I spent a year on Linux and forgot to miss Windows | Hacker News Reader

I spent a year on Linux and forgot to miss Windows

theverge.com

68 pointsspeckx78 comments

I love Linux and use it daily, but this paragraph gave me pause:

"I’ve spent dozens of hours combing through Reddit threads, analyzing old Stack Overflow solutions, and, in times of true desperation, asking AI chatbots like Mistral’s Le Chat and Anthropic’s Claude for help deciphering error messages. Luckily, the Linux community is also very supportive. If you’re willing to ask for help, or at least do a little troubleshooting, you’ll be able to work out any problems that come your way."

There are many people -- like my Mom or Dad, for example -- who will never find this appealing and are likely to dig themselves into deeper holes trying to fix system issues on the command line. That's why Steve Jobs was on the money when he talked about a computer that was as intuitive as an appliance -- it has to "just work" for most normies. While I'm as frustrated with Windows as the next person, I'd probably just hand the average person a Mac mini instead of popping a linux distro on their machine if they needed a new computer (though if all they are doing is just browsing the web and reading emails, a ubuntu install is probably fine).

Reminds me of C++ (templates) or Latex vs Rust or Typst error messages - good errors are possible

There are plenty of folks with some (or lots of) technical capability who’d rather not have to deal with these things, too.

I’m in favor of Linux becoming more dominant as a desktop operating system but there is still plenty of work to be done in making it suitable for mass adoption. Denying that only slows the timeline on Linux’s ascendance.

It gave me pause in the sense that it doesn't feel true.

I mean, yes, I've had to look things up to see how to do things in Linux. I've also had to do that on MacOS. (Just the other day, I couldn't remember what the Task Manager-equivalent on MacOS was, and nothing I typed into the launcher was coming up with an appropriate app, so I had to ask the robot what it was named.)

But dozens of hours? Maybe back in the Red Hat 4.2 days, but not now. Some of that is obviously just that I have a lot of knowledge about things, but even so.

Some advanced uses from Windows that are very easy can be very difficult on Linux still. PipeWire, for example, while more stable overall, has made getting my audio routing all correct (e.g. for streaming) much more difficult than it is on Windows. Once it's set up it's just as stable but it took me longer to set up.

I could see that among other things totaling dozens of hours for a Linux beginner. Power management on laptops is still a common sticking point; i probably spent more than a dozen hours on that alone before giving up and going back to Windows on my laptop. And I've been using Linux for 20 years.

You know how much time I had to spend doing desktop support for developers who couldn't get their own Zoom/Teams meetings to work on Windows? Its not as intuitive as you think, you're probably just used to it.

Persistent input to output mappings in PipeWire is impossible without third party tools or custom scripts you run on boot. Something windows just does automatically. It's not even about ease in that case, just literally what you're able to do.

I recently started using MacOS for work after decades of Windows/Linux.

I definitely had to, and continue to, search online for help. Sure, perhaps MacOS is more intuitive than Linux, but not by much.

I find a major difference is that Linux support is harder to understand but OSX support is harder to get.

I've found support.apple.com and discussions.apple.com to be incredibly wanting. This isn't helped in the slightest by the fact that OSX changes tools, even in major versions. If anyone is doubting the "harder to get" claim then I encourage you to search (you can use LLMs) to figure out how to print the SSID you're connected to from the CLI. Such a task is really really simple. I can tell you a bunch of ways to do this on linux with tools like `iw`, `iwconfig`, `nmcli`, or `iwgetid` but I can no longer tell you how to do this on OSX. The linux answer is hard because the tool might change based on your distro or you can install a tool. That requires more understanding. But on OSX, this category of problems don't exist.

If you want the old answer you can see here. None of those work, even with sudo, nor does wtallis's answer, despite this working on an earlier version of Sequoia (FWIW, I'm now on 15.7.3): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41633547

> I encourage you to search (you can use LLMs) to figure out how to print the SSID you're connected to from the CLI.

Yeah, the official Apple support forums are and have always been embarrassingly bad.

I don't use the CLI on my Macs all that often, so there might be a better way to do it, but this works on Tahoe:

  networksetup -listpreferredwirelessnetworks en0 | grep -v '^Preferred networks on' | head -1 | xargs

There's also get-ssid: https://github.com/fjh658/get-ssid

  > networksetup -listpreferredwirelessnetworks en0

On Sequoia this command shows you the history of SSIDs, not the current SSID you're on. For easy verification turn off your WiFi and run the command, you'll get identical output.

