How is it that not more people switch to Linux?

[wasab]

i use linux because i really like the gnome desktop, that and the terminal. 

[CosmicEmotion]

2 hours ago, LogicalDrm said:

For a Linux evangelist, you lack some basic knowledge. Android is based on Linux.

 

I know that, I use deGoogled Android myself. I mean the regular Linux phones with Phosh and Plasma Mobile.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Not sure if I'm more on minority side, though I always tried to learn and adapt when something new comes, to see how it works and learn it as it before I change or fix. I've learned certain shortcuts that are great. The right clock at start was odd, some things didn't show there, potentially up to devs of those programs, though also on older menu there could be bloat of some programs I didn't want their sections. There are ways to configure this, though I didn't find it need it. I use modern or shifted old one if need. 

Not sure what you mean about junk in explorer, I find it rather simple for most stuff you'd need, same like before, like general copy, paste, move, rename, sort, view, delete and such. There are drive letter, huh I see them right now. Did so since fresh install.

When you're talking about muscle memory of people who have been using Windows since 3.1, its much harder to adjust, particularly if those people are older.

Now we can kinda ignore how 3.1 worked as that was so long ago, but since XP explorer did not really change that much.  But once they added indexing they have been trying to phase out drive letters in favour of libraries.  Neither me nor my mother use libraries, indexing is useless as our primary files are on a Linux NAS mapped to, you guessed it, drive letters.

Now this does seem to have changed recently it seems, but 11 at launch had a habit of opening with This PC closed, so drive letters were completely hidden and you'd have to go looking for My PC under the list of useless libraries.  Before all this, drive letters were right at the top of the list.  My mother's memory is failing, so she forgets how things have changed making it even worse. She had already been struggling going to 10 from 7, I could immediately see that 11 would be problem so moved her to Linux as it would be easier to just mount her network share into the Documents folder and call it a day.   Interestingly I notice something changed on 11 as drive letters are showing in Home too now which is also opening by default (maybe they always were but it was not open so I never thought to look), but its too late now.
 

I found it easy to adjust right up until 11, where changing the cut, copy, paste icons and moving them to the top in a row always causes me to have to hesitate to hit the right one, as before they were in a list as plain text.  Sure I know the keyboard shortcuts, but I alternate between UI and keyboard depending on what I'm doing, not least because I have a disability in my hands so sometimes the right hand is easier to use the UI than a shortcut.  Or on my gaming PC I use a wireless keyboard on my lap because 99% of the time I'm gaming using a controller (again, disabled hands means keyboard + mouse was no longer possible for me).

Microsoft have made a big deal about being more "accessible" recently, but these changes have made Windows harder for me with a disability in my hands.

There's also how intrusive updates are on 11.  They install at random, reboot when it feels like if you leave the PC idle, are stupidly slow to get you back to the desktop after an update and add friction to carry on what you were doing with the annoying "look whats new" screens.  Linux has none of those issues.  Also as drivers are part of the kernel, I never have to think about making sure all drivers are updated or that Windows Update might downgrade/break some driver at random.

 

MacOS seems to have gone the other way, tried to keep the UI consistent forever at the cost of hiding feature improvements.  The end result is the same, its awkward to navigate in Finder because things like being able to enter the path/URI of something is hidden behind a keyboard shortcut.  It has absolutely dog awful speed when browsing NAS drives too with a lot of files in them (yes I made all the MacOS tweaks to SAMBA, it helps but is still very slow), and file sorting seems to work completely differently to Windows or Linux.  So all together it makes it harder to use.  Literally when browsing a folder for a specific image to open can take minutes to find on MacOS (as its tediously slow at thumbnailing due to their preference for pre indexing meta data, which again I don't want or need to waste precious storage space on that) but seconds on Windows or Linux, because of its dreadful performance and different interpretation of alphabetical sorting.

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 hours ago, CosmicEmotion said:

It's actually enabled by default if you have an HDR monitor. Xorg is completely dead, it won't even be an option in Fedora 40.

 

By the end of the year I'm expecting HDR to be enabled by default for games as well.

