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> And of course it's Linux, so there's infinite opportunity to get under the hood and tinker. - Or keep trying to fix the environment + hardware compatibility

> And of course it's Linux, so there's infinite opportunity to get under the hood and tinker. - Or keep trying to fix the environment + hardware compatibility issues and not do the actual work/study. Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. Or try to fix some other random files since the sound driver doesn't work. He's 10. I'm 40 and still horrified to deal with those problems on a daily basis as my company requires me to work multiple platforms. Linux doesn't care for a regular non-geek user, and its experts all over the internet are very condescending in general. It's a sad reality that no platform actually cares for what a general customer wants. Macs these days have a few times more problems than Windows. His best bet is probably to just stick to Windows and keep checking for any new auto-introduced problems.

bboygravity 4y ago
This is 100 percent why I (and many others no doubt) don't want to touch Linux. Even though it feels better/best. When it fully works on my hardware. Which it never ever does.
- blkhawk 4y ago
  Good, I think that is somewhat of a feature - It serves as a bit of a moat to people who would hurt themself in their confusion. This might sound a bit harsh but Microsoft actively cultivated a type of user I would call "long time novice computer user" and combine that with the poor choices that were made regarding security design and you get results like the ninja updates Windows has these days. As for hardware compatibility Windows has the big advantage that everything is tested on it. One can definitively minimize the risk of issues by just selecting appropriate hardware for linux.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    But that's just it. There is no expectation that I'll grab a random laptop off eBay and install MacOS, or install Windows on a Switch. Then you have Windows users complaining that they have some random hardware that the manufacturer refuses to support Linux, and are shocked that it doesn't work perfectly out the box.
- flakeoil 4y ago
  It might be worth using hardware that is more adapted and tested for use with Linux such as Framework, System76, Starlabs, Tuxedo etc. Typically these computers have better HW driver support than some others and also a HW company with an interest to have their laptops work with Linux backing it up a bit. After all Mac OS only runs on a few dedicated Apple computers and that's partly why it is a smoother experience overall. If Linux only had to support a few Laptop models it would have been easier to get it all working.
mo_42 4y ago
Maybe this is a bit too early for a 10 year old. Definitely not for a 15 year old. I did exactly that when I was that age. Also I think there a much less hardware issues today. Tinkering with Linux was my first real computing experience and also started my career in that field.
einr 4y ago
Or keep trying to fix the environment + hardware compatibility issues and not work on the actual study. Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. Or try to fix some other random files since the sound driver doesn't work. He's 10. I was doing this stuff in Linux when I was… well, not 10, but 12. Today I work with computers. What do you think ”tinkering” means? I do sympathize with being a grown adult and having no time for this stuff anymore. But there is a time and place where, for some, the act of making a computer work right and do what you want is fun in itself. Isn’t that why we’re all here?
- piyush_soni 4y ago
  Not everyone is here to become a Computer Scientist or even a computer professional unfortunately, they want to study their favorite subject, do screen recordings, make nice presentations etc. Our company uses RHEL / CentOS distributions of Linux. And they still suffer from all these weird problems I don't find 'fun' to fix because I have actual work to do, but I have to anyway.
  - einr 4y ago
    Sure. But the article here is specifically about someone who wants their child to learn about computers by tinkering and trial and error.
    - phendrenad2 4y ago
      Uh, the article isn't about that at all. It's about how cluttered, user-hostile, and specifically kid-unfriendly Windows has become in the latest iteration. Linux isn't the answer because it replaces those "features" with different kinds of user-hostility (everything is geared towards people who are on the road to becoming software developers, or are close friends with someone who is).
      - einr 4y ago
        "Uh," maybe we can both be right. Allow me to quote directly: "I want him to be able to dig deeper. To explore. To try things out, misconfigure, crash, fix, and re-install. To get a feeling for how things work below the surface and how they do not work. To learn how to type fast and efficiently. To create things. Maybe, one day, even to learn how to code if he's interested."
spaceman_2020 4y ago
This is very much true. The first time I had mouse scrollwheel issues on Linux, I was just casually told to create a bash file to change config settings. Not user friendly at all.
- blkhawk 4y ago
  why is that user-unfriendly? Didn't it work? Did you miss the ads and the tracking you cannot turn off, updates that ninja-popup and log your PC for half an hour if you not careful for half a second while writing something or the simplicity of selecting the type of user you want to setup by pulling the network cable or disabling your wifi?
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    This is just whataboutism. Also, some of us dare to dream of an OS that doesn't track you and also... works. Don't limit your imagination to the status quo.
  - emsixteen 4y ago
    Completely and utterly missing the point. That comment needs nothing beyond the first question.
  - _dain_ 4y ago
