The only few reason I know so far is software availability, like adobe software, and Microsoft suite. Is there more of major reasons that I missed?
Everything I know about Linux I learned troubleshooting a problem. And I still feel like I don’t know shit about the OS. After so long with Windows, Linux feels like living in a country where you don’t speak the language; everything is harder than it needs to be.
If the day comes where games are as easy on Linux as they are on Windows, I’ll give desktop Linux another shot.
This said, I’ve self-hosted on a Debian box for years.
I recently switched for the first time, and have been using EndeavorOS with KDE on a couple year old laptop, and my experience has been the complete opposite. It’s fantastic. I feel like this is what using a PC is supposed to be like. Before Microsoft fucked it all up.
Similar, I’ve been running a jellyfin server on mint on a spare laptop, and some other networking tests for other projects. It’s a good low-risk way to learn, I think. But my income depends on the daily driver being reliable, and I’m just not comfortable enough in Linux to switch right now
There are two parts of my story.
For those with limited time, I gave up Linux once because it was so “strange” from Windows I felt uneasy to use one, and other time because I simply had no use case for it. For those with time, kindly read on.
I had always been an MS-DOS/Windows user who tried Linux and failed several times because I didn’t “get” it, until sometimes between 2006 and 2007 when Mac started its transition into Intel CPU. It was interesting enough (as it was the beginning point for Mac to become mainstream in my country). I decided that my first laptop was going to be a Mac (my house used to see that building own PC was the way to go). It was the first lightbulb moment when I tinkered with a few options in the terminal. This helped me in the future when I tried Linux again. Count it as a transferable skill of sort.
Then around as late as 2021 (because of various life circumstances), I decided to become a cyber security professional—a long time passion of mine. In order for the journey to be pleasant, Linux must be learnt. I enrolled in a course from one authoritative source for SysAdmin, and that was the first time I got to study the innards of the system. After that, along with myself landing a cyber security job, I became more fluent with Linux. Today, I work closely with clients who use Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, and sometimes Solaris, so there is no dull moment (except for troubleshooting Windows from time to time). Linux becomes part of my professional life, as the main use case.
Linux learning curve does feel steep, but choosing a right distro for others help a lot. I never have my peers giving up on Zorin so far, for instance.
Some people like to work on their pc, and not work on their pc.
Don’t get me wrong I love Linux, but outside of the Lemmy echo chamber is isn’t very accessible for the average user
20ish years ago I installed Ubuntu on a laptop with the intention to get off Windows. I then spent 4 to 6 hours a day for the next two weeks just trying to get the WiFi to function. None of the fixes I could Google up worked, and that was frustrating. It was the people in the Linux forums that finally made me quit trying, though. The amount of gatekeeping was kind of shocking. Like, how dare I bother such mighty computer men with my plebian questions. I should feel honored that anyone condescended to respond at all, and I should gratefully accept their link to a fix I’ve already tried and fuck off.
I bought a new PC last year and I hate Windows 11 so much that it’s got me eyeing Linux again. But the thought of having to repeat that whole ordeal again makes me feel sick to my butthole.
I can totally relate to this. I‘m pretty far into my own linux journey and if I didnt have so much stuff already done and wouldnt know as much, I probably would have a really bad time sometimes.
It’s definitely not the majority (anymore, I guess) but there are some real elitist douchebags out there. The amount of times I got RTFMd is unholy.
By now, I do understand some of it as some users get really frustrated. This is hard to deal with sometimes as using polished windows has made them used to being pampered into helplessness. This does trigger me at times. I have to work hard to not RTFM them in that case.
TL;DR: imo, a lot of folks on both sides get frustrated because M$ and others make shiny, well oiled data collection machines and linux is neither the former nor the latter.
I’m not sure Windows is particularly polished though. Going back to it on occasion it feels kind of awful to use. I think most people are just fighting decades of muscle memory on how to use a PC
I switched pretty recently (maybe 6 months) and while the muscle memory is true, windows has a severely dumbed down and simplified everything imo. Even gnomes very limited customizability (without using cli) is a lot more than most windows users regularly need. Just from what I have seen over the years, not objective fact.
