Asklemmy

I really only want Linux for software dev work(docker mostly). Windows has wsl which has worked beautifully for me besides memory leaks a couple times a year. The issues I face with wal pale in comparison to my experience dealing with Nvidia drivers and gaming on Linux.

The best way I've seen it put is as such "why would I bother with a list of workarounds and janky, barely supported tools, just to get on par with out of the box windows". Because like it or not, windows is a piss easy OS to get running on, and Microsoft puts a huge amount of work into making compatability a non-issue. If it was made for windows, it probably still works so long as your hardware hasn't broken it, regardless of how old. Linux just can't match the sheer amount of stuff that works on windows. And Linux subsystem means you don't even need a dedicated Linux boot for things.

So all in all, Linux just doesn't stack up that well as a daily driver. Sure, I have various systems that run it, and they work great, but that's because I don't ever use them beyond narrow purposes.

There are two parts of my story.

For those with limited time, I gave up Linux once because it was so “strange” from Windows I felt uneasy to use one, and other time because I simply had no use case for it. For those with time, kindly read on.

I had always been an MS-DOS/Windows user who tried Linux and failed several times because I didn’t “get” it, until sometimes between 2006 and 2007 when Mac started its transition into Intel CPU. It was interesting enough (as it was the beginning point for Mac to become mainstream in my country). I decided that my first laptop was going to be a Mac (my house used to see that building own PC was the way to go). It was the first lightbulb moment when I tinkered with a few options in the terminal. This helped me in the future when I tried Linux again. Count it as a transferable skill of sort.

Then around as late as 2021 (because of various life circumstances), I decided to become a cyber security professional—a long time passion of mine. In order for the journey to be pleasant, Linux must be learnt. I enrolled in a course from one authoritative source for SysAdmin, and that was the first time I got to study the innards of the system. After that, along with myself landing a cyber security job, I became more fluent with Linux. Today, I work closely with clients who use Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, and sometimes Solaris, so there is no dull moment (except for troubleshooting Windows from time to time). Linux becomes part of my professional life, as the main use case.

Linux learning curve does feel steep, but choosing a right distro for others help a lot. I never have my peers giving up on Zorin so far, for instance.

I haven’t given up on Linux. I have at least 5 Linux machines in the other room, including tablets, laptops, and servers.

There’s a few Mac’s in the mix too, but those are workstations.

Though I can sympathize with the complaints here in these comments. I brought a ryzen laptop home and installed a distribution on it. Sleep didn’t work. Tried 2 more distros, sleep still didn’t work. Now that laptop just sits there. My Chromebook gets more use than it. Having to shut it down and boot it back up every time wasn’t worth using it anymore when my pinebook pro does have the support you’d expect for functions you’d expect from a laptop.

I switched to a Mac a couple years ago but I'll always at least keep a Linux VM and a separate Linux laptop just in case.

As for why, generally speaking, Apple puts a lot of really, really good work into making a machine that feels immediately productive with little fiddling around, they're ahead of the pack in some ways, and for advanced stuff it's "good enough".

My reasons:

1. Cross-device integration (at least with Apple) - I already use an iPhone, iPad, and AppleTV. The integration between iOS and macOS is just really, really good. Android+Linux just doesn't come anywhere close. And that's even if you put in the hours it'd take to set a bunch of disparate apps up to try to replicate it. Anyone telling you otherwise is completely full of bullshit or is showing that they actually haven't used Apple devices.

• Using my iPad as a secondary display takes literally 2 clicks.
• Setting my Apple Watch to unlock my laptop takes literally 4 clicks.
• Casting my screen or even just sound takes 2 clicks.
• Handoff is just magic. If you recently used something on your phone and have the matching app on your Mac, you get a shortcut in your Dock to load whatever you had on your phone on your computer to pick up where you left off. If I am in a Signal chat, I can instantly open the chat I was viewing on my phone. Same for browsing websites, text messages, and a bunch of things.
• Airdrop between devices "just works".
• If I connect to a wifi access point from my phone, my laptop will prompt me to automagically copy the password over (i think) bluetooth. Or if I'm at a friend's house and they use an iPhone, they'll get a prompt to share their wifi network password with me.

