Windows doesn't "just work"
-
The problem with Linux is that it is not tech-normie friendly.
That probably was true 15 years ago. That is absolutely not true now. This misconception stems from the fact that most tech normies have a lot of experience with Windows through job, so people assume Windows is friendly, but in reality they just know how it works.
Learning how to use Linux is dead easy. It's not popular because it's not pre installed, as you said, but it's not because the OS is bad, it's because Linux doesn't have multibillion corporation behind it to make sure its everywhere.I tend to disagree, I do have several devices running Linux and with all of them I had issues after install (standby not working, swap partition not recognized, sound only playing on half of the speakers, issues with monitor scaling etc...)
Im fine with it and like the journey, but there are still quirks.Probably Im in an in-between-world where I do have some tricky use-cases, but missing the full know-how to do it...
thing which makes it not normy-usable, are the documentations: for windows issues you can find DAU-conform guides to solve something. Mostly on "official" (with probably too many ads) pages.
For Linux it's usually a rabbit hole of official documentations (which dont show all the options), forums, reddit pages, where some guy tells another guy to add xyz to the config file....without telling which file and where in the file. Why is this command not listed in the documentation? What does that command actually do?
It has gotten much better, but there's still some way to go
-
Have a different experience. Usually, Linux does not even boot, due to driver issues, in the first place. So, the first installation process usually easily takes 5 to 10 hours, straight. And this is only for common popular distributions, not to mention lesser known and lesser supported ones. (Talking about Linux GUI based installations, only.)
yeah no i'm sorry but this just sounds completely fucking made up
-
yeah no i'm sorry but this just sounds completely fucking made up
Over the past 5 years, I've installed ubuntu about 30 times on different computers. Not once has an install on an SSD taken me more than an hour, with it typically taking me 30 minutes or less except for rare occasions where I've messed something up.
-
Have a different experience. Usually, Linux does not even boot, due to driver issues, in the first place. So, the first installation process usually easily takes 5 to 10 hours, straight. And this is only for common popular distributions, not to mention lesser known and lesser supported ones. (Talking about Linux GUI based installations, only.)
I think it highly depends on what kind of hardware you are attempting to install Linux on. You can make it work on almost anything, but the graphical installers are best used with hardware that was widely used when the distribution was released.
Also the older and more obscure distros may not have installers that pass secure boot checks, which is very frustrating if you don't know what is happening.
-
I think you were being biased.
- You heard the name of the software
- You search on Google, which takes you to their official website
- You click on the download button and download it
- Double click on the file and follow the on-screen guide to finished the installation
To your conscious brain, it might seem like 4 steps. But we are doing a lot more in reality because install process is second nature to us (Because of several years of usage).
If you tell someone who has never used a Windows PC to install a software and my list is more accurate.
-
yeah no i'm sorry but this just sounds completely fucking made up
-
Over the past 5 years, I've installed ubuntu about 30 times on different computers. Not once has an install on an SSD taken me more than an hour, with it typically taking me 30 minutes or less except for rare occasions where I've messed something up.
It's not about the speed of the installation.... It's about the installation not working. Crashes. Hard to see error logs. Drivers missing for the most generic hardware, ever. No, I'm not talking about an unmaintained fringe distribution. I'm talking about Ubuntu, Lubuntu & Debian. Plain old stable and simple.
-
How to install the app on Linux.
You search for it. Highly likely it is not available or barely functional.
IF it works, it's only packaged for Ubuntu, Debian and Arch. If you use Nix or something even more niche, good luck with proprietary software or sometimes even openly available open source software.
Most of the time, the package is available on the standard package manager which makes the process extremely simple. Hardest part is knowing the package name. If you know
apt search, you don't even have to search on the browser to find the package name. But certain packages are only available as tar.gz or as source. But those are usually not encountered by newbies.If someone is using Nix, they generally don't have trouble finding packages. Also, Nix has more packages compared to AUR.
-
If i have to suffer because I'm a dumb dumb, that's on me. I'm tired of suffering because other people are stupid.
-
I just don't see it. I run it on all my PCs with nvidia, amd, hybrid graphics, pretty much any combination (I have too many
). It works.
