this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Despite not being nearly as user-friendly as Windows, the problem with Linux, at least in my many attempts to use it as a daily driver, is that system failures are often catastrophic and involve expert-level skills to work through.
In contrast, I haven't had a Windows system in the last 20 years force me to reinstall the OS.
But if Microsoft goes this route, I will absolutely have no issues with switching to Linux and working through any pain points.
Personally, I find KDE Plasma to be extremely easy to use. I prefer it to Windows, but that could also just be familiarity.
I've also not had a catastrophic failure in I don't know how many years. I have several machines running Linux and the only time I reinstall is when I get a new computer. 20 years ago we were still running XP or maybe Vista and I absolutely remember reinstalling XP several times. Windows even today has it's share of "expert-level" fixes too. I find the incantations to fix Windows problems even more mysterious, and often coming from sources I'm not sure I can trust.
In any case it's all anecdotal, but I wanted to offer a counterpoint in favor of Linux. :)
I do recommend giving it a go, as it's really improved a lot in the last several years.
I will keep giving it a go. I mean, I've been trying to get into Linux for like 25 years 😂
What I mean by windows being easier to recover from, if there's ever an issue, is that it has multiple layers of restore, repair, and other modes that are very user friendly.
Just installing a simple app in Linux often involves numerous lines in the terminal. My wife would 1000% never be able to use Linux. LMAO
Mind you, I've only really tried various flavours of Ubuntu, so many there's a better distro for me.
You don't need to use the terminal to install a program at all, at least on Debian with KDE Plasma. You can either download a .deb file and install it with the graphical deb installer, or you can open the software centre (Discover for KDE) and search for it. You can even add extra repositories graphically (and for Debian, you probably are going to want to enable the non-free repo by doing this, which I think has a tick box).
I've also never had Linux break on me, unless I broke it myself after poking things I shouldn't poke.
Yes, when deb files exist, I go for that! There have been instances where I'm following a tutorial for whatever I'm looking to do, and it's always terminal commands. I grew up using DOS, so i get PTSD when I see the terminal 😂
As for breaking, i don't remeber the distro (a major one), but I'd have instances where after some time the ram use would just grow and grow until everything came to a halt. Even with 32gb of ram i was having this happen often enough that i had to stop. I do still think my desktop pc still has linux installed as a dual boot with windows, but I've been using a laptop exclusively for a long while.
I'll still continue to try. My computing needs aren't excessive and i lived with a chromebook for years as a daily driver before getting a windows laptop.
Installing software is one of the big blockers I see with people, especially when they're used to downloading a random executable from a website somewhere. (haha! Anyone remember Tucows?) Ubuntu has also been making their installation worse lately with pushing Snaps, which always seem to be only partially integrated into the rest of the system. I have been playing a bit with Flatpak distributed software and it seems to work well, with some nice UIs to browse the various repos. I'm also a fan of AppImage for the ease of distribution. But yeah, just the fact I have to type this out means it's quite different and yet something else to learn.
Good luck with your Linux adventures! :)
Fedora Silverblue has a read-only OS and uses Flatpak for apps. It’s pretty hard to break while being pretty simple to install software.
appimages just got less easy…
i don't know which update did it - i think it must have been os-level (i run pop_os, derived from ubuntu) - but appimages silently stopped working. double-click, nothing. finally i looked in the log out of desparation, which said 'appimages require fuse'.
more accurately, appimages require fuse 2 and the os had just upgraded to fuse 3. the fix is to heat-seek libfuse2, and don't mess with any other fuse-related package as things can start wrecking themselves:
sudo apt install libfuse2originally seen on an omgubuntu post
Oof! That's unfortunate.
say to hwr that's like in her cellphone, just download from the native store, maybe it's easier that way
Most of the time Linux fails on me it's nvidia related. I hate nvidia.
In the past month I’ve given up Reddit, Windows and Nvidia. If I had a carbon-fibre submersible, I’d give that up too!
Same here. Once or twice I've switched to the non-free Nvidia drivers thinking it might be better, but it's worse, with some sort of basic xrandr (or such) missing. The free/open-source Nouveau drivers are better but far from perfect.
I'm not sure there is a better alternative, except for Intel (integrated GPU).
Honest question(s) from someone who's been using Linux as a daily diver for well over a decade:
What distro were you using as a daily driver that encountered "catastrophic" system failures? What sort of use case? Was this recent?
If you really want to tinker, you can certainly break your system if you don't really know what you're doing. I'm sure I encountered that in my early days of playing around with home servers and whatnot; but I can honestly say that I haven't had this experience at all with my "daily driver". I've been running Fedora for a couple years now on my laptop; and everything just works. I run updates (at my leisure) once every week or two. I can't remember the last time something just "broke". I certainly can't remember the last time (if ever?) I had to "reinstall the OS" due to a catastrophic failure.
Not recent, so the details would be very cloudy, but I tend to favor Ubuntu, but it was most likely that.
What I did was set things up so that I could use it for my daily tasks : web browsing, remote desktop, video editing, and perhaps installed steam to see how games ran. In the last case, I was getting issues with memory leaks, so my RAM would constantly grow until the system became unresponsive and couldn't be used. This happened several times and I gave up.
In other cases (from what I can recall), I'll have some issue booting or the main desktop interface (whatever it's called) wouldn't load or needed to fall back to a very bare bone UI, and that was that. LOL
Other times, just installing something that required additional dependencies would give me issues, and then getting my graphics card to work required a tremendous amount of research and terminal use... I didn't have the patience for any of it, to be honest.
On Windows, I can tinker all day (but that's no longer my hobby as I just want things to work in my old age), but I only tried doing the basics on Linux, at least enough that my general needs were met without using Windows, and I just couldn't get it to work or be stable enough.
I may try other distros, but I tend to feel like the more popular ones are going to be more stable or offer more community support. Unless I'm totally wrong about that.
personally the problem for linux to me is lack of support from companies
I know in the early years of my Linux experience, I didn't quite understand the underlining system and can agree that I had some catastrophic failures, but I can also say I've had probably just as many from Windows. Hell, even had a Windows update that was forced and then it broke my install and system restore, dcim, etc... Nothing fixed it. That being said, I've been able to resolve most windows problems without a factory reset, but I'm also super stubborn and will try to fix a problem for a long time before I give up.
Now, for the present... I don't remember the last time I had a Linux catastrophic failure that forced a reinstall. Yes I've run into huge problems from my own mistakes that made me fear potential reinstall, but in the end I was always able to overcome them for at least 1 of several reasons: 1. Just my growing experience of Linux (which I can say I am way more familiar with than Windows or Mac now), 2. Online Linux forums where others had the same issue with fixes that weren't "start over" like I've seen in so many windows forums, or 3. Linux IRC channels. Live support from experts who give their own free time to help for no cost. A lot of people give hate to people who are pro Linux, but the community is so much more trustworthy and friendly in my experience (can't say if that would be the same for everyone or not of course).
Same. I actually love Linux and don't like to do software dev on anything else. The only reason windows is my main personal computer is for gaming and streaming services. And some of that is inertia, cause I'm aware that Linux gaming has improved a ton in recent years.