I agree with Linus Torvalds. Linux is too fragmented. This makes consistent software deployment and support expensive and far too varied. Maintaining documentation alone requires an unlimited number of distros. From a user’s perspective, I really think Linux needs a universal install method like .exe. No user should ever need to use the CLI install software, no matter their distribution. Radarr, for example, is a very popular home media server application. It is one-click install on Windows. It is fucked on Linux.
If the average person can not use your OS, it is not ready. Period.
For example:
Windows - Open File Explorer > Add Network Drive > Find/plug it in > Enter creds > Bam. Ready to go and will automatically log you in at boot. Very nice, very intuitive UI.
Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
In my own experience, I was able to get the hang of Windows with no one showing me how a computer ever worked, at the age of 10! Intuitive enough a child can do it.
On Linux, you have to read manuals/documentation, ask random (mostly rude) people on the internet, or give up because why the fuck would I want to go and enter 5 commands just to have something as simple as auto mount a network share? Not intuitive, therefore not easy to learn as you go.
I get it, Linux people like knowing how their computers operate, they like ensuring everything is working the way THEY want to, and that’s awesome! What’s not awesome is recommending Linux to the general populace and then getting upset at them for asking why they can’t do something or why don’t they just do these steps to do whatever it is they are having issues with. Then, you have a person who doesn’t even know what a terminal is confused as hell because they were told Linux is so much better than Windows.
Until we get a more intuitive (GUI focused) way of doing what I would consider normal computer tasks, it will not ever be ready. That’s just the way I see it.
the average person doesnt know how to mount a drive on windows or even what that is or why you would want to, they just need to be able to open a browser
The average person does not mount network drives themselves.
I would hazard a guess that for the truly average user, booting to a desktop with Firefox and LibreOffice installed is like 90% of what they need.
Meanwhile my experience with automounting network drives with dolphin is
Open Dolphin > Add Network Folder > Enter creds > Check automount box > done
I haven’t had to use the terminal for anything in years. There’s some things I do in the terminal, but that’s because I like it better, not because there isn’t an intuitive way to do it.
The reason guides tell people to use the terminal is because it’s the same across DEs, not because there aren’t DEs that make it more intuitive.
Would I throw a random non techy friend on Linux? No, because it’s not what they’re used to. If they had no computer experience at all though I absolutely would.
I once wanted to change my mouse scrolling direction on Windows. In KDE it’s a toggle in the mouse settings and on Windows it’s some dubious registry editing (apparently). I think there are about as many things that are easier on Linux than on Windows as there are things that are easier on Windows than on Linux (assuming you’re using a modern distribution with a beginner-friendly, sensible configuration).
I mean, I was able to figure out how MS-DOS worked as a child just be flailing on the keyboard and reading the errors. It was “easy” because now I know it while Macintoshes may as well have been alien technology. A “mouse”?, moving windows?, you have to find programs and click on them instead of just typing?
You’re just used to Windows annoyances and not used to Linux annoyances, that’s all.
For example:
Installing and updating a program on Windows is a horror show compared to using a package manager. It expects average users to find, download and run executable files from the Internet and conditions them to approve elevation for anything that asks.
If Windows breaks, how do you troubleshoot it? Maybe Google knows, maybe rebooting fixes it, if not then possibly re-installing the entire OS. It’s so bad that if you work with Windows clients you probably already have an image of a Windows install because troubleshooting is so much of a pain it’s easier to just completely re-image the machine.
Don’t even get me started on how often Microsoft changes the layout of administration tools and system menus or their tendency to change the name of various system components for no logical reason.
I don’t think Linux is for everyone, but only because most everyone already has years of Windows experience and forgets all of the frustration and learning.
If you used Linux for just as long as you’ve used Windows, then editing fstab would seem as trivial a task as pinning an item to the
start bartaskbar, orlaunching a programstarting an app from thesystem traynotification areasystem tray.Mounting a network share is beyond the usage scope of the DAU you describe. They need a functional default desktop environment, working standard drivers for their standard hardware, and a browser. That’s pretty much it.
And let’s not pretend there’s anything intuitive about Windows distinguishing between accessing a network share, and mounting it as a virtual drive. This is just the staying power of “whatever I’m used to from an age when I had the curiosity and patience to figure stuff out”.