Is Tahoe doing something different? If so, honestly that only exemplifies my point of how Apple is creating a difficult ecosystem to navigate through, where the correct incantations change, even through minor versions.

*IT IS MADDENING*

  > There's also get-ssid: https://github.com/fjh658/get-ssid

I think the README is quite illustrative of the problem here. Seems like John ran into the same issue I was! He even mentions the issue with the `-getairportnetwork` flag for `networksetup`.

But get-ssid still has a problem... it requires root. For my original use case I was wanting to run ssh proxy jumps and rsyncs based on the SSID I'm connected to. This doesn't really work for those cases. Escalating to root just creates a major security concern and I definitely don't want automated processes doing escalating unless absolutely necessary.

There is a difference between someone like my grandmother who I've had on Ubuntu for years, and this user and people like me who are trying to do more advanced operations. My grandmother doesn't need to research for hours to open her internet browser.

I now say that these Linux success stories are just like saying you've been married for a year and everything is going fine. It's great that you made it to the first big milestone, but that doesn't mean there aren't legitimate reasons Linux is a bottom contender for user OS. A long, scarring evening of frustration and pain is very likely coming down the road. Will The Verge publish stories about these problems, too? No, they won't!

https://xkcd.com/349/

I wonder if this is due to Linux being harder to work on or because it is possible to fix some errors which would be catastrophic on other OSes?

Back when I used Windows a lot (Windwos XP times...) I also had the "long, scarring evening of frustation" rather often. It was usually solved by a reinstall.

In recent times, the “standard” seems to be smartphones (I use Android). The logic of smartphones it: It works or it dosen't and if it doesn't there is nothing you can do about it. Like ... not supporting some docking station because its network interface is called usb0 rather than eth0 ... no bypass, no solution, buy another docking station.

Of course this is faster than debugging the issue and maybe fixing it for good or maybe waste the evening on it.

Effectively Linux giving you the option to do something about errors doesn't mean the workarounds from other OSes like “reinstall”, “buy a new one”, “use a friend's system because it doesn't work here” are still readily available?

If only this were the whole story, but my Windows gaming desktop has been running more or less without issue (barring hardware failure), no reinstalls, since 2019. I tried so hard to use Linux on my laptop for two years but eventually gave up; i reinstalled Ubuntu three times in those two years.

Now, my Ubuntu server has also been running continuously since 2019. Linux can be that solid for the right use case. I've got a Linux HTPC that's pretty worry free, too.

Linux just legitimately has some hard-if-not-impossible problems on random specific consumer hardware, sadly. Until manufacturers start actually supporting it, that'll always be the case. Manufacturers have gotten better about it too, though, and I'm hoping valve continues making official Linux support more appealing for device manufacturers.

I guess all I'm saying is, some things on Linux still actually just can't be fixed, and every platform is gonna give you a night of extreme frustration from time to time.

  > but my Windows gaming desktop has been running more or less without issue (barring hardware failure), no reinstalls, since 2019

This also describes my Linux desktop.

  > I tried so hard to use Linux on my laptop

Unfortunately comparing a laptop to a desktop is not a fair comparison. Things are better than they were in 2019 but display and battery are constant issues (especially if you have a laptop with an nvidia graphics card).[0]

I'm not trying to say Linux doesn't have issues, but I do need to point out that your logic has a strong bias to it. I'll also add that while I have no problems gaming on my Linux desktop (thanks Valve!!), I don't usually play online games or MMOs but my understanding is that this is problematic for Linux systems as anticheat is a pain.

[0] My friend has a Framework laptop which has PopOS on it and he's said he's had no issues with it. He's used other Linux laptops before and has expressed this has been a very different experience. I think it helps that they're more aware of the hardware and can do more robust testing on that hardware.

I'm strongly biased towards Linux, believe me. It just really does have its issues.

I don't upvote often and you got it. This is a great explanation of what seems to be going on.

If you want a Linux for the average Joe, then you have immutable distros, (such as Fedora Kinoite) which are going to better suited also for old people, and those that don't need to fiddle with their experience.