    >why is that user-unfriendly? Didn't it work? assuming you're not trolling, it's user-unfriendly because novices are used to changing settings in GUIs. changing settings in a bash script is a qualitative difference, and paradoxically leaves novices more helpless, despite being a more powerful tool in principle. they don't know any of the syntax or semantics of bash, so they may as well be pasting something written in Kanji. they must put their trust in some random person on the internet who told them the incantation, that it isn't malicious or outdated or irrelevant. if it doesn't work, they have no idea what to do, or how to even begin to debug it, or how to undo it. they don't know if the change they made is permanent or if it will go away if they delete the line and reboot. they don't know about man pages, or the difference between .bashrc and .profile, or what the PATH environmental variable is, or what an environmental variable is full-stop, or what sudo means, or file permissions, symlinks, shebang lines, package managers, or any of the myriad incidental complexity which might crop up when you try to run some shell command from stackoverflow. because often it isn't as simple as running that shell command. it turns out you need to run it with sudo, or apt install some missing command, or it uses some syntactic construct that doesn't work in your current shell, or a grep option that doesn't exist on your version, or you're in the wrong directory, or you need to activate some systemd service first, or it says to pip install something but actually you should use your system's package manager, or X or Y or Z ... experienced users run into little snags like this all the time and fix them without even thinking about it. do an experiment for me right now: go through your bash command history and find some command you used to solve some minor problem. then look at the commands before it for the failed attempts and workarounds and diagnostic steps you did. you probably forgot you even did those. then ask yourself if a total novice could have done them. the answer will be "no". compare a GUI: a GUI settings dialog will have options labelled in English, and leans on well-understood semiotics of checkboxes, dropdown menus, sliders and so on. those constrain the possible types and values (compare with stringly typed shell commands), and it's clear how to undo them afterwards if necessary. they inform you of both the current state of the system, and how to change it (contrast: viewing the state of the system vs changing the state is two different terminal commands). novices have a perfectly rational fear of screwing with things on the terminal.
bombolo 4y ago
I feel that people who haven't tried the thing they're commenting about in the last 10 years should start with a disclaimer like "=== ATTENTION, I'M JUST PARROTING HERE ===".
- Godel_unicode 4y ago
  Interesting, and what should people do if they are unable to understand that others experiences can and do differ from their own? As of an hour ago, plugging a trrs headset into the jack on my laptop breaks audio until I go kick the daemon. Linux is a pain in the neck.
  - bombolo 4y ago
    Format your distribution. You probably messed some config file up, while trying to fix something. They work completely fine. I use them all the time and have been using them for about a decade.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Godel_unicode 4y ago
      The irony of this response on a thread about how Linux support on the internet always devolves to condescending “it works for me” is delicious. The bug to which I refer has been open for over a year and is well replicated on my hardware and distro. I would fix it myself but I can’t be bothered so I use Bluetooth (in one of the rare cases were there’s an audio problem on Linux and the solution is Bluetooth).
      - bombolo 4y ago
        Most people complaining about bugs are unaware that the issue got solved 15-20 years ago. They just keep repeating the same thing over and over and over.
EchoReflection 4y ago
linux has lots of flavors and one can run virtual/emulated OSes on i imagine any of them. Win11 sux big time though, no doubt. I actually had a Geeksquad dude visibly grimace when i told him i accidentally "upgraded" to Win11 and he helped me wipe the HD and put win10 back.
pmontra 4y ago
It either works or it doesn't. Workarounds are usually permanent. Example: I booted a friend's Thinkpad t440p with an Ubuntu 22.04 pen drive to check that she was OK with it and that there were no issues. All went well (screen, touchpad, USB, printer, scanner) except resume from sleep: the pointer froze. An internet search returned the workaround from many years ago sudo modprobe -r psmouse sudo modprobe psmouse It worked and my friend was OK to add it to systemd post resume script. Given the age of the workaround it will never be fixed so it's up to the user. Maybe the kernel or the distro should make some checks on the hardware and take care of it but I guess that there are thousands of those combinations. Lenovo is doing that work with Microsoft for their hw on Windows, they are not doing it with Canonical on Ubuntu nor they are sending patches to the kernel.
- michelledepeil 4y ago
  Ha! I've actually been facing this same problem on a t440s. thanks for posting the fix!
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > Given the age of the workaround it will never be fixed Man, there are so many of these. Not just in FOSS but software in general. What makes it annoying in FOSS is the fact that developers would rather rewrite everything in rust than fix many-years-old issues, even when someone has submitted a patch.
CoolCold 4y ago
Couldn't it be WhatsApp and TikTok what a "general customer" wants actually? Could it be MS has stats from MS Store to actually see what users install (say I have WhatsApp from the Store, among several others, not mentioning Office). We don't have numbers from the telemetry, but they have, so we guess, but they may actually know. Not something unrealistic for me. As side note, I find astonishing things, for good or bad, when looking out of my nerdy bubble.
- vetinari 4y ago
  While I do agree with the general sentiment, that it probably is what a normies want, but then the cynic inside me wakes up. Preloads are not there to make the service or experience better. Preloads are there, because someone paid for them to be there. So someone makes money on them, doesn't care exactly what they are, and is selling your attention and your time to get there. So no popularity numbers needed, only a good offer.
