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I'll have to agree with this. Compiz was great at drawing curious people in but I'd argue that Compiz helped many people write off Linux. It definitely made Win

I'll have to agree with this. Compiz was great at drawing curious people in but I'd argue that Compiz helped many people write off Linux. It definitely made Windows XP look outdated but after you scratch the surface and adopt Linux, you discover a world of hurt whether it be bad drivers that break your desktop and throw you to a different run level, poor interoperability between the different components or just the general loss of trust when something catastrophic happens like the stupid USB stack corrupting your drive when you copy a simple file (yes this happened to me a few times over the years). Compiz resulted in tons of Youtube videos showing how cool it is but it was a gimmick. An OS is much more than cool looking visualizations and to that end during the time it was introduced, Linux was less stable and so people come for the looks and then left because its Linux. I still want to believe that Linux will become the king because we have lost so many freedoms over the years. As a result, every year I install a clean copy of Ubuntu on to my PC, start using it and then stop when I discover some serious bug. After that I put it back on the shelf and wait until next year. Maybe next year it will be better. This whole journey began during the Compiz era.

laumars 5y ago
I switched to Linux full time before Compiz took off and did so for exactly the reasons you cited the other platforms were superior: Linux was more stable, easier to reason with (as it was doing less magic behind the scenes), components worked better with each other since POSIX is designed for interoperability. Driver support was patchy at times, but then it wasn’t exactly easy on OSX (Apple: “if we don’t support you then you’re shit out of luck”) nor Windows (Microsoft: “we support everything. Albeit you’d have to manually find those drivers yourself so if your system doesn’t boot or network access fails then you’re shit out of luck”) either. At least Linux shipped 99% of what you needed on the install CD. For that reason, I’d almost always switch to Linux if ever I needed to debug a hardware problem in Windows or OSX. Though that’s less of an issue these days because I haven’t run Windows in ~15yrs and if you have a hardware problem on a modern MBP then you’re shit out of luck so there’s little point trying to debug it yourself.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  >I switched to Linux full time before Compiz took off and did so for exactly the reasons you cited the other platforms were superior: Linux was more stable, easier to reason with (as it was doing less magic behind the scenes), components worked better with each other since POSIX is designed for interoperability. Good for you that you had this experience but this is the standard talking point I have been hearing for 15 years. Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS. However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications. Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users. If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck. If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools).
  - laumars 5y ago
    > Good for you that you had this experience but this is the standard talking point I have been hearing for 15 years. Which is entirely anecdotal. I’ve done a considerable amount of research on this topic over the last 20 years and for the at least 10 years of it the actual main reason Windows users don’t like Linux is simply because it’s not like Windows. It doesn’t matter how much better Linux might be or how crappy Windows might get, if people are comfortable in one thing then they generally don’t like switching to another thing that behaves differently. And Linux behaves very differently. This is the reason Microsoft practically gives Microsoft products away at schools. Get them comfortable at a young age and most of them will stick with you for life. Just look at how successful Android, ChromeOS, Linux netbooks (before Microsoft subsidised XP on them) are/were. If a compelling platform comes with Linux pre-installed people manage just fine. But if you ask them to take a Windows machine, wipe it and install something alien the of course a lot of people with struggle. It’s no different to how few people install 3rd party firmware on smart TVs, routers or other consumer devices. But I’m fine with that. I used to get wound up with tactics like MS subsidies 20 years ago but these days I’m very much more live and let live. As long as people don’t impose their preferences on me, I won’t be an arse about my preferences to them. Just don’t try to fob me off with pseudo-technical rubbish when it’s clearly just a subjective bias. > Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS. Open source is only part of the equation. It’s that the whole OS is modular and easy to interface with. Whether it’s CLI components, common APIs or even just hot swappable services like desktop managers. Windows has elements of this too but frankly Linux just does it better. And I say this as someone who use to author a competitor to Windows Blinds. I’ve done my fair amount of low level hacking on Windows, I’d even go as far as to say that Win32 APIs are fun. But Linux is just easier to mould into whatever vision you have. But that’s not a criticism of Windows, Windows caters for a different audience. And it honestly doesn’t take any more effort to learn Linux than Windows. People just get a head start with Windows given that’s what you grow up with. However having taught computer literacy to old people, I can tell you that Windows can be just as alien if you haven’t already had that head start. Equally my