• palordrolap
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    141 month ago

    99% of people want a drop-in replacement for Windows that will install and run every possible Windows-compatible application, game and device without them having to make any extra effort or learn anything new. Basically Windows but free (in all senses).

    Any even slightly subtle difference or incompatibility and they’ll balk. Linux can never be that, and Microsoft will keep the goalposts moving anyway to be sure of it.

    Sure, a lot more works and is more user friendly than 15 years ago, but most people won’t make the time to sit down and deal with something new unless it’s forced on them… which is what Microsoft are doing with Win11.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 month ago

      More user friendly doesn’t mean you won’t have to spend hours troubleshooting driver issues that you will never have on Windows, that’s a real problem…

      (and when you find the solution you need to input commands in terminal that you can’t tell what they do, that’s a huge security concern as it teaches users to just trust anyone who tells them to do things they don’t understand)

      • MudMan
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        61 month ago

        Man, people really overstate the barrier to entry to the terminal. Windows troubleshooting is full of command line stuff as well.

        It’s not the terminal, it’s the underlying issues. Having more GUI options to set certain things is nice, but the reality of it is that if an option isn’t customizable to the point of needing quick GUI access it should just never break, not be configurable or at least not need any manual configuration at any point. The reason nobody goes “oh, but Windows command line is so annoying” is that if you are digging in there something has gone very wrong or you’re trying to do something Windows doesn’t want you to do.

        The big difference is that the OS not wanting you to do things you can do is a bug for people in this type of online community while for normies it’s a feature.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 month ago

          You know whats worse than doing things in windows command line or powershell? The registry

          “Nooooo! I cant $sudo nano /etc/some.conf!!!”

          Regedit -> HKEY_USERS/microsoft/windows/system/some_setting --> value=FUCK type=DWORD

          • @[email protected]
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            21 month ago

            That’s because you are sending your Fucks to the wrong key. You are missing the /feedback folder under system

            • MudMan
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              11 month ago

              The deliberate misrepresentation here is that the Windows registry supports importing keys from a text file, so most of the time you have to mess with it you just download a file and double click on it.

              Is that super secure? Nope. But hey, anytime you need to do something on a Linux terminal you’re also copy/pasting random crap you found online, don’t pretend you’re not.

              The ultimate point still stands. None of these matter to normies, it’s how often you need to tinker or troubleshoot to begin with. For most users the acceptable number is zero.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Shit, I can’t get Windows to print on my network printer. Have to uninstall it, reinstall it, manually set the IP, restart Windows, and then it’ll work for like one session and then not work again. Windows won’t even throw an error, it’ll just tell me it printed while my printer sits silent.

        On linux it works every time. It’s gotten to the point where I don’t even try to print in Windows anymore, I just forward all documents to my laptop and print in linux.

        • @[email protected]
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          01 month ago

          Disable IPv6.

          Windows and some printers just choke on IPv6 for some reason. I was having sporadic issues with network printers and windows until I disabled IPv6 for other reasons and noticed a noticeable decrease in printer error metrics.

          It’ll also affect SMB shares

          • @[email protected]
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            11 month ago

            I wish I could do that, but CGNAT makes ipv6 the much preferred option for a lot of things.

            But it’s good to know that this might be the cause…

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Well, my brother installed linux (mint) on more than 30 laptops that we were fixing to reuse. Im pretty sure none of them had any driver problems.

        Tbh, unless you have a NVIDIA graphics card, or are using arch*, driver issues almost never happen.

        *my personal thinkpads wifi board didn’t work in arch, but that may be because I had already borked that install completly.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 month ago

          Even the Nvidia graphics card sentiment is becoming outdated. There have been sizeable improvements in their drivers over the past couple years.

      • azuth
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        01 month ago

        Sure AMD’s drivers have not been a crapshot in windows forever, DDU dance is not a thing.

        Sometimes to solve a windows problem you also get terminal commands, or get told to change settings in the registry. But usually users download some random binary tool that claims it will fix their problem. They will accept any UAC prompt as trained to do since Vista.

        Frankly you are comically biased.