another_story 4y ago
People always say this, but in the last half decade I've put Linux (ubuntu varieties) on multiple desktops with near 0 additional effort needed. At most I needed to install a proprietary Nvidia driver which was easily done without using terminal. I've spent far more time trying to decrapify Windows than getting Linux to work. Now laptops are a different matter.
- oblio 4y ago
  > Now laptops are a different matter. And laptops are most client PCs sold these days, people barely buy desktops anymore: https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021 https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021 Linux is skating where the puck has been.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    Meh, my latest laptops, which are your bog-standard HP enterprise models, both worked better when new under Linux than under Windows. One of them, AMD-based, "only" had some issue with the USB hub to which the webcam and light sensor are connected. It otherwise worked OK. On the OOB Windows install which came with the PC from the factory, the backlight couldn't go up all the day and was a horribly dim affair. It was fixed around a year later. It would also randomly hang when waking up from sleep. The second one, a full-Intel affair, was much more of a PITA. First off, the Windows installer didn't recognize the touchpad nor track point. It still doesn't, more than a year later! Then, once installed, there was some stupid issue with the display out via the HP dock. I'd have to do a ridiculous dance of plugging in the display via both HDMI and DP and unplugging and re-plugging the DP connector at just the right time. Then, almost a year later, Intel released a new driver that actually fixed it! But then, for a while, Windows Update wouldn't have any of that, and insisted on updating the driver to the older one with the bug. Good times. Absolutely 0 issues under Linux since day one. The only "config file fiddling" I did was actually Xorg, but that's because I insisted on remapping CAPS to Hyper and using a mac-style US layout with the win and menu keys working as level 3 shift for easier French typing. How do you even do that under windows?
    - 4y ago
StrangeATractor 4y ago
It's 2023, do people still have driver issues on Linux? Last I had to worry about that was when Ubuntu was <10.xx. It works well on random machines IME for the last two decades almost. (Admittedly, I've done well by staying away from nvidia)
- dagw 4y ago
  2022 I spent several days trying to get Ubuntu to run stably without tearing on an AMD Ryzen APU.
  - StrangeATractor 4y ago
    It Works For Me!™ Seriously though, compatibility issues seem the exception to the rule nowadays. Getting wifi or display drivers working used to be...challenging, if not traumatizing. You could put that shit on your resume nowadays. "I set up X11 with native resolution and got WiFi working most of the time in 2003 without damaging hardware."
- beebeepka 4y ago
  Some WiFi drivers are still not mainlined, so yeah, depending on the exact model, a brand new laptop may not have WiFi, regardless of distribution. I just bought one like that. It sucks. All I have to do now is rebuild the driver after an update. "No Biggie"
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > It's 2023, do people still have driver issues on Linux? Almost nobody. Most manufacturers have come to the conclusion that if they're going to dick about with special proprietary drivers, they can expect to sell a handful of their product compared to one that is just normal. No-one wants a webcam that uses a special super-sekrit magic driver that has to be downloaded from some sketchy website. They want to plug it in and wave to granny, or join their Teams call. Thus, the special super-sekrit proprietary crap got evolved out of existence.
- GNUfanaticism 4y ago
  I can't speak for laptops, but I strongly doubt any claims about drivers on desktop GNU/Linux. It's a common talking point but I believe it is mostly parroting. Anything I have plugged into my PC for the past few years has worked right out of the box. Installing Nvidia drivers is a common complaint, but it has never been more than an apt/pacman/xbps-install away for me.
jchw 4y ago
> Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. The truth is things like that are not as common as they used to be. Everything with Xorg is plug-n-play, input and video devices are greatly standardized, etc. Not to mention, if your machine boots into Wayland, there simply isn't an Xorg configuration to worry about. That having been said, that was my experience when I was a kid, and I do not regret it at all. On the contrary, it was the perfect time to become proficient with Linux at a deeper level. Different strokes.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
None of those have been a thing for 20 years. Linux just works, straight out of the box, with pretty much any sane hardware. Have you ever tried to get anything as outré as a USB keyboard, or USB memory stick, or heaven help you, a USB serial port working in Windows?
- vetinari 4y ago
  > USB serial port working in Windows The whole FTDI hoopla happened only because FTDI serial driver was the only one shipped with Windows, so only one that was really plug and play.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    It's not even FTDI, it's any of them. And if you plug it into a different socket, it has to go on the Internet to find the driver all over again. Janky.
pauby 4y ago
I was very much of the same opinion until the start of the year when I went back to Linux (Manjaro this time, Kubuntu last time) for the precise reasons listed in the article. Manjaro has caused me no more (and in some respects less) issues than Windows did. The biggest issue for me is finding equivalent software from what I had on Windows. In almost all cases, I've been successful. Gaming is great so far. Same games. > experts all over the internet are very condescending in general. This is a dissapointing generalisation and not my experience. I've had nothing but support and help with any questions I have asked recently. The Linux ecosystem is a different beast now and one I'd recommend to most people. It's not going to work for everybody but if your user case is not special, chances are you'll have a better time than the current Windows.
