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I've been daily-drivering on Linux for Desktop and Laptop for months and Linux across 4 different distros has made me feel more helpless than Windows ever did.

I've been daily-drivering on Linux for Desktop and Laptop for months and Linux across 4 different distros has made me feel more helpless than Windows ever did. Sure, the Windows "police" would come in and straighten my update settings (which is ultimately why I abandoned Windows), but Linux you get the helplessness of sometimes having something break and the only answer you can find after spending half of your weekend searching for solutions is just "idk, give up and reset your entire OS" or "Yea, that bit of hardware just doesn't work with the Linux kernel and never will because some BDFL hates someone who worked at that company". I'm currently living with SO MANY "crooked picture frames" on all my devices that I've just given up on fixing after spending tens of hours on them and burning my free time on it. I still prefer Linux in general for a lot of the reasons you like it, but just doing basic "I want to install a program to take screenshots" has send me down hours of reading about how window compositing systems work, and why Snap is the devil even though everyone seems to be using it now. If I wasn't single and had better hobbies other than tinkering with config files, I'd have given up months ago.

usrn 5y ago
The trick to not having crooked picture frames on Linux is to throw out components that refuse to be straightened (and you'll run into many of these, especially if you're on a distro pushing snap on you.) If you pull out everything complex and thoroughly understand what's left you won't run into the "idk just reset the whole OS" situation. Something Windows/OSX users coming to Linux might not realize is that almost nothing in the userspace is actually necessary because the kernel does almost everything. Especially if you don't want graphics but even if you consider those components necisary then all you need are: The kernel (one file plus some modules), a device manager (the thing that creates nodes in /dev when you plug stuff in, if you use kdrive you don't even need this), a display manager (Xorg, kdrive or Wayland) and some kind of shell and VTE (bash and Xterm for example.) Literally everything else can be thrown out if you don't want to deal with it. Don't like configuring systemd? I've used just script in the past at /linuxrc. Don't like what Gnome is doing or maybe it's crashing on you? Get rid of it, for the most part it's just aesthetic and the functionality can be replaced by eg fluxbox and PCFMan (and maybe wpa_gui if you like using a GUI to configure your wireless card.) Did the package manager get confused? You can actually get away with removing the database and starting over (although this will replace all the binaries it previously installed and potentially overwrite configs.) Don't be afraid to nuke things.
- scarface74 5y ago
  > Especially if you don't want graphics Who in 2022 doesn’t “want graphics”?
  - usrn 5y ago
    People who don't want to redo their Xorg config.
    - noirbot 5y ago
      I don't WANT to redo my Xorg config, but I don't have much choice if I want Linux to behave like an OS from this century.
      - kaba0 5y ago
        Wayland is here without any need to tinker for modern features.
        usrn 5y ago
        Modern features like screenshots? Wayland is a nightmare of second system syndrome for most users.
        kaba0 5y ago
        Wayland can do screenshots since like forever. Do try it out before you believe every false claim on the internet.
        usrn 5y ago
        The implication was that screenshots require tinkering although I can see why that wasn't clear.
        5y ago
leephillips 5y ago
I don’t understand where these problems are coming from. I also needed a program to take screenshots, so I did `apt install flameshot` and it worked great.
- noirbot 5y ago
  Until you try to do that on Fedora. Where Flameshot just doesn't work for reasons. You can install it, but can't actually open it. For reasons I don't know enough about the windowing systems in whatever my flavor of Fedora is using to understand.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    I wouldn’t try to use apt on Fedora. But a more serious reply would be to ask what you mean by “windowing systems” (I don’t know much about Fedora). I’ve found that Linux works best if you keep things simple. I use Debian with no “desktop”; just X11 and dwm as a window manager. This gets me a fast and responsive system on modest hardware, with almost all my RAM available to actually use. But aren’t there at least a half-dozen screenshot programs to choose from?
    - noirbot 5y ago
      I don't know much about Fedora either, but it's the only distro that seemed to have out of the box support for the laptop components in the laptop I needed to install linux on. My basic understanding of the Flameshot issue is that it assumes you're in Gnome and tries to put the Flameshot button in the top bar, but whatever Fedora uses doesn't have that bar, so it just silently crashes. The issue is "keeping things simple" requires you to have some pretty serious knowledge of Linux, to the point where it's far from simple to know what the "simple" set of things you need to install in order for your system to work, or to know what components you can't buy if you want to use Linux. As-is, my trackpad on my laptop just sometimes doesn't register clicks, even on the best supported drivers (which I had to install by hand because no distro upstreams them). Also the audio system just doesn't work half of the time either, but I'm used to that on Linux, and literally the official explanation I've seen is "idk it's like that. Just reboot if it can't find any audio devices." No other OS makes me have to check the manufacturer of specific sub-components of my motherboard to know whether they'll work at all. Helplessness.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> but Linux you get the helplessness of sometimes having something break and the only answer you can find after spending half of your weekend searching for solutions is just "idk, give up and reset your entire OS" ... On Linux? That's the traditional Windows solution.
