“Okay, I switched to Linux, now I’m getting this error message: _______.”
“Install ______.”
“It gives me this error now: ______.”
“You have to update the _____ library first.”
“It won’t let me.”
“You have to use sudo.”
“It tells me to clone the git via the command line, but git says verifying login from command line isn’t supported any more.”
“You’re following seven year old instructions.”
“They’re the only instructions I can find.”
“You should switch to this other flavor of Linux.”
TIHI
I do not prefer apt-based systems, but I’ve installed variations of Ubuntu (e.g. Mint) on systems for geriatric (grand)parents in the past 5 years and have not yet needed to drop into shell to fix something.
If the needs are basic (browsing, email, printing, documents), Linux hasn’t needed wizardry for years. This is mostly thanks to Gnome and KDE’s hard work on GUI admin tools, but if someone is going directly from Windows to i3, they’ve chosen a steep hill to climb.
Switch to Linux and spend way more time making sure everything is updated and having to jump through hoops installing things.
Okay, I’ll bite. I’ve been trying Linux every few years for the last few decades and it’s never been anywhere close to replacing Windows for me. I’m not a luddite; I was in tech for many years (MCSE certified) but there just… ALWAYS something that doesn’t work right. And there’s NEVER a simple fix. Linux for me ends up being more of a hobby than a tool and I haven’t had the time or patience to deal with it in the past.
But I’m willing to try again,
Anyone have any resources to get me pointed in the right direction? Which distro to try, how to install as a dual-boot on an exiting Windows machine without breaking it, how to get Steam/Nvidia drivers/games going, etc?
EDIT - Apparently trying to dual boot with Windows on a machine with two physical drives is too much to ask (unless you have a CS degree). Maybe next time, Linux.
I had the same experience as you did: I’ve tried Linux every few years ever since someone brought it to my attention in the nineties. And it always felt like a hobby instead of an invisible layer that just makes my computer tick. After Microsoft tried to ram W11 up my arse for the umpteenth time, I tried again recently. And it was amazing. Absolutely zero driver issues and it is FAST and CLEAN. No pop-ups or sneaky ads or any of the other things that make me feel like a tenant on my own computer. I now have a dual boot setup Ubuntu/W10, where I really only still use the W10 boot for games. And I have my office and audio software living in separate VM’s that I can use regardless of which OS I booted into at the start.
It’s awesome.
I’ve been trying to switch to Linux for the same reasons you mentioned. What OS are you dual booting with windows that you’ve been able to use as a daily driver?
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (basically the newest regular Ubuntu release). It has native support for my Geforce 1080 gtx and every USB device I have tossed at it so far. I you install on a desktop I recommend setting up a W10 VM just to broaden your options.
What are you running your VM in, out of interest? I’ve only ever used VirtualBox, but it’s not always that performant.
VirtualBox :) There are some tweaks, like committing more memory to a box through a command line than is possible through the UI. And if I need performance, I boot into W10.
I’ll give it another go to see if things have changed over the years, thanks!
Yeah it’s both windows going the Facebook route, and Linux getting quite user friendly IMO.
I’m checking out Linux Mint since a bunch of years and now everything is a breeze, or already installed. Sure, I have learned a lot along the way, and maybe I use less specific softwares and more a browser, but still I feel it’s (I haven’t checked out gaming yet) become a quite mature os.
And its inherent security that windows doesn’t have (I know it’s not “full security” or anything but at least an account is locked in in its own world) makes my Linux pop a command line instantly and my corporate (both thinkpads, corporate is faster) takes 30+ seconds to ‘verify’ over the internet that I’m not hAcKiNg I guess…
I have never been as close as this to switch main PC to Linux :-p
Three distros usually get recommended as fairly hassle-free. Ubuntu (personally haven’t used since 2012 or so, don’t like that they started advertising stuff), Linux Mint (haven’t used in years either, but through no fault of Mint - I changed to something less hassle-free, Gentoo) and Pop!_OS. The latter uses customized Unity, but is working on its’ own desktop environment. I have a feeling that when they’re finished with it, it will be very user friendly (maybe not the FIRST release, but certainly the later ones).