wife has bought Linux laptops before (because they were cheap) and had zero issues with them. So the stories of Linux being anti-user are far overblown. > However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications. I haven’t forgotten that. You just wrongly assume that only Windows can do that. > Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users. I did actually give examples. :) eg Linux being easier to install because there’s no googling around to find the correct drivers. They just get picked up by default from your install media. Admittedly Windows has improved vastly in that area too but I think Microsoft had to borrow a lot of ideas from Apple and Linux to get there. > If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck. That’s just as big a problem on Windows and macOS as it is any other operating system, Linux includes. Software breaks on any platform. Heck, I’ve had far more instances of Windows Server failing after a broken update than I have on Linux despite running 2 orders of magnitude more Linux servers. And we are talking severs! Never mind all the junk that slows desktop Windows down from a thousand different independent update managers to printer bloatware that isn’t an issue on Linux. And Windows itself isn’t exactly big free itself either. > If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools). That’s not really a fair comment when Windows has multiple different control panels (has the Font applet even been updated from Win 3.x yet?) that were designed for entirely different desktop paradigms. Each with slightly different functionality and thus finding the right option usually requires clicking around a dozen hyperlinks in different applications for 10 minutes until, by chance, you happen upon the right applet. Honestly mate, I’ve got nothing against other peoples preferences. Maybe you should relax your outlook on others too. Or at least stop pretending your preferences are technical in nature because for the vast majority of peoples that’s really not the case. For most people, it’s far more down to familiarity than it is down to which platform is objectively better (not that a vague term like “better” can ever be an objective metric anyway)
marcodiego 5y ago
> An OS is much more than cool looking visualizations [...] At the time it was easy to hear people complaining about how ugly linux was. Compiz helped a lot in that front. We were used to people saying "you can't do that on linux" and then things quickly changed to us saying "you can't do that on your OS". Let's not fake it: linux is still far from being a diamond of UI design or consistency, but well, competition has its own problems too. The point is: things improved a lot and that event at that time in history made things improve a bit faster. To the point that almost two decades later something like this gets to the front page of hacker news and is filled by comments of people with fond memories of the time. > This whole journey began during the Compiz era. Another evidence of the impact it had.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  I guess I can sort of agree with you. Although during that time was the height of GNOME2 and even today I find myself leaning towards Gnome2/MATE because it feels so much more stable than anything else(despite me always giving the main Ubuntu distro a chance every year as well because I feel it is the most looked at distro). >Another evidence of the impact it had. Well for me it wasn't Compiz that brought me into Linux, it was this idea of something different from WIndows but it may have had this impact for others. Compiz was a gimmick to me and after trying it once I put it aside to try and just make my regular Linux installs remain stable.
- Phrodo_00 5y ago
  > linux is still far from being a diamond of UI design or consistency While I'll agree those are important for usability, I'm not sure they're necessary for adoption. Windows 10 uses a mix of UIs ranging from win32 windows 95 legacy to MAUI and most popular programs implement their own UI frameworks and it's doing ok.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    A lot of people don't care about the experience of using a computer. If they did, there would be revolts and walk-outs against Outlook and Exchange, about SharePoint, and about every single version of Windows. I am an amateur font designer and even I find the font rendering on Windows (specially if you have mixed density screens) horrendous. It's like it has a dozen incompatible libraries using different font rendering methods that are inconsistent between screens. It's an old joke that one of the best ways to make someone perpetually unhappy is to teach them proper font kerning.
Zak 5y ago
> I install a clean copy of Ubuntu on to my PC, start using it and then stop when I discover some serious bug What do you do when you encounter a serious bug in your OS of choice?
- nebula8804 5y ago
  >What do you do when you encounter a serious bug in your OS of choice? When I say serious bug I typically mean serious OS breaking bugs. Some examples from these past years(these all happened different years): 1) After clean install, desktop crashes after first reboot and I am thrown into terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on. 2) After Clean install, I wish to copy some files to an fat32 USB drive(Sandisk purchased directly from them). I get some error while the file is being copied, the drive is unmounted and then when I go to another system running Windows to check if my file was copied, the drive is corrupted causing all my files to be lost. Result: Stop usage and move on. 3) After clean install, I go ahead and connect a second monitor. Now my desktop becomes a garbled mess on both screens. I disconnect screen and the desktop remains a garbled mess on the main screen. I force reboot and upon reboot now I have been dropped to the terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on. These issues don't happen on Windows and Mac in my experience. Don't get me wrong, Windows is degrading in usability and Mac is as well (at a much slower pace) but they are not falling apart in these fundamental ways. The very foundations of Linux seem to be built on sand and that does not convey trust when you expect your system to be more than just a toy. This is a machine to get work done on and I depend on it. I cannot be dealing with silly issues like this.
