this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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I've been using all major OSes for a long time. I have the most experience with Windows, I've been using it since Windows 95 and stopped at Windows 8. I've been using macOS for about a decade and Linux (in total) for about 5 years. I have started with Mandrake, moved to Mandriva, spent over a year on Ubuntu and recently I've been using Fedora as my daily driver. And honestly, I'm running out of patience.

Few days ago I ran into the gpu driver issue. Long story short, Steam games started to crash on directx issue. Games that were working few weeks ago. I admit, I was mocking around with GPU drivers in order to make Podman containers to access the GPU. But I did the fresh diver install and it didn't solved the issue (also my GPU was not found despite all commands showed it was there). I don't have much spare time and I would like to play a game, I used to play before, without spending hours/days fixing issue that didn't exist last time I played it.

But it's not only about games. I have two laptops, both running Fedora 40 KDE spin. Some time ago on one laptop the power widget stopped working. It shows "no power profiles found on a device". But when I delete the widget and add it again, it works fine.

Other issue is with the general look and feel. There are many apps that don't follow the OS look - lack of window borders/shadow, random icons that don't match the system, flatpacks having issues accessing system configuration (e.g. vscodium not recognising zsh as a default shell).

Few more problems I had:

  • on GNOME, some extensions where crashing without any reason
  • some apps don't respect desktop scaling
  • bluetooth randomly dropping connections
  • syncing files between devices is always a struggle
  • you never know what's going to break when installing updates

If you want a Linux like experience use macOS, and if you want to play games, stick to Windows.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Start with Gentoo or Arch

I wouldn't recommend arch to general users. I consider myself a general linux user, and figuring out Arch, even after the installation hurdle, wasn't easy for me.

is like fixing windows when it doesn’t

I don't think Arch really makes that easy. Although, I guess archwiki is pretty great. Even arch forum helped me a lot with respect to other disto.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

That's why I wrote it's another unpopular opinion. Somehow the internet claims Arch is hard when to me it's been the easiest distro I've ever used

  • No GUI bs, unless you install it yourself, that you never know what it does under the hood. The config file you find in man is the config file that governs the thing - easy
  • You deleted a little bit too much? You just reinstall package, like in Slackware - easy
  • You need something from outside the packages? Arch is very well prepared for you building things from source and install it in a sane way, instead of pure make install, like Gentoo - easy
    And PKGBUILD is easy to understand, RPM and DEB package creation is black magic
  • You don't have a lot of crap in the system that you are not sure you need. Since it comes rather plain, you either install something you want, or it gets installed as dependency

But, of course, YMMV
And I've tried "easier" distros in the past. Sooner or later it always felt like I need proprietary set of keys to unscrew the lid to flip one small cable