Image text: “Fact: 90% of Linux users switch back to windows right before all their problems are about to be fixed”

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            7 months ago

            NixOS is semi-immutable but not really designed to be user friendly. I think we are more talking about Universal Blue, Fedora SilberBlur, OpenSUSE microOS, VanillaOS and so on.

            • _NoName_@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              7 months ago

              And steamdeckOS… whenever valve decides they’re gonna release it for general use.

              • Grass@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                7 months ago

                Apart from the game mode update notes being hard coded to show steamos updates, bazzite is a drop in replacement that doesn’t get rid of your non flatpak packages each update. It also bundles or has easy installation options for all the recommended third party software everyone uses with the deck.

    • svnipni@lemy.lol
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      7 months ago

      I still boot to windows every now and then to play games. But each time windows painfully reminds me why I hate it

      • bitchkat@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        7 months ago

        I have never liked Windows. Unix workstations or linux pretty much since the mid 80’s. My current pet peeve is companies that block email clients except Outlook from connecting to their mail server (Exchange).

  • cosmicrookie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    71
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    7 months ago

    Actually more like a self fulfilling prophesy

    IMO many will leave Linux just before finding the fix!

    I had tried dual boot but kept going back to windows because i knew how to do things there without having to mess with anything

    Its only after i removed windows altogether and only ran Mint, that i was forced to seriously look for solutions. Once you do find them though, you dont need to mess around with anything that much any more

    • mortalic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      24
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      7 months ago

      A suggestion for everyone that’s kinda new, and to be honest, grizzled vets too… Use chatgpt as a trouble shooting tool. It’s really surprising how good it is sometimes. I’ve had it write bash scripts in minutes, solve obscure Firefox issues, fix game settings for barely compatible games… So many things

        • jnk@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Not very accessible, in the vast majority of (troubleshooting, nothing private) cases free gpt is the best option (fast, free, openAI training on that chat might even be beneficial to the community). Decent GPU’s for LLM are stupid pricey.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      “When he reached the New World, Cortezh burned hish ships. Ash a reshult hish men were well motivated.” —Capt. Ramius, played by Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red October

    • maxprime@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 months ago

      It wasn’t until windows shat itself and I couldn’t boot into it anymore that I took my Linux drive more seriously.

  • the16bitgamer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    ·
    7 months ago

    This is true, I wanted to play a game and it looked broken in Linux. When I went back to Windows I discovered that it was a problem with the game. Then I went back to Linux and it ran better than it did in Windows.

    Typical Ubisoft experience.

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    7 months ago

    I mean, if you duel boot, it’s just a matter of time until Windows nukes your other OS. At least with me, my Linux was about to solve world peace, but Windows got wind of that and shut it the fuck down.

    Meme is correct, they’re coming for you.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      7 months ago

      I almost wanted to correct you and say its dual not duel, but when I think about it windows will fight to be the only bootloader right when you think its finally behaving.

      • N4CHEM@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        7 months ago

        Wanted to say the same: the typo made the comment better. There has to be a community for this.

    • Doxin@yiffit.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      7 months ago

      Windows basically never nukes the actual linux install. It DOES like breaking the bootloader though. Which is fixable but still deeply annoying.

      • svnipni@lemy.lol
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        7 months ago

        Ah damn this is exactly what happened a few days ago. My popos boot entry suddenly disappeared. I can still just boot from the physical ssd it’s installed on, but I found it strange it just pooped out somehow. Any pointers on how to fix it?

          • taiyang@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 months ago

            I still need to fix mine, thanks for the link. The weirdest break it did once was messing with my Wi-Fi driver, managed to break Linux’ driver somehow, making the Internet a no go. Still no idea how Windows managed that though, they shouldn’t be messing with my bios. :/

        • Doxin@yiffit.net
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          7 months ago

          I haven’t had it happen to me for a while now. I used to have a boot repair liveCD that’d always do the trick, but I don’t think that specific distro even exists anymore.

          The gist is you’ll want to boot a liveCD and use the liveCD to reinstall GRUB, I’m sure you can find the right incantation to do so online somewhere.

    • msage@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      7 months ago

      Reminded me how Windows would set the hardware clock to different timezone that Linux uses, can’t remember which.

      It would make my blood boil, that’s when I decided to never boot it again. 100% Linux everywhere, I get it on routers when I can.

