Normal People Don't Use Linux For a Reason
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- čas přidán 8. 02. 2024
- Today, I talk about why normal people don't use Linux, even if we think they should. And also, why we should stop assuming we're all capable or willing to use Linux.
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I use it where it makes sense. Home servers and routers. Not so much for gaming and family computers. Though I guess it depends on how you classify Android and Nvidia Shield/GeForce Now.
great video buddy ,fun fact I am one of those people who watch the linux channels despite not daily driving it and out of all the linux people i watch ( DT , Broady...etc ) , YOU managed to say EVERYTHING that I'd say If I were to make the video myself...
I used Ubuntu many years back. What are the "pain points" of Linux I've experienced? (1) Printer driver doesn't auto-install. Had to download a tarball and enter commands into the terminal to get it to work; (2) Limited software. I'm taking the time to learn the software that's available and works well on Linux now; (3) DVD Video burning software bare, basic and almost useless. Thankfully, I no longer burn to physical media anymore; (4) Limited video editors at the time. With Olive & DaVinci Resolve now available, this will make returning to Linux much better. Overall, I miss Linux and am going to return, but with Linux Mint this time, since it makes Ubuntu better.
i play a lot of bethesda games, and i like to mod my games, and one of the things that are making me think twice into getting with linux is i have heard you can't really mod very well on linux, i want to use all the same modern conveniences i use on windows with linux, i don't care about the program having another name, but it absolutely must work out of the box for me to consider using it and making the move to linux to make the move.
but linux is also hard to get into for many other reasons, i know very basic things even on my windows pc, but to make the move to linux i feel like i need to go back to school to make something like that to work.
if linux needs anything, it needs convenience and easy to set up for the average person to make the move, without these things it's kind of dead in the water.
recently i have started using windows and i want to make the move, but again some things have to be set in place before i make the move, and windows is giving up on win 10 support in 2025, so hopefully i have moved at that point, because i really don't want win 11 or god forbit 12.
i wouldn't mind having 2 separate pc's for other uses, so if i have my windows pc, it's for work but if i want to play my games i want to play on linux, but the issue is so many games that i want to play don't have all the features i love that only existed on windows and never on linux, so it's like this never ending cycle of linux never meeting the standards to make what i want happen or to become a reality that i want.
Most people are not (1) concerned about privacy, freedom, etc. (2) informed of alternatives, (3) technical. One of these is enough to block you from using Free Software. It's a miracle that Linux' market share is even 2%
i’m all of these things. and i do plan on switching to linux with minimal computer experience.
There's a 4th one, *TIME*. I work 60-80 hour weeks as in the dev & devops space for the past decade (therefore quite good in using linux on the non-desktop usage), and have major family obligations.
There's a 5th one *Critical Application Availability*: "Alternatives" are vast majority of the time NOT an option. If the place you work at relies on applications and toolsets that arent available in Linux, you CANNOT work. There will always be data and formatting conflicts if you even get that far. If you want to collab you're fucked. Especially with more advanced scientific, engineering, finance, BSS/OSS application/tooling.
I love linux, but that doesnt mean I can sacrifice my job stability and/or family to fully transition my windows setup (as much as i hate it) to linux. Pretty sure a good amount of people who would want to switch to Linux fall far more into a mix of Time and Application availability camp than anything else
@@Zam432F Why then? Is Windows such a pain, that you are willing to learn a new OS? Good luck!
I care about all these but i still use windows. Because everything just works on windows.
you use someone else made software and think...there is no privacy even with linux. open website they know you opened it LOL
It's the same reason why not everyone is into cars. People just want a tool that works.
As a repeat relapsing Windows user the main reason why i always switch back to Windows is not that the basic stuff is too difficult to use, or that the concept of using a command line is too scary, or that the GUI is not "Windows like enough". I am perfectly fine with Linux when everything works or when there is a very clear well documented solution to a problem that is a mere google search away.
What causes me to go back to Windows are the times when there isn't a clear, well documented solution accessible by a simple Google query. Like when Pulse audio or something just refuses to stop doing something weird on my hardware(like crackling), and all the solutions are either so old that all the commands to fix it have changed or the person giving the solution forgets to mention that i need to install something else before the used commands work, so a newb like me will just get confused as no matter how carefully i read the instructions, there will be some new error which i now too have to google to figure out what it is and how to fix it. Creating this problem cascade where fixing a problem leads you to first having to fix two other problems, and the two of them have the problems of their own to tackle as well.
Eventually after a day of trying to fix it, i get frustrated and impatient and begin copy pasting random commands into the terminal that somewhat are supposed to maybe fix a similar issue, uninstalling things to try out an older version of the thing i wasn't even aware existed 10 seconds ago until this mystery reddit post mentioned it. Sooner rather than later something gets bricked and i whip out the Windows 10 installation USB image.
Core of the problem is not the question whether there is a solution to a problem, but that the solution needs to be universal and up-to-date with clear instructions that do not skip steps. If the instructions do not work on a fresh Linux install, they are not much use to a newb.
@@DruidEnjoyer so your issues with Linux are specifically those elements of WINDOWS that were recently introduced in Linux.
ironically i totally agree.
the way i use linux is complete removal of Pulse audio, System-D network manager amd other windowisms
@@sillysad3198 Pretty much. I'd rather type out 100 commands if those 100 commands are guaranteed to work if i follow the instructions to a letter, than scour 50 reddit posts and forum threads for the five commands that maybe, probably will fix the problem. No amount of transparent animated GUI elements or one-click GUI installed programs in the App Center is going to make me stay on Linux, if i can't find the solution to fix my audio issues or to some similar problem of equal fundamental importance.
I’m currently fighting a multiple week battle just like how @@DruidEnjoyer is describing. I’m really trying to finally go completely open source. I use Emacs for crying out loud. Surely I can do this. But I’m at the point of giving up. I can’t keep being reduced to poorly or non-functioning machines. So do I spend a couple grand on new hardware that I hope will have better luck with the endless Linux issues (risky!) or do I just go buy a new Mac (closed source)?
What I probably need is a Linux setup that works like how old iPhones were. Ridiculously restricted in what you could do but within those boundaries, things that did work worked really well.
@@sillysad3198 PulseAudio serves a very useful purpose because without it, you can't share the audio device among multiple apps, or mix the output volumes of apps independently. The Windows equivalent wasn't introduced until Windows Vista and both Windows and Linux are copying Core Audio, introduced with macOS 10.0.
I've been using a Raspberry Pi 400 as an Internet terminal and Pi OS has a lot of customization to make it less painful, like configuring Chromium and Firefox to disable all video codecs except for H.264 in CZcams since it's the only hardware-accelerated codec (and HEVC, I believe), and "raspi-config" for Pi-specific hardware settings. I had to use the latter to switch from PipeWire to PulseAudio because I want to run my DAC at 24-bit 192 kHz, which PulseAudio has no problem with, and whose config file I know how to edit to increase the sample rate and size, but adding an additional layer between the USB audio driver and my Linux apps that all use PulseAudio, for copying and buffering and converting samples to the "new way of doing things" makes no practical sense. It's this inability to refrain from "innovating" in places that just add complexity and don't solve real problems that feeds into the fragmentation and relative difficulty in finding the correct way to fix a Linux issue online, imho.
You are spot on Matt. I was an IT educator for 15 years teaching “normal” people to use their computers in a healthcare environment. Many people use computers because they have to, but they just want it to work and do not know, or want to know how to troubleshoot.
I wasn’t able to go completely to Linux until I retired because I had to work within the Windows ecosystem. I am enjoying learning Linux now that I have a choice.
I enjoy your CZcams channel and your podcast. I watch/listen to all of them!.
I tried to convert an IT department to use Linux tools, "Load balancer, LDAP, VM's for specific applications", mind you this is a team of IT Support needing to use Linux. Every member said no, because the would need to "sudo" to have elevated privileges. 😄😄
The simple truth after decades of IT work is that some people are into tech and some people are not. Some people only want a computer for its function period, they don't care about looking under the hood or learning how it works, they have little to no interest in a learning curve. I am the same way with things like vehicles, I don't give a rat's nest about the motor specs or even looks as long and I can get from point A to B. My brother knows vehicles and machinery like I know computers, we have diametrical interests. I still get frustrated with Linux because of the 'ghost in the machine' issues that come up. I used my admin password to do an update the other day in Manjaro, after the update was done I couldn't get my password to work any more during the session, I kept getting a wrong password try again error. I typed it in a plaintext editor just to make sure that I wasn't having a stroke and typing it wrong. I rebooted the computer and it worked perfectly again. I have no clue what happened and despite searching I couldn't find the answer. (I suspect something in the update caused the issue)
I know people that buy a computer and make Zero adjustments. They use it for Email, type a letter, photos, and watching CZcams. Not even font size.
The only issue in the described issue is Manjaro
actually if hardware would be in shops with linux preinstalled, probably many would not even realize what they are using
There are more Arch based distros than Planets in the Universe and you chose the one maintained by idiots that dial back system clocks to renew ssl certificates, ddos'ed the same software repository twice, and buy personal items from donation money. No wonder you get problems.
I have many computers with different versions of Linux for different purposes. I use Manjaro on a studio computer@@justanaveragebalkan
in 2013 I was running Ubuntu 12lts and one day my volume was reduced to 50% and that was the new cap. spent 14 hours figuring out how to get my volume to go over 50%. that wasn't the only time I spent a long time learning to do something I shouldn't have to learn, just the most insane and ridiculous
Windows only heard my Rode mic faintly. Tried official drivers, third party drivers, reinstalling default drivers... nothing helped. I had to use a third party tool to get serious volume out of it, and that frequently lost the driver it used (weekly or so) and required a computer restart to fix.
When I installed PopOS last year, it worked out of the box. Perfect volume, no issues, done.
Absolutely this is not always the case, but for a long time Windows had been getting worse. Opening Office now takes half a minute, opening existing tools takes ages... in Linux I was staggered how quickly those things opened on the same hardware.
@@lumeronswiftto be fair, I've had my fair share of trouble with hardware on windows... Mics are a great example.
but generally speaking, things that worked yesterday (on windows) will continue to work today. I can't promise that with old linux.. And the conceit of the populous is the general understanding of what it has been not what it is.
that's the problem that's being pointed out in this video in th first place. it's not nessesarily that linux is bad it's that it's not one thing and it's not as simple as windows in many cases and the blind corners, techno-babble and lack of real actual established commitment to compatibility.
The fact remains, I wasted 14 hours on a trivial and foolish pursuit of higher volume and I never had to use that knowledge again.. I didn't grow or become better adept at fixing these issues. I just became more jaded.. that knowledge is worthless today if I had retained it anyway. I'm not even 100% sure what fixed the problem as I'd just started throwing solutions at the wall at that point.
@@poleve5409 the main issue with the forums is it's coin toss between being helped and being attacked because you needed to ask the question. The community is downright toxic in some regards
@@flotowncomputerguy6243 This, and then they try to gaslight you into thinking you should have expected whatever garbage just happened to your system out of the blue, and it's actually your fault for continuing to use your system like a normal person instead of anticipating every breaking change and diving into system configuration for a half hour to an hour.
There's so much preventing Linux for non tech people. First is Microsoft office. When I show Libreoffice and thunderbird, people looks at me like I'm 20 years late to modern ui. Second is hardware issue. The webcam embedded in my laptop is so tied to windows that I it will take years before it'll be supported in Linux. Last issue is that unless you're into tech you don't see added values into Linux. Your computer was shipped with a working os so why bother changing?
