This is exactly the type of shit I’ve been trying to explain to the Linux fanboys for years and all of them dismiss outright.
Until simple shit like this is easy for the average person, Linux will never replace Windows as a default OS option for regular users. 99% of people are scared of config files and the terminal, and they’re still just too commonly needed in every distro.
A LOT of work has been done to minimize it, but there’s always still basic functionality that just isn’t in the GUI. That’s not an issue for most of us here… But it is for most people. Fediverse users are a small minority.
It’s funny, i use both. Work is Windows, Linux at home.
90% of troubles literally come down to what you are used to and expect. I have had hundreds of problems assisting with company IT that I never would have had on Linux. People just ignore it or write it off as “expected”, but when something they doesn’t work on linux, they go crazy and say that Linux just doesn’t work. Windows has just as many basic functionality things that don’t work, if not more.
Linux isn’t perfect, but work is being done to fix it, where in windows, the support tells you to fuck off, try the only 2 GUI tools they have, then enter random command line commands and if that doesn’t fix it, fuck off.
Examples:
Searching in the start menu literally won’t return the program if the program doesn’t start with what you are searching instead of simply “contains” like every other search on earth
File search in fundamentally garbage on windows compared to Linux (both GUI). Not to mention that until last year there was no option to find where the fuck the file was in windows without ending the search and having to start the search over (hell on network shares). Luckily it has gotten better
One drive forcing itself as default, sync problems, losing files, etc… That often has to be fixed through powershell. Not to mention lying to you that files are synced when they are not.
Teams silently installing a random DLL that causes teams to bootloop endlessly, no resources online about it until last year late where you had to manually console command your way out of it via powershell
Microphone completely just not working at all. No possible way to re-enable it via settings, control panel, manual controls, registry, etc… It wasn’t broken. Microsoft secretly disabled it in the background and you had to install the old version of the audio troubleshooter because their new one is AI slop and it would say “oh it was disabled, I will re-enable it” when literally every single other tool in windows said it was enabled and working fine. This was a problem with >10% of people. Again, the GUI wouldn’t fix it until you downloaded a sketchy old version of a troubleshooter.
installing windows without internet working. They are making it almost impossible, actively. Literally the single most basic thing
Microsoft office being layered on top of each other all in one gigantic pile because one font was installed from a path that it didn’t like this brought PowerPoint in my old company to a halt for days
Font blurring when moving windows between monitors (especially PDFs). Linux doesn’t have this problem that I have seen. Windows fonts look like smeared shit after dragging them from screens of different sizes
If one single file has an issue in one single office project e.g. a warning dialog open or a frozen excel window, all office programs are no longer able to be closed, and often even interacted with. That is like the basic of the basic of having multiple program instances open. I have seen unorganized people with 10 excel instances open literally have to restart their computer because no office windows will respond enough to even find the problem instance
Update hangs and failures are a daily occurance in windows. I haven’t had an update fail for years in Linux and when it did, it said “this is why” where windows just says “try again” and keeps failing. Basic basic functionality.
pathing are the worst thing ever in windows. You have import library after library to get windows paths to work in different codebases where in Linux it just works.
windows and printers… You know how everyone has problems with printers? Yeah, a lot of that is from windows shit printer drivers. With Linux, I haven’t had a print job fail in years. In windows, sometimes it will serially send a PDF to the printer, corrupt itself, and balloon the 10MB PDF size to 10GB and overload the printer until you have to hard reset it.
windows constantly resets your printer settings in word, even after you manually set printer settings in the OS. How many times people have printed double sided because auto-switches back after you change it. That is so basic.
SVChost or “system interrupts” eating 60-90% CPU for minuten on end where there are no programs running, making everything work extremely slowly and lag all over the place with no way to fix it.
not going to sleep. Windows sleep is so damn broken ever since they fucked with sleep levels. My new work laptop will literally sleep and turn itself off after a few hours (only if it is plugged in) so I have to unplug it before leaving. My old one with the exact same power settings works fine. Not to mention with modern sleep, laptops will just turn themselves on in a backpack and overheat and dump their battery to 0 for no reason. Windows had sleep right in 7 and then decided to completely break it all and increase power consumption 100x for 1s faster wakeup times… In Linux. If you tell it to go to sleep, it goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up until you wake it up.
I could go on for an hour, literally.
