You mean, are present in Linux TODAY.
Installing Linux 22-years ago, when XP shipped, was hugely painful and only the most technical would attempt it.
Windows XP marked the begin of an era when corporations replaced analog processes with digital.
It sounds so foreign now, but in the late 90s - it was still common for corporations to send printed memo to employees as the predominate form of internal communication.
So there's a lot of nostalgia for XP, because it was the first OS used by the masses.
That’s still the case with Linux now. I did two recent Linux installs (different distros) and it’s still a nightmare of finding drivers, scripts, etc. to get everything setup. On one of my devices it still doesn’t recognise all the USB ports attached to the motherboard (but does recognise some), I just got tired of trying to discover why. It’s still often the case that BIOS changes are required, etc.
Linux is not accessible to the average non-technical user at all. The moment one thing goes wrong, they’re done.
Windows is going in the wrong direction for sure, but still when it comes to everything “just working”, it’s hard to beat.
Yes, you can get to a usable desktop pretty quickly. But getting everything right is still an hour or better process, post-install, in 2024.
… for someone who knows what they’re doing. Anyone non-technical would be terrified of the steps needed to get a Linux install into a good state for their machine. It could easily take them days to get a setup that's sound (depending on the level of driver support for their hardware).
To be fair, one of the installs I did was Raspberry PI OS (funnily enough for a Raspberry PI!) - and that was the smoothest Linux install I’ve ever had.
So having a distro tuned to the hardware really does go a long way!
If you mean Linux, "a week or better" is a more realistic, yet still optimistic estimate to get "everything right". Until the next odd regressions come in during a follow-up update.
How is this different from Windows, macOS or any other operating system these days exactly? It's not like things don't go wrong there...
You've never had updates bork your Windows machine, its drivers etc a few hours before an important meeting, I see!
Who here isn't intimately familiar with
> Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock
That’s Linux’s biggest cross to bear
He literally tried to imply incompetence. That is a personal attack. When the entire point of this thread was to empathise with non-techy people installing and setting up a Linux distro. It's not about me, I'm able to resolve issues that come up with the myriad operating-systems I've used in the four decades of using and programming computers.
Instead this commenter got into one of those "my operating system is better than your operating system" childish positions and trying to question my competence rather than deal with the point.
Really, I was trying to state that Linux (all distros) still have some ways to go before the average human would be comfortable with it - especially once you fall off the happy path. The things that make Linux strong for the power user (myriad choices for everything, open-source, CLI driven) are not at all what normal humans want - they don't want a million options, they don't want to run scripts, they couldn't care less about the open-sourciness (other than it's free), etc. The motivations and incentives are different.
And for sure, Windows and OSX have their own problems, but mostly you stay on the happy path because they always have the drivers made for them, which means it's rare that a device or something doesn't work. And if something does go wrong then there's usually either the vendor (who sold them the device) or a single place on the internet to go to find out how to resolve.
This whole thread from my original comment down shows exactly how far away from the average user the Linux community still is. The default answer when someone has problems is "well, stop being so shit, be better - it's your fault". Or, "I've never had that issue, you're an idiot".
Of course those are sweeping generalisations, and I've made the point elsewhere that the Linux community has made great strides - but if we're ever going to have the year of the Linux desktop (I mean real Windows-denting momentum, not just the odd Linux laptop) then more needs to be done, and some of the shitty attitudes need to change.
Sent from my Linux Distro.
> Really, I was trying to state that Linux (all distros) still have some ways to go before the average human would be comfortable with it - especially once you fall off the happy path.
This is just not true. Average humans buy preinstalled. If it's preinstalled, it doesn't matter whether it's Windows or Linux.
Sent from my Librem 5.
Pre-installed Linux laptops is great - and is clearly the way to get someone less techy on-the-way. But, for most, if they're sick of Windows and they want to move (dual boot their machine) then god help them.
Linux is much better than it was, for sure, and I think the community is much better at answering questions than it was - it's less patronising than it used to be (like this guy [1]) - but I when I think of most people who I know who use Windows (non techy users), and whether I think they could survive in a Linux environment - I have to say no, still, which is a shame.
Did it... get a lot better recently? Last time I installed Windows on a laptop I had "fun" getting it the drivers so it could use the Wi-Fi card so it could pull the rest of itself down.
