No spyware, much better performance and wear on your hardware. Actual control over your devices. The downside is, linux is complicated and a pain to learn how to use or maintain. Windows is easy to use but so is a vtech laptop which is essentiallly the trade off. It used to be that windows was easy to use and open as a platform, but microsoft is doing everything in its power to ruin windows. The modern developers also really suck and the modern codebase is buggy as hell. The OS kills your harddisks and ssds, even before the new broekn update because they are constantly scanning your files to send signitures to palantir or whatever. They are removing basic functionality and a few years from now I imagine you wont even be allowed to close or open apps, like with Android. It will just be full of ads and spyware and you will have to pay a subscription to use it or something. People have been jumping ship because at this point continuing to use windows is just going to make your life painful in the future.
Linux is objectivly hard to use. Sure if you use it everyday for years and years and memorize all the commands and stuff, you can probably figure out most stuff without searching, but as someone who has only been using Linux for a few years, and is a mere amature C++ programmer, installing anything or even doing basic tasks is often a multi hour process, that requires a snack and a nap afterwards, with a maybe 50% success rate. Just adding a script to autorun at boot was something that took me a few hours and probably dozens of lines of shell. Im moving to debian soon though, which should maybe help since i dont have to deal with containers and and overlay filesystem and all that nonsense. Linux really needs to lean into UI development, simplicity, and intutive design. I still struggle to find files in linux without links. KDE has come a long way in recent years. I can now do things like scale my screen size without hours of research, shell hacking, and autoruns. Linux will never become mainstream unless the typical user can do nearly everything without ever touching the shell. That has always been the thing that has held Linux back besides game compatability. Now that valve is finally creating a more normie friendly version of linux with game compatability and a sort of complete UI. It might actually overtake windows. Its still a massive pain in the butt compared to windows- double click an exe or msi to install your software. If i need to find a file on Windows, I don’t even need a search function. I can just find it in less then a minute. Linux definitly has some big flaws and bad design decisions. Modern womdows isnoretty terrible compared to 7 and before but it is still much easier to use for almost every task.
From what I remember Mint is probably the most brain dead easy Distros you could use. Almost everything has a GUI if I remember. Its mainly a mix of what Distro/DE you use and how much you want to tinker.
Good to know, i havnt researched mint much, but im trying to find the most simple system so i can learn linux on a deep level. Basically the temple OS or Dos or windows XP of linux. Not simple as in UI but in file system and stuff. Debian lets me install KDE which i like so the UI side is fine. Its a bit trickier to understand overlay file systems and stuff.
Maybe half of the software I use is in the discover store. I for whatever reason end up using quite a bit of niche software. I have improved a good bit with installing from scripts and stuff. Sometimes i need to install stuff into the OS tree to get it to work and use propeitary binaries. Installing java, AI dev tools, certian versions of Python to get software to work or compile Its annoying, but im moving to debian which should help with many of these things if i can manage to get it installed.
Java, AI dev tools, and Python, are all not linux-specific things what so ever.
You speak as someone who thinks you know more than you do. I suggest ACTUALLY getting back to basics, ACTUALLY learn the linux file system like its folder structure and how it treats everything like a file, ACTUALLY learn how most linux distros primarily use package managers and what those are, and ACTUALLY learn how all the tools you want to use exist as separate entities with their own designs and philosophies. Then maybe how all of the software components in Linux are chopped up and distributed might make more sense.
If you want to learn about Linux on a deeper level Mint is probably not the best choice for it, since it aims at providing a Distros for non tech literate users. For this goal I would recommend Arch Linux, since the installation an maintaining teaches you quite a bit. Main Problem is, that Arch is sometimes quite unstable. If you like to suffer to learn you can also try out Gentoo or NixOS or crea[e your own Linux with Linux from scratch.