2. Device restoration - Restoring a Mac is just impressive for how little effort it requires. If someone stole my laptop, I can drive 15 mins to an Apple Store, buy a new laptop, point it at my NAS, and be back running in an hour or less to exactly where I left off. Similarly, If I buy a brand new laptop, copying data from the old one to the new one is incredibly boring -- in all of the right ways. All apps/info/config/etc gets moved over. No weird quirks or workarounds or anything needed.

3. M-series laptops - At the time, there were no other good options for ARM CPU laptops, especially ones that can be spec'd to 64GB of RAM. The M CPU laptops are crazy fast and efficient. I can literally use my laptop for 9-10 hours in a day going full-hardcore, and still have juice to spare. Yeah I know Asahi Linux works for the most part now, but I don't have time anymore to beta-test my main box.

4. Adequate Unixy bits - The terminal does everything I need, the utilities are fine. I use Nix (and some Homebrew) to maintain various CLI tools.

5. Software - I wanted to save this for last since everyone quotes this first. I wanted to meddle with music and Ardour doesn't really scratch the itch the same way Logic Pro does. Another example: as bad as the Mac version of Microsoft Office is, it's still far more nicer feeling than LibreOffice and requires much less work to get a good looking presentation/etc. out the door on a time crunch.

The first time I gave up was basically just too much back and forth with Windows. Wine was still not there yet and Proton wasn't even a thing yet though.

I've used it a lot on laptops still, but haven't gone to a desktop mainly because friends still like to bounce between games that I have to worry if my system will even support (for anti-cheat reasons not for normal compatibility reasons)

Currently using on steam deck and it's great, am planning for next PC because it feels like too much work to do on a current one when everything is already working the way I want it to.

I've used Linux since about 1996, when only Slackware worked for me ( Red Hat didn't work right, & I never tried Yggdrasil ).

Ian began his Debian distro sometime around then ( Deb was his partner, hence the distro's name )

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About a year ago, I was using openSUSE, both Tumbeweed & their more-stable LEAP.

They removed the drivers for my wifi adapter, in an update.

They broke my desktop.

Again.

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I've been told by Steam support ( in 2023, iirc ), directly through their system, that they ONLY support the Ubuntu family of Linuxen.

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UbuntuStudio stuck with XFCE for YEARS, even though XFCE is rigged to prevent one from being able to grab the corner of a window, because almost-all of its different options ( themes? ) permit only a 1px thick window-grabber, and that isn't usable.

Why??

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Try installing Haskell Stack on Void Linux for ARM.

You can't:

Haskell Stack requires GMP lib, for arbitrary precision arithmetic, and you can't get that to work on it.

They won't add it, to make Haskell Stack installable.

So, if the only machine you've got is ARM based, and you need to learn Haskell, go get a different distro.

( "Haskell Programming From First Principles" requires Stack )

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I used Ubuntu Server on ARM, for awhile, and the Ruby it included was broken, with a hard-coded bit in one of its scripts that had the wrong-location for one of the basic things in Linux...

can't remember what it was, perhaps it was /usr/bin/mv instead of /bin/mv or something .. it was stupid, though, and it was in the Ubuntu version of Ruby, which was a deprecated version of Ruby .. so...

the upstream Ruby maintainers wouldn't fix it, because they only maintain the maintained versions of Ruby, AND...

Ubuntu wouldn't fix it, because they insisted it was upstream's problem, even-though they wouldn't include a maintained version of Ruby.

Fuck idiocy.

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On & on & on.

Fix 1 thing, & break 3 more , seems to be the "religion" of the various Linuxen.

I'm old, & tired of being beaten-on by "friends" and "allies".

Abusers are abusers.

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IF I ever succeed in fixing my health, breaking ( permanently ) my health-obstacles,

THEN I want to do a linux-distro that simply excludes all bullshit, & enforces correctness-of-function.

