i miss handwriting input; both english and chinese writing. yes keyboard is faster but time spent writing isn’t that wasted for me, and my posture is better when i used a drawing tablet exclusively instead of mouse and keyboard, also i’ve bullied windows handwriting recognition enough that it’s pretty much chicken scratch input.
eh, i’ve broken my hand enough it hurts to handwrite. chopsticks are fine, but if i have to write more than a page i will type instead.
Where I live now, the kiddos can’t even write the language properly without some sort of keypad or keyboard.
Step one: download bazzite Step two: install Step three: ??? Step four: Fuck windows
I would caution against fucking Windows - you’ll likely end up with a nasty virus
That’s why you use a firewall and open a port to insert your ramdisk
Hey, just because I preach harm reduction, doesn’t mean I’m gonna kink shame
In contrast, Linux won’t stop you if you try to use a command that deletes every file on your PC (“sudo rm -rf /”).
Actually AFAIK it will stop that specific command nowadays. I don’t have a VM handy to test, but without the “–no-preserve-root” flag it should give an error.
(Don’t actually run that command on a machine you care about, I’m only 80% confident.)
Nope, it absolutely won’t let you
could this be based on the distro?
or is it built into the kernel?
It was made default for rm command in 2006.
Goddamn this mf really did hold the gun up to his own head and pulled the trigger just to prove it would go click.
Gotta test the guardrails sometimes…
Maybe he did it in a vm
Nope, I’m on bare metal :)
You are ice cold metal, my friend 🤘
My first night on Linux was rough. Getting all my apps installed and set up was exhausting, especially because I had no experience using the command line. For those who haven’t stared into the dark void of a Linux terminal before, it’s where most system management happens — installing apps, running updates, and the like. It’s an unavoidable part of the Linux experience
Bullshit. And fuck you for
propagatingperpetuating this notion, yet again.Edit: fixed to the correct word.
Depends on your distro. Maybe on Ubuntu or Mint, sure. I’m running EndeavourOS, and it’s terminal or nothing. I’m fine with that, but YMMV.
You dont have to. But honestly its worth the time to get over the fear of the terminal. Understanding how they work and being comfortable using them has many advantages. So many things do not require a bloated GUI application. Like again its not necessary but its a bandaid that I think is worth it to rip off.
I really take issue with the author suggesting that you need to. You do not need to, and it is a myth that needs to go away. Particularly when they said it was “exhausting” installing applications. Linux is miles ahead on that front: you look through a list of what you like, or search for them, and click on the ones you want.
Also for system management, there is no need for the terminal either and the author says “It’s an unavoidable part of the Linux experience”. That one in particular really doesn’t sit well with me.
Now can you? Yes. Should you? Also yes, because it is the easiest way to convey and execute an idea. But you do not have to.
And they fail to mention that windows does this too, for almost every task for system maintenance is done this way: press run+r, now type “whatever -command”.
Anyways a moderately mainstream article and they are going to scare people away over something they did not need to do. Which after a year you would think they would have figured that out.
I agree for the most part. It depends a lot on what distro youre using, what DE, so on. But you can easily get by on gnome without having to use the terminal much if at all.
KDE as well. It is astounding how easy it is to use a modern KDE distro: everything has tips and hints get you to the setting you want. Even mounting shares is just click and mount.
Personally I enjoy typing stuff in the konsole
I came across this the other day but haven’t had a chance to use it. Hopefully this saves someone a lot of time installing programs.
Huh ninite for Linux. That’s neat
I think I’ve booted my windows install maybe two or three times after getting things setup on my Bazzite box, and each time was desperation because I couldn’t get something working on a time crunch (like my microphone no longer working before a telehealth appointment) and most of the time it’s user error (like the audio profile being switched so the mic wasn’t enabled for some reason).
Honestly, the only complaint I have is that periodically flat/snap apps (idr offhand) don’t want to open and I have to reboot a couple times before they do. Can’t say the same for my windows installs…
Why are these mainstream media journalists going out of their way to make Linux work and look harder than it is?You don’t need to open the terminal to install software or configure anything, that’s literally the whole point of every big DE that ships well made GUI apps.He solved his problem by switching off of Ubuntu to Fedora, I think I almost shed a tear lmao
The trick is to learn to absolutely despise Windows before doing the switch, then everytime something breaks on Linux you reminisce about the olden days and decide that typing two or three commands in the terminal isn’t so bad afterall.
The trick is to
dump your personal files into a seperate, non OS hard drive so that if shit hits the bricks, you have a parachute.
Ask me how I know.
I had crashes on Linux because of defective hardware but first thought it was because of software/config/driver issues. I reinstalled the OS, problem persisted. I installed two other completely different distros, problem still there. To make sure it’s not because of Linux in general, I installed Windows…
Damn the installation of Windows (newest image) with updates and only the basic drivers for GPU and mainboard took longer than installing three different Linux distros, and I’m not exaggerating!
Linux: Boot installer, choose to use network installation so you get the newest packages, maybe add or remove some features, choose locales, enter login credentials, files get copied, reboot when finished, done.
