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I hate to be one of the “Linux isn’t ready” people, but I have to agree. I love Linux and have been using it for the last 15 years. I work in IT and am a Windows and Linux sysadmin. My wife wanted to build a new gaming PC and I convinced her to go with Linux since she really only wanted it for single player games. Brand new build, first time installing an OS (chose Bazzite since it was supposed to be the gaming distro that “just works”). First thing I did was install a few apps from the built in App Store and none of them would launch. Clicking “Launch” from the GUI app installer did nothing, and they didn’t show up in the application launcher either. I spent several hours trying to figure out what was wrong before giving up and opening an issue on GitHub. It was an upstream issue that they fixed with an update.
When I had these issues, the first thing my wife suggested was installing Windows because she was afraid she may run into more issues later on and it “just works”. If I had never used Linux and didn’t work in IT and decided to give it a try because all the cool people on Lemmy said it was ready for prime time, and this was the first issue I ran into, I would go back to Windows and this would sour my view of Linux for years to come.
I still love Linux and will continue to recommend moving away from Windows to my friends, but basic stuff like this makes it really hard to recommend.
Alright, I have shared my unpopular opinions on Lemmy, I’m ready for my downvotes.
I’ve been using Linux for over thirty years and the nice looking App Stores that have appeared those last few years have always been shit and have always been mostly broken in various ways. I don’t know why.
On the other hand, the ugly frontends to the package manager just work.
In this case it was installing them from flathub anyway. The applications were being installed, but the only way to launch them was through the CLI using flatpak run then the app ID. Every article I came across said to run that, then right click the app after it was open and pin it to the taskbar or whatever, but that option was greyed out.
On the other hand, the ugly frontends to the package manager just work.
The misery I have trying to get a newer(or sometimes older) version of a package I want is sometimes immeasurable. Yet somehow usually the right version is extremely accessible on choco.
I agree with you, lemmings and the Linux community as a whole has the incredible lack of ability to put themselves in the shoes of a technologically less literate “normal” person and see that Linux is not exactly ready for mainstream
That being said, tour first fuck up was not going with EndeavorOS the actual distro that’s for gamers (or anyone) that just works.
It’s based on arch btw
I get it. Working in IT and doing this stuff all the time and being surrounded by other technical people really disconnects you from the knowledge of the average user. I’ve worked in IT for over 10 years now, and I am always overestimating how much technical knowledge the average user has. Luckily I don’t have to talk to end users anymore, but even when helping friends and family with things, stuff that I think is common knowledge isn’t common among less tech-savvy people. I still struggle with this, and suspect I will for a very long time.
I’ve heard of Endeavor before as well. May give it a try, but then I feel like I would be one of the distro-hoppers I always see out there. I just crave stability.
The fact that there is a “correct” distro only adds to the unreadyness for mainstream.
Windows is just more familiar. It definitely has problems just like this all the time. There’s a reason most companies have to have a test environment to try out every update to make sure it doesn’t break everything.
Yep. Somehow people forget windows update breaking shit, weird issues, having to go to device manager to uninstall a shitty graphics driver update you didn’t want, etc.
Rose tinted glasses.
I think you guys have hit the nail on the head. So much of the Linux argument has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with what people already know.
Everyone forgets the bugs and crashes they’ve always had to deal with even exist, because they become background noise. Then they change to a new OS and might run into completely new “roadblocks” and cry about how broken and useless the OS is even though their new problems are just as minor (or more so) than the problems they left behind.
In reality, any OS is a complicated piece of kit. The more you do with it, the more likely you are going to run into something that does something you don’t expect - and the more tech literate you believe yourself to be, the more likely you think the OS doing something you don’t expect means it is broken.
I just recently installed Bazzite and I have to say that your experience was unusual. Installing apps from the built in Software Center (it’s not really an app store, because it’s not really a store), just worked for me.
But, I’ll agree with you that Linux isn’t quite ready for mass adoption. Currently I’m tracking an nVidia bug that results in my GPU locking up when doing pretty normal things. The bug was reported 3 weeks ago, and is affecting a lot of people with more than 1 monitor, but still hasn’t been fixed. I’m also tracking 2 annoying but not system-crashing bugs. Plus, there’s another behaviour that happens daily that is annoying and I haven’t had the time to track down.