Exactly 👍
Mine came with win 11 pro and I wanted to change it to see how good it was Linux on it (kubuntu 23.10) and wow beautiful and all BUT another WOW it just freezes and all devices are not working properly 🥲😔
So now as for today in back to win 11 pro 😢
I’ll wait a year maybe to check again it a miracle happens 🥹
As a person who is on the ledge and about to install Mint 21.3, I know that I'm likely going to face some pretty retarded design/coding choices from the Linux makers. It'll be some shit that could have been REAL easy for them to make a simple, straightforward process, but instead, it'll be some convoluted shit that takes WAAAAAY longer to do than it should, and this issue is mostly caused by the fact Linux is built by Simpsons Comic Book Store-guy coding edgelords who think that it's completely reasonable to expect someone to solve some pythagorum theorum bullshit down to the 26th decimal point without a calculator in order to install a fkn program...
"people looks at me like I'm 20 years late to modern ui."
Well, rightfully I guess.
Thunderbird is NOT a good substittue for folks using outlook. Honestly I'm still looking for a good one. The calendaring features tied into outlook and how well they sync on shared calendars is decades ahead thunderbird.
With O365 being there, this pain point can be bought around.. with a subscription to software... kind of antithetical to linux though yeah?
The fingerprint scanner on my laptop is unsupported. Sound is hit or miss (works in Mint, not in Debian.. go figure)... laptops are just a rough field to get linux running on some times.
I have a surface pro 8 with lte support, I would be impressed if I could install linux on that and have it work at all in the next 5 years. But I do think most people could use the web versions of office programs, I have to for work.
I think the Statement "Win32 is the most stable Platform for Games on Linux" says it all. I think the problem with Linux is that they always want to improve everything from a developer perspective or the get some fringe features to work. Like the whole X11 Wayland Transition. Yes Wayland is better in many ways and one day might be for the end user, but these things are gonna appreciated by 1% of the users while 99% of the users would are gonna loose their marbles if their Distro moving to Wayland causes 1 Feature in one of their Programms they use to not work anymore.
Just the other day I read a post about someone wanting to basically write a new BlueZ - the Linux Bluetooth Stack because there are some use cases where BlueZ is doing weird stuff and its hard to maintain, ... the usual stuff. But this again will mean that so much stuff that relies on BlueZ will need to be ported and tested and you know for a fact that this will break a bunch of peoples workflow who then will say "Fuck it, Back to Window!"
yep. going for features that only a developer would want. is called Developer Creep. part of the problem is that the features that users actually commonly want, are not that visible to developers
Actually you don't have to give up X11 because of Wayland, as you can just use Xwayland, which is a full featured X11 server, that instead of directly rendering to the screen, renders into a Wayland screen buffer, so that the result of the rendering can be displayed on a Wayland desktop. This is not even noticeable performance wise, as drawing the Wayland buffer to display in the end is lightning fast (it's all done by the GPU in hardware). And Xwayland mixes fine with native Wayland apps.
Further it's not like other systems wouldn't have done such a transition as well. Both Windows and macOS had a similar transition in the past, they just did it way earlier. macOS did it with macOS 10.2 when Quartz Extreme replaced Quartz and Windows did it with Vista when Aero replaced the classical Windows graphic stack. The reason why you did not notice anything is that both systems have one default UI API that all the apps on those systems use. There is only one! Linux on the other hand... some apps used X11 directly, some apps used Qt, some apps used GTK, some apps used . Sure, there are GTK/QT builds also for Windows and macOS but those still use the system default API in the end, they are just wrappers on top. And by making sure that the system default API works the same after the transition, old apps would not even notice anything of that transition.
Wayland on the other hand makes things even worse for Linux, because it no longer offers any base UI API (in X11, there was at least the X11 API, that other APIs could build upon), instead every UI framework now must do everything on its own, which would be fine if there only was only one UI API on Linux, but now Qt, GTK, Xwayland, must each implement all the functionality on their own, that has been implemented only once in Windows and macOS by the vendor of those OSes. And if their implementation do not agree 100% on how to draw something (e.g. how to render fonts), you get an inconsistent UI experience (e.g. the same font might look slightly different in a Qt app as it does in a GTK app).
Yup. I have said this for years that so many developers waste their time and resources in creating innumerable distros, package managers, DEs etc instead of focusing on making apllicati9ns great. When I got interested in Linux around 2008, I loved tinkering around but never used it for my primary needs. Still don't. From .Deb. rpm to now those plus flatpack and snap and God knows what else, it's just such a mess. On windows one has .exe and .msi and that's it.
As a photographer there are zero good photo editing applications which can offer the quality and features of Lightroom or Capture One. There is Darktable but it's one of the most horrible UI/UX applications ever. I mean cmon.
Even font rendering on some distros is horrible even today. This is the problem with thinking like a dev and not a end user. Didn't and will never understand why so many good devices waste their time with making forks, not caring about UI as much as commercial products.
@@xcoder1122 you make it sound like because of xwayland there's already perfect backwards compatibility, but I'd bet for someone migrating to Wayland there's still going to be be issues relating to drag n drop between applications and keyboard shortcuts, meaning they're going to perceive their workflow has been broken for no apparent reason
@@HamidKarzaiDrag'n drop between two X11 apps both using Xwayland works exactly the same way as if they both were to use any other X11 server, after all it's all handle by the X11 clipboard protocol. Drag'n drop between an Xwayland app and a native Wayland app may not work but then the Wayland app or the framework (GTK, Qt) is too blame, because Xwayland correctly implements the Wayland clipboard protocol; which is again one of the downsides of Wayland as I already mentioned: There is no central piece of code handling that, every app or app framework must implement Wayland clipboard functionality on its own and they must ensure they do it correctly and if done incorrectly, it may still work fine within the same app framework but then it won't work well across different frameworks. Wayland is just a protocol, Wayland does not provide any functional implementation, it just tells apps how they should implement stuff. Same is true with the X11 protocol, it's also just a protocol, but the X11 server is a central implementation that was providing the same functionality to all apps using it, thus freeing every app from re-implement everything itself. But issues like that are not a core problem that cannot be fixed and they are also not a design flaw in the Wayland protocol, as the protocol on its own is sane, those are just teething troubles that every new system has in the beginning, until all frameworks do it correctly and until app developers that don't want to use a framework (you don't have to use Qt or GTK for your UI app) have at least settled on using the same library that provides Wayland clipboard functionality for them.
As for input handling, Xwayland just receives your keypresses from your Wayland compositor. You just need to ensure that your keyboard mappings are set correctly in that compositor, which gets all input events from libinput and that is no different to the X11 server from X.org, which in 99% of all cases also got input events only from libinput, as all native input drivers were pretty much deprecated for years, except some for exotic tablets as libinput doesn't support those tablets. Other than that, you may have to configure Xwayland appropriately as Xwayland is a Xserver after all, meaning it understands the same config option as any Xserver does, including those that influence keyboard mapping. If you make no changes here, you get the default mapping, which may not be the same as what you had before if you had some customized mapping before but for me keyboard shortcuts in Xwayland work the same as they do when I run the same app in X11.
I'm a developer and every time I tried Linux it caused me so much frustration I just went back to my "noob" Windows environment because it just works. Supposedly Linux Dev environment is meant to be much better but the Desktop Environment setup/configuration nearly killed me lol. Windows 11 is becoming increasingly annoying though, so I think it's eventually going to push me back into Linux. To me it seems like Linux suffers from the issue where you need to spend so much time learning/configuring the tool instead of just using the tool. I just wanna login, do some coding, do some gaming, and never have to touch the OS
the only tool you need on windows is Putty.
just connect to your server and then your windows "just works!"
As a long time linux user, your experience sounds completely alien to me. Other than hardware support, I always found the defaults pleasant enough. When stuff worked, it just worked and kept on working. I haven't had issues with hardware support in over a decade, either.
To me it seems tgat when people complain about having to fiddle around with their system and use the terminal, it's because they are doing things on Linux that they either can't or would never consider on windows.
@@Lestibournes I've forgotten most of the troubles now, but a few basic ones I still remember are: I have an image smaller than my screen resolution. I wanted it as my desktop background to fill up the whole background. Probably just called "stretch" or "centered stretch" or something. Anyway it kept repeating to fill available space so the image displayed multiple times. People on discord said I had to resize the image in an image editor to be the same as my screen resolution. I also couldn't set different scaling levels on each monitor, they had to be the same. Plus there was only options for 100%, 150%, 200%, but I wanted 125% and couldn't understand how to set that
For the image, it should just be an option in the setting for the wallpaper.
For the scaling, tough beans. It didn't work, and might still not work.
Neither of these requires fiddling. One is easy while the other is impossible. If it was Windows you would probably just give up on something that doesn't work, but because it's Linux you tried anyway. That's my point. Linux makes users feel empowered to do more, but then they complain about being required to do more when they could just not do more.
@@Lestibournes How's this: Installed Debian 12, you know the distro known to be really "stable", on a system that's around 3-4 years old. It's got a GTX1660 Super in it, an Nvidia-card. I installed the driver exactly as the Debian-Wiki instructed. Now the system won't boot and I have to go back and find out what went wrong, for something as basic as a graphics driver install. Last time something like that happened on any of my machines running Windows was with XP...
No OS can gain broad traction on the desktop without broad preinstalls. It has nothing to do with marketing, monopoly, conspiracy, toxicity, anti-cheat, or anything of the sort. Normal people don't install operating systems and never will. If 30 years of frustration and the Steam Deck's success haven't convinced you, nothing will.
My tech virgin friend (he didn't use windows, mac or anything) learned linux as his first os and now he is the linux tech support of his class.
linux is a pretty good way to lose tech verginity lol
@@no_name4796 XD starting hardcore
protect him, at all times. he might be our last hope.
@@vaisakhkm783You say that but when I actually gave Linux a real proper chance, I found it to be really easy to pick up on. I find it easier to figure out when something is wrong and deal with it on Linux than with Windows. Even though nowadays DEs are much more fleshed out, I still find myself spending an inordinate amount of time in the terminal because controlling everything via keyboard really turns out to be a lot faster than using a mouse.
@@iWillAvert ofcouse.. that's why i sticked with linux... and terminal is intuitive than any gui, but i still give points to windows for keyboard accessibility....
i use twm in nixos... i am all in on hyproptimised keyboard driven system.. but once my work system's (windows) trackpad broke and i was in a different place so i didn't had mouse, i managed to use it exclusively with keyboard with a lot of tab, and as a dev, i know that level of accessibility really hard to pull of and linux accessibility sucks...
but everything else about window sucks hard
I didn't mean to offend anyone by using the word Normal. I just meant non-Linux Nerds.
You should've went all in and say normies with a smug cheesy grin like Luke Smith lol
it’s ok. we knew what you meant.
the word "normal" is scuffed anyway - in maths a normal is a direction that is perpendicular to a vector, i.e. it goes in a completely DIFFERENT direction to what you're comparing it to. really we should be saying parallel (not just cause then we could call normies "the parallised")
Too late, reported.
Normies
I'm someone who's grown up on Windows almost exclusively, but I've been doing passive research into Linux for the past year or so- so this opinion will be from someone on the outside looking in.
Linux is hard to describe, because it's open source so realistically it can be whatever anyone wants it to be that has the know-how to make a distro. Yet regardless of that, it seems to have garnered a reputation for being "the technically advanced OS" that's only for nerds who love coding and tinkering with their computer.
