I realized why I enjoy Linux so much and why I've stuck with it all these years (slight vent)... ( kbin.social )

In a world where nothing seems to work anymore, especially anything related to tech and/or customer service, getting on my laptop running Linux Mint just feels like a breath of fresh air. And that goes for just about any distro. It's nice to have something that works as it should and doesn't seem to go out of its way to cause frustration and irritation.

(P.S. Loblaw's/PC Express suck ass. Canadians will know what I'm talking about).

black-twisted-boughs ,
@black-twisted-boughs@kbin.social avatar

Definitely agree with this sentiment. Another aspect for myself -- When I tell Linux to do something, it fucking does something. No questions, no obfuscating, no disallowing in order to "save me from myself". I have a significantly increased sense of control over MY hardware with Linux.

It is frankly unfathomable to consider going back to the telemetry / spyware laden corporate controlled systems of the mainstream OSes.

george-Leo ,

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LanternEverywhere ,

What?! I'm sorry but no that has not been my experience, and it's also contrary to the commonly accepted reputation of Linux. I like Linux, it definitely has lots of advantages and benefits, but that definitely doesn't include it 'just working' and "not causing frustration and irritation."

d3Xt3r ,

That really depends on your needs, and the Linux distro you’re using. Generally speaking, the greater your requirements (and therefore usage), the more finicky an OS gets.

I switched my non-techy Mum and Dad over to Linux over a decade ago (Xubuntu previously, now Zorin) and in all this time, I can count on one hand the number of times they called about an issue. The entire motivation to switch them over was because Windows was so unstable and would either tend to break after an update, or get infected by malware or something, and I got tired of being the IT guy for them and having to constantly fix it. I reasoned that Linux would be a good candidate for them because they have very simple requirements - they mainly just use a browser foe the most part, work with documents occasionally and do a printout once in a while, like for flight tickets and stuff. More than a decade later, my reasoning was proven right, and I’m glad it’s been working so well. Linux was the very definition of “just working”, at least for my parents.

Spiracle ,
@Spiracle@kbin.social avatar

Really depends on distro/use case/luck. I’ve had quite a few years without any issues, more with minimal and very rare irritations. The day-to-day experience continues is pleasant.

The few months have been somewhat more frustrating for me, and once I have a bit more leisure time I’ll switch distro to something that hopefully works better for me.

rbos ,
@rbos@lemmy.ca avatar

I’ve worked with windows professionally for many years, and have experienced far far more stupid inexplicable frustration with windows bugs than with Linux ones. Windows bugs are intractably unfixable and require arcane workarounds more often than not.

Tanza ,
@Tanza@kbin.social avatar

beyond one or two mistakes of my own doing, where i didn't read or think before running a command, linux is perfectly stable compared to windows for me atleast!

oo1 ,

a breath of minty fresh air

RoboRay ,
@RoboRay@kbin.social avatar

A Linux computer does what you tell it to do when you tell it to do it, and that's all it does...

Like every computer should do.

But this hasn't been true of Windows computers in 20 years.

Gordon_Freeman ,
@Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social avatar

I had the opposite experience recently

I was into Linux back then when Valve launched TF2 for Linux (this was in 2013) in the end I broke Linux Mint (I don't know how but it stopped loading) so I said Fuck it and returned to Windows, after all I wanted to play all games, not only TF2

Recently I wanted to return to Linux since gaming is finally a thing and I had to constantly fix stuff...

-First of all If I changed between windows and linux, the motherboard clock was constantly changing. I had to fix it

-KeepassXC (the browser extension) could not connect with KeepassXC for some reason their windows counterparts worked flawlessly

-KDE somehow look uglier and less customizable than the KDE from 10 years ago

-The system tray kinda sucks

-Having the programs to run at system start up does not always works by changing the settings (you have to put a shortcut in a special folder)

-I never managed to make KDE connect to work properly(I connected my phone and Linux, but I never managed to receive the phone notifications on the PC)

-The OS was asking me to restart after every boot almost daily because it got updated (back then Linux asking for a reboot was a rare sight)

-and the cherry on top, one day the software stopped working and I did nothing weird. I could not use KeepassXC, nor steam, nor blender, etc... I asked for help first here and then on the official OS forums and nobody could find a fix other than "delete everything and reinstall the OS". Is something I could do, but is a pain in the ass. I'll have to fix everything that I already fixed again, I'll start receiving security emails because someone logged into my accounts (yeah, me, from linux), I'll have to configure everything again, etc...