> ubuntu install is probably fine

Ubuntu and Gnome should be avoided even as suggestions. Ubuntu has become less reliable than Fedora in my experience. And Gnome does Gnome things that are incompatible of the average users requirement from a desktop encironment.

Opposite experience here. My aging mom had been on Windows XP for years and years, and then someone gave her a cast-off laptop running Windows 10.

That was such a culture shock. Endless pop-ups to do this and subscribe to that and so on. And it has gotten worse since then of course.

Instead I set her up on a nice mature Linux desktop - Mate - and that was fine. Chrome, Thunderbird and not much else. And solid reliable and nobody reaching in from the cloud with the latest attempts to monetize something or push AI onto you or whatever. You turn on (unsuspend) the computer and it's the same computer it was yesterday, working just the same.

As for Microsoft, I've never found it to "just work". I've daily driven Windows machines because work has given them to me but I always try to get a Mac instead. Windows just breaks constantly and with silly things like using Windows Hello breaks Outlook and can cause it to go into a log{in,out} loop.

For OSX, I mostly agree but think "just works" is a bit too strong of a statement too. There are definitely fewer errors but they aren't non-existent. These seem to have dramatically increased with OSX 26 as well as the fact that the UX has significantly changed and in ways that contradict how things worked before. I get frequent calls from my parents. We'll set aside how often I'm searching how to do things and my absolute hatred for how little support there actually is online (good fucking god how utterly useless are support.apple.com and discussions.apple.com?!?!)[0]

I've also handed them linux computers. Truth is that they can't tell the difference. But it also depends on what type of user your parents are. Mine just browse the internet so they already know to use Firefox and they're good to go. Probably the most confusing thing for them would be to navigate the app store (I have no expectation for them to use the CLI) and understand what apps they need because the names are different from what they're used to. I think people under-appreciate how big of an impact this type of lock-in actually is. Search is still a pretty difficult problem and frankly older people don't even understand very basic search. (My mom still types in www.google.com every time she wants to search. Yes, I've showed her she can just type her query into the url bar...). That said, they also switched to DDG on their own accord (I did not tell them).

[0] On linux 95 times out of 100 I can find what I'm looking for with a search. But that's biased by years of experience and knowing what to search. Though I can use the same patterns as I would with linux, swapping out the tool for the OSX version and I will not get good results. If you want to see an example try searching for how to print out your network SSID from the CLI. You can even ask an LLM! In fact, I no longer know how to do this, even with sudo. I specifically mean "no longer" because I used to be able to... And let's be honest, what fucking reason is there to prevent one from seeing the SSID in the CLI? It's not private information. I can see it from the GUI no problem!

I was happy to see them give this clear headline

> Linux isn’t especially complicated on a daily basis, but you have to be willing to solve your own problems

That being said, given the huge uptick in Linux articles lately, I can only believe Canonical is funding something here. It's just too sudden of a surge.

I'll probably still game on Linux, but who knows if that will last after a few more "freeze on resume" situations. These just don't happen on Windows and most Linux sentiment seems to be coming from anti-Onedrive feelings, which is fair, but the popups are easy to click through. Random Linux instability, not so.

As a gamer and software developer, I've been Windows-free for over two years, no regrets, maybe kernel level anticheat competitive multiplayer games, but I have tons of other games and not much time to spend in multiplayer. Ubuntu on desktop gaming PC, Ubuntu on laptop, Steam Deck, Debian/Raspbian for servers. GNOME everywhere except on Steam Deck which has KDE, love both.

> Linux won't stop you if you try to use a command that deletes every file on your PC ("sudo rm -rf /").

It will definitely stop you from running that command because of "--preserve-root" that is enabled by default, if you want to break your system you have to opt out of it. Just don't try to put an asterisk after, pathname expansion will be a different case ("rm -rf /*").

Fedora has the following aliases in the root .bashrc.

alias rm='rm -i'

alias cp='cp -i'

alias mv='mv -i'

It's a nice addition for certain use cases, however in the case of running "rm -rf ...", it has no effect because of the "-f / --force" flag set afterwards.

"rm -if" never prompts, "rm -fi" prompts. --preserve-root is an entirely different thing which will stop the command from deleting files even if you told it to.

  $ sudo rm -ri /
  rm: it is dangerous to operate recursively on '/'
  rm: use --no-preserve-root to override this failsafe

When in doubt, you might want to activate xtrace with "set -x", run the command and see what it expanded to. then "set +x" to disable.