It is Not that Bad. The installation isnt that hard, if you use a tutorial. In terms of maintaining its mostly a “hit or miss” scenario. I heard from people who had no issues at all and from people who ran into issues all of the time. I can say, that I did not have that much problems. In about 2 years of relative frequent use of arch I only bricked my system once, leading to my is being unfixable and me having to reinstall the whole OS. I ran into smaller problems of which, except for one, where I found a manual temporary workaround and couldn’t bother to fix it completely, all could be fixed. I would not recommend to use it on a machine, where you can’t risk eventually having to fix it for one or two days.
Or even any of the multitude of GUI stores that exist, one of which will probably come pre-installed on your system if you’re using a just-works distro.
Windows is objectively hard to use, and makes it harder to use with every release. I wasn’t saying Linux is particularly easy (though depending on the distro I’d say it’s definitely easier than Windows), but more that feeling like windows is easy to use is just being used to it.
The difference is really, I dont have to look stuff up usually to change things on windows. In linux you have to do most things with obscure shell commands and arguments that i dont know.
If you had that many years of experience on Linux then the shell commands and arguments wouldn’t be obscure.
Now’s the best time to learn, there’s a lot of other beginners now so the Linux communities are full of people learning at the same time as you would be.
I find linux to usually be logical. In windows everything appears to be completely random.
It has a lot to do with familiarity, but design choices also play a part.
I’ve been using Mint and KDE Neon on two of my machines for the past year, and I still have to search for how to install an app image properly.
Its one of those things that isn’t the end of the world, and I guess there are increasing numbers of Snap/Flatpak packages. And, of course apt. And whatever application manager your distro comes with.
But some software is available either to be compiled by the user, or as an app image. And I don’t understand why that image can’t just be dropped in an application folder and run, the same way it works in macOS.
But I’m a relative noob. I assume there’s a historical reason.
No, it isn’t. Using Linux is only as hard as you want it to be. There are plenty of user-friendly choices that purposefully mimic familiar desktop environments and require little to no terminal knowledge for basic use. If you chose something like Gentoo or Arch as your first taste then that’s your fault, not the OS’s.
Well im sure that’s true for most people who just browse the web and stuff, but I do many complex things with my PC. Double clicking an installer is just always easier to install software. That was the first big mistake of linux tbh. Not having a standard gui type way to install 3rd party software. App stores are cool, dont get me wrong, but its not a replacement for just double clicking a downloaded file that interacts with a standard set of tools on your PC. I know there are reasons for this, linux is only a kernel and what not. I have been using windows since idk 95 i think when i was like 6 years old. It is definitly way easier to do just about anything. That is because windows was designed to be as simple and cross compatible as possible. Xp and 7 were the best versions of windows unless you were too dumb to avoid getting malware or something. For whatever reason, most people were too dumb to avoid getting maleware because they hard no artistic sense. I could always detect the quality of the mind which made a website, and i knew bad artists were the ones who likely had bad morals, and had malware. Also personality. It was simple for me to avoid malware and i never did get it, maybe twice over like 20 years.
Windows died and so i started to use linux a few years ago. The hardest thing i ever had to do in windows was probably link libraries in C++, almost everything in linux is that hard. The people who make linux just will never understand that the average user will never want to spend hundreds of hours a year maintaining their system. 90% of people cannot even understand if a simple logical statement is true or not. Half of them can barely read. Kid these days dont even know how to use something thats not a touch screen, older people over 60% of them cant send an email without help, and these people are supposed to download xrandr for their linux machine and create a custom startup script in system d, to make their tv display correctly? Madness. I feel like i may have walked into a cult. If you guys are like Linux devs, that is extreamly cool fr, atleast to me, but you are delusional if you think linux is easier to use then windows. It has come a long way. Bazzite is the first distro that i feel comfortable recomending to normies, and i recomend it to many people who are trying to escape the trashpile that is modern windows. Learning liinux has been difficult though, maybe because i dont have tons of free time and energy anymore like when i was younger. It is coming a long way however thxs to lord gaben and his push to make linux more mainstream, so the personal PC market doesnt die completly with whatever the hell microsoft and apple are doing these days, probably trying to micromanage their users, e force moral sogma, and use nudge theory on them because the people who run most companies in America are actually dumb incels at this point.
i have handed fedora kionite to a non-techie who was super happy with it, cuz it looks like windows, but most of the things you need, you can safely get via discover.