Mostly, these are “chicken and egg” things. The nVidia bug was allowed to happen and wasn’t fixed quickly because there aren’t enough Linux users for nVidia to bother to fully test their things on lots of different Linux configurations before releasing them, or to make it an all-hands-on-deck emergency when they break. If there were more users, the drivers would be better. But it’s hard to get people to migrate to Linux because there are frequently buggy drivers. Same with other drivers, and other commercial software. People don’t switch because it’s glitchy, it’s glitchy because there aren’t enough users for companies to properly invest in fixing things, that makes it glitchy, so people won’t switch.
Having said that, the thing that prompted me to install Bazzite was that I was getting BSODs in Windows and I wasn’t sure if it was a driver issue or a hardware issue. It turned out to be bad nVidia drivers… but they were fixed in days, not weeks. So, it’s not that things don’t break in Windows, it’s just that it’s a bigger emergency when they do break.
I’m not going back to Windows any time soon. Despite the issues I’m having, there are some parts of the system that are so much better than Windows.
Like, people complain about Linux having a bad UI, but have you ever tried to change low-level network settings in Windows? You start in a windows 10 or 11 themed settings app. If the thing you’re trying to change doesn’t show up there you have to click to open a lower-level settings app, this one styled in a Windows XP UI. And if that’s not where the setting lives, you have to open up a lower-level thing that is using the Windows NT / Windows 3.1 interface.
Or, anything involving using a commandline. Windows does actually support doing a lot of things using the “DOS prompt” but that thing feels like a Fisher Price toy compared to a real shell. Even the “power” shell is a janky mess.
Or, any time you have to touch the registry. Only an insane person would prefer to deal with making changes there vs. making changes in a filesystem where you can comment out values, leave comments explaining what you did, back up files, etc.
But, while Linux isn’t quite there for the end-user, it’s getting closer and closer. Really, all that’s needed is enough people taking the plunge to make it a higher priority for devs. It could be that Microsoft deciding that Windows 10 machines that are not capable of running Windows 11 should just be thrown out will convince enough people to try Linux instead. Linux might not yet beat Windows for the average end user, but the annoyances associated with Linux vs. a machine you just have to throw away? That’s an easy one.
Yeah, I get it’s unusual and it sucks it happened. I honestly would have been less upset if it was a driver issue or something like that. I at least could have looked at dmesg logs or something to try and figure out what was going on. I’m new to GUI Linux, so I had no idea where to start with this one. I think this was more frustrating than a driver issue or something similar for me because I would expect installing applications from the built in repositories to be something that “just works”.
Hopefully as more people move over to Linux distros, we will get more people that donate to them as well so more dedicated developers can be hired to work on such things. I know it will get there one day, and it’s already so much better from when I last tried gaming on Linux back in the early 2010’s. Hopefully the full release of SteamOS will truly bring about the age of Linux desktop.
If Steam OS getting a wider release happens around the same time as Windows 10 hitting end-of-life, that could be a game-changer.
I know what you mean about it being frustrating when flatpak apps don’t work right though. I had an app that would just start to open and die, no error message, no feedback, just it started to open then closed. Because I was new to Flatpak I didn’t know how to poke at it. But, then I discovered how you can run flatpak apps from the commandline, and when you do that you get access to flags and you get error messages you can read. But, if you’re just some dude/dudette who wants to sit down and run an app and it doesn’t work, that kind of behaviour is ultra frustrating.
The problem is that there’s still a lot of flux when it comes to packaging and running Linux apps. There’s the old way – debs and rpms. There’s flatpaks, there’s the snap store, there’s homebrew, there’s mise and of course there are manual installs and/or building from source. Each one’s a bit different and has its own benefits and drawbacks. And, standard things like showing an error message that helps you sort out the problem when things break isn’t universally handled in a clean way.