      • 乇ㄥ乇¢ㄒ尺ㄖ@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        Yeah, that’s what I i did, first tried Nobara, I liked it but encountered some issues, tried to fix them but I realized I spent too much time and there’s no clear fix, so I hoped on Fedora and everything works nicely, exept for the Multimedia drivers which I’m still trying to fix…

        • NoisyFlake@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          Seriously, how can a huge distro like Fedora still be so horribly user-unfriendly when it comes to basic things like multimedia playback.

          • 乇ㄥ乇¢ㄒ尺ㄖ@infosec.pub
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            7
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            7 months ago

            It’s the stupid US patent law, and they don’t wanna deal with any “legal” issues, showing you how to install those drivers is how far they can go… But this is Exactly why these drivers are broken, they’re not well integrated and not tested by Fedora devs…

            That’s why Distros like Ultramarine promise you a working Fedora experience OOTB, because they’re not US based and such laws don’t apply to their software…

        • digdug@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          This is what seems to have helped for me on Fedora:

          1. Install free and non-free RPM Fusion repositories: https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

          2. Then run the following:

            sudo dnf groupupdate multimedia --setop="install_weak_deps=False" --exclude=PackageKit-gstreamer-plugin
            sudo dnf groupupdate sound-and-video
            sudo dnf install mozilla-openh264
            rm ~/.cache/gstreamer-1.0/registry.x86_64.bin
            
            

          I was having trouble with many h265 videos until I cleared my gstreamer cache (I only needed to clear the 64-bit cache, this thread suggests clearing both 32 and 64-bit):
          https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/h265-videos-wont-play-in-totem-after-installing-all-codecs/87341/17

      • onlinepersona@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        7
        ·
        7 months ago

        In terms of stability and packages, it’s an amazing OS. Gone are the days of being afraid that of updates or system upgrades that might leave your system borked. Unless you’re experimenting with filesystems and boot parameters, it’s not straightforward to fuck things up.

        On the flipside, by Linus is it difficult to get things working as a beginner. Good luck packaging new stuff, good luck creating new options, good luck cross-compiling, good luck configuring stuff with hardcoded config paths in /var/ or whatever, actually good luck understanding how to configure existing packages, good luck getting any kind of PR merged without the say-so of a chosen few, good luck changing anything in the community without getting past the gatekeepers, and have fun understanding why some random package is being installed and/or compiled when you switch to a new configuration.

        Anti Commercial-AI license

        • Atemu@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          7 months ago

          Good luck packaging new stuff

          Packaging is generally hard on any distro.

          Compared to a traditional distro, the packaging difficulty distribution is quite skewed with Nix though as packages that follow common conventions are quite a lot easier to package due to the abstractions Nixpkgs has built for said conventions while some packages are near impossible to package due to the unique constraints Nix (rightfully) enforces.

          good luck creating new options

          Creating options is really simple actually. Had I known you could do that earlier, I would have done so when I was starting out.

          Creating good options APIs is an art to be mastered but you don’t need to do that to get something going.

          good luck cross-compiling

          Have you ever tried cross-compiling on a traditional distro? Cross-compiling using Nixpkgs is quite easy in comparison.

          actually good luck understanding how to configure existing packages

          Yeah, no way to do so other than to read the source.

          It’s usually quite understandable without knowing the exact details though; just look at the function arguments.

          Also beats having no option to configure packages at all. Good luck slightly modifying an Arch package. It has no abstractions for this whatsoever; you have to copy and edit the source. Oh and you need to keep it up to date yourself too.

          Gentoo-like standardised flags would be great and are being worked on.

          good luck getting any kind of PR merged without the say-so of a chosen few

          Hi, one of the “chosen few” here: That’s a security feature.

          Not a particularly good one, mind you, but a security feature nonetheless.

          There’s also now a merge bot now running in the wild allowing maintainers of packages to merge automatic updates on their maintained packages though which alleviates this a bit.

          have fun understanding why some random package is being installed and/or compiled when you switch to a new configuration.

          It can be mysterious sometimes but once you know the tools, you can directly introspect the dependency tree that is core to the concept of Nix and figure out exactly what’s happening.

          I’m not aware of the existence of any such tools in traditional distros though. What do you do on i.e. Arch if your hourly shot of -Syu goes off and fetches some package you’ve never seen before due to an update to some other package? Manually look at PKGBUILDs?