Funtoo seems to be part of The Right Answer ( it is the evolution of Gentoo ), in that people get the benefit of whatever hardware they've got, instead of a dumbed-down version which is more sluggish than need-be.

I'd want it to be based entirely on Haskell, & Julia, leaving-out pretty-much all other languages ( Haskell's correctness & Julia's ruthless-efficiency ).

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Notice how there is a huge push to replace X.org with Wayland?

Wayland removes ability to run The Linux Terminal Server Project, so you can't have little arm-terminals stuck on the backs of displays, and 1 single real-computer in the back, with an ocean of RAM, for all the students to use for their real apps...

This "improvement" forces all to either have a powerful-enough desktop or .. not be allowed to run the modern distros/Linuxen at all.

War against inclusion of people in poorer places, where it is much more doable to afford a bunch of RasPi-terminals than it is to afford dozens & dozens of x86-64 machines, is warring for .. fashion & class-status??

The X Window System works. Through it, TLSP works.

It enables people to have their Blender-renderer machine in the other room, where its fans-noise isn't going to bother them.

Fashion-motivated or fad-motivated "strategy" consistently solves the wrong problem.

Same as breaking people's wifi solves the wrong problem.

WTF "loyalty" for a distro can ANYone have,

.. once one has been "punched-in-the-face" by them, enough times??

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I've read OpenBSD's statement that "lack of a manpage IS A BUG".

That IS PROPER.

They GET it.

There are development/programming methods that hold-to the same kind of properness:

Behaviour-Driven Design, e.g.

Test-1st.

As somebody pointed-out, of all the "agile" methods, XP included engineering-processes, like test-1st whereas .. the rest, like Scrum, don't...

That difference-in-religion, XP's objectivity MATTERS.

Any "improvement" which breaks the functionality-tests or behaviour-tests, and you don't get the "improvement" in.

Nobody has the integrity to do that, at the distro-level?

I wouldn't permit any desktop-environment which is hard-coded to have 1px window-grabbers to be included in a distro, hence XFCE would have to get fixed, or it would be locked-out, explicitly for that usability-defect.

I wouldn't permit breaking of people's network-access to be an official update's component.

MAKE IT WORK RIGHT.

That needs to be SOME distro's spine, that is usable-by-most, and efficient, and including the capability that people actually need to get stuff done...

I want low-vision people being able to use it.

I want blind-readers working in it.

I want deaf people having full function through it.

I want quadraplegics being able to work through it.

I want TLSP working, so a single x86-64 machine, plus a batch of displays & RasPi's stuck on their backs, give a classroom the ability to teach calculus with Julia which is the proper way to be learning algebra or calculus ( seriously, try Julia: it's wonderful ).

Anyways, you're seeing a tiny sliver of the decades-of-abuse that operating-system makers have put in us, that is in me.

I won't willingly run any MS software ever again, due to their religion of molestation-of-priivacy & abuses ( I was one of the ones stung by their stolen from STAC disk-compression tech, in DOS 6.20, and their Vista era sending all searched-terms from the desktop to Microsoft violated privacy-law for both health-care sytems & for police systems, but .. they're "too big" to make accountable?? etc. )

But the Linux world seems to have one hell of a religious-problem against stable usability.

Distro-runners need to read a book by Al Ries: "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding", and understand that that stability/identifiability is a REQUIREMENT for a userbase to be not-sabotaged by one's distro.

DON'T KEEP CHANGING THE WAY EVERYTHING WORKS, and expect your userbase to love you for it.

KDE 3.5 had much right-idea, but nowadays .. wtf??

Too complicated to be allowed to see where one is, within the menu-system??

That isn't a "feature", that is "fashionable" mental-illness.

And I despise the Apple-style contextless GNOME way.

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/grouch

just an opinion, of an old, useless bastard, who's tired of being obstructed/abused by distro-decisions.

_ /\ _

It’s “hard”.

I’m an os slut. I use whatever… daily driver is Mac, most of my work is RDP to windows servers

I’ve always got a Linux flavor or two running

We are not most people… not even close. “Most people “ love that their computer runs chrome - and that’s good enough.
It lets them facebook and do taxes.

