"I’m a busy person with a jobbity job and kids and a mortgage on an iPhone 18 Ultra Plus Air and stuff.
If I have to READ to make anything work, it’s not customer ready, and this new thing should take no time at all to completely understand on my part.
It needs to be a perfect ‘free Windows clone’ before I’ll even consider switching from the mega-corporate ecosystem I was coerced into dependency on from the start. If there’s one thing I hate more than reading, it’s asking anybody for help. Especially my friends. The operating system is the problem."
On a serious note, having used Linux on and off since the 90s (aah, Slackware, how I miss installing you from floppies … not), Linux has, IMHO, actually been desktop ready for ages (though definitelly not in the days of Slackware when configuring X was seriously interesting for a geek and pretty much an impossible barrier for everybody else).
The problem have always been applications not having Linux builds, only Windows builds, not the actual desktop Linux distros being an inferior desktop experience than Windows (well, not once Gnome and KDE emerged and made things like configuring your machine possible via GUIs - the age of the RTFF and editing text files in the command line before that wasn’t exactly friendly for non-techies).
In other words, from maybe the late 00s onwards the problem were mainly the “networks effects” (in a business sense of "apps are made for Windows because that’s were users are, users go for Windows because that’s were the apps are) rather than the “desktop” experience.
The almost unassailable advantage of Windows thanks to pretty much just network effects, was something most of us Linux fans were aware since way back.
What happened in the meanwhile to make Linux more appealing “in the Desktop” was mainly on the app availabilty side - OpenOffice (later LibreOffice and derivatives) providing an Office-style suit in Linux, the movement from locally hosted apps to web-hosted apps meaning that a lot of PC usage was really just browser usage, Wine improving by leaps and bounds and making more and more Windows applications run in Linux (most notably and also thanks to DXVK, Games) and so on.
Personally I think Linux has been a superior experience on the server side since the late 90s and, aside for the lack of Linux versions of most commonly used non-OS applications, a superior experience in the desktop since the 00s.
To make a long post short, windows is shitty but its setup bullshit is very straight forward and clear to deal with, linux is great when it works but its setup bullshit is byzantine as all hell. I got Linux working with only light bullshit on a laptop but just gave up entierly after 3 days of trying to get different distros at different advice working on my desktop.
windows is shitty but its setup bullshit is very straight forward and clear to deal with
Unfortunately, you definitely get a false sense of simplicity when you’re essentially forced down a lazy river of:
“Accept all these corporate agreements, make an account with our centralized authority structure, try to deny a litany of invasive ad permissions (you can’t turn it all off lol nice try.), enable our one touch AI button, shut up, and click go.”
"(Pulsing blue light) We’Re TaKiNg CaRe Of YoU. . ."
Some setup things in Linux can be confusing at first, like how I’ve agonized over the implications of which file system to use. (Settled on BTRFS for rollbacks, otherwise it doesn’t matter for 99.9% of people lol.)
But also I think we’re just at a sad point in history where computers are everywhere but people have terrible computer education (self included), and it’s left up to private interests who mainly want a cattle-like customer base.
…So everything seems scary and complicated.
I imagine cars would be the same way if we weren’t required to test for a license. They’re getting that way quickly though, people wanting a “Push ignition and turn off brain” machine that seemingly “just works” until it doesn’t and they must take it to Special Wizards. A black box which they ultimately have no control over, but feels “easy”.
I think it’s because people are forced to use these devices. Like driving, some people enjoy the act of computing. Linux is for those people.
When everybody is forced to use computers every day and most of those computers run something by Apple, Microsoft, or Google, anything else feels like yet another stupid thing to deal with.
TL;DR: Linux respects the user, but respect is built on a two way street of understanding. People hate learning because they’re systemically stressed TF out all the time.
I suspect Mint would work fine on that same desktop at this point, since it was just very new at the time and support take a bit to come in, but now its all set up how I want. Perhaps when windows next shits itself and I need to re-format anyway.
Can confirm. In over 10 years of Arch I had only three breakages, two of which were self-caused by not checking for required manual intervention before upgrading. The third was because my laptop’s battery died during an upgrade.
And the fix was always the same. Boot a life image, chroot into my install and fix it.
“No, you don’t understand, Linux is not desktop ready, I know that because I installed Fedora back in 2008 and it was kinda wonky.”