(That attitude has completely changed. Maybe give it another try sometime)
Even today, the Arch community is exactly as previously described.
I know people meme around about it but have you actually experienced it yourself? As an Arch user myself, can’t confirm.
Yes.
My last experience was around 2 months ago with a driver issue. In the forums, someone linked a solution, and a lot of comments were in the lines of “Seriously? This was already in the newsletter, why are people not reading/subscribed to it. It’s their problem then”. Funnily enough, an actually helpful comment noted that the newsletter solution had a typo that made the solution not work as expected.
what distro was it back then? some distros religiously dedicated to software freedom don’t ship the proprietary
linux-firmwareblobs which might, among other things, contain your WiFi drivers.I honestly don’t remember. It was a long time ago. I also tried Mint thinking it might be more intuitive, but I couldn’t get WiFi to work with either of them.
virtually any built in card works these days. with 3rd party cards… well you’re better of looking up it’s chipset and how well it is supported by linux before you buy one, for example some cheap realtek dongles had no WPA3 support and worse throughput. Iirc Broadcom has for a long time been hostile towards linux.
Lemmy is basically a Linux forum these days. Have you seen that kind of attitude here on Lemmy? You should give Linux another go and post any problem you have here on Lemmy.
It’s gotten a bit better, but last time I tried switching, the GUI client for my VPN provider was shit, the PC gaming compatibility aspect (non-Steam) wasn’t quite good enough for me, Nvidia’s drivers said fuck you to my display, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to set up Samba. Lol.
Ive quite enjoyed the KDE NordVPN plasmoid. Visually integrates it into the taskbar.
Nvidia’s drivers said fuck you to my display
Easily one of the longest and most headache inducing troubleshooting sessions I ever had on Linux -_-
This is a weird reason, but there is a logic to it.
I use Linux at work, and I associate Linux with writing software.
Once I’m done working for the day, I want to relax and do something fun. For me, that is Windows. While I don’t particularly care for any OS, I associate one with work and one with play.
The opposite was true when I used to work with .NET on Windows 7. I hated using Windows on my home laptop, and Fedora became my “fun time OS”.
This is absolutely me as well, only the other way.
I use Macs at work.
But I game on Windows, and code on Linux.
Originally my workplace was using Fedora servers, which acted too similar to my Linux laptop, and I had to switch it to Ubuntu. That mental separation
consider running two linux distros…?
It’s not just the UI. It’s the difference in fonts, it’s even weird stuff like using Powershell over the Terminal, or the file system structure.
I get the same with OSX. I use a MBP, and that’s also “work mode” to me. It all puts me on edge, whereas with Windows I can relax.
With that being said, I’ll switch to OSX or Fedora if I’m in an interview doing code challenges, even if I’m using a browser-based code editor.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with Linux is it requires tinkering in terminal which nearly every non-tech savvy person finds intimidating. Even if it’s a simple command. Until Linux has a shiny dumbed-down GUI for everything you need to do, it won’t catch on for the average PC user.
Linux has made incredible progress in this area though. But, everytime I use a new Linux install, I encounter errors or something that requires troubleshooting and terminal use.
Tinkering in terminal is the thing I like most about Linux. What’s holding me back is most of the tools and games I want to use is not yet available on Linux but I think it’s getting there soon
Most of the games? Or just a few? Because my experience recently with Proton has been pretty amazing, and I’ve yet to run into a game (that my laptop meets the requirements for) that hasn’t worked. Even some games that Steam marked as “unsupported” worked just fine for me.
There’s still no way to log into Nautilus as root user from Nautilus.
So you can’t just double click on an icon to decompress it below the home folder.
And then people will give out this long series of terminal commands…hello, I said FROM NAUTILUS.
I’m actually quite okay with using the terminal, the problem is almost nothing invoked from the CLI actually works properly. If the programmer can’t be arsed making a skin, they generally can’t be arsed with proper playtesting either.