But the thing is that Linux really doesn't have to be like that- I've heard stories of tech support people that like to set up more elderly or technically illiterate folks on a very locked-down Linux computer as it allows them to check their email and browse the web easily with no annoying technical issues/updates/ads, and that's all most older people want their computer for anyway. Likewise, there are distros like Pop OS or Mint that emulate the Windows/Mac experience as closely as possible. Even Steam OS is a very locked down idiot-proofed form of Arch, the distro widely considered by most to be the most technically advanced. Yes Linux has its issues, like gaming on a Linux computer being a royal pain until very recently with the release of Proton, but it shouldn't be hard to get something working that meets your expectations if you really try. So why don't more people use/switch to Linux? The reason everyone likes to points fingers at is lack of support- eg. the Adobe suite of products, CAD software, etc. not working on Linux without significant hardship. But that can be traced to Linux's low market share, if they were to become a big player in the market then those software developers would have no choice but to support Linux.
So where's the heart of the issue? I personally believe it's the Linux community itself, or at least a subsection of it. It's no secret that Linux has always been preferred by the more tech savvy and coders of the world, but in a lot of cases (not all, but a lot) this turns into elitism and exclusionary behavior. I've seen tons of people who tried to switch to Linux get shunned on tech help forms for "asking stupid questions" that "they could have looked at the manual for", but that kind of behavior drives "normies" and even relatively tech-savvy people away from adopting it. It makes switching to Linux even more intimidating than it already is.
There also seems to be this obstinance from a lot of Linux communities (especially places like the Arch community) to making their OS more accessible. Rather than change things to make them easier to understand, it for some reason falls onto the user to figure it out themselves, and if they don't like it they can just "try a different distro" or "go back to Windows", all because they don't want to have to read a manual just to know how to use their computer. The release of the Steam Deck shows just how bad this is via comparison- as a good example, Decky, the most popular mod loader for the Steam Deck, went from needing to be installed via the command line to being a one click binary executable file, likely because a lot of windows/console users weren't comfortable opening the command line and they obliged. This kind of consideration for the end user born from the Steam Deck's audience mainly being console/Windows users is something a LOT of Linux communities seem to fail to do, and part of me thinks this is an intentional effort to keep Linux free of "ignorant normies".
For what it's worth, I'm still thinking of potentially switching to something like Ubuntu when support for Windows 10 runs out in 2025- now that Proton exists (again, a major issue that a huge external company had to step in to provide because the Linux community couldn't make it happen even given 15+ years to do so) gaming is basically a non-issue no matter your distro, and I'm fortunate enough to not be using anything exclusive to Windows as part of a workflow.
It would probably help if there were more people willing to help answer Linux questions. I've had several times I had no idea how something works or how to do something and when I ask, I get Linux Elitism "he doesn't know how to do this, what a noob!" type junk.
Then there's the Distro Rivalries. It's really annoying when someone tells you "oh this feature would be super easy if only you were using My Preferred Distro" or "oh this problem only happens on Distro X but not Distro Y." Like, I'm not gonna reinstall my OS or have four separate OSes running on thumb drives just for niche purposes.
At least with Windows, 99% of things work right out of the gate. I use Linux mainly for internet browsing as it is genuinely the safer option for that. On Windows I intentionally avoid any site I've never heard of.
Thank you for this video, i jumped into Linux last year and i've been loving it.
But what i don't love is how toxic the big linux communities and subreddits seem to be against windows users / casuals / normal people.
Sometimes they even bully others for using easy distros instead of hardcore ones like Arch or Gentoo.
I constantly told myself that those are a loud minority and not the broader Linux community, but they don't make it easy.
So i really appreaciate this video showing empathy for the hardships others can have during the jump into Linux and not just demonizing Windows users.
Stick to your guns! I've been using Linux since the very early 00s, and today I'm running Mint. It "just works", and that's what I want from my operating system. Some friends have tried to get me into Arch, but I tried Debian Sid at one point and learned that I do not enjoy living on the edge. I prefer to focus on challenges I want to overcome, rather than ones forced on me.
The 'thing is i jumped in the deep end with my first distro being arch because it's pretty compatible with my laptop and I like how lightweight and customisable it is- and when looking for help if i run into problems theres SO much esoteric elitism where these powerusers don't even like to answer because 'you should have read the documentation before installing' or other phrases of the like. They like their walled garden :( it really makes it hard to move to linux in any capacity because unless you have a friend willing to help, youre going to have to just try get everything working alone.
Linux communities are analogous to modding communities for games, where often the game fades into the background and people enjoy the modding itself. Elitism in this environment manifests in examples like you gave, when someone is doing more challenging modding than you are they like to brag about it.
What it boils down to for me and why I don't use Linux comes down to three reasons.
It is obviously a hobby, whereas windows is not a hobby but a means to an end. This in my view means if you enter the Linux space and you try to use Linux as a tool instead of a playground you are not the target audience and your experience will be poorer than with Windows.
The second is long-term stability. I am not at all confident I won't encounter unforeseen problems and data loss if I attempt to use a Linux distro as my OS for several years. Windows truly is a miraculously pain free experience, relatively speaking. My current system seems immune to BSOD's, I can't remember the last time that happened to me. Maybe early 2010's?
Lastly, compatibility issues with games.
For me it's application installation. Packages are just weird concept coming from Windows. I want app installations to be abstructed as much as possible. Flatpak fixes that problem, but not all software is available in that format.
Installation is hardly abstracted on Windows, it's just that everyone has gotten used to the traditional model of hunting down installation files on different websites. That said, getting every package from third-party sources rather than directly from their developer is definitely kinda weird; flatpaks are helping to strike that middle ground.
I tried linux once
Installing linux was the easy part
Installing an app, no idea how to do it
So that’s my experience with linux lol
I don’t like the idea of a package manager. To me it feels like abstracting stuff that has no right being abstracted. How often do you have to install apps anyway?
@@mckendrick7672 but on linux it's also not directly from the source. you rely on package maintainers for your distro. the use case that does not seem to be optimized for on Linux is installing something that has not been prepackaged in the repos.
- if the package is not available, then you are out of luck
- if you don't have an internet connection, then you are out of luck too
@@Thomas_wurdo you use a smartphone? their app stores are package managers. a package manager is not just for installing software, it also handles updates and removal.
Funny... for me as a Mac users, app installation as a whole is a very strange concept. In macOS you take an app, you copy it where you want it to be and you run it. There is no such thing as an "installation". There is also no uninstall, you just delete the app if you are done with it. Why would you have to "install" anything? Sure, there are also install packages for macOS, but those are only used when you install something that makes system modifications. A normal app does not make system modifications.
Audio production is the one use case that has kept me bound to windows for years. I intend to switch to using a windows virtual machine on linux for audio production, but It'll take a lot of work to get running well. . .waaaay more work than just installing the software on windows. My brain is so used to windows, a lot of linux stuff is much more complex it takes me days to do things that would have taken me hours, and hours to do things that would have taken a few minutes.
Anything creative, stay away from Linux. I'm a photographer and there is no alternative to Lightroom, Capture One, Photoshop. Gimp is ok but no raw editors wh8ch would make one want to work.
@@Whatreally123 Just use the web versions of those programs.
@@MegaLokopo why? First of all there are no web versions of those and even if they were why would I use a web version instead of a locally installed version which will be faster and can be used anywhere and anytime.
There's no need for me to make my life hard just for the sake of using Linux.
@@Whatreally123 They do have web versions, most desktop versions require an internet connection because they are really just a browser that is running a web version. There are many features that are exclusive to the web edition of those software.
It is hard to use linux at first, but you will get used to it. What is your biggest complaint with windows?
@@MegaLokopo I have been using Linux since 2008 so I'm not a newbie.
They don't have web versions. And most of these software require you acceleration which won't be available on a web version.
And it's a stupid workflow even if they had a web version. Totally dependent on bandwidth and availability of the service. Not how professionals work.
I have no complaints with windows. I like using it. Unlike a lot of people who bash it cos it's cool to do so, I set it up well and use it without any issues.
Part of the issue is that Linux lacks "killer apps" that would appeal to a wider user base. Personally, I only came back to Linux for the window managers which I would say is the one killer feature that Linux has better than Windows or MacOS. Plus, it doesn't help that there is no Industry Standard desktop applications. Film, CGI, Games, Music, Business - for all of them it is hard to opt for something other than either Windows or MacOS. That said, I think the Linux desktop has a bright future, but it will keep progressing slowly. Windows & MacOS aren't what they used to be and MS & Apple are making things more difficult all the time for both users and developers. Linux is the only potential alternative for those looking to escape like Valve or System76.
You are a bit miss informed, Film, GGI and Games (tooling not necessarily client) is one of the spaces where Linux excels.
You have Blender that is used by many gamedev studios.
You also have DreamWorks CGI production pipeline that is developed and deployed only in Linux environments.
You also have Lightworks that is a video editor used in Hollywood production that is also made to run on Linux, you also have the new comer Blackmagic DaVinci resolve.
Krita, Inkscape for drawing, Retroarch, Steam for gaming.
@@Zandman26 Sure, but let's not lose track of the question. This is all within the context of the "Linux Desktop". Not, "Linux used somewhere in someway in our overall toolchain".
@@xXxRaVeNcRoFt_LuVrr69 I think most people that use DaVinci resolve and Lightworks does so on a desktop and not on a server.
When it comes to DreamWorks, they are a big company so they run Mac, Windows and Linux depending on employee preference (and yes they have artists using Linux).
You should watch some of their interviews surrounding this.
@@Zandman26 Honestly if I was a casual user I would probably switch to Linux. However, I do engineering for a living, and unfortunately, specialized engineering software does not match with Linux. SolidWorks, Catia, AutoCad, SolidEdge, Inventor and a few more for 3d CAD modeling, Altium Designer, OrCAD X for pcb design, and I could go on and on.
My main concern with Linux in general, no matter what distro, is the stability. Ubuntu and it's simblings already have some stability issues regarding graphic rendering, desktop environment and the system overall, let alone other distros. I always had this big problem where I would do something as simple as trying to mount a hard drive, and I would break something on the system, or something would simply stop working like the hard drive itself or a program that were meant to use it, and that's just to mention one of the many problems I personally had with Linux.
I prefeer 10 times to just stick to Windows 10 and actually get work/tasks done instead of constantly fighting with my OS whenever I want to do something slightly complex. Windows is not perfect too (specially performance wise), but at least it's more stable than Linux when it comes to using it as a daily desktop OS.
Win10's life ends in like a year or something. I don't know what problems you have with hard drive mounting, mine mounted automatically and mount/unmount automatically when I take my laptop on or off of its dock, and it just works fine. Ubuntu is quite stable but if you want more stable use Debian, although I recommend Mx Linux KDE (it's debian 12 but with powerful, user-friendly mx-tools and optimized).
yeah windows just works, im using windows 10 ltsc and have wls installed if i need it, and everything just works.
@@nextprogram5945 Linux also "just works" now. The amount its changed in 2 years let alone the last 5 has been insane
I resisted switching to Linux for some time. Dual booting back in the mid 2000s was a nightmare, and I lost a bunch of data. When I went full Ubuntu in the late 2000s it slightly improved, but then I was out of the computer-using world for over a decade. Now, I waited 2 years using a Windows laptop which I've hated, to going full Linux Mint over the last weekend.
And I'm kind of regretting it a little, because now I can't stream to my friends over Discord, and I no longer have a useful option for a free real-time voice changer (like Voicemod) or video avatar, for privacy. I was in the middle of starting a podcast series, and now I'm wondering if I should even bother or if I just need to find a better distro or what? I'm not super technical, but I like the Linux _concept_ and _ideal,_ even if the execution hasn't been the most easy to get to. My system keeps freezing when I watch videos that were never any problem for me before, too, so that's another thing.