"It is dangerous to operate recursively on '/'" is such a stereotypically traditional Linux way to explain the situation.

(I would write something like "Refusing to delete the entire filesystem (did a shell variable expansion go wrong?)".)

Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/293/

There's worse:

"Out of memory: Kill process or sacrifice child"

> It will definitely stop you from running that command because of "--preserve-root" that is enabled by default

Until you come across a system old enough that the coreutils' rm doesn't have that safeguard. And that is how I accidentally'd my OLPC XO's Fedora install.

Ha ha, I think the busybox rm implementation also doesn't have it, be careful, it's present in lightweight containers, even though it's probably a recent thing. Can't speak for MacOS too.

TBF, this safeguard has never saved me, being careful saved me. You can afford to take the time to be careful, because writing the powershell equivalent is probably at least ten times longer (just kidding, or am I?), and clicking buttons in the file explorer is a hundred times longer. Always write the "-rf" after writing the path! I never run rsync without a dry-run, too, even without --delete.

I'm new to both but just picked up a 3080 with 32gb ram. Would you recommend I clear my windows to install Linux? And games like arc raiders etc will still work?

Try dual-booting first if you can. It's better to understand the new OS before switching over completely.

Look up protondb for game compatibility. Arc raiders is marked as running perfectly fine, but plenty of multiplayer games with invasive client side anti cheats such as Fortnite or Genjin Impact do not run. If you depend on such games it's best not to switch, any privacy concern you may have with Windows is gone with those games running literal rootkits on your PC anyway.

I've been running Linux for gaming for well over 15 years and have not missed much in the last 5 or so. There's way too many games out there to play that do run on Linux even if unemployed and have the time to dedicate it as your sole hobby.

I would recommend it yes, the biggest pain point of switching OSes for me is getting your data out on an external drive, I'm not good with backups so it always takes a while for me to find my files and make sure I'm not erasing valuable documents or non cloud savefiles. If you have a new SSD you can keep the old one as a backup.

To check for game compatibility, you should check :

- Steam store page for Steam Deck compatibility, be aware that sometimes a bad rating only means the in-game text is too small to read on small screens or that gamepad support is poor, also I've played multiple "not supported" games that ran just fine.

- ProtonDB, community rating, separate comments for Steam Deck and PC, troubleshooting for Nvidia/AMD specific issues, etc. -> This includes Valve's Steam Deck compatibility score https://www.protondb.com/app/1808500?device=pc

- https://areweanticheatyet.com/game/arc-raiders AWACY says ARC Raiders is not officially supported, but runs. You never know, it might break in the future or not.

- Be aware that the Steam Client is only officially supported on Ubuntu, though you might be fine with other distros as well. Don't use the open source "nouveau" GPU driver, use the proprietary Nvidia drivers, also I've had GPU hiccups during the transition from X.org to Wayland that might be related to NVIDIA, but now it's fine.

Arc Raiders runs great. ProtonDB is the right thing to check to find out if any given game is gonna run on Linux. Fortunately, the success of the Steam Deck has more and more devs playing ball.

You could just buy another SSD and install Linux on that. Then, you have your Windows drive left untouched and pristine so you can swap back if you want, or you can pull data over as needed.

I would buy a second hard drive and replace your current and install Linux on that. That way you can swap them back without issue. If you feel satisfied and ready to wipe windows, and have open slots, you can add the original drive back to your motherboard and mount it in pretty seamlessly (or entirely seamlessly with LVM).

I wouldn't try to dual boot, mainly from past experience. Linux is very fine with it, but Windows can aggressively try to repair itself and break other things, or end up broken itself.

> just picked up a 3080 with 32gb ram

Prepare for some potential headaches, do some research and see what kind of problems you might encounter. And before blaming Linux watch this short clip[0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ

Dual boot. I have never not had a need to boot into Windows on occasion. Daily driving Linux is very pleasant but personally, having the fallback for multiplayer games or modding tools and stuff has always been worth it.

  >> Linux won't stop you if you try to use a command that deletes every file on your PC ("sudo rm -rf /").

  > It will definitely stop you from running that command

You're protected against removing / but your can still run `rm -rf /` and even as a user that'll do a lot of damage.

