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> Linux required almost-daily googling and opening up a terminal to fix or change something. It became maddening eventually. Really? What kind of things do you

> Linux required almost-daily googling and opening up a terminal to fix or change something. It became maddening eventually. Really? What kind of things do you have to google for Linux to work these days? The opposite is true for me in Windows, I am not about to relearn how to use the Windows terminal.

jwells89 3y ago
In my personal experience it's usually random little things that technically work but not quite right, and occasionally it's stuff that's just outright broken. There's also been a fair amount of googling for how to set up X in Linux to do Y only to find a trail of half-functional or abandoned packages. Getting global menus set up in your DE of choice for example takes a surprising amount of twiddling and even at its best doesn't work with a lot of software. Getting everything functioning as expected with a minimal WM setup is also a surprising amount of work (e.g. laptop volume keys not working if some daemon isn't running). Admittedly it's not as bad if all your want is a Win9x-type or iPad-type desktop.
- bergon 3y ago
  It's frustrating that you can't change DE in Windows though, and that it changes from version to version.
  - anticensor 3y ago
    You actually can, but there is no viable alternative DE. If only KDE had a Win32-free build for Windows.
    - bergon 3y ago
      I didn't know that, thanks for mentioning. It's apparently called shells in Windows lingo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_f...
- simion314 3y ago
  >Getting global menus set up in your DE of choice for example takes a surprising amount of twiddling and even at its best doesn't work with a lot of software. And is one click and works with all apps in Windows ?
  - jwells89 3y ago
    No, but there’s no chance of Windows becoming my primary platform — I use it almost exclusively for games (some of which don’t play nice with Proton) — and so I don’t need as much from it. Additionally, Windows isn’t usually sold on its flexibility to anywhere near the extent that desktop Linux is. As such I don’t think it’s strange to expect that taking advantage of said flexibility is relatively painless, regardless of what the user is trying to do — there’s no point in flexibility if e.g. there’s actually only a small handful of options that are practical.
    - simion314 3y ago
      But you realize that getting all possible apps to look the same and have same behavior is very hard, you have GTK2, GTK3, GTK4 with their limited customization, then you have Qt apps, KDE apps, Java with their different GUI frameworks, node apps, Wine apps, other smaller toolkits used in Python etc. But as you admit in Linux you have infinite more power to attempt setting up a global menu, but this feature is not something a mainstream distro offers by default so IMO is not a fair complaint.
biogene 3y ago
I don't think Linux is as bad as people claim, but it isn't as good/easy to use as people claim either. One problem I see is that the distribution of software is tied to the package manager. If you install any complex (esp stuff that uses web+database+python,etc) app outside of this system, I've seen dependencies break when updating software. MariaDB/Laravel upgrades have been painful.

jwells89 3y ago

In my personal experience it's usually random little things that technically work but not quite right, and occasionally it's stuff that's just outright broken. There's also been a fair amount of googling for how to set up X in Linux to do Y only to find a trail of half-functional or abandoned packages. Getting global menus set up in your DE of choice for example takes a surprising amount of twiddling and even at its best doesn't work with a lot of software. Getting everything functioning as expected with a minimal WM setup is also a surprising amount of work (e.g. laptop volume keys not working if some daemon isn't running). Admittedly it's not as bad if all your want is a Win9x-type or iPad-type desktop.

bergon 3y ago
It's frustrating that you can't change DE in Windows though, and that it changes from version to version.
- anticensor 3y ago
  You actually can, but there is no viable alternative DE. If only KDE had a Win32-free build for Windows.
  - bergon 3y ago
    I didn't know that, thanks for mentioning. It's apparently called shells in Windows lingo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_for_Windows https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_shells_f...
simion314 3y ago
>Getting global menus set up in your DE of choice for example takes a surprising amount of twiddling and even at its best doesn't work with a lot of software. And is one click and works with all apps in Windows ?
- jwells89 3y ago
  No, but there’s no chance of Windows becoming my primary platform — I use it almost exclusively for games (some of which don’t play nice with Proton) — and so I don’t need as much from it. Additionally, Windows isn’t usually sold on its flexibility to anywhere near the extent that desktop Linux is. As such I don’t think it’s strange to expect that taking advantage of said flexibility is relatively painless, regardless of what the user is trying to do — there’s no point in flexibility if e.g. there’s actually only a small handful of options that are practical.
  - simion314 3y ago
    But you realize that getting all possible apps to look the same and have same behavior is very hard, you have GTK2, GTK3, GTK4 with their limited customization, then you have Qt apps, KDE apps, Java with their different GUI frameworks, node apps, Wine apps, other smaller toolkits used in Python etc. But as you admit in Linux you have infinite more power to attempt setting up a global menu, but this feature is not something a mainstream distro offers by default so IMO is not a fair complaint.

biogene 3y ago

I don't think Linux is as bad as people claim, but it isn't as good/easy to use as people claim either. One problem I see is that the distribution of software is tied to the package manager. If you install any complex (esp stuff that uses web+database+python,etc) app outside of this system, I've seen dependencies break when updating software. MariaDB/Laravel upgrades have been painful.