Nkt with GNOME. I only needed to use the Terminal in GNOME to do complex things an ordinary user wouldn’t do anyway.
I’m comfortable using a terminal, but with my Linux machines s common pattern is:
Need to get some software working. Find how to fix it, edit some config files.
Months later I run a system update and it’s starts asking me about merging the changes I made to various files. What were they for again? Are they still even necessary with the update or are the values I changed no longer used?
Then sometimes, something I installed is no longer supported, or needs a manual update because of how I installed it.
You can set up something like Timeshift to automatically take a snapshot of your system before updating (and/or before installing new software) every time. The one time my system got a little fucked up after removing the wrong dependencies or whatever, loading up that snapshot worked like a charm.
Just having that as backup has made me far more comfortable with trying new things on my laptop.
Yeah. It’s come a long way, and if nothing else, Linux is a fertile playground for the philosophy of software design for those who handle the UX/UI stuff.
Windows 7 was beat to the punch by gnome/Ubuntu on the paradigm of representing apps in the taskbar as icons that then expand to become textual lists. Some people hate that idea, and that’s ok too, so long as they’re given alternatives that are easy to switch between.
Windows 7 was the best OS. I miss it.
Some of those that don’t find it intimidating do find it tiring. I grew up using MSDOS and later Windows 3.1 when it came out. Most of what we did was in command line and having everything in a GUI is just a QOL upgrade you don’t really want to come back from.
I’ve been using mint on my laptop for a few months now and it’s great, but like you said there’s still some things that require command line tinkering and I just don’t have the energy for it.
It’s the same reason I like console games, they just work. Don’t get me wrong, the console modding scene is non-existent and any kind of customization is generally out of the question, but it just works, and it works the first time every time.Tbh for some people there’s no going back once you learn it. Navigating a GUI and clicking through several buttons vs having a nice shell with completions and whatnot like Fish and learning piping at some point just becomes faster, same thing as using modal editors.
Full agree on tiring. I work as an SRE, my job is administrating Linux machines (containers these days). When I need to use a computer, I just want it to work out of the box and Linux doesn’t offer that yet. I don’t want to spend time getting it to work
Thank you! Glad I’m not the only one to mention this or agree with it. Had some twit bitching at me last night to prove it, as if I kept screenshots or something. I just fixed things and moved on.
Agreed. This should be the #1 priority for at least one Linux distribution to make it accessible. The issue is that Linux fanatics will cry blasphemy for it and that’s counter intuitive.
I switched to a Mac a couple years ago but I’ll always at least keep a Linux VM and a separate Linux laptop just in case.
As for why, generally speaking, Apple puts a lot of really, really good work into making a machine that feels immediately productive with little fiddling around, they’re ahead of the pack in some ways, and for advanced stuff it’s “good enough”.
My reasons:
- Cross-device integration (at least with Apple) - I already use an iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV. The integration between iOS and macOS is just really, really good. Android+Linux just doesn’t come anywhere close. And that’s even if you put in the hours it’d take to set a bunch of disparate apps up to try to replicate it. Anyone telling you otherwise is completely full of bullshit or is showing that they actually haven’t used Apple devices.
- Using my iPad as a secondary display takes literally 2 clicks.
- Setting my Apple Watch to unlock my laptop takes literally 4 clicks.
- Casting my screen or even just sound takes 2 clicks.
- Handoff is just magic. If you recently used something on your phone and have the matching app on your Mac, you get a shortcut in your Dock to load whatever you had on your phone on your computer to pick up where you left off. If I am in a Signal chat, I can instantly open the chat I was viewing on my phone. Same for browsing websites, text messages, and a bunch of things.
- Airdrop between devices “just works”.
- If I connect to a wifi access point from my phone, my laptop will prompt me to automagically copy the password over (i think) bluetooth. Or if I’m at a friend’s house and they use an iPhone, they’ll get a prompt to share their wifi network password with me.
