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That hasn't been my experience at all - except for the graphics card issue where there is really some work to be done before the specific driver for the card works.

For everything else Linux is actually a lot easier to work with than Windows - where you may need to download specific drivers for it to work.

As for your comment about config files - the same is the case with Windows where instead of config files, you may need to tweak registry keys.

If you don't mind the default settings, it is about the same experience on Linux and Windows. When you start tweaking things, then your mileage will vary.

> As for your comment about config files - the same is the case with Windows where instead of config files, you may need to tweak registry keys.

This is a pretty bad comparison. Here's a list of things I had to use config files (or terribly documented randomly downloaded CLI apps) for in Ubuntu but have a simple GUI (or just work) in Windows:

- Mounting a network drive

- Adjusting my touchpad behaviour (whether to supress on keyboard entry)

- Restarting my network adapter

- Wipe my SSH credentials

The last time I touched Windows registry was to disable automatic USB device connection, but that's only because I don't have group policy on this machine.

I've never had to deal with anything as brittle as xorg.conf on Windows.

1. My experience with Windows 10 is that there's a considerable chance that it will break after an update and refuse to boot requiring me to reinstall it. With Linux even when using bleeding edge Arch things rarely break and when they do I can see WHY and then FIX it.

2. Not a problem with AMD at least.

3. Mileage may vary

4. Ubuntu is a joke. Try Manjaro.

5. Learning curve is steep but you install Gnome or KDE and have a proper desktop environment that don't get in your way or show ads without touching a single configuration file.

6. Mileage may vary but most distros are Debian, Arch or Fedora based and environments are not that fragmented as you make it sound. Also there is Flatpak and others as an alternative for building and distributing desktop applications.

7. I'm playing games with decent performance on a GPU that was released on last month. Also it's only crappy if doesn't get the job done and is good that the community cares for long term support better than this trend of disposable software and planned obsolescence.

8. Never had this problem.

1. shrug that hasn't been my experience. You also mentioned blue screens in another comment, but I've only seen one blue screen in the last decade and that one was my fault (RAM timings too tight; Surprised it lasted long enough to run a benchmark).

2. Like I told the other guy: "Yeah I'll just trade in my RTX 3090 for something that has half the performance and doesn't support tensorflow"

4. More fragmentation? If the most popular distro is a joke, why would I try something even more unstable (rolling release)?

6. Flatpak and snap are definitely progress. When more people can run identical binaries, I suspect a lot of these problems will go away. There will still be issues with administration (why are there so many ways to configure networking?), but yeah it's progress.

7. Why would I want "decent performance"? I want low latency (min 300fps rendering) while running at max quality

8. Then you've never measured it. Try listening to your own voice using software audio loopback. You'll find that the default audio latency is greater than internet latency within the US. That leads to people interrupting each other in video calls and callouts being late in co-op games

4. Stability has nothing to do with reliability. I had less issues with Arch Linux than with Ubuntu LTS and I hear people say the same thing. Even Windows 10 is a rolling release OS. If you want a ready to use stable OS there's Manjaro where repositories are purposefully a bit behind Arch.

7. Decent is 1080p@60Hz, what most people play. What you want is extreme performance. Honestly 300fps at 4K is just absurd even on Windows unless you're playing an old game as CPU becomes a bottleneck and why would you need it? Do you have a 300fps display?

8. Never measured it but trying pw-loopback I don't see how whatever it's can be a problem even for competitive gaming.

At least for your glibc / nvidia concern, I feel like if you stick to the binary packages, at least on Ubuntu, it's hard to break. Recently I've been trying to do all the gaming I can on Linux with Proton, and at least for single-player games, it tends to work pretty well. (MP is still a big issue due to the current state of anti-cheat)

Audio latency is one struggle I agree is still pretty bad. I had a pretty good time getting SteamVR running on Linux with Beat Saber running via proton, but tuning the audio latency was a big pain.

1 why/how would you break glibc? This sounds like you're "holding it wrong"? You don't go willy-nilly changing system dlls on windows, do you?

2 yeah, nvidia does not support linux/Foss. It sucks. Buy amd, or use windows.

3 I've not really seen this lately. Ubuntu/canonical does a pretty good and pragmatic job of enabling non-free drivers - but sure, not all vendors care. See 2.

4 not with eg Ubuntu 20.04 lts Wayland. I'm rather positively impressed with the settings app. I'm not all that happy personally with all the dbus/changes that enable this pretty gui - I tend to prefer simple config files. But at any rate - I don't think your point 4 has been true for a while.

5 yes and no? Honestly I think the only config files I'm editing is nvim and vs code. My terminal for example has a perfectly usable gui preferences coupled with a perfectly readable and version controllable config file.

Well and the occasional bash rc tweak.

6 maybe?

7 I think it's more that hw vendors don't care about Linux, so it takes a lot of time for drivers etc to materialize.

8 Hopefully pipewire will kill pulse audio, and this will cease to be the case.

1. sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

2. Yeah I'll just trade in my RTX 3090 for something that has half the performance and doesn't support tensorflow

1 when was this? On Ubuntu lts or Debian stable?

2 if a vendor makes good hw, but poor drivers for your os - that really is on the vendor, not the os?

Still, I agree it's frustrating that nvidia is unwilling to commit to Foss/linux.

1. Ubuntu 18 LTS

2. Meh, I never said it was on the OS. I'm just listing some reasons why it's impossible to use Linux on my personal desktop. Believe me, I've tried.

> Ubuntu 18 LTS

You updated system glibc and system packages broke? Or third party packages?

Sorry for being a bit of a Nix shill, but NixOS aims to solve 1, 2, 5, and the latter part of 6.

1) This should not occur. You do not update glibc on a stable desktop environment. If you use rolling release distributions, yes shit will hit the fan (even though proponents/fans of such will deny such 'ever happening to their X years of Arch or w/e usage).

2) Don't use Nvidia; use AMD or Intel with FOSS drivers. I know this sucks if you don't have the option (its a package deal, or you already bought it).

(I've only bothered to address the first two. Doesn't mean you're correct on the other 6.)

1. Yeah it "should not" happen yet I've experienced it on a relatively sane distro. Btw "Update glibc and everything breaks" is a quote from Linus Torvalds. He's a newcomer on this scene, but he makes some good points: https://youtu.be/5PmHRSeA2c8?t=588

2. No thanks. I'll stick with my RTX 3090 for my personal desktop and 2x2080Ti for each of my servers. We both wish there was another vendor that supported tensorflow with reasonable performance, but you know that's not the world we live in.

3-8: Well you better address them then

Yeah, "Update glibc and everything breaks" is a quote by Linus Torvalds on Debconf 2014. But why? Do you know? I do. Because this very thing happened on Debian Testing. Not Debian Stable, Testing. That's akin to a rolling release like Arch. Debian GNU/Linux is a sane Linux distribution, as long as you run Stable. If you run Testing or Unstable shit is going to break, just like Arch or Nix or .. (at least Nix got good rollback support to mitigate it)

I'm happily using a Vega56 and can achieve decent performance on 1080p and 1440p on Linux. Raytracing is a gimmick to me, tear-free gaming not (but I got FreeSync working). I don't work with Tensorflow or Hashcat or such, I'm talking about Linux desktop gaming here. There's no need to use Nvidia there unless you need exotic stuff like raytracing. The AMD Radeon Navi series (5000 and 6000) deliver excellent performance.

If you are going to cite a joke, cite this: Windows, you do anything and the screen go blue. Problems exist and they need be addressed but Linux did not stop at time and the scenario is not the same as it was at 7 years ago.

This hasn’t been my Ubuntu experience at all. I’ve used it for years