Choosing Bazzite was a big mistake, you could’ve gone for NobaraOS or PopOS
I’m used to the CLI world of Linux. I wanted something for my non-technical wife that would “just work”. I’ve heard good things online about Bazzite and how it already has everything installed (Steam, Wine, Proton, graphics drivers, all that) and I didn’t want to mess with installing any of that stuff by hand. Idk, maybe it’s my fault for expecting a distro to have basic functionally out of the box.
I think blaming me for choosing a distro based on what it says it’s supposed to do is a bit silly. Sure, I could have installed any distro and worked to install and maintain everything by hand, but that’s not what I was looking for. I don’t want to play tech support every week when something breaks and spend hours trying to fix it when my wife just wants to play a game. If you enjoy that, great, more power to you. Sorry for not choosing your favorite distro, I guess.
Choosing a distro based on what it says it does is not on you. Recommending it to your wife without even having tried it is. When I put Ubuntu on my wife’s computer, I know what to expect because I’ve installed on just abuse every pc I’ve ever used in the past 10 years.
This is exactly what keeps me from switching. I don’t have the time or pull to do knuckle down on an important PC. Maybe when I have a backup one, I’ll do it. Who knows.
You’re not wrong. This is an argument for sticking with Windows. It will suck. But, you know exactly how much it will suck and in what ways. Switching to Linux will suck in new and expected ways.
This.
I installed Bazzite on my personal gaming PC a few months ago, so I have done more than try it. My AMD drivers would crash on Windows when playing Helldivers about every 30 minutes. I lost count of the number of times I booted into safe mode and ran DDU to uninstall drivers. Haven’t had the issue a single time on Linux. The Bazzite image I’m using on her PC is different than mine since she currently has an NVIDIA GPU. She has an old 1080Ti because Microcenter was out of stock of all GPU’s on the day we went to buy the rest of the parts for her build. Eventually she will get a newer AMD GPU as well and we can be on the same image.
It’s not my favorite distro, the maintainer of Proton-GE created NobaraOS
I also had a similar experience with bazzite and ubuntu.
Apps would look like they installed but they are nowhere. Tried the app store. Tried flatpak. It instilled but clicking on the icon wouldn’t launch anything. Ended up with two icons for the same app. One works one doesn’t. No easy way to uninstall non working app.Bazzite bluetooth stopped working after update. Had to run two commands found on the Bazzite forum to get it to work again. Steam wouldn’t update either. Had to run another command I found on the forum to get it to update.
This is all last week. I am still running both but I wouldn’t call it ready for the non-IT user.
The App Store has to work consistently for it to be accessible for the average person.
Linux will never be “ready”, in a large part because it’s made by enthusiasts for enthusiasts, and most of those people just don’t understand how an end user thinks.
I got annoyed when my new Windows machine immediately had to install a bunch of updates, which only required me to click next every fifteen minutes or so, and I had to uninstall Onedrive and disable the news feed on the lock screen.
I’d have taken it back if I had to spend that much time actually researching, I’ve got far better things to do with my time.
You don’t see how terrible Windows is until you’ve switched to another OS and need to interact with it again.
The constant pop-ups, the ads everywhere, the settings hidden away.
It really feels like your PC isn’t yours.
I have to use Windows at work. Once, apropos of nothing at all, a system pop-up asked me if I wanted to buy an XBox controller. When I lock the screen and come back, sometimes Edge will have opened all by itself, presenting me with the Bing homepage. Nice try, Microsoft!
Honestly, not being able to run Dolphin as root made me feel like my PC wasn’t mine more than anything windows did up until recently.
Your computer is yours… As long as you’re comfortable doing it via terminal… Yay…
That’s been fixed for nearly 2 years now.
Install
kio-adminThen in the location bar type:
admin:It’ll prompt you for your password and then:
You’ve given me instructions that require terminal use, your argument is invalid. If it doesn’t either work out of the box or is immediately fixable without going into the terminal, then it’s not ready yet.
I’m not making an argument, I’m telling you how to fix your problem.
Even if the instructions required terminal use, you’re on Linux. You’re not going to make it very far if you confuse having to use the terminal with a failure in the software.