The average person doesn’t use network drives or know what they are.
The real problem is if people can’t buy Linux laptops at Best Buy it literally doesn’t matter how usable or not it is because the average person doesn’t install an OS.
If my mother can’t tell the difference between Firefox and the OS, but can use Linux mint just fine, then so can the average user.
I work with windows for over 10 years, and use Linux daily for private stuff, including being a nerd and a gamer, and some side gigs for at least 8.
If something is weird, doesn’t work or breaks in Linux, I can usually find the culprit and help fast. It’s out there or it’s so obscure I need to puzzle it myself.
If something like that happens on windows, pray someone already had that issue or Microsoft decided to write an article about it, because nobody will help, and most search results point to bot responses about scf scannow, dism at best, and straight up reseting your system to factory defaults.
Point being, I like figuring out stuff in Linux, and I dread opaque bullshit Microsoft gets away with.
Even your network drive example, in my experience is a coin toss. So many variables, hidden settings, weird registry keys with no documentation. Yeah.
You are confusing the average user with the mids… average usage is equally easy to windows:
Open a file Edit a file Copy a file Open a browser
Most people i know does not care for anything else.
Why is automounting at boot without credentials a necessity and intuitive for you. No, I would expect it to mount exactly once and to require me to input username and password before I mount my porn collection so that my sister does not see it.
I don’t get why you claim that windows does this correctly and Linux does not. It would be the opposite for me.
Besides, the important point in this example is to actually mount the folder to do your job. In your example, both systems do this equally well with an equally well UI, before your automounting nonsense.
It’s simpler that all that. Turn on new computer, open browser, install steam, install games, play games. Anything more complex than that makes it unusable. People have zero time to deal with even a slight hiccup. It is annoying to watch as people are getting into steamOS on Steamdeck and every little thing is the end of the world. I have seen “oh, to get that one to run smooth you gotta set the FPS locked to 30” met with “nah, I ain’t got time for all that, I’ll play it on the Xbox”.
I don’t know what the fix is, outside cloning windows GUI and making an ultra safe and familiar entry Linux (the replies will be various lists of “just use x,y,z” and “get this one and technobabble the dilithium crystals into the frondulator” and that just pushes people away instantly…there has to be a tiktok-dumb entry level OS before any real migration happens.
lol wut? Proton vpn sucks on Linux.
Proton the gaming tool
Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
But once you leave Steam […] it gets a lot worse
Heroic Games Launcher is pretty great for games from GOG and Epic. You can run games with Proton just fine.
Lutris is also a great option, actively contributing to it. Got a slightly different focus than Heroic, but a lot more features as well. Basically a one-stop shop once you got familiar with it. Really needs more people that can contribute though given the huge amount of platforms and launchers it attempts to cover (literally all of them).
Also, for folks out of the loop, let me explain what this entails. I installed Steam. I clicked install on a game. I clicked play in Steam. That was it. Proton isn’t some sort of thing you need to install or launch separately. It really does “just work”.
I’m able to play Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2, and even Marvel Rivals online just fine. All of these are online multiplayer games, the types that generally seem to have the most trouble on Linux.
that is most definitely not the process. You have to explicitly go into Steam’s settings > Compatibility > “Enable Steam Play for all other titles” (what in the world, it’s called Steam Play, not Proton?) and then additionally select which Proton version you want. If you don’t know this, or don’t google it with the right keywords, you won’t understand why literally 90% of your library isn’t available (in my case it was 99% of my library, I think I only had 3 games available on linux natively). Also if you select the wrong Proton version some games won’t run, so you have to know that and switch it for those games only.
They’re likely using a gaming distro that has those settings enabled by default.
It isn’t perfectly seamless but enabling Steam Play or changing proton versions isn’t any more of an advanced task than verifying game files (something that Windows users are asked to do the moment that they have a problem).
It has come a long way from the days of manually creating wine environments and writing custom launch files.
If you can install Skyrim or Minecraft mods (not using Steam Workshop) then you’re sophisticated enough to game on gaming distros like Pop and Bazzite.
If you can use cheat engine without a guide and write your own mods then you’re ready for Arch.
I’m using CachyOS, I think it was set up out of the box.
Agreed, but I think it’s important to note that that isn’t because of a shortcoming of Linux, it’s because those companies are incentivized to support platforms that are more suitable for enabling massive profits, that’s what it seems like to me anyways.