        • @[email protected]
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          01 month ago

          Yeah, I run Linux as my main OS and am able to say that it’s not ready to go mainstream, biased as fuck

          • azuth
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            01 month ago

            It’s telling you are not even going to defend your points.

            Windows being mainstream is not due to being easier to use or setup/configure (which the mainstream does not do) nor due to it being more robust or easier to fix (which it isn’t, plenty of guys make their living fixing windows issues, usually by wiping and reinstalling because documentation for most things in windows is very shallow).

            It’s because the mainstream buys PCs and they are sold with windows

            • @[email protected]
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              01 month ago

              The difference is that the average user won’t face those problems in the first place on Windows while they’ll have them from the first boot on Linux because driver development for Linux isn’t a priority for manufacturers.

              Then the user has to figure out the solution that applies to their version of Linux (when the average person can’t tell what OS they’re using in the first place) and the solution doesn’t come from the manufacturer but from a random GitHub project or people on a Linux forum that they just need to trust even though basic computer security starts with “don’t just trust random people”.

              The “What about the registry? And people have to use the terminal on Windows as well!” argument falls apart when you realize that it’s not something that will be required for the average user while it is for the average user if they use Linux. Unless you’re trying to make Windows do power user stuff you don’t even need to know that it has a terminal.

              There, happy?

              • azuth
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                01 month ago

                You can’t bullshit me man. I ‘ve been using solving peoples’ issues with Windows before I ever downloaded a Linux distro.

                Most of the problems average users won’t see with windows is because they buy it preinstalled while they have to install linux themselves. So they 'll be spared being unable to install AMD gpu drivers on a fresh Win 10 install if they made the mistake of not installing them before connecting the machine to the internet and Win Update fucking things up.

                However windows update will get them later. Windows start menu refused to work after an update on a friends’ pc. Or it will be fail to apply an update and failing with no troubleshootable information only to fail again on next reboot and again and again. Or explorer crashing hundreds times a second causing users to have a black screen after login.

                You are technically right in that the average user will not use the terminal (or registry, or booting to safe mode), they will pay someone else to do that or cope with it.

                • @[email protected]
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                  01 month ago

                  Sounds like the problem is between the keyboard and the chair because I’ve never had issues installing AMD drivers on Windows 10, never had Windows update issues and so on.

                  Maybe you would be better off getting a iPad.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 month ago

      Honestly I think potentially a bigger factor is that there are very few manufacturers who sell machines with linux preinstalled. Very few people have ever installed an OS before or have any desire to do so.

      Also there is plenty of software with no real linux alternative even today unfortunately.

      • @[email protected]
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        That is exactly why Chromebooks were (are?) so popular. You got a cheap laptop with an easy-to-use OS without having to do any install. And let’s be real here, most people don’t need anything more than a web browser.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 month ago

          And let’s be real here, most people don’t need anything more than a web browser.

          You would think. Surprisingly, i only know of one non techy person in my life for whom this was the case, and even they ended up needing to use some statistics software for school after switching to linux. Luckily, they were able to get it through a school-provided VM.

          People have all kinds of needs and those needs can change over time. For people who are deaf in one ear, there is no easy way to set the audio output to mono. That’s just one way that accessibility features are lacking. I know people who rely on apps like notability syncing their mac laptop to their ipad, which no app on linux can do. I know people who have specialized software for work such as VPN apps that simply do not exist on linux. I know people who do creative work for whom it would be a major learning curve at the very least to switch. It only takes one app or crucial feature to lock you out. Even I have to dual boot from time to time for firmware updates or to play games my friends want to play that aren’t on Linux.

          But you better believe I’m tracking all of these issues so I can switch people over as soon as they’re implemented ;)

    • @[email protected]
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      01 month ago

      You say it like it’s a bad thing but yes, I want my stuff to just work and my apps to just run after I download them… I don’t want to spend hours every other day or week during my limited free time troubleshooting why something doesn’t work. I already spend all day doing that in my work’s linux servers and my home server.

      This is an issue with FOSS. If something doesn’t work then you are on your own. Yes, I can fix it, or work around it, or whatever but it will take hours that I could be spending in windows 11 just playing a game or actually learn something more relevant instead of troubleshooting random shit. On other apps as well, I’ve paid for a lot of software to be able to ask the owners to help and for them to not tell me to fuck off.