The last but one Linux Mint install I did didn’t even recognise the mouse and keyboard I had plugged in, haha! (The installer recognised them, but not the OS post install!) It turned out I needed a slightly different flavour of mint, but yeah, the average user might even throw in the towel at that point.
No.
"My OS makes it easier to do X" is generally an illusion because you learned what arcane nonsense your OS requires in order to do that ten years ago and now it takes two seconds, but the other OS requires you to learn some different arcane nonsense which would also take two seconds if you already knew what it was.
Non-technical folks might be able to click their way through the installation but in the process every anti-privacy setting you can think of will be turned on by default because you have to really go out of your way and click dark-pattern-enabled links to opt into a few settings that help protect your limited privacy when using Windows.
In some cases you have to either disconnect your internet or purposely fail logging into a MS cloud account multiple times before you're allowed to login to your personal computer with a local account.
I have to wonder what hardware and distros you're using, as the most dominant vendors (Intel, Realtek) work out of the box on the major distros. Or are you recalling experiences from 15 years ago with ndiswrapper and older Broadcom devices still?
The difficulty of dual boot is to do with something being already there. Already Ubuntu etc. have installers that will do repartitioning for you intelligently. Windows by comparison will just pave over whats there if you let it do the happy path and if you want to set up dual boot, requires as much knowledge about resizing partitions.
amdgpu
i2c
bluetooth autosuspend
wifi connectivity issues
resume after suspend sometimes crashing
usbc-pd sometimes not charging
There are so many warnings in journalctl / dmesg, since getting the laptop one month ago, I'm nonstop searching for solutions.
The only reason I'm doing this is to learn the inner workings of the current state of how things are done in Linux.
"Oh, you just used the wrong Linux. You really should use X with Y blah blah..."
There is no "wrong Windows".
Ubuntu desktop might be the closest to just works, but I'm getting more and more averse to its quirks and will likely find myself back on Debian soon.
That's just part of Linux's charm I guess.
For example Server versions are rarely what you want, or business versions, or IoT versions
“Why do I require an online account” (pro? business? enterprise?), “why does this game not work (windows media player being unavailable means certain videos in game engines like Unreal can never play ;))”, “why cant I keep using Windows 7? the new one has a weird taskbar and hid stuff again!”
I get that theres fewer choice and its made for you, but if it hadn't been made for you its actually much more difficult to get it right as a non-tech
I've installed Windows 7-11 on entire fleets. I've run multiple corporate-wide Windows upgrade projects for multiple companies and environments. I've built gold images and templates for Citrix and VDI environments. There really is no hardware configuration needed at all.
I've never had any problems running games or any software in Windows due to drivers or configuration issues. In fact, I run all my creative software specifically in Windows because there's nothing to think about at all.
The only time I've had any kind of hardware or driver issues is with external hardware like testing apparatuses or machinery. I haven't had to mess with drivers in Windows in probably 10 years or more.
I have also run windows and linux for a long time, server contexts and otherwise (hence why I am aware of that Windows Media bug btw).
My personal experience with Linux has been plug and play ever since NDISwrapper wasnt needed for wifi anymore, and aside from some extra repos needed in Fedora for Nvidia.
Windows on the other hand had no official public ISO image and we resorted to sharing it around inside Ubisoft because it was annoying to get a new copy of, we had a blessed version which had the issue of not coming with directX, so we had to copy it from someones desktop windows to get our gameservers running.
Glad you had a good experience, but mine was better in a professional setting with Linux than windows: and I knew more about what I was doing than most.
However: we are mostly talking about desktops, and i was mainly pointing out that most windows users don't have to go to MSDN and get an ISO for their machine or drivers: so safe choices are already made. That doesn’t mean it would be easier given the same non-installed circumstances for the common user.
Was running 2012R2 on the server, there were copies available online of the evaluation edition if you submitted your details, but they wouldn't join a KMS server unless you manually intervened to change the “edition” from evaluation - Joining the domain didnt fix it.
2014-2018 for that directx + download anecdote
Has there been significant progress in this area in a decade? last time I installed a windows (11 pro) it was significantly worse than Ubuntu. Both in downloading it and installing it.