blaerk 4y ago
Running dos, win9x and others was quite a lot of fixing stuff as well. Getting your hardware to work with games and is took some patience and a lot of trial and error “back in the days”.
- anthk 4y ago
  - You install chipset drivers? BSOD - IE with too many windows? BSOD - Process stack being mad? BSOD
  - piyush_soni 4y ago
    Anyone who's used Windows recently can say it happens a _lot_ less now. And also, I see not a "Blue" screen of death, but other screens of death on my work macbook all the time (all official 2019 MBP, no customizations). :| .. It just suddenly restarts and then opens up a 'white window of death' to make me report the kernel problems to Apple. I have saved a few screenshots as well.
otikik 4y ago
Windows is losing on the “there’s a compatible driver” front, too. Not-so-old devices only have drivers for win <= 10, and don’t work on 11 (but they work on the latest Fedora)
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
You say that as if Windows doesn't have the same problems. But it does. I've never had Windows "just work" for a long time. It's either the OEM installed one that's crammed full of bloatware, or you do a fresh install in which case you still have to dick around with: 1. Running the many cycles of updates and reboots that invariably need to happen on a fresh install. Oh yeah, and one hard reset or power loss when Windows update hangs, as it does regularly, can be enough to irreparably corrupt the installation and force you to reinstall. 2. Finding the drivers that were missed by Windows update *without* being tricked into downloading malware. 3. Finding and installing software without being tricked to download malware by SEO spam. And without every application adding itself to startup or installing 3rd party spyware, slowing down boot time. 4. Finding and changing all the settings whose defaults are making the system slow, insecure, etc. Some of these settings automatically change themselves back after some time btw, unless you use regedit or other hacks.
aembleton 4y ago
> his monitor's display suddenly became weird Not experienced that for a decade on Linux, but it happens every day for me on MacOS. Not sure why, but coming out of sleep, half the time one monitor will be at the wrong resolution and a third of the time the other monitor will be rotated 90 degrees. I've resorted to leaving the displays setting window open so I can change them back when it happens. Really frustrating and the same monitors, HDMI cables and USB-C hub cause no issues on Linux.
binkHN 4y ago
Give ChromeOS a spin.
mrjin 4y ago
I'm not sure which year you are from. Over ten years ago, it was definitely the case. But now, Windows 10, especially 11, bothers me much much more than Linux. Just in around 3 months, this is already the 2nd time that Windows 11 screwed up and I wanted to clean wipe it. I never imaged a triple hit before: a bad update fcked up the external display; then uninstall the update again fcked up the whole system; and at last system restore did not work. And that's on a damn surface pro 8. On the other hand, another toy laptop with Fedora installed has running flawlessly for quite a few years, started from Fedora 30 to 37 without a single hiccup. For Macs, never liked Apple products, so no comments.
- piyush_soni 4y ago
  I use all three - Windows, Linux and macOS for work (and macOS and Windows for personal use). Last I had these problems with Linux was 2022. We don't use the more user focused Ubuntu/Fedora distros. We use RHEL/CentOS which still look like ages old even with their latest versions, and suffer from the same problems. I'd love to personally use Linux because it's much faster than Windows, but at the same time I'm talking about the lack of integration like you delete the file in the Terminal, and the 'built-in' File explorer doesn't get that news (even in 2022), the display drivers have problems every time IT updates the OS kernel (hardware acceleration stops working), every software that works on it looks again from pre-historic times and for any serious development work it causes more problems than it solves which is reflected in all the third party libraries that we use which have something or the other 'not supported' on Linux.
  - mrjin 4y ago
    RHEL/CentOS are meant for servers/workstations aiming to run 24x7, and most of the instances might not event have GUI installed. I can understand why those problems were there as end user experience wasn't the priority. And you mentioned it was IT that updating the kernel, if I read it correctly, then it's the IT did not do their job properly as they did not test an update at all before rolling out. For 3rd party support, it's getting better, but as you mentioned, still a long way to go.
safety1st 4y ago
This doesn't reflect my experience using Linux as my daily driver for 10 years, across many devices. Especially these days, I get trouble from only two places - 1) driver issues on laptops that aren't advertised as Linux-ready, 2) adding 3rd party apt repositories and hoping everything will update painlessly down the road. It's hard for me to think of Linux problems I've had in the last... 5+ years? that didn't stem from one of those two things. I'm not saying they don't exist but every OS has its share of bugs, I think the days of Linux randomly exploding for random reasons are long behind us.
throwbadubadu 4y ago
Very exaggerated imo.. but tbh, reread what the author wants for his kid. Even if he has to do that, it will be so much learning experience ... and also so satisfying when you figured this config thing and that issue out. So even if exaggerated, I think your post is an argument and not a counterpoint wrt to the intended purpose. ;)
dralley 4y ago
> Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. X is dead or very nearly so, this problem doesn't really exist.

