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Comment by walteweiss | Hacker News Reader

Before I switched to Linux (from macOS) I believed such commenters as they gave me the plausible excuse.

This is wrong. Linux is very good for an average person.

Well, if that average person wants to do something unusual and doesn’t want to invest even a fraction of their time into learning the system… well, blame on them. Making a desktop file is no rocket science, and something you can learn how to do within half an hour at most. Don’t listen to someone who makes such a bold statement as ‘Linux in such a bad state’ and then immediately shows their lack of competence with showing they are unable to make a desktop file. It is not Linux, it is you and all those guys who upvoted you to become the top voted comment on this thread.

ElementaryOS is trash, just get yourself Fedora Workstation or even Ubuntu, if you have no idea of how to deal with Linux, changes are it will be much easier for you with those distros.

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It sucks to say this on Hacker News, but you're being really naive. If I, as a power user, have trouble installing and even running Linux, how can you expect a normal user to do it?

I run into non-stop issues with Linux. I ran into a bug where I can't even boot into a Linux OS without artifacts if I have more than one monitor turned on. I ran into sound driver bugs where my microphone pitch is completely off on Discord and other apps. The Fedora installer didn't even open for me.

Linux is not accessible. If it was, you'd see hundreds of power users moving to it. You're doing the Linux community a disservice by writing it off as "people being impatient".

> Linux is not accessible

Linux is extremely accessible.

Most popular linux variants can be downloaded for free, and it's easy to find solutions to most common issues you run into. I'd be surprised if there isn't a StackOverflow post or two that have solutions to the issues you ran into, and even if there aren't, you can usually get answers just by asking.

Some linux variants are better than others, and YMMV per use case, but saying "linux is not accessible" is incredibly inaccurate.

I refer to this technique as the Distro Distract. I first ran into it during my first experience with Linux in the mid-nineties.

I install a distro, I experience problems, there's not a lot of info out there. I hit #linux or some forum and I am told that what I really have is an XY problem, and the real problem is that I am running the wrong distro.

So I install Distro #2. And my problems have vanished! But ... but there are new problems that were not there in the first distro. So I hit the forums again and get someone nearly identical telling me that what my actual problem is is that I just have no idea how to pick a decent distro, and what I should really be using is ...

People do not want to cycle through one distro after another. That is not accessible. It takes time to pick out the next one and install (less now), and then you go through your stuff until you hit yet another brick wall.

You describe Windows approach, when a reboot solves a weird problem. In the Linux world you don't solve your problems by just mindlessly doing the same things again and again until it works. The best approach is to explore and learn, the longer you do that the simpler it becomes. That’s how Linux is best to be treated.

What if my life is finite? What if I want to accomplish something with my time, rather than "learn linux noob"? Rebooting Windows is 10 seconds of my time. Learning Linux took me hundreds of hours. Hours I want back, frankly.

The thing is you are going to spend less and less time on that after you get through the basics. It is not as huge as you think, especially if you work with computers.

Accessible for power users, yes. Not the average person.

Linux is great and an incredible testament to the power of open source.

But my god, it’s made by nerds, for nerds - which is great for folks like us, but there is absolutely no taste or consistency in UI/UX in any of the distros I’ve seen.

ElementaryOS is perhaps the prettiest Linux distro, yet it is so much uglier than even the perennial virtual corporate suit, Windows.

I just want an OSS Linux distro that’s beautiful, intuitive, and deeply customizable when I want to put on my power user hat. Is that too much to ask?

I was in the same boat, as a Mac user. The thing you need to understand is that the beauty is not in the visual aesthetics of the GUI, but in other things.

‘It’s not how it looks like, it’s good it works’ is the phrase we believe Steve Jobs kept saying. Well, here it is. Linux is very ugly from the beautiful UI standpoint. But at some point you may realize you just don’t need any interface, and that’s where the beauty starts.

The completely different experiences people have make me wonder what’s going on and what broken to cause it.

I have no great skill set and mess around with machines at weekends. I got Ubuntu desktop running on the metal and in a VM on both Proxmox and ESXi with everything passed through and working nicely and did so without any particular issues (bar thunderbolt, but that turned out to be hardware and a new machine was shipped to me and it now works).

This was on a Nuc, but the different experiences point to something being very wrong.

It’s largely driver support. If the manufacturer doesn’t support Linux it’s a roll of the dice. Nothing Linux can do about it really.

>It sucks to say this on Hacker News, but you're being really naive. If I, as a power user, have trouble installing and even running Linux, how can you expect a normal user to do it?

It has less to do with technical abilities of the user and more to do with their general outlook and what they value. If you look for deficiencies, you'll find them. If you value the freedom and no bullshit experience, research the hardware and put in some effort to make it work.

I wonder how do you solve the technical problem if there was driver issue in Windows.

When I am facing issue in Windows, I google it, then I got some regedit trick to perform. If that works, that's great. If not, then I need to search for another trick until it works. Since windows command line sucks, I have to hop through different configuration windows to try solving the issue. A very frustrating experience.