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Device restoration - Restoring a Mac is just impressive for how little effort it requires. If someone stole my laptop, I can drive 15 mins to an Apple Store, buy a new laptop, point it at my NAS, and be back running in an hour or less to exactly where I left off. Similarly, If I buy a brand new laptop, copying data from the old one to the new one is incredibly boring – in all of the right ways. All apps/info/config/etc gets moved over. No weird quirks or workarounds or anything needed.
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M-series laptops - At the time, there were no other good options for ARM CPU laptops, especially ones that can be spec’d to 64GB of RAM. The M CPU laptops are crazy fast and efficient. I can literally use my laptop for 9-10 hours in a day going full-hardcore, and still have juice to spare. Yeah I know Asahi Linux works for the most part now, but I don’t have time anymore to beta-test my main box.
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Adequate Unixy bits - The terminal does everything I need, the utilities are fine. I use Nix (and some Homebrew) to maintain various CLI tools.
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Software - I wanted to save this for last since everyone quotes this first. I wanted to meddle with music and Ardour doesn’t really scratch the itch the same way Logic Pro does. Another example: as bad as the Mac version of Microsoft Office is, it’s still far more nicer feeling than LibreOffice and requires much less work to get a good looking presentation/etc. out the door on a time crunch.
This is my experience as well. I would add: if you like to tinker and have time to spare, use Linux. If you want a Unix and have more money than time, buy a Mac.
Breath of fresh air comment here on Lemmy.
It really is, after reading whole threads about people shitting on Apple products for no good reason. Not criticism, but name calling etc
Apple products are generally fine, its their ethos that sucks. Closed, expensive, proprietary.
Its far too limiting IMO. Open MacOS and it would be quite a compelling option
Theyre expensive as any other flagships tho
The hardware is rarely ever comparable. You show me a like for like hardware comparison, and Mac will always be more expensive with fewer upgrade paths.
Well yeah, it’s probably more expensive, but hardware is not all you’re paying for though
What specifically do you mean when you say “Open MacOS”? Open to what? You can already install anything you want on it. It’s unix based, so your terminal works mostly the same as in Linux. You’ve even got a package manager (homebrew), so you won’t miss apt or whatever else you use. iOS is another discussion, but imho, OSX is “open” enough.
Alterable Desktop Environments, alternative stores, removing integrated packages such as the app store, installable on non Apple hardware, whether arm or x86.
Open air drop as a standard would help too
IMO even windows is too closed for my taste.
I don’t like Apple because of the close ecosystem and they choose what they believe its best for you. I like to own my devices , and install whatever I want do whatever I want on them.
Fair enough. I like their ecosystem, even if it’s closed. It just works and that’s all I need. I still don’t understand what you mean by „I like to own my devices”. You bought the phone right?
Oh no I mean phones are so difficult to modify and install another OS. I used to own a Oneplus 3 and I was changing the ROM almost every week , I was so excited to have a different feeling for my phone every time I install a new ROM and even if I brick my phone it was my fault and I wouldn’t complain. I like to change the ram , change the hard drive , change the OS my hardware. I don’t like being stuck on the same ecosystem and having to relied on a company.
Give me a rundown on your setup and what you do.
Superb write-up, well done! Echoes my experience completely.
Regarding point 2, this was why deadmau5 used Mac for a long time during his live gigs. He likes the predictability of a Mac, it makes it easy for him to get back going if something goes wrong.
He’s had to stop using it for the Cube stuff though, since it requires a lot of Windows software.
We definitely have a long way to go in Linux land lol.
Yeah :/
I almost wonder how far (as an example) System76 or someone could get by mirroring Apple’s approach: build a range of devices and focus aggressively on gluing them together without a care in the world for anything else.
I know Samsung tries for their devices with Windows, but their software always felt like there’s an internal competition for who can add the most number of controls to each UI and it comes across as very clunky.
I’m not really sure the demographic that cares enough to find an alternative to Windows or Mac is the same demographic that would be ok in a walled garden.