Regardless, literally none of what I said requires you to use the terminal. It requires you to install a specifically named software package and type 5 characters into the Dolphin bar (note, the picture).
I fixed this ages ago, I am pointing out that it’s unacceptable from a UX standpoint. And it was in the last year for the record, this definitely wasn’t just a fully solved issue years ago.
On mine I just right click in the window and choose open as administrator. It asks for a password and that’s it. No terminal ever comes up.
I much prefer using the terminal than the GUI if I can.
But I understand that not everyone likes the terminal.
To be fair, I couldn’t tell you how to run my file manager as root from the GUI because I don’t use it that much.
Which is great for the people who have the time to invest to know how to use a computer via the terminal, I used to be one of those people, now I have had various full time jobs that don’t use computers for nearly a decade since then though and I don’t want to do much with terminal anymore (it took me like 10 minutes to remember ‘top’) It’s hard to take a polished, user friendly OS seriously when I couldn’t access the NTFS windows backup partition on my laptop without using terminal, because they needed elevated permissions to see because they were, naturallly, created by another user. I legitimately couldn’t just open the file manager as root to copy and paste my files into the new root partition without thinking about it. Ridiculous hand holding clunkiness.
Let’s be real. Most people can’t really use Windows, either. Anything harder than clicking the Chrome icon is beyond most users.
When is the last time you checked?
Windows XP 😭
Oh man I’m way behind at Winders 3.1, better stick with Linux!
Ooofty doofty.
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I used to think I could just stick to macOS. But I don’t trust the USA and by extension, I don’t trust Apple.
Switching to Linux isn’t a choice anymore. It’s a requirement for freedom.
Yeah, Apple will just cave when necessary. Honestly, even if the USA is removed from the equation, nobody is really safe from any government or corporation. We’re only in better and worse condition because no one has done the unthinkable yet. The UK online safety bill, Signal’s threat to leave Sweden, France busting activists using Swiss VPN. If you can’t host it yourself, secure it yourself, rebuild it yourself, you can’t trust businesses and governments to do these things for you in the long run.
Hell, it’s starting to feel a lot less like freedom and more about the ability to hide, even if you’re doing nothing wrong, because someone may eventually decide that what you’re doing was wrong.
Encrypting your chats to keep them from being sold/mined for government oversight? ILLEGAL!
I think you’re 100% correct.
With all my Apple stuff I thought we were headed for a Star Trek federation. Instead we’re getting a starship troopers federation 😞
Linux is American by that definition
I think by America they pretty clearly meant corporate America and its corporate-owned government, neither of which controls how Linux works.
I hate to break it to you but Linux is maintained by corporate America. Everything from the Linux foundation to Linux focused companies like Red Hat, Amazon and Microsoft.
Sure it is probably better than anything else available but I think it is silly to focus on the region a company is based in when we are talking about international corporations.
I don’t know what argument you’re having, but what I said was that the Linux Foundation doesn’t have any control over the code.
The other type I see is people who complain that Linux isn’t usable, and it gradually turns out that the only thing they’d consider usable is an OS exactly like Windows.
Because unfortunately nobody has made a better UI for an OS than windows, including the distributions that don’t copy windows.
I use Windows for work and I can easily say that KDE, Gnome, Xfce, Mate, all are better UI than Windows. The Windows start menu has become such utter BS it’s crazy. Even MacOS is better at this point. What are you smoking lol
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I’ve used Linux for 25 years now and I remember every time when back then people needed help with windows it was always "go to the registry editor and add the key djrgegfbwkgisgktkwbthagnsfidjgnwhtjrtv in position god-knows-where to fix some stupid windows shit. that, apparently, made windows user ready
On Linux I’d have to edit an English language file and add an English word and that meant it wasn’t user ready
Yeah, Linux was ready long ago
Proton covers most games that I play, only a couple exceptions involving heavy handed anti-cheat stuff like League of Legends has now. For non-gaming Windows stuff that doesn’t work in Linux I would guess that a virtual machine might work.
Based Linux wont run riot games
Is that a bad thing?
Dont get me wrong, I love the IP for League, but the I would never reccomend the game to anyone.