"I’m a busy person with a jobbity job and kids and a mortgage on an iPhone 18 Ultra Plus Air and stuff.
If I have to READ to make anything work, it’s not customer ready, and this new thing should take no time at all to completely understand on my part.
It needs to be a perfect ‘free Windows clone’ before I’ll even consider switching from the mega-corporate ecosystem I was coerced into dependency on from the start. If there’s one thing I hate more than reading, it’s asking anybody for help. Especially my friends. The operating system is the problem."
On a serious note, having used Linux on and off since the 90s (aah, Slackware, how I miss installing you from floppies … not), Linux has, IMHO, actually been desktop ready for ages (though definitelly not in the days of Slackware when configuring X was seriously interesting for a geek and pretty much an impossible barrier for everybody else).
The problem have always been applications not having Linux builds, only Windows builds, not the actual desktop Linux distros being an inferior desktop experience than Windows (well, not once Gnome and KDE emerged and made things like configuring your machine possible via GUIs - the age of the RTFF and editing text files in the command line before that wasn’t exactly friendly for non-techies).
In other words, from maybe the late 00s onwards the problem were mainly the “networks effects” (in a business sense of "apps are made for Windows because that’s were users are, users go for Windows because that’s were the apps are) rather than the “desktop” experience.
The almost unassailable advantage of Windows thanks to pretty much just network effects, was something most of us Linux fans were aware since way back.
What happened in the meanwhile to make Linux more appealing “in the Desktop” was mainly on the app availabilty side - OpenOffice (later LibreOffice and derivatives) providing an Office-style suit in Linux, the movement from locally hosted apps to web-hosted apps meaning that a lot of PC usage was really just browser usage, Wine improving by leaps and bounds and making more and more Windows applications run in Linux (most notably and also thanks to DXVK, Games) and so on.
Personally I think Linux has been a superior experience on the server side since the late 90s and, aside for the lack of Linux versions of most commonly used non-OS applications, a superior experience in the desktop since the 00s.
To make a long post short, windows is shitty but its setup bullshit is very straight forward and clear to deal with, linux is great when it works but its setup bullshit is byzantine as all hell. I got Linux working with only light bullshit on a laptop but just gave up entierly after 3 days of trying to get different distros at different advice working on my desktop.
Unfortunately, you definitely get a false sense of simplicity when you’re essentially forced down a lazy river of:
“Accept all these corporate agreements, make an account with our centralized authority structure, try to deny a litany of invasive ad permissions (you can’t turn it all off lol nice try.), enable our one touch AI button, shut up, and click go.”
"(Pulsing blue light) We’Re TaKiNg CaRe Of YoU. . ."
Some setup things in Linux can be confusing at first, like how I’ve agonized over the implications of which file system to use. (Settled on BTRFS for rollbacks, otherwise it doesn’t matter for 99.9% of people lol.)
But also I think we’re just at a sad point in history where computers are everywhere but people have terrible computer education (self included), and it’s left up to private interests who mainly want a cattle-like customer base.
…So everything seems scary and complicated.
I imagine cars would be the same way if we weren’t required to test for a license. They’re getting that way quickly though, people wanting a “Push ignition and turn off brain” machine that seemingly “just works” until it doesn’t and they must take it to Special Wizards. A black box which they ultimately have no control over, but feels “easy”.
I think it’s because people are forced to use these devices. Like driving, some people enjoy the act of computing. Linux is for those people.
When everybody is forced to use computers every day and most of those computers run something by Apple, Microsoft, or Google, anything else feels like yet another stupid thing to deal with.
TL;DR: Linux respects the user, but respect is built on a two way street of understanding. People hate learning because they’re systemically stressed TF out all the time.
True. Linux supports a lot of hardware. However some distros support some better than others.
Basically before you buy hardware you need to check if it works on Linux. Usually it does, but better check throughly
Is there some website or tool i could search my hardware specs for the best distro?
I suspect Mint would work fine on that same desktop at this point, since it was just very new at the time and support take a bit to come in, but now its all set up how I want. Perhaps when windows next shits itself and I need to re-format anyway.
Ironically, for me, Arch has been the “Just Works” Distro lol.
Can confirm. In over 10 years of Arch I had only three breakages, two of which were self-caused by not checking for required manual intervention before upgrading. The third was because my laptop’s battery died during an upgrade.
And the fix was always the same. Boot a life image, chroot into my install and fix it.