Which is a drawback, as I wont be able to update to 40 as I use Synergy and the proprietary NVIDIA drivers which are required to use CUDA.  Although there is rumblings of there potentially being an Xorg compatibility package available after all, so we shall see.  Plasma Wayland is plain broken on proprietary NVIDIA drivers due to the lack of implicit sync support by NVIDIA, which leaves me SOL.

 

I also can't figure out how on earth TigerVNC servers will work without Xorg support.  Every time I try to search for VNC its about remoting into a real screen, not a virtual one.  Its going to suck if I have to switch to running a VM (or an older DE)  just to run a few UI applications that work perfectly as a virtual Plasma session right now.

[MiszS]

5 hours ago, Average Nerd said:

Windows takes up between 7 and 8GB of RAM on idle, and yet I have never even once run out of RAM (I have 16GB), so is it really a problem?

7GB on idle is crazy, but ig in your case it isn't a problem. The problem is when you are either gaming, or doing something that requires processing power, it can be not enough, and if so much ram is being used, the cpu is also used, which means it always runs hotter and uses more power, and that can rlly add up over time, not even talking about laptops, where battery life is important

[Average Nerd]

Just now, MiszS said:

7GB on idle is crazy, but ig in your case it isn't a problem. The problem is when you are either gaming, or doing something that requires processing power, it can be not enough, and if so much ram is being used, the cpu is also used, which means it always runs hotter and uses more power, and that can rlly add up over time, not even talking about laptops, where battery life is important

When idling, the CPU sits at 13-20% utilisation, when I game, I use up to about 12-13GB of RAM.

And I am talking about a laptop, the battery lives about 4-4,5h, depending on what I'm doing, it's a gaming laptop so it's not too bad.

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 minutes ago, Average Nerd said:

When idling, the CPU sits at 13-20% utilisation, when I game, I use up to about 12-13GB of RAM.

And I am talking about a laptop, the battery lives about 4-4,5h, depending on what I'm doing, it's a gaming laptop so it's not too bad.

I'm seeing 7GB usage too after closing everything but 2GB of that is Folding@Home + FanControl.

 

Game launchers can add up too.  Steam alone seems to use 550-600MB of RAM if you have the "latest promotions" thing open, it drops to about 320MB once that is closed.

 

[Nayr438]

13 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I also can't figure out how on earth TigerVNC servers will work without Xorg support.  Every time I try to search for VNC its about remoting into a real screen, not a virtual one.  Its going to suck if I have to switch to running a VM (or an older DE)  just to run a few UI applications that work perfectly as a virtual Plasma session right now.

GNOME RDP, they recently gained headless login support which I believe will land in GNOME 46. GNOME is pretty much the standard in the EL space.
I'll also drop this here, Waypipe.

[Average Nerd]

4 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm seeing 7GB usage too after closing everything but 2GB of that is Folding@Home + FanControl.

 

In my case it's my AV, some steam background thing and some windows apps (mostly Smartphone Link) that I use often.

If I really want to, I can get it down to about 5,5GB, but I don't really see it as necessary.

[Doobeedoo]

12 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

When you're talking about muscle memory of people who have been using Windows since 3.1, its much harder to adjust, particularly if those people are older.

Now we can kinda ignore how 3.1 worked as that was so long ago, but since XP explorer did not really change that much.  But once they added indexing they have been trying to phase out drive letters in favour of libraries.  Neither me nor my mother use libraries, indexing is useless as our primary files are on a Linux NAS mapped to, you guessed it, drive letters.

Now this does seem to have changed recently it seems, but 11 at launch had a habit of opening with This PC closed, so drive letters were completely hidden and you'd have to go looking for My PC under the list of useless libraries.  Before all this, drive letters were right at the top of the list.  My mother's memory is failing, so she forgets how things have changed making it even worse. She had already been struggling going to 10 from 7, I could immediately see that 11 would be problem so moved her to Linux as it would be easier to just mount her network share into the Documents folder and call it a day.   Interestingly I notice something changed on 11 as drive letters are showing in Home too now which is also opening by default (maybe they always were but it was not open so I never thought to look), but its too late now.
 