Mint and Pop!_OS are both based on Ubuntu, so you’ll have the vast repository of knowledge that is AskUbuntu to help you with most things.
So get one of those 3 distros and you’ll be good! They come in different flavours (desktop environments), I believe GNOME is the most polished one, KDE (on
Also there’s two new methods to install software - flatpaks and snaps. Flatpaks are considered the better standard and are supported by Linux Mint and Pop!_OS out of the box and Ubuntu… tries to force you to use snaps. Flatpak is decentralized and anyone can host a store (but mostly you just need Flathub, which is configured by default on most distros I believe). Snap is centralized and its’ backend is closed-source, so you’re dependent on Canonical.
Both of these install your software in a sort of sandbox that manages the dependencies - this means there should be no library version conflicts, so it doesn’t matter what the system version of library X is, the application can use whatever version it needs. Should be a way to reduce compatibility issues on your Linux system, I believe - I haven’t tried them yet, mostly because I minimized my kernel to the point where flatpak was complaining about missing some filesystem driver, and I didn’t care too much about getting it to work. Will do it soon though.
As for gaming - Pop!_OS has an image available that comes with nVidia drivers straight out of the box, but the other ones I suggested, will also allow you to install them easily. Steam can be installed via apt (may require configuring a secondary repository) or flatpak (Flathub has it!). Once you have Steam installed, playing Windows games is as easy as checking compatibility on Protondb and seeing if there are any tips on whether you should use a non-default Proton version or add command-line options. But most games without draconian kernel-level anticheats work nowadays. New AAA games that don’t work on default Proton get support fairly quickly on the GloriousEggroll fork of Proton, but that has to be installed manually (I guess nowadays there’s an utility that can handle it too). However, oftentimes, a brand new game will work right away on existing Proton versions too. And sometimes there are regressions, so you may also want to try older Proton versions for some games. But that’s as simple as changing a setup option in the Steam GUI. No terminal-fu required.
Overall, it’s actually fairly pleasant compared to what it was 10 years ago, when you had to configure wine and pray. Proton handles all that for you. If you’re a patient person and can wait a few weeks or months after a game comes out, it’s very good, otherwise it can be a bit hit and miss.
You CAN also play non-steam games using Proton via Steam. I played through the entirety of AC Valhalla that way, by adding Ubisoft launcher as a non-steam App. Completely unsupported so it doesn’t have a special config like it does for officially supported games, but it worked, just had to change the version to something old
This was really helpful and informative. Thanks for taking the time!
I think I’m leaning towards Mint this time based on comments here and my research. Fingers crossed!
I used mint on my laptop and once it was setup I was pleased. The laptop is a 2in1 with a swivel touchscreen and it’s impressive that everything works. Hopefully it works well for you too!
Yeah ignore the people in this thread. I’ve been using Linux for the past year and a half, and it’s the exact same experience for me. And I am definitely more technology literate than the average person.
As much as people want to believe that Linux is easy and hassle-free, it’s not, and it is a long way off. They are biased because they have technical knowledge so they don’t see the problems that the average user would have.
That being said, I do like Linux. There’s a reason why I still use it despite all this. But it’s up to you if it’s worth it.
Edit: Also all the people recommending Linux Mint, in my experience, it was horrible! Very unstable, and not even very customisable. I feel like I’m going crazy. Can someone explain why it’s so popular? Was I doing something wrong?
deleted by creator
This is why Linux fanboys also need to embrace the “use the best tool for the job”. I use Linux, just not on my daily driver gaming PC. But I also wouldn’t use Windows as a hypervisor… they all have their place.
It’s definitely different environment so there are lots of small things that you have to get used to.
In all my years of using Linux I have used about every major distro there is. I still stick to the old and tried advice, if people want hassle free distro, they should use Ubuntu.