And yeah, yeah, "oh, so-and-so has a fix for the [whatever] problem." Fine, but then I'm installing this and making that file and altering 24 settings and not only is it some Brobdingnagian monstrosity of a project to undertake, it's also me tinkering with things I don't fully understand, made by randos on the internet, which makes me nervous. One page is giving me a list of sudos to run, while the other tells me to never run sudo commands from untrusted sources. Well who the hell is a _trusted_ source, when everything is released by f0rkbend3r_32 on some otherwise empty GitHub, and I can't invest 16 hours of research into all the documentation for a solution I can't possibly understand? I mean, if I understood the behind-the-scenes stuff, I wouldn't need a fix in the first place, I'd do it myself. And I have a life to live, so I don't have the spare time (and these days maybe not the mental faculty) to learn programing and kernel functions.
So you wonder why people aren't switching to Linux? It's because every single install I've ever used fails to make using it easy enough for the things I want to do most. But I did it anyway. And now I'll be the new reason someone doesn't switch: "my friend Fern installed Linux and now we can't do the show we had written up and they don't watch movies with us anymore. They said I shouldn't switch to Linux."
Unfortunately the one side job i worked that was Linux friendly only did it half ass. We had to log into a secure boot running a flash drive with their own Linux distro. If your system can handle it, it was ok, but still suffered from the limitations of running a distro out of a flash drive. Ever since they deployed SRW for windows, they phased out Linux. The bottom line is, that Windows just has the devs and numbers to really keep things the way it is.
I’m so glad someone finally said it.
Exactly put! Not everyone is a Linux nerd.. at most some are wannabe Linux nerds..
Unfortunately, if one uses the machine for work, it's difficult to solve all the problems one faces while using Linux distros. Ppl simply don't have the time for it, even though they may be interested to learn..
I gave up on GUI Linux on the desktop in 2009. No matter what distro I tried, it felt like I was dealing with a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing. I also had my system break numerous times on updates. As a full time developer I didn't have time to deal with that. I subsequently moved to Mac and the only thing I regret is not having done that a lot sooner. I still use Linux but on the server.and there it shines.
Sounds like you use some free preview or something and not production system like Red Hat Enterprise 5, or SUSE Linux Enterprise 11, or Debian 5 or Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. Of course everything fully patched and no customization to unsupported features, like changing desktop environment in Ubuntu (they really supported only default Gnome 2).
Production systems don't break on updates, that is symptom for some developer/preview/beta version.
Linux desktop is NOTHING like it was in 2009. It's super slick and easy to use now
same, just that i switched back to windows
i like the point you made about the Linux community becoming fixated on a specific issue and thinking that will bring more users. i think that a lot of issues like anti cheat not working are just symptoms of the actual problems. i would be happy to play with Linux if the only problem were these external factors. but the usability issues are almost never external factors. i write software but that doesn't mean i want to waste time fighting with my OS to get work done
My Grandma is 86 years old, she runs Mint doesn't even know it, i did it as a social experiment. It just works, she can browse, watch movies and do what a normal user would do with their machine.
I mean she doesn't even know English, there is also that.
End of all of be all, it's just lack of marketing. It's not the software, aside from few key specific areas Linux actually has better software than both Mac and Windows. However it's hard to convince someone that is already used to something else. If Linux is to be the de-facto desktop experience it has the target young people, not your mac/windows crowd out there, that battle is already lost.
i did that with my mums old laptop, she was using a distro whos name i have forgotten, but she could do everything she needed to on it, shopping and facebook, thats it, she never knew it wasnt windows. what made me do it was her getting phone scammed by some dudes in india who had her put teamviewer on and stole some money off her
Excellent video. Very well explained.
Great video. Pretty much sums what ive been thinking for a while now when following the youtube linux space for the last few months. Windows user who is interested in linux, but i dont see me switching fully to linux in anytime soon. Reason is that i dont feel like im getting the same functionality and performance on linux. A lot of games work fine, some dont. VRR + multiple monitors with different refresh rates. Nvidia. People on linux space praise amd for their open source drivers but the hardware on the nvidia cards is still superior in many use cases
Good stuff, Matt.
For me it's a bunch of smaller things, like proprietary hardware without Linux drivers, DTP software, music plugins that are a lot of work to get running (if at all) and every day conveniences like how I use my Corsair macro keyboard with profiles for different programs that doesn't work as well on Linux (and no profile switching when switching programs on Wayland). But I'm still moving over, slowly. Very slowly. Tumbleweed ftw.
I've tried Linux as a daily driver off and on for a while, but just kept going back to Windows. This most recent time was a combination of two things:
1. I had complicated PDFs I needed to work with, and I couldn't find any software that would run that could work with them properly. I chalk this up more to Adobe's complex proprietary formats than a failing on the foss community.
2. A lot of programs I tried just Didn't Work. From alternate PDF readers to video editing software to all kinds of other things, programs just did nothing. I installed them from the package manager, I hit Run, and no reaction. No error messages that I could look up, even. Looking around online and asking for help didn't give me any basis for troubleshooting, anything I could find would simply tell me that it should work.
I've hopped from all the major os. Went back to them all over again including windows. I'll probably do it all over again
Oh my god, that password thing really drives me nuts sometimes 😹
So I basically do the same. Just type password in a text editor and copy paste .
A very balanced and fair assessment. I can do most of what I do daily on Linux, but that last 15% is usually painful enough that I don't daily drive it. There's finding the time to troubleshoot, read log files, and search forums to find a solution. That then involves applying what I've read, contextualizing it, and figuring out how to make it work when the instructions are not 1:1 for my situation or setup. It's time consuming
When Apple transitioned to OSX from OS9, and through the various CPU architectures, they implemented software that made sure the experience would not be something that left the end user frustrated. There's wisdom in that approach. One reason that the Steam Deck has been popular is that it has a QA team keeping the user experience consistent in coming from the Windows version of the app
Amongst all the distros I have personally tested, the one that comes closest to the ideal is Manjaro. And it is for one major reason: the package manager.
It has an easy, informative GUI, and gives access to a large number of programs and subvariants. It also has a better installation process, where it actually asks if you want to install all the dependencies etc., so the program is completely set up just by using the GUI package manager.
The Terminal is obviously critical to what makes Linux so great, especially in the realm of problem solving, however, it feels like this fact is causing developers to neglect the importance of a strong GUI based option for more basic end users.
Manjaro KDE is what got me to stick with Linux after trying a few distros... It was finally easy to use and ran great after fighting so much with Ubuntu and other Ubuntu based things everyone kept telling me was the best (its not). I ran Manjaro a long time while learning a lot before moving on to other distros.
I am a viewer who doesn't use Linux as a daily driver, and currently I don't have Linux on my system at all. There are a couple reasons for this. Right now I am waiting for Plasma 6 to just reinstall Linux on my dedicated SSD.
But the reasons I won't dedicate myself to just Linux and dump Windows. The first is distros, there are too many and every one has pros and cons, but most have too many cons. One distro fixes another distros con but then creates another con that the previous distro never had. So it shows the cons can be fixed. "Oh well fix it yourself" I can, but in 2024 I don't want to mess with compiling, I did my dues in the 90s, I want it to work. "Well go to Mint, there is not issues"" Yeah I would, but Mint has gaming performance issues that Nobara fixes, "Ok Go Nobara" I do but Nobara is ran by one guy and so when a bug comes it isn't fixed for a while, "Ok go with POP it can game and has good performance" Big ole "no" POP looks like Mac and I don't like it along with any Gnome DEs. "Well then go mint and fix it to run great" Why? It shouldn't NEED me to fix it? "Well windows is also unstable" No... It doesn't my Windows hardly crashes ever, it's not Vista, if it crashes it's something I did during an upgrade or software I installed. Linux crashes, especially when I try to "fix it", no, it just crashes period, usually from updates that my system doesn't like, otherwise Windows works and performs without "fixing it" to work.
2nd reason is gaming, yes steam works great but GOG and other stores? Well Lutris and Heroic are really buggy and a mess and need to be really "buttoned up" I heard GE is making a Proton standard for 3rd party apps and I hope this fixes this issue because it needs it. Because all it is is more "fixing" what shouldn't be fixed. I wish GOG and epic would just bring their stuff to Linux, maybe the new standard would convince them.
3rd reason MSoffice and Launchbox. "Oh use batocera and libreoffice" I don't like them, libreoffice documents don't open correctly to people using MSoffice. Have you ever seen how they come out for someone using it? It garbled. "Save it as a PDF" Oh ok, i'll send my boss an excel PDF. Batocera and Emustation looks ugly compared to launchbox, yeah that's on me. "well use bottles or a VM" Ok well now I am using windows again. so what's the point?
I like Linux, I want it to succeed, especially before Win 10 EoL next year. I plan to jump on linux regardless if Windows 12 is crap like Windows 11 and thats why I watch Linux videos, I want to see how it's progressing and it's progressing very very fast. But for right now i just tinker with it on a seperate SSD because I have to hop distros like crazy and I cannot format my main drive every few months to try the newest thing.
I hope this helps everyone somewhat understand because I know I am not alone in this mentality. It's not only about skill, we SHOULDNT NEED SKILL to use a damn OS. An OS should just work so we can mess with other programs, which should also work without fixing them and if they don't, they're just trash and not expected "because it's linux"
PART 1:
It sounds like you come from a Windows background. IMO, Windows is the king of the desktop.
If you want something with a Windows feel, there is the KDE desktop.
I use Kubuntu since 18.04. I switched in Jan 2020 right when MS pulled the plug on Win 7. Previous to that, I had tested Kubuntu for 3 months to see how much it would annoy me.
Learning some of the details took months, just like in my days with Win 95.
PART 2:
I don’t know about GOG. They have an app that you install?
Steam works well. Battlefield 1 was running but then, EA did an update and it no longer runs.
LibreOffice doesn’t replace MS Office. For sure, there are going to be differences. I’m just a basic user so I don’t run into too many bugs. There is one bug that I hate that they never fix.
PART 3:
If you are doing business, if you need AutoCAD or SoftImage or some professional software, always use Windows.
What’s wrong with Win 11? To me, they all started to look the same, they looks like Win 8.
In my experience, Linux is not as stable as Windows. It can lock up and you get the black screen of death.
With Win Vista, when the video driver crashed, it would reset the driver. Vista was quite solid. 7 was even better.
Before I switched, my hardware was very unstable on Linux, and over time, as I changed hardware, I switched completely.
As a person who is on the ledge and about to install Mint 21.3, I know that I'm likely going to face some pretty retarded design/coding choices from the Linux makers. It'll be some shit that could have been REAL easy for them to make a simple, straightforward process, but instead, it'll be some convoluted shit that takes WAAAAAY longer to do than it should, and this issue is mostly caused by the fact Linux is built by Simpsons Comic Book Store-guy coding edgelords who think that it's completely reasonable to expect someone to solve some pythagorum theorum bullshit down to the 26th decimal point without a calculator in order to install a fkn program...
Thing is 90percent of people buy a p.c that comes with windows or Mac OS installed and then use it. The saving to buy a machine without an os is negligable and sellers are not interested in supplying machines pre loaded with one of a hundred distros that are all slightly tailored to a specific use case.
I think it comes down more to demand. Like it's stated in the video not all hardware is compatible with linux so vendors would have to spend that much more time and resources to searching for hardware that's compatible with linux. If only 5% of your customers want linux as an OS would it really be worth it to spend the effort?
@@Johny9405 Dell offers multiple different types of systems for Linux users.