I think for the average person this would be synonymous to "every file on your PC". It is all the files that they care about. It deletes everything they have permission for. Everything they* own. For the average user `rm -rf /` is no different than `sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /`

That said, some* systems have some protections. It is common to see the following aliases in the default .bashrc (check your /etc/skel/.bashrc) but also we have to ask the question "is this a bad thing?" I'm not so sure the answer is as clear as people like to suggest it is. But you're asking your computer to do something and either it is going to do that thing or it is going to refuse. I'm personally on the side that a computer refusing to do what you ask it to do is a worse thing, but I can also understand why people want to add in precautions to protect users. Sudo is even one of those!

I'd also suggest adding the following to your ~/.bashrc and would encourage distro makes to put this in /etc/skel/.bashrc

  alias rm='rm -I' # Ask for confirmation if deleting more than 3 files
  #alias rm='rm -i' # Ask for confirmation if deleting files
  alias cp='cp -i' # Ask for confirmation if overwriting files
  alias mv='mv -i' # Ask for confirmation if overwriting files

This can help reduce mistakes. It has saved me on multiple occasions and I've been using linux for over a decade. And honestly, I am deeply frustrated every time I have to touch a Windows machine. I have terrible experiences and it has never "Just worked". With my last work laptop with windows (2024) I learned that Windows Hello (login with fingerprint) likes to break Outlook. The fact that this was a known issue to my IT team kinda highlights how disorganized Microsoft is. FWIW I do also use a Macbook Air as a daily driver but to be frank, for any work it is an overpriced SSH machine. I haven't tried a linux netbook in a few years but that would be ideal if it can actually have long battery life. Biggest help is that Microsoft is inadvertently being less hostile to linux users by making everything cloud based. I hate cloud apps but at least I don't have to have their shitty software on my computer to read a Word document (and because people can't just normalize sending PDFs)

One year on Linux, two distros, a few tears, four desktop environments

In other words, you've found a new hobby along with your new operating system.

And that's OK --- but not everyone is looking for a hobby.

This comment summarises it well. Linux requires you to think about your OS. Which can be fun, but for most people it’s not.

Technology advances by increasing the number of things people can achieve without thinking about them.

For me it came with age. I'm in my mid-forties now and although I loved to tinker with stuff, now I want things to "just work". I certainly see the allure of Apple ecosystem. (anecdata but my brother is the same).

I'm not convinced that's the case. A few years ago I had a laptop with pre-installed Ubuntu and it worked without any fiddling. You certainly can turn Linux into a hobby and try all sorts of variations, which isn't really an option with Windows or Mac. But you don't have to do that.

Buying it preinstalled is the trick. Installing Linux on a laptop without official vendor support can be unpleasant.

Yes. Most people buy OS X and Windows preinstalled, too.

Linux doesn't really require you to think about it, necessarily. More that odds are high if you have tinkered with something recently, you are more likely to do so again. Think of it as a reverse lindy number. (And this can be frustrating for folks with automated marketing that feel that they are too dumb. They are, but the dumb approach works rather well.)

To that end, the last time I tinkered with what linux distro I'm using is over a decade ago.

I have definitely spent less time on maintaining my Linux setup than I spent on trying to tame Windows to my wishes. Windows imposes a steep toll on your time as well. Just looking at the time spent to set up Linux is not sufficient. Unlike Windows, once you set up your Linux system it generally runs well a long, long time.

I've seen a lot of people switch from Windows to Bazzite and they are super happy with it.

The only thing you'll have to decide is if you want a desktop which looks more similar to MacOS (GNOME) or Windows (KDE). For now they don't even care about even more advantages or disadvantages, like the fact that KDE is customizable to the point things can get a little crazy.

Graphical desktop and Steam support (with a little pinch of Lutris added on top), and that's good enough.

You get a computer that's compatibles with Linux, you install Ubuntu LTS, and you just keep using it. After a couple of years, you reinstall it. If you are a power user able to prepare the boot USB and boot from it, you do it yourself, otherwise you have to pay someone to do it for it for you or buy a computer with Ubuntu preinstalled. I've been using Ubuntu for more than 20 years, Debian before that, and Linux is definitely not my hobby.

I like this hobby, but it is so irritating that I cannot apply this hobby to workstation because of industry standards. Adobe and linux are no options for progressional work.