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I think once Valve polishes SteamOS for desktop environments there will be actual largescale migration.
I thought the holdup was the graphics drivers (Nvidia mostly) not the de. Normal desktop mode with KDE works fine on my steamdeck.
Fair point. But even so I think SteamOS has the most viable potential to achieve something like a 5-10% adoption rate that could get entities like nVidia to pay more attention.
Lol can’t disagree with you there, they just need to release it already!
Back in october I travelled for a lan party. I didnt bring my linux desktop with me, and just brought my steam deck and dock, and when I got there, borrowed a keyboard/mouse/monitor.
Then i swapped it to desktop mode, and the people I was with all commented on “Oh wow! it’s just like a regular computer”
One of them has explicited said they were fed up with microsoft’s BS and would swap their gaming PC over to steamOS once it’s formally released for desktop (they were uninterested in Bazzite and wanted an official Valve release for their gaming PC).
I’m certainly buying one of whatever they release.
A large scale migration would be wild. It would be like the Commodore 64 all over again - where one of the coolest things in gaming also happens to be the most functional personal PC of the year.
I guess it could happen.
Will ValveOS be useful for anything besides playing games?
Games are pretty demanding, there will probably be widespread support just coincidentally. Also companies build software for where the market is, a big Linux population will command more development time for drivers etc.
If it is useful at only playing games I think it will be a popular option nonetheless.
Sure, lots of people mainly use their computers for games, but I would think even they would demand at least a web browser and/or social media apps.
SteamOS has a web browser.
It boots by default into Steam Big Picture mode, which is the SteamOS/HTPC style “intended to be used with a controller” layout.
In the power menu, it has a “switch to desktop” button that drops you to KDE. Firefox is pre-installed, and immediately available for use.
But also, it’s just an immutable OS with plenty of things installable via flatpak in KDE Discover. Which means Slack, Discord, Zoom, Chrome… all of the “desktop” things most people need are available.
Only a small fraction of people use Steam so I don’t see that happening.
Steam apparently has about 130 million monthly active users and about 70 million daily active users. About half the planet has a computer at home. So, Steam users are somewhere between say 2% and 10% of the world’s active PC users.
If someone is a daily active steam user, they spend a lot of time on the computer. If they have to make sure their drivers are up to date and their frame rate is high enough to support their games, they’ve probably developed a bit of knowledge about the system. My guess is that people who play Steam games tend to be the tech support people for their friends and family more often than not.
So, it’s a small group, but it’s an influential group. If enough of that group becomes comfortable with SteamOS, they may be comfortable setting it up (or a variant of it) for a friend or family member, even if that friend or family member only uses their computer to watch videos, check emails, etc. In a world where Windows was free and just worked, that might not happen. But, in this world Windows 10 is about to lose support, and Microsoft is suggesting that if your computer can’t run Windows 11 you should just throw it away and upgrade. In that world, more people might end up switching to Linux.
Why would you set up Steam OS for a family member. That is problematic in many ways.
I could care less if Linux explodes in market share or not. It serves my needs fine and that’s all that matters for me.
I haven’t used SteamOS so I’m speculating. But, it’s probably possible to boot to a desktop instead of to Steam. It’s probably easy to install Firefox (or Chrome) and Thunderbird. I would expect that Valve has made the desktop experience easy to use.
So, why install SteamOS for a family member? Because you have a desktop OS that’s easy to use that a big, rich commercial company is spending a lot of R&D effort to make as good, easy and smooth an experience as possible. Even if the primary use case is playing Steam-based games, if you have a family member who just wants an easy-to-use OS that just runs their web browser, an email client, and a few other odds and ends, that might be the easiest way to do it.
It’s immutable (you can’t break the core OS, there is no deleting system32). You can’t install packages (like you would from AUR), but have access to flatpaks.
Firefox is preinstalled, but anything from flathub is also available.
So yes, it has all the things most people need from a desktop OS, and is harder to break, and is supported commercially.
It has a desktop mode, I’ve never looked into whether you can boot to desktop by default. But I would imagine if they released a desktop friendly version, that would be an option.