  • tearsintherain@leminal.space
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Every child should be introduced to linux. Will help them understand better they don’t need to be treated as products and certainly make them more computer literate, and hopefully more security conscious.

    • MenacingPerson@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      7 months ago

      But to be honest, not every child is technologically-inclined. Most are just gonna get annoyed and hate it. This is not a good idea.

      I’d have loved it as a child though

        • Demdaru@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          7 months ago

          Was introduced as a teen. Recently even looked back at my book from the times and it had a whole goddamn chapter with linux propaganda.

          Hated it. Felt like high maintenance windows. No reason to even get near. Also, hated it doubly because nobody asked.

          Best way would be to switch school computers to linux. That way there’s no active part - it’s here, you have to use it anyway, deal with it. Then you can taste it neutrally, and it becomes just a quirk. Quirk some may like.

          • jnk@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            7 months ago

            Check on EducaandOS. It’s my region’s school distro. It was absolute crap around 15 years ago, when they launched (names Guadalinex Edu), but it was preinstalled in school laptops so we learned to use it.

            Right now it’s pretty decent and simple enough to just throw it into a kid’s computer, but sadly nobody gives a fuck about it. It would be so cool if more institutions tried to pull projects like this

          • MenacingPerson@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            7 months ago

            Exactly this. Barely any child would have cared about free software or whatever. I’d be concerned for the ones that did care.

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            7 months ago

            Linux doesn’t have to be high maintenance though. Definitely not more high maintenance than Windows for basic use cases.

            • Demdaru@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              7 months ago

              It doesn’t have to, but for most users on the level of teens/kids it is. You wanna do something in windows? Done. Just done. No problems whatsoever, most devs bend over backwards for compatibility. Meanwhile finding shit for linux is pain. Most things you heard of are not even there. You have to go through weird apps just to run things you’re used to, and meanwhile OS asks weird questions like which graphic driver to install,

              Linux changed a whole lot from the time I was introduced to it, and it became reaaaaally close to being as easy to use as windows. Hell, I even was considering switching to Mint some time ago ( Then bricked my boot. Thrice. And it’s not fault of Linux. I think. ). I like how it looks and feels, and with proton and stuff it’s best time to do so but it still isn’t on the same level of being non-problematic as windows.

              Edit: Cannot talk about Win 11. Touched it once. If I need to upgrade, fuck that, going linux. Not worth it. At all.

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                7 months ago

                Not really most detect the graphics card automatically, unless you are on Nvidia in which case you probably built the thing anyway or are a PC gamer which would know that anyway.

                Windows isn’t as easy to use and tends to break if given to the computer illiterate from viruses, not doing updates, not rebooting, and so on. I’ve dealt with these kinds of people, they are better off with Linux Mint, ChromeOS, or similar as it doesn’t have these issues. If you are talking about mac then yeah it’s easier, you have an argument there. I would point out as well that most of the easy to use devices run Linux, like Android and ChromeOS devices.

                Windows 11 is the new default, so that’s what we are comparing to here.

                Dual boots on a single drive and EFI partition are expected to break at this point. This is because Microsoft like to overwrite the Linux boot loader. You should use a separate drive or at least a different EFI partition. REFIND can be helpful too. Dual boots have always been an advanced use case though.

                • Demdaru@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  7 months ago

                  Most people who don’t know their stuff uses nvidia. Happily slowly changing, but nvidia is everywhere, at least where I live. And people who don’t know stuff still hold onto “green good, red hot and bad”.

                  How do you break Windows except by downloading malware? It literally hides, or rather masquarades it’s settings from you and makes it hard to do anything bad to it. My grandpa uses Windows - I thought about introducing him to linux to breathe second life into his PC but…I doubt he would be able to do much with it. I cede point towards Android.

                  How is Win 11 new default? I may be out of the loop, but is it now majorly used? If so, I cede all because the only time I tried to use it, goddamn first-time registration died on me. Like, fully. Unfixable. What a mess.

                  And yeah, again, the boot bricking isn’t on linux it’s just me being an idiot. Also I love how fast you picked up how I broke the boot.

      • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        7 months ago

        Something like Linux Mint is very easy to use and doesn’t require much maintenance. You don’t need to reformat every year or two either when Windows inevitably shits itself.

          • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            7 months ago

            My point is Linux doesn’t have to be hard to use. You are going out of your way and making things difficult when using something like Arch Linux.

            • MenacingPerson@lemm.ee
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              7 months ago

              I’m not undermining your point in the first sentence, I was just saying that I use arch, btw

              Linux mint shares a few ubuntu bugs, and even if you use LMDE someone like a child cannot understand the essence of linux in a controlled environment.

              I’ll repeat. You cannot teach linux in a controlled environment to a child.

              • Moorshou@lemmy.zip
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                7 months ago

                I’ve heard of cases where parents are putting kids in front of linux recently!

                They are windows illiterate i think is what the kids posted.

              • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                7 months ago

                Yes you can! What do you think a Chromebook is or an Android tablet. Modern Linux is quite easy to use, in some areas easier than modern Windows. This is especially true if you have the kind of children who get viruses all the time.

                • MenacingPerson@lemm.ee
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  arrow-down
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  7 months ago

                  Oh awesome. Leave it to lemmy to be pedantic.

                  I obviously meant normal linux distros when I referred to linux. Not chromebooks or android.

                  Also, using those is in no way the same as learning linux. In a chrome book you’ll just be using a browser. In a phone, all the apps are locked down and you have no access to cli.

  • someguywithacomputer@lemmynsfw.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Arch is cool and all but fixing all the issues every other time you update is a full time job. I can never rely on my system for shit. Sometimes there’s actually a wiki page for the issue but in my experience it’s usually bugs almost no one else has which means I’m on my own. If you’re smart enough for that cool but I’ve dedicated most of my life to only using Linux and I’m still nowhere close to being able to use Arch without spending too much time troubleshooting issues. I think I’d rather deal with Debian repositories being so out of date half my shit is broken because that way at least I only have to fix it once every year or two instead of every goddamn week.

    • icedterminal@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      7 months ago

      Arch is not meant to be a daily driver if you’re expecting “shit just works” stability long term when you just blindly run updates. You have to understand what you’re updating and sometimes why.

      It is targeted at the proficient GNU/Linux user, or anyone with a do-it-yourself attitude who is willing to read the documentation, and solve their own problems.

      If you want to use Arch, you need to invest in snapshots using rsync or dd. Given how it’s a rolling release, you should do this weekly. If something fucks up, grab all your logs and put them somewhere safe. Roll back and look at your logs to see what broke. Then apply updates as needed. You can ignore packages for quite a while. If you’re not smart enough to understand it now, you may in the future. It takes time and practice.

      Debian based is only “out of date” feature wise because they do a package freeze. They ensure stability before release. Updates are largely security related.

      • nexussapphire@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        7 months ago

        To be fair if you set it up properly, you don’t install a ton of stuff from the aur, and you stick to a major desktop like kde or gnome it’s stable to the point of being boring.

        I’ve recently switched to hyprland from kde just to have something to mess with or tweak when I feel like it. Sometimes they change the config file for hyprland and I have to fix it but I like it none the less. I used kde for a couple years with zero issues and only just switched desktops using the zx backdoor as an excuse to while my system.

        This is coming from an individual that hasn’t had an opportunity to switch from an Nvidia card yet.

    • Veneroso@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      I generally seem to have had a good experience with Linux Mint. I use the cinnamon version.

      Even dist upgrades don’t seem to be too much trouble.

      I used to main Gentoo but that was a lot of work. I still miss it though, but that was almost 20 years ago, when I was unemployed, and had more free time than money.

      I run Windows 10 on my personal laptop and I look at these changes for the sake of change and I am seriously considering wiping it and not just use Linux in a VM.

  • joel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    7 months ago

    I’ve been using nothing but Linux for 5 years and I still have problems every now and then.

    • Zetta@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      23
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      But the same can be said with windows. My life long windows user friend occasionally (a few times a year) reaches out about some significant issues they are experiencing with windows on their modern desktop.

      I truly wouldn’t recommend Linux for a fairly tech illiterate person like him, but really Linux is better in every category that matters to me.

      • jnk@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        I truly wouldn’t recommend Linux for a fairly tech illiterate person like him

        I would actually argue the opposite, linux is way more intuitive for new people who hasn’t used a pc before or hasn’t used windows long enough to fill their brain with their unconsistent mess. I’ve seen 3 variants of this already with people close to me ( last one of them encouraged by me). Kinda mind boggling.

