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.
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 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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
My experience is the opposite but the same. I have been a sysadmin for 15 years in mostly Windows and Microsoft only. All my work tools are in Windows.
I actually boot to Linux when I’m not supposed to work since otherwise I just have anxiety or dread and then I’ll open teams, outlook, ncentral, prtg…
Also why I enjoy my switch. Can’t really do projects on it like I can on Linux, but I also am switched off from work.
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’ve been exclusively using Linux for almost a decade now. I started in high school when the computer we had at home was painfully slow with Windows. At start, it did seem a bit hard to wrap my head around. I was a kid, and there was no one who used Linux to teach me. I guess the installation etc. are much simpler nowadays. And the online spaces are much less toxic.
Even after all that, the main reason, I believe, is that it’s different. If someone is using a stable distro like Debian, and just wants to do what 90% of people do (i.e. browsing, looking at documents media etc.), Linux isn’t really a hassle. The installation process might be daunting to some people. But after that, they don’t need to open a terminal ever if they don’t want to. My sister is basically tech illiterate, and she’s been running Mint for a few years now. Never heard any complaints. Only issue she had was when she deleted her
.configfolder. But I had set up a script that backed up dotfiles to her external drive, so it was easily fixable.People get frustrated because whenever something happens on Linux, and they go online, they see all these walls of text that they need to read, and commands they need to run. But they forget that on Windows and Macs, that isn’t even an option. Most of the time, you need to reset your system. Or, in the case of Macs, get it replaced. The frustration that people experience is caused by conditioning. They accept the inconveniences of Windows and Macs because they grew up with it. But since Linux is new to them, the shortcomings stick out much more.
TL;DR: For the average user, the OS doesn’t matter (they should probably still use Linux for increased privacy). For the power user, unless some specific applications they need are missing, Linux is always the best choice. The frustration is mostly due to conditioning.
If someone is using a stable distro like Debian, and just wants to do what 90% of people do (i.e. browsing, looking at documents media etc.), Linux isn’t really a hassle.
I see this point repeated a lot, it’s just not true.
For example sudo apt upgrade is broken currently on the debian live images.
Imagine you tell someone “if you want stable, go debian” they hear it and install it and literally first apt update upgrade it’s borked.
There isnt a distro that isnt a hassle, that doesnt exist.
Why would you be running apt upgrade on live images?
I’m confused about this question.
If you install debian through the live image. The apt upgrade of your installation will come out of the box broken.
I haven’t seen anyone mention this problem, and I’ve recently installed Debian and didn’t have this problem.
I linked it elsewhere. It’s a problem if you install from the live image. If you want I could find the link again for ya.
I ended up finding it after replying. Definitely an unfortunate issue, but the replies say it is fixed and the updated ISO will not have it.
Why is that an issue for a desktop user?
Because you can’t update your system at all. How’s that not a problem?
… from a live environment. Thats not a problem because almost no one does that, and certainly not a problem because no one relies on updating a live environment for their desktop usage.
That’s not it. If you install on your hardware with the live image. Apt upgrade is broken. On your hardware. Not on the live image.
Ah, well that is a serious issue! I’ve never experienced a bug even close to that bad on distros with a reputation of being less stable than Debian, so that surprises me.
Have at look at this: https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
I found this to be invaluable when I was borking stuff all the time.
the year of Linux ladies and gentlemen
My first experience with linux was Ubuntu. Sue me, it was listed under most “most user friendly distro” listicles when I wasn’t smart enough to realize those were mostly marketing.
It worked fine for my purposes, though it took getting used to, but it would wake itself up from sleep after a few minutes. I would have to shut it off at night so that I wouldn’t wake up in a panic as an eerie light emanated through the room from my closed laptop. I did my best searching for the problem, but could never find a solution that worked; in retrospect, I probably just didn’t have the language to adequately describe the problem.
Nothing about the GUI was well-documented to the degree that CLI apps were. If I needed to make any changes, there would be like one grainy video on youtube that showed what apps to open and buttons to click and failed to solve my problem, but a dozen Stack Exchange articles telling me exactly what to do via the terminal.
I remember going off on some friends online when they tried to convince me Linux and the terminal were superior. I ranted about how this stupid sleep issue was indicative of larger, more annoying problems that drove potential users away. I raged about how hostile to users this esoteric nerds-only UX is. I cried about Windows could be better for everyone if the most computer-adept people would stop jumping ship for mediocre OSes.
I met another friend who used Arch (btw) within a year from that hissy fit, and she fixed my laptop within minutes. Using a CLI app nonetheless. I grumbled angrily to myself.
A few years later and everyone’s home all the time for some reason, and I get the wild idea that I’m going to be a(n ethical) hacker for whatever reason. I then proceeded to install Kali on a VM and the rest is history.
The point being that some people labor under the misguided belief that technology should conform to the users, and because we were mostly raised on Windows or Mac, we develop the misconception that those interfaces are “intuitive” (solely because we learned them during the best time in our life to pick up new skills). Then you try to move to linux for whatever reason and everything works differently and the process is jarring and noticeably requires the user conforming to the technology–i.e. changing bad habits learned from other OSes to fit the new one. The lucky few of us go on to learn many other OSes and start to see beyond the specifics to the abstract ideas similar to all of them, then it doesn’t matter if you have to work with iOS or TempleOS, you understand the basics of how it all fits together.
TL;DR Category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive
My Category theorist friend is always trying to explain how I should try to interpret all my research using category theory instead.
Can you explain how category theorists must be the least frustrated people alive? 😅
Category Theory is an attempt to understand all of math (including conputer science) as simply different instances of abstract conceprs, called categories. The way I’ve managed to understand OSes as abstract systems rather than entirely unique beasts is how I imagine category theorists must see all of computer science
It’s a freeing paradigm shift once you realize that your understanding is broad enough that you can transfer your knowledge from one OS to another, therefore the joke is that since Category Theorists have the broadest knowledge, they must deal with the least amount of frustrations learning a new system
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.For most people computers are just the same as cars. People want a car that will drive them from place to place, are easy to refuel, easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for anything difficult or that requires specialized knowledge. Same for computers. Most people want a computer to navigate the web, install the apps they are used to and that their friends use, is easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for any involved work.
Even the friendliest of Linux distro don’t check all those boxes. You cant get ready support from a repair shop, many of the apps are different or function differently, and it doesn’t receive all the same love and attention from major third party developers as Windows does.
Most people could learn to use Linux; it’s not that hard. Most people could learn to change their own oil. But for most people, it’s not worth it. For most people it’s not the journey, it’s the destination and cars and computers are just tools to get there.
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
I’m not sure what you were doing to break apt, but it was probably something pretty funky (or at least adding a bunch of repos without really thinking about it).
The thing with Linux is that it doesn’t stop you doing stupid shit as much as Windows. If you know what you’re doing, that’s a really good thing. It’s really annoying when your OS stops you doing something for your own protection if you know that you’re not going to break anything. Simple example: Windows locks any file that’s open, Linux doesn’t. That’s really convenient, but you can screw things up badly if you’re not careful.
If you’re a beginner, I would suggest sticking to the GUI, i.e. control panels, software installed, etc. in Ubuntu. If you ever go into command line, be really careful, and understand what you’re doing. Definitely do not copy and paste commands you find online without understanding them reasonably well. Ubuntu puts in pretty good protections in its graphical tools. You’ll be able to do whatever you need to do, but shouldn’t break anything. Over time, you’ll pick up some knowledge and be able to do more in the command line (etc.) without breaking things.