“it’s important to note that [insert speculation]”
Um yeah that’s why I qualified it how i did 🙄
It’s not important to note something that is speculative.
“It’s important to note that YarHarSuperstar probably doesn’t even run Linux.”
See?
That’s your opinion and you have the right to express it. I disagree obviously, that’s why if you’ll pay very close attention to the words I used, it says “I think” before I said that.
You start by presenting it as a fact “keep in mind that it’s not because of X, but because of Y” then specify that’s it’s what “it seems like” but don’t provide any proof of, therefore there’s nothing important to note about what you said because you can’t back it with a source.
Getting something brand new from EA is painful on any platform
Can confirm, bought my son a FIFA game on pc that caused so much trouble and confusion on windows with their activation bullshit that I ended up buying him an xbox
lutris works just as flawlessly nowadays using proton with minimal config.
deleted by creator
Honestly I’m surprised how often I see gimp still mentioned on lemmy/forums/etc. It’s lagging so far behind PS that to call it viable is honestly a stretch. Even for hobbyist needs the feature set is basically a decade behind.
I hate Adobe, let me be clear lol. I’m glad I don’t need to use their crap anymore (I’m focused on video editing now I never really touch photos these days). But resolve is industry-standard, professional software you can run on Linux for video editing and gimp is basically weaker photoshop circa 2015. Someone needs to overhaul it badly or we need new offerings.
I mean yeah it works and is stable but I’ve got tools on my phone to edit photos that gimp doesn’t even have. The toolset is very thin.
I really, REALLY wish the Affinity suite would work on Linux. They are the only ones even remotely comparable to Adobe.
Yeah, it’s what I use these days and yeah, that’d be nice. It isn’t the all-in-one package you get with PS, but for casual use in photo editing it’s decent and there are alternatives for some of the other use cases of PS that are closer while still being a fraction of the cost when stacked on top of Affinity.
I use gimp for pixel art for game textures and to make memes. It has tons of features that nobody knows about becuase they’re fucked by horrendous UI. But theres never been anything I needed to to but couldnt after looking up a tutorial on the internet. Valid points against gimp but lets not pretend people used to photoshop arent also kind of stuck in their old workflow habits and unwilling to relearn new software UI.
Theres photogimp but it hasn’t been worked on in a while.
Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
Another reason to use Gentoo: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-gfx/gimp
You can install 3.0.0rc2 or even git version.
Oh cool! Let me just spend three weeks crawling through wiki articles, setting flags in the config files, and patching out 15 different issues with various drivers then installing 20 dependencies compiling them all from source.
Hyperbole, but yeah no thanks I’ll take the L on some optimization and 2gb of storage space and some wierd file system locations for files to load a flatpak if old stable doesn’t cut it. you might want to be careful recommending gentoo to people they might not know better. Most Linux nerds don’t want to open that can of worms, but good for you if it works.
also goes for arch. its fun, it helps you learn, ive used it before but if you are a newbie you will break stuff. things will break too, depending on your setup. use it if you are ok with that.
Photopea was written by a single college grad, and it’s miles better than gimp. While gimp has more resources and manpowers. Something is seriously wrong with their team.
Photopea blows me away. You can actually follow along in a lot of PS tutorials just using Photopea. It’s got so many features implemented
Photopea uses rendering by browser. And probably doesn’t have plugin system.
I’m pretty sure Photoshop was better in 2003 than gimp is today
Gimp has a few weak spots but it’s an incredibly capable tool and if you think phone apps can do things it can’t then I don’t think you know how to use it.
To run Resolve properly, you apparently have to run DaVinci’s flavor of Rocky Linux 8.6. If you’re doing other things with that machine, this may be undesirable. And as far as I know, there’s no equivalent for After Effects.
You’re telling me this free, volunteer-run feature full software isn’t almost as good as the multi-million dollar product from a multi-billion dollar company?
If this dude can edit his videos and images on Linux so can you Mr Van Gogh. https://youtu.be/lm51xZHZI6g
Yes, that’s what we’re saying. It’s fine though, I don’t expect developers to work miracles for free, they are doing an amazing job, but In the context of “Linux being ready” it’s important to recognize some honest truths.
