7 ms·

> Everything just works No it doesn't. Every Linux desktop requires me to spend hours tweaking things or finding workarounds to make it usable for myself. Wind

by o1y32 3y ago

> Everything just works No it doesn't. Every Linux desktop requires me to spend hours tweaking things or finding workarounds to make it usable for myself. Window management is horrible compared to other OS. Fractional scaling mostly doesn't work. The Pomodoro timer in the "Software" store is no longer maintained and doesn't work at all on the latest Gnome. (Windows 11 has it built-in). Even so, I have to live with certain restrictions. I tried to get into Linux desktop every few years, and I never find the situation has improved much. By comparison, setting up the environment on Windows or MacOS takes no more than a fem minutes.

bsder 3y ago
> By comparison, setting up the environment on Windows or MacOS takes no more than a fem minutes. My wife is constantly taking her laptop into her IT staff. The main difference between Windows and Linux is that corporate IT staff are willing to futz with Windows but not Linux. The main difference between macOS and Linux is that macOS users will spend money to futz with macOS but not Linux.
- vips7L 3y ago
  This is because corporate IT staff are largely responsible for Windows not working. Their endless and senseless configuration changes make Windows not work.
NoGravitas 3y ago
To be fair, fractional scaling on Windows is kind of garbage, at least if you don't have the same scaling set on every display. If I have one screen at 100% and one at 125%, any application will look okay only on the display it was started on, and blurry on any others. I don't think the situation is any better on Linux, but I'm pretty sure that as long as you're using Wayland (only), it's not any worse.
coconut08 3y ago
you are correct about fractional scaling being suboptimal and there are a few quirks here and there but linux has become largely usable at this point. most of the criticisms you have made about linux are due to inexperience and not being familiar with it rather than being fundamental problems with it. If instead of spending the last x years of your life daily driving windows or macos you had instead spent that time daily driving linux you would have all of the understanding infrastructure built up around linux instead and these would be non problems. I use fedora with gnome and I don't install any extensions or do any tweaking or workarounds as you say. I know this is true because i'm a non developer, non power user (though still relatively technical) who has been using linux since 2006 and it works just fine. Not only that my dad has been happily setup using linux since around 2014 and he is as non technical as they come. To really go in on this point I bought a macbook pro when the m1 devices came out and the experience you have with linux I have with macos. It's the worst operating system I have ever used. You complain about linux having bad window management but macos has basically no window management. you double click the top bar and depending on the software sometimes it will maximize, sometimes it will pull the window all the way down the screen and sometimes it will do nothing at all. You drag the window to the top or to the side and nothing happens at all. Window management on macos is so bad that most people say that you need to install external tools to mac it even half way usable. Even when you do its still less performant and buggier than what gnome or windows offers out of the box. You say macos needs no setup, but I spent 10's of hours desperately trying to make the workflow and ux of macos not be a horrible experience for me. Everything from no tools and trying to work within its paradigm, simple window management tools even going so far as to trying yabai and none of them felt right to me. Now that said I would bet a person who has spent a decade daily driving macos probably has internalized the ins and outs and quirks relating to macos and wouldn't find it nearly as problematic. Most of the issues people have with linux are much less problems with linux and much more a lack of workflow understanding that they haven't built up but have built up around other operating systems instead. The main exception being that there are some proprietary tools that are pretty explicitly not supported on linux which require windows or macos.
mrguyorama 3y ago
People are acting like Linus Sebastian and that other guy didn't JUST RECENTLY demonstrate Linux to still be a tough sell to non-linux gurus for daily driving.
- nwallin 3y ago
  He deliberately shitcanned his system to generate clicks. What are people going to say if an uppity linux fanboy youtuber shows himself deleting system32 and then crying about Windows is unusable for non-Windows gurus for daily driving? They're going to say he's an idiot and move on. When I instruct my package manager to uninstall your desktop environment, and the package manager says, "You are about to delete critical system components. Are you sure? (yes/no)" and I type in "yes" I expect my package manager to uninstall the desktop environment. That is the correct thing for it to do. Anything else is the wrong thing to do. "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -Douglas Adams
  - bravetraveler 3y ago
    Let's not forget, that while he did kind of shrug and agree to remove everything... that was a problem in the packaging spec. The package (Steam, if memory serves?) should not have had the other packages referenced as they were. The dependency/requirement resolution was faulty... Then he didn't truly take in the message and this is the result we get. There's plenty of "probably say no if you don't know what this means" in what he ignored. Fault is all over. - His distribution of choice [or] the repository supporting it - him for not reading and acting accordingly - sheer chance Had he chosen another distribution at random, there's little chance that would have happened. If he repeated it on the same one now, it wouldn't happen. When you choose a niche distribution, you get niche problems. My entire family manages fine on 'bleeding edge' Fedora, yet it doesn't market itself this way. Packaging is specifically in their domain of expertise This isn't to say Linux is for everyone, but I really wish for a more fair representation. As the reporters they should have dug in a bit more. They become part of the problem, in a sense, by not clarifying where there truly be dragons.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
It takes me days to make Windows usable for myself by hosing all the garbage off it. And it's still a miserable experience. On the other hand, if I just install a batteries included Linux distro I get something I'm not necessarily thrilled about, but I can go pretty much straight to work. And if I spend a few days, I can set up a system that's exactly tailored the way I want it to be, eats an order of magnitude less RAM than Windows, and doesn't regularly break itself by forcing updates on me, changing settings from under me, etc. MacOS is somewhat better than Windows(less garbage to hose off), but it's not worth the money of buying the overpriced unrepairable and unupgradeable hardware it runs on.
- faeriechangling 3y ago
  Sure, attempting to make Windows into Linux by “decrapifying” it is harder, but if you use Windows as intended and upload all your documents to Microsoft’s cloud it is easier for the vast vast majority of users. Windows breaking itself with updates is less a symptom of Windows and more of a side-effect of “decrapification”. I’ve seen a pretty damn large sample size of windows users undergoing windows updates and Windows Update does really not break computers other than by annoyingly changing your defaults to Microsoft stuff “woops, by accident” but if you do stuff like use Edge as your default browser it stops breaking. Apple forces you to use their defaults, Microsoft theirs, and Google theirs. When you accept these companies operating system is not Linux, and stop acting like they are Linux, and stop acting like you own your windows PC, they do become pretty simple to use. If you want a PC you can own, you use Linux. Linux is great. My grandmother uses Microsoft Windows in S mode with edge as her browser. Her photos get backed up. She only uses Edge at 175% DPI scaling and maybe looks up a few family photos. It is easier for her than using Linux because she’s familiar with it and because nobody has taught her that unless she is using Windows for education without a decrapify script she is doing things all wrong.
  - navjack27 3y ago
    You're absolutely correct
- musicale 3y ago
iraqmtpizza 3y ago
meanwhile, .bashrc, .bash_login, .bash_profile, .profile, /etc/profile, and /etc/environment all still exist, are poorly documented, and if you want a GUI for them, you have to build it yourself.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  Patently incorrect. https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Bash-Startup-Files https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Bash-Star... These files are all shell scripts and largely empty before distribution-specific customizations, there isn't much to document there. They are commands that you want to run in startup.
- bsder 3y ago
  As opposed to the amazing Windows Registry? Those who throw stones ... Nevertheless, your criticisms are fair. However, unlike on Windows, Linux is actually working on that. Distributions like NixOS and Fedora Silverblue are starting to take the whole "put everything under control" very seriously. I see no comparable efforts on Windows.
  - sitzkrieg 3y ago
    AD, gpos and mdm csps go very far. this is windows business bread and butter
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    I've never had to set an environment variable in the windows registry. I'm talking about simply adding a directory to the Path or setting JAVA_HOME. Windows GUI needs tons of work but it's at least 20 years ahead of linux. It gets one year more ahead of linux every year.
- 4ad 3y ago
  > are poorly documented There are many things you can criticize Linux for, but this is not one of them.
- blueflow 3y ago

