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?
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.
Nope, it doesn’t.
Yep…it does.
It’s either the user, the distro, package maintainer or upstream fucking up.
Yes that’s what I’m referring to.
So it’s people borking it and not the “system itself”. You have control over which people are involved in the software on your system ne it affects the likelihood of it ending up borked.
Agreed, you get to pick between a system that empowers you to do whatever you like, or an unborkable system. If you need something that won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot, you ought to be using an immutable distro.
For ages I blamed GNU/Linux for breaking when I was unknowingly causing issues. These days, I don’t fix what isn’t broken, and if I can’t help myself, I make sure I understand what I’m doing, write down any changes I make, and ensure I have a snapshot ready in case things don’t work out.
GNU/Linux may not exclusively be for advanced users anymore, but system customization still is.
Agreed, you get to pick between a system that empowers you to do whatever you like, or an unborkable system.
Yeah that’s not true. There is no such thing as an “unborkable” system. There are, however, systems that aren’t often borked by their developers, and systems that are easy or intuitive to fix when they do become borked, or systems that quickly ship a fix when they do become “borked” (this is Windows BTW).
The implication that any “borked” Linux install was somehow self-inflicted by the user is ridiculous.
No, no OS “borks” itself. You just didn
t 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.I can’t agree as it happened to me quite a few times. The system updates, some things don’t work anymore. I turn off the computer, reboot it the next day and it works. All of that without doing anything myself.
Still, I love Linux and don’t picture myself going back to windows for my home computer. I just think we shouldn’t say Linux is perfect and the rest is shit.
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.Setting is up is always easy. Having it do what you need it to, day in and day out, without fail, is the hard part.
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’m fine with Linux and techy stuff for my personal life.
My work stuff has to work. Always. Enterprise solutions are the only way I can get that without a personal army of IT guys.
macOS and iOS both have their own feel that just isnt intuitive for me.
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.
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.
That’s exactly why I love Linux and hate Windows. Try something simple in Windows like setting custom keyboard shortcuts… insanely frustrating. I’m not sure you can even do it without 3rd party apps, but in Linux I can do it in 10 seconds.
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.
The few times a have some minor issue on linux, it is probably audio related or related to working with multiple different screens with different refresh rates, resolutions, etc, so you probably have a point.
However, I did have various issues with audio and multiple screens on windows as well, I would say even more frequently. However, on windows those issues were generally resolved after a restart, on linux I actually had to do some troubleshooting.
Try and get the Focusrite Solo at 48k with Windows without using the awful software that comes with it, in Linux it’s literally plug and play. It goes both ways, that’s what Windows plebs don’t understand. All the issues Windows plebs complain about in Linux, are also present in Windows: driver issues, updates breaking userspace, etc.
Those are common problems. What is not common is the complete lack of control and customization, the ads and telemetry data, and the dogshit workflows that Windows offers.
Attacking people because there are valid criticisms of Linux, which you haven’t refuted at all, shows how utterly stupid you are.
Yes there are valid criticisms of Windows. No that does not give you a pass to attack people who use it, they have made their own choice.
One device, which you admit works with the correct drivers, doesn’t remotely compare to a glaring flaw with audio that I can find first mentioned in 2002 still impacting Linux today.
I haven’t attacked anyone… yet, but the cognitive dissonance of that first sentence, oh my! Do you have any self-awareness at all? I can’t imagine contradicting myself in the same fucking sentence, lmao, you’re straight up delusional my guy.
I explained why they are not valid criticisms and you’re missing my point that it goes both ways, but anyway… thanks for that opening sentence and confirming your opinions don’t merit consideration. I will no longer waste time conversing with you, not because you are ignorant but because you quite obviously lack critical thinking abilities.
Windows plebs
Yes you clearly meant that in an endearing sort of way.
It goes both ways, that’s what Windows plebs don’t understand. All the issues Windows plebs …
Does it make you a patrician to use Linux? Are you a father figure now to society?
We plebeians are just waiting on your glory to shine upon us, o high one.
Are you offended that I am calling your knowledge into question over invalid criticisms? Instead of being offended, maybe take the time and learn from it. At the end of the day, if you want an extremely limited OS that spies on you, it’s your life… but maybe you should reconsider participating in a Linux sublem.
Calling anybody a pleb means everything you say is discounted. You have an arrogance that’s wildly unhinged.