Thank you. All of this libre software is amazing, and impressive as hell, but that doesn’t exempt it from having usability issues and other valid points of criticism.
Calling that out isn’t inherently anti-Linux or anti open source. I want all of these tools to improve to the point that there’s no fucking contest and they are the de facto standard (like blender is), but shit is going to have a harder time improving if people have blinders to valid criticism.
Exactly. We have to know the weak points and photo editing is a major one right now. And lots of people - not just professional photographers - depend on it
But also, whenever someone pulls that card I just point at Blender until they go away.
Hell, there is such a widespread appetite for a PS alternative you’d think it’d be easier for Gimp than Blender at this point.
Or OBS. Or VLC. Or Kodi. Or Home Assistant. I can lists tons of FOSS apps that are better than alternatives developed by large companies.
Users do not care about how hard the devs are working for free. If the software doesn’t have the features, it’s not ready.
Really think about this. You’re saying two entirely contradictory things:
-
Linux software is ready to compete with Windows
-
Users cannot expect Linux software to have comparable features to Windows
How will it compete without comparable features? Passion and morals aren’t valued over effectiveness by most users.
Lmao. Windows does not have comparable features to Linux. I have to use Windows for work… it’s waaay behind Linux.
-
No. I am saying if you expect people to make the swap with the argument “you can do anything on Linux that you can do on windows more or less” then offer gimp as a photoshop replacement, you’re going to get some pretty strange looks.
None of what I’m talking about has to do with developer passion or competing with billions of dollars. We are talking about software people need. And the fact is there just isn’t a good photo editor on Linux which is a huge problem. Gimp is not suitable at all to fill that role.
gimp is ass sorry
GIMP’s engine is very good. It’s UI is cuntpuke.
Somebody write a QT front end for Imagemagick and you’ll probably see Linux adoption jump.
You’re telling me this free, volunteer-run feature full software isn’t almost as good as the multi-million dollar product from a multi-billion dollar company?
You’re describing the truth about Linux vs windows, except many Linux oses are better than anything ms makes.
I think Windows could be a far better OS than Linux if Microsoft gave a single shit. Instead they want to add AI and recall and various invasive updates.
The only thing windows has going is the market share.
Nope. The way you interact with your computer, the DE, is way behind in Windows. Every major Linux DE runs circles around Windows. Every time I have to use Windows it feels like I’m wading through 3ft of shit in slow motion. Because I know how much faster I could do the same things in Linux.
Could, true, but never has, never will. As long as it uses a janky non-standard kernel underneath, I’m gonna be hating on it.
Yeah. it’s dogshit but they certainly have the capacity to improve. it’s clear where their priorities are: milk users for profit
I can guarantee you that no app on or for your phone can do a fraction of what GIMP is capable of.
Oh well if you can guarantee me then I must have no clue what I’m talking about and we can just wrap this up
I’ve been using the Gimp for decades to great effect. Git gud (pin intended). Also, all phone photo editors are garbage.
For decades to do what?
Trim my toenails, obviously.
It was a legitimate question not bait or something so I don’t know why you’re being an ass about it. What is your use case?
Image editing.
Well I can tell we’re past the point of productivity. Have a good one
What else is the program for? I haven’t used Photoshop since the '90s.
On the 5 distros i used, i had different problems that would make normal people uninstall the OS
I could ignore them because the benefits outweigh the problems, other people probably couldnt because they want a stable computer, not cool features
“Nvidia GPU working”
If the driver feels like it, lol.
If the gpu doesn’t burn
I know NVIDIA gets a lot of shit, but I’ve honestly never encountered a problem after using nvidia + Linux for well over a decade. Sure, it can be picky when it comes to kernel version, but deciding on a kernel that works well for you and the rest of the system is part of initial setup of a proper system anyway.
For real?? 😓 I was rockin a 3080ti on a 4k panel for a bit there and Wayland was impossible to run on Debian-KDE. Like as soon as I got to desktop everything stuttered in slow motion, dpi was janky as hell, and wouldn’t respond to DPI config changes… And that was on a fresh install from Debian’s KDE installation media! 🤔 did ya’ll have to do any tinkering or was Wayland cruising for ya outta the box?