Some things i can get from discover but many things i use i have to manulally install. I just dont want to deal with containers and ostree and stuff. Maybe in the future i will.
fair, but considering that you mentioned autoruns and such, i guess you need more specialised things anyways, so maybe kionite just isn’t for you.
i don’t use it either, but for my normie friends who need nothing but a browser, office, and mby steam (in that case mby bazzite), its awesome
I find Linux far easier to use than anything else because most decent distros come with all the software I want, or it is trivial to install, and it’s all free.
Most of that software is available for Apple or Windows, but it’s a PITA to install. Giant waste of time. And money, of course. And of you install Windows, you gotta manually disable all the shit advertising.
All of that without needing the command line, even.
It’s even easier with Brew: have terminal window open, type brew install librewolf & if MacOS complains, xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LibreWolf.app (for example to get a nice bland browser without corporate spyware). Every now and then, brew upgrade librewolf.
I didn’t even want to bring up brew, which is also great. I know it’s cool to hate on MacOS, but for both “getting shit done” and mostly “just working” (drivers, etc) I think MacOS is the best intersection of those needs. The hardware is also easily the best available.
No spyware, much better performance and wear on your hardware. Actual control over your devices. The downside is, linux is complicated and a pain to learn how to use or maintain. Windows is easy to use but so is a vtech laptop which is essentiallly the trade off. It used to be that windows was easy to use and open as a platform, but microsoft is doing everything in its power to ruin windows. The modern developers also really suck and the modern codebase is buggy as hell. The OS kills your harddisks and ssds, even before the new broekn update because they are constantly scanning your files to send signitures to palantir or whatever. They are removing basic functionality and a few years from now I imagine you wont even be allowed to close or open apps, like with Android. It will just be full of ads and spyware and you will have to pay a subscription to use it or something. People have been jumping ship because at this point continuing to use windows is just going to make your life painful in the future.
Speak for yourself there mate lol
Linux is objectivly hard to use. Sure if you use it everyday for years and years and memorize all the commands and stuff, you can probably figure out most stuff without searching, but as someone who has only been using Linux for a few years, and is a mere amature C++ programmer, installing anything or even doing basic tasks is often a multi hour process, that requires a snack and a nap afterwards, with a maybe 50% success rate. Just adding a script to autorun at boot was something that took me a few hours and probably dozens of lines of shell. Im moving to debian soon though, which should maybe help since i dont have to deal with containers and and overlay filesystem and all that nonsense. Linux really needs to lean into UI development, simplicity, and intutive design. I still struggle to find files in linux without links. KDE has come a long way in recent years. I can now do things like scale my screen size without hours of research, shell hacking, and autoruns. Linux will never become mainstream unless the typical user can do nearly everything without ever touching the shell. That has always been the thing that has held Linux back besides game compatability. Now that valve is finally creating a more normie friendly version of linux with game compatability and a sort of complete UI. It might actually overtake windows. Its still a massive pain in the butt compared to windows- double click an exe or msi to install your software. If i need to find a file on Windows, I don’t even need a search function. I can just find it in less then a minute. Linux definitly has some big flaws and bad design decisions. Modern womdows isnoretty terrible compared to 7 and before but it is still much easier to use for almost every task.
From what I remember Mint is probably the most brain dead easy Distros you could use. Almost everything has a GUI if I remember. Its mainly a mix of what Distro/DE you use and how much you want to tinker.
Elementary and Ubuntu as well these days. Dead simple.
Good to know, i havnt researched mint much, but im trying to find the most simple system so i can learn linux on a deep level. Basically the temple OS or Dos or windows XP of linux. Not simple as in UI but in file system and stuff. Debian lets me install KDE which i like so the UI side is fine. Its a bit trickier to understand overlay file systems and stuff.
