Can confirm. Just switched to Linux about 2 weeks ago. I am happy enough, but there was a brutal learning curve. This was for a distro that is user friendly, too. I was able to install just fine, but actually getting my environment set up is an ongoing process.
Many Linux distros are getting there, but they still aren’t ready for casual users.
I don’t think the learning curve is any harder than someone who’s learning Windows for the first time.
It’s just different. Honestly in some ways simpler IMO. But if you were a life long Mac user and touched Windows for the first time today you’d probably have a rougher time I think.
Wouldn’t you have the same experience if you moved from iOS to Android, never having used Android before? Does that make Android not ready for casual use?
If you have used Windows your whole life, there will definitely be a learning curve getting used to Linux and whatever desktop environment you choose to use.
I personally have better experience having casual users use Linux than Windows.
In fact, one has a similar learning curve going from Android to iOS (as I learned when I transitioned to iPhone) even if iOS is broadly considered more “user friendly.”
I think you’re onto something. Switching to Windows would be painful to anyone used to Linux regardless of all the philosophical differences simply because the OS works differently. Lord knows I despise MacOS despite people who use it saying, “it just works.”
I was only using “from iOS to Android” as an example. I believe it would be equally difficult going from Android to iOS. As you, I also despise using MacOS. It’s a struggle, because I’m not used to it in any way.
There is a difference between going from a GUI based OS to a hybrid GUI/console OS.
For both iOS and Android the only difference is where things live. The processes are still the same.
This is not the case with Windows and Linux. If you want to install something in Windows you go to a website and download an installer. For Linux, you find out if there is a package. If not you go to a website and see if there is an app image or zip file. You then need to know where to place the downloaded file, how to get it running (making it executable), knowing how to chmod and chown (it is better to have to do it like in Linux, but it is an extra step), and how to add it to your desktop (there is no right+click and add to desktop/create shortcut option in Arch based distros like there is on Windows). If there is a service component you may need to go into command line and systemctl to enable it.
Your comparison to iOS and Android is not really appropriate.
For Linux, you find out if there is a package. If not you go to a website and see if there is an app image or zip file. You then need to know where to place the downloaded file, how to get it running (making it executable), knowing how to chmod and chown (it is better to have to do it like in Linux, but it is an extra step), and how to add it to your desktop (there is no right+click and add to desktop/create shortcut option in Arch based distros like there is on Windows). If there is a service component you may need to go into command line and systemctl to enable it.
I don’t think I’ve ever followed that workflow to be honest. Except for when doing something niche and way above and beyond something a casual user would do.
Open the software center, search what you want. Click install. Done. I use the terminal to the same effect but that’s by preference. Installing packages as you described is not at all recommended… They won’t update with the system.
The “add to desktop” thing really depends on your Desktop Environment too. GNOME not really, KDE and most others yeah.
I’m curious what setup you have to do?
I do some customization of KDE on my desktop, but for my laptops it’s always install and use without the need to setup anything.
I am using CachyOS. I was able to find my way around because I knew what I needed to look up due to existing server experience, but a first time user would likely struggle a lot more.
Which distros are you using on laptop? I have a gaming laptop, I’ve been procrastinating on the switch because I dont want to lose some things. I really enjoy the control software for the lights and fans that it came pre-installed with, for example
If anything, Linux gives you far more control over those things and it’s usually much easier to do than in Windows.
I’ve been using Bazzite for gaming for over a year now and it’s great. It is immutable though, so while you can do just about anything you can do in other distros, the process can be different.
I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting CachyOS lately for gaming, if you want something that isn’t immutable.
I don’t use my laptops for gaming, only casual web browsing and the occasional 3d print or code script.
I have used fedora in the past but a failed update broke it, so I’m using cachyos now.
The only issue I had with the laptop, is that it’s recognized as a 2-in-1 and sometimes would switch to the tablet mode which disabled the keyboard. Either I found how to disable it or cachy doesn’t have the issue.
