It does have quite a bit of problems, bugs and fails at the basics more often than not.

I kinda feel like I’m being gaslit whenever I bring it up and people say it “just works”.

Because. Well. It doesn’t.

Let’s watch this guy get crucified.

1. Zero awareness of what linux actually is or means.

2. No clue what DE they’re using. Talks about “linux UI”.

3. Clearly some borked distro problems, none of this would happen on any modern user-oriented distro.

4. Blatantly consumerist attitude towards a FOSS product.

To the last one, OP, go eat shit. You can pay Apple however much they ask you, and be their happy slave, or you can keep allowing windows to push their big fat aDs down your throat. Nobody has forced you to use linux.

Oh, and the more of such garbage users like you switch back to windows, the better for us. We’re never planning to run this as s for-profit catering to every Karen’s demands. We just kick Karens out of this bar while continuing enjoying our hard liquor.

Btw, all of this reads like a copypasta from like a decade ago, which I suspect it might just be.

I’ve only had issues like this on a particular laptop. Luckily it was a work laptop so not a big deal but this thing hated Linux. It would have issues on almost every front like the audio device suddenly not working or it isn’t able to change brightness or not being able to turn on because a mouse is plugged in. Weird shit like that. Sometimes it would lock up for no reason.

I’ve installed Linux on my personal laptop and only had a few minor issues. Any issue on my PC I try to fix because I use it so often but Wayland has automated a lot of the more annoying parts like having to stream audio through my mic on Discord.

It definitely has issues that can be frustrating. I was dealing with applications not hooking up to my audio properly but it turned out that pipewire needed a restart then it was good to go. I’m currently waiting for LCARSWM to be updated so I can test it out. My Bluetooth keyboard hasn’t been interacting well but this might be fixed but I’ll need to test it.

I love to tinker and problem solving is my bread and butter so Linux is ideal for me. I hated how much Windows kept obscuring things I needed to see just to play around with settings. It’s almost accepted that some shit will require getting into the weeds with because Linux is so overlooked by companies that something somewhere will break. I’m fine with it because I enjoy the challenge and I hate the sacrifices I’d have to make to use Windows.

I’m a software developer with about twenty years in the field, spending my first half of that working in a Unix environment. I have tried so hard to make Linux my home desktop solution. I’ve come back to it every five years or so, hoping it’s finally figured out the UI/UX thing.

Things I like:

• no comercial motivation
• intrinsically programmer-oriented
• free with available sources, as deep as I care to dig

Things I don’t like:

• High barrier to entry (which distro?)
• Poor support for newer hardware (not a fault of Linux but a reality)
• Too much competition in very basic facilities like package managers and desktop environments
• Well-intentioned but largely unhelpful community support due to the above points

I’m back using Linux again (Fedora) because at the moment I’m doing a lot of embedded and SoC work at the moment, and again I love the dev experience. But so far it seems like not much has changed wrt how fiddly daily driving can be. I can’t stand W11 for a lot of reasons, but I’m constantly tempted to try my luck with WSL as a better compromise.

I’m not going to downvote, but I doubt yours is actually an unpopular opinion. It’s just that the minority linux diehards are very vocal.

The rest of us tried it and moved on, because we have better things to do with our lives, ran into driver issues, and/or don’t enjoy tinkering.

And why get into an argument with someone who’s enjoying linux? They’re enjoying it and happy with it. No need to shit on their parade.

Yep, Linux is certainly not perfect, and it’s not for everyone, though it’s improving all the time. A lot of the problems you were seeing come down to distro and Desktop environment, paired with hardware.

Because of the amount of choice and preferences we have, not all the desktop environments are feature parity, and each team has their own priorities. It’s just a shame that you practically have to do homework in order to have the best experience, when Linux users themselves say that the biggest benefit is choice.