Maybe half of the software I use is in the discover store. I for whatever reason end up using quite a bit of niche software. I have improved a good bit with installing from scripts and stuff. Sometimes i need to install stuff into the OS tree to get it to work and use propeitary binaries. Installing java, AI dev tools, certian versions of Python to get software to work or compile Its annoying, but im moving to debian which should help with many of these things if i can manage to get it installed.
Managing multiple versions of python and other dev tooling can be made simple with something like:
https://mise.jdx.dev/
Or
https://asdf-vm.com/
Thxs that is useful knowledge.
Java, AI dev tools, and Python, are all not linux-specific things what so ever.
You speak as someone who thinks you know more than you do. I suggest ACTUALLY getting back to basics, ACTUALLY learn the linux file system like its folder structure and how it treats everything like a file, ACTUALLY learn how most linux distros primarily use package managers and what those are, and ACTUALLY learn how all the tools you want to use exist as separate entities with their own designs and philosophies. Then maybe how all of the software components in Linux are chopped up and distributed might make more sense.
You are delusional.
If you want to learn about Linux on a deeper level Mint is probably not the best choice for it, since it aims at providing a Distros for non tech literate users. For this goal I would recommend Arch Linux, since the installation an maintaining teaches you quite a bit. Main Problem is, that Arch is sometimes quite unstable. If you like to suffer to learn you can also try out Gentoo or NixOS or crea[e your own Linux with Linux from scratch.
I would try arch one day except i have a job lol
It is Not that Bad. The installation isnt that hard, if you use a tutorial. In terms of maintaining its mostly a “hit or miss” scenario. I heard from people who had no issues at all and from people who ran into issues all of the time. I can say, that I did not have that much problems. In about 2 years of relative frequent use of arch I only bricked my system once, leading to my is being unfixable and me having to reinstall the whole OS. I ran into smaller problems of which, except for one, where I found a manual temporary workaround and couldn’t bother to fix it completely, all could be fixed. I would not recommend to use it on a machine, where you can’t risk eventually having to fix it for one or two days.
pacman -S [software]That was easy.
Now youve overwritten older dependencies and three of your other programs now shit the bed.
pacman exists specifically to solve dependency issues and prevent that exact scenario
Alternatively yay install [software] or flatpak install [software]
Or even any of the multitude of GUI stores that exist, one of which will probably come pre-installed on your system if you’re using a just-works distro.
Or
yay [software]and pick out the software you want to install from a list.Windows is objectively hard to use, and makes it harder to use with every release. I wasn’t saying Linux is particularly easy (though depending on the distro I’d say it’s definitely easier than Windows), but more that feeling like windows is easy to use is just being used to it.
The difference is really, I dont have to look stuff up usually to change things on windows. In linux you have to do most things with obscure shell commands and arguments that i dont know.
How many years of Windows experience do you have?
If you had that many years of experience on Linux then the shell commands and arguments wouldn’t be obscure.
Now’s the best time to learn, there’s a lot of other beginners now so the Linux communities are full of people learning at the same time as you would be.
I find linux to usually be logical. In windows everything appears to be completely random.
It has a lot to do with familiarity, but design choices also play a part.
True
I’ve been using Mint and KDE Neon on two of my machines for the past year, and I still have to search for how to install an app image properly.
Its one of those things that isn’t the end of the world, and I guess there are increasing numbers of Snap/Flatpak packages. And, of course apt. And whatever application manager your distro comes with.
But some software is available either to be compiled by the user, or as an app image. And I don’t understand why that image can’t just be dropped in an application folder and run, the same way it works in macOS.
But I’m a relative noob. I assume there’s a historical reason.
No, it isn’t. Using Linux is only as hard as you want it to be. There are plenty of user-friendly choices that purposefully mimic familiar desktop environments and require little to no terminal knowledge for basic use. If you chose something like Gentoo or Arch as your first taste then that’s your fault, not the OS’s.
