He gets out of Windows! ๐๐
"No, you don't understand, Linux is not desktop ready, I know that because I installed Fedora back in 2008 and it was kinda wonky."
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2025
1163 points (97.7% liked)
linuxmemes
28058 readers
1138 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn, no politics, no trolling or ragebaiting.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. ๐ฌ๐ง Language/ัะทัะบ/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. ๐ฌ๐ง๐ฆ๐บ๐บ๐ธ
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed.
6. (NEW!) Regarding public figures
We all have our opinions, and certain public figures can be divisive. Keep in mind that this is a community for memes and light-hearted fun, not for airing grievances or leveling accusations. - Keep discussions polite and free of disparagement.
- We are never in possession of all of the facts. Defamatory comments will not be tolerated.
- Discussions that get too heated will be locked and offending comments removed. ย
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
"I'm a busy person with a jobbity job and kids and a mortgage on an iPhone 18 Ultra Plus Air and stuff.
If I have to READ to make anything work, it's not customer ready, and this new thing should take no time at all to completely understand on my part.
It needs to be a perfect 'free Windows clone' before I'll even consider switching from the mega-corporate ecosystem I was coerced into dependency on from the start. If there's one thing I hate more than reading, it's asking anybody for help. Especially my friends. The operating system is the problem."
Uh it's actually called the New iPhone 18 Ultra Plus Air Max Gold Edition. Duh
On a serious note, having used Linux on and off since the 90s (aah, Slackware, how I miss installing you from floppies ... not), Linux has, IMHO, actually been desktop ready for ages (though definitelly not in the days of Slackware when configuring X was seriously interesting for a geek and pretty much an impossible barrier for everybody else).
The problem have always been applications not having Linux builds, only Windows builds, not the actual desktop Linux distros being an inferior desktop experience than Windows (well, not once Gnome and KDE emerged and made things like configuring your machine possible via GUIs - the age of the RTFF and editing text files in the command line before that wasn't exactly friendly for non-techies).
In other words, from maybe the late 00s onwards the problem were mainly the "networks effects" (in a business sense of "apps are made for Windows because that's were users are, users go for Windows because that's were the apps are) rather than the "desktop" experience.
The almost unassailable advantage of Windows thanks to pretty much just network effects, was something most of us Linux fans were aware since way back.
What happened in the meanwhile to make Linux more appealing "in the Desktop" was mainly on the app availabilty side - OpenOffice (later LibreOffice and derivatives) providing an Office-style suit in Linux, the movement from locally hosted apps to web-hosted apps meaning that a lot of PC usage was really just browser usage, Wine improving by leaps and bounds and making more and more Windows applications run in Linux (most notably and also thanks to DXVK, Games) and so on.
Personally I think Linux has been a superior experience on the server side since the late 90s and, aside for the lack of Linux versions of most commonly used non-OS applications, a superior experience in the desktop since the 00s.
Oddly enough it seems like Microsoft themselves that's working towards breaking the network effect. They are pushing people to use the web versions of their software now and since edge is chromium, their web versions should work in Linux.
In the past Microsoft made most of their money from Windows and Office, but now they make more money off of cloud services so the traditional Windows and Office products are becoming more and more about just driving people to their cloud services. But as they they put more emphasis on cloud services they're actually making it easier for people to dump Windows, and as they make Windows more about marketing their cloud services, they give people more incentive to dump Windows.
Microsoft is digging the grave for windows.
RTFF? What's a fanual?
Read The Fucking FAQ.
1990s Usenet reference.
A fan of manuals, obviously. There are dozens of us!
Ironically, for me, Arch has been the โJust Worksโ Distro lol.
Can confirm. In over 10 years of Arch I had only three breakages, two of which were self-caused by not checking for required manual intervention before upgrading. The third was because my laptop's battery died during an upgrade.
And the fix was always the same. Boot a life image, chroot into my install and fix it.