I found it easy to adjust right up until 11, where changing the cut, copy, paste icons and moving them to the top in a row always causes me to have to hesitate to hit the right one, as before they were in a list as plain text.  Sure I know the keyboard shortcuts, but I alternate between UI and keyboard depending on what I'm doing, not least because I have a disability in my hands so sometimes the right hand is easier to use the UI than a shortcut.  Or on my gaming PC I use a wireless keyboard on my lap because 99% of the time I'm gaming using a controller (again, disabled hands means keyboard + mouse was no longer possible for me).

Microsoft have made a big deal about being more "accessible" recently, but these changes have made Windows harder for me with a disability in my hands.

There's also how intrusive updates are on 11.  They install at random, reboot when it feels like if you leave the PC idle, are stupidly slow to get you back to the desktop after an update and add friction to carry on what you were doing with the annoying "look whats new" screens.  Linux has none of those issues.  Also as drivers are part of the kernel, I never have to think about making sure all drivers are updated or that Windows Update might downgrade/break some driver at random.

 

MacOS seems to have gone the other way, tried to keep the UI consistent forever at the cost of hiding feature improvements.  The end result is the same, its awkward to navigate in Finder because things like being able to enter the path/URI of something is hidden behind a keyboard shortcut.  It has absolutely dog awful speed when browsing NAS drives too with a lot of files in them (yes I made all the MacOS tweaks to SAMBA, it helps but is still very slow), and file sorting seems to work completely differently to Windows or Linux.  So all together it makes it harder to use.  Literally when browsing a folder for a specific image to open can take minutes to find on MacOS (as its tediously slow at thumbnailing due to their preference for pre indexing meta data, which again I don't want or need to waste precious storage space on that) but seconds on Windows or Linux, because of its dreadful performance and different interpretation of alphabetical sorting.

I mean sure maybe yeah. Though if someone has been using it for decades from very start I'd expect they're rather knowledgeable in terms of basic UI though.

Since a lot of basics are the same more or less, yes if you really want last century feel you can configure it with tools.

I'm just glad they added tabs natively to explorer though. Drive letters work fine for me but I don't use NAS so not sure what fix is for that. You can mess with Indexing options though and make it work for yourself how you want I guess, there's also Everything that is neat to use.

I have This PC as default to open over Home for me. I don't really use libraries though. But I never had drive letter hidden for me, they'd always be right there.

Heh, I liked they made cut, copy, rename, delete close to initial mouse click, but I understand it's not instantly intuitive with icons at first. They are improving this next like so:

 

Not sure if you mean actual disability or choice of peripheral use, but them saying accessible to me I'd expect just proper adjustments I can make. Which some things do lack or missing. Can get PowerToys though.

 

Updates never were issue, can't say I've heard from others that. I've kept it up to date easily, I'd just get a prompt if there are updates and if I'd DL and install. I never had them auto-install or auto-reboot and I've left my machine for who day almost at times idle. I do have a modern system so stuff is very quick for me. Just need to configure updates in Advanced options in Settings. I am not using Home edition so not sure if it's different for it as I've heard some limitations for it.

The drivers problem can also be on dev side too though. Some just don't update their crap properly or are too old ones. 

 

I'm not a fan of MacOS myself in general usage to me things on it feel dated. But yeah, can't comment on your specific use case.

[CosmicEmotion]

7 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Which is a drawback, as I wont be able to update to 40 as I use Synergy and the proprietary NVIDIA drivers which are required to use CUDA.  Although there is rumblings of there potentially being an Xorg compatibility package available after all, so we shall see.  Plasma Wayland is plain broken on proprietary NVIDIA drivers due to the lack of implicit sync support by NVIDIA, which leaves me SOL.

 

I also can't figure out how on earth TigerVNC servers will work without Xorg support.  Every time I try to search for VNC its about remoting into a real screen, not a virtual one.  Its going to suck if I have to switch to running a VM (or an older DE)  just to run a few UI applications that work perfectly as a virtual Plasma session right now.

 

It's not a drawback. I can understand your frustration but we can't stay on a 40 years old technology just because Nvidia refuses to update their drivers. The optimal solution, unfortunately, is to use AMD and the CUDA equivalent and there are plenty of alternatives for remote desktop in Wayland.

[MiszS]

14 hours ago, Average Nerd said:

When idling, the CPU sits at 13-20% utilisation, when I game, I use up to about 12-13GB of RAM.