bboygravity 4y ago

This is 100 percent why I (and many others no doubt) don't want to touch Linux. Even though it feels better/best. When it fully works on my hardware. Which it never ever does.

blkhawk 4y ago
Good, I think that is somewhat of a feature - It serves as a bit of a moat to people who would hurt themself in their confusion. This might sound a bit harsh but Microsoft actively cultivated a type of user I would call "long time novice computer user" and combine that with the poor choices that were made regarding security design and you get results like the ninja updates Windows has these days. As for hardware compatibility Windows has the big advantage that everything is tested on it. One can definitively minimize the risk of issues by just selecting appropriate hardware for linux.
- happymellon 4y ago
  But that's just it. There is no expectation that I'll grab a random laptop off eBay and install MacOS, or install Windows on a Switch. Then you have Windows users complaining that they have some random hardware that the manufacturer refuses to support Linux, and are shocked that it doesn't work perfectly out the box.
flakeoil 4y ago
It might be worth using hardware that is more adapted and tested for use with Linux such as Framework, System76, Starlabs, Tuxedo etc. Typically these computers have better HW driver support than some others and also a HW company with an interest to have their laptops work with Linux backing it up a bit. After all Mac OS only runs on a few dedicated Apple computers and that's partly why it is a smoother experience overall. If Linux only had to support a few Laptop models it would have been easier to get it all working.

mo_42 4y ago

Maybe this is a bit too early for a 10 year old. Definitely not for a 15 year old. I did exactly that when I was that age. Also I think there a much less hardware issues today. Tinkering with Linux was my first real computing experience and also started my career in that field.

einr 4y ago

Or keep trying to fix the environment + hardware compatibility issues and not work on the actual study. Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. Or try to fix some other random files since the sound driver doesn't work. He's 10. I was doing this stuff in Linux when I was… well, not 10, but 12. Today I work with computers. What do you think ”tinkering” means? I do sympathize with being a grown adult and having no time for this stuff anymore. But there is a time and place where, for some, the act of making a computer work right and do what you want is fun in itself. Isn’t that why we’re all here?

piyush_soni 4y ago
Not everyone is here to become a Computer Scientist or even a computer professional unfortunately, they want to study their favorite subject, do screen recordings, make nice presentations etc. Our company uses RHEL / CentOS distributions of Linux. And they still suffer from all these weird problems I don't find 'fun' to fix because I have actual work to do, but I have to anyway.
- einr 4y ago
  Sure. But the article here is specifically about someone who wants their child to learn about computers by tinkering and trial and error.
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    Uh, the article isn't about that at all. It's about how cluttered, user-hostile, and specifically kid-unfriendly Windows has become in the latest iteration. Linux isn't the answer because it replaces those "features" with different kinds of user-hostility (everything is geared towards people who are on the road to becoming software developers, or are close friends with someone who is).
    - einr 4y ago
      "Uh," maybe we can both be right. Allow me to quote directly: "I want him to be able to dig deeper. To explore. To try things out, misconfigure, crash, fix, and re-install. To get a feeling for how things work below the surface and how they do not work. To learn how to type fast and efficiently. To create things. Maybe, one day, even to learn how to code if he's interested."

spaceman_2020 4y ago

This is very much true. The first time I had mouse scrollwheel issues on Linux, I was just casually told to create a bash file to change config settings. Not user friendly at all.