That being said, those environments are generally going to EoL Windows 10 as there's just no reason to move to 11 if things are working. I have 0 experience with Windows 11 yet for that reason.
As far as a consumer goes, if you're starting from a Windows 10 machine, creating the installation media is as easy as downloading the Windows installation media creation tool, point it to your USB, and off you go. Licensing is generally tied to the hardware at this point, so if your device is newish, there's no activation or license keys.
Install takes maybe 15 minutes and is hands off other than username, time zone, pick your wifi SSID etc. Unless you have special hardware, you shouldn't need to install any other drivers. It just goes.
I seriously doubt you've ever even seen a large scale Windows deployment and spend all your time on your "creative software". Is that Powerpoint by any chance?
Creative software being Audacity, Fruityloops, ProTools, Logic, Reaper, various tracker, etc for sound engineering/recording and the Adobe suite for photography and graphics. Ie, my hobbies. I've never had to fiddle with drivers with any of these, just software settings, which is to be expected.
My point is that installing Windows applications, even at scale, generally does not require poking or reconfiguring the OS itself.
Not sure why you're being rude.
Unless you your hardware is so new that it requires the very latest kernel then you should be golden.
Threads are written not spoken, if you don't want to read them press PgDn.
So, if you buy something that works, it will work, and if you buy something that doesn't work, it won't. Wow, what insight. It really does boggle the mind why people don't just buy things that work. Am I right!?!
So either you just like to complain about unfixable things or you are unaware that once you discover your hardware is not supported you should stop wasting time on forums and go back to your working Windows environment
It's never "this doesn't work on Linux".
It's "This SMBus driver is only supported by version 10.1 of arcane library. It will work but first you have to swap out this shim for another one and configure dpkg to never upgrade it. However, this requires that your kernel needs to be compiled with flags foo, bar, and baz. Oh btw, your CPU doesn't support those instructions lol."
I'm being hyperbolic, but it's usually that after some banging your head against the wall you find that, yeah, it could work, but I'm not compiling custom shit to get my function key light working.
Yeah, there's more than one if you count Gentoo, OpenWrt and Linux from scratch.
I can install Fedora Linux on my Surface Go with my eyes closed, barely touching the keyboard. Everything that is supported works out of the box and it doesn't take a day and a half.
The surface is more constrained to specific hardware so I think any operating system would be easy to kick to it much like a Thinkpad.
Of course, everyone is quick to blame the manufacturer when it comes to drivers, even when the MS supposedly vets these drivers and even when the manufacturer is MS itself.
It reads like the prototypical "I tried Linux a decade ago and keep repeating the experience as if it represents reality today". Hell, 10 years ago was when I met my ex and I can't remember any time during that period that I actually "struggled" with anything other than Nvidia+Wayland before I stopped giving Nvidia money.
"finding drivers"? really? For what? I can't remember the last time I've even heard of anyone mentioning compiling a module manually. Running random scripts from the Internet haphazardly trying to "fix" stuff? Yeah, okay, I'm getting a mental image.
I can't name the last thing or feature that required any amount of fiddling to get working in Linux. Premium webcams, audio equipment, Chromebooks, Lenovos, ASUS gaming laptops, brand new laptops, 3 USB-C hubs, complicated docked, multi-monitor scenarios. It all has just worked out of box with Linux and NixOS, and requires less maintenance and hand holding than my single Windows dual-boot install.
But the next time you decide to be a patronising asshole to someone you’ve never met and who very likely has significantly more experience than you, maybe remember this meme [1]
Because it describes you completely.
The point, in case you completely missed it, is to empathise with the average user. Not me, I’m able to resolve the issues that arise in Linux land (or know when to stop), the average user can very quickly drown.
[1] https://media.tenor.com/QIvah8HkvzgAAAAM/the-point-over-your...
Well, I touched a nerve, but apparently not the nerve that would've caused you to substantiate your point with any specifics or details whatsoever, thereby re-confirming my suspicion.
> ho very likely has significantly more experience than you
Shrug, I can give detailed examples of things I have experience with; especially things that I'm publicly saying don't work well. Furthermore, you have zero basis on which to make this statement, other than emotions.
> The point, in case you completely missed it, is to empathise with the average user. Not me, I’m able to resolve the issues that arise in Linux land (or know when to stop), the average user can very quickly drown.
