Advice Request The Year of the Linux dissatisfaction

[bribon77]

Using something new is one that is not embedded in the genes of most individuals. Most people prefer doing things that they are comfortable with and are used to doing it in a certain way. A major part of why we feel Windows is simple and Linux isn't, is because we have become so comfortable and so accustomed to it. I have used Windows long enough that the time I switched to MacOS/Linux on one fine day, I wasn't happy at all. Round and round I kept installing and uninstalling Linux distro's, because I didn't have enough patience to learn everything all over again. But over time, I persisted and now am using Linux 50% of the time.

Some of the Linux distro's are popular because they are beginner friendly and similar to Windows (like Mint and Zorin OS). So the initiative taken by Linux/WindowsFX is commendable, because the decision/willpower to make the transition from Windows to Linux is more crucial than taking full advantage of the power of Linux customizability, flexibility, security and freedom.

Switching to another operating system requires an adaptation period.
I must confess that I do not understand Android very well, because I have an old phone, which is used to call and to be called. My daughters know more than I do because they have Android phones.
Then I would have to adapt and suffer the learning curve, which all systems require
It is true that there are more friendly desks than others but that is a personal matter.

I think the greatness of Linux is that it is different.

 

[ForgottenSeer 72227]

Flatpaks and Snaps are supposed to help with the software development problems, but everyone seems to hate them. I have very bad luck with Snaps on Manjaro, and everyone on the Manjaro forum seems to hate them, mainly because Snap is controlled by Canonical.
Flatpaks take up too much disk space, but work great for me. I have LibreOffice on Flatpak, and it launches fast, and always has the most updated version, I don't have to wait for my distro to issue it.

I haven't played around with snap packs too much, but I have used Flatpaks and like them a lot. Yes they are bigger size wise, but it works. I think part of the problem in Linux (hence the fragmentation) is that many people are expecting things to be 100% perfect out of the gate. If it's not, it garbage. Sometime things take time to mature, but as usual instead of working together, someone else and goes and does their own thing. Furthermore, you will never, ever please 100% of the people all the time. That goes for anything in life. I think if the community just chose 1 solution, even if it's not perfect, and work together to make it better, it will help the Linux ecosystem a lot. As for Snaps, the only major issue that I keep seeing is the fact that Canonical has kind of closed it up, instead of the standard open nature of things on Linux. So it's more of a personal stance, rather than it not working as a solution per say. At least that's how I see it.

If you need a Windows like GNU+Linux while still having an original touch install a distro that uses KDE, Cinnamon or Deepin as its desktop environment.

Linuxfx it's violating copyright and impersonating the Windows trademark, leading to less knowledgeable people (including the media) think Linux it's a cheap Windows knock off while it isn't. Some may even feel completely disappointed when they can't run the software they're used to use on Windows.

This is one of those things that I see get brought up in the Linux community. There does seem to be this stigma that Linux users are pirates and don't want to pay for anything and to be fair, when you see things like this, I wonder why there's this perception. I truly wish that people in the Linux community would stop caring and worrying about what MS, Apple, etc.. are doing and just do their own thing and try to do something different for a change. I do agree that projects like this are only adding to the confusion and aren't really helping things, either.

 

[mazskolnieces]

Linux has improved, but it is not for somebody that expects reliability. Because of the OSS communities, Linux will never be anything like Windows, Chrome OS or MacOS.

 

[bayasdev]

Because of the OSS communities, Linux will never be anything like Windows, Chrome OS or MacOS.

So true, when you install Linux as your only OS you immediately feel like a superior being and start watching Windows users like NPCs but you're actually just wasting your time and computing resources emulating Windows programs because the OSS alternatives are not good for daily usage nor they're non existent.

As a side note I actually wanted to try KVM GPU passthrough and do all the Windows stuff including gaming on a VM but unfortunately I have a laptop so KVM guests can't make use of my dGPU.

