agree with this, wholeheartedly. However, I think those who use Linux are a self-selecting sort. This means, unfortunately, that the type of person who might be able to best help a “typical Linux newb coming from Windows” isn’t using Linux in the first place, or have already gone long past the point of being able to be in a mindset best suited to help.
What I just said, on the whole, isn’t exclusive to Linux and can be applied to Windows as well (maybe except the “go back to Windows” mantra, and possibly the RTFM culture of Linux—but then again, the general refrain of LMGTFY is common enough for one to argue that a similar complaint exists in Windows as well).
Having to fall back to the command-line, however, is generally a rare experience in Windows. I personally never have had any need to. However, that’s mostly because I was never a power user in Windows, and I’ve never had any experience like having to fix messed-up partitions. Windows have its own set of problems too, like the registry system.
Whatever my complaints about Linux might be, it doesn’t make Windows any better. I am still daily-driving Linux for a reason (or several).
The 90%, 10% and 1% thing I said at the end applies to Windows as well. It is a general rule of thumb I’ve mentioned to highlight that, the scary things oft-talked about Linux are a small percentage of what a user might encounter. And it’s even less, probably non-existent, if you stick to the “straight and narrow.”