Yeah, so it sounds like a good choice for a relative who isn’t a gamer but wants a hard-to-break simple OS that runs basic things like a web browser, email client, etc.
It’s probably too soon now, I just checked and it doesn’t quite sound like it’s very stable yet (as in, they’re still tweaking it). But, maybe by the time Windows 10 is no longer supported it would be a good option.
Maybe. I just mean once(if) there becomes an OS that reliably runs Steam and the games on Steam, there will be a viable alternative to Windows for a significant population of users.
I disagree
Most people just want Windows
Before I bought a Steam Deck I had never used Linux but now I really like it, honestly I’m tempted to install SteamOS on my PC as it’s only ever used for gaming anyway
Ok, I’ll bite. I tried Ubuntu a few months ago. Logging into Eduroam was a bit of a process, but eventually I figured it out and it worked. Then one day the internet didn’t work and I had no idea why. Something to do with the network drivers. Then I was trying to use OpenOffice (or LibreOffice? The one that came with the OS), and I use Zotero for references. The Zotero plugin had a bunch of glitches that made me not trust it. The Internet (back on Windows) assured me that it worked fine, but it was way glitchier than the Windows version.
The bottom line is that I just need this stuff to work because I don’t have time to debug. I love the idea though; maybe I was using the wrong distro.
Yeah depending on your hardware things like that can still happen sometimes. I don’t think it’s a lot more common than on other OSes. It’s especially not really usual for something as basic as network drivers to misbehave though, especially suddenly. For what it’s worth, my experience trying to use Zotero on Windows on both MS word and LibreOffice writer was also a glitchy mess. Anyway, hope you try it again another time when you are under a bit less pressure and it works out better for you then.
I’ve heard of issues connecting to Eduroam a few times on Linux, but I just don’t get it.
I’m on Debian with KDE Plasma, and it was very much plug-and-play when connecting to Eduroam. What issues did you have?
I had this issue, using pop. It just would not connect without specifying some parameters (I can’t remember which, domain or something and a few others). I had the same problem on Android, with the same solution.
Ah yeah, that’s just what you need to do to connect to Eduroam on anything, since you need to authenticate via your institution.
On windows, I only had to enter username and password.
And was your username <name/ID>@<domain>?
Because that’s the same thing as entering the name/ID and domain separately. It’s just put into a different field.
Same. Loaded Ubuntu on an under-specced (for Windows) Dell laptop a couple years ago. No niche OS, no obscure hardware. Out of the box, wifi won’t stay connected for more than a few minutes. Literally no other device on the network (Android, Windows, Roku, etc) has wifi issues. Load Windows back on, it works fine.
Linux is never going to take off until basic functionality works reliably. I’m not asking for the moon, here.
Plug the info on eduoram 6 years ago and everything connected without a problem. Dunno wtf were you doing
Bazzite is your answer in most cases imo. It’s the most functional distro Ive ever used
I daily drive it right now on my gaming rig. It’s fairly stable, it has a few issues though like display color tweaking out upon waking up out of sleep or Bluetooth just straight up deciding it’s done for the session and forcing me to reboot.
I love how you’re getting downvoted. Kind of says it all
My assumption for the downvotes is that it’s a pretty new (~1 year) and niche (gaming-oriented) distro, and largely irrelevant to your issue.
I don’t understand how it’s irrelevant? The drivers work great and it’s a solid distro that doesn’t have the issues of package updates breaking your pc without a way back easily.
To me it fixed every issue that I had with Ubuntu /shrug
They can downvote if they want, it’s just internet points. I still recommend bazzite
I guess that info not having been explained earlier maybe? I’d never even heard of Bazzite, and I’ve recently been looking up what new distro options are out there.
Fwiw bazzite itself is new but it’s just built on top of Fedora and is really stable. I have only had one issue with kernel panic on boot but rolling back was as easy as picking my version before the last update. Was fixed in less than a day
Yeah I did see that after looking into it. It’s definitely on my growing list of distros to check out now, so thanks for putting it on my radar.