Everything I see on this topic involves gaming. The last game I played in a long while was Cities Skylines on my laptop (which was taxing, but ran it fine). I used to use Macs, but for a long time, until up to 2013, I decided that since I look at mostly text editors, terminals and a web browser and some other common things, I'd rather spend less for equipment and get used to some desktop UI on a Linux. I have had reliable ThinkPads (procured used) for years as a result. While there were bumps, it's been fine. Since I am in the vicinity of financial applications, I have to use Windows about 30% of the time, and I hate it every time. Can someone be the Steam for Excel, please? :)

I went for the uber-nerd approach to gaming.

Whatever's possible, local on Linux. If it's not, one of my servers has a GPU that I pass through to a Windows VM, and run the games there and displayed by streaming. Also works for VR.

Not a setup for everyone and a tad technically complex to set up, but it works well enough for my needs.

It does run into some trouble with games that don't like virtual machines, but since I'm a very casual gamer I just play things that don't complain about that.

> Can someone be the Steam for Excel, please? :)

You can actually add anything you want to Steam, so you can use Steam Link to run Excel remotely.

One common complaint with the idea of the year if the Linux desktop is that Linux simply doesn't "just work" in the way MacOS and even Windows do. I think that's becoming less and less a barrier though for both the fact that Linux is getting closer to "just working" (especially as Windows and MacOS get further away), but also because more and more of the people still using Windows are power users and aren't as intimidated by the command line or manually resolving library dependencies or whatever. Like, there's a lot of PC gamers that'll happily spend hours on messing with their system to eke out another 5 FPS, or doing manual dependency resolution to get 200 SkyDome mods to play nicely together. "Doesn't just work" isn't as big a deal to power users that are more likely to be annoyed by Windows and MacOS's trajectory anyway

The idea that Windows "just works" is pretty recent. 20 years ago, any time I visited a relative who had a Windows PC, I was installing Firefox, fixing a driver, and removing spyware, if not outright malware. Either you were a power user, or you were having a bad time.

It's also still not true. My son has a Windows machine that he's responsible for, after a long time running ChromeOS. He's reported all kinds of weird driver things, and having had to watch YouTube tutorials to figure out how to fix issues.

At least the vendor writes a Windows driver, no matter how bad it is. If your device doesn't work on Linux, you're simply SOL.

The main difference is that with Windows the work is mostly front loaded. From 2000/XP forward, as long as you set up the correct drivers post-install, they for most intents and purposes, barring shitty hardware, really did “just work”.

There’s something to be said for “Windows creep” though, where the install decays over time and a reinstall is required. Back in the 2K/XP/Vista days this could be pretty bad, but that improved with 7 onwards. It still exists today, but the decay takes years to become noticeable instead of months.

Linux isn’t without its own issues there however. Even on a more friendly distro like Ubuntu or Fedora, eventually one will end up with things like config files that slipped through the cracks and didn’t get migrated correctly, very slowing degrading the desktop experience.

That more or less matches my experience. A quality PC with NT5+ preloaded and not too much bundled crapware would mostly just work when it was fresh, but it would not be working well a year later if not maintained by someone with a modicum of technical knowledge.

I don't disagree which is why the level of effort needed to use Linux has always seemed overblown to me lol, but that is the relative popular perception

"Just works" in computing is an illusion. Modern computers have enough complexity and potential failure where their internal (usually software) components interact that they must be maintained and sysadmin'd. And if you're not doing that yourself, you're delegating that task to someone else—typically the OS vendor. That's why Microsoft considers Windows a "service" and will force updates at the least convenient possible time. That's why Apple has set up restrictions on running arbitrary software, even on Macs but especially on iDevices. The cost of having a device that seems to "just work" is a device you don't really own.

Even on idevices, just works is more marketing and mental gymnastics than reality.

Not far off though. My mum's been on iphone for a decade and I don't think there have been issues with it not working. There are issues with figuring out how to work it though and Apples magic hidden gestures and the like.

I built a new PC in May of 2024 and decided to put Linux on it. Partly as a challenge to see how long I could last with it, partly because I want my kid to know how a computer works and use a platform that respects the user.

I went with Fedora Kinoite, and everything worked perfectly fine. I did choose an AMD GPU for this experiment, going with a 7800 XT.