I’m not happy with snaps but that’s a minor flaw. It still provides the best out of the box experience for people who just want stuff to work.
Dual-boot can be set up at the installation process automatically. Just make sure you have enough space on your NTFS for the installer to make it smaller and stay alert that you pick the correct partitioning scheme on installation “install Ubuntu alongside Windows”. Steam, Nvidia drivers all just work on Ubuntu. No need to tinker.
I remember I had a date with a girl back in the’10s. We hit it off and got back to her place. Wanted to show her a funny Internet video.
She brought out an ancient laptop that refused to boot and said her Ex had tried to fix it with Linux.
I got it pointed at the right dependencies, she fellated me as it updated.
I think this is my only sexy story that includes Linux.
Well, I guess there was this one time I loaned a lonely neighbor DOS 6 disks.
But, that does not include Linux.
My suspicion is it’s not just your sexy Linux story but the only sexy Linux story.
I mean we all know that recompiling the kernel is practically a replacement for sex
Never been to PenguiCon, I guess.
Is that the furry Linux con?
This is the best blowjob story I’ve read yet lol
Removed by mod
Thing is, linux is not suitable for general crowd.
How do you play Diablo 4 on Linux again? 4K while we’re at it?
Given that you need to install non-native hi rez textures to play Diablo 4 in 4k on Windows, that is not a good test for the “general crowd”.
The moment you get into any kind of high end gaming PCs, you’ve already left “general crowd” territory for most computer users.
Then lets scale down to suit the new narrative.
How do normal users play diablo 4 linux in HD like install and play on Windows?
Install Lutris.
Use the battle net install helper for Lutris.
Launch battle net.
Profit.
It’s like one extra step (install Lutris) compared to Windows. Using Linux doesn’t have to be some archaic mystery and the proliferation of the steam deck is doing wonders at improving the ease of use of all this stuff.
Personally, I don’t really mess with battlenet games at all, but my understanding is that you can open Lutris and install battlenet pretty easily. Then just like on Windows, you install Diablo via their installer, and for most people, it works out of the box.
You can also download battlenet directly and add it as a non steam game to steam and then run it using their Proton compatibility option. This also works on the steam deck.
Look, I’ll be the first one to say that gaming on Linux is not as easy as it can be on Windows. But it is definitely not a bad experience, and hard core gaming is not the majority use case for computers. We have billions of PC users in the world. Under 3 million play Diablo 4. That is a fraction of a fraction of a percent.
Honestly, Heroic and Lutris arguably give a superior experience to inumerable windows installers…when they work. Which is pretty often.
I feel like that is the common trend for me. Linux is the superior experience to Windows in every situation that it works at all.
That includes when an issue arises. I would much prefer to troubleshoot a Linux install than Windows.
deleted by creator
My parents have a hard time clicking a download button and double clicking to install.
There’s no way I can get them to apt-get anything from a command shell.
There’s also GUI package managers. If you chose a normal distro, there should already be one.
How messed up is it that the touchscreen generation is having the same problem.
deleted by creator
Tbh I would probably only bother to use a Linux machine for a media server really, Windows isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, computer games, widespread office and engineering support, general purpose software support and the fact that everyone uses it is the big three reasons why it’s still around, just look at how well Android has managed to stick around.
I think the only way for Linux to get ahead would be to offer easy potential alternatives to all these things, even then they’re only just competing
As someone who has had been around Linux-based people and whenever I have had a single gripe about Windows - it’s this.
I don’t have a hate boner with Linux, I just feel like Linux is a little too much for the average casual user. Everything is fine until they run into a single issue with Linux, if the bewilderment of not having their familiar easy to run programs that they had on Windows wasn’t a turn off for them from the get-go.
I would disagree with “average casual user” or maybe I think about them differently. For me average casual user now is completely fine with Linux distribution like Mint or Ubuntu or similar (or maybe chrome os). And with that they are little bit safer online as they are usual targets and victims of malicious software etc.
I think casual users are type of people completely happy with internet browser, media player, image viewer and just basic software … They are usually satisfied with regular Android phone Wich is enough for everything they do in computer space.
