Linux

Lol no. I've been using Linux for 10 years and it's been a continuous dumpster fire. Constant issues l, especially with Nvidia, across many different machines. Issues with wine, no X11 (or Wayland) after updates, games not starting, etc, etc. Across Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch (and derivatives).

Yet I almost exclusively use Linux nowadays. Why? Because it's a dumpster fire I can influence. Windows is going to shit, they were taking my PC hostage, installing spyware, ads, forcing updated without my consent. On Linux I have to invest hours to fix shit, on Windows I can get fucked whenever something happens that I don't want.

With proton advancing, Wayland working somewhat usable even with Nvidia,my threshold was passed. I'd rather fix the fixable Linux issues that cost me time than deal with Windows any longer. But for the layman I'm not sure I'd recommend it. I'm a computer scientist. I can fixodt issues, it's just a question of time and energy. But that doesn't go for everyone.

I have been using Linux for a long time and it's only been in the post chrome os era that I've really seen updates and maintenance begin to turn the corner.

A lot of Linux users will tell you their system is perfect but it kinda reminds me of that documentary where all these inventors came to show off their sex robots at a sex robot convention. Its obvious how absurd it is when you're on the outside looking in at a bunch of people who are like "I know she's rough lookin' but just check out this feature".

ChromeOS was really a first class experience on third rate garbage hardware. It did however really spark the potential for a new paradigm that projects like ChimeraOS, universalBlue, vanillaOS, blendOS, and even steamOS are tackling.

Ubuntu is a bit "dated" in its design. (For lack of a better description even though they keep trying to re-invent the wheel). There is a reason why everyone is rushing to make Linux usable now and that's namely because it's become valves chosen desktop platform moving forward. Immutable/atomic distributions are set to fix the problems the average user deals with when it comes to Linux.

I'm actually using bazzite-dx with Nvidia and gnome right now. Its been an overall success with some kinks due to the average jank you get with Nvidia drivers. For instance, Bambu studio flatpak was busted for a week but I just checked tonight and it looks like it's been fixed.

Its ok to be frustrated about this. You're not alone.There are dozens of us! Dozens!

I began writing this comment with the intention of answering your question, but it actually ended up mainly being me venting myself.

Obviously no, it's never been a flawless experience, but a few months back I decided I wanted to try gaming so I put an nvidia card in my pc and reinstalled linux to start fresh. All of the examples you've given sound like the sort of problems I've had since then, but never in the ten years before when I was using intel integrated graphics. I was aware going in that nvidia is massively more problematic than AMD, but this card was a spare from someone I know.

Obviously there are games I can run well now that were unrealistic before, but there are also a couple 2D games with SNES-quality graphics that I've tried which spike my CPU to 100% and lag like crap in spite of working perfectly before I installed the card. I've had two experiences where a game suddenly has issues immediately after an update to the nvidia-utils package. I'm not new to linux, but I am new to gaming on it and I've kind of given up on troubleshooting this stuff in favor of "maybe there will be an update tomorrow that fixes this".

There's reason for optimism, everyone is saying the situation is steadily improving because nvidia has been much more cooperative in the past couple years. It's not realistic to say you won't find annoyances regardless, but it wouldn't surprise me if over half of your struggles are a direct result of decades of one company's deliberate decision to ignore pleas to stop making life as hard as they possibly can on software developers trying to support their hardware.

I’ve been running Linux for two years but I do find it’s not as easy to use as Windows still, but it’s not worlds apart like it once was. However I didn’t have the experience you had, mine was pretty smooth. I spent some time working quirks out but nothing was breaking, it was just tweak isn’t it to the way I want it. Maybe try hopping to a different distro if you’re having bad luck with that one. I was on Fedora and it’s pretty solid now.

Kind of out of my depth here, but what machine are you running it on?

I run Kubuntu and it isn't that bad, but it's definitely less reliable than Windows. Often KDE seems to completely crash, requiring a force restart of my system. I also have a bunch of monitors that turn off via a smart plug when I leave the house, and it sometimes doesn't like that.

The best thing I ever did was use Nvidia prime offloading to move everything to my integrated GPU and have only select GPU intensive applications (like games, video editing) interact with Nvidia.

Never had to deal with weird graphics bugs after that.

I am waiting for SteamOS 3 Desktop to be released, so that I don't have to worry about this sort of thing, and have support from an 800lb gorilla. When I tried Mint back in January, my games weren't working right - Lutris, Hero Launcher, ect. Considering the amount of retro and Japanese games I play, having broken GOG installations wasn't a good start.

For now I am just sticking to Windows 11 IoT, but sooner or latter Microsoft's issues will be too much. Hopefully, SteamOS will be out by then.

More or less,

Arch gave me some issues on install getting steam games to run on my main graphics card but since fixing then it's been maintenance free. There were some other issues that resolved with system updates, e.g. HDR on Wayland/KDE but Plasma update fixed it almost a year ago.

I'm running AMD/AMD/ASUS RoG.

My windows dual bout however takes 5min for all the bootup apps to launch and explorer is unstable. Probably because of local account and some policies I've been locking AI and metrics down with. Also Office clock to run burns my cpu when at idle and it ignores the manual start setting in services as well as startup-apps menu. It's just there for work.

Edit given below comments: I am NOT suggesting Arch for a beginner who wants simple and easy. Plenty of more beginner friendly distros will need even less maintenance.

Try latest stable Debian (13 Trixie) with Chromium or Firefox - I have no issues personally, though I'm not dealing with an Nvidia graphics card thankfully

I don't dare do hardcore gaming on Linux 'cause I'm lazy. I went and bought a Raspberry Pi at some point and only tried out some distros on it. I had troubles from day 1 where like OP, I could figure out. Right now, I can't even get Redshift to work on basically a RaspberryPi OS fork and I have no clue why.

Windows just worked.

Excuse me while I laugh hysterically while remembering the sorts of Windows issues I've troubleshot for family or coworkers. The one where the combination of a particular Windows version + a particular MS Office version + document previews being activated would cause Office to crash randomly on operations that had nothing to do with document previews was particularly memorable and difficult to figure out. The various Linux snafus I've had to deal with were pretty easy to handle by comparison.

In general, yes.. I used Ubuntu years ago but for almost 10 years now it's MX Linux (Debian based), only problem I had was on my brand new PC the wifi card was new and not well supported by the kernel, but with new kernel/driver it improved and now I have 0 problem.

I experience the same thing every time I decide to try KDE on any distro.

I don't know. FWIW, once you get it tuned, þe maintenance drops sharply. Þere are a lot of caveats, þough.

You're on Ubuntu, which I would normally say should be un-boat-like once you work out þe kinks, except þat Ubuntu has been doing þings like pushing Snap and Wayland, which introduce variables and can cause whole new issues for some people.

Þis is why many of us steer new users towards distros like Mint, which tend to stick wiþ more tried-and-true technology stacks. It's hard to beat a Debian-derived distribution which excludes Snaps and Flatpacks, and ships with Xorg and some GTK3/2 desktop, like xfce or cinnamon. It won't be þe most sexy, but you'll probably get a more "just works" experience.

Nope, but they have extremely short memories. They spent 2 hours yesterday tinkering with 4 issues. But when you ask them, their system has been solid for months.

Linux is very much a boat. Or more accurately the same engine used in 50 different boats all with their own quirks.

No that's Linux. If you point it out Linux users just yell at you real hard and bully you into submission. That's how we get the newbies from finding out the truth.