- noirbot 5y ago
  I mean, it can be both. The issue is sometime you do an "apt get" and it just doesn't work and the only solution you can find is "idk your apt cache is broken. Clean-slate your entire OS because at some point Apt crashed in a way that was unrecoverable."
  - seba_dos1 5y ago
    I don't get it. Since 2006 I have never had to clean-slate my GNU/Linux installation, on both PCs or phones. I only ever did it out of choice, usually with new hardware being a pretext to try a different distro or installation method - which happened total a handful of times during those 15 years. Debian (and apt) in particular has never made me even worry that I'll have to reinstall my OS, and I'm sort of a power user who isn't afraid to break things, so I should be more likely to actually break it. How can my experience of using GNU/Linux as my only OS for so many years be so drastically different than what you describe?
    - noirbot 5y ago
      Honestly, you're probably just better at using it than I am. I'm sure most of my "I guess I'll just clean-slate" moments could be fixed if I put in the time and knew the system better, but I don't, and in the moment where my computer is half-broken and the windowing system has stopped displaying any text on anything, or just not rending half of the icons, I have the choice of either making it a learning opportunity, or deciding I want to use my computer today for sure. Most folks who use Linux daily are just flat out better at Linux than me at this point. It makes sense - it's a self-selecting group. But that also means half of the instructions you'll find on a blog or forum or SO assume a lot more familiarity with the system than I have. I've been wanting to try a different visual theme on my computer - it seems easy to install a new one, and the repo I found just has a helper script that should install it, but all the docs also just say "and you can just uninstall it if you want", but there's no uninstall script, and I don't understand the install script well enough to know how I'd undo it if something broke. So I just haven't done it.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I've been daily-drivering on Linux for Desktop and Laptop for months and Linux across 4 different distros has made me feel more helpless than Windows ever did. Sure, the Windows "police" would come in and straighten my update settings (which is ultimately why I abandoned Windows), but Linux you get the helplessness of sometimes having something break and the only answer you can find after spending half of your weekend searching for solutions is just "idk, give up and reset your entire OS" So a long time ago, I installed Gentoo running GNOME 2. There was a menu in the topbar labeled with some kind of icon in addition to the text. Probably the GNOME foot. Anyway, since Gentoo was all about letting you make the customizations you wanted, I thought it would be nice to replace that icon. I had found an icon of the Gentoo fish wearing a wizard hat and I thought that would be appropriate. So I looked through the documentation for the menu. I found the file where the icon associated with the menu was defined. And I replaced that with a definition pointing to my preferred icon. This did not work. The icon displayed in the name of the menu didn't change. It's not that there was no effect. If I viewed the menu properties (you know - right click, "properties"...), my fish-wizard icon showed up (in the properties view) as the icon for the menu where I'd tried to put it. It just wasn't displaying in the topbar the way I'd hoped. I was unable to figure out how to change the icon the menu actually displayed, and had to give up. The documentation was no help. :(
scns 5y ago
Something to laugh about crooked frames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
wvh 5y ago
There's technical knowledge, and there's ecosystem knowledge. To know which applications/libraries are available and suitable for a certain task, and what their individual strengths and weaknesses are, is a very different set of knowledge, and often a vastly underestimated part of experience. I've been using Linux and other Unix/BSD operating systems since the nineties, and I'm completely lost when it comes to helping out others about App store or Windows store options. I can imagine that it's especially hard in Linux to be missing that sort of ecosystem information, as the installation process often assumes some level of technical proficiency and up-front knowledge already. For experienced Linux users, the experience of freedom is a lot greater than using Windows, Android or Apple operating systems; but if you're just starting out and all unknowns turn up more unknowns, it might be a pretty frustrating experience. I think you have to choose if you want to learn, or if you're willing to settle with whatever you're given in the Windows, Android and Apple world.
kewrkewm53 5y ago
I've been using Linux Mint Cinnamon for years, doing mostly programming, and honestly I've encountered way less issues than with Windows. Maybe it's because I'm using old hardware. I'm very satisfied with the experience as it is by default, not much need for customization or tinkering in my case.