      • palordrolap
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        21 month ago

        Here’s an analogy: You can do your own gardening, or you can hire one of the two landscaping services in town.

        This sounds great, but these days, no matter who you hire, the people who show up 1) want to install a fountain and an advertisement billboard that will run off your water and electricity supply and 2) want the right to take what they like from your house by default, they’ll mysteriously “forget” and do it anyway even if you pay them not to.

        Furthermore, with their latest package, one of the landscaping companies are basically saying that if you don’t have a yard large enough for their fountain, you have to move house, which is only marginally better than the other one who will only work on gardens for houses they sold in the first place.

        (A previous version of this comment involved the word “lube”. I’m sure you can imagine the rest.)

        • MudMan
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          -11 month ago

          That is a terrible analogy. In your weird alternate reality I just wouldn’t keep a garden. Also, I’d be pretty concerned with suing the patently illegal practices of this weirdly overbearing landscaping business, if I cared enough about gardening, which I don’t.

          More to the point, that’s not how people present this to themselves and normies. At least not until they get some pushback. The pitch is always “it works now” or “it’s actually better and faster” or “everybody is going to switch any day now because of some random event or another, I’ve decided”.

          It’s never “hey guys, maybe you can trade a whole bunch of convenience and a much higher minimum level of technical skill for the benefit of not being as impacted by enshittified services of the late online era”. Because in that scenario most people will take enshittified services. If not out of conviction, necessity or laziness, definitely out of not being able to clear that technical bar in the first place.

          • palordrolap
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            11 month ago

            Bringing “no garden” back out of the analogy equates to no computer at all. The fountain is all the crapware and spyware shovelled into Windows these days. The billboard is the ads they want inject into everything.

            The alternative is Apple. They don’t want to install a billboard just yet, and there’s no obvious fountain, but there’s a nightmare HOA who tell you how you have to live and if you don’t live their way you have to move.

    • @[email protected]
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      01 month ago

      Most of the hobbyists I speak to that have failed linux desktop experiences mostly switch back to windows due to:

      1. Hardware compatibility issues.
      2. Microsoft office interoperability limitations of the web based office.
      3. Display scaling issues on multi-monitor setups and some linux applications.

      Personally for me the list is:

      1. Bluetooth not being detected on my particular asus laptop. (The same bluetooth chip works in other laptops)
      2. Multi-monitor scaling and resolution issues when 3 external monitors are connected via thunderbolt doc.
      3. Lack of good alternatives to fancyzones
      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Add binary compatibility issues to that list: https://jangafx.com/insights/linux-binary-compatibility The moment you need software that is not packaged by your distro you either need to be lucky that whomever compiled it accounted for your setup, or compile it from scratch yourself (if open source and publicly available). Especially with closed source software (like most games) the latter isn’t even an option.

    • MudMan
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      -11 month ago

      This is my old man nerd point every time (and by the way, we all keep having the exact same conversation here, which is infuriating).

      It is NOT, in fact, more user friendly than 15 years ago.

      Not Linux’s fault, necessarily, but hardware got… weird since the days of the mid 00s when Linux WAS pretty much a drop-in replacement. What it couldn’t do then is run Windows software very well at all, and that was the blocker. If we had Proton and as many web-based apps as we do now in 2004 I’d have been on Linux full time.

      These days it’s a much harder thing to achieve despite a lot more work having gone into it (to your point on moving goalposts).

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Audio and networking were a shitshow back then, nowadays almost everything just works on those two fronts. Also, having to edit your Xorg.conf is not what I’d call user friendly…

        • MudMan
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          01 month ago

          But there was this brief moment, though. Maybe that’s my problem, that I remember it as this momentous piece of Linux history to start getting these cool distros in nice, shiny professional-looking CDs with proper installers that would set up your DE first time every time and get everything mostly there… and it turns out that it was like three years and a couple of Ubuntu iterations.