I wish you luck, o wise patrician. May the glory of Rome shine forever upon you.
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).
Can you change Alt+tab and other defaults? Because I’m talking about the ability to fully customize all keyboard shortcuts. I can make my laptop sing for you without lifting my hands from the keyboard, and anytime I boot into Windows I feel like I’m weighted down with 80lb sandbags.
@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.
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.
Whenever I’ve used an old Thinkpad with windows on it, it has been slow to the point of being unusable. Linux is much better in this regard, let alone after a few years of use.
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
I’m pretty sure every thinkpad uses network adapters with linux drivers.
Sure, and ThinkPads make up like 1% of computing devices.
Fair, but the person above you was talking about ThinkPads… Laptops with network adapters that have no Linux drivers are very rare. In the large majority of cases network adapters have drivers in the kernel, and almost all of the rest have drivers that need to be installed after. I used to work at a PC shop where I would very often use a Linux live CD to test hardware if Windows was having issues that seemed to be driver related. 90% of the hardware we worked on were laptops, so I booted Linux on a lot of them. There was never a laptop that didn’t work out of the box on Linux. They certainly exist, but they are not as common as you think they are.
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.
I’ve resorted to just creating accounts for other people for them, updating the avatar and profile, following people and hashtags that might interest them, and then just handing them the login info.
Good news! Sh.itjust.works!
Shit ain’t working
Ahahahaha
There’s a lot of little things to you need to learn, that you don’t learn until actually messing around with in Linux which absolutely make or break your experience with Linux, and that Linux users will mock you for asking about.
For a lot of people windows just works how they want it, so when they’re convinced to switch by a friend/family member/youtuber they now have to relearn what was incredibly easy for them, which absolutely will cause frustrations regardless.
And a lot of Linux dudes get really defensive and elitist when you ask them to explain or help, like screaming that you’re afraid of the command line when you’ve just never needed to use it before. So the initial learning curve is rough, to het more or less what you had before(For an avg user)
Like. I’m sorry, but having an issue keeping you from using your pc, and only getting advice to read the documentation of the distro, when you could have just kept windows, is going to frustrate people
The command line is always going to turn people away from Linux. I’ve only had to use the command line to fix a windows issue once in the past 10 years while I regularly have to use it every time I have to work with Linux.
People like convenience and will almost always go with the more convenient option even if it’s not the best option.
Until the majority of issues can be solved using point and click (and help forums show that method over command line), Linux will always lag behind Mac and Windows.
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.
An OS as a service does nothing but turn you, and your data and habits, into the product.
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.
Every software generates errors, problems, and weird bullshit. The main difference I see in this regard, is that Linux usually explicitly tells you what’s wrong, and there is always at least couple of ways to deal with it. You have a range of solutions, you have paths to understand and fix the problem, or at least copy enough random commands from StackOverflow to either fix it or break it completely.
With other OS you kind of stuck. Either your problem has a solution someone already thought of, or there is nothing to be done.
As an example, my colleague and me bought the same bluetooth headset, and it didn’t work out of the box neither with his windows machine, nor with my Linux. He did the usual reinstall drivers - reboot - reconnect - google shit routine, didn’t find a solution, and returned the headset. I did my routine, found the patch for bt-pipewire app, applied it and it finally worked. Later he said “your Linux is stupid, you always have to do some complicated stuff with it, and my windows just works”, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of music I was enjoying with my new working headset.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.
When I was a child we had basic computer literacy classes in elementary school. They showed you how to get around Windows and use computers a bit. Somehow, I doubt that those kinds of classes ever taught Linux.
But the real problem I think is that Linux distros also never had Microsoft’s budget to develop, assemble, test, and release the operating system + software suite. The fact that Linux is as good as it is in spite of that is really something special.
This is the most truthful answer. People learn and use System X all their life, its no wonder when a different System, let’s say System Y is presented, they have difficulties. System X!=System Y, never did.
Learned helplessness. People just get stuck on their ways. I guess it’s just a feature of getting older. Your brain becomes less and less malleable. Ironically challenging yourself would probably help with that.
Back when I was in school, we had typing classes. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m younger than you and they assumed we has basic computer literacy, or older than you and they assumed we couldn’t type at all. In either case, we used Macs.
It wasn’t until university that we even had an option to use Linux on school computers, and that’s only because they have a big CS program. They’re also heavily locked-down Ubuntu instances that re-image the drive on boot, so it’s not like we could tinker much or learn how to install anything.