My understanding is that one of the selling points for products by System76 and other similar brands is the modularity and ability to upgrade the hardware.
There are good paid alternatives for music. The question was about Linux, not FOSS. Comparing to Ardour is unfair
Because in yanks number out of ass 87.74% of threads of “why use X? Linux has Y, it’ll do everything you want”
Ardour/LO/etc are great for what they are and have their uses, but there are some apps that just aren’t available on Linux and the claimed alternatives really don’t work.
Because it refuses to work well without constant tinkering.
I picked up a raspberry pi 5 to use as my desktop at home, and tried pi OS, Ubuntu, KDE Plasma, all of which could connect to my home wifi network, but none of which would provide reliable upload or download speeds. Ongoing issues with connection quality to my Bluetooth speaker. Trying to find fixes online is challenging.
I wound up installing android, and everything just works.
So… You’re aware that all the things listed are Linux at their core, right? Android runs on the Linux kernel.
Constant tinkering really means understanding how the system works; not to mention a system (be it Mac/win/lin) which needs no modification is one unused. The only way construction in NYC would stop being a ‘problem’ is if the city were dead.
Android is Google/Linux not GNU/Linux tho. You can’t even create a damn symlink.
command line interface
I’m fine with it, but it’s cryptic and a deal breaker for many.
is one on windows
Yes, but most people don’t ever have to use it for anything. The average Windows user doesn’t know what you mean when you say “open a command prompt.”
I literally only use it on Windows to compile some source code or run python scripts.
And most people, if they used Linux, wouldn’t have to use the terminal for anything either. Linux has come along a long way for the average user, assuming you choose a sensible newbie-friendly distro like Zorin on Linux-friendly hw, or your PC comes with Linux OOTB (like System76 machines) - then an average user, would never have to touch the terminal.
Just ask my elderly parents - they’ve been running Linux for about 15 years now without having to touch the terminal or learn any commands. And before you say anything - yes, they do more than just Facebook - they print and scan stuff, backup files from their phones, transfer files across USB drives, do some light document editing - pretty much all your basic computing tasks really - and they never needed to touch the terminal.
This misconception that Linux users need to use/learn the terminal really needs to die.
Your one use case does nothing to convince me. I’ve read enough recent examples contrary to that to know better, not to mention having had to manually edit a ridiculous number of setting files on my own system to get something to work properly that should have just worked without jumping through all the hoops. Keep lying to yourself that this will be the year of the linux desktop.
I gave up on linux because it made academic collaboration difficult as a grad student. I spent too long trying to make a system to bridge the gap between mac/windows and linux, and not enough time on research. Professors don’t care that you use arch btw, they just want results, and will not be forgiving if you explain that linux is what’s slowing you down.
this is actually my case lol, no way I’m writing thesis in libreoffice or onlyoffice if I didn’t have much experience of using it
Why aren’t you using LaTeX to write your thesis though?
Collaborative?
If you’re committed to word-style documents instead of LaTeX, pandoc is a great way to convert between word and the style of your choice (for me, markdown). I made a bunch of additional scripts to assist in conversion between the two.
That said, LaTeX is often a better choice. I’ve settled into a combination of overleaf / git / vscode / LaTeX that keeps my collaborators (and myself) happy.
Linux works well if you need something to function as a tool, be it a NAS, network appliance, server, etc. You can setup it up with the small subset of things you need it to do and trust it’ll just run without further interference.
When it comes to a consumer device, it fails the “just works” criteria much harder the OSX or Windows. Software tends to be maintained by an army of unpaid volunteers passionate about their specific use case with a lot of infighting around how things get done. Such functionality is often developed by people with such a warped idea of usability that they consider VIM to be the ideal, modern, text editor. This is a piece of software that started life in the mainframe days, where input lag was measured in seconds rather the milliseconds, in order to minimize number of keystrokes, no matter how convoluted. This leads to multitudes of forks of functionality with subtly differing functionality often with terrible UI and UX catered to the developer’s specific workflow.