 

[AG3S]

So true, when you install Linux as your only OS you immediately feel like a superior being and start watching Windows users like NPCs but you're actually just wasting your time and computing resources emulating Windows programs because the OSS alternatives are not good for daily usage nor they're non existent.

As a side note I actually wanted to try KVM GPU passthrough and do all the Windows stuff including gaming on a VM but unfortunately I have a laptop so KVM guests can't make use of my dGPU.

I completely agree with you... however, only for the beginners. Linux can be a complete replacement of other OS BUT... it has a learning curve that you should pass.

And this learning curve is not something that you open a book or a youtube video or a website and do it. It should be applied based on your personal needs.

Sometimes it is not applicable for the cases that you need a specific software which is only developed for Windows.

But for the majority of the needs Linux works.

I should be clear though... this learning curve might not be easy.. you should learn command line (bash/shell) till some extend and be ready to make your hands dirty in the begining. for me it took about 6 months although I already was familiar with servers and was administrating two FreeBSD servers myself.

It is not easy... but if you can do it .. it worth a lot.

Something that I do not understand is why some people are talking about finding a free OS! windows now adays is almost Free! you can get a (almost legal) windows 10 licenses off of Amazon for about 10 Dollars... and most the notebooks already have it pre-installed. For me it is not about the price. It is about privacy, security and developement which Windows can not deliver based on my needs.

 

[mazskolnieces]

I do not know anyone who is a big media consumer, gamer or business desktop user who uses Linux as their daily driver. The ones that I do know that use Linux daily tend to be the equivalent of Chromebook users. It's not that they particularly love Linux. It is that they dislike Windows or Microsoft more, and would rather exercise that dislike by using something other than Windows. Then you have the Google haters. They too don't want to use anything Google related.

The typical Linux user tends to be anti-big-tech, pro-privacy. So they tend not to use things such as Chrome, Microsoft Office, media players and so on. They also seem to be much more tolerant of bugs or willing to do extensive troubleshooting.

Trying to replicate a Windows-like experience on LInux is a waste of time. Millions have tried. None have succeeded. Despite all the improvements, Linux as a desktop remains a failure.

 

[ChoiceVoice]

Linux has never run lighter for my systems, worse on older CPUs with less than 4GB RAM.

my linux system has 3 gb ram, so it runs lighter. it actually runs perfectly on it, fast and smooth. windows 10 barely runs on it, if you don't mind waiting a couple of minutes for the browser to open, lol.

 

[ChoiceVoice]

a guy was telling me his Chrome OS can run a week on a single battery charge. that is, with him using it daily for hours. my win10 can't do that. i wonder if he was exaggerating ...

 

[bayasdev]

If you have a mid-high end machine use Windows otherwise you're wasting its full potential by using Linux as your only OS.

But since I'm a Linux enthousiast I'm waiting for a M2 to SATA adapter so I can install Kubuntu on my old SSD, this way I can have the best of both worlds without having to mess with EFI bootloaders if I install Linux on the same physical disk where I have Windows.

 

[jackuars]

If you have a mid-high end machine use Windows otherwise you're wasting its full potential by using Linux as your only OS.

Most people are just casual surfers, like the only activities they do are browsing, emailing, watching videos, creating and sharing documents. They aren't really interested in security and don't even use an antivirus and if they do they will be using expired ones that came with the system. For that reason alone, LInux should be ideal for them.

 

[mazskolnieces]

If you have a mid-high end machine use Windows otherwise you're wasting its full potential by using Linux as your only OS.

For example, in the Linux community they constantly whine and moan that there are very few AMD CPU powered systems. Then once they get one, they whine and moan that AMD CPU, power management and thermal control software are not available on Linux. That is because coreboot only supports Intel - and to support AMD would require a huge amount of further development.