  - necovek 5y ago
    I completely believe you've experienced these. TL;DR: Linux, like all other systems, mostly has issues with hardware. For a proper experience, get a system that's known good under Linux (and you need to use a non-ideological distribution like Ubuntu which will ship proprietary drivers). Linux-focused or business models of major manufacturers are your best bet. 1) sounds like a hardware issue or hardware compatibility issue. Unfortunately, while Linux does come with great and extensive hardware support out-of-the-box, you'd still benefit from choosing hardware that works well with Linux. Thinkpad T series (I usually use X1 Carbon, but as the highest end ultraportable it can introduce some Windows-specific firmware issues that they only resolve in a few months after release — they did that with Gen6 when they switched to new always-on-standby, but they introduced a BIOS option for Linux ~6 months later) is usually the best bet out of big manufacturers, and Linux-focused ones like System76 are a good choice too. So if you want to try out Linux next time, get Linux hardware that will work well with it first (or be ready to debug issues like the ones you mention). These sort of issues happen even more on Windows if you clean install it on a wide variety of hardware (MacOS can't even be installed on your non-Apple system, I am guessing, so I'd say that it's even worse :). The benefit Windows has is that it comes pre-installed on those systems. I've seen 2) frequently ~5 years ago myself: you had to really ensure that you unmounted FAT32 devices cleanly and waited for the system to announce that the drive was safe to remove: don't do that a few times, and filesystem will be messed up enough for Linux FAT32 driver to be able to cope (Microsoft, having developed FAT32 themselves, has an obvious advantage there). They don't seem to cause as much corruption anymore (only the file you were transferring might be corrupted), or maybe I learned to wait properly. Also, flash drives can degrade and cause all sorts of issues where it seems to work properly in other systems but causes silent corruption. If this was an old flash drive, that's the most likely issue: I've learned to go with only SanDisk Extreme flash drives because they have the best write endurance, but they are multiple times more expensive for the same capacity compared to other flash drives (including SanDisk ultra stuff). 3) is really weird, and external display connectivity has been a huge issue ~10 years ago, but I haven't seen any issues since (including in presentations on random projectors, multiple screen types and such): the only stuff that still annoys me is the default of setting up new screens as extended, chromeless display areas (I'd definitely default to "mirror screens"), but once a screen is set up, it saves the settings forever. Still, this is most obviously a driver issue (integrated Intel graphics is usually most stable, Nvidia most performant, but AMD should be becoming the best of both worlds in the last few years, though it's hard to get their GPUs). And since you say these don't happen with Windows, just 10 days ago I had to reboot my X1 Carbon into Windows (that it came preinstalled with) to file some tax paperwork and I connected it to my Dell 4K TB3 display (which I dock to and undock from repeatedly on Linux without issue: all of this is pretty high end Windows equipment). On reboot, TB3 light remained on and it stopped charging and passing DisplayPort through (still worked as a USB hub, and rebooting back into Windows did not fix it). I was thinking I'd have to go to the service shop since my laptop is still under warranty, but as I was pulling my SSD out to prepare for that, I realised I could just disconnect the battery and see if that helps, and luckily, it did. In short, dealing with hardware is hard (which all your issues seem to be), and all of the operating systems have different quirks. As above, I had a pretty terrible issue with an expensive Windows laptop and Windows-supporting screen ($3000 + $1200) which worked without issue under Linux for more than a year. Apple has a huge advantage because they control the hardware they ship with, Windows is generally worse on arbitrary hardware but has the benefit of being pre-installed and "pre-debugged", and Linux is better than Windows but has to be clean installed (I am pretty confident that if you took random 20 laptops off the market today and attempted to clean install both Windows and Linux on them, you'd get a fully working Linux system more easily; MacOS easily loses out on such a benchmark).
AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
It's a real shame, but unfortunately it seems endemic to the FOSS development ecosystem: people will work on things they think are cool; and stable, consistent, functional software is hard work and not very cool. Consequently we get a lot of opinionated little fiefdoms ruling over collections of frankensteined software and then the evangelical wonder why it isn't The Year of the Linux Desktop yet.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- javier2 5y ago
  Yes, I think so too. And I have used Linux since 2004, macos since 2013. And have barely touched windows since 2009, but I have tried w10 and w11 briefly.

