I would use Linux more if:
1: I could host my desktop with Parsec (client support exists, but not host support. 2: Sunshine/Moonlight is broken and janky and isn’t a substitute. I’ve tried. A lot. 3: VR support is a hot mess and I’m still waiting for a solution to wirelessly link my Quest 2 in linux. 4: Proton gaming works most of the time, but not for the titles I play.
skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
You know. It’s interesting. I’ve been trying out Debian 12 with KDE Plasma. It actually has been a joy and feels like what Windows 11 should have grown into, had Microsoft actually been designing software with the customer in mind.
…but then there have been times where things so easily critically break until you fix them. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll go mess with kernel code if I have to, so I’m comfortable, but… I just want my computer to work. Windows, for all its shittiness, still keeps working through it like a slow cargo train pushing through a park piled in millions of pancakes.
I had one event the other day where I was installing a Snap app for the first time. Decided rather than installing the Snap package manager because I wanted to avoid Canonical if possible, I’d just manually put it in /opt. Figured out how to edit the KDE “start” menu to add the app using the included GUI tool. Wanted to use the app’s icon. The snap app had an icon embedded in it that Dolphin file manager recognized and displayed.
So I went, “ok, sometimes applications can parse out images from binary files. I’ve seen this work for decades,” so I tell the menu editor to ingest the snap binary for the icon, to see if it will scrape the icon. No icon showed up, so I found a a svg online and assigned that to the icon.
Then I went and saved and launched another application.
GUI slowly started not working and eventually the entire OS locked, even the alt text consoles would not load. Ctrl+alt+backspace was dead, caps lock died, which was when I knew, “he’s dead, Jim.”
Tried rebooting, tried launching that program again, (bearing in mind, not the program I manually added to the “start” menu) and every time the whole OS freezes up. Tried launching apps in different order, launching from command line, etc. When the one app launched that wasn’t the one I created a launcher icon for, same thing. Freeze.
I go remove the start menu link, hoping that, what I assumed was part of Plasma was trying to load this binary as an icon even though it should have checked the file, recognized it as “no I can’t parse this,” and done nothing or displayed an error or parsed it and showed the icon. Especially after I assigned it another image. I just hoped whatever screwed up would be connected to the code inside that app launcher icon config.
Shit you not, the computer became rock solid stable again after that and one more reboot. Hasn’t glitches since.
It’s shit like that that makes me proooobably give up on this experiment and end up on a commercial OS like MacOS again despite the cost and downward trend they are also suffering in a lack of innovative energy.
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 3 months ago
With respect, you can screw up Windows by doing things in a non-standard way too. That’s not the fault of the OS.
Dkarma@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Apples to oranges. Generally you can fix what you did wrong in windows. In Linux good luck.
entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
You can fix what you did wrong in Linux. People are just less used to troubleshooting Linux problems than Windows problems because they’ve used Windows more, by and large
PlasticExistence@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Are you literally in a Linux community to proclaim that Windows is the better OS because it gives you the freedom to screw it up?
My brother in computing, that’s on you if you’re having problems with fixing problems you’ve caused in Linux. As a former professional system admin, I’ve run into issues with Windows that Microsoft’s own support team could not figure out and had to refund their fee. I have never, not once, had an issue in Linux that I couldn’t fix or find someone who knows how.
Mango@lemmy.world 3 months ago
It’s kinda hilarious that I was just about to say the inverse. Linux is yours too fix, and Windows is not.
ulterno@lemmy.kde.social 3 months ago
The person in the anecdote above seemed to have a pretty “good luck”
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Don’t use snaps.
Seriously.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
It’s not safe, but some people just wanna dance with the bear.
skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
Hey, good to know. It was one app that was only available as a Snap. Will look for alternatives.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Flatpaks are nice though
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Of the options… Flatpaks are, IMO, the best.
I still avoid them whenever humanly possible.
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
Just to mention also, I’ve been running Debian for much longer than I care to think about (since my teen years, I’m now in my 40s), with config file requirements that make arch look like lazy mode by comparison.
If you have to use something, flatpak wins, but personally I’d lean away from any of it as much as possible. The Debian stable repos are stable, so what’s in there will work. Add flatpak to KDE Discover by installing plasma-discover-backend-flatpak to get that option in there.
But snaps should be strictly off limits. For everyone, tbh.
AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Are you one of the like dozen people that run Debian Unstable?
curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 months ago
… Yes. But only on one machine.
Mostly its stable (all of my servers, an editing machine, etc) but I’ll do silly things when I need to try something, like image a drive, change the sources to testing/unstable, do what I need to do to test, then reimage.
And recently started running EndeavourOS then Arch because I honestly spend too much time in Debian and felt like poking around at other solutions again, which I do every several years or so.
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
That’s a mistake. #SSoT #WET
irotsoma@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Debian tends to require a lot of tweaking to get it to work well with more modern things. I’ve never gotten video and audio hardware to work out of the box to my satisfaction, for example. Ubuntu is definitely easier to use out of the box. But I also don’t like the way Canonical has been taking it lately. And since I’ve been using CENTOS for servers for many, many years and more recently Rocky Linux, I decided to give Fedora another try after a failed attempt like a decade ago (I think the version at the time was Verne).
Combined with Plasma as a front end, Fedora is awesome. Some things aren’t there that I’d prefer and flatpacks and snaps always have minor, annoying issues, but for the most part it does everything I need and even supports my fairly new laptop with a touchscreen and pretty modern hardware without any tweaking.
Disgracefulone@discuss.online 3 months ago
This was all good except I’d be remiss to not point out that millions of pancakes wouldn’t slow a cargo train at all.
Proceed.
skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
I was trying to think of a mental image that was internet-safe to imply something like you’re stuck in deep mud that is pulling your boots off but at least you survived. Or less internet-safe, you’re trying to get home and have no ride and for some reason the weather turned to a storm of actual shit and you’re walking home with shit raining down upon you but you must survive.
It definitely wasn’t scientifically accurate.
Disgracefulone@discuss.online 3 months ago
🤣🤣
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Give Fedora Kinoite a shot. Atomic distros are the shit. If you fuck it up, you literally just reboot, roll back, and you are up and running again. I’m finally starting the process of migrating off of windows and onto Bazzite for my desktop (because it doubles as my gaming machine), but I’ve been using Kinoite on my personal dev laptop for a while now and it’s awesome! It’s a bit of a paradigm shift from a traditional distro, but it’s really not that hard to figure out and adjust to.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 3 months ago
Am not gonna take away bootloader customization and going flatpack first hell nah dunno why people are like “ItS HaRd tO BrEaK ThE oS”
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Because some people like having a daily driver that just works, period. I can spin up a container or VM (or baremetal install) on one of my other boxes if I want to do some sort of work that needs it, but for the use cases of human:homelab interface and gaming box, I like that stability and recoverability are first-order concerns. I can generally figure out what else is going on as long as I have a reliable entry point.