Linux

Weird way to say spend hours fixing something that just randomly borked your PC.

by work, I meant actual work, and not fixing something.
Last time I fixed something was a few weeks ago. It was MPV needing an update(which was totally my fault, as I often forget to do updates) as a yt-dlp script wasn't working.

As for something breaking, my experience has been the opposite. Probably because I don't own any newest hardware and don't do much gaming, or any other stuff that might require some proprietary service for optimal functioning.

Also, my experience with the community has been excellent so far. Even my basic questions(e.g.: dual boot) were answered promptly and nicely by the community(I mostly use #linux on IRC, or distro-specific forums like linux mint forum).

I'd suggest you to give GNU/Linux one more try. Probably try out something like Nobara if you're into games. Or maybe Linux mint if you want it to just work.

Maybe you just weren't lucky the first time.

And don't worry about fake internet points. They mean nothing.

The only times I've "broken" something it's because I did dumb shit lol. I've heard tell of it happening but usually not on something like Debian LTS, usually arch. Also, if you're looking for a GUI solution that doesn't exist, yes, people will often say "use the terminal" and unless you said "no terminal" they usually say "try this command.." with it. I've only had one dude be an insufferable prick about it in all my time on linux, and it got him (CHEFKOCH) banned from c/linux like 2y ago. I'm not gonna downvote you for being wrong, but you are at least outdated in your info.

Yep, this has been my experience too.

People shit on windows, but it was easy to navigate, and generally made an effort to keep you from breaking it and you pretty much never had to enter a command line for anything as an average user.

Linux troubleshooting, especially for new people, is going to become a much bigger problem as time goes on because any searched solution basically boils down to copy and pasting stuff into terminal and hoping its 1)still relevant and 2) doesnt break everything worse. Which is probably why so many immutable distros have popped up, to give that windows level of protection.

As for hostility? Its still there, in pockets. Not so much on lemmy from what i've seen, but it still exists elsewhere.. but it is significantly better overall than it was 10+ years ago, where questions about problems were seemingly treated as insults against the prophet and were responded to with great aggression, and often racist undertones.

Amen to that.

A lot of Linux users have forgotten how tech-savvy they are even compared to the average power user. Saying "Linux just works" shows just how tone deaf they are.

As someone who didnt know anything about file systems besides FAT32 and NTFS, and as someone who isn't comfortable using command line, trying to switch to Linux was horrible. On windows something might not work they way you want it to, but it does kinda work. On Linux I felt like I had to fight every step of the way to do simple tasks.

Its like buying a car - I'm not a gearhead, I just want something that gets me around when I put petrol in. I want to drive it off the lot, even if there are a few maddening features like the cup holder being in the wrong place. I don't want to have to choose the right wheels and assemble them, I don't want to have to buy seats and install them, and I don't want to stop every other day to figure out why something isn't working.

Maybe I’m the minority, but I’ve never really broken my Linux. Sure, it’s NixOS, so it’s a little more stable than many other distros, but still, I have a much better time with it than I do with Windows

Weird esoteric issues happen on Windows too. I had a bug where I couldn’t create a new folder from Windows Explorer, which I never figured out and didn’t resolve itself with reboots or even Windows updates. I probably could have spent a half day tracking it down and fixing it, but someone less tech savvy would probably have had to reinstall Windows. Instead I just popped a terminal and used mkdir whenever I needed a new folder until I upgraded to Windows 11 and that resolved it.

Point is, computers just suck sometimes regardless of what software they run. Or I’m just a magnet for ridiculous arcane bugs, you decide.

This might come across as Linux fanboyism but I currently have Linux, Windows, macOS, iPadOS, Android, and FreeBSD all running on various devices around my house and they all suck in their own unique ways.

every distro I install I am eventually greeted with something just completely breaking for no reason whatsoever

This happens on Windows too and the fixes you have to apply aren't less esoteric.

For example: User complains that Spyder won't start on her brand-new laptop. Installation seems perfectly fine, nothing wrong there, no corruption or obvious missing bits. Dig around in the Windows log files, find some fairly generic error. Do a bit of googling, eventually decide to just search Github for issues mentioning Spyder not loading. Turns out the laptop is just too new and the AMD graphics driver Windows installs on its own has issues with the IGPU. So replacing that with newer the version AMD distributes fixes it.

Or, with Windows 11, if you want the start menu on the left and the Explorer context menu usable: Sure, just open powershell and run these commands to create new, weird registry keys to force it, btw these are not supported by Microsoft, you're on your own.

I'd rather choose the OS that doesn't have the audacity to charge money and then blast me with ads in the start menu.

This happend to me a lot 10-15 years ago but since then has never again happened to me. With the noteable exception of Arch Linux which does tell you to read update notes though.

Same, does it work? If it means booting into a DE and being able to move your mouse and type on your keyboard, sure most distros can do that.

It’s those little gotchas everywhere that gets you. Enabling video acceleration on Nvidia in firefox? Getting LDAC to work on Bluetooth? Etc. etc.

Do most distros work? Yeah, only if you don’t mind software encoding, or compiling from some user-provided repos.

I have a few hobby boxes running all flavours of distros, but whenever I need something to just work with no caveats, I go back to w11.