It always feels like it’s someone’s hobby and not a mature product.

Fixing nearly anything is digging through a text file that might follow a standard but never the same standard as the last text file.

I’ve been using it exclusively as my desktop for over 20 years. Does it have flaws and shortcomings? Sure. So have Windows and Mac. What system does not have issues?

Does it fit your use case? Who knows? Just try it and be the judge. If it doesn’t work, just keep using whatever you’re using, no harm done.

All you need is a USB stick, some curiosity and some time. It’s not like it’s a lifetime commitment or something. Unless, of course, you enjoy it… then you are doomed.

the vast majority of my work software is windows/mac (although the expensive software I wish I could afford just added linux support in 2022). that’s the big one for me. on a smaller note i haven’t checked on my games since, i mean if i’m going to have to run a windows box i might as well take advantage of the plusses, but i understand there is significantly worse compatibility on linux.

Linux seems catered for the most basic users (grandma) and extremely advanced users (Linux enthusiasts, programmers). I’m in the middle where I’m pretty good on a computer but not that into the tweaking and tuning. I don’t think my demographic is catered to very well.

There’s a LOT of super cool stuff on Linux but a lot of it is buried on GitHub and needs configuration to work right. 1, I don’t have time to find that stuff and 2, I don’t care enough usually to make it work even though I typically could with sufficient effort.

“It’s different! It is not what I learned to use!”

I can give you my experience so far, seeing as the common criticisms of Linux usually boil down to unwillingness to try it as well as kernel level anticheat and Adobe products, and I…honestly don’t miss either of them, but I’m mostly a dev and a single player games enjoyer, so not much to miss, really.

The speakers on my Razer blade laptop (running EndeavourOS, btw) stopped working randomly, but I’m not convinced it wasn’t my fault since I did have to work on the laptop internals for unrelated reasons and might have screwed something up.

My webcam on my desktop, a Logitech Brio, has been acting up as of a couple of weeks on Bazzite, where the microphone keeps kinda dying and I have to unplug/re-plug the webcam to have a working mic. Also the audio quality on my Sony XM5s keeps changing to shitty quality, mostly when I do the re-plugging of the webcam, but it’s happened at random times before. Gotta go change the codec on the audio settings every now and then due to it.

Monitor brightness can sometimes behave weirdly, not going back to a brighter setting after auto-dimming.

Games with kernel anticheat don’t let me play online.

This has mostly been it, to be honest. There’s a microscopic learning curve for Bazzite since it’s immutable, so I have flatpaks for most stuff, and “figure it out” for anything else, but other than that, it’s just better than Windows ever was. If you run into an issue, you’re most likely going to be able to solve it with a quick online search or by consulting the eldritch hallucinations of OpenAI or of your choosing.

@[email protected] here’s a brief list, in no particular order and based pretty much entirely on my own opinions and experience.

1. you have to learn a little bit about what happens behind the scenes sometimes. for example, if you don’t know what distro packages are or what flatpak is (or the reasons behind each of them, honestly) then installing apps kinda sucks at first.

2. you can end up installing a package thinking it is the official one, when in fact it is some variety of third-party. generally this doesn’t really hurt anything but it can (look up fedora flatpak).

3. sometimes cool features get stuck in limbo because none of the people who want them know how to code

4. sometimes cool features get stuck in limbo because of politics (in-project politics, not what you probably thought at first)

5. it can be hard to figure out if something is good or if the people reccomending it are just trying to help a new user find something easy and, since they don’t actually use it and haven’t for a while, don’t know that it kind of sucks now (I’m thinking of ubuntu here but it happens with a lot of stuff, distro or otherwise)

6. all the damn tribalism

7. drivers are hell on most distros

8. app availabilty on non-.deb systems

9. some apps refuse to look native (gtk apps on kde, qt apps on gnome, anything made by a mac user for some reason, every browser fighting tooth and nail to default to windows titlebar icons)

10. all the damn tribalism

For me if an application isn’t on the pop-shop then its very hard to install, I’ve had people tell me to just not download things from the internet, but when the application I need isn’t on the pop-shop or the repos its a non-starter.

I’ve had loads of problems installing software and making it work.

it’s made out of like a thousand different independently maintained hobby projects

1. Just installed Debian, no wifi

2. Lots more stuff just like #1, such as my 10 year old and 3 month old Logitech wireless mice weren’t detected, and support for them is (fortunately) only available from a third party, which I found by searching the web for an answer.

I could give you pages of why Linux doesn’t compare to Windows for the desktop, which I’d follow with where it really shines - as a server for all kinds of things. It’s so good for specific tasks that even VMware replaced their own Workstation virtualization with Linux KVM.

For Gnome there isn’t an easy way to add programs to the application menu. And yes I know tools exist to do this but it should be easier. Other then that I’m pretty good with Linux.

I’m using Linux Mint for my daily driver for about 5 years. It works great with no ads!! I’m not a gamer and Libre Office works well for me so no significant problems with software. I also do some basic python programming on it. The more complex command line stuff takes a while to figure out but Mint has been great!

Forced to use the command line like you’re programming for ZX Spectrum in 1982

I’ve been using Linux Mint for the last 1–2 months (or so) and one of the things I miss the most is how on Windows, games just run (typically). Now, on Linux, one of the very first things I do upon wanting to play a new game is check the ProtonDb page. I am not always able to play the game I want. There’s often not even any ProtonDb page for a lot of older games, notably in my case Jazz Jackrabbit. (For example, even though the Jazz Jackrabbit Collection on GOG has a Linux installer, for some reason it won’t run.)

Make no mistake, I ain’t never going back to Windows for my personal use if I have anything to say about it. The sense of personal security I feel from not having my every move be captured, scrutinized, and sold by Microsoft is way too important to me. If I can have that feeling of relative comfort by forgoing a few games, it seems like a worthwhile price to me.

Nevertheless, the “plug-and-play” nature of games designed for Windows is something I miss.