Even various friends of mine have tried it on their older setups, no problems there either.Unless you're using something like Debian or whatever with crazy old packages, everything works for the most part. Nvidia is still not great on Wayland but it at least works now.
I'm not saying your experience isn't valid, I'm not trying to gaslight you, but I'm not sure it's representative of the average experience nowadays.
What PCs? Certified by some Linux supporting company? If you buy a random laptop or pre-made PC, chances are high, that it won't work. And I'm not even a "beginner", who does "beginner" mistakes. No, I'm actually a Linux pro. I work with Linux literally every single day, even in my free time.
-
I've been using Linux exclusively for about 8 years. Recently I got frustrated with a bunch of issues that popped one after another. I had a spare SSD so I decided to check out Windows again. I've installed Windows 11 LTSC. It was a nightmare. After all the years on Linux, I forgot how terrible Windows actually is.
On the day I installed the system and a bunch of basic software, I had two bluescreens. I wasn't even doing anything at that time, just going through basic settings and software installation. Okay, it happens. So I installed Steam and tried to play a game I've been currently playing on Linux just to see the performance difference. And it was... worse, for some reason. The "autodetect" in game changed my settings from Ultra to High. On Linux, the game was running at the 75 fps cap all the time. Windows kept dropping them to around 67-ish a lot of times. But the weirdest part was actual power consumption and the way GPU worked. Both systems kept the GPU temperature at around 50C. But the fans were running at 100% speed at that temperature on Windows, while Linux kept them pretty quiet. I had to change the fan controls by myself on Windows just because it was so annoying. The power consumption difference was even harder to explain, as I was getting 190-210W under Linux and under Windows I got 220-250W. And mind you, under Linux I had not only higher graphical settings set up, but was also getting better performance.
I tried connecting my bluetooth earbuds to my PC. Alright, the setup itself was fine. But then the problems started. My earbuds support opus codec for audio. Do you think I can change the bluetooth codec easily, just like on Linux? Nope. There is no way to do it without some third party programs. And don't even get me started on Windows randomly changing my default audio output and trying to play sound through my controller.
Today I decided to make this rant-post after yet another game crashed on me twice under Windows. I bought Watch Dogs since it's currently really cheap on Steam. I click play. I get the loading screen. The game crashed. I try again. I play through the basic "tutorial". After going out of the building, game crashed again. I'm going to play again, this time under Linux.
I've had my share of frustrations under Linux, but that experience made me realise that Windows is not a perfect solution either. Spending a lot of time with Linux and it's bugs made me forget all the bad experience in the past with Windows, and I was craving to go back to the "just works" solution. But it's not "just works". Two days was all it took for me to realize that I'll actually stick with Linux, probably forever. The spare SSD went back to my drawer, maybe so I can try something new in the future. It's so good to be back after a short trip to the other side!
What Linux distro are you using share Bluetooth and audio âjust worksâ?
-
Most of the time, the package is available on the standard package manager which makes the process extremely simple. Hardest part is knowing the package name. If you know
apt search, you don't even have to search on the browser to find the package name. But certain packages are only available as tar.gz or as source. But those are usually not encountered by newbies.If someone is using Nix, they generally don't have trouble finding packages. Also, Nix has more packages compared to AUR.
apt searchis very inefficient. It outputs way too many results and at least 8/10 times, I search for a keyword related to the package, which is not in the package name or description itself, so the package does not show up for me.Searching online is better, but still crap. I work a lot with Container Images, Alpine etc. professionally and in my free time. Searching for the right Alpine package is always a huge pain in the ass.
Less is more. Nix has lots of packages, but they are barely maintained. For fun, I set up a Kubernetes cluster on NixOS a couple of years back. Had it "running" until last month. Long story short: Kubernetes is broken on NixOS. There are several open GitHub issues since years and nobody fixes them, because not enough people care to fix Kubernetes for NixOS.
-
What Linux distro are you using share Bluetooth and audio âjust worksâ?
Probably the DE, for me Bluetooth has "just worked" under KDE
-
Using Windows since Windows XP was sired. Using Linux for longer than that, mostly Linux servers, but have tons of years of Linux Desktop experience under my belt, with probably half of all Linux distributions on DistroWatch.com.
Conclusion:
Linux server rocks.