Well im sure that’s true for most people who just browse the web and stuff, but I do many complex things with my PC. Double clicking an installer is just always easier to install software. That was the first big mistake of linux tbh. Not having a standard gui type way to install 3rd party software. App stores are cool, dont get me wrong, but its not a replacement for just double clicking a downloaded file that interacts with a standard set of tools on your PC. I know there are reasons for this, linux is only a kernel and what not. I have been using windows since idk 95 i think when i was like 6 years old. It is definitly way easier to do just about anything. That is because windows was designed to be as simple and cross compatible as possible. Xp and 7 were the best versions of windows unless you were too dumb to avoid getting malware or something. For whatever reason, most people were too dumb to avoid getting maleware because they hard no artistic sense. I could always detect the quality of the mind which made a website, and i knew bad artists were the ones who likely had bad morals, and had malware. Also personality. It was simple for me to avoid malware and i never did get it, maybe twice over like 20 years.
Windows died and so i started to use linux a few years ago. The hardest thing i ever had to do in windows was probably link libraries in C++, almost everything in linux is that hard. The people who make linux just will never understand that the average user will never want to spend hundreds of hours a year maintaining their system. 90% of people cannot even understand if a simple logical statement is true or not. Half of them can barely read. Kid these days dont even know how to use something thats not a touch screen, older people over 60% of them cant send an email without help, and these people are supposed to download xrandr for their linux machine and create a custom startup script in system d, to make their tv display correctly? Madness. I feel like i may have walked into a cult. If you guys are like Linux devs, that is extreamly cool fr, atleast to me, but you are delusional if you think linux is easier to use then windows. It has come a long way. Bazzite is the first distro that i feel comfortable recomending to normies, and i recomend it to many people who are trying to escape the trashpile that is modern windows. Learning liinux has been difficult though, maybe because i dont have tons of free time and energy anymore like when i was younger. It is coming a long way however thxs to lord gaben and his push to make linux more mainstream, so the personal PC market doesnt die completly with whatever the hell microsoft and apple are doing these days, probably trying to micromanage their users, e force moral sogma, and use nudge theory on them because the people who run most companies in America are actually dumb incels at this point.
i have handed fedora kionite to a non-techie who was super happy with it, cuz it looks like windows, but most of the things you need, you can safely get via discover.
Some things i can get from discover but many things i use i have to manulally install. I just dont want to deal with containers and ostree and stuff. Maybe in the future i will.
What niche stuff are you manually installing that somehow takes hours on Linux, and is instant and easy on Windows?
Stuff like java, tetrd, local AI stuff.
Why do those take you hours to install on Linux and no time on Windows?
fair, but considering that you mentioned autoruns and such, i guess you need more specialised things anyways, so maybe kionite just isn’t for you. i don’t use it either, but for my normie friends who need nothing but a browser, office, and mby steam (in that case mby bazzite), its awesome
I will probably write a script to autorun everything i have in a folder or something eventually i think.
I find Linux far easier to use than anything else because most decent distros come with all the software I want, or it is trivial to install, and it’s all free.
Most of that software is available for Apple or Windows, but it’s a PITA to install. Giant waste of time. And money, of course. And of you install Windows, you gotta manually disable all the shit advertising.
All of that without needing the command line, even.
MacOS software is extremely easy to install. Drag package icon from mounted drive (with auto popup) to Applications.
It’s even easier with Brew: have terminal window open, type
brew install librewolf& if MacOS complains,xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/LibreWolf.app(for example to get a nice bland browser without corporate spyware). Every now and then,brew upgrade librewolf.I didn’t even want to bring up brew, which is also great. I know it’s cool to hate on MacOS, but for both “getting shit done” and mostly “just working” (drivers, etc) I think MacOS is the best intersection of those needs. The hardware is also easily the best available.
Lmfao. You people dont even listen to yourselves
“Its even easier here. Just open a console and type in gibberish”
This is not a thing outside of linux.
What you’re used to is easy, what you don’t know is hard. People are creatures of habit and don’t like change.
Nothing new here.