by o1y32 3y ago

bsder 3y ago

> By comparison, setting up the environment on Windows or MacOS takes no more than a fem minutes. My wife is constantly taking her laptop into her IT staff. The main difference between Windows and Linux is that corporate IT staff are willing to futz with Windows but not Linux. The main difference between macOS and Linux is that macOS users will spend money to futz with macOS but not Linux.

vips7L 3y ago
This is because corporate IT staff are largely responsible for Windows not working. Their endless and senseless configuration changes make Windows not work.

NoGravitas 3y ago

To be fair, fractional scaling on Windows is kind of garbage, at least if you don't have the same scaling set on every display. If I have one screen at 100% and one at 125%, any application will look okay only on the display it was started on, and blurry on any others. I don't think the situation is any better on Linux, but I'm pretty sure that as long as you're using Wayland (only), it's not any worse.

coconut08 3y ago

you are correct about fractional scaling being suboptimal and there are a few quirks here and there but linux has become largely usable at this point. most of the criticisms you have made about linux are due to inexperience and not being familiar with it rather than being fundamental problems with it. If instead of spending the last x years of your life daily driving windows or macos you had instead spent that time daily driving linux you would have all of the understanding infrastructure built up around linux instead and these would be non problems. I use fedora with gnome and I don't install any extensions or do any tweaking or workarounds as you say. I know this is true because i'm a non developer, non power user (though still relatively technical) who has been using linux since 2006 and it works just fine. Not only that my dad has been happily setup using linux since around 2014 and he is as non technical as they come. To really go in on this point I bought a macbook pro when the m1 devices came out and the experience you have with linux I have with macos. It's the worst operating system I have ever used. You complain about linux having bad window management but macos has basically no window management. you double click the top bar and depending on the software sometimes it will maximize, sometimes it will pull the window all the way down the screen and sometimes it will do nothing at all. You drag the window to the top or to the side and nothing happens at all. Window management on macos is so bad that most people say that you need to install external tools to mac it even half way usable. Even when you do its still less performant and buggier than what gnome or windows offers out of the box. You say macos needs no setup, but I spent 10's of hours desperately trying to make the workflow and ux of macos not be a horrible experience for me. Everything from no tools and trying to work within its paradigm, simple window management tools even going so far as to trying yabai and none of them felt right to me. Now that said I would bet a person who has spent a decade daily driving macos probably has internalized the ins and outs and quirks relating to macos and wouldn't find it nearly as problematic. Most of the issues people have with linux are much less problems with linux and much more a lack of workflow understanding that they haven't built up but have built up around other operating systems instead. The main exception being that there are some proprietary tools that are pretty explicitly not supported on linux which require windows or macos.