To make a long post short, windows is shitty but its setup bullshit is very straight forward and clear to deal with, linux is great when it works but its setup bullshit is byzantine as all hell. I got Linux working with only light bullshit on a laptop but just gave up entierly after 3 days of trying to get different distros at different advice working on my desktop.
windows is shitty but its setup bullshit is very straight forward and clear to deal with
Unfortunately, you definitely get a false sense of simplicity when you're essentially forced down a lazy river of:
"Accept all these corporate agreements, make an account with our centralized authority structure, try to deny a litany of invasive ad permissions (you can't turn it all off lol nice try.), enable our one touch AI button, shut up, and click go."
"(Pulsing blue light) We'Re TaKiNg CaRe Of YoU. . ."
Some setup things in Linux can be confusing at first, like how I've agonized over the implications of which file system to use. (Settled on BTRFS for rollbacks, otherwise it doesn't matter for 99.9% of people lol.)
But also I think we're just at a sad point in history where computers are everywhere but people have terrible computer education (self included), and it's left up to private interests who mainly want a cattle-like customer base.
...So everything seems scary and complicated.
I imagine cars would be the same way if we weren't required to test for a license. They're getting that way quickly though, people wanting a "Push ignition and turn off brain" machine that seemingly "just works" until it doesn't and they must take it to Special Wizards. A black box which they ultimately have no control over, but feels "easy".
I think it's because people are forced to use these devices. Like driving, some people enjoy the act of computing. Linux is for those people.
When everybody is forced to use computers every day and most of those computers run something by Apple, Microsoft, or Google, anything else feels like yet another stupid thing to deal with.
TL;DR: Linux respects the user, but respect is built on a two way street of understanding. People hate learning because they're systemically stressed TF out all the time.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
Wine was actually a good tip hahah
Also as a side note, i would recommend new Linux users to not learn the command line. Do not touch the command line if you're not sure what you're doing. Like with a knife, it's a powerful tool but you can also do a lot of harm with it if you don't know exactly what you are doing.
Everything that most people need (web browsing, writing emails, watching movies, making presentations) can be done with graphical programs only. You shouldn't ever need to touch the command line.
So I agree with you, kinda. it shouldnโt be something scary. It just needs to be understood. The command line is very literal. With a graphical environment, there are design elements that can kind of nudge you towards one way or another of doing or saying something to the computer. A command line is blindly speaking to something. Is incredibly efficient at doing exactly what you already know exactly how to do. The GUI is more assistive.
I only tried Linux once, about 15 years ago, and got scared off because it was all command. When I blow the dust off my laptop I might try it again now that its all user friendly.
Just make sure to pick the right distro. Some are complex still to cater to us veterans
Wine?
Now we need a windows compatibility program called "com-plain"
Simplified communication, components, compatibility, whatever makes the backronym work
alias complain=proton
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
"I can't switch, there's this one function of this one programme that I may need in the next 50 years."
There's a Linux app for that but the buttons are in different places
"There's this obscure function in Excel that I know somebody who knows somebody who used it that won't work in LibreOffice Calc"
load more comments
(1 replies)
"They told me to type words into a black screen with green letters, and the mere suggestion burned down my house and killed my family."
"But I am more than happy to root around the registry and make changes to obscure variables that will be reverted in the next update"
You mean through a GUI?
Geez, I wonder why.
I mean, just now I was talking about dual booting Linux and Windows, and they fight over the RTC, Linux wants UTC, Windows wants local time. It's a line of bash to set Linux to use local time, it's changing a registry key in Windows.
load more comments
(8 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
Finally swapped to Linux last week and loving it! Kubuntu because I wanted KDE for KZones since I was using FancyZones from PowerToys on Windows. The hardest part was migrating my qBitTorrent, Sonarr/Radarr/Plex because they all point to windows drives. A simple replace in the DB file fixed it, and weโre running smoothly!
Gonna get an auto encode/upload working this weekend, and Iโm so excited. I donโt feel held back like windows, and it doesnโt feel like work configuring it, which I was afraid of.
A few hiccups here and there, but I think of it like growing pains that will eventually go away.
I use Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarch
I don't know, the most whining I see here on Lemmy is from Linux people.
I have been online linux mint for a good while now.
theres a plasma window decoration called klassy that has a bunch of presets. all the windows-like presets are called defenestrated (followed by the number of whatever version of windows it is like).
view more: next โบ