The only people I know that use Linux for a personal laptop acknowledge that it is little more than an equivalent to Chromebook. The minute that they try making their Linux a Windows replacement - for business, productivity, media consumption, cloud, etc - it immediately falls apart. It requires either configuring the system to get it to work - and not changing it except once every few years - or constant troubleshooting due to upgrade breakages.

For expensive laptops, the only real options out there are XPS 13 Developer Edition, the new Lenovo X1 Linux series, and well-supported Linux ODMs such as System76.

Most people just buy old Lenovo laptops that are years old, then throw Linux onto them. Why is that ? Because when it comes to hardware compatibility, LInux still is 15+ years behind the Windows-OEM aliiances of bringing very well-developed software to hardware.

 

[bayasdev]

Most people are just casual surfers, like the only activities they do are browsing, emailing, watching videos, creating and sharing documents.

Well in such case Linux does very good and better than Windows when it comes to security.

But if for example you have the latest and greatest Nvidia RTX3080 on your gaming rig you're not going to enjoy it using Linux.

 

[shmu26]

Well in such case Linux does very good and better than Windows when it comes to security.

But if for example you have the latest and greatest Nvidia RTX3080 on your gaming rig you're not going to enjoy it using Linux.

+1
the biggest issues are with the Nvidia graphics.
I use linux on my desktop with i7 9th gen, integrated graphics, and I get great performance from linux. But I don't do gaming or anything graphics-intensive. Battery performance is of course not relevant for desktop. So for me, linux is fast and smooth.

 

[ForgottenSeer 85179]

Well in such case Linux does very good and better than Windows when it comes to security.

Don't agree.
Many thinking like that. But in fact it's not true:

 

[shmu26]

Don't agree.
Many thinking like that. But in fact it's not true:

In theory, linux has poor security in many ways. But in practice, it is pretty rare for a linux home user to get infected. It's unlikely that a linux home user will be exposed to malware that attacks linux machines. The security risk is mainly for servers.

 

[bribon77]

Don't agree.
Many thinking like that. But in fact it's not true:

Linux is not the holy grail, but I've been on linux for a few years and haven't seen anyone using linux, asking for help because it's infected.
It has vulnerabilities, YES, but hackers don't waste time with a system that is used by 1%.
Thanks for the links.

 

[ForgottenSeer 85179]

In theory, linux has poor security in many ways. But in practice, it is pretty rare for a linux home user to get infected. It's unlikely that a linux home user will be exposed to malware that attacks linux machines. The security risk is mainly for servers.

I would say the practice isn't soo rare as Linux get more and more a attractive target. And it definitely exist attacks against user so therefore you should be careful.

Linux is not the holy grail, but I've been on linux for a few years and haven't seen anyone using linux, asking for help because it's infected.
It has vulnerabilities, YES, but hackers don't waste time with a system that is used by 1%.
Thanks for the links.

Fair enough!
If you want more reading stuff, just ask

 

[bayasdev]

You can't just double click a .sh/binary file on Linux, this extra complexity prevents most people from running malware on Linux. If a common user somehow manages to open a terminal, chmod and run that file as root then we're no longer talking about a common user.

 

[ForgottenSeer 85179]

You can't just double click a .sh/binary file on Linux, this extra complexity prevents most people from running malware on Linux. If a common user somehow manages to open a terminal, chmod and run that file as root then we're no longer talking about a common user.

Sure but this isn't the only way. Even the repositories contained malicious programs in past.
Another problems are vulnerabilities which are listed in the Reddit post.

Anyway you can use of course what you want.
I just don't like "use Linux, it's safe" comments, but i'm out now

 

[bribon77]

When we talk about Linux, we always end up comparing it with Windows, but I think that's a mistake.
Windows is a universal system, where there is a lot to choose from.
Linux is more limited in terms of programmes.
But there are enough, for the basics, which is what we all use in the end.
I'm not going to give up on Windows, but I feel good about Linux, so why not use both?
That's been my way of looking at things with these two systems.