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          The moment a new user needs to use command line, they are out.

          It isn’t mind boggling at all.

          • jnk@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            7 months ago

            Untrue statement plus in some distros you don’t need the terminal at all. Fear to the terminal is included in windows’ inconsistent mess, as i said, to real first time users it’s not that horrible to “talk to the pc so it does what you told it to do”.

            Also you don’t get to decide if an experience i had felt mind boggling or not (?

        • Zetta@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          I mean he’s tech illiterate when it comes to anything semi complicated but with the way he uses his pc and the software he uses it would just not be possible for him to switch at all, would be unable to do 70% of the stuff he wants to do.

          Linux is only good for the truly tech illiterate/pretty noice users in my opinion. After that you hit a point where they are literate just enough that they would need to solve problems on linux they wouldn’t have to on windows and their inability to solve problems on Linux make their experience bad.

          One level above that Linux is the better option again though.

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      You can usually find the solution to Linux problems on the forum for your distro.

      With windows problems, the answer is usually “nothing can be done unless microsoft actually decides to fix it”. That’s after digging through 10 or more pages of search results filled with AI generated crap.

      • Richard@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        7 months ago

        Yes, and I would like to add that if you really know what you’re doing, you can even fix complicated, deep-rooted problems by yourself.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        7 months ago

        “nothing can be done unless microsoft actually decides to fix it”

        That is just a straight up lie

        I haven’t encountered a SINGLE issue like that in all my years of IT in heavy Microsoft environments. You can always find a solution, albeit having some small caveats like you have in every open source software. Every single issue is documented somewhere since 80% of desktops run it. The community is just so much bigger. You can even straight up contact Microsoft directly if you encounter anything that hasn’t been encountered before.

        Don’t blame your lack of Google fu on Microsoft just because you don’t like their design philosophy.

        • Moorshou@lemmy.zip
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          I would say so far, I can find the solutions just like i can with Microsoft, i can even leverage it with AI to get my problems solved. and actually, in linux mint, they have a irc and forum i can contact from my desktop.

  • NoisyFlake@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    I actually switched back to Windows a few weeks ago because I was so tired of all the NVIDIA problems I had on Wayland. A few days later I read that explicit sync finally got merged, lol.

    I’m definitely planning on switching back to Linux, but I’m not sure if I’ll do it before getting a new AMD GPU.

  • lemmyreader@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    “Fact: 95% of Linux users switched back to Windows95 right before all their problems are about to be fixed” A.D. 1999

    • Seriously though a few years ago Microsoft launched their own Linux distributions. You’d think it would be smooth sailing now, no ?
  • Usernamealreadyinuse@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    7 months ago

    Ok so I am probably gonna curse in the Linux church but please enlighten me

    I have one laptop with windows 10 for the simple stuff: internet, movie, ms office. It functions perfectly. Yes it needs a reboot sometimes. I don’t understand what people are saying about how terrible ms in regard for easy users.

    I mean I get it that it probably using my data, which would be actually enough to change.

    However: all these post about how easy it is to fix stuff in Linux (and thus saying it is not working properly)… Keeps me in ms.

    What are you guys doing that needs so much tinkering that needs to be fixed constantly?

    • melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      me?

      okay so sometimes you need to run a twenty year old game made for another OS or cpu architecture

      which… weirdly, easier in Linux than win7; Linux has better backward compatibility with windows than windows. was like three clicks to install.

      but sometimes that game uses broadcast UDP packets for LAN multiplayer.

      and this is where our problem comes from, because broadcast UDP packets are deprecated, and also most modern routers don’t love them, I don’t think.

      so, I needed to find a way to manually readdress outgoing UDP packets from broadcast to a specific set of multicast addresses, which…

      also, some issues running USB as serial for some exotic peripherals. and by ‘exotic’ I mean ‘I don’t know for sure the PC is the problem; I might have soldered this wrong’.

      also some issues in qubes, but that’s literally all virtualization, and not a distro for anyone who hasn’t both been using Linux for a while and considered the cost of making their apartment a Faraday cage.

      a few issues with bare arch, which is the ‘do everything from scratch 0 automation bleeding edge tech nerd, no, seriously you need to manually download a file system’ distro. don’t use arch if you don’t know what youre doing.