usrn 5y ago

The trick to not having crooked picture frames on Linux is to throw out components that refuse to be straightened (and you'll run into many of these, especially if you're on a distro pushing snap on you.) If you pull out everything complex and thoroughly understand what's left you won't run into the "idk just reset the whole OS" situation. Something Windows/OSX users coming to Linux might not realize is that almost nothing in the userspace is actually necessary because the kernel does almost everything. Especially if you don't want graphics but even if you consider those components necisary then all you need are: The kernel (one file plus some modules), a device manager (the thing that creates nodes in /dev when you plug stuff in, if you use kdrive you don't even need this), a display manager (Xorg, kdrive or Wayland) and some kind of shell and VTE (bash and Xterm for example.) Literally everything else can be thrown out if you don't want to deal with it. Don't like configuring systemd? I've used just script in the past at /linuxrc. Don't like what Gnome is doing or maybe it's crashing on you? Get rid of it, for the most part it's just aesthetic and the functionality can be replaced by eg fluxbox and PCFMan (and maybe wpa_gui if you like using a GUI to configure your wireless card.) Did the package manager get confused? You can actually get away with removing the database and starting over (although this will replace all the binaries it previously installed and potentially overwrite configs.) Don't be afraid to nuke things.

scarface74 5y ago
> Especially if you don't want graphics Who in 2022 doesn’t “want graphics”?
- usrn 5y ago
  People who don't want to redo their Xorg config.
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I don't WANT to redo my Xorg config, but I don't have much choice if I want Linux to behave like an OS from this century.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      Wayland is here without any need to tinker for modern features.
      - usrn 5y ago
        Modern features like screenshots? Wayland is a nightmare of second system syndrome for most users.
        kaba0 5y ago
        Wayland can do screenshots since like forever. Do try it out before you believe every false claim on the internet.
        usrn 5y ago
        The implication was that screenshots require tinkering although I can see why that wasn't clear.
        5y ago

leephillips 5y ago

I don’t understand where these problems are coming from. I also needed a program to take screenshots, so I did `apt install flameshot` and it worked great.

noirbot 5y ago
Until you try to do that on Fedora. Where Flameshot just doesn't work for reasons. You can install it, but can't actually open it. For reasons I don't know enough about the windowing systems in whatever my flavor of Fedora is using to understand.
- leephillips 5y ago
  I wouldn’t try to use apt on Fedora. But a more serious reply would be to ask what you mean by “windowing systems” (I don’t know much about Fedora). I’ve found that Linux works best if you keep things simple. I use Debian with no “desktop”; just X11 and dwm as a window manager. This gets me a fast and responsive system on modest hardware, with almost all my RAM available to actually use. But aren’t there at least a half-dozen screenshot programs to choose from?
  - noirbot 5y ago
    I don't know much about Fedora either, but it's the only distro that seemed to have out of the box support for the laptop components in the laptop I needed to install linux on. My basic understanding of the Flameshot issue is that it assumes you're in Gnome and tries to put the Flameshot button in the top bar, but whatever Fedora uses doesn't have that bar, so it just silently crashes. The issue is "keeping things simple" requires you to have some pretty serious knowledge of Linux, to the point where it's far from simple to know what the "simple" set of things you need to install in order for your system to work, or to know what components you can't buy if you want to use Linux. As-is, my trackpad on my laptop just sometimes doesn't register clicks, even on the best supported drivers (which I had to install by hand because no distro upstreams them). Also the audio system just doesn't work half of the time either, but I'm used to that on Linux, and literally the official explanation I've seen is "idk it's like that. Just reboot if it can't find any audio devices." No other OS makes me have to check the manufacturer of specific sub-components of my motherboard to know whether they'll work at all. Helplessness.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