          FWIW, networking mostly works, but I had a heck of a time finding a distro that would properly do 5.1 out of my integrated ASUS audio device last time I went distro hopping. I think audio got better, worse and then better again since the good old days.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 month ago

            I had a heck of a time finding a distro that would properly do 5.1 out of my integrated ASUS audio device

            That’s not even close to a common use case though. Using that as an indicator of how user friendly Linux is is unfair.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        it definitely is more user friendly, i remember trying ubuntu 10+ years ago and the default driver was awful, the nvidia driver install ran in the terminal and asked questions that i had no answer to, so half the time i fucked it up, and then it didn’t support my monitor so i had to edit the x server conf to get the correct resolution and refresh rate. and when the new drivers came out i had to re-do everything every time
        for a few years now you just install with a usb stick and everything runs great

      • circuitfarmer
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        11 month ago

        It is NOT, in fact, more user friendly than 15 years ago.

        This is just patently false. Pick any common distro.

  • Phoenixz
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    51 month ago

    I’ve used Linux for 25 years now and I remember every time when back then people needed help with windows it was always "go to the registry editor and add the key djrgegfbwkgisgktkwbthagnsfidjgnwhtjrtv in position god-knows-where to fix some stupid windows shit. that, apparently, made windows user ready

    On Linux I’d have to edit an English language file and add an English word and that meant it wasn’t user ready

    Yeah, Linux was ready long ago

    • @[email protected]
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      -11 month ago

      I couldnt use linux on my laptop 15 years ago because suspend never seemed to work. Just tried it again last week on my generic desktop, suspend still not working. So ya linux has come a long way. Still cant use it.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Wifi on resume is the bane of my existence. If I close my lid I just have my laptop restart. Mint.

      • AugustWest
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        11 month ago

        As another Linux user with over 2 decades of Linux as my primary, it sounds like that might be a your laptop problem.

        • @[email protected]
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          -11 month ago

          it sounds like that might be a your laptop problem

          All the laptops Ive ever tried and all the desktops including my current one which is a very generic Ryzen 7? None of them have ever suspended reliably, thats for sure a linux problem. Without that feature, I cannot switch to it as my daily. Its relegated to server only for me sadly.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Suspend doesn’t really work for my Thinkpad either. Computers were never really meant to ‘suspend’, I’ve learned it’s just as fast to power down/up on Linux.

        • @[email protected]
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          -11 month ago

          Suspend doesn’t really work for my Thinkpad either. Computers were never really meant to ‘suspend’

          Well, whether computers were ‘meant’ to suspend is beside the point, windows made it work somehow but so far linux has not, and Id call it a required for most users. Without that feature working reliably, I can’t personally make the switch even though I want to.

      • TorJansen
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        11 month ago

        An HP by any chance? These don’t handle suspend well and you need to add a parameter or three at boot via grub (or systemd too). Otherwise the system gets tied up filling the log endlessly with rapidly cycling pcie errors and you end up crashing or frozen pretty quickly. If this might be your problem, see

        https://askubuntu.com/questions/863150/pcie-bus-error-severity-corrected-type-physical-layer-id-00e5receiver-id

        And

        https://www.reddit.com/r/pop_os/comments/yh3nkw/freezing_issue_finally_solved_here_is_how/

        Where there’s a problem there’s usually a solution, you just might need to root around the web for answers.

        • @[email protected]
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          -21 month ago

          Where there’s a problem there’s usually a solution, you just might need to root around the web for answers.

          Thats a huge problem for linux, average users are never going to do that. But as a long time linux user myself I have been trying to find solution to the suspend problem for a long time and I still cant find one. So Id say its a big problem.

          • TorJansen
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            1 month ago

            Linux programmers have been battling Microsoft and its shady deals with hardware vendors for decades. That’s the real problem. Just when something starts working too well, MS changes things up, dictates changes to hardware, and then that breaks it for Linux, so it’s back to the old IDE with new hardware to figure out how to get around it. Or the hardware folk just don’t consider Linux a viable alternative and just happily make sure only Winders runs well.

      • Phoenixz
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        11 month ago

        Just installed KDE neon on two HP laptops and I might be mistaken but I do think they’re both asleep right now. I’ll check back on that later but usually it’s a bad hardware issue that can be rectified with some kernel parameters.

      • @[email protected]
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        01 month ago

        Implying suspend works on Windows either. I’ve got like a 50/50 chance my monitor connected with DisplayPort actually gets signal after waking on Windows. This shit has been a problem for a long time.