Unfortunately—at least in North America—you really have to go out of your way to learn how to do things in Linux. That’s just something most people don’t have the time for, and there’s not much incentive driving people to switch.
A small side note: I’m pretty thankful for Valve and the Steam Deck. I feel like it’s been doing a pretty good job teaching people how to approach Linux.
By going for a polished console-like experience with game mode by default, people are shown that Linux isn’t a big, scary mish-mash of terminal windows and obscure FOSS programs without a consistent design language. And by also making it possible to enter a desktop environment and plug in a keyboard and mouse, people can* explore a more conventional Linux graphical environment if they’re comfortable trying that.
If you want a fair comparison between Windows, MacOS and Linux then I think its wrong to compare distros that don’t come pre-installed when you buy your device.
Not one single MacBook owner had to install their OS and configure drivers etc. None of my family, friends or coworkers had to install Windows on any of their PCs (I know that some people do but not in any of my social circles).
Consider Pop_OS from System76 or Tuxedo OS from Tuxedo Computers, they have identical user experiences as Mac or PC:
Step 1: Buy computer Step 2: Turn on Step 3: Answer some one time setup questions Step 4: Get on with your life
If you have the opportunity to build your own PC and fresh install an OS from scratch then when you come across a problem that you don’t have experience with you will be understandably frustrated.
Specifically Windows has the advantage that hardware manufactures always make drivers for Windows. If your hardware is supported then the Linux OS installation is not very different, but when the hardware is not plug-and-play then configuring Linux becomes its own kind of frustration torture.
TL;DR Get your computer with the OS already installed, then Linux is no more frustrating than a Mac or PC. Install Linux yourself and your mileage may vary.
Yep which is why if you wanna try Linux I’d say get a Steamdeck. At the very least, you won’t have to deal with driver/hardware problems. Lead with the hardware and the software will follow. Certainly worked pretty well for Apple.
People hate Linux because shows they aren’t computer experts, they’re just Windows power users.
Yeah, but you can’t expect every person using a computer to be a computer expert. In fact, you should expect most of us not to be.
Man 100%. If anyone wants to be a computer expert and is struggling, just stick with it and keep learning. You have to learn through experimentation and effort!
It’s just an attitude thing that some people’s egos are hurt when Linux confuses them.
I think it is a mix of closed mindedness and unfair metrics.
Like no one would say that Windows sucks because it cannot run Final Cut Pro, but that standard gets put on Linux all the time.
As far as intuitive that has to do with context. Going from Windows to macOS or in reverse is also going to take some getting used to.
Linux, even compared to windows, often doesn make things “easy”.
Mac by comparison makes things incredibly easy, often as the detriment to customization options. But they have really made things like security very well integrated and behind the scenes. You can do Full Disk Encryption in a fairly secure manner with a simple check box. On windows its a bit tougher, normally more of a click through session where they try and make it easier, but give you options to retain the keys yourself at your own risk.
linux…its fairly easy during install. Post installl…basically not possible and for some you have to run through a guide like this: https://mutschler.dev/linux/pop-os-btrfs-22-04/
Thats straight up not digestable for 99% of the world.
Similarly mac makes backups a goddam breeze. Windows is a bit harder but theres a lot of developed software to knock it out thats very good and relatively simple. Linux…well see the guide above as well.
There are places macOS falls short. For example docking stations are a fucking mess and tied to the processor version in new iterations. Ie: You need a M2-pro for 2+ screens. M2 ultra for higher resolutions iirc and a M1/M2 standard can only do a single screen. Theres also Thunderbolt considerations. Its so goddam convoluted we bought dell displaylink docs for most at work.
There are also places windows does well. AD and group policy in a corporate environment are awesome. Simply unrivaled. For someone that plays video games. Windows excels at video games, egpus are legit hotpluggable, drivers are unrivaled there. Linux is getting better than ever but even still. Fired up steam on my Pop_OS and cant get games to launch, even when they show as usabled in protondb.
Linux is unrivaled with options and customization though. But not a whole lot else on the desktop space. On the server side, they are pretty goddam solid from a stability and performance standpoint.