> but Linux you get the helplessness of sometimes having something break and the only answer you can find after spending half of your weekend searching for solutions is just "idk, give up and reset your entire OS" ... On Linux? That's the traditional Windows solution.

noirbot 5y ago
I mean, it can be both. The issue is sometime you do an "apt get" and it just doesn't work and the only solution you can find is "idk your apt cache is broken. Clean-slate your entire OS because at some point Apt crashed in a way that was unrecoverable."
- seba_dos1 5y ago
  I don't get it. Since 2006 I have never had to clean-slate my GNU/Linux installation, on both PCs or phones. I only ever did it out of choice, usually with new hardware being a pretext to try a different distro or installation method - which happened total a handful of times during those 15 years. Debian (and apt) in particular has never made me even worry that I'll have to reinstall my OS, and I'm sort of a power user who isn't afraid to break things, so I should be more likely to actually break it. How can my experience of using GNU/Linux as my only OS for so many years be so drastically different than what you describe?
  - noirbot 5y ago
    Honestly, you're probably just better at using it than I am. I'm sure most of my "I guess I'll just clean-slate" moments could be fixed if I put in the time and knew the system better, but I don't, and in the moment where my computer is half-broken and the windowing system has stopped displaying any text on anything, or just not rending half of the icons, I have the choice of either making it a learning opportunity, or deciding I want to use my computer today for sure. Most folks who use Linux daily are just flat out better at Linux than me at this point. It makes sense - it's a self-selecting group. But that also means half of the instructions you'll find on a blog or forum or SO assume a lot more familiarity with the system than I have. I've been wanting to try a different visual theme on my computer - it seems easy to install a new one, and the repo I found just has a helper script that should install it, but all the docs also just say "and you can just uninstall it if you want", but there's no uninstall script, and I don't understand the install script well enough to know how I'd undo it if something broke. So I just haven't done it.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> I've been daily-drivering on Linux for Desktop and Laptop for months and Linux across 4 different distros has made me feel more helpless than Windows ever did. Sure, the Windows "police" would come in and straighten my update settings (which is ultimately why I abandoned Windows), but Linux you get the helplessness of sometimes having something break and the only answer you can find after spending half of your weekend searching for solutions is just "idk, give up and reset your entire OS" So a long time ago, I installed Gentoo running GNOME 2. There was a menu in the topbar labeled with some kind of icon in addition to the text. Probably the GNOME foot. Anyway, since Gentoo was all about letting you make the customizations you wanted, I thought it would be nice to replace that icon. I had found an icon of the Gentoo fish wearing a wizard hat and I thought that would be appropriate. So I looked through the documentation for the menu. I found the file where the icon associated with the menu was defined. And I replaced that with a definition pointing to my preferred icon. This did not work. The icon displayed in the name of the menu didn't change. It's not that there was no effect. If I viewed the menu properties (you know - right click, "properties"...), my fish-wizard icon showed up (in the properties view) as the icon for the menu where I'd tried to put it. It just wasn't displaying in the topbar the way I'd hoped. I was unable to figure out how to change the icon the menu actually displayed, and had to give up. The documentation was no help. :(

scns 5y ago

Something to laugh about crooked frames: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhj1xhv3rZI

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

wvh 5y ago

There's technical knowledge, and there's ecosystem knowledge. To know which applications/libraries are available and suitable for a certain task, and what their individual strengths and weaknesses are, is a very different set of knowledge, and often a vastly underestimated part of experience. I've been using Linux and other Unix/BSD operating systems since the nineties, and I'm completely lost when it comes to helping out others about App store or Windows store options. I can imagine that it's especially hard in Linux to be missing that sort of ecosystem information, as the installation process often assumes some level of technical proficiency and up-front knowledge already. For experienced Linux users, the experience of freedom is a lot greater than using Windows, Android or Apple operating systems; but if you're just starting out and all unknowns turn up more unknowns, it might be a pretty frustrating experience. I think you have to choose if you want to learn, or if you're willing to settle with whatever you're given in the Windows, Android and Apple world.

kewrkewm53 5y ago

I've been using Linux Mint Cinnamon for years, doing mostly programming, and honestly I've encountered way less issues than with Windows. Maybe it's because I'm using old hardware. I'm very satisfied with the experience as it is by default, not much need for customization or tinkering in my case.