        • @[email protected]
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          -11 month ago

          Ive been using windows 30 years and linux for 20, Ive never seen windows fail at suspending on any system in that time. Linux on the other hand Ive never seen it reliably suspend on any system. Dont get me wrong I want to use linux at home very badly, but none of the fixes I have looked into have solved the problem. Its a 100% required feature for me.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 month ago

            I had to implement a GPO to disable suspend on windows 10 AND 11 for everyone at my company equipped with HP zbook laptops because it was requiring a hard reset every… Single… Time.

            No amount of bios upgrade ever fixed the issue.

            • @[email protected]
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              With our HP laptops they would work perfectly so long as you only ever used them with one brand of dock. If you mixed dock brands without doing a full restart (like say having one brand at home, suspending, and then using another brand’s dock at the office) Wi-Fi, suspend, and several other features would no longer work or work intermittently. We had HP and Targus working on it, even their engineers were puzzled.

              Problem was non-existent on Linux…

    • @[email protected]
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      -11 month ago

      Right, that’s the reason alright, lol. Remember dconf on Gn*me? It’s like registry on windows, but worse.

      No, Linux is still not ready for desktop, and it has nothing to do with this fallacy of yours.

      • Phoenixz
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        11 month ago

        I used Linux desktop for 25 years now and I never used Gnome, what is your point?

      • AugustWest
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        -11 month ago

        How was the gnome registry some how worse? Microsoft didn’t even have a document that could describe how theirs worked, much less an organizational structure. At least Gnomes was basically simple words and categories. And they built a settings manager for it too.

        Not that I use gnome much, but still this is silly.

        • @[email protected]
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          -21 month ago

          I know this is linuxmemes, but if you want a serious answer, I can provide, lol. It’s worse because it is an amateurish attempt at recreating windows like registry (like most things Gn*me lol).

          boring technical details

          Let’s start from the top:

          Microsoft didn’t even have a document that could describe how theirs worked

          Oh, really, I remember reading enormous amounts of info on MSDN describing how the internal registry hives work in 1998 (yes, I am that old lol) Also, there were/are excellent books on the topic, i.e. “Windows Internals” by Mark Russinovich. Can you tell me where I can find more info on how dconf works, what about dconf internal structure and organization? I don’t want to read the source code.

          At least Gnomes was basically simple words and categories

          Right, can you tell me what this dconf dump is about:

          [org/gnome/nm-applet/eap/fea8b3cc-21a2-4a3d-a3bb-72b7459247b7]
          check-time=uint32 1742505110
          

          And they built a settings manager for it too

          You mean like simplified UI for poor man’s regedit?

          Windows registry is horribly over-engineered very very high performance binary database (dconf is a Gvariant binary db also, lol) deeply integrated within the NT kernel and overall system, it supports access virtualization, transparent path override, robust ACLs, and more. IMO, M$’ biggest mistake was allowing 3rd party access to the hive in the early days. Then backwards compatibility kicked in and the rest is history.

          Don’t get me wrong it sucks, massively, but this attempt of Gn*me/freedesktop INI db is a joke, like the OP’s argument

  • @[email protected]
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    41 month ago

    You don’t see how terrible Windows is until you’ve switched to another OS and need to interact with it again.

    The constant pop-ups, the ads everywhere, the settings hidden away.

    It really feels like your PC isn’t yours.

    • @[email protected]
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      Honestly, not being able to run Dolphin as root made me feel like my PC wasn’t mine more than anything windows did up until recently.

      Your computer is yours… As long as you’re comfortable doing it via terminal… Yay…

      • @[email protected]
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        1 month ago

        That’s been fixed for nearly 2 years now.

        Install

        kio-admin
        

        Then in the location bar type:

        admin:
        

        It’ll prompt you for your password and then:

        • @[email protected]
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          You’ve given me instructions that require terminal use, your argument is invalid. If it doesn’t either work out of the box or is immediately fixable without going into the terminal, then it’s not ready yet.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 month ago

            I’m not making an argument, I’m telling you how to fix your problem.

