Asklemmy

Who gave up?

I gave up because sound stopped working every time I rebooted.

I loved Linux at work when I had a sysadmin. Shit worked great. At home I started using Linux and despite some driver issues, it was mostly good. Then I started working for myself (so no more sysadmin). Some Linux update totally screwed up my computer and I lost a lot of work. It also became too much work to try and configure the apps that I needed to use for work. Switched to windows and it's been pretty smooth sailing. Still boot up Linux now and again for this or that, but I don't trust it enough as a daily driver for my needs.

I love Linux. But I got so exasperated with system updates breaking X-Windows and dropping me into the console with no clue what to do, for some time I intentionally deferred the updates.

I wanted a stable daily driver, so in 2015 I switched from Linux to ChromeOS. Now I'm back to Linux with the Crostini container of ChromeOS and Raspberry Pi OS on a Raspberry Pi 400.

Gave up because of hardware issues. Laptops had fan problems with it on, the grub wouldn't install right, a lot of the good distros would show up as black before or after installation. My latest attempt with a decade old iMac made the screen die after less than half an hour upon each reboot. Most of these computers should work very well with Linux but they never did for me. Back then it was a matter of just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

For me, a few things keep me from sticking with it. The community used to be a problem but it's not as bad as it used to be. Seeking help online regarding anything related to network services are still rife with the "git gooder" useless fucks. Two months ago I was told, "you shouldn't be doing this if you need a guide." I was trying to deploy a Lemmy instance... Using the guide provided by Lemmy devs... That they recommended for beginners... FML with a curling iron...

Another big one for me is access to solutions. I have never encountered a problem with windows that I couldn't find a solution or at least an explanation for. But I frequently find issues with linux that I am apparently the first to ever experience.

And lastly, it seems like not using a terminal at all to do completely normal things is even remotely possible. Powershell allows all kinds of things that would be otherwise burdensome or impossible, but none of those are required for use. On the flip side, it feels like everything I want to do in Linux tends to require me to copypasta a terminal command, open the terminal, and run. Why? Why is there no "control panel" style settings tools? Why is every setting scattered to the .conf fucking wind? My kingdom for a distro that I don't have to nano my fucking way through.

Software compatibility??? That is a problem I would love to have when it comes to trying to switch OSs. That would mean that everything else is already working and only MS products are acting up. Also... who switches to Linux but still requires MS Office??? Why does this person exist? Lol

Anyway. Haven't tried the switch in a few years and it seems like things have changed a lot in that time comparatively to the preceding years, so I may be a bit out of touch. But that's why I quit last time. I would love to not need windows ever again. But my worst windows day is still better than my best Linux day.

Because it's not Windows and it's not MacOS. Yes, it's an operating system, but what people are comparing against are their expectations. I dont expect a program that's not written or designed for my particular distribution or operating system to work. Now, in some cases it turns out that it does and sometimes it works better then under Microsoft, but that shouldn't be your expectation. The software that is made for it runs as expected.

Working hardware is usually step one. If your hardware isn't supported then of course you're in for a rough ride.

About 23 years ago I couldn’t make it boot when I plugged in a USB hub.
And since, my life just became too invested in Microsoft/Adobe products to be able to use something else as a daily driver.

But I “use” Linux every day - whether it’s the PiHole, the NAS, the server that runs my 3D printer, or WSL in Windows PowerShell. I’m about to spin up my own OPNSense router, too.
Weird trajectory on WSL - I learned Unix commands using MacOS terminal for a previous job, but I generally abhor windows command line (it just doesn’t work with my brain). So now when I use commend line in windows, I default to *nix.

It sort of works out that I use Macs for personal use, Windows for work, and Linux to run the systems of my life.

I've been having this weird issue with wifi where it will just switch itself off (shown in NetworkManager as "no available connections") and not allow me to restart the OS normally. It's like the driver is crashing or something. Hardware isn't the issue, otherwise it would have happened on Windows. Drivers can be an issue, as NVIDIA users know too well. Games can be a bit choppy on Linux if you use ray-tracing, probably due to drivers as well as the intermediary processes for getting games to work like DXVK. This was my experience with Cyberpunk 2077. Game modding can be an issue due to .NET not being fully there yet, especially if you have games that are glitchy and require stability mods for a good experience. (e.g. any Bethesda game that exists.)

The only thing keeping me from full-timing Windows is the fact that Windows 11 just plain sucks. I feel like I have to use it, rather than want to use it. Compared to even a bog-standard KDE setup, the Windows experience is miserable. As for Mac, I have a Hackintosh but Apple really loves to render everything on the GPU side and it's chugging my ol' GPU. Maybe I need to go get an M-series MacBook this year.

LibreOffice is an an amazing replacement for the MS-Office suite.

I hadn't learned enough about how to use it back then.