laumars 5y ago

I switched to Linux full time before Compiz took off and did so for exactly the reasons you cited the other platforms were superior: Linux was more stable, easier to reason with (as it was doing less magic behind the scenes), components worked better with each other since POSIX is designed for interoperability. Driver support was patchy at times, but then it wasn’t exactly easy on OSX (Apple: “if we don’t support you then you’re shit out of luck”) nor Windows (Microsoft: “we support everything. Albeit you’d have to manually find those drivers yourself so if your system doesn’t boot or network access fails then you’re shit out of luck”) either. At least Linux shipped 99% of what you needed on the install CD. For that reason, I’d almost always switch to Linux if ever I needed to debug a hardware problem in Windows or OSX. Though that’s less of an issue these days because I haven’t run Windows in ~15yrs and if you have a hardware problem on a modern MBP then you’re shit out of luck so there’s little point trying to debug it yourself.

nebula8804 5y ago
>I switched to Linux full time before Compiz took off and did so for exactly the reasons you cited the other platforms were superior: Linux was more stable, easier to reason with (as it was doing less magic behind the scenes), components worked better with each other since POSIX is designed for interoperability. Good for you that you had this experience but this is the standard talking point I have been hearing for 15 years. Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS. However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications. Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users. If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck. If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools).
- laumars 5y ago
  > Good for you that you had this experience but this is the standard talking point I have been hearing for 15 years. Which is entirely anecdotal. I’ve done a considerable amount of research on this topic over the last 20 years and for the at least 10 years of it the actual main reason Windows users don’t like Linux is simply because it’s not like Windows. It doesn’t matter how much better Linux might be or how crappy Windows might get, if people are comfortable in one thing then they generally don’t like switching to another thing that behaves differently. And Linux behaves very differently. This is the reason Microsoft practically gives Microsoft products away at schools. Get them comfortable at a young age and most of them will stick with you for life. Just look at how successful Android, ChromeOS, Linux netbooks (before Microsoft subsidised XP on them) are/were. If a compelling platform comes with Linux pre-installed people manage just fine. But if you ask them to take a Windows machine, wipe it and install something alien the of course a lot of people with struggle. It’s no different to how few people install 3rd party firmware on smart TVs, routers or other consumer devices. But I’m fine with that. I used to get wound up with tactics like MS subsidies 20 years ago but these days I’m very much more live and let live. As long as people don’t impose their preferences on me, I won’t be an arse about my preferences to them. Just don’t try to fob me off with pseudo-technical rubbish when it’s clearly just a subjective bias. > Yes if you are willing to put in the work Linux is more powerful than a closed source OS. Open source is only part of the equation. It’s that the whole OS is modular and easy to interface with. Whether it’s CLI components, common APIs or even just hot swappable services like desktop managers. Windows has elements of this too but frankly Linux just does it better. And I say this as someone who use to author a competitor to Windows Blinds. I’ve done my fair amount of low level hacking on Windows, I’d even go as far as to say that Win32 APIs are fun. But Linux is just easier to mould into whatever vision you have. But that’s not a criticism of Windows, Windows caters for a different audience. And it honestly doesn’t take any more effort to learn Linux than Windows. People just get a head start with Windows given that’s what you grow up with. However having taught computer literacy to old people, I can tell you that Windows can be just as alien if you haven’t already had that head start. Equally my wife has bought Linux laptops before (because they were cheap) and had zero issues with them. So the stories of Linux being anti-user are far overblown. > However you forget that the primary job of the OS is to provide a stable platform to enable you to run applications. I haven’t forgotten that. You just wrongly assume that only Windows can do that. > Instead you are ignoring this and praising other aspects of the OS that do not directly correlate to improvements for regular non IT end users. I did actually give examples. :) eg Linux being easier to install because there’s no googling around to find the correct drivers. They just get picked up by default from your install media. Admittedly Windows has improved vastly in that area too but I think Microsoft had to borrow a lot of ideas from Apple and Linux to get there. > If I do not want to spend time fixing a broken config caused but a bug, I am out of luck. If I do not want to deal with poorly made system utilities that do not correlate to what the config files do then I am out of luck. That’s just as big a problem on Windows and macOS as it is any other operating system, Linux includes. Software breaks on any platform. Heck, I’ve had far more instances of Windows Server failing after a broken update than I have on Linux despite running 2 orders of magnitude more Linux servers. And we are talking severs! Never mind all the junk that slows desktop Windows down from a thousand different independent update managers to printer bloatware that isn’t an issue on Linux. And Windows itself isn’t exactly big free itself either. > If I want different components of the OS to have a unified design language so they work together I am out of luck(ex. Even today GNOME bundles a bunch of old garbage tools and expect them to be equivalent to their Windows/Mac counterparts, no thought is put into the usability and uniformity of these tools). That’s not really a fair comment when Windows has multiple different control panels (has the Font applet even been updated from Win 3.x yet?) that were designed for entirely different desktop paradigms. Each with slightly different functionality and thus finding the right option usually requires clicking around a dozen hyperlinks in different applications for 10 minutes until, by chance, you happen upon the right applet. Honestly mate, I’ve got nothing against other peoples preferences. Maybe you should relax your outlook on others too. Or at least stop pretending your preferences are technical in nature because for the vast majority of peoples that’s really not the case. For most people, it’s far more down to familiarity than it is down to which platform is objectively better (not that a vague term like “better” can ever be an objective metric anyway)