I'll like to get rid of windows for ever, but is not easy

sado1 ,
  • KeepassXC should just work, if the browser's key was added to your KDBX database successfully. Other than that, I am surprised.
  • Yup, the motherboard clock thingy is a consequence of Windows storing local time, vs Linux storing UTC. It's a minor thing to fix in any of these systems, though.
  • Shortcuts thingy - never had a problem, although I did have a problem with KDE's keyboard shortcuts to run a program, which may be related workflow and maybe both were/are broken.
  • KDE Connect is surprising, as at least for me it worked flawlessly
  • The reboot thingy must be related to Linux Mint. I saw similar thing in EndeavourOS. One nice thing that some distributions implemented, is the ability to apply updates when you poweroff - from my point of view it's a less annoying solution than what you describe.
  • I can't comment on the 'cherry on top' one without more details.
    I had a somewhat similar issue on my work laptop a short while ago, when I installed a program, which included a bugged XML settings file, then ran system update. When the updater tried to rebuild some caches (related to ie. icons, MIME etc.), some programs which use these caches simply stopped working. Reinstalling all packages with apt was the only thing that helped, to this day I do not even know all of the parts of my system that were broken.
    But this was one of these issues that happen once per 5 years, and leave you scratching your head and asking "what the hell is going on here?". The difference from Windows is that in Linux, you can have a high understanding of system's internal modular components (at the cost of time needed to learn it), and regular system issues can be identified after a few minutes of Googling.
Gordon_Freeman ,
@Gordon_Freeman@kbin.social avatar

I saw similar thing in EndeavourOS

Yeah, is the OS I installed this time. Mint did not did that, at least 10 years ago, but I wanted to try a different distro.

So, is not a trend for all distros? Maybe I'll try a different one next time. I want to stay as close to Arch as possible (but I'm scared of Arch itself) because SteamOS is based on Arch so maybe I'll install Manjaro next

I can't comment on the 'cherry on top' one without more details.

If you want more details

https://kbin.social/m/linux/t/325780/Stuff-stopped-working

https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/some-software-stopped-working/44395

I still have it installed (I'm pissed/frustrated and still have not made the reinstall), I check from time to time if an update fix it, but no luck to this day

sado1 ,

I looked through the posts.
Explanation of the issue: the userspace implementation of OpenGL for Xorg, called GLX,does not work, maybe it isn't loaded. From what I see, /usr/lib/nvidia/xorg/libglx.so is no longer included in nvidia-utils package, the new name for it is probably libglxserver_nvidia.so

Did you have any lines with (EE) in Xorg.0.log?
Do you see if this log says, if libglxserver_nvidia.so was loaded correctly?
Wouldn't hurt to check, if nvidia kernel module is loaded: lsmod | grep nvidia
Maybe reinstallation of nvidia-utils package could help, although I am pretty sure this was done already when you removed and added nVidia driver again.

Feel free to PM me, whenever you give it another go, even if it's half a year from now :) I'll do my best to provide you some advice.
('nv' is an old driver for old nVidia cards, you shouldn't look in that direction, it's normal that it doesn't load, if nvidia driver does)

RhetoricalRat ,

The KeepassXC-browser stuff is most likely from when Ubuntu started pushing snaps. For a while this was broken, and even if you installed Firefox from a PPA instead it still wouldn't work due to a default AppArmor policy blocking the connection.

sado1 ,

Would be a good guess, but Gordon mentioned that in his latest try, he installed Arch-based EndeavourOS instead of Mint.

Zozano ,

I dualboot to play games with anti-cheat. There are so many counterintuitive design choices on Windows, it’s seriously fucked. They have removed options which used to exist. WHY?! It’s not a security risk, it’s just a basic feature. I don’t understand.

ShaunaTheDead ,
@ShaunaTheDead@kbin.social avatar

Hell yeah! I haven't tried Mint in awhile, it was my first foray into a Linux distro and I wasn't quite ready at the time, mostly because gaming on Linux wasn't where I needed it to be. It sure was a beautiful distro though!

I love that Linux has taught me how to debug programs and since open source is more common in Linux environments, if there's a problem then I can fix it myself rather than waiting for the developers to patch it.

Oh yeah, and PC Express and all the groceries stores are such bullshit! Galen Weston... heads (of lettuce probably) will roll!

datavoid ,

Did I miss something in the news about PC Express? Does their new update not support Linux or something?

such_lettuce7970 OP ,
@such_lettuce7970@kbin.social avatar

No, they were just the source of my frustration the day I made this post.

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