this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Not to say you are wrong in general, just a personal anecdote: i run Debian, everytime i need to upgrade from one major Version to the next I work for a day, dont get it done, cry, and then setup all my 3 PCs from scratch. (And NO a rolling release like arch or tumbleweed is not the solution, as I am not smart enough to manage different versions of dependencies and everything breaks at somepoint, Debian is at least stable between the major releases) My vive wireless will not work under Linux so I need to keep a dual boot windows on the workhorse which is difficult to maintain itself sometimes. And on my low spec PC audio is never synched with video and no matter what I do I don't get it fixed
I love Linux for its philosophy and hate Microsoft for theirs, I will go back under no circumstances and agree that Linux gives better error messages and docs to fix things, but I never needed to do that with Microsoft. I never needed to open the registry apart from escaping out of box setup...
User experience for someone with high technical expectations for what should be possible (vr, games, hi-fi cinema, CAD, DAW) but only moderate technical skills (I can navigate GUIs and make basic use of the terminal (grep, nano, apt) but if I try to understand English primary source docs I don't get it as after ~7 years of Linux I still only know about 30% of the necessary concepts and vocabulary just isn't that good.... Like, Damm, its hard for someone without any technical training who only has a few hours a month to work on his PC (meaning having time to fix and learn stuff, not just using the PC) to get the stuff done which is a no brainer on win
May I ask how your Debian upgrades go wrong?
I mostly say so because I recently upgraded from 12 to 13 with almost no issues; the only issue was something with Apache that ended up being a quick fix. I followed the official Debian guide and temporarily remove third party repos and packages.
Havent brought myself to upgrade to 13 yet, but from 11 to 12 i followed to official guidlines, and when trying to reinstall my packages after kernel upgrade stuff got messed up. Packages didnt recognize their own config files anymore, wine completley behaved random, apt was flooded with error messages, the blzrry glassy Theme in I had in KDE plasma didn't reinstall properly leaving my desktop looking horrible, half programs not working and some weird driver(?) behavior ( hanging Indefinitly when trying to shut down the system and stuff like that)
Maybe all would have been fixable for someone smart enough, for me it was easier to start again from scratch.
Did you restart the computer after the upgrade and before reinstalling third party repo packages?
The “half the programs not working” kind of sounds like you had packages compiled for a newer libc and the like but the newer libc wasn’t in memory yet because you hadn’t restarted.
Was a while ago, i think i did. All I know is I worked trough the whole doc to upgrade start to finish because I didn't know which sections apply to me and which don't, it was like ten hours of work trying t o understand everything which, holly shit, wasn't easy and when I finally got completely through it didn't work as expected.
Not that I think the docs were wrong, I am aware that I was the problem there, but it sometimes bothers me when people act like Linux is super easy and even grandma can understand and use it while I, the most techy persons in my peer group, give it my all and still dont even manage a simple upgrade, which would be absolutely no problem on the corporate OSs
Huh. I guess 3 years of Debian usage has just gotten me used to stuff like that.
I can see where one might go wrong; there’s a lot of sections in that guide with contingencies only meant for specific situations, like upgrading from a USB or optical disc.