Could an average Windows user could able to diagnostic their problem and confidently perform an action knowing it will work? My experience is they just ask their friend, family or ask for immediate solution on social media. If they can't solve it, then maybe just buy a new one.

I think Windows is just as accessible as how many friends and family using Windows.

> I wonder how do you solve the technical problem if there was driver issue in Windows.

This just doesn't happen that often in Windows, at least for the majority of hardware.

Yeah yeah, I know everyone has an anecdote of some graphics card driver update screwing up their multi-monitor setup, or that cheap no-name Chinese headset or camera bought off Amazon that never worked (and which they promptly returned).

But chances are, if you buy a well known branded component at Best Buy or Staples or even online, and you're not running some ancient version of Windows, the drivers will work. At worst, you might have to ask the IT guy at work or your kid who's more tech savvy, and they'll figure it out by downloading the drivers off the OEM's site. They certainly won't need to jump into a command line and compile a patched driver into a kernel like you'll end up having to do on Linux.

The reason for this is because the software engineers who wrote the drivers spent 90% of their time ensuring it would work in "most" versions and configurations of Windows, 9% of their time getting it to work with Mac (maybe), and anywhere from 0% to 1% for Linux.

When I was younger, I really enjoyed the challenge of digging into Linux and learning about how drivers and various subsystems worked. But now... I don't want to spend half my weekend to get a $40 USB camera or headset to work properly. I get paid decent money to write and fix software at work, 50 hours a week, and the novelty of doing it on Linux has long worn off.

Purchased a "Microsoft Xbox Wireless Controller + Wireless Adapter for Windows 10" off Amazon.

Brand is Microsoft and it is designed for Windows 10. (Non-affiliate link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078T3R8YS)

Plugged it into a USB 3.0 port on my Windows 10 machine. Hardware not recognized. Clicked, "Search automatically for drivers" (which has maybe worked once, ever), No drivers found.

Went to Google... All the "support" answers that you see from microsoft when you google "drivers for windows 10 xbox controller" provide basic IT support responses and no links to drivers. Found a link on reddit somewhere to a microsoft page where I finally found drivers that worked.

> if you buy a well known branded component at Best Buy or Staples or even online, and you're not running some ancient version of Windows, the drivers will work

Microsoft brand main stream product (over 5000 reviews on amazon), doesn't work out of the box on Windows 10...

I can't say that my personal experience is in line with anything you mention, re "things working out of the box on windows more than mac or linux".

Just buy a piece of hardware that is compatible with Linux and then you get a pain free experience.

I am more productive when enjoying higher IO throughput on linux file system. Windows's program was always unresponsive and hurting my productivity.

Another example is an unknown driver bug could cause Windows system process go up to 100% CPU usage and there are no obvious solution to the problem. I don't think average user like it. They just think computer is generally buggy and accept that. They don't know anything better.

The last paragraph in your response really resonates with me. My time is much more valuable now, than it was when I'd find excuses to tinker with my tools.

Today, I just want my tools to work, and I want to use those tools to get things done.

Yeah unfortunately the Linux experience is still highly dependent on how well your hardware is supported, and whether you’re going to stick to the happy path (so not much gaming, photo/video editing, or coding in .NET).

I’m squarely in the linux happy path (I bought a Thinkpad because they’re known for good linux support) and it’s amazing, far better than Windows. But that’s also because staying in the happy path is a conscious choice: I actively avoid the stupid kinds of tech pain that eat entire weekends. For all that stuff I keep a Windows box around, which I power up once a month or so.

Youre issues are mostly to do with your device manufacturers, you’re facing driver issues because the manufacturer never even once bothered to test it for linux.

I’ve never had any one of the problems you prescribed because luckily my system parts were all linux compatible.

Don’t blame linux for this, its your manufacturer who didn’t bother with the compatibility.

Forgot to add about the distros: I didn't mean Ubuntu and Fedora are bad in any way, but the opposite. I think they are very good for an average person who looks to escape Windows. Personally I think Fedora Workstation is much better than Ubuntu, but very similar in that very departments: being very popular and yet working out of the box.

Having used many flavors of Linux over the years as my work desktop, they are all very capable of being my daily driver.

The only thing holding me back at home is anti cheat support for proton.

Why would you even want that?

If someone has Windows on an intel PC with a graphics card (nvidia or amd) and 2 monitors 1 connected to the graphics card and the other to the integrated GPU, they WONT be able to use both monitors once they install Linux (any distro). SURPRISE!!!

I use linux in my home pc. I play games and code. I've been tinkering with linux since 1999. With FreeBSD since 1997. Linux has come a long way, but still has A LOT of HUGE rough edges.

Most dedicated GPUs have 2 or 3 monitor ports, so having the integrated GPU also support a extra monitor is not something that worked on windows (at least not until recently, I tried back in the day), also is not a something I would call a rough edge, let alone reasonable to expect in general.

You average user works on Ms Office, plays some games, uses photoshop and other apps that linux has some alternatives barely. No libre office is not a replacement, GIMP is not a replacement, proton for games is not. They’re compromises. Same about Wine. Im a linux+windows user. Linux is not even near when it comes to average UX.

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