And I am talking about a laptop, the battery lives about 4-4,5h, depending on what I'm doing, it's a gaming laptop so it's not too bad.

That's kinda a lot for idle, especially if it's a new laptop, my laptop on linux sits at around 2% cpu and 750MB of ram, even tho it has a pretty old i3 6006u. Windows ofc may not work for you because of some apps, but it has undeniably worse battery life

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

13 hours ago, CosmicEmotion said:

It's not a drawback. I can understand your frustration but we can't stay on a 40 years old technology just because Nvidia refuses to update their drivers. The optimal solution, unfortunately, is to use AMD and the CUDA equivalent and there are plenty of alternatives for remote desktop in Wayland.

If it breaks some functionality that people actually NEED in their day to day usage, then saying its a drawback is actually an understatement, its completely unusable to some of us.  I totally understand the Wayland push, I WANT to use Wayland, but if I literally can't because Wayland does not yet support the features I use on a daily basis then sure I'm going to be pi**ed.

 

I periodically try Wayland to see how things stand but every time I do, too much is broken.  I tried a few weeks back and 75% of my right click menu in Dolphin disappeared.  Also looking at progress reports when they say things like "crashes a lot less" it doesn't give me a lot of faith, given I've not had Plasma 5 X11 crash in years now.  The bar for "Wayland is okay for day to day use" seems to be set incredibly low.

 

I use Fedora specifically to stay on the cutting edge, because there has always been workarounds to fix changes that break things.  The problem with Wayland is they are proposing removing those workarounds in order to force developers to fix the problems.  This is great in principle, but if it leaves users on an effectively unusable platform, that's a huge problem.

 

As for NVIDIA not adding implicit sync, this is very similar to distros dropping Xorg.   Explicit sync is the future and they are trying to force its adoption.  You can't say its okay to break things for some users by forcing Wayland only, then call out NVIDIA for breaking things because they are forcing explicit sync.

I totally get explicit sync is complicated as it involves many different parts all needing to switch to it, but that's not hugely dissimilar to the Wayland situation.

[wasab]

12 hours ago, JustAPersonig said:

You know that android uses a modified linux kernel right?

linux is just the kernel. everything that runs on top of it is completely whatever. 

[Ralphred]

On 3/14/2024 at 12:30 PM, CosmicEmotion said:

To me, the concept of "fighting with your system" has been absolutely reversed in the time I was gone.

Personally, I've used *nix derivatives for nearly 30 years, Windows for almost as long. The worst thing to happen to windows (IMHO) was the loss of the ability to close it between win3.x and win98. Since that time the expectation for an OS to do 'the sort of thing I expect you to do out of the box' has increased beyond Moore's law to the level of a 90's cellphone (Read: work without crashing, rebooting or user input of any kind, ever* and on all possible hardware combinations. *including at the time of install.). This is obvious nonsense is pushed by the tech illiterate and tinkerers with self aggrandisement issues.

 

Well, you know what 'they' say: "Make something idiot proof, and they'll just breed a new class of idiot!" -  this has been the limiting force in all of linux's "technological development" for far too long, and they keep finding new classes of idiot (re: People who still use GNOME after 2009). If you aren't an idiot then your raft of choices is becoming smaller, not larger - this is antithetical to both freedom of choice and technological progression, but midwits are gonna midwit and *nix became their target, one of the biggest failings of *buntu was not containing them, because I honestly fail to see any other reason for it to exist other than a containment distro for people people not smart enough to use Debian effectively....

[denco101]

I use Windows because it works for me: I am not doing so because of inability to learn or understand anything else, nor merely out of habit.  Everything is pretty much plug and play, in my experience, and practically any software I could ever want to use is Windows compatible. For the most part, barring the odd hiccup just as I encounter on other platforms, things "just work," too... I've also yet to encounter a game that didn't run on Windows.

I use macOS because they probably have the best ecosystem out there, and as I have an iPhone and iPad, the MacBook Pro makes sense as a "mobile" computer for me (my PC being mainly docked at my desk). Again, things generally "just work," and there's Mac specific software that works great at what it does, that you just can't find on Linux.

On either platform, a quick Google search can usually get me solutions, often from people on forums who've had the same issues and communities full of people willing and able to help.