And you still haven't given a single freaking example. As I stated, I worked with extensive piles of commodity consumer hardware and have NEVER EVER HAD to compile a kernel module in the past 10-15 years. I haven't had to do anything that couldn't just be done in Plasma/Gnome. Go on, give an example. Any example.
Ha! Try installing a newer version of one of these than the last one the device OEM supported.
"Doing this is so difficult that you should abandon all hope and give up immediately" is the same as "just works" in the same way that a car crusher is a good way to secure a computer.
Notable exception for those assholes at nVidia.
Can’t say the same for windows, i still have to download printer/scanner drivers like it’s 2005.
I had an IBM R51 (many years old at that point), which used to take 2 hours+ to install Windows XP, and it was always very slow to use. I installed a bunch of different Linuxes over the years and it extended the life of the laptop significantly. Most Linux installers already had a good GUI installer on the Live CD at that point.
Yes, I think between the end of Windows XP and start of Windows Vista era is interesting because it is by that era when Linux installers got really good (they're full graphical and would be really easy, most times just pressing Next->Next->Finish) while Windows still had its ugly TUI installer.
Also, Windows at that time didn't ship with as many drivers as today, and also we didn't have as fast internet and Windows Update still did a poor job for installing drivers from random devices, so most of time after installing Windows you had a pretty poor installation with broken internet/audio/graphics and also possibly weirdly slow (because missing chipset drivers would make the system slow depending on the hardware). While Linux if you had reasonably supported hardware it would just work.
Not that this really matters. Installation of a new OS is something that was and still is mostly done by knowledge people, and generally those people can install either Windows or Linux regardless.
Did it look as good as XP? no. It worked though.
There was a weird sweet spot for Linux around 2000-2004, very short, where most things just worked. Sure, there was very little gaming, but you could get by just fine and installations was reasonably simple, Redhat, Slackware, Debian, SuSE, Mandrake, Caldera, they all just worked. Sure you had to be a little selective regarding hardware, but it wasn't a massive issue.
Interaction with Windows mostly worked without issues, but as Windows XP became more dominate, and especially as Internet Explorer and newer versions of Office took over, things got worse. Still for a few short years, those of us who got into Linux in that tiny windows of time, didn't actually struggle as much as people think. We could do online shopping, word processing, online banking and a little casual gaming. Come 2005 and that was all gone.
XP wasn’t especially easier to install if you had to partition. It was simply easier because Dell, et al had already installed it.
I installed frequently, even had quad boot with OS/2 at one point.
I tried different versions of Ubuntu, Debian, different kernels, different window managers, different graphics drivers, stripping things out of the system etc.
After going down the rabbit hole, I finally ripped out pulseaudio and replaced with ALSA.
In Windows or MacOS I would have been up and running immediately.
Now I'm completely burnt out and the creative urge is long gone.
Linux is my daily driver and I love it, but my god, some things are still way more fucking difficult than they need to be.
It reminds me of screwing around 20 years ago with wifi ndiswrapper stuff or multimonitor xrandr incantations.
>This article describes how to configure your system for recording, mixing and playing back audio as well as using it to synthesize and generate sounds. Those activities are subsumed under the term professional audio (pro audio) and typically require low latency performance.
First link.
I then I noticed screen tearing in my browser (fresh install of Ubuntu 22.04).
Oh ok, well maybe I've got the wrong drivers and it's eating CPU.
Run all the tests to ensure I have the right Nvidia drivers. All checks out.
Then I find something about hybrid graphics mode. Sure enough, I needed to set my graphics to discreet mode in the BIOS. Screen tearing is now gone.
Well now that I'm on it, why don't I move to LXDE from Gnome? Can't hurt right?
No dice.
I look up my laptop. Find that only 20.04 is "officially" supported by Lenovo. Ok, well I need to install that now to rule that out.
While I'm waiting for that to install, I stumble upon real time kernels, apparently popular for audio stuff.
Try that, marginally better but latency is now unstable. Switch kernels again.
Now I dig into Reaper settings. There are tons of things that can improve latency (that I'm also familiar with). Bitrates, buffers, sample rates, etc.
This is all to say I didn't think I'd have to change whatever the hell pulseaudio is to ALSA. Why should I have to do anything? I don't in Windows.