I started using Linix around fall last year and it's been great for me, there are some problems still but slowly things are getting better while windows just seems to keep getting worse. Even the age old issue of Wayland on Nvidia is getting better. Playing on Wayland would usually half my performance, but a few weeks ago, it just suddenly worked, I'd forgotten to awitch to X11 and gamed for 2 hours only realizing I was still on Wayland when I went to change my display settings. Now, (at least on my 1650) I'm getting the exact same performance on both Wayland and X11. It's great.
I'm recently finished my software dev master's studies. During most of my studies, I used Linux because it's clearly the best for software dev. Now, I don't at all anymore (for desktop purposes, of course still using Linux in servers), not at home nor at work. Here's why:
- At home / personal use: I'm a photographer and a gamer (although less and less). Therefore, Windows is the easy way because Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop. And games install experience is still easier (therefore superior) on Windows. On my private time, I don't want to tinker with my OS for half of my weekend just to get to what I want to do. Be it first install or bug fix/maintenance.
- At work: the PC came with Windows. Simple as that. Yes, I would enjoy running VSCode, Docker and Kubernetes on a less RAM-hungry OS like Fedora or even Ubuntu. But since everybody has windows pre-installed, that means all our internal softwares/projects (especially docs) are catered towards Windows. And OS homogeneity is very important in a company setting: the "I need more time to get it to work on my Linux" excuse is not valid for a boss, and being the only one in the office with a different OS means that you put a barrier between your coworkers and yourself when it comes to asking for help, even when those coworkers are software devs/IT too and know Linux.
three things, all because it's my job to support a Windows environment
Active Directory, .Net, and the GPO.
My personal computers are Linux based, but at work it is a Windows enterprise AD environment and I need to Windows 7, 10, 11, and manage the domain.
There is a lot of drivers for hardwear like 3d scanners and then the art software and wifi cards dont have surport then there is the wording used for commands and the complexity of just setting something up
I’m glad you said this! I’ve had a flirtationship with Linux since the late 2000s when I first tried Ubuntu Hardy Heron, and yet despite liking the OS a lot in theory, I’ve always found myself going back to either Mac or Windows for various reasons that usually amount to “this game or app I need won’t work.” It’s why I’m a Mac user. Do I have my problems with Apple? Oh yes! Do I know that there are loads of great video and audio editing tools on Windows and Linux? Absolutely I do! And yet my brain just seems to like Apple’s creative apps the best. And while I’m a big computer nerd and definitely wouldn’t consider myself to have a skill based problem, I definitely would acknowledge that I’m just prioritizing how I spend my time. I’d rather be making podcasts and writing and video editing than fighting with my operating system over various pain points.
That said, I just got a steam deck relatively recently to serve as my primary gaming pc, so I’ve been loving the world of Linux gaming! I’ve even set it up to use as a desktop OS!
When I drive my car I don’t need to be a car mechanic to use it.
Lots of people want to use their computers without needing to be a Linux mechanic to use it.
The command-line is for mechanics.
A reason often given is "When something doesn't work, you have to go in terminal, type all kind of cryptic commands you don't understand and then you might be able to somehow fix it but you have no idea what you just did". And I totally agree with that. But the funny thing is: There are tons of situation like that on Windows and macOS, too. And what do you do on those systems to fix them? Right, you go to terminal and type a lot of cryptic commands you don't understand, ... Either that or the answer is "sorry, it can't be done on those systems at all", which prevents you from going to terminal but is that really better in the end? If that's the solution you are happy with, well, then you could have also ignored the terminal in Linux and just pretended "it cannot be done".
But I must admit, what scares people away is that you must do such stuff way more often on Linux and I can see why people are not happy about that. Most people just want to use their OS, they don't want to permanently hack it. Most people just want to buy and drive a car, not tinkering under the hood as they are no hobby car mechanics. I use Linux a lot on servers and embedded devices but for my daily work, I use a Mac because you buy it, it works very well right out of the box and macOS never really failed on me within decades. Linux does a great job on my VM servers but as a desktop OS it failed so many times on me in the past and while I was able to finally fix it most of the time (a few times I just had to give up) because I am a tech savvy person, it sometimes took me days tinkering around with config files, re-build kernel modules, installing all kind of software, you know, this kind of stuff and most people don't even have the time for that in their life, as they actually do have a life (a job, a family, a hobby, etc.) and the computer is just a tool they want to use, not a tool they want to spend time on to get it working in the first place.
To be "fair" to Windows, sometimes you don't use the command line / PowerShell, sometimes you have to use regedit...
For Linus on the desktop, give Linux Mint a shot, without fudging around too much. Unless you have cutting-edge or very specialized hardware, then I don't recommend it at all, unless the manufacturers support Linux.
The thing is that with Linux these situations occur at an alarming frequency. Recently installed the Nvidia-driver on Debian 12, system wouldn't boot afterwards. Still haven't fixed it, since it's such a PIA. Windows hasn't been silly like that for over a decade now. It would be great if you could use Linux as a daily driver as a normie and have the option to go really deep under the hood and mod your system to your exact liking. But alas you have to be a Terminal wizard either way or it's going to be a painful experience running Linux for even basic tasks.
I have never run into a problem on windows that can't be fixed without using the terminal. I run into problems every single day on linux that as far as I can tell require the terminal to fix. Most windows users don't even know what a terminal is. If you want linux to be more popular you have to be able to fix every problem without touching the terminal just like how with windows you can fix every issue with only using the gui.
@@MegaLokopoEvery single day on Linux? Okay, provide one example for that and I will show you examples of issues you cannot solve in the UI in Windows.
@@xcoder1122 To be clear it isn't the same issue every day obviously. But you asked for one example, It took me several hours of looking each weekend for more than a month to try to get the stream deck working on linux mint with a gui, then it took another few hours after I gave up to find the right terminal commands to make it work. Most of the commands worked for a different distro or failed to work for some other reason, and with chatgpt or bingai it still took me more than an hour of talking back and forth with them to get the necessary commands to make the stream deck work on linux mint.
Now maybe it has gotten easier since I installed it a few months ago, but you only asked for one example and that was the most annoying and memorable.
I would love to hear what issue you ran into on windows that couldn't be fixed with a gui.
I did some look into Linux for my new build but basically due to all the reason you listed, I took a striped down version of win11, I'm quite happy with that since my main complain about windows is it's Applization (I use win7 until this new build on last year)
For me it’s the “this is a X issue” (where x is not the subject of the place) when trying to get some help in a forum or irc chat, with no further indication of interest to help
let me guess you installed arch and asked them a basic question
they hate that, btw. Arch forums and users are completely toxic.
However, the arch wiki has some of the best package documentation if not the best of any distro. Even on debian based systems I read the arch wiki to look at package notes, it's that useful
Been a Linux gamer since 2003. I game with only Linux games that were design or support Linux with no limitations. I never gave up gaming, I just changed how I game. I still game with AAA games that don't work in Linux or not 100% in Linux. Which I use gaming console hardware like Playstation to game those AAA games that don't work in Linux. My Desktop have many Linux games only and enjoy them all.
The AAA games that don’t work on Linux don’t deserve our attention anyway 😂 Looking at you Valorant and Warzone with your kernel level anticheats
hi friend, normie here, took me almost a year of my local linux nerd gently encouraging me about linux topics and teaching me about privacy topics little by little to get me to switch to linux mint yesterday 😅 We tried to get me to switch last year, but I was very sentimental about my computer. I had so many memories on my computer that i needed to back up, that i was afraid of losing. I needed a system I could depend on. I'm busy and use my computer for lots of things most weekdays, and all of the issues I have (that aren't privacy related) with Windows 10 were issues I could predict and know how to solve. Been on Windows systems for almost 25 years. it took me a while, and i had to watch not just tutorials on linux topics, but the culture of the FOSS community/Linux community in general to really understand. Last week my friend helped me learn how to set up a USB flash drive so that it could .... live boot a test run of linux mint? (Im not sure if that's the correct terminology.) After finally getting brave enough to test everything out, i couldn't go back. Im lucky that things went by smoothly so far but yeah.
It appears that a web-browser is the only software you need for your work and creativity. In that case, congratulations!
I used to use Ubuntu as my main back in the XP/Vista era. The main barrier back then for me was just the pain of installing software and having to look up guides every single time. Having to live half my time in the terminal didn't help as I'd grown up with DOS and kept mixing up the commands. My primary use eventually shifted to PC gaming and back then sawing off your own leg was easier than getting a brand new game running. Eventually shifted back to Windows and just kept up with Linux as its much better in a server role for me.
I'm a Linux/Windows user, for many years I served as IT Consultant and I came to the point where I can resume in a single word why people doesn't use Linux, HABITS. And it goes beyond IT topics, people in general doesn't like to change their habits. It is well known that changing an habit for something better will bring many benefits and it applies to IT, but it is also well known that we don't like to change our habits, even when they are killing us.
For me it was more like--what is keeping me from using a few old computers? It was Windows. Or my lack of knowing anything at all about Linux. So I dove right in. That is why I started following channels like this, to learn more on a regular basis. Then I came to the realization--what is keeping me from using Linux on newer devices? And that required me to increase my skills quite a bit. Also, when my workplace largely shifted to Google Suite/Workplace, Google Docs, Google Classroom, it rather allowed me to bow out of the Microsoft world anyway. We began using Google Docs more than Microsoft. So before i was told I needed to keep using Windows because I had to use MS apps. But that reason was lost when the school shifted to Google.
schools and also any public service - like services, provided by the Government, etc, should be technology agnostic as much as possible and use open document formats, without caring what software you use and without forcing people and companies to use specific software, related to certain brand.
I was looking into free recording software, and found out because a few of the programs supported Linux, so I went on Wikipedia and looked up Linux. Found distrowatch, a few choice popular example distros, and I was having a friend teach me how to build computers... next thing I know I have a dualboot, and I'm playing games and running Office 2007 in Wine, and I'm doing all this stuff. This was back when I was still in high school, so I was concerned about whether or not the original Guild Wars would run, Counter-Strike Source, MechWarrior 4, etc. I had a License for Reaper that I was installing in Wine, I had this dumb idea to open a LAN gaming cafe, and I was trying to teach myself how to admin a website on local hardware via LAMP, how to get Active Directory permissions to work over Samba and Wine using Ubuntu Server, how to run various game servers on Linux, etc. It's been almost 20 years. 2006 and my 11th year of grade school was so long ago, lol.
@@moetocafe while I agree it's too late. ABC has a hold of the tech industry and you already know they have access to any document made anywhere
@@escapetherace1943 this is not something, set in stone. And if people, governments, educational institutions, etc all start to adhere to FOSS or at least open source formats, ABC will not have a monopoly, neither MS will have it.
I've said this before: I'm somewhere in the middle between 'Linux enthusiast' and 'uses computer as a tool'. There are packages (e.g: Music on Console) I am a big advocate for, but in general I'm fairly package agnostic; I use what works and don't get concerned about things like Wayland vs x11. Not saying that can't be an important issue, though.
This is another thing I've said before and caught some flak for it: Sometimes (and this is not directed at Matt at all) the Linux community's self satisfaction is its own worst enemy. If you want people to switch to Linux permanently, you can't be yelling at them because they're not using Linux the "right way" or that they have "skill issues" when they genuinely don't know something. A lot of Linux nerds have been using Linux so long that they've lost perspective on being new to Linux and just don't get this at all, even though it's common sense.
I started using BazziteOS on my desktop because i like steamOS 3 so much. I haven't touched windows in quite some time and have enjoyed my time with it so far.
another issue that a lot of people don’t think about especially with the xorg to Wayland transition is accessibility. Screen readers do not function very well on wayland because it’s tight permission control. I’m aware there’s an accessibility API now, but none of the Linux screen readers have actually been updated to use it because nobody’s really maintaining them.