Linux, I play with from time to time, across a wide variety of distros... and when I do it's usually an immediate struggle just to get everything to work. The second issue I encounter is then finding software for everything I want to do, that I like to use. I can often figure things out, eventually, but it's often a painful journey through solutions that may have at one point worked, but don't in my case... and let's face it, communities peppered with (because it's not everyone, but they exist and aren't particularly rare) less than helpful users that will do little more than belittle you for seeking help.

[goatedpenguin]

On 3/14/2024 at 5:30 AM, CosmicEmotion said:

 

Linux can play 99% of games these days. Is Val and CoD or Adobe seriously that important to you guys that you put up with all the garbage that comes with Windows? I'm seriously astounded.

Dualboot

On 3/14/2024 at 5:35 AM, Blasty Blosty said:

ost modern games lack Linux support, especially AAA games. 

Not always, it is mostly the kernel level anticheats which is stopping Linux from being able to play games like Valorant and COD etc.

 

Sometimes people use windows because it just does a better job at somethings which Linux cannot make up for, for an instance, modern applications such as adobe products will never perform as well as on Linux compared to Windows. I think the best solution here is to dualboot, or if you have the money to spare get separate machines. These days there are many apps that debloat windows and remove telemetry such as winutil which I use personally. I used to have ~350 process on boot and after debloating its been cut to only 150ish which is very reasonable imo. Distros like Linux mint are very welcoming for ppl who are migrating from windows and elementary OS for MACos. Though I think there should be a better way to market Linux instead of having the stereotypical nerdy view at it. 

[WereCat]

On 3/15/2024 at 6:13 AM, CosmicEmotion said:

 

It's not a drawback. I can understand your frustration but we can't stay on a 40 years old technology just because Nvidia refuses to update their drivers. The optimal solution, unfortunately, is to use AMD and the CUDA equivalent and there are plenty of alternatives for remote desktop in Wayland.

AMD on Linux sucks more for work than on Windows. 

Many video editing programs like KDenlive or Davinci Resolve don't even support HEVC HW encoders on AMD. 

Blender will not render with the GPU unless you use the non-FOSS Pro driver. 

 

These things actually work on NVIDIA on Linux better... But then there's the thing with NVIDIA that not all series cards work and usually new HW is huge hit and miss. 

[CosmicEmotion]

17 hours ago, WereCat said:

AMD on Linux sucks more for work than on Windows. 

Many video editing programs like KDenlive or Davinci Resolve don't even support HEVC HW encoders on AMD. 

Blender will not render with the GPU unless you use the non-FOSS Pro driver. 

 

These things actually work on NVIDIA on Linux better... But then there's the thing with NVIDIA that not all series cards work and usually new HW is huge hit and miss. 

If you're a professional and use this kind of software you probably use Nvidia. For a regular user who just writes documents and games Linux on AMD is the best option available.

[goatedpenguin]

4 minutes ago, CosmicEmotion said:

If you're a professional and use this kind of software you probably use Nvidia. For a regular user who just writes documents and games Linux on AMD is the best option available.

AMD devices in general are more compatible and easy to use with Linux compared to their counterparts, for gaming there is no need to install the Nvidia driver, blacklist the nouveau driver which is a not so good quality-of-life experience for the end user. I would say though that if your doing video editing or 3d modelling there is no reason to be on Linux, just stick to windows or mac. 

[WereCat]

1 hour ago, CosmicEmotion said:

If you're a professional and use this kind of software you probably use Nvidia. For a regular user who just writes documents and games Linux on AMD is the best option available.

All I'm saying is that there are people who don't need this kind of stuff for work but from time to time need or want to do some editing or modeling. And it's not that you cannot do it on Linux. The editing experience is almost the same as on Windows. It's when it comes down to rendering and encoding you'll waste your time waiting because of lack of encoder and renderer support.

 

And if OBS does support the AMD HEVC encoder I see no reason why KDenlive does not for example. Maybe is's a licencing issue, no idea. But it just sucks for convenience.

 

I just don't like splitting users into work/home use. Sometimes you want both while you don't need it just for convenience.

 

Right now I run Linux on my laptop and Windows on my PC. Pretty much all SW I use is Linux ready with some of the caveats I mentioned before and I've tried running Linux on my main PC for 2 months (Fedora 38 KDE back in the day) and even the web browsing experience was awful because VRR is completely broken on Linux.