You should give the name of the distro rather than just say modern. Ubuntu is “modern” and they broke the auto-updates for everyone some months ago. It’s more about stability than modernity
oh, so when the Linux fanboys come out and say “you should switch to Linux, it’s easy!” they actually mean learn the decades long history of countless distributions, fork infighting, and an untold amount of software and hardware compatibility baggage, THEN switching will be easy! silly of me to make such a mistake!
No? I just said it would be nicer if you precised the name of the distro when you have an issue. This way I’m less likely to recommand an unstable distro. That’s it.
You obviously can’t be expected to know what distro is stable or not, I don’t either
yes, Nvidia, and who knows for the rest. i think it was Debian-based, maybe Mint. they went back to Win11 after barely a month because it was so rough, despite years of experience with Linux.
Thats a hardware related annoyance that I’ve even seen on commercially distributed versions of Linux, and if it were set up correctly, you wouldn’t have even noticed (aside from a bunch of scrolling text during the next boot when the new kernel was loaded). I had a client where they couldn’t even get to the console of the server for this reason. Once set up correctly though, those updates have chugged away in the background… but I digress.
I’m assuming you (and your partner) have no trouble at all navigating around and using linux, it was the (poorly managed) update process that gave you headaches. I think that is a perfectly reasonable complaint.
Its mostly because of what nvidia does - the newer stuff has open source drivers, but this is a more recent thing (past year or so), but a good chunk of their libraries are still closed, their firmware is still closed, and anything not supported by the newer open source kernel modules has to use the proprietary drivers.
This is, unfortunately, outside of the control of the Linux kernel. And nvidia can be made to work just fine (I have a bunch of quadro cards for example) without dropping to the console, but that first setup to make it that way takes some knowledge. That, to me, is the big problem.
Thats also why you’ll see a lot of intel gpu’s and amd gpu’s in the linux world, while nvidia made that switch I mentioned to open on the new stuff, that was in 2024. AMD started their effort in 2015, its much more mature, and intel had open drivers for a bit over 10 years before that.
Can confirm. Just switched to Linux about 2 weeks ago. I am happy enough, but there was a brutal learning curve. This was for a distro that is user friendly, too. I was able to install just fine, but actually getting my environment set up is an ongoing process.
Many Linux distros are getting there, but they still aren’t ready for casual users.
I don’t think the learning curve is any harder than someone who’s learning Windows for the first time.
It’s just different. Honestly in some ways simpler IMO. But if you were a life long Mac user and touched Windows for the first time today you’d probably have a rougher time I think.
Wouldn’t you have the same experience if you moved from iOS to Android, never having used Android before? Does that make Android not ready for casual use?
If you have used Windows your whole life, there will definitely be a learning curve getting used to Linux and whatever desktop environment you choose to use.
I personally have better experience having casual users use Linux than Windows.
In fact, one has a similar learning curve going from Android to iOS (as I learned when I transitioned to iPhone) even if iOS is broadly considered more “user friendly.”
I think you’re onto something. Switching to Windows would be painful to anyone used to Linux regardless of all the philosophical differences simply because the OS works differently. Lord knows I despise MacOS despite people who use it saying, “it just works.”
I was only using “from iOS to Android” as an example. I believe it would be equally difficult going from Android to iOS. As you, I also despise using MacOS. It’s a struggle, because I’m not used to it in any way.
There is a difference between going from a GUI based OS to a hybrid GUI/console OS.
For both iOS and Android the only difference is where things live. The processes are still the same.
This is not the case with Windows and Linux. If you want to install something in Windows you go to a website and download an installer. For Linux, you find out if there is a package. If not you go to a website and see if there is an app image or zip file. You then need to know where to place the downloaded file, how to get it running (making it executable), knowing how to chmod and chown (it is better to have to do it like in Linux, but it is an extra step), and how to add it to your desktop (there is no right+click and add to desktop/create shortcut option in Arch based distros like there is on Windows). If there is a service component you may need to go into command line and systemctl to enable it.
Your comparison to iOS and Android is not really appropriate.
I don’t think I’ve ever followed that workflow to be honest. Except for when doing something niche and way above and beyond something a casual user would do.