These are very basic functionality that is critically broken or hot garbage and just works on Linux. Again, there are tons of things wrong in Linux too like other users have mentioned, it comes down to the problems the individual user is used to having and living with.
People are learning to deal with a different set of broken things and problems while not seeing the previous problems they had to deal with invisibly just work (because that is how the human brain works).
This is a big reason why most won’t switch. Linux can be difficult to get started with and Windows really makes things a lot easier for the average person.
I tried to switch over to Linux this weekend, I gave up and switched back to Windows last night. I’m not completely computer illiterate, I know how to fix things enough that my colleagues often ask me (the administrative assistant) about simple stuff before going to IT.
I really like the Linux environment and I found alternatives to my frequently used programs, but the one thing I really use my computer most is to play World of Warcraft. I spent hours trying to get it working and I couldn’t. I don’t understand the terminal stuff, GitHub is confusing, and there are so many obscure forums with info I don’t understand. With Windows, the install is incredibly simple and I had my previous setup running within 2 hours.
I WANT to switch to Linux, but until I can run wow a lot easier, it looks like I won’t be. I’m not fully giving up on Linux, it just won’t be on my main machine.
It’s really similar to a conversation I had with a classmate on Android vs iPhone. He just didn’t get why I have an iPhone; “Android is more open”, “you have more options”, etc. I had to explain that it just works; I get a new phone when my old one is no longer supported, then all I have to do is sign in and my phone is back to where it was. Yes, it’s a walled garden, yes there are things Apple does that I don’t like, but the phone itself is simple and easy to upgrade. It just works.
WoW was one of the first things that was working on Linux with wine. It takes 2 seconds to setup bnet with something like Lutris and only requires the user to follow basic on screen prompts. No terminal, no configuration files.
In fact, I just googled “setup wow on Linux” and the first 10 results were tutorials for installing Lutris and just letting it do it for you. Hell even my mom figured out how to do this on PopOS and she’s not that technical.
What do you use the terminal and config files for? I mainly use bazzite now but after a fresh install the most I do is login to steam and change some settings in Firefox. I copy paste my directory settings for imports on darktable to point to my nas but thats probably the most advanced thing I do
This is exactly the type of shit I’ve been trying to explain to the Linux fanboys for years and all of them dismiss outright.
Until simple shit like this is easy for the average person, Linux will never replace Windows as a default OS option for regular users. 99% of people are scared of config files and the terminal, and they’re still just too commonly needed in every distro.
A LOT of work has been done to minimize it, but there’s always still basic functionality that just isn’t in the GUI. That’s not an issue for most of us here… But it is for most people. Fediverse users are a small minority.
It’s funny, i use both. Work is Windows, Linux at home.
90% of troubles literally come down to what you are used to and expect. I have had hundreds of problems assisting with company IT that I never would have had on Linux. People just ignore it or write it off as “expected”, but when something they doesn’t work on linux, they go crazy and say that Linux just doesn’t work. Windows has just as many basic functionality things that don’t work, if not more.
Linux isn’t perfect, but work is being done to fix it, where in windows, the support tells you to fuck off, try the only 2 GUI tools they have, then enter random command line commands and if that doesn’t fix it, fuck off.
Examples:
Searching in the start menu literally won’t return the program if the program doesn’t start with what you are searching instead of simply “contains” like every other search on earth
File search in fundamentally garbage on windows compared to Linux (both GUI). Not to mention that until last year there was no option to find where the fuck the file was in windows without ending the search and having to start the search over (hell on network shares). Luckily it has gotten better
One drive forcing itself as default, sync problems, losing files, etc… That often has to be fixed through powershell. Not to mention lying to you that files are synced when they are not.
Teams silently installing a random DLL that causes teams to bootloop endlessly, no resources online about it until last year late where you had to manually console command your way out of it via powershell
Microphone completely just not working at all. No possible way to re-enable it via settings, control panel, manual controls, registry, etc… It wasn’t broken. Microsoft secretly disabled it in the background and you had to install the old version of the audio troubleshooter because their new one is AI slop and it would say “oh it was disabled, I will re-enable it” when literally every single other tool in windows said it was enabled and working fine. This was a problem with >10% of people. Again, the GUI wouldn’t fix it until you downloaded a sketchy old version of a troubleshooter.