Professionally my computing needs rely on an obd2 device and a piece of open source software that only works on windows. VMs work but the performance is terrible and I don't want to have to wait for my VM to boot every time I need it or starve my system of cores and ram to leave it open all the time. I've tried my hardest to get it to work with wine and it makes the application load but it doesn't work fully and it doesn't fix the peripheral issue. The sad thing is both the drivers for the device and the software in question are open source but I need help learning how to migrate libraries and that sort of thing and the linux community hasn't been very helpful for learning how to do this. So I'm going to keep dual booting for now
Whenever I explain to my friends nerdy stuff about Linux they look at me like I'm talking in tongues and that I'm some sort of "hackerman" for using Linux, when in reality I use Nobara, so I'm just using the equivalent of Windows, but not shit. Best move I've made for my PC usage.
Gotta love Nobara.
I have already tried for over 20 years now... Installation has been easy to me for a very long time, but the quirks and a as you note the lack of familiar software (or the alternatives do not fill in the void) on the desktop for what I do on a daily basis makes me return to Windows every single time.
I use linux on web servers and for projects that run on the PI.
I like you Matt, you are one of the most reasonable Linux guys on CZcams, that understand or try to understand regular PC user.
I am back on Windows after about one month long experiment of using Linux... overall it is OK, but for me, it is not here yet, some problems and weirdness here and there... Will for sure try again when Wayland land for good. But if someone just watch CZcams, use browser, and do some simple tasks, nothing specific, I think Gnome will give great experience, Cinnamon too, KDE is great, but it is a mess XD.
If you think about that, both Win and Mac are way ahead of UI/UX, they just work, there are pop-ups with explanation, consistency, and ease of use. Great example is auto-mount, editing fstab via nano in terminal for average user is scary, double scary if system dot go up :D - Linux Mint has the best GUI for that in my opinion. Regular user should never ever see terminal, never! And installers have to be better, mostly the part with partitioning - because there is auto that I don't even know what is going on, or manual where if I don't know procedure I don't know what is going on.
Valid point is, people want to use their PC, not thinking about using it, in my opinion there is not yet a distro or desktop environment there that will fulfil that - I mean OK there is Zorin, but they have to move from Ubuntu as a base to Debian or Fedora, and have updates once a year not like right now.
The best way to convince normal people to use Linux, is to encourage them to dual-boot Windows and Linux. Let them learn Linux at their own pace. If they run into issues, they can boot into Windows. That's what I did when I first started using Linux Mint, and now I use Linux exclusively.
Yes. But there is a step before that - remove as many proprietary products and install Open Source alternatives on their Windows computer. If they can't get used to LIbre/Only/whatever Office, Thunderbird, Firefox, VLC, etc., there is no sense to go on to dual-booting.
I use Linux as daily driver but not for gaming. Gaming on Linux is painful even with Proton or Lutris. I love Linux because of Gnome and see my pc running like a beast.
I useLLinux for daily driver, and for gaming with no issue.... until a game developer used Denuvo. Denuvo is the worst.
I've thought about switching to Linux and have tested a couple distros sparingly in the past, but I'm not sure I want to grow a neckbeard or never go outside again. Seriously though, I'm unfamiliar with unix CLI and have forgotten a lot of the DOS I ever used, so telling me to sudo something in the terminal when I want a GUI isn't the easiest shift for UX.
We also just recommend bad choices for noobs because of biases. Many linux users I know (including myself) would hate the thought of running an LTS distro and exclusively using snaps and flatpaks, but I have no doubt in my mind that that would be the easiest starting point for a noob.
I don't recommend Linux to anyone in my life. Why???
I don't want to do "free" support work for them. Been There, Done That, Got The T-shirt, Lost Friends, Pissed Off Family, etc...
If they run Windows or Mac, I can truly say, I don't run those on my computers. If they ask about my work computers, I ask if they can pay what my workplace pays... 👹 Then I refer them to my local computer/cellphone guy. He gets money, they get their shit fixed, and I don't have to waste time.
Most people don't want to learn anything, they want a magical appliance. 99% do not want to read or follow instructions.
If they are interested in Linux, auto repair, raccoon babies or woodworking, I send them to CZcams...
It depends on what they are doing, I suppose. I installed Kubuntu for my brother and my mother. They just watch stuff on CZcams and use Firefox. They know how to apply updates.
Firefox under Linux is the same Firefox as on Windows.
What else is the average user going to do with a PC? They need an internet connection. They need to watch videos, listen to music, talk to people with some phone like thing.
Without an internet connection, they don’t need a PC. Might as well go back to our lives in 1980.
As a person who is on the ledge and about to install Mint 21.3, I know that I'm likely going to face some pretty retarded design/coding choices from the Linux makers. It'll be some shit that could have been REAL easy for them to make a simple, straightforward process, but instead, it'll be some convoluted shit that takes WAAAAAY longer to do than it should, and this issue is mostly caused by the fact Linux is built by Simpsons Comic Book Store-guy coding edgelords who think that it's completely reasonable to expect someone to solve some pythagorum theorum bullshit down to the 26th decimal point without a calculator in order to install a fkn program...
@@Funkteon Not really. The installation process for Linux Mint and a bunch of other distros is entirely GUI based.
Probably the most complicated part is the HDD partitioning part. I think EUFI systems, you need to create a 10 MB partition.
Then, you need a root which is the equivalent of the C of Windows.
You should also create a swap space of 10 to 50 GB.
Linux will warn you if there is a problem. You can also tell it to do a guided setup of your HDD. I think Mint uses the same installer as Debian.
I install LibreOffice manually, so it does get a little nonsensical. If you don’t want to deal with the command line, you can install software from the Mint store.
Is this the first time you are trying Linux?
@@louistournas120 It is my first time, and the fact you just had to spend half a dozen lines to explain that an OS needs you to hold its fucking hand to create a bunch of partitions is fucking retarded. We're a few decades into the existence of Linux distros, and these coding edgelords are still pumping out a complete mess of a setup system that gatekeeps Windows users from switching. I just want to double click on an install file from within Windows and have it create the partition and install itself so that the next time I restart my computer, I'm presented with an option to boot into Windows or into Mint. I don't want to have to either watch 68 hours of CZcams instructional videos or borrow money from the bank to study computer science at University in order to understand how to install a half-baked OS that can't even do 10% of what Windows can do.
Most people want their OS to just work, not have it be their hobby. You need to know a lot about how Linux works under the hood to accomplish the same tasks as in Windows or MacOS, because despite what the fanboys say Linux likes to break down A LOT. That's THE reason why people don't pick up Linux right there. Case and point I installed Debian 12 recently on a machine with hardware that's around 3-4 years old, so nothing fancy. I installed the nvidia-driver exactly as described in the Debain-Wiki...now the machine won't boot. I haven't had problems like this with Windows since XP...that was over 15 years.
Close second are mandatory software people need for their job like CAD, Media-editing, Office etc and also games, though gaming is becoming much better under Linux, very exciting.
Linux is frustrating even for someone who knows computers. I build them for a living, service them, I install operating systems and other software. I don't have the time or patience to use Linux, Windows just works. I tried one time a couple of years back with Mint, a beginner distro. Could not get my printer to work, even though it had Linux drivers on their website. After a few hours of hassle, reading Reddit and watching some CZcams video, could finally get it to print, but not scan. The scanner part just refused to work. I gave up, I don't have time for that. So there's another niche here. Even people who know computers don't always have the motivation to learn Linux. Intalling a distro is a piece of cake (did it for a couple of clients on request), using it daily is another matter.
Spot on for the observation on gaming. So efforts on that would bring more uptake. I installed Zorin on a old AMD Phenom II x4 after not having a regular Linux machine for a while. Very happy and made a checklist, install was easy and I have that as a dual boot with windows 10, it ticked all the boxes, Libra office, network printer found, bluetooth devices all very easy. So far the only issue was a missing mouse cursor in Steam, Half life 1 and 2 games. The games ran fine, in fact graphics and netcode look a touch better. October 14, 2025 windows 10 support stops, in our family group we have around 10 older PCs that Win 11 isn't going to run on. Half of those will be fine as gaming isn't a issue.
I do recommend Zorin (or mint) for users that are just using emails and CZcams and the occasional need for Office. They hardly notice the difference.
In fact, why you would buy a new win 11 PC and make e-waste because Win 10 is "dying" (sort of) ... is not what I call a upgrade, it is more like a ecological disaster.
Last year tried to switch to linux. I was unable to get vertical sync to work in any browser in videos, resulting in a visible tear in youtube. I tried every configuration google suggested. Lasted for a month, than plugged back my windows ssd.
I don't want to start debugging C code when i want to watch a video without screen tear.
I've been limping along with Linux for about 4 years. With installation of Linux sometimes I have to reset BIOS or disable Secure Boot. Drauger Linux is my current bestie.
I use Windows for personal use and Mac for work. I use Linux in any (old) hardware that I have that can't run Windows properly.
I use Windows 11 on my desktop cause I game on it and Mint on my laptop. I put Zorin on my parents computers recently as they had older machines running Windows 10. They are in their mid 60's and early 70's and not very computer literate, but the switch over for them was pretty easy. It does everything they need, web browsing, email and office programs and the GUI looks like Windows 10.
my work laptop doesn't support wayland well. It's not black screen tier, but pretty unusable from the perspective of a perfectly fine X11.
But you gave me an idea with that talk about recent GPUs being better with Wayland: i'm set up to offload certain apps to nvidia as required, while using integrated graphics on desktop. Maybe the nvidia dgpu would actually work better than the intel igpu on wayland (or hyprland)
Legit❤. I Run Linux as My Daily Drive. And I LOVE the way I Own my copy of the operating system I choose to install and Uninstall any unwanted Programs. No pre-installed commercial programs 😊
I'm a reluctant Windows user. The best i can do to "stick it to the man" is use a custom rom. I've wanted to switch to Linux for a long time but I keep running into this discrepancy of what Linux is and what people tout it as being.
One of the biggest examples of this I think is Sudo. As an average person who plays games regularly and sometimes works, at no point have I ever cared or considered why I run certain things on Windows as an administrator. If something doesn't work the next logical choice for me is always to right click and run as admin. It works. I don't care about security, I don't have multiple users, I hit a wall and without understanding why I hit the wall I circumvent it.
Sudo is this for me. Whenever something doesn't work on Linux, I have to Google a solution. The solution will always say run xyz command. Half the time those commands require sudo and by proxy my password. The other half of the time they don't require sudo, they don't work, and then when I add sudo they do work.
Whenever I ask about why Linux users continue to use sudo I get a variety of answers that range from "Sudo is critical if you have multiple users" to "it's the Linux way never do anything in root it's the devil." But using that example I gave with running my program as admin before, to me it doesn't make sense that anyone would expect Sudo to actually make me reconsider what I'm doing.
Especially considering that Sudo works.
Linux in general, it feels like, has an underlying philosophy, and idk if it's UNIX or what, but it directly opposes being a convenient easy to use operating system. I don't need to be spoon fed like it's Mac, I'm comfortable with ricing and tinkering with configs, Google when I have to. But it feels like I'm constantly fighting to make the system run how I want it to, but for it to run how I want it to I break a lot of taboos and rules that I'm basically hazed into believing.
For the Sudo problem in particular, instead of addressing the underlying fact of the matter that a normal user won't care about sudo or understand why they have to put in their password three times in 10 minutes, I've been told that the problem will be fixed with an app store. I don't think this addresses the issue. But since I'm in the minority I guess it just stays like that. And that's how I ended up staying on Windows.