            Even if the instructions required terminal use, you’re on Linux. You’re not going to make it very far if you confuse having to use the terminal with a failure in the software.

            Regardless, literally none of what I said requires you to use the terminal. It requires you to install a specifically named software package and type 5 characters into the Dolphin bar (note, the picture).

          • @[email protected]
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            11 month ago

            if installing a plugin and typing something into the admin bar requries a terminal then every password prompt on windows is also a terminal.

          • @[email protected]
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            01 month ago

            Counter arguments are not allowed on Lemmy. Especially this topic. It’s non negotiable and you will always be wrong or downvoted for being right

  • @[email protected]
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    41 month ago

    I hate to be one of the “Linux isn’t ready” people, but I have to agree. I love Linux and have been using it for the last 15 years. I work in IT and am a Windows and Linux sysadmin. My wife wanted to build a new gaming PC and I convinced her to go with Linux since she really only wanted it for single player games. Brand new build, first time installing an OS (chose Bazzite since it was supposed to be the gaming distro that “just works”). First thing I did was install a few apps from the built in App Store and none of them would launch. Clicking “Launch” from the GUI app installer did nothing, and they didn’t show up in the application launcher either. I spent several hours trying to figure out what was wrong before giving up and opening an issue on GitHub. It was an upstream issue that they fixed with an update.

    When I had these issues, the first thing my wife suggested was installing Windows because she was afraid she may run into more issues later on and it “just works”. If I had never used Linux and didn’t work in IT and decided to give it a try because all the cool people on Lemmy said it was ready for prime time, and this was the first issue I ran into, I would go back to Windows and this would sour my view of Linux for years to come.

    I still love Linux and will continue to recommend moving away from Windows to my friends, but basic stuff like this makes it really hard to recommend.

    Alright, I have shared my unpopular opinions on Lemmy, I’m ready for my downvotes.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 month ago

      I’ve been using Linux for over thirty years and the nice looking App Stores that have appeared those last few years have always been shit and have always been mostly broken in various ways. I don’t know why.

      On the other hand, the ugly frontends to the package manager just work.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      I agree with you, lemmings and the Linux community as a whole has the incredible lack of ability to put themselves in the shoes of a technologically less literate “normal” person and see that Linux is not exactly ready for mainstream

      That being said, tour first fuck up was not going with EndeavorOS the actual distro that’s for gamers (or anyone) that just works.

      It’s based on arch btw

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        The fact that there is a “correct” distro only adds to the unreadyness for mainstream.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      I would probably not recommend newcomers an esoteric linux distro tbh. People hate canonical but if people in academia can daily drive Ubuntu, anyone can

    • ZeroOne
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      11 month ago

      Choosing Bazzite was a big mistake, you could’ve gone for NobaraOS or PopOS

      • @[email protected]
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        01 month ago

        I’m used to the CLI world of Linux. I wanted something for my non-technical wife that would “just work”. I’ve heard good things online about Bazzite and how it already has everything installed (Steam, Wine, Proton, graphics drivers, all that) and I didn’t want to mess with installing any of that stuff by hand. Idk, maybe it’s my fault for expecting a distro to have basic functionally out of the box.

        I think blaming me for choosing a distro based on what it says it’s supposed to do is a bit silly. Sure, I could have installed any distro and worked to install and maintain everything by hand, but that’s not what I was looking for. I don’t want to play tech support every week when something breaks and spend hours trying to fix it when my wife just wants to play a game. If you enjoy that, great, more power to you. Sorry for not choosing your favorite distro, I guess.

        • ZeroOne
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          11 month ago

          It’s not my favorite distro, the maintainer of Proton-GE created NobaraOS

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      Yeah that’ll happen if you run Bazzite. It’s extremely hardware dependent. It “just works” if you get lucky and use the same hardware as the developers. Otherwise, it’s a shitshow

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      Windows is just more familiar. It definitely has problems just like this all the time. There’s a reason most companies have to have a test environment to try out every update to make sure it doesn’t break everything.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Yep. Somehow people forget windows update breaking shit, weird issues, having to go to device manager to uninstall a shitty graphics driver update you didn’t want, etc.

        Rose tinted glasses.