marcodiego 5y ago

> An OS is much more than cool looking visualizations [...] At the time it was easy to hear people complaining about how ugly linux was. Compiz helped a lot in that front. We were used to people saying "you can't do that on linux" and then things quickly changed to us saying "you can't do that on your OS". Let's not fake it: linux is still far from being a diamond of UI design or consistency, but well, competition has its own problems too. The point is: things improved a lot and that event at that time in history made things improve a bit faster. To the point that almost two decades later something like this gets to the front page of hacker news and is filled by comments of people with fond memories of the time. > This whole journey began during the Compiz era. Another evidence of the impact it had.

nebula8804 5y ago
I guess I can sort of agree with you. Although during that time was the height of GNOME2 and even today I find myself leaning towards Gnome2/MATE because it feels so much more stable than anything else(despite me always giving the main Ubuntu distro a chance every year as well because I feel it is the most looked at distro). >Another evidence of the impact it had. Well for me it wasn't Compiz that brought me into Linux, it was this idea of something different from WIndows but it may have had this impact for others. Compiz was a gimmick to me and after trying it once I put it aside to try and just make my regular Linux installs remain stable.
Phrodo_00 5y ago
> linux is still far from being a diamond of UI design or consistency While I'll agree those are important for usability, I'm not sure they're necessary for adoption. Windows 10 uses a mix of UIs ranging from win32 windows 95 legacy to MAUI and most popular programs implement their own UI frameworks and it's doing ok.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  A lot of people don't care about the experience of using a computer. If they did, there would be revolts and walk-outs against Outlook and Exchange, about SharePoint, and about every single version of Windows. I am an amateur font designer and even I find the font rendering on Windows (specially if you have mixed density screens) horrendous. It's like it has a dozen incompatible libraries using different font rendering methods that are inconsistent between screens. It's an old joke that one of the best ways to make someone perpetually unhappy is to teach them proper font kerning.

Zak 5y ago

> I install a clean copy of Ubuntu on to my PC, start using it and then stop when I discover some serious bug What do you do when you encounter a serious bug in your OS of choice?