The Sudo thing is only a small part of the bigger picture and that picture is that I'm fighting Linux for control of things that Windows doesn't even blink at letting me do. Even if i want to delete System 32, they only pop one warning. Linux treats me like Apple. Like it's not MY PC.
Dunno if that made sense.
Also something something PuppyLinux or whatever it is 🎉
I've set up a number of office computers using Fedora for a local company and most users don't realise they are not using windows. Once linux is setup for a particular use scenario then most people are happy. Even home computing for many that simply use their computer for web access, email, watch videos or play music the Linux is fine.
Part of the trouble, IMO, is when people try to learn more and try accessing help sites to learn more advanced Linux functions for themselves. Many time they get either too technical a response when a simple command or comment would solve the issue.
Linux nerds have to stop thinking they are above the norm at times and give straight honest response. You go to some , socalled , help or support sites and they are toxic to all but the Nerdiest.
For example is somebody asks how to install a program then don't tell them to go watch a tutorial or give them instructions on how to download and compile an app to customise for their system..... Simply show or tell them to fire up the software market package and search and auto install. (Thats actually easier than windows installing software.) It may not be the GEEKY or NERDY way of doing things but it works. (Not everything HAS to be done from the command line!)
But if people can't even tell the difference, then that is hardly a reason to convince them to switch. Imagine a sales pitch of "please try this product, it has gotten so much better that you can now almost forget you even switched"
I'm not sure how installation is a pain point, I've had little to no trouble installing linux, though I've only used a few popular distros so far that might've had most of the kinks worked out. On installer was bugged and I had to run an apt update && apt upgrade first before I could run the installer which took a while since apparently it needed to compile some stuff.
I just am so invested in windows specifically my main pc that I have tweaked just so, it's familiar and comfortable and I know it well. While linux is usable for most things it might be a "skill issue" as you said where I just don't have the knowledge or skills to do things on linux that I can do on windows. And it'll take month or years of effort to get to a point where I'm comfortable navigating the internals and fixing issues to a level which I would consider "adequate". I have around 20 years experience on windows even if it was only my private machines so probably not as much as somebody who works IT and has had to troubleshoot all kinds of issues on all kinds of machines. In that time I've found all sorts of neat little programs and utilites to squeeze more functionality out of it. "On paper" it sounds a lot like exactly what linux offers, but that "on paper" part is the trick, to actually customize linux the way I have my windows customized takes a lot more than basic knowledge of point and click(to be fair it was the same on windows mostly) and I can't just copy the programs over and run them in WINE either since it would basically be sandboxed to the WINE environment so I couldn't customize the whole Desktop Environment that way, at least with what I've tried so far.
Another possible pain point. Windows and the programs that run on windows are usually designed with average windows users in mind, beginner friendly, they'll hold your hand almost sometimes. While linux in my experience seems to assume you already know what you're doing and already have the knowledge and skills to fix whatever problems pop-up, already have the terminal skills, know about permissions and getting things to work, etc. Basically since linux has usually always been for more technical people the developers tend to assume the users already know stuff they consider basic knowledge. It's a known problem where experts often treat certain things as common sense when it's not common or intuitive at all. Basically windows with it's standardized form where everybody has the same basic system and having an intuitive GUI is the default and not an addon front-end for a command line tool possibly by a different developer, it's just far more intuitive even for more advanced usages. Also it might be less secure but having to constantly type your password every couple minutes to get around permission issues is incredibly tedious after a while.
I've had a mixed experience with linux, trying out specific things to see if they'd work or if I could do them, but got frustrated quickly. To be fair a good chunk of the frustration wasn't linux's fault per say as I only had low-specced machines/VMs to try it out on and I was trying to do stuff that required more than that even if I was running on windows. However what constantly frustrated me with linux seemed to be stuff like permission issues and having to practically sudo everything all the time to get around error messages. Twice I had issues where the drives/partitions I was trying to access weren't mounted with the right configuration by default and the programs couldn't just access them I had to mess with mount/umount/fstab and finally the disks control panel app and banged my head against a wall for like a few hours and even when I got it working I was at a loss as to how I did it or how to reproduce it when it broke again. And if I ever want to edit a config file in a GUI based editor I had to terminal in and sudo the editor so it'd have permission to edit the config file. So many times did I accidentally open a config file in read-only mode, do all my edits and try to save only to realize it didn't have permission.
Oh and boy did I break stuff messing around. The one cheap laptop I tried it on I managed to completely break the audio output while /trying/ to fix the volume control app requiring a reinstall since I had no idea what I did to break it. I managed to bork the Desktop Environment on an old desktop I was trying out server stuff on and tried to make booting the desktop environment optional to save resources so I could just type a command to launch the DE like you could run a DOS environment and type WIN to launch windows way back in the olden times of 3.1/95. I managed to disable the DE, but then when I tried to launch it again I hit more of those permission issues where even the system apps didn't seem to have the permissions they needed to work and I had to find out the command line to launch them and SUDO them.
I have used Linux since Win 7 support ended. I am competent in it but a lot of my skills beyond the basic are copy/paste from online sources. If Microsoft was not so intrusive and expensive,I would love using a Win 7 like OS. Linux Mint is about the closest I can come to it. I do like the concept of FOSS and do try to persuade folks off of Win 10/11 spy/bloatware.
My machine ran Windows 10 fine in terms of speed . But it kept bricking itself - recovery didn't work - just would frag itself and simply not boot ( drivers or something like that I think) even though the data was still there. I could "fix" it by goign to windows 11, but oops - you don;t have the right nanny-ware/drm/anti-piracy chip to make Windows happy so no upgrade for you without a WHOLE NEW CPU and MB. $800 as that also required a new power supply and memory to work with it. Oh, and a new copy of Windows as changing all of that would be too much for it to transfer the license over.
Linux. Steam Deck. Runs my games 10-20% faster than Windows, is stable, and no need to upgrade my hardware. I can really deal with having 5 or 10 less games out of the 400 or so that I have.
As for distros, I tried Garuda and it was.. problematic for running basic day to day tasks like my printer. Printer is fine, scanner part of it is NG. Flash drives - sorry, somehow doesn't read them half the time - and so on. I tried Nobara and it was too steep of a learning curve/fiddly. I'm back to Cinnamon again as it's the best "Mint" variant and I can just plop a question in Discord and get an answer 99% of the time.
As for look and feel, transforming it to look like the older Mac OS versions from about a decade ago is a snap.
@@plektosgaming Same, I have a job, so there are way more games then I have time to play anyways. (Also switched with the Win7 support end.)
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece Yeah mowing to 8 was basically 7+, but 10 just screwed us as we couldn't clone drives any more and just drop a new set of SIDs at it and toss that at the KMS server and go. So instead of having a custom live image with our apps and settings ready to go that we could drop onto 20 kiosks at a time, or have hot spares ready to go if one died, we had to go to a Windows imaging server setup and it was a massive headache as it meant manually activating EVERYTHING after the base install. Then screwing with scripts to set up the firewall and on and on.
Meanwhile more and more departments just kept getting iPads with keyboards. lol. Which being BSD based we could actually remotely control and configure via a few scripts. Windows PCs for business use are quickly becoming dinosaurs and Window's obsession with DRM and control is at the core of it.
@@plektosgaming That sounds more then just moderately painful.
I haven't done exactly that (yet), but imaging a hard drive can be trivially automated with a cheap docking station.
The alternative is a bit more time consuming. to say the least.
@@fgregerfeaxcwfeffece The thing is that it simply no longer works with Windows as it sees the hardware being changed and assumed it's being pirated. Even upgrading to a larger SSD is a major headache. While in Linux, it's insert, copy, yank and reboot. AND the thing runs ZFS so I don't have to worry about the drive fragging itself due to a busted allocation table (usually from a power loss - sorry)
for me it was after days of research and reconfiguring my old laptop to install linux i was confused at the required disk partitions and how to even implement this on a hard drive with limited space. the plan was to install Debian first, mount the two terabyte drive i have always used with this laptop, make the sixteen gigabyte drive the partition for Debian and partition the external drive for the rest but can find no instruction on how to do this. After much pondering i decided Tiny 11 was the answer as i am already fed up with endless command prompt scripts which are not threatening but rather a pain. As far as Linux goes, why should anything be this complicated, question mark. Typing on an air mouse that does not have punctuation.
if installling debian is complicated than breathing is complicated..... that said debian shouldn't be your first distro. If you want debian stability but with slighly better performance try MX Linux and if your machine isn't a complete toaster use the KDE version. It's based on Debian 12 but the installer is super user friendly
I've been using Linux on and off in VMs, but i just couldn't get myself to actually switch yet.
I installed Linux on my mothers laptop several years ago and she's mostly been using that ever since, but i am still the one doing tech support if anything fails.
and you always will be, just a fact of life. And you would still be the tech support if her laptop was running windows
@@GameCyborgCh Yeah, but i am more familiar with Windows because i use it every day. With Linux i don't even know what the equivalent of Task Manager is.
@9:30 I also got an Apex Legends Ban 2 months ago. It took 1 month for EA to unban me with alot of asking from my site, with no response from EA's site why. Understandable that I know a bit afraid to start Apex again from a Linux machine, although I would love to use Linux as my daily driver.
Also I can imagine there are some people that got banned and the ban won't get revoked from EA.
I've been thinking about this... We have evolved in Linux to be able to both handle and improve upon Windows and Linux. In order to become dominant, we need to be seen as the "safe" option. With Linux, we need to provide folks with advice for keeping their data (pictures) their own and safe from third parties. they need to feel that they have /more/ options for games and apps to do what they want to do... and hat they will never lose their "state." We need to provide folks the option to seemlessly migrate via virtualization (kvm/qemu)... or for folks to "never migrate." I think all these things happen before 2034... and in-between then, we start fighting Apple iOS and Google Android.
normal people don't use linux because software companies refuse to support it. I refuse to support these companies.
I've tried linux several times, and every time there where things that just didn't work. Last time the nail in the coffin was me not being able to use my dualsense controller in certain games, and no AMD adrenalin software. But despite that, I really liked the UI and the responsiveness of the OS.
I go on and off with using linux. A big issue I had was smaller things not being supported or like video call software not working. It was always a hassle to figure out how to fix an issue when it did come up
@11.00 this was a case where he shared the pc. He could dual boot.
On the case that you mentioned, that someone Dows not want to support multiple systems, if you are the one supporting them, then it is on you to show the rest how easy it is or sit is not. If it ends up it is not, then maybe this means that linux is not that ready for mass "consumption".
But let's face it. Linux community always blames everyone else for the failure of adopting LInux on desktop. But they still refuse to come together and make one thing that linux needs. A "standard" , what you would call the poster child for linux.
What prevents me from using only linux is battery life.
I've just installed debian as a dualboot and battery life is horrible.
Plug it in to an outlet, do you use a computer while you walk, heck no.
@@STONE69_no but i use a laptop on a bench outside away from outlets
@@STONE69_oof
@lindenreaper8683 nvidia? Heck no, I have integrated graphics. (Powerful enough)
@lindenreaper8683 only 5 hours of CZcams @1080p60 and 11 hours of libreoffice is a joke. If my laptop is not heating as much as windows, where is the power going?
I used Linux as a daily driver for over 6years nonstop because it ran so much better on the laptop I had at the time than windows ever would. I worked through and learned so many things about Linux and some things that come to mind would be, ditch the need for users to learn and mess with repositories all together, devs need to come up with a double click exe ease of installation for everything. Windows is so easy to install the most mundane things and to do the same for Linux... Ope gotta kick open the terminal, then a list of commands from some random website later and the install may or may not have worked.. Just a couple of many things (: great video
On the subject of pain points keeping people using windows more than Linux - I've messed with Linux since the early 2000s (Not a dev). It's come SO far since then. Back then, a person like me was doing pretty good to burn a CD that worked, let alone find a distro that liked your video card. It's great now, but I don't know enough to troubleshoot it as well as I can with windows. Like you said - Some of us don't have the time/desire to go and learn all that. For me - Especially if I have to learn a whole new world in Terminal. I use Ubuntu on the regular, always dual-boot, but I use Windows more.
