Don’t get me wrong. I love Linux and FOSS. I have been using and installing distros on my own since I was 12. Now that I’m working in tech-related positions, after the Reddit migration happened, etc. I recovered my interest in all the Linux environment. I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited. There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command. Sometimes I lack time and energy for troubleshooting and sometimes I just fail at it.
I usually end up in need of redoing a fresh install until it breaks up again. Maybe Linux is not good for beginners working full time? Maybe we should do something like that Cisco course that teaches you the basic commands?
| If your Windows 7 or newer computer blue screens, it’s very likely a bad piece of hardware, occasionally a bad driver. The OS itself is quite solid.
Okay, really, though? Windows is solid and good because it doesn’t kernel panic much? Who’s getting kernel panics out of Linux without faulty hardware or doing something risky? I think you’ve equivocated a bit here: either we’re comparing kernel to kernel or we’re comparing userland to userland. You’re comparing Windows itself to Linux userland or using some kernel even freakier than the weird patched-up stuff I like to play with.
I feel like discussion of this topic is plagued by double standards and shifting goalposts :-\ Apples to oranges comparisons, refusals to even consider things just because they’re ‘foreign,’ blaming “Linux” for things that really aren’t its fault (neither in the OS sense nor in the broader sense) … including of course (sometimes) turning the discussion into an “us versus them” thing. Software on Linux has iffy documentation! … But the same software exists on Windows, or the equivalent(s) is(/are) just as bad. Linux kernel documentation is scary or weird! … But no one relevant is touching it anyway and wasn’t touching Windows kernel anything either. The UI is different! Yeah, so’s the new one on every version of Windows you get forced into. Casual Windowsers all hate it every time but somehow “Linux” is unusable because they won’t learn a new UI unless Microsoft tells them to.
You can buy (a licence to, if MS likes you lots, borrow) a copy of Windows and apparently buy support for it too… yeah okay, but that’s business, not a software issue. There are enterprise distros and software packages with all’ that business-type support, unless they’ve all vanished? That’s how that stuff works, no?
I’m not demanding anyone switch and distro hop over the course of months to find a distro they love but I’d really prefer to see some more fairness discussing the matter. “Linux” is never going to be “usable on desktop” if it’s always just the enemy to be spurned and derided.
(Also, sorry this got so wordy. It’s not meant as a diatribe, just I feel like there’s a lot to say and I’m not saying much of it 🤷♀)
TLDR: It’s unfair or outright dishonest to blame an apple for not being tart enough and hide that your actual standard is “is it an orange.”
Windows auto-recovers from almost any issue the average user might encounter. It cannot be understated just how hard it is for an application or driver to break modern Windows. It goes much farther than just fixing a kernel panic. It will reset to a serviceable state for almost anything you can think of ( e.g. bad display settings, borked application install) and even in the worst situation will still give you some sort of GUI and try to walk you through the problem.
Linux sort of just gives up and lets you shoot yourself in the foot if you really ask it to. It’s up to you to then figure out how to fix things and that usually involves diving into the terminal. But even ignoring that, a lot of Linux applications have a serious UI/UX problem. I cannot count how many applications just do things like throw a config file at you even for common tasks and expect you to read a doc page in order to figure it out. I have better things to do than read yet another wall of text just to do something simple like remapping key bindings (e.g. mpv). That would be an unthinkable thing to do to a Windows user.
Linux developers seem to want to develop software for other developers. Windows developers develop software for average people. The fragmentation of 1000s of Linux distros, each with their own quirks only make matters worse by further complicating where and how to get help.