Had to sell that card as I got tf outta the US anyways (been maining my steam Deck on a dock, which has been fun!), but I’m thinking I’ll go AMD for my next build. VR & Wayland are way better on an AMD GPU, from what I hear!
Same here. I really don’t know what people do with their machines. I’ve had numerous nvidia gpus for ages without trouble (and litteraly decades of linux).
Never on laptops though, maybe that’s where problems arise.
Laptops exclusively for decades here, so nope, that’s not it.
There may be a lot of reasons why the problems don’t apply to you guys. Perhaps you just use nouveau. Perhaps you prefer to not use cutting edge hardware. You might stuck to a distro that did an exceptional job. Perhaps it’s also a little bit of selective perception (you might fix something that appears tiny to you, but is a system breaker for others who intimately familiar with Linux).
What I can say is, after using both desktops and laptops with many different distros for about a decade and now helping my family at moving over to Linux, that there absolutely are a thousand ways for the Nvidia driver to break. On one machine it decided to stop working with Wayland after a kernel upgrade after working fine with it beforehand. On another one the driver utility of Mint failed to install the driver. And on my laptop the driver failed due to Nvidia screwing up their repo for Tumbleweed with faulty dependencies. Also, does “Nvidia repo went offline for half a day, preventing setting up a new system” count? (It’s hosted by Nvidia)
It’s good to hear you lucked out, however for many users and distro maintainers those drivers are an absolute pain. Assumingly also for Nvidia given they began working on a completely new driver.
Well, there goes my pet theory then.
For me, my crime was trying to use Wayland with an Nvidia card before the explicit sync support was added in.
Many games still a pain in the arse to boot, even on Bottles.
Unless computer companies include Linux with their PC’s, it will never get general adoption.
No average user will follow instructions on how to boot Linux distro installer, especially when there are multiple steps needed to do so, such as on UEFI systems.
I didn’t think Linux had enough ads and wasn’t commercialized enough but then I tried Ubuntu.
Fuckin gottem 🤣🤣 bullseye!
HDR was solved?
+1 for kdenlive!! Kickass software
It certainly sounds like wayland is just about ripe. Any DE recommendations for a lifelong XFCE enjoyer like myself?
KDE. It’s working very well with Wayland. I’ve been using both on my daily driver for a year now and it’s come a long way since then. It was still a bit rough in the beginning but now I can’t see myself going back. It’s pretty polished.
I’ve been using KDE Plasma with Wayland for a couple of months and it’s been really good. The apps that don’t support it properly open as an X11 window inside Wayland, which is perfectly fine. I’m not switching back to X11 either haha
I’m not a Linux noob, but I’ve been out of the scene for a few years.
Recently tried debian with KDE and Wayland on a modern PC with a 3060. Just a default install.
My mouse could barely track across the screen, it was very choppy and stuttered like crazy.
This was in the last 6 months. I got it fixed by switching to a different compositor, but I shouldn’t have had to do that. Even then I found YouTube to be super laggy.
It’s just not ready.
well it’s again more about nvidia driver for wayland u need manually do some tweaks such as https://github.com/CachyOS/CachyOS-Settings/blob/master/usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
I’m glad there are ways to get it working, and thank you for sharing it, but this doesn’t qualify as “it just works, why are you idiots not switching from Windows when Linux just works”.
This is directly why a lot of people don’t take the arguments that Linux is ready for the average user seriously.
I had the exact same experience with Debian. The thing is, Debian is so many versions behind, it’s really no surprise that you thought it wasn’t ready yet. Try a less “stable” distro, you’ll be surprised.
i am a Linux noob. i installed debian KDE wayland with an Nvidia card just like you.
i experienced similar issues. i couldn’t set my refresh rate above 60Hz, my screen was really dim and stuttering, and video playback was lagging. worst of all my Minecraft framerate was abysmal! (<20fps default settings)
i read the dang wiki and got everything running smoothly in an afternoon
it’s ready as fuck
i read the dang wiki and got everything running smoothly in an afternoon
that means it’s not ready…
Xfce next major release will have Wayland support so no need to even change!
Wfce?
Best news I’ve heard all year
KDE or Gnome.
I’m jumping on the kde train. The experience has been solid since plasma 6 and the Wayland jump last year, especially if you are already stuck in the Nvidia family.
Cinamon should be supporting it soon
Still no viable alternative to Adobe lightroom imo