 

GNOME devs are completely right with their way of taking so long to implement it and their objections to the issues (which I encountered all of them) as on KDE VRR does work... Unless you meet all the specifics where it causes issues. Like having multi-monitor setup where one monitor has VRR and other does not and they also vary in refresh rates.

 

Now I'm gonna say that this kind of setup has it's own issues on Windows as well. And I've spent years dealing and working around those issues and now it's got to a point where I don't have to basically do anything to have good experience. The way the issues manifest on Linux is similar but there is no workaround for now except unplugging my secondary screens or disabling VRR alltogether. So I'm just waiting for a good implementations and then I'll probably switch as I'm in love with a lot of features on Linux. Especially the tiling window manager with Pop!_OS.

[CosmicEmotion]

3 minutes ago, WereCat said:

All I'm saying is that there are people who don't need this kind of stuff for work but from time to time need or want to do some editing or modeling. And it's not that you cannot do it on Linux. The editing experience is almost the same as on Windows. It's when it comes down to rendering and encoding you'll waste your time waiting because of lack of encoder and renderer support.

 

And if OBS does support the AMD HEVC encoder I see no reason why KDenlive does not for example. Maybe is's a licencing issue, no idea. But it just sucks for convenience.

 

I just don't like splitting users into work/home use. Sometimes you want both while you don't need it just for convenience.

 

Right now I run Linux on my laptop and Windows on my PC. Pretty much all SW I use is Linux ready with some of the caveats I mentioned before and I've tried running Linux on my main PC for 2 months (Fedora 38 KDE back in the day) and even the web browsing experience was awful because VRR is completely broken on Linux.

 

GNOME devs are completely right with their way of taking so long to implement it and their objections to the issues (which I encountered all of them) as on KDE VRR does work... Unless you meet all the specifics where it causes issues. Like having multi-monitor setup where one monitor has VRR and other does not and they also vary in refresh rates.

 

Now I'm gonna say that this kind of setup has it's own issues on Windows as well. And I've spent years dealing and working around those issues and now it's got to a point where I don't have to basically do anything to have good experience. The way the issues manifest on Linux is similar but there is no workaround for now except unplugging my secondary screens or disabling VRR alltogether. So I'm just waiting for a good implementations and then I'll probably switch as I'm in love with a lot of features on Linux. Especially the tiling window manager with Pop!_OS.

 

I didn't have issues with VRR on Linux, are you on Nvidia or AMD?

[WereCat]

1 hour ago, CosmicEmotion said:

 

I didn't have issues with VRR on Linux, are you on Nvidia or AMD?

AMD (Wayland). Do you fall into the category I described?

[IkeaGnome]

I can’t be bothered to start a new thread. 
About once a year I give Linux a go. I think the problem I’ve had in the past is that I try to “cold turkey” Windows. I’ll be making the swap in the next day or two. 

In order to not go cold turkey and still be able to play games with anti cheat that don’t work on Linux, or DCS which uses a joystick and throttle that the control software won’t work on Linux, or VR gaming.

I want Linux to be my primary OS. Anything that doesn’t work on Linux will be done on Windows. I do record games and stream. I’ve found ways to seemingly get that to work on Linux. 

Am I better off with dual booting or running a Windows VM inside Linux? compute power and CPU cores aren’t an issue. 

[goatedpenguin]

5 minutes ago, IkeaGnome said:

I want Linux to be my primary OS. Anything that doesn’t work on Linux will be done on Windows. I do record games and stream. I’ve found ways to seemingly get that to work on Linux. 

Am I better off with dual booting or running a Windows VM inside Linux? compute power and CPU cores aren’t an issue. 

I see this a lot, what I mean is that you should not think that if your not using Linux your going to be lower than other people who are(Some people who use Linux just install different distros all day and call themselves a "advanced Linux user", they don't have anything to do besides that in their life). Some people use Linux because they need to, others use it because they like to have tinker and have privacy etc. If you find that doing stuff on windows is easier then just use windows and dualboot Linux. That's what I and many others do. I can guarantee you that I can never Use Linux OR Windows as my primary OS for me, they both depend on each other(in my use case ofc)