This whole thing was a project to get myself off of Windows and my point is it shouldn't be this hard. I've used various DAWs in Windows over the last 20 years and it was never difficult.
With both OS you eventually have problems and if you are willing to solve them you can put a lot of time and effort into doing so. The only difference is the openness of the system. With Linux, you can easily go much deeper (for many reasons: community, available source code, multiple implementations for different system components, custom kernels). But don't get me wrong: More options aren't necessarily better, because it can take a lot longer until you run out of options.
> In Windows or MacOS I would have been up and running immediately.
Over the years, I have thought so too sometimes, but every time that I tried, I had to tinker with Windows too (not necessarily to solve the same issue, but then something else)...
"Just use asio"? Had a borked driver cause blue screens on bootup for a piece of hardware, talking 5 digit price tag hardware... Same driver randomly doesn't present an Asio device.
Want to stick to "windows default audio engines" well, wasapi is what you should use now right? KS has the best latency ( wasapi should be calling that under the hood ), how about the other 3 options?
When it "just works" it's great. When it doesn't you cannot "dig in and find you need to go directly to ALSA(the KS alternative for linux)" because the driver you have loaded may not even present a KS interface, if your DAW even allows you to use something which isn't ASIO...
I have my faie share of pain with audio on windows, I wouldn't trade that pain for audio on linux granted but honestly, never had a single issue on macOS...
I only ask because I too had audio issues with Ubuntu LTS and Debian (both stable and unstable in hopes to get newer packages) in the past. I never got past the problems I had so I reverted back to Windows but if I go down that rabbit hole again I'd likely try Arch just to see what happens.
In that vein, I ended up looking into Linux from scratch this weekend. I'd love to have a laptop that runs reaper and that's it.
Someday, but for now, a minimal Ubuntu install is doing the trick for what I need.
> In Windows or MacOS I would have been up and running immediately.
I watched a couple of videos yesterday by musicians using Ableton on their new Apple M3 Max laptops with latest MacOS, talking about how it was dropping audio frames audibly during live performances
I don't think it's safe to assume MacOS would reliably solve your audio latency problem. You may have to experiment.
Quite a few that use other launchers are "plug and play" installs with lutris (like WoW).
My favourite games all do, but I'm already using consoles exclusively for my gaming because I was unhappy being held prisoner.
Did you get w3champions (https://www.w3champions.com/) running as well? I had a quick look but it didn't seem that straightforward.
People look down on me for it, but the way I see it: my computing experience is not keeping me prisoner; and I value my time too much to dig about certain issues, you're guaranteed to suffer the "my FPS isn't so good I will investigate" or "this game doesn't run so I will investigate" situations.
Cheats are less common too, so there's less incentive for kernel anti-cheat, and if there was: it would be contained to my "game computer" anyway.
I don’t have to worry about downloading a game launcher riddled with telemetry or wait 6 months after launch for a PC port to reach a playable state.
Imagine if most cars were modeled after Lamborghinis and people complained about the lack of turbo or carbon seats when hopping on your Honda Civic.
Imagine if most parks were modeled after football fields and people complained about the lack of goals and lines in your backyard.
Imagine if most knifes were modeled after big damascus blades and people complained about your table knifes when they come for dinner for not being cool and sharp enough
If you gave me a dull knife to carve a turkey or fillet a fish, I would definitely complain about it not being sharp enough. Most people probably have a sharper knife than a table knife for cooking, is that a sharpness obsession?
It's about picking the right tool for the job. On my home server, I run Linux; my gaming computer runs Windows. If you wanna keep going with the knife analogy, look at how many types of kitchen knives there are. There is no knife that does everything just as well as all the others. Asking for a bread knife for cutting a loaf isn't an attack on every other knife.
If someone is trying to set a lap record, a Camry probably isn't a good choice either. Still works well for getting groceries though.
I don’t think I’m obsessed with gaming but it is a hobby and if I have to boot into Windows to play, so be it.
Sadly, a lot of us have. Most laptops and assembled PCs you buy come bundled with windows and you can’t return it for a refund even if the first thing you do is ripping it out and installing a better FOSS OS. You’ve still paid MS for their dumpster fire of an OS you didn’t even want.