But it’s not ready because insert niche use case that only applies to me and no, I will not seek out open source alternatives to insert closed source software
I run Linux daily, Linux isn’t ready, its really not much of a debate. If the average person can’t operate it efficiently then the average person will just stick to mac or windows.
I’ll admit it is closer than it has ever been thanks to compatibility layers like proton but the average user still can’t figure it out so it still has a way to go.
Honestly, Windows isn’t ready for the desktop, either, it’s just not ready in a different way that most people are familiar with.
Things like an OS update breaking the system should be rare, not so common that people are barely surprised when it happens to them. In a unified system developed as one integral product by one company there should be one config UI, not at least three (one of which is essentially undocumented). “Use third-party software to disable core features of the OS” shouldn’t be sensible advice.
Windows is horribly janky, it’s just common enough that people accept that jank as an unavoidable part of using a computer.
the average user clicks on the chrome icon to open the internet and goes to gmail.com.
you can do all that in linux.
Until everything breaks because the average user hasn’t bothered updating.
With atomic distros, that updating happens in the background, you don’t have to do anything. It’s like MacOS or Android.
Until everything breaks because the average user held down the power button mid-update because the computer wouldn’t shut down.
Anything’s possible. But, they try to make that hard. The system always keeps 2 versions around, the newest one and the previous one, so if you screw up the newest one you can always boot into the previous one. And Bazzite, at least, uses BTRFS which uses copy-on-write, so it’s much harder to corrupt the filesystem. I think the /boot partition is still ext4 though, so it’s possible that if you time it just right you could theoretically mess up your boot partition. Then you’d need to use a rescue USB drive to fix it.
The /boot partition is FAT32 due to RedHat’s stupidity but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that regular users don’t know how to boot into a previous version of the OS. Yes, I know you just have to select it on GRUB but a black screen with a list of kernels qualifies as broken for regular people.
I’d agree that in the current state it’s pretty useless. But, I don’t think it would take too much to make it usable. If the GRUB menu had some basic information on it like: what version is it, when was it installed, has it booted successfully, etc. then I think that would be enough for most people to figure out. Although, I do think that the current Bazzite timeout is way too short.
BTW, on my system /boot is ext4, /boot/efi is FAT32 and the rest mounted at /sysroot is BTRFS.
This is a lot safer on Linux than Windows, this year. A lot of engineering has gone into making updates resilient.
And Linux hasn’t done the Windows 10 to Windows 11 - black screen for a couple hours, hope you know not to touch it - that we sometimes see.
Linux now has a stronger default permissions model, so it’s a lot harder for user error to break the machine in serious ways, even if they do reboot during a sensitive update.
Linux does do the black screen and hope you don’t touch it, at least OpenSUSE and Fedora do. And that’s a good thing. The “reboot to update is bad” meme needs to die but I digress. I’m skeptical that Linux is more resilient than Windows when it comes to updating but even if it is, Windows automatically rolls back failed updates while Linux will boot you into broken system and expect you to know what to do. Regular people can’t deal with this, even if the answer is a simple as selecting a different entry from the GRUB.
while Linux will boot you into broken system and expect you to know what to do.
But…
even if the answer is a simple as selecting a different entry from the GRUB.
Okay. Yeah. It’s often that simple.
I take your point, but I’ve had my Windows blow itself to hell way more than my Linux has, and putting Linux on relatives machines has been by far the least hassle of the big three, for me.
But that’s just my anecdotal experience.
So like forced updates in Windows?
Sort of. In my experience with Windows it gets really annoying. They tell you there’s an update and that you have to restart. If you put it off for long enough and just hibernate your computer, Windows will eventually boot your computer even if it’s “off” to install the update.
With Bazzite and other atomic distros it’s more like it lets you know that there’s an update available for you, and that the next time you reboot you’ll get that update. I personally haven’t ever had it bug me to reboot, but maybe it does that eventually. I don’t know of any Linux distros that would have the nerve to boot your system when it’s off to install an update.
Also, if you don’t want that update, you can “pin” your current deployment and you don’t have to update. Next time you boot you can choose the “pinned” deployment rather than the new one. Normally you wouldn’t want to do that because you’d be missing out on security updates, but if you’ve heard that the newest drivers are unstable, you can definitely choose not to update – or at least not to boot into the updated version.