In my experience, users get frustrated with Linux because they think they know a lot about computers, but in reality just know a lot about Windows. These people are unwilling to learn new workflows and OS concepts, so they get frustrated and give up. Of course, this isn’t to say Linux can’t be genuinely frustrating, because it 100% can be, but I think Linux and Windows are equally frustrating if you know them both well.
It’s hard to say why your experience was frustrating without many more details.
Yes and no. There are the type of people who will go ‘Aaarghh! I can’t open my Microsoft Edge through Microsoft Cortana to use Microsoft Bing! Linux sucks!!!1!!’, but there are also things in Linux that are frustrating.
The biggest annoyance to me is how small the border around windows is. On Windows, I can grab anywhere around the edge of a window and resize it, including in both directions from the corners. In Linux, I need an electron microscope to find the edges, and the hand of god to find a corner.
If I want to paste something in Windows, it’s ctrl v. If I want to paste in Linux, it’s ctrl v. Unless it’s the terminal, which is shift, ctrl v. Or edge cases where it’s shift and insert.
They don’t tend to be major problems, but they break your workflow, and that makes them feel a lot worse.
The biggest annoyance to me is how small the border around windows is. On Windows, I can grab anywhere around the edge of a window and resize it, including in both directions from the corners. In Linux, I need an electron microscope to find the edges, and the hand of god to find a corner.
This is a problem with the DE that you use and not linux in general. Gnome and KDE for example don’t have this issue. I’m guessing you’re using xfce?, since I had the same issue with it.
XFCE and Cinnamon. I’ve got a Xubuntu server and a Mint laptop, and they both do it.
It’s not a major issue, but it’s enough to break my train of thought, which is annoying.
I agree with you that Linux can be frustrating, I said this in my above comment. I just don’t think Linux is inherently more frustrating than Windows. I use Linux on my personal devices and servers, as well as servers at work. I also use Windows on my work laptop. I find using Windows to be a much more frustrating experience, but I know that is partially because I use Linux more often.
If you want to move windows in GNOME/KDE, you can hold the windows key + left click anywhere on the window to move it. You can do something similar for resizing with a right click instead.
ctrl+c and Ctrl+v do not work in windows CMD/powershell windows either.
I agree with you on that. I started using only Linux in january and I have no problems, but before migrating I studied Linux for about a year, learning docker, using WSL, using FOSS apps on windows, using chocolatey and winget to install/updating anything. My workflow and habits was more Linux like than windows so when I finally migrate I had no surprises.
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.
In my experience, when Linux works, it’s beautiful (yay package managers). But once you have an issue or go off the beaten path, it can get complex and confusing very quickly. You’ll find a perfect fix… oh wait, that’s for Red Hat. This is Ubuntu and everything is different.
This man page is thirty pages long and has in depth descriptions of all fifty switches in alphabetical order, but all i want is an example on how to do a very simple, common thing with it. And of course, all commands have their own syntax (of course windows isn’t any better, outside of Powershell).
Don’t curl to bash, it’s dangerous. But heaven help the adventurer that tries to do the install manually. And building from the source? Hah!
The registry gets a ton of shit, and yes, it can be opaque and confusing, but hundreds of text files in hundreds of random directories (that might be a different place on a different distro), all with their own syntax, isn’t necessarily all that more intuitive.
You want this to work differently? Then code a fix yourself! What do you mean you’re not a programmer?
I had multiple Ubuntu installs stop updating because the installer by default made the /boot partition (IIRC) something like 100MB. Do a couple updates and that gets filled up with unused files, and then apt craps itself. And this wasn’t all too long ago - well after the point it was supposed to be the district for the everyman.
Like you, I want to like it more, but it’s never smooth sailing. Granted, a lot of that is familiarity with Windows (and believe me, many curses have been thrown MS’s way), but it always seems to turn into a struggle.
I’m a devops engineer, so I understand Linux well. I actually used exclusively Linux all throughout university.
Linux works just as good as windows for 98% of my uses cases. And for the 2% that it doesnt, I can probably figure out how to get it to work or an alternative.
But honestly, I usually just don’t want to anymore. After working 8 hours, I’m very seldom in the mood to do more debugging, so I switch to Windows more and more frequently.
If this is my experience as someone who understands it, most normies will just fuck off the moment the first program they want to run doesn’t.
I think I am more than happy with the os. The bummer is that many of the alternative softwares do not have feature parity. The more you try to mimic the Windows workflow, the more you’ll burnout with minimal results. I’ve come to terms with it and just run a vm in gnome boxes for ms office and tableau and other stuff. However, many a times if I want something that could be done programmatically I’d definitely try a cli solution, so that cant be the same pro for everyone.