Asking even the most basic lift. Install Firefox; try an ad blocker. Care about your privacy.

Nope. Make Netflix work is about as far as it gets.

I want to get Asahi running when I have some time to spare. I’ve only don’t run it as a daily driver because what I have works. And that’s fine.

command line interface

I’m fine with it, but it’s cryptic and a deal breaker for many.

About 20 years ago, I was trying to get audio playing to stay stable, and have audible alarms from KCal. I did everything, recompiled kernels, nothing fixed it.

So I went out and got a G4 Mac mini, set it up with my audio and it worked perfectly. Within a week I'd shut off the Linux trash for good. Mac OS X does everything better.

For servers, I use FreeBSD, it's dumb to run Linux there, too.

Nothing's improved, I have the same audio problems on my RasPi in Linux. Linux is bad at just about everything, any other OS or possibly just a dead badger will do the job better.

In 1999 I heard linux mentioned now and then, without knowing nothing about it, other than it being a non-microsoft OS. The problem for me was that I had no method of obtaining it while living in rural scandinavia, but I was chatting with someone on IRC who suggested I give FreeBSD, and gave me a link to where I could buy the discs (FreeBSD is, as the name implies, free to download and use, but you can pay for the convenience of having the official disks, which was reasonable for me as I was on dialup). So, that was my first experience in the unix-ish world; FreeBSD 3.3.

I did tinker with it for a while, and found it absolutely fascinating. Coincidence would have it that I was also looking into perl at the time because I needed to write some CGI stuff, and FreeBSD was pretty practical for that. However, more or less nothing worked out of the box - I could never get my fairly standard Soundblaster Live to work, and it became apparent that while FreeBSD was a good server OS, it did not do as well as a desktop OS. So I reinstalled Win98, and continued to use that as my primary desktop OS. I kept fBSD on a hobby-server at home, though, which allowed me to continue tinker with it.

A couple of years later I thought it was finally time to check out linux as a desktop OS. I don't remember trying them all, but in particular I remember Slackware and Mandrake linux. Slackware had some of the same problems as FreeBSD, where it wasn't mature enough as a desktop OS, but worked well on servers. Mandrake, on the other hand, was somewhat better at this. But still not good enough for me to switch. However, I continued to tinker with both linux and FreeBSD on the side, and on a few occasions I did primarily use FreeBSD when windows was giving me grief. I tested out Gentoo during this time as well, and liked how well its portage system felt familiar to me being used to the ports-system from FreeBSD. Come to think about it, during that time I was doing a lot of music production, for which I absolutely needed windows, that's probably one of the things that held me back.

In 2007 I landed a job where my pearlier tinkering came in very handy, and while I at that point still considered myself primarily a BSD person, it became more and more apparent that Linux was probably a better choice for me, as the community was a lot larger, so I gradually migrated more and more over to linux. I did check out ubuntu, but I didn't like it. I started running Debian on a server I was responsible for.

2013 rolls around, and I decided for reasons I cannot remember that it was time to try the desktop install again. I decided to try Mint. The more I used it, the less it resembled the unpolished distros I'd been trying earlier - Everything worked out of the box. I haven't moved back since.

Come 2023 and my kids are old enough that they don't kill themselves if left unattended for 10 seconds, and I actually can hear myself think in the evening, and I start to look around for music software again. I first found Ardour, but I find it lacking a few of the things that I've always taken for granted in a DAW, so I was seriously considering having a dedicated windows install for music-work, but luckily I stumbled across Bitwig which is exactly what I need. It took a while for the software ecosystem to catch up to what I wanted to do on linux, but it finally got there.

It's gotten a bit better, but last time I tried switching, the GUI client for my VPN provider was shit, the PC gaming compatibility aspect (non-Steam) wasn't quite good enough for me, Nvidia's drivers said fuck you to my display, and I couldn't quite figure out how to set up Samba. Lol.

Historically, it's been because I didn't just "use it". Instead I tinkered with it, and then broke it beyond my ability to repair.