blkhawk 4y ago
why is that user-unfriendly? Didn't it work? Did you miss the ads and the tracking you cannot turn off, updates that ninja-popup and log your PC for half an hour if you not careful for half a second while writing something or the simplicity of selecting the type of user you want to setup by pulling the network cable or disabling your wifi?
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  This is just whataboutism. Also, some of us dare to dream of an OS that doesn't track you and also... works. Don't limit your imagination to the status quo.
- emsixteen 4y ago
  Completely and utterly missing the point. That comment needs nothing beyond the first question.
- _dain_ 4y ago
  >why is that user-unfriendly? Didn't it work? assuming you're not trolling, it's user-unfriendly because novices are used to changing settings in GUIs. changing settings in a bash script is a qualitative difference, and paradoxically leaves novices more helpless, despite being a more powerful tool in principle. they don't know any of the syntax or semantics of bash, so they may as well be pasting something written in Kanji. they must put their trust in some random person on the internet who told them the incantation, that it isn't malicious or outdated or irrelevant. if it doesn't work, they have no idea what to do, or how to even begin to debug it, or how to undo it. they don't know if the change they made is permanent or if it will go away if they delete the line and reboot. they don't know about man pages, or the difference between .bashrc and .profile, or what the PATH environmental variable is, or what an environmental variable is full-stop, or what sudo means, or file permissions, symlinks, shebang lines, package managers, or any of the myriad incidental complexity which might crop up when you try to run some shell command from stackoverflow. because often it isn't as simple as running that shell command. it turns out you need to run it with sudo, or apt install some missing command, or it uses some syntactic construct that doesn't work in your current shell, or a grep option that doesn't exist on your version, or you're in the wrong directory, or you need to activate some systemd service first, or it says to pip install something but actually you should use your system's package manager, or X or Y or Z ... experienced users run into little snags like this all the time and fix them without even thinking about it. do an experiment for me right now: go through your bash command history and find some command you used to solve some minor problem. then look at the commands before it for the failed attempts and workarounds and diagnostic steps you did. you probably forgot you even did those. then ask yourself if a total novice could have done them. the answer will be "no". compare a GUI: a GUI settings dialog will have options labelled in English, and leans on well-understood semiotics of checkboxes, dropdown menus, sliders and so on. those constrain the possible types and values (compare with stringly typed shell commands), and it's clear how to undo them afterwards if necessary. they inform you of both the current state of the system, and how to change it (contrast: viewing the state of the system vs changing the state is two different terminal commands). novices have a perfectly rational fear of screwing with things on the terminal.

bombolo 4y ago

I feel that people who haven't tried the thing they're commenting about in the last 10 years should start with a disclaimer like "=== ATTENTION, I'M JUST PARROTING HERE ===".

Godel_unicode 4y ago
Interesting, and what should people do if they are unable to understand that others experiences can and do differ from their own? As of an hour ago, plugging a trrs headset into the jack on my laptop breaks audio until I go kick the daemon. Linux is a pain in the neck.
- bombolo 4y ago
  Format your distribution. You probably messed some config file up, while trying to fix something. They work completely fine. I use them all the time and have been using them for about a decade.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Godel_unicode 4y ago
    The irony of this response on a thread about how Linux support on the internet always devolves to condescending “it works for me” is delicious. The bug to which I refer has been open for over a year and is well replicated on my hardware and distro. I would fix it myself but I can’t be bothered so I use Bluetooth (in one of the rare cases were there’s an audio problem on Linux and the solution is Bluetooth).
    - bombolo 4y ago
      Most people complaining about bugs are unaware that the issue got solved 15-20 years ago. They just keep repeating the same thing over and over and over.

EchoReflection 4y ago

linux has lots of flavors and one can run virtual/emulated OSes on i imagine any of them. Win11 sux big time though, no doubt. I actually had a Geeksquad dude visibly grimace when i told him i accidentally "upgraded" to Win11 and he helped me wipe the HD and put win10 back.

pmontra 4y ago

It either works or it doesn't. Workarounds are usually permanent. Example: I booted a friend's Thinkpad t440p with an Ubuntu 22.04 pen drive to check that she was OK with it and that there were no issues. All went well (screen, touchpad, USB, printer, scanner) except resume from sleep: the pointer froze. An internet search returned the workaround from many years ago sudo modprobe -r psmouse sudo modprobe psmouse It worked and my friend was OK to add it to systemd post resume script. Given the age of the workaround it will never be fixed so it's up to the user. Maybe the kernel or the distro should make some checks on the hardware and take care of it but I guess that there are thousands of those combinations. Lenovo is doing that work with Microsoft for their hw on Windows, they are not doing it with Canonical on Ubuntu nor they are sending patches to the kernel.

michelledepeil 4y ago
Ha! I've actually been facing this same problem on a t440s. thanks for posting the fix!
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
> Given the age of the workaround it will never be fixed Man, there are so many of these. Not just in FOSS but software in general. What makes it annoying in FOSS is the fact that developers would rather rewrite everything in rust than fix many-years-old issues, even when someone has submitted a patch.

CoolCold 4y ago

Couldn't it be WhatsApp and TikTok what a "general customer" wants actually? Could it be MS has stats from MS Store to actually see what users install (say I have WhatsApp from the Store, among several others, not mentioning Office). We don't have numbers from the telemetry, but they have, so we guess, but they may actually know. Not something unrealistic for me. As side note, I find astonishing things, for good or bad, when looking out of my nerdy bubble.

vetinari 4y ago
While I do agree with the general sentiment, that it probably is what a normies want, but then the cynic inside me wakes up. Preloads are not there to make the service or experience better. Preloads are there, because someone paid for them to be there. So someone makes money on them, doesn't care exactly what they are, and is selling your attention and your time to get there. So no popularity numbers needed, only a good offer.

another_story 4y ago

People always say this, but in the last half decade I've put Linux (ubuntu varieties) on multiple desktops with near 0 additional effort needed. At most I needed to install a proprietary Nvidia driver which was easily done without using terminal. I've spent far more time trying to decrapify Windows than getting Linux to work. Now laptops are a different matter.