      • Usernamealreadyinuse@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        Ok cool, so you do very specific things (and I lost you at UDP). So since I don’t have a very specific use case, I am sadly still not convinced that I need to switch

        • melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          no I’m saying weirdshit that made me fudge things in Linux. and I could. it was easy.

          in windows my issues were all ‘this isn’t supposed to work, this isn’t allowed’ and I had to fight the system rather than finding the right config file and changing a couple lines.

          so my windows problems were much simpler shit. things like getting the taskbar to to what I want, or getting windows to not explode on top edge of screen (literally a checkbox in KDE plasma)

      • psud@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        For the UDP broadcast, you should be able to catch and change them with simple firewall rules, you’d catch packets with a destination address of the broadcast address and send them to a chain that rewrites the destination

    • monkeyman512@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      7 months ago

      A lot of the people who are drawn to Linux want to be able to tinker with things. For your use case you would probably be perfectly happy with installing Ubuntu, getting the apps you need, then not messing with it.

    • TangledHyphae@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 months ago

      I don’t really have to fix anything in Linux, I do a lot of advanced things though (I’m a software dev) where I will manually change executables’ paths, swap them out with symlinks, use custom newer GCC compilers, etc, but even with all of that I still rarely ever have to “fix” anything. I have been waiting, prepared, for when this Ubuntu install craps out so I can finally wipe it out and switch to Arch for this PC… but it still keeps going and going without a hiccup.

      I’m not sure what people are referring to that they have to fix all the time, but no two people have the same experience overall obviously, and there are so many variations of a linux system. like take 10 different desktop environments or window managers or different pieces of software or hardware and every permutation is going to have either more problems, or less problems.

      Ultimately I would recommend anybody just giving all of the distros and DE/WMs a try. A good try, give it a few weeks and see how each of them feel, you’re not going to know what you’ve been missing, or if anything ever has bugs or quirks at all period, until you do.

    • sag@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      7 months ago

      You don’t need to tinker so much Linux if you are just gonna use it for Internet and Movie stuff. We tinker with it so much because we want to make our desktop the way we want it

    • UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      No software is perfect, you are going to run into some issue, somewhere, eventually. However, I would say when talking about Linux spcifically, there is a high chance that people talking about stuff being broken are people breaking stuff.

      It’s simply fun to try riscy, experimental things. Naturally, people also like to write about it.

      • psud@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        However, I would say when talking about Linux specifically, there is a high chance that people talking about stuff being broken are people breaking stuff.

        I’m sure you’re right. It used to be complicated to set up printers, bluetooth, audio, but even then once set up they were fine. Now all those and just about anything else you need to manage on the machine has an easy GUI

        My wife’s computer runs Linux and she’s never had to use a terminal (she’s not a techie type)

    • Moorshou@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      Honestly? I fixed windows as much as i do linux

      I just web surf and play video games on my machines, I had to open terminal once to install printer drivers, the printers a MFC-490CW otherwise, nothing needed to be fixed

      It’s just nice to HAVE the terminal, lets me go under the hood of my computer if need be.

    • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      In windows you can’t fix it. You leave it there. In linux you can fix, you may try to fix it.

      Also the real issue to fix must be at install time for drivers. You wouldn’t face that in windows since the devices are preinstalled and configured by manufacturer. If something doesn’t work on windows it would be called manufacturer’s fault and not windows’ fault, so manufacturers make sure its working correctly

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        7 months ago

        You’re talking about Mac, if something is wrong there like an app being too old, you can’t do anything about it.

        Windows allows you to mold it to make it do what you like, but usually the default setup is pretty decent. Even if it can be the manufacturers fault, you can still install older versions of drivers, install open source third party drivers, or compile your own if you are so inclined.

        The database that comes with Windows is to make it easy for the user, so they don’t have to go around searching for drivers when they attach a new device. Most of the time it works flawless.

        • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Windows allows, yes. But its difficult imo. Its not open and configurable so you have to do hacks if you want to place taskbar vertical or somethin. Then it becomes unstable and i guess that has a chance to get reverted with an update

        • mexicancartel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          7 months ago

          It already just works in linux. But what people constantly want to “fix” is not fixable in windows. If you don’t need that, you still can use linux without so called “fixing”