nebula8804 5y ago
>What do you do when you encounter a serious bug in your OS of choice? When I say serious bug I typically mean serious OS breaking bugs. Some examples from these past years(these all happened different years): 1) After clean install, desktop crashes after first reboot and I am thrown into terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on. 2) After Clean install, I wish to copy some files to an fat32 USB drive(Sandisk purchased directly from them). I get some error while the file is being copied, the drive is unmounted and then when I go to another system running Windows to check if my file was copied, the drive is corrupted causing all my files to be lost. Result: Stop usage and move on. 3) After clean install, I go ahead and connect a second monitor. Now my desktop becomes a garbled mess on both screens. I disconnect screen and the desktop remains a garbled mess on the main screen. I force reboot and upon reboot now I have been dropped to the terminal. Result: Stop usage and move on. These issues don't happen on Windows and Mac in my experience. Don't get me wrong, Windows is degrading in usability and Mac is as well (at a much slower pace) but they are not falling apart in these fundamental ways. The very foundations of Linux seem to be built on sand and that does not convey trust when you expect your system to be more than just a toy. This is a machine to get work done on and I depend on it. I cannot be dealing with silly issues like this.
- necovek 5y ago
  I completely believe you've experienced these. TL;DR: Linux, like all other systems, mostly has issues with hardware. For a proper experience, get a system that's known good under Linux (and you need to use a non-ideological distribution like Ubuntu which will ship proprietary drivers). Linux-focused or business models of major manufacturers are your best bet. 1) sounds like a hardware issue or hardware compatibility issue. Unfortunately, while Linux does come with great and extensive hardware support out-of-the-box, you'd still benefit from choosing hardware that works well with Linux. Thinkpad T series (I usually use X1 Carbon, but as the highest end ultraportable it can introduce some Windows-specific firmware issues that they only resolve in a few months after release — they did that with Gen6 when they switched to new always-on-standby, but they introduced a BIOS option for Linux ~6 months later) is usually the best bet out of big manufacturers, and Linux-focused ones like System76 are a good choice too. So if you want to try out Linux next time, get Linux hardware that will work well with it first (or be ready to debug issues like the ones you mention). These sort of issues happen even more on Windows if you clean install it on a wide variety of hardware (MacOS can't even be installed on your non-Apple system, I am guessing, so I'd say that it's even worse :). The benefit Windows has is that it comes pre-installed on those systems. I've seen 2) frequently ~5 years ago myself: you had to really ensure that you unmounted FAT32 devices cleanly and waited for the system to announce that the drive was safe to remove: don't do that a few times, and filesystem will be messed up enough for Linux FAT32 driver to be able to cope (Microsoft, having developed FAT32 themselves, has an obvious advantage there). They don't seem to cause as much corruption anymore (only the file you were transferring might be corrupted), or maybe I learned to wait properly. Also, flash drives can degrade and cause all sorts of issues where it seems to work properly in other systems but causes silent corruption. If this was an old flash drive, that's the most likely issue: I've learned to go with only SanDisk Extreme flash drives because they have the best write endurance, but they are multiple times more expensive for the same capacity compared to other flash drives (including SanDisk ultra stuff). 3) is really weird, and external display connectivity has been a huge issue ~10 years ago, but I haven't seen any issues since (including in presentations on random projectors, multiple screen types and such): the only stuff that still annoys me is the default of setting up new screens as extended, chromeless display areas (I'd definitely default to "mirror screens"), but once a screen is set up, it saves the settings forever. Still, this is most obviously a driver issue (integrated Intel graphics is usually most stable, Nvidia most performant, but AMD should be becoming the best of both worlds in the last few years, though it's hard to get their GPUs). And since you say these don't happen with Windows, just 10 days ago I had to reboot my X1 Carbon into Windows (that it came preinstalled with) to file some tax paperwork and I connected it to my Dell 4K TB3 display (which I dock to and undock from repeatedly on Linux without issue: all of this is pretty high end Windows equipment). On reboot, TB3 light remained on and it stopped charging and passing DisplayPort through (still worked as a USB hub, and rebooting back into Windows did not fix it). I was thinking I'd have to go to the service shop since my laptop is still under warranty, but as I was pulling my SSD out to prepare for that, I realised I could just disconnect the battery and see if that helps, and luckily, it did. In short, dealing with hardware is hard (which all your issues seem to be), and all of the operating systems have different quirks. As above, I had a pretty terrible issue with an expensive Windows laptop and Windows-supporting screen ($3000 + $1200) which worked without issue under Linux for more than a year. Apple has a huge advantage because they control the hardware they ship with, Windows is generally worse on arbitrary hardware but has the benefit of being pre-installed and "pre-debugged", and Linux is better than Windows but has to be clean installed (I am pretty confident that if you took random 20 laptops off the market today and attempted to clean install both Windows and Linux on them, you'd get a fully working Linux system more easily; MacOS easily loses out on such a benchmark).

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

It's a real shame, but unfortunately it seems endemic to the FOSS development ecosystem: people will work on things they think are cool; and stable, consistent, functional software is hard work and not very cool. Consequently we get a lot of opinionated little fiefdoms ruling over collections of frankensteined software and then the evangelical wonder why it isn't The Year of the Linux Desktop yet.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
javier2 5y ago
Yes, I think so too. And I have used Linux since 2004, macos since 2013. And have barely touched windows since 2009, but I have tried w10 and w11 briefly.