Also worth mentioning that there are always 2 boot entries, the newest one and the previous one. So, if the newest one does get installed and there’s some issue, you can reboot and choose the previous one. Theoretically you can also roll back to an earlier one from months ago, but I haven’t ever done that.
I’ve been playing FFXIV on Linux with dlss, reshade and 3rd party mods and it’s been a blast.
Linux is 100% ready for gaming even with the worst case scenario (nvidia) I’ve been able to overclock and play just fine.
I disagree. I’m running Bazzite, which is based on the immutable variant of fedora, and it runs like a charm, even without much knowledge. Most drivers are prepackaged, so stuff like WiFi aren’t much of a hassle anymore and I haven’t had any issues with Flatpak. It basically eliminates all fiddling at the cost of customizing your OS as much as other distros. Honestly, SteamOS did show that immutable distros are the de facto future for new users. So far I know of Bazzite and Fedora’s immutable distros variant, but there might be more.
My grandma uses Linux, you stupid?
Did she install it herself or did you set it up for them?
Because the majority of people do not have the luxury of someone who will fix their shit if it breaks. They just bring it back to the store.
Are you calling your grandma stupid? I already stated I use linux as well.
I have had people tell me " I dont feel like building my own OS from scratch " I’m like what are you even talking about?
MFs be modifying regedit and throwing random bash scripts to make their windows PC barely usuable then say shit like “I have to run this one command in the terminal?, but Im not a hacker?!!”
Bitch stfu
I’m literally talking to a person, in this very thread, who bailed the instant they saw a
code blockbecause they thought I was telling them to touch the terminal. (I was not, and even included a picture of Dolphin with my instructions, but they still noped out)
Gentoo. They’re talking about Gentoo.
Linux is not ready for most people
The last time i used it was 30 minutes ago
That’s because the computer most people actually need is a tablet.
So, which distro is the ready one?
Linux mint
They’re all fine, but Hannah Montana Linux is the best.
Mint
I use Arch (obligatory)
But I run Fedora with KDE on a chrome book and a low end laptop. There has been zero admin stuff to do. Everything has worked out of the box, updates are uneventful, and surprisingly packages have at times been ahead of Arch.
Also worth mentioning that the Desktop of my Steamdeck is stable as can be too. I use it when I travel with a portable keyboard and I never have to do anything with it either.
I would use Debian, Suse, nearly ANYTHING except Ubuntu. That is the one that always fails for me.
Fedora with KDE is stupid easy
Opensuse/Fedora.
Strange, because in this thread alone I have seen recommendations for PopOS, Arch, Mint Cinnamon, EndeavorOS, Bazzite, NixOS, and Ubuntu.
Even ZorinOS got a mention.
So why isn’t it Debian?
So why isn’t it Debian?
As a ride or die Debian fan, I can answer this:
A lot of really nice updates happened in the last year, and we’re not going to see a lot of them in Debian stable until 2 or 3 years from today.
If you’re already running Debian, you’ll probably just be delighted when they reach Debian stable.
But if I’m recommending a “how’s Linux today?” test, grab something that already includes the latest quality of life features. There’s been some really nice stuff added to Gnome and KDE and various Flatpaks, this year.
Edit: In about two years I’ll probably be back to saying “forget all that, just run Debian Stable, because the very best stuff is already there.”
Of course, if the current trend of great updates continues another two years, I may have to eat my words, lol.
It depends on your hardware if it is Debian. Debian prefers to use an older kernel until the next point release comes, which is nice because a random update likely won’t break your system.
But… speaking from experience: expect issues (missing drivers etc.) if your hardware is too new.
Fedora the test bed bleeding edge is stable?
I often see people recommend arch and fedora to newbies and then wondering why people turn away from Linux, they should recommend Linux mint, or and steam os
Steam OS is based on arch, and outside of the Steam Deck it’s really not that great of a distro. It’s just tailor-made for that hardware and has good brand recognition.
Bazzite is a similar concept but operates better as an actual OS outside of being a gaming console.