That’s exactly my experience.
I’ve been doing Linux since the early days when Slackware fitted a “few” floppy disks and you had to configure the low level CRT display timings on a text file to get X-windows to work, and through my career have used Linux abundantly, at some point even designing distributed high performance software systems on top of it for Investment Banks.
Nowadays I just don’t have the patience to solve stupid problems that are only there because some moron decided that THEY are the ones that after 2 bloody decades of it working fine trully have the perfect way (the kind of dunning-krugger level software design expertise which is “oh so common” at the mid-point of one’s software development career and regularly produces amongst others “yet another programming language were all the old lessons about efficiency of the whole software development cycle and maintenability have been forgotten”) for something that’s been done well enough for years, and decided to reinvent it, so now instead of one well integrated, well documented solution there are these pieces of masturbatory-“brilliance” barelly fitting together with documentation that doesn’t even match it properly.
Just recently I got a ton of headaches merely getting language and keyboard configuration working properly in Armbian because there was zero explanation associated with the choices and their implications, thousands of combinations (99.99% of which are not used or even exists) of keyboard configurations were ordered alphabetically on almost-arbitrary names across 2 tables, with no emphasis on “commonly used” (clearly every user is supposed to be an expert on the ins and outs of keyboard layouts) and there were multiple tools, most of which didn’t work (some immediatelly due to missing directories, others failing after a couple of minutes, others only affecting X) and whatever documentation was there (online and offline) didn’t actually match.
(It’s funny how the “genious” never seems to extend to creating good documentation or even proper integration testing)
Don’t get me wrong: I see Software Architecture-level rookie mistakes all the time in the design of software systems, frameworks and libraries in the for-profit sector (“Hi Google!!!”), but they seem to actually more frequent in Open Source because the barrier for entry for reinventing the wheel (again!) is often just convincing a handful of people with an equally low level of expertise.
(anyways, rant over)
I work in devops as well and while Windows is easier and more convenient for many things, some processing-heavy tasks are better left to Linux. Doing generative AI stuff, for example, I don’t want to be loading a bulky OS on top of the task at hand.
I thought about dual booting, but it would make multitasking nearly impossible. So, instead, I’m using Linux whenever possible and I have a Windows VM I can enter at a moment’s notice or hibernate if I need the resources. And then there’s the MacBook, but we don’t talk about the MacBook.
That’s part of why I don’t use Linux, outside of my steamdeck which I rarely go out of game mode so doesn’t even count, I just want my shit to work and not worry about compatibility or “figuring it out” I feel like had I used it at a younger age I’d be more fine with it but I just can’t be bothered tbh.
I think the answer to your question about why it’s frustrating for some people and not others has a lot to do with use case.
One use case that easily makes Linux way less frustrating is of developing software, especially in low-level languages. If you’re writing and debugging software, reading documentation is something you do every day, which makes it a lot easier. Most of the issues where people break their systems, don’t know how it happened, and can’t figure out how to fix it are because they default to copying bash commands from a Wordpress blog from 2007 instead of actually reading the documentation for their system. If you’re developing software, a log of the software you’re installing and using is open source, so you benefit tremendously from a package manager that’s baked into the OS.
If your use case is anything like that, Windows in particular is way more frustrating to use IMO.
If instead your use case is using a web browser and a collection of proprietary closed-source GUI tools, then most of the benefits that you’re getting using Linux are more ephemeral. You get the benefit of using a free and open source OS, not being tied into something that built to spy on you, not supporting companies that use copyrights to limit the free access of information and tools, etc. Those benefits are great and super important, and I would still recommend Linux if you’re up to it, but they definitely don’t make computing any easier.
If your use case is anything like the second one, you’re probably used to following online guides without needing to understand how each step works, and you’re probably used to expecting that software will make it hard for you to break it in a meaningful way. Both of those things directly contribute to making Linux might be frustrating to use at times for you.
If you’re in the second category, the best advice is to get used to going to the official webpage for the applications you use and actually reading the docs. When you run into a problem, try to find information about it the docs. It’s fine to use guides or other resources, but whenever you do, try to look up the docs for the commands that you’re using and actually understand what you’re doing. RTFM is a thing for a reason haha.