People in this thread have noted that some systems seem to be Linux-cursed, and I’ve definitely experienced that. Usually it’s a specific piece of hardware that isn’t well supported, or a package or default configuration that has an issue. I’ve had systems that were spinning their heads and spraying pea soup everywhere on OpenSUSE and Debian turn around and behave perfectly on Gentoo (that was 17 years ago, but it doesn’t seem to be a unique experience).

Regarding the controller, if you’re connecting a PS4 controller via bluetooth I think I had the same problem earlier today, and there’s an issue open on the bluez github about it. I found a post on the Arch bbs with a workaround. TLDR, bluez has had a few issues in the latest builds and reverting all your bluez libraries to 5.68-1 seems to solve it for most people, including me. Unfortunately, this kind of thing crops up occasionally. Everywhere really, but especially on Linux because of how much it relies on community contributions to projects.

Anyway, I’ve rambled too long. Sounds like you got bit by either a driver issue or a config/package issue. Sorry it happened to you, and sorry it soured you on Linux. If you’re looking for something that “just works” and aren’t getting it with Linux, no reason to beat your head against a wall.

I put Linux Mint on my laptop about ten years ago. Finally, this year, my track pad started working.

Sorry but if you can’t get Gold or even Platinum rated games to run then the problem is in front of the monitor.

Enough Linux spam…

I’m sorry to hear you had a bad experience with Linux.

One of the problems with that family of systems is hardware compatibility. Unfortunately if your hardware is not (proven) to be compatible with Linux, you will have problems. Sometimes those problems are of the “my system won’t start” kind. Often, these will be hard to identify and fix.

Linux is not yet IMO a system for general use. Fixing problems can be long, tedious and require you to read a lot of docs. Yesterday I spent a few hours fixing my package manager, which was recently broken by a system update. Yay.

I have been using dual boots for years for that very same reason. I am a software developer and Linux makes a lot of sense for my work. But for videogames (and other software not supported on Linux), Windows is my platform of choice.

The question I would ask myself if I was you is: do you need Linux? If so, I would next check (before anything else) hardware compatibility with some distro that makes sense for you (one that comes shipped with good graphics drivers for example). There are a few distro that work reasonably well for some of those cases. If you don’t need Linux (and you don’t like tinkering with systems) then I would suggest reconsidering your choice of platform.

Anyway, I wish you all the best settling for a system that works for you and hopefully you can see a quick end to your frustrations.

Edit: typo

Fwiw, I switched to Linux a couple months back (pop_os!) and I’ve been very happy. I’ve had some minor issues (random gaming proton crashes, os freezes) and some learning experiences. Occasional fiddling with stuff seems required but not an every day thing. The benefits of Linux vastly outway the minor issues.

How can you flame like this without mentioning the distribution so we can shit on it!

You’re not alone, but it’s an unpopular opinion among geeks. I guess most of them are just bored and therefore love to tinker with these kind of issues. I value my time and prefer not to care about my OS doing things for me. I like to have the option to do so, if I need, but I shouldn’t have too. Windows allows that, MacOS doesn’t and Linux allows too much of that, even requires it.

Another part is the dopamine rush when an issue got solved. Obviously you don’t get any if it works right away.

My windows 10 is running flawless since 2019 and it didn’t slow down or get bloated. I have disabled a few options but that’s about it. Meanwhile my coworker is fighting bad drivers every day. Not even talking about games that simply don’t work at all.

I use Linux at work and it’s great when you set up a VM to do one thing and then forget about it.

Honestly youre right. When i first started using linux it was for fun, something different. It had so many issues that by default id boot into windows and use ubuntu occassionally to learn it some more. A few years later and endeavour is my daily driver and im lucky enough to have 0 issues whatsoever, i love it but its probably dumb luck that all my hardware works well. The issues people have with linux seem totally random, some people breeze through it, then theres people like you that just encounter so much seemingly random bs.

Youre right about the circlejerks, enjoy the comments that are gonna come pouring in lol