        • @[email protected]
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          11 month ago

          I think you guys have hit the nail on the head. So much of the Linux argument has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with what people already know.

          Everyone forgets the bugs and crashes they’ve always had to deal with even exist, because they become background noise. Then they change to a new OS and might run into completely new “roadblocks” and cry about how broken and useless the OS is even though their new problems are just as minor (or more so) than the problems they left behind.

          In reality, any OS is a complicated piece of kit. The more you do with it, the more likely you are going to run into something that does something you don’t expect - and the more tech literate you believe yourself to be, the more likely you think the OS doing something you don’t expect means it is broken.

    • @[email protected]
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      01 month ago

      I just recently installed Bazzite and I have to say that your experience was unusual. Installing apps from the built in Software Center (it’s not really an app store, because it’s not really a store), just worked for me.

      But, I’ll agree with you that Linux isn’t quite ready for mass adoption. Currently I’m tracking an nVidia bug that results in my GPU locking up when doing pretty normal things. The bug was reported 3 weeks ago, and is affecting a lot of people with more than 1 monitor, but still hasn’t been fixed. I’m also tracking 2 annoying but not system-crashing bugs. Plus, there’s another behaviour that happens daily that is annoying and I haven’t had the time to track down.

      Mostly, these are “chicken and egg” things. The nVidia bug was allowed to happen and wasn’t fixed quickly because there aren’t enough Linux users for nVidia to bother to fully test their things on lots of different Linux configurations before releasing them, or to make it an all-hands-on-deck emergency when they break. If there were more users, the drivers would be better. But it’s hard to get people to migrate to Linux because there are frequently buggy drivers. Same with other drivers, and other commercial software. People don’t switch because it’s glitchy, it’s glitchy because there aren’t enough users for companies to properly invest in fixing things, that makes it glitchy, so people won’t switch.

      Having said that, the thing that prompted me to install Bazzite was that I was getting BSODs in Windows and I wasn’t sure if it was a driver issue or a hardware issue. It turned out to be bad nVidia drivers… but they were fixed in days, not weeks. So, it’s not that things don’t break in Windows, it’s just that it’s a bigger emergency when they do break.

      I’m not going back to Windows any time soon. Despite the issues I’m having, there are some parts of the system that are so much better than Windows.

      Like, people complain about Linux having a bad UI, but have you ever tried to change low-level network settings in Windows? You start in a windows 10 or 11 themed settings app. If the thing you’re trying to change doesn’t show up there you have to click to open a lower-level settings app, this one styled in a Windows XP UI. And if that’s not where the setting lives, you have to open up a lower-level thing that is using the Windows NT / Windows 3.1 interface.

      Or, anything involving using a commandline. Windows does actually support doing a lot of things using the “DOS prompt” but that thing feels like a Fisher Price toy compared to a real shell. Even the “power” shell is a janky mess.

      Or, any time you have to touch the registry. Only an insane person would prefer to deal with making changes there vs. making changes in a filesystem where you can comment out values, leave comments explaining what you did, back up files, etc.

      But, while Linux isn’t quite there for the end-user, it’s getting closer and closer. Really, all that’s needed is enough people taking the plunge to make it a higher priority for devs. It could be that Microsoft deciding that Windows 10 machines that are not capable of running Windows 11 should just be thrown out will convince enough people to try Linux instead. Linux might not yet beat Windows for the average end user, but the annoyances associated with Linux vs. a machine you just have to throw away? That’s an easy one.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Yeah, I get it’s unusual and it sucks it happened. I honestly would have been less upset if it was a driver issue or something like that. I at least could have looked at dmesg logs or something to try and figure out what was going on. I’m new to GUI Linux, so I had no idea where to start with this one. I think this was more frustrating than a driver issue or something similar for me because I would expect installing applications from the built in repositories to be something that “just works”.

        Hopefully as more people move over to Linux distros, we will get more people that donate to them as well so more dedicated developers can be hired to work on such things. I know it will get there one day, and it’s already so much better from when I last tried gaming on Linux back in the early 2010’s. Hopefully the full release of SteamOS will truly bring about the age of Linux desktop.