This type of users (like my mother and other members of family) are fine with major Linux distros. They don’t care about OS they use, it means nothing to them.
This is where I draw the line when suggesting Linux to people. If they don’t know and don’t care …Linux is usually fine. If they are aware of what type of os they use or even what version ( talking about Windows) I will suggest Linux only if they are open to it and I’m willing to help and recommend some software alternatives.
No, you don’t say “switch to Linux”. This is an opportunity to be free from the shackles of being the go-to IT support person! If they say they are having computer problems, ask “Is it Linux? No? Sorry, can’t help you”
Switch to Linux! Then you can have problems with Linux.
Windows sucks but no one seems to realize this because they’re too comfortable with how they fix, or work around, the broken stuff repetitively. The repetitiveness of the bad experience becomes “normal” so nothing is amiss. It being broken is “normal” so in their eyes it "just works"TM. It’s almost like a form of brain washing.
It really is akin to people in domestic abuse situations who are just so numb to it they aren’t motivated to get out.
Maybe we should be taking a book from domestic abuse counseling or something?
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
I honestly can’t tell if you are making an ironic joke
No joke at all. It’s literally impossible to talk sense to anyone about how bad Windows is.
I’ve done tech support for 20+ years with the first half being Windows support exclusively and the second half being largely, but not entirely, Linux support. Windows support is much much harder than Linux. Most linux errors are verbose and can be searched to find a wealth of sources of possible fixes. MS errors are nonsensical and usually land you on only one or two other posts that if they don’t work you’re entirely screwed.
I can install Linux in about 15 minutes start to finish including all my commonly installed apps. Windows takes 45min minimum on a good day and if you already know which things are in the drivers DB and which things require third party downloads and installs (and where to get them). That’s just OS and drivers. Software takes much much much longer from all the diverse third party sources. You could maybe cobble together some powershell or something that gets you like 90% of the way to the speed of installing Linux and software. But you’re still going to have some stuff without the API access or CLI inputs that just can’t be scripted.
Battery life and heat production running Linux is much better because it doesn’t spend all your free cycles exfiltrating your data to MS so machines just run faster, smoother, cooler and with better battery life.
At no time do you have to pay for or worry about licenses just trying to install the damn OS. If I had a dime for every person I’ve known in my life running windows unlicensed with that sad black background and that persistent watermark I’d have enough money to afford a single windows home license ($139 Retail).
I could go on. But why when, as noted, no one is going to give it the time of day.
I couldn’t have said it better than this.
I hate Windows for all my soul, and I must use Microsoft stuff at work, lucky me
In the last decade the only serious troubleshooting I’ve had to do is on non-Windows OSes. Including an install of Ubuntu that I blew away because it froze in the middle of an upgrade and couldn’t load into the OS anymore.
So, speaking from personal experience, Windows is what I use when I just want stuff to work. Other OSes are fun when I have time to kill trying to figure out how to do things.
The thing is, many of us know Windows better than our back yard, because it hasn’t changed much in the past 14 years (Win7). What we might call “basic troubleshooting” might be on the same level as a similar issue on Linux if you knew nothing
If a had a nickel for every windows system that I’ve had to reformat due to a botched upgrade I’d have a small jar of nickels.
I’ve been using distros since Kubuntu 6.06. While I have dual boot, Ubuntu MATE is what I use everyday.
A little over a month ago I built a new PC on the AM5 socket platform (modern hardware). The ASUS motherboard has a built-in Wi-Fi adapter. Windows 10? It just works, it simply required installing a driver at most. Ubuntu 22.04? Even lspci doesn’t properly identify the adapter name. Now I have to hope that I can find a driver that I will have to compile and hope it to work.
Unfortunately, GNU/Linux distros still aren’t as convenient as Windows. Blame the hardware manufacturers in this case or whatever but, in any case, the final experience is not smooth.