oblio 4y ago
> Now laptops are a different matter. And laptops are most client PCs sold these days, people barely buy desktops anymore: https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021 https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/global-pc-market-Q4-2021 Linux is skating where the puck has been.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  Meh, my latest laptops, which are your bog-standard HP enterprise models, both worked better when new under Linux than under Windows. One of them, AMD-based, "only" had some issue with the USB hub to which the webcam and light sensor are connected. It otherwise worked OK. On the OOB Windows install which came with the PC from the factory, the backlight couldn't go up all the day and was a horribly dim affair. It was fixed around a year later. It would also randomly hang when waking up from sleep. The second one, a full-Intel affair, was much more of a PITA. First off, the Windows installer didn't recognize the touchpad nor track point. It still doesn't, more than a year later! Then, once installed, there was some stupid issue with the display out via the HP dock. I'd have to do a ridiculous dance of plugging in the display via both HDMI and DP and unplugging and re-plugging the DP connector at just the right time. Then, almost a year later, Intel released a new driver that actually fixed it! But then, for a while, Windows Update wouldn't have any of that, and insisted on updating the driver to the older one with the bug. Good times. Absolutely 0 issues under Linux since day one. The only "config file fiddling" I did was actually Xorg, but that's because I insisted on remapping CAPS to Hyper and using a mac-style US layout with the win and menu keys working as level 3 shift for easier French typing. How do you even do that under windows?
  - 4y ago

StrangeATractor 4y ago

It's 2023, do people still have driver issues on Linux? Last I had to worry about that was when Ubuntu was <10.xx. It works well on random machines IME for the last two decades almost. (Admittedly, I've done well by staying away from nvidia)

dagw 4y ago
2022 I spent several days trying to get Ubuntu to run stably without tearing on an AMD Ryzen APU.
- StrangeATractor 4y ago
  It Works For Me!™ Seriously though, compatibility issues seem the exception to the rule nowadays. Getting wifi or display drivers working used to be...challenging, if not traumatizing. You could put that shit on your resume nowadays. "I set up X11 with native resolution and got WiFi working most of the time in 2003 without damaging hardware."
beebeepka 4y ago
Some WiFi drivers are still not mainlined, so yeah, depending on the exact model, a brand new laptop may not have WiFi, regardless of distribution. I just bought one like that. It sucks. All I have to do now is rebuild the driver after an update. "No Biggie"
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> It's 2023, do people still have driver issues on Linux? Almost nobody. Most manufacturers have come to the conclusion that if they're going to dick about with special proprietary drivers, they can expect to sell a handful of their product compared to one that is just normal. No-one wants a webcam that uses a special super-sekrit magic driver that has to be downloaded from some sketchy website. They want to plug it in and wave to granny, or join their Teams call. Thus, the special super-sekrit proprietary crap got evolved out of existence.
GNUfanaticism 4y ago
I can't speak for laptops, but I strongly doubt any claims about drivers on desktop GNU/Linux. It's a common talking point but I believe it is mostly parroting. Anything I have plugged into my PC for the past few years has worked right out of the box. Installing Nvidia drivers is a common complaint, but it has never been more than an apt/pacman/xbps-install away for me.

jchw 4y ago

> Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. The truth is things like that are not as common as they used to be. Everything with Xorg is plug-n-play, input and video devices are greatly standardized, etc. Not to mention, if your machine boots into Wayland, there simply isn't an Xorg configuration to worry about. That having been said, that was my experience when I was a kid, and I do not regret it at all. On the contrary, it was the perfect time to become proficient with Linux at a deeper level. Different strokes.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

None of those have been a thing for 20 years. Linux just works, straight out of the box, with pretty much any sane hardware. Have you ever tried to get anything as outré as a USB keyboard, or USB memory stick, or heaven help you, a USB serial port working in Windows?

vetinari 4y ago
> USB serial port working in Windows The whole FTDI hoopla happened only because FTDI serial driver was the only one shipped with Windows, so only one that was really plug and play.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  It's not even FTDI, it's any of them. And if you plug it into a different socket, it has to go on the Internet to find the driver all over again. Janky.

pauby 4y ago

I was very much of the same opinion until the start of the year when I went back to Linux (Manjaro this time, Kubuntu last time) for the precise reasons listed in the article. Manjaro has caused me no more (and in some respects less) issues than Windows did. The biggest issue for me is finding equivalent software from what I had on Windows. In almost all cases, I've been successful. Gaming is great so far. Same games. > experts all over the internet are very condescending in general. This is a dissapointing generalisation and not my experience. I've had nothing but support and help with any questions I have asked recently. The Linux ecosystem is a different beast now and one I'd recommend to most people. It's not going to work for everybody but if your user case is not special, chances are you'll have a better time than the current Windows.