Whenever a lay persons asks how to get started with Linux, they get sent down a rabbit hole of dozens of distros, majority of which are just some variant of Ubuntu, with no clear indication of what’s different as they all just describe themselves as the ultimate beginner distro. With the paralysis of choice, they can pick one at random and hope it’ll work with their hardware without issue, spend hours figuring out the nitty-gritty differences and compatibility issues, or just give up and keep using what they already know.
My take is that:
Linux is a utility OS. Just doing what you told it to.
Windows/Mac are a general purpose OS. They try to assist and help you where possible. But thwy allow for some kind of deeper tinkering if needed.Linux trys to become Win/Mac but failing because of the fighting you mentioned. Also because that OS aint being checked by QA for general folks.
Windows Server/Mac Server are trying to be a Linux OS but being way too bloated and trying to do things they arent meant to do.
For me was when Mint suddenly broke my Bluetooth driver and I had to dig deep about how to fix that wasting my entire day on it, this was 2016 I think.
I just wanted to play some games.
I feel your pain
I managed to get someone online to try out Linux because their Windows 7 install was dying. Turns out the problem was hardware, but he used Linux for a while and stuck to it for his new PC.
A whole bunch of utilities he got used to had no Linux equivalent (people online claiming the average user can replace GUIs with awk and sed are fools) but I have quite some experience with Wine, so that wasn’t too bad.
HDR is an issue. It just doesn’t seem to work right. Media players do all kinds of weird stuff. I’ve seen six screencaps from six media players taking snapshots of the same file, and they all had their colours wrong in different ways on Linux. VLC managed to get the colours right, but then lacked some other features. The Linux version of his previous media player uses different codecs on Linux so it suffers from the same problem.
Thank to Valve, many games work out of the box, but even Valve’s settings need patching every now and then. Elzen Ring didn’t work right because the version of Proton Steam decided to ship was broken, and needed to be changed in the config settings.
While debugging something else, we also ran into an issue with Teamviewer, which still doesn’t seem to support Wayland. That was a quick workaround, but it still sucks. I hope Teamviewer fixes their stuff soon.
I can troubleshoot, debug, and work around these issues, but normal people can’t. The big things all work. Browsers, settings pages, email, you name it, your average office worker can get through their day out of the box. For the technically skilled, Linux is amazing, with tweaks, source code, and tools available for every purpose under the sun if you’re willing to read some documentation and maybe a little source code.
However, if you fall anywhere inbetween “I just need a browser and basic word processing” and “I know how to program in C”, Linux requires a lot of reading, Googling, and replacing with slightly inferior versions.
Linux may be full of great freeware, but Windows has decades of history of free shareware that seems to just work better. I think the difference is that a lot of Linux tools were written by developers for developers, whereas Windows tools were often written by developers for users.
With Flatpak maturing, things are becoming better and better, but there are still times where I need to tell the guy I helping to open a terminal, and that’s the point where Linux as an OS for normal people fails.
I’m happily using Linux on practically any computer I own, but there’s no denying that Windows was better in a lot of ways for the general public, even back in the XP days.
Rustdesk is better than this proprietary spyware teamviewer
I haven’t used it since Valve made Proton what it is today, but:
The troubleshooting was a nightmare. Heaven forbid the trouble be with graphics drivers. I love the command terminal and all but when you try 10 different solutions from Stack Exchange and Reddit and all of them give you errors or do nothing at all… At some point I just had to accept that it wasn’t worth the amount of time I had to invest in it.
I hate Windows as much as the next guy but I had to admit that troubleshooting, for whatever reason, took significantly less time when problems came up on Windows.
Perhaps you are used to the windows ways? It enrages me a little Everytime windows does stupid things, which I know can’t be fixed (or fixing it would require astronomical efforts). That usually does not happen on Linux, but of course Linux has a lot of things to be fixed too. Then again, fixing Linux machines has kind of become a hobby, im a selfhosted now and work in it.