mrguyorama 3y ago

People are acting like Linus Sebastian and that other guy didn't JUST RECENTLY demonstrate Linux to still be a tough sell to non-linux gurus for daily driving.

nwallin 3y ago
He deliberately shitcanned his system to generate clicks. What are people going to say if an uppity linux fanboy youtuber shows himself deleting system32 and then crying about Windows is unusable for non-Windows gurus for daily driving? They're going to say he's an idiot and move on. When I instruct my package manager to uninstall your desktop environment, and the package manager says, "You are about to delete critical system components. Are you sure? (yes/no)" and I type in "yes" I expect my package manager to uninstall the desktop environment. That is the correct thing for it to do. Anything else is the wrong thing to do. "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." -Douglas Adams
- bravetraveler 3y ago
  Let's not forget, that while he did kind of shrug and agree to remove everything... that was a problem in the packaging spec. The package (Steam, if memory serves?) should not have had the other packages referenced as they were. The dependency/requirement resolution was faulty... Then he didn't truly take in the message and this is the result we get. There's plenty of "probably say no if you don't know what this means" in what he ignored. Fault is all over. - His distribution of choice [or] the repository supporting it - him for not reading and acting accordingly - sheer chance Had he chosen another distribution at random, there's little chance that would have happened. If he repeated it on the same one now, it wouldn't happen. When you choose a niche distribution, you get niche problems. My entire family manages fine on 'bleeding edge' Fedora, yet it doesn't market itself this way. Packaging is specifically in their domain of expertise This isn't to say Linux is for everyone, but I really wish for a more fair representation. As the reporters they should have dug in a bit more. They become part of the problem, in a sense, by not clarifying where there truly be dragons.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

It takes me days to make Windows usable for myself by hosing all the garbage off it. And it's still a miserable experience. On the other hand, if I just install a batteries included Linux distro I get something I'm not necessarily thrilled about, but I can go pretty much straight to work. And if I spend a few days, I can set up a system that's exactly tailored the way I want it to be, eats an order of magnitude less RAM than Windows, and doesn't regularly break itself by forcing updates on me, changing settings from under me, etc. MacOS is somewhat better than Windows(less garbage to hose off), but it's not worth the money of buying the overpriced unrepairable and unupgradeable hardware it runs on.

faeriechangling 3y ago
Sure, attempting to make Windows into Linux by “decrapifying” it is harder, but if you use Windows as intended and upload all your documents to Microsoft’s cloud it is easier for the vast vast majority of users. Windows breaking itself with updates is less a symptom of Windows and more of a side-effect of “decrapification”. I’ve seen a pretty damn large sample size of windows users undergoing windows updates and Windows Update does really not break computers other than by annoyingly changing your defaults to Microsoft stuff “woops, by accident” but if you do stuff like use Edge as your default browser it stops breaking. Apple forces you to use their defaults, Microsoft theirs, and Google theirs. When you accept these companies operating system is not Linux, and stop acting like they are Linux, and stop acting like you own your windows PC, they do become pretty simple to use. If you want a PC you can own, you use Linux. Linux is great. My grandmother uses Microsoft Windows in S mode with edge as her browser. Her photos get backed up. She only uses Edge at 175% DPI scaling and maybe looks up a few family photos. It is easier for her than using Linux because she’s familiar with it and because nobody has taught her that unless she is using Windows for education without a decrapify script she is doing things all wrong.
- navjack27 3y ago
  You're absolutely correct
musicale 3y ago

iraqmtpizza 3y ago

meanwhile, .bashrc, .bash_login, .bash_profile, .profile, /etc/profile, and /etc/environment all still exist, are poorly documented, and if you want a GUI for them, you have to build it yourself.

pdntspa 3y ago
Patently incorrect. https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Bash-Startup-Files https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html#Bash-Star... These files are all shell scripts and largely empty before distribution-specific customizations, there isn't much to document there. They are commands that you want to run in startup.
bsder 3y ago
As opposed to the amazing Windows Registry? Those who throw stones ... Nevertheless, your criticisms are fair. However, unlike on Windows, Linux is actually working on that. Distributions like NixOS and Fedora Silverblue are starting to take the whole "put everything under control" very seriously. I see no comparable efforts on Windows.
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  AD, gpos and mdm csps go very far. this is windows business bread and butter
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  I've never had to set an environment variable in the windows registry. I'm talking about simply adding a directory to the Path or setting JAVA_HOME. Windows GUI needs tons of work but it's at least 20 years ahead of linux. It gets one year more ahead of linux every year.
4ad 3y ago
> are poorly documented There are many things you can criticize Linux for, but this is not one of them.
blueflow 3y ago