Windows Desktop sux in many ways, but it just works and I personally have no issues with it.
Linux Desktop is the worst hell possible. Barely ever works. It is literal hell and I hate it.Whenever I try to get into Linux Desktop, I have to meditate and drink a de-stressing tea beforehand, or else I cannot guarantee the laptop's or PC's screen's safety, when dealing with Linux Desktop.
For anyone attempting to comment: note, that there is a huge difference between headless server Linux usage and Linux Desktop/GUI usage. I'm only talking about Linux GUI. Linux headless is fine and works great!
But did you try (the distro I personally prefer)? I've tried 500 distros and that one is the one that actually worked for me.
-
I'd summarize the current OS situation as
Windows Just Works until it doesn't, at which point there's basically nothing you can do about it and you just have to kick it until something clicks into place and it starts working properly again.
Whereas linux Just Works to a slightly smaller degree, but when it stops Just Working it does so in granular steps most of the time, and every part of the ecosystem tries to help you fix things when they break.
Windows is a resin-potted black box that takes input and does stuff, if it breaks you're supposed to just chuck it and buy a new one.
Linux is a slightly bulkier thing that you can just unscrew and replace a capacitor when it breaks.Only if you refuse to put forth the same effort into fixing windows as you do with Linux. Not wanting to learn doesn't mean it's not learnable.
-
yeah no i'm sorry but this just sounds completely fucking made up
Oh I just did that
-
I almost never had Linux not boot after a fresh install, even with nVidia hardware. It happened a few times like 10 years ago and never again. What hardware are you running?
If you're willing to put up with the low security options provided by default and don't have a weird laptop, maybe.
-
Laptops have historically been a little iffy yeah. Personally I haven't had many issues except for Nvidia optimus, but since most of them are non standard and proprietary it used to be kind of a pain.
Now though it's much better, at least on newer hardware, even my newest laptop with hybrid graphics just worked out of the box.Lol "the main computer market is iffy"
-
Was windows dev for 10 years, I switched to Linux for work and I'm never going back : everything is simpler (may not be easier though) and makes sense whereas you constantly work against the system in windows. It's an opinion so widespread they even made a subsystem to use Linux tools on windows.
As a user windows installation is an utter nightmare, getting rid of the thousands stuff you don't want is horrible. And also you may not even be able to install it without special ssd drivers that you have to side load manually (for some pretty basic asus hardware)
Also don't get me started on the nearly mandatory microsoft account
You donât have to get rid of all the stuff, it doesnât break the system like missing sounds or whatnot. Some of its even helpful like weather and news. Plus it isnât that hard to make a Microsoft account, donât you need one anyway for Minecraft? And since when do you need drivers for an SSD, donât those usually work out of the box?
-
What PCs? Certified by some Linux supporting company? If you buy a random laptop or pre-made PC, chances are high, that it won't work. And I'm not even a "beginner", who does "beginner" mistakes. No, I'm actually a Linux pro. I work with Linux literally every single day, even in my free time.
Nah just stuff I built myself or random laptops.
-
Some old Lenovo laptop with an Intel iGPU and an AMD GPU I can't remember, worked out of the box but was a bit finicky for some things. I don't remember what it was, it broke years ago.
-
ASUS TUF FX504GM (1060 maxq), zero issues on X11
-
Lenovo Legion 5 (3070 + AMD iGPU), zero issues, daily driver
-
Custom Desktop (1070 + Intel iGPU though I didn't really use it), some issues but i was testing Wayland years ago. Good on X11.
-
Custom Desktop (7900xtx + 3080), zero issues, daily driver. It used to just have a 3080, it's fairly solid on Wayland as well but not perfect.
-
A few other random laptops and desktop some friends owned over the years, fairly smooth on pretty much all of them.
I've found in general that anything that doesn't have an Nvidia card as the display output works fine. Wayland is getting quite usable on Nvidia as well, but there are still growing pains. Still, no black screens anywhere.
Sure I've tinkered a bit during the years, but I almost never had a black screen on install. I did brick my display drivers a few times (just Nvidia being a pain, mostly) but it was mostly my fault.
It may be you've just been really unlucky. There are definitely hardware combinations out there that cause problems, but I haven't really found any particularly problematic ones up until now.
-