Open the software center, search what you want. Click install. Done. I use the terminal to the same effect but that’s by preference. Installing packages as you described is not at all recommended… They won’t update with the system.
The “add to desktop” thing really depends on your Desktop Environment too. GNOME not really, KDE and most others yeah.
I’ve been using Linux for 20 years. The learning curve is still too steep for me.
I’m curious what setup you have to do?
I do some customization of KDE on my desktop, but for my laptops it’s always install and use without the need to setup anything.
I am using CachyOS. I was able to find my way around because I knew what I needed to look up due to existing server experience, but a first time user would likely struggle a lot more.
Which distros are you using on laptop? I have a gaming laptop, I’ve been procrastinating on the switch because I dont want to lose some things. I really enjoy the control software for the lights and fans that it came pre-installed with, for example
If anything, Linux gives you far more control over those things and it’s usually much easier to do than in Windows.
I’ve been using Bazzite for gaming for over a year now and it’s great. It is immutable though, so while you can do just about anything you can do in other distros, the process can be different.
I’ve seen a lot of people suggesting CachyOS lately for gaming, if you want something that isn’t immutable.
What gaming laptop is it? I had an ASUS Strix and it worked wonders with https://asus-linux.org/.
Acer Predator Triton
I don’t use my laptops for gaming, only casual web browsing and the occasional 3d print or code script.
I have used fedora in the past but a failed update broke it, so I’m using cachyos now.
The only issue I had with the laptop, is that it’s recognized as a 2-in-1 and sometimes would switch to the tablet mode which disabled the keyboard. Either I found how to disable it or cachy doesn’t have the issue.
get excited for a random system update to boot you to a GRUB rescue console soon!
When was the last time you used Linux? And what distro was it? Your complaints are a decade out of date.
this exact situation happened about 3 months ago to my partner on a modern distro
You should give the name of the distro rather than just say modern. Ubuntu is “modern” and they broke the auto-updates for everyone some months ago. It’s more about stability than modernity
oh, so when the Linux fanboys come out and say “you should switch to Linux, it’s easy!” they actually mean learn the decades long history of countless distributions, fork infighting, and an untold amount of software and hardware compatibility baggage, THEN switching will be easy! silly of me to make such a mistake!
No? I just said it would be nicer if you precised the name of the distro when you have an issue. This way I’m less likely to recommand an unstable distro. That’s it.
You obviously can’t be expected to know what distro is stable or not, I don’t either
Just curious here… nvidia + kernel update and not using dkms?
yes, Nvidia, and who knows for the rest. i think it was Debian-based, maybe Mint. they went back to Win11 after barely a month because it was so rough, despite years of experience with Linux.
This is what I meant by my comment here.
Thats a hardware related annoyance that I’ve even seen on commercially distributed versions of Linux, and if it were set up correctly, you wouldn’t have even noticed (aside from a bunch of scrolling text during the next boot when the new kernel was loaded). I had a client where they couldn’t even get to the console of the server for this reason. Once set up correctly though, those updates have chugged away in the background… but I digress.
I’m assuming you (and your partner) have no trouble at all navigating around and using linux, it was the (poorly managed) update process that gave you headaches. I think that is a perfectly reasonable complaint.
of course the most popular graphics card manufacturer wouldn’t work out of the box on Linux! i would expect nothing less!
Its mostly because of what nvidia does - the newer stuff has open source drivers, but this is a more recent thing (past year or so), but a good chunk of their libraries are still closed, their firmware is still closed, and anything not supported by the newer open source kernel modules has to use the proprietary drivers.
This is, unfortunately, outside of the control of the Linux kernel. And nvidia can be made to work just fine (I have a bunch of quadro cards for example) without dropping to the console, but that first setup to make it that way takes some knowledge. That, to me, is the big problem.
Thats also why you’ll see a lot of intel gpu’s and amd gpu’s in the linux world, while nvidia made that switch I mentioned to open on the new stuff, that was in 2024. AMD started their effort in 2015, its much more mature, and intel had open drivers for a bit over 10 years before that.
deleted by creator
set up?