Half a year ago I started using Ubuntu for work. I hate it. Everything I want to do I can do with windows as well, just easier. Much easier. What I’m left with is a lot of theoretical benefits I’m never going to use and a whole lot of Googleing how to do basic things.
On top of that the system isn’t nearly as stable as Windows. Tons of display issues and even crashes. On a fresh install on a new developer laptop nonetheless. Speak for yourself, but for me the experience on Ubuntu is worse in almost every way.
Unfortunately I’ve definitely been the raven at least once.
That used to be me. Now whenever someone ask me to fix their computer I’m like “no hablo windowes”
About the same when you ask for a good GUI replacement for X and someone replies “just use the command line”, like cheers for that men, not what I’m asking for.
AMEN! I asked recently if there was a good Linux alternative to this program I used in Windows called “Bulk Rename Utility” and i was flooded by people telling me how easy it was to set up a script to do what I want.
Turns out the best alternative is running BRU in Wine.
There almost always powerful existing utilities that can do what you want in linux.
But you have to find them and they have a learning curve. Sometimes that “curve” is a cliff.
Krename is pretty nice
This makes me wonder how powerful a repo platform like gitlab would be if it allowed people to suggest software ideas and have people make them. In this instance a simple GUI wrapper for bulk rename command line would be sufficient but I would bet there’s millions of things like that, not world changing software just nice qol stuff
I’d have recommended KRename personally. It uses some programming-esque stuff (format specifiers for stuff), but it’s not exactly difficult to do advanced stuff with it.
I tried to do something very similar recently and every solution I found involved using the command line with regular expressions. Fuck I hate regex. It would literally be faster for me to manually rename the files than to debug the regex until it works.
Let me tell you about the wonderful world of pipes
Wahoo!
No need for a script, just use
rename.
I still don’t understand why there isn’t a terminal-gui (you know, those text but graphical utilities) for basic stuff like mounting a network share. Why do I still need to manually edit fstab?!?
“Why even use a DE? Try a WM like openbox”
Well, because a lot of things are simplified with DE functionality, and not everyone has the same preferences…
The WM folks can be obnoxious lol. But it comes from a place of passion and love for the ecosystem so it’s not bad.
I do have to vouch for sometimes the command line is easier, not with everything but sometimes. Like my VPN sometimes it’s a little slow on the uptake and finding a server all that nonsense but I can also just have a few taps away at the command line and bing bang boom it’s done.
Based 😁
Sometimes what you want to hear and what you need to hear, are not the same thing.
Like wanting to hear “this is the Year of the Linux Desktop” and needing to hear “this is the 27th consecutive Year of the Linux Desktop that failed”?
The Linux desktop is superior, it doesn’t matter what year it is.
And yet people stay away from it in droves.
Fancy that.
Sounds like someone is hearing what he wants to hear, not what he needs to.
And yet people stay away from it in droves.
Ad Populum. I don’t consider the opinions of morons.
Sounds like someone is hearing what he wants to hear, not what he needs to.
Reaching now, huh? Swing and a miss.
Of course I know him, that’s me!
Why? So I can have more trouble? :P
I’ve been trying to switch to Linux for 30 years now and am still trying to figure out permissions. Best of luck!
Can’t have permission issues if you
777everythingI did that one time, it turns out that if everything is 777 major faults will occur due to security measures (see: sudo not working anymore)
You get a rwx!
You get a rwx!
You get a rwx!
Does that make it crash into an ocean? /s
Permissions is my favorite cheese. I enjoy some on my pasta dinner every night I get the chance to. Some days Im like 750 with my permission, maybe even 755 when we got guests over, but when I’m feeling hungry i bring out the 700 permission cheese
Hmm, is James Bond fully accessible to others but not himself or his family/friends?
If you figured out how logging into any site works, you can figure out permissions. Claiming that after “trying to switch” for 30 years and still are unable to figure out permissions means either you are lying or not trying to switch. And mind you not wanting to use it or not trying to switch is fine, but making mountains out of mole hills is just disingenuous.
deleted by creator