I'm planning to buy a new pc and I'm thinking about going with linux. I keep hearing how bad windows 10 and 11 is. If it plays my steam games and is stable, it should be just fine I hope
system76, cosmic desktop…
windows 10-11 are not the worst thing in the world but i can see why people are growing tired of windows. the inability to opt out of advertisements and telemetry seem to be the biggest gripes. My gripe with windows was how they keep changing little things that worked fine before. i.e right click drop down menu in windows 11. If it ain't broke don't fix it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@Johny9405 i guess the only thing im wondering now about linux is does it support most gaming devices? particularly, steering wheels and pedal for sim racing and a bunch of other accessories
I go back and fourth mainly due to gaming reasons.Don't get me wrong i've gotten most of my games working but like i enjoy playing halo infinite which for me is just borked on linux no matter distro , proton or method i used same with modding is just more of a pian on linux.
@@lindenreaper8683idk but i can't fix it. I've tried for hours everything people said on protondb,reddit etc
@@lindenreaper8683 the halo games run perfectly on Linux. However I can't say if Infinite does, I've never played it. The other Halo games run pretty much natively.
@@lindenreaper8683 anti cheat works in multiplayer now. Not all but some of them. I know easy anti cheat works fine
Why I stopped using Linux is it has bad hardware support for laptops. I am a laptop user and battery life is something important to me. On Windows, usually I get about 8 hours of use and on the same laptop I get about 3 to 4 hours of of use on the distros I tried. I understand that the hardware I use is designed for Windows and not for Linux, but still, whenever someone asks a question about windows, the responses I see goes like "just install Linux". Well, on Linux, I can't switch to different performance/power profiles, RGB lighting controls don't work, Dolby atmos is not available, HDR is not supported etc.
And some very serious issues with Linux OSes like web browsers not supporting hardware decoding for video playback (which increases CPU usage significantly when watching videos online, thus reducing battery life significantly) , graphics card driver issues prevent me from using or recommending linux to any Windows / Mac users. And these issues have been there for decades and will not be resolved anytime soon.
First Linux-based operating system supporting laptops was Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. So yes, hardware support for laptops arrived very late.
Hardware decoding for videos have been existed from year 2008 too. Just use nVidia GPU and use VPDAU.
Browsers of course used long time Flash player that was garbage. Web developers started to using in browser videos without Flash Player somewhere in 2012, CZcams was earliest users where it was used side by side with Flash Player, but Flash Player was used to year 2017 in video services.
Hardware decoding support in desktop browsers was added in year 2020, so you are talking ancient history.
@gruntaxeman3740 Hardware decoding is working on video players. I'm talking about web browsers. On Windows, all the major web browsers use hardware decoding for youtube and other videos. On Linux NONE of the browsers support Hardware decoding. I'm not talking ancient times. I'm talking 2024 browsers. And on Windows, all major browsers supported Hardware decoding since HTML5 video players were available. So on Windows it was available since ancient times. On Linux still not available on 2024.
i have an Intel N4100 CPU based mini system. Previously I installed Ubuntu 22 on it and use it to watch 1080P movies and it works fine. After a kernal update the audio driver was completely ruined and since then the sound just never work again. I have to reinstall Windows 11 on it despite the much higher resource requirement. As a Windowser I tried many many times but Linux was never my primary OS.
Problems with linux:
-MS office is how the world does business. This isn't an option on Linux
-Gaming is still a chore on Linux
-Most speciality software (excluding software tools) are windows exclusive
-MS Exchange support is poor in Linux mail clients, this is a problem.
-Linux is a chore in the desktop environment more often than Windows and Mac. You end up 'Playing Linux' rather than doing what you want/need to do.
My mom used Mint Linux for 8 years and it wasn't painful. In fact with the lack of spyware and scams it was less painful.
I wonder how many Linux Enthusiast you could get to participate in creating a brand new Linux branch, from scratch. That is, starting by making a list of the things they like most about Linux, rather than starting by forking an existing branch. Then, working out a plan, and accepting the fact that it's going to be a huge project. Two things I would suggest strongly considering to go into such a project would be, having a graphical user interface that does everything through a terminal window, which could be opened to view as a log of everything done in the graphical user interface, with an option to edit any list of commands invoked through the graphical user interface before they get executed (or canceled), and a system for listing things to be chosen from, which could be used for such things as to show the locations of every file with execution privileges, sorted by creation date, for example, or perhaps sorted in alphabetical order so that duplicates could be easily found, but the point is sorted in the way chosen by the user rather than in some predetermined way and also likewise selectively filtered. Of course, my way is just one way and this is meant as inspiration rather than as instructions. I hope someone will see it and be inspired by it.
Hmm. Probably the closest thing is Chrome OS, which is secretly a linux based operating system.
Excellent discussion here. At the end of the road, anything is connected to hardware specs and general knowledge. Today, if you want a system based on Linux but with the heavy duty to be the daily/main driver, virtualization is the minimum. High performance CPU (such Ryzen 9 series), a lot of RAM is the minimum. Because you can base yourself on one of the best Linux distribution and then, with the VM, you can manage any OSes you want, including Windows. This approach is the best for testing and learning, especially installing other specific Linux distros such Kali and Parrot aimed for much interesting things, safer in VM than as main driver itself ;)
People keep acting like linux just works out of the box these days, but it really doesn’t in most cases. I have tried to switch to linux full time for the 4th time now (it looks promising this time) but every time i tried it, i had to spend days getting everything to work and set up how i like it. And even then, every other program i install needs tweaking. And all this comes from someone who has a fairly decent understanding of linux compared to the general population.
And even if everything works, there are always factors you can’t control, for example the latest kernel on fedora just doesn’t boot for me. That really isn’t something you would ever have to consider on windows or macOS.
windows has a lot of issues too, its not perfect.
Deb 12 has worked out of the box and very little I had to adjust. Only issue I had was with my Nvidia card
@@Ralphunreal honestly didn’t compare for me. I rarely ever had to tweak anything and never had problems even nearly as severe as with linux. I still use linux because i enjoy tinkering with it, but i don’t think i would be able to recommend it to anyone that isn’t tech-savvy
It depends heavily on your hardware. A 15 year old thinkpad will unironically have less friction than a top of the line gaming PC with a top of the line Nvidia card. A 10 year old MacBook Pro will have a much easier install than a new Apple Silicon Mac. Linux means you really don’t know how difficult the transition is with your personal machine until its too late, and sometimes you might find certain things like webcams and external devices just don’t work at all. Sometimes everything is perfect and instantly works, but I find older hardware tends to be the easiest way to get that result.
My biggest question is what so called "Linux Nerd" do with your linux pc? Matt-san makes videos, I understand that, but what do average Linux users use them for? and if it's like watching movies and youtubes, does OS matter?
Is it like "I drive to my work place with porche", "My nissan do the same thing, why do you need porche" thing?
*I usually use Windows but my media console runs on Mint. Still watch this kind of videos (like Matt-san and DT-san etc.)
It’s not just a question of what tasks do you perform, it’s also a question of the quality of your experience. If you want to be able to avoid hard sell software, DRM, constantly having to purchase your operating system every time you buy a new machine, subscription services, having a new machine pre installed with software that you can’t use until you purchase it, computer viruses, applications that use your data as a commodity, etc, then Linux and open source software sets you free from all that grift. That’s only touching the surface. I would say the difference is not between a porche and family car, but the difference between living in your own private house or living in a shopping mall and paying rent for the pleasure. Or we could stick with the car metaphor and say Linux is like driving a porche which has been given free of charge, compared to driving a Ford family saloon which you have to buy all over again every few years.
Some people also like to heavily customize their environment and deal with Lua, yaml and conf files. Some people run Arch and update their system every weekend so they spend their free time troubleshooting for fun.
I am software developer. Linux provides customizations unachievable on Windows. I enjoy workspace free of visual distractions.
I've switched from Windows XP, it has lived its own life, felt unpredictable, almost conscious. I've seen newer versions, felt sluggish and cluttered.
Windows is good enough for consumption, software and driver support is much better.
@@humanBonsai Most people are buying laptops where windows pre-installed does not add to the cost. There are no subscription costs for running windows. If you can be bothered with the tinkering to customize linux to get it just the way you want it (or even just get it to work for you at all) then why wouldn't that person be bothered to remove all the per-installed bloat from windows? Having just set up a computer with windows 11 and another with Ubuntu, I can say it is so so much quicker to get the windows system 95% of the way I like it, than it is to get the Ubuntu system 95% of the way I like it.
Most of the time that most people are spending on a computer is on the internet, and the tracking is happening at so many levels besides the OS. Tracking is so much worse on mobile phones, and people are installing things like tiktok, shien and temu and apps that read the clipboard and spy on users. OS telemetry data is so far down the list of tracking threats that people ignore.
@@HesderOleh he asked why Linux users install Linux so I gave him an answer. I am not saying why people should use Linux. Most people shouldn’t unless they are into tech. Here in the UK when you buy a laptop with Windows preinstalled you do pay for a windows license, it’s part of the cost of the laptop. With Linux I just buy secondhand machines and slap Linux on. With subscriptions I am talking about most of the software you can install on Windows and Mac. Linux ecosystem the apps are free of charge. But you know what, I am not trying to convince anyone to use Linux. I don’t care what other people use. If you prefer windows, then rock on. You do you. Good for you. But if someone wants to know why Linux users use Linux, then I am free to offer some of my reasons.
I tried multiple time to switch to linux. But for me iot is just not possible. I see all the time how good driver support became or how good games are implemented or how premium open source software has become (and I am using Open Source when it fits my needs, i.e. libre office) but I am always hurt by driver issues (even just to get the onboard audio running), open source software that misses most of the options I just NEED from that kind of software and often games (not so much of an issue to me) still aren't running.
And sometimes the OS is unneccessary complicated to do simple tasks.
And then: Which of those thousands of distros and combinations with which GUIs should I use.
I want it to just work, and that is something that (nowadays) windows does. I just don't have the time a) to wait for solutions for unsolved problems to come b) to figure out anything I want to do.
But I will always be willing to give linux a chance, when It looks like, the issues I have, have been solved for good
I enjoy the idea of Linux, I would like for it to be my main driving OS, but I have music production setup with some casual gaming, I don't have time for tweaks. I need to work, right from the install.
Most people own a computer to do some light work and be entertained. The one place the average user has a hard time being entertained is Linux. There is still quite a learning curve to game on Linux (though as a gamer using Linux, it’s very viable). Until more work is done to reduce the friction to migrating to Linux people who’ve used windows and Mac their whole life won’t have a lot of motivation to use Linux. (Especially when windows is essentially free to upgrade).
Linux gaming is definitely decent, but compared to Windows I find there's still a lot of tinkering involved to get things to work properly, e.g., getting Lutris from upstream instead of your package manager on a stable release distro, proprietary drivers being a pain to install unless your distro has a specific solution for it, and often times things will break before you get them to work. That said, if you're not averse to tinkering before being able to set and forget, it's not too bad.
I have both Linux and Windows. When I want to game I will boot to Windows 100%. I'm done with tinkering. Actually I only use Linux when I need to work with PDF files.
exactly to the point!