installing windows without internet working. They are making it almost impossible, actively. Literally the single most basic thing
Microsoft office being layered on top of each other all in one gigantic pile because one font was installed from a path that it didn’t like this brought PowerPoint in my old company to a halt for days
Font blurring when moving windows between monitors (especially PDFs). Linux doesn’t have this problem that I have seen. Windows fonts look like smeared shit after dragging them from screens of different sizes
If one single file has an issue in one single office project e.g. a warning dialog open or a frozen excel window, all office programs are no longer able to be closed, and often even interacted with. That is like the basic of the basic of having multiple program instances open. I have seen unorganized people with 10 excel instances open literally have to restart their computer because no office windows will respond enough to even find the problem instance
Update hangs and failures are a daily occurance in windows. I haven’t had an update fail for years in Linux and when it did, it said “this is why” where windows just says “try again” and keeps failing. Basic basic functionality.
pathing are the worst thing ever in windows. You have import library after library to get windows paths to work in different codebases where in Linux it just works.
windows and printers… You know how everyone has problems with printers? Yeah, a lot of that is from windows shit printer drivers. With Linux, I haven’t had a print job fail in years. In windows, sometimes it will serially send a PDF to the printer, corrupt itself, and balloon the 10MB PDF size to 10GB and overload the printer until you have to hard reset it.
windows constantly resets your printer settings in word, even after you manually set printer settings in the OS. How many times people have printed double sided because auto-switches back after you change it. That is so basic.
SVChost or “system interrupts” eating 60-90% CPU for minuten on end where there are no programs running, making everything work extremely slowly and lag all over the place with no way to fix it.
not going to sleep. Windows sleep is so damn broken ever since they fucked with sleep levels. My new work laptop will literally sleep and turn itself off after a few hours (only if it is plugged in) so I have to unplug it before leaving. My old one with the exact same power settings works fine. Not to mention with modern sleep, laptops will just turn themselves on in a backpack and overheat and dump their battery to 0 for no reason. Windows had sleep right in 7 and then decided to completely break it all and increase power consumption 100x for 1s faster wakeup times… In Linux. If you tell it to go to sleep, it goes to sleep and doesn’t wake up until you wake it up.
I could go on for an hour, literally.
These are very basic functionality that is critically broken or hot garbage and just works on Linux. Again, there are tons of things wrong in Linux too like other users have mentioned, it comes down to the problems the individual user is used to having and living with.
People are learning to deal with a different set of broken things and problems while not seeing the previous problems they had to deal with invisibly just work (because that is how the human brain works).
This is a big reason why most won’t switch. Linux can be difficult to get started with and Windows really makes things a lot easier for the average person.
I tried to switch over to Linux this weekend, I gave up and switched back to Windows last night. I’m not completely computer illiterate, I know how to fix things enough that my colleagues often ask me (the administrative assistant) about simple stuff before going to IT.
I really like the Linux environment and I found alternatives to my frequently used programs, but the one thing I really use my computer most is to play World of Warcraft. I spent hours trying to get it working and I couldn’t. I don’t understand the terminal stuff, GitHub is confusing, and there are so many obscure forums with info I don’t understand. With Windows, the install is incredibly simple and I had my previous setup running within 2 hours.
I WANT to switch to Linux, but until I can run wow a lot easier, it looks like I won’t be. I’m not fully giving up on Linux, it just won’t be on my main machine.
It’s really similar to a conversation I had with a classmate on Android vs iPhone. He just didn’t get why I have an iPhone; “Android is more open”, “you have more options”, etc. I had to explain that it just works; I get a new phone when my old one is no longer supported, then all I have to do is sign in and my phone is back to where it was. Yes, it’s a walled garden, yes there are things Apple does that I don’t like, but the phone itself is simple and easy to upgrade. It just works.
WoW was one of the first things that was working on Linux with wine. It takes 2 seconds to setup bnet with something like Lutris and only requires the user to follow basic on screen prompts. No terminal, no configuration files.
In fact, I just googled “setup wow on Linux” and the first 10 results were tutorials for installing Lutris and just letting it do it for you. Hell even my mom figured out how to do this on PopOS and she’s not that technical.
Config files and terminals? Huh? Why would you need any of that
What do you use the terminal and config files for? I mainly use bazzite now but after a fresh install the most I do is login to steam and change some settings in Firefox. I copy paste my directory settings for imports on darktable to point to my nas but thats probably the most advanced thing I do
Excuses for staying on windows, primarily.