blaerk 4y ago

Running dos, win9x and others was quite a lot of fixing stuff as well. Getting your hardware to work with games and is took some patience and a lot of trial and error “back in the days”.

anthk 4y ago
- You install chipset drivers? BSOD - IE with too many windows? BSOD - Process stack being mad? BSOD
- piyush_soni 4y ago
  Anyone who's used Windows recently can say it happens a _lot_ less now. And also, I see not a "Blue" screen of death, but other screens of death on my work macbook all the time (all official 2019 MBP, no customizations). :| .. It just suddenly restarts and then opens up a 'white window of death' to make me report the kernel problems to Apple. I have saved a few screenshots as well.

otikik 4y ago

Windows is losing on the “there’s a compatible driver” front, too. Not-so-old devices only have drivers for win <= 10, and don’t work on 11 (but they work on the latest Fedora)

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

You say that as if Windows doesn't have the same problems. But it does. I've never had Windows "just work" for a long time. It's either the OEM installed one that's crammed full of bloatware, or you do a fresh install in which case you still have to dick around with: 1. Running the many cycles of updates and reboots that invariably need to happen on a fresh install. Oh yeah, and one hard reset or power loss when Windows update hangs, as it does regularly, can be enough to irreparably corrupt the installation and force you to reinstall. 2. Finding the drivers that were missed by Windows update *without* being tricked into downloading malware. 3. Finding and installing software without being tricked to download malware by SEO spam. And without every application adding itself to startup or installing 3rd party spyware, slowing down boot time. 4. Finding and changing all the settings whose defaults are making the system slow, insecure, etc. Some of these settings automatically change themselves back after some time btw, unless you use regedit or other hacks.

aembleton 4y ago

> his monitor's display suddenly became weird Not experienced that for a decade on Linux, but it happens every day for me on MacOS. Not sure why, but coming out of sleep, half the time one monitor will be at the wrong resolution and a third of the time the other monitor will be rotated 90 degrees. I've resorted to leaving the displays setting window open so I can change them back when it happens. Really frustrating and the same monitors, HDMI cables and USB-C hub cause no issues on Linux.

binkHN 4y ago

Give ChromeOS a spin.

mrjin 4y ago

I'm not sure which year you are from. Over ten years ago, it was definitely the case. But now, Windows 10, especially 11, bothers me much much more than Linux. Just in around 3 months, this is already the 2nd time that Windows 11 screwed up and I wanted to clean wipe it. I never imaged a triple hit before: a bad update fcked up the external display; then uninstall the update again fcked up the whole system; and at last system restore did not work. And that's on a damn surface pro 8. On the other hand, another toy laptop with Fedora installed has running flawlessly for quite a few years, started from Fedora 30 to 37 without a single hiccup. For Macs, never liked Apple products, so no comments.

piyush_soni 4y ago
I use all three - Windows, Linux and macOS for work (and macOS and Windows for personal use). Last I had these problems with Linux was 2022. We don't use the more user focused Ubuntu/Fedora distros. We use RHEL/CentOS which still look like ages old even with their latest versions, and suffer from the same problems. I'd love to personally use Linux because it's much faster than Windows, but at the same time I'm talking about the lack of integration like you delete the file in the Terminal, and the 'built-in' File explorer doesn't get that news (even in 2022), the display drivers have problems every time IT updates the OS kernel (hardware acceleration stops working), every software that works on it looks again from pre-historic times and for any serious development work it causes more problems than it solves which is reflected in all the third party libraries that we use which have something or the other 'not supported' on Linux.
- mrjin 4y ago
  RHEL/CentOS are meant for servers/workstations aiming to run 24x7, and most of the instances might not event have GUI installed. I can understand why those problems were there as end user experience wasn't the priority. And you mentioned it was IT that updating the kernel, if I read it correctly, then it's the IT did not do their job properly as they did not test an update at all before rolling out. For 3rd party support, it's getting better, but as you mentioned, still a long way to go.

safety1st 4y ago

This doesn't reflect my experience using Linux as my daily driver for 10 years, across many devices. Especially these days, I get trouble from only two places - 1) driver issues on laptops that aren't advertised as Linux-ready, 2) adding 3rd party apt repositories and hoping everything will update painlessly down the road. It's hard for me to think of Linux problems I've had in the last... 5+ years? that didn't stem from one of those two things. I'm not saying they don't exist but every OS has its share of bugs, I think the days of Linux randomly exploding for random reasons are long behind us.

throwbadubadu 4y ago

Very exaggerated imo.. but tbh, reread what the author wants for his kid. Even if he has to do that, it will be so much learning experience ... and also so satisfying when you figured this config thing and that issue out. So even if exaggerated, I think your post is an argument and not a counterpoint wrt to the intended purpose. ;)

dralley 4y ago

> Or keep editing some random xorg.conf file because his monitor's display suddenly became weird. X is dead or very nearly so, this problem doesn't really exist.