Linux friction is “unpredictable” but windows friction isn’t, because you have a lot of windows experience and not much in Linux. I don’t think you’d feel the same after a few months of Linux.
I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
11–20 of 229 posts
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#12The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence. This was with the install on a fast SSD. I tried a whole bunch of things and never figured out what the issue was. Then, one day, it just....went away. I'm not trying to make much of a point other than that: anecdotes aren't…
Seriously! On my windows desktop, I have to let the computer sit a minute after booting before i touch the keyboard otherwise it completely wigs out and becomes partially unresponsive due to some weird issue with the AMD chipset drivers. I can see my mouse move, i can move windows around, but nothing responds to clicks and i can't open anything.
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#13I always see the same when someone says things like this in any article, video or comment. There will be like 20 replies saying that it's because they chose the wrong linux distro. And of course each of those 20 will recommend a different one! Sometimes distros that I had never even heard about before...
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#14I've never experienced what the writer has, and it would be interesting to know more about their system setup to diagnose the alleged network slowness. Package manager is a network app, so it sounds to me like there is something strange going on system-wide. Perhaps the writer has a new-enough network card from a vendor that doesn't have driver support?
FWIW I am essentially full-time Linux on all my devices for the first time in my 20 years since first using it (Ubuntu 6.06). The only issue I had is with a wifi card that is a brand-new spec without Linux support - I happened to have another wifi card that has a more open chipset that is also wifi7 that works great.
Here's my quick intro to anyone interested in running a Linux machine for gaming and everyday use.
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#15"I've been distro-hopping for probably twenty years. Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Arch, and most recently Fedora with KDE Plasma."
Missing : good old debian :)
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#16I empathize with the frustrations with Linux, and I certainly used to have them. But about 5 years ago I just... stopped having any issues at all. I switched to Debian around then, which may or may not fully explain the improvement. Point is, I've barely thought about or actively maintained or troubleshooted my operating system for several years now.
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#17There are much more annoying defaults in windows that are unmentioned, for instance the autoupdate automatic restarts.
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#18[dead]
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#19Is this AI generated? The “two things broke” reasons are just so laughably bad in a real world context yet strangely vague.
Re: I love Linux, but I can't quit Windows
#20My experience too: "Linux friction is unpredictable. The update tool freezing for no reason. System-wide slowdown I can't diagnose. Notifications telling me too many programs are listening for file changes and asking me to decide whether to increase the limit (a decision I don't understand why I'm being asked to make)."
I'm not a windows user anymore, haven't been for a decade or so, but it wasn't until a couple months that I finished the switch when I moved from windows to bazzite in my gaming rig.
Which is why this statement is surprising. Not because I disagree with it, Linux friction is indeed unpredictable even for those of us that customized our own installation ad infinitum and know intimately the architecture of the system.
It's because friction in windows is even more unpredictable, at least with the limited interaction I had with it recently. Peripherals will disconnect randomly and removing them in order to reconnect fails. You still have to use decades old interface like regedit end device manager often to fix those issues. Random update reboots, updates that fail without useful logs, only generic error codes. And the whole culture of downloading and installing execs is the worst if all. There is the windows store, which is terrible, and chocolatey which is nice, and they aren't a full replacement for going online and downloading random binary blobs, which is a huge source of unpredictability, because suddenly every software needs to implement their own private supply chain to deliver their updates.
So all in all Linux has less friction than windows. It breaks down with updates, you go online and can usually find resources to help you fix it. Windows breaks down and it usually takes someone inside to acknowledge the problem, fix it and release in the next update, because there are some classes of problems that just aren't fixable in windows, and those that are will usually take you through a journey into the system registry that, if you asked me, didn't age too nicely.