Later that summer I decided to rebase (not reinstall, rebasing in fedora atomic is neat) to Bazzite, a more gaming focused version with some convience features, but that's about it.

Everything I want to do on my computer works fine, I don't feel hamstrung by it and really enjoy using it. The only game I regularly play that doesn't work is Battlefield 6, which I had a small Windows drive for, but I stopped playing that after the hype died down. The Finals, Arc Raiders, CS2, Hunt Showdown, Guild Wars 2, all run great.

I've been gaming on Linux (CachyOS) for roughly a year now as well, and I love it. Better performance, faster loading, but I do admit there are drawbacks.

I'm a developer, so I'm techy enough how to look up what I don't know, but I would never recommend this to someone who struggles with technology.

Kernel antic heat is frustrating but usually its games where I feel like I won't lose anything if I don't play it.

> Kernel antic heat is frustrating but usually its games where I feel like I won't lose anything if I don't play it.

And for those you still have options, through streaming:

1> A small headless Windows PC powered with a videocard like a Radeon 9070 XT and a nifty app called Moonlight (https://moonlight-stream.org/) enables you to stream games protected with kernel level anti cheat to Linux machines (and some other devices).

2> Geforce Now supports some games notoriously renowned for their kernel level anti cheat like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty Black Ops 7. With some trickery it is possible to run the app they "exclusively" developed for handhelds like the Deck on any Linux distro, because it is just a desktop app distributed through Flatpak.

As a long term linux user, I agree with the comments that essentially say: "you found a hobby and not an OS".

While I see that recommending a different distro seems like more change and more fiddling about, Bazzite is something to try out for sure. As long as you don't have a very complicated usecase, it really does get out of your way and remove a lot of the foot-guns you find on linux.

I really think it's ideal for a gamer usecase, and it's also great for a parent/casual user who does most of their work inside a browser anyway. As a programmer with a big distro-hopping past, I've switched to Bluefin/Bazzite on all my personal computers and things work well. I'm glad to have something that works well out of the box and glad to not think about the OS.

I first learned Unix in high school in 1991. I wanted a Sun workstation so bad but they were over $10,000 in 1991 money. Got a PC in 1994 just to install Linux and I've been happy ever since. Completely skipped over windows 95 and all the stuff after and continue to ignore it.

Y'all it's been a couple decades but is it _actually_ the year of the Linux desktop now??

We're getting there! I think the new Valve hardware (especially the Steam machine) will help a lot, and obviously Microsoft has a lot more AI antics planned for the future, which will drive more users away from Windows.

Valve hardware is a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a blip for desktop hardware sales. It will not bring the Year of Linux to the Desktop.

No, but their work will. Gaming is now perfectly viable because of their investment and developers targeting the Steam Deck.

It's far from "perfect". It may be "okay" or "acceptable" or even "good", but it lacks perfection.

I wouldn't give it "perfectly viable" yet. It's very good, but there are a lot of popular titles that have kernel anti-cheat that make linux a non-starter if you play even one of the titles frequently. If this can be overcome, I would give linux the perfectly viable title.

https://archive.ph/N4thi

I work on Linux every day and wish it was Windows. Linux is package dependency hell. Switching to working on a different application I am often forced to setup a new VM to even build it without breaking other apps I am working on. I never had that problem on Windows.

It's sort of hilarious to me that for anything high performance-- or indeed low-middle performance, Windows is entirely out of the question. C++ compilation under Windows is 60-80% slower than in a Linux VM on the same machine. The EM simulations we do at work are several times faster on Linux.

That aside, the Windows API is one of the most godawful, miserable pieces of code I've ever had to work with. I've been up to my neck in WinRT writing Bluetooth drivers and holy fuck I wouldn't wish this misery on anyone. I don't know how any developer or engineer ever gets anything done on Windows.

Last job let me use Linux where it mattered most, and new job doesn't care so long as the work is done. I don't think I'll accept a job anywhere that requires Windows in the future. There is just plain and simple no feasible way to do my work on Windows anymore.

> WinRT writing Bluetooth drivers

This is a bit suspect. WinRT is an entirely user-mode library meant for writing user-mode applications; why would you be writing Bluetooth drivers in that? It's like writing Linux drivers with GTK. Why aren't you writing the driver with UMDF2[1]? I have so many questions.

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows-hardware/drivers/w...

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