  • arthurpizza
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    21 month ago

    Let’s be real. Most people can’t really use Windows, either. Anything harder than clicking the Chrome icon is beyond most users.

  • @[email protected]
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    21 month ago

    It like the endless and useless fight between Android and iOS fan boys, it’s much simpler than that, you use what you like/comfortable with, you don’t need to convince anyone how right you are and how wrong they are, never really understood this weird behaviour from supposedly well educated people. You enjoy Linux, good for you , you like windows, kodus, you’re mac person have at it .

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    I don’t think Windows, Mac, Android, iOS, whatever is “ready yet” either. operating systems are always in development. There are things I can do on my linux machine that I can’t do on my windows machine, and vice versa.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 month ago

      Nah…windows 2000 was ready…windows 7 was ready. The enshitification of everything since has had made everything “not ready”.

      The end goal of every modern product is to shove ads down your throat. I’ll eat a little bit of pain from Linux to avoid that.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    People who are like this today, tried to install red hat 5/6 using popular mechanics magazine as an instruction booklet and with floppy disks

    Either that or they tried to install Open BSD once and survived: https://xkcd.com/349/

    By all standards, a completely understandable outcome

  • Sundray
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    11 month ago

    “Have you tried installing Linux on your computer recently?”

    “WTF is a computer?”

  • @[email protected]
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    11 month ago

    But it’s not ready because insert niche use case that only applies to me and no, I will not seek out open source alternatives to insert closed source software

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      Yes, that’s exactly me. I need to use creative cloud for the company where I work. If I deviate it fucks everyone and the entire workflow. But I don’t really think CC is niche. The moment they support linux, I’m switching

      • @[email protected]
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        11 month ago

        Tbf (and you seem to already be aware of this) that’s not really an issue with Linux. Lots of software devs don’t care about supporting Linux sadly.

      • @[email protected]OP
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        11 month ago

        Like he said its not lacking on anything is just that you cant use your needed program. And its fine to stay on windows.

  • obnomus
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    11 month ago

    Yesterday a guy was mad about that why everything has to go through his igpu and why not directlg through dgpu then I told bro that hdmi or anyother port on your laptop doesn’t use your dgpu then he understood.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 month ago

    Ship laptops with LM and people will stray on Linux. Some might switch due to windows OS locked apps like ms365 but for most watching YouTube and maybe managing photos is all they do.

    I run dual boot and honestly, if only all things which run on windows would run on Linux without tribal shamanism rituals, is never ever had to switch. But my favorite DAW is not running Linux. My occasionally useful editing software is not there (but kdenlive is cool tho). My very specific apps for games are not running native or at all.

    When I’m not using these, I just flip a switch and run DAS with Bazzite. And I love it. But you just can’t substitute everything windows offers. It is a gaming and working software OS after all.

    • TorJansen
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      1 month ago

      A whole lot of people who just do web or email or whatever could live with a Chromebook actually. They don’t really need the latest CPU/GPU and gobs of ram and disk space for simple stuff

    • @[email protected]
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      11 month ago

      Some might switch due to windows OS locked apps

      Fusion360 is literally the only reason I still have a windows install. I’ve had people try to recommend Linux alternatives before, and none of them can match my level of stupidity. If I can’t draw a circle in your CAD program without looking up a tutorial, then I really can’t design a webcam adapter for my telescope

    • Maki
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      -11 month ago

      Windows hasn’t been a ‘gaming and working software’ OS for a while. Kernel-level DRM, paywalled productivity suites, the requirement to log into a ms account for more and more things, telemetry and ads in everything from the start menu to taskbar? The few windows-unique softwares and functionalities are not worth it.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 month ago

    It is in mixed states of ready. Each distro has something it’s ready for and something it isn’t. It’d be nice if all the ready parts were in a single distro, but that’s an XKCD 927 issue. I am hopeful that Valve puts thought and effort into making SteamOS a solid desktop on top of a solid gaming platform.

  • @[email protected]
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    1 month ago

    The average ‘advanced’ window user: CLI is scary!

    Also the average ‘advanced’ windows user: if you open regedit and add this DWORD entry to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Microsoft/application/windows/something, then you can stop Microsoft from screwing you, but it’ll revert after each update so you gotta keep fixing it