Windows: Boot installer, workaround to use local account, installing files, reboot, installing more files, choose locale and login credentials, answer questions about privacy, install more files, reboot, login to Windows, download updates, reboot, download more updates, reboot, open edge (optional: install other browser), visit mainboard manufacturer website, search for correct drivers, install, reboot, visit GPU website, download driver, install, reboot…
And then it’s only the absolute minimum. No debloat or other software installed like office suite or steam which on Linux can selected and installed directly with the OS.
When the day comes that Linux runs all of my games, I will give the dual-boot the boot. :)
The only games that don’t run nowadays I think are the ones that require installing kernel malware so you might reconsider playing them regardless of your OS.
Stop playing games that won’t play on Linux.
Just throw away the money you spent, and the social groups that use those games as hangouts!
Mostly online multiplayer with cheat protections specific only for Windoze.
So far in my friend group it’s just CoD, Destiny…forget the others. I don’t play those but literally every game I do wanna play just works for the last few years. 🤷♂️
Which specific don’t work. Every online multivitamin game I played works. I don’t play COD or those modern “AAA” slops.
That will most likely never happen, so stop lying to yourself.
But remembered to write a shitty article about it
Linux isn’t especially complicated on a daily basis, but you have to be willing to solve your own problems
Who was solving your problems before then?
The entire internet? Whatever problem you had on windows you can just Google it and there’s either a YouTube video, reddit thread, or some obscure forum post that fixes your exact issue by copy and pasting some Powershell commands or a random bat file or GitHub project.
Linux? It’s gotten better, but the community side can get quite toxic or outright ignorant of how to troubleshoot any kind of issues tbh.
Same with Linux. Is there a problem Search it. Someone had that problem before. Shit even basic AI can help you out if you can’t quickly solve the issue.
Yeah, they had the same problem… 13 years ago, and their solution doesnt work on modern OS’s due to package changes and command depreciations.
Thats how about 99% of my internet searches for linux problems end up.
Who was solving your problems before then?
Every tech company in existence, in exchange for all of your privacy and now subscription fee.
For the low low price of all of your money and privacy you can avoid having to figure out how to backup your own files and have a team of developers ensuring that any kind of difficulty that you have will be fixed before you even realize it was a problem.
Once it is ensured that you will never develop those skills you are completely dependent on their services and they can keep jacking up the price.
Hate Netflix’s price increase, or password sharing restrictions? Too bad you spent 8 years not learning how to setup streaming media that you control. Hate listening to ads in order to listen to music? Well, it looks like Spotify doing everything for you has paid off for them.
Everyone has traded their privacy for convenience, if you want your privacy back then you have to give back the convenience and learn to do things for yourselves.
To give the author credit, ignoring the other flaws with windows, most things “just worked” and generally either didn’t have an issue or if it did, fixed it’s own issues. I didn’t really have to resolve any issues or anything. Heck it even fixed itself if it failed to update, rolling back the changes and alerting the user next boot (which I usually just ignored and let fix itself which it generally did after a few days/tries! lol)
My current rig had Windows as the primary OS from 2016 to about 2024, during that time I don’t recall any times I had to actually look up any issues unless I personally created the problem. I think the most extensive issue I had was my 5700xt crashing under high load but that wasn’t something I could fix anyway as it was a driver issue, or when i made the entire system unbootable cause I messed up making a recovery partition
When I swapped back to Linux (Linux Mint at first, then Linux Mint DE, then Debian 12, now Debian 13), I had multiple hurdles from my headset not functioning, to my video card not being supported, no login screen(this surprised me as I had thought Debian was supposed to be stable), etc, these issues didn’t fix themselves, I had to fix them. Granted some were easier to fix (like the no login screen was a super simple edit to a config file), but it wasn’t something I had to deal with on windows.
Linux isn’t going to hold your hand like Windows does with issues. So yea you need to resolve your own issues, Linux isn’t going to do it for you, the most it will do is post a command in the log saying “issue X expected, run this command to fix”
Running windows is like playing with an action figure. You take it out of the box and it does what it’s supposed to. Linux I consider more like a Lego set. Sure you have to put some stuff together before you really play with it, but it’s YOUR creation by the time your done with it and you can modify to suit your use case. If you have no interest in tinkering with ur OS windows or Mac is just a better option, if you want to tailor your experience how you’d like Linux is the way. I run W11 on my gaming PC because I don’t have time to mess with it and experiment anymore. I have played with so many Linux distros but never had one work flawless out of the gate, and always reserved it for my secondary fuck around rigs because if I wanted to fuck around I could but I do want something that i can press the power button and evrything works fine without use of my brain after working a 13 hour day where i might get lucky to play for 40 mins lol. My fuck around time these days is totally sapped by project vehicles and house issues the last think I wanna do is play around in terminal when I have 10k other more important things to do :c
Fully agree. When I mention switching to Linux on the rare occasion it comes up I make sure to mention that you can do basically anything on the platform, but with that customization comes drawbacks. If you are afraid to research an issue then I would not recommend full stop. I also mention not to be afraid of needing to use the terminal if needed. Don’t expect a 1:1 it’ll do most things you can do on Windows, but there will be some things you just can’t
Running windows is like playing with an action figure. You take it out of the box and it does what it’s supposed to. Linux I consider more like a Lego set. Sure you have to put some stuff together before you really play with it, but it’s YOUR creation by the time your done with it and you can modify to suit your use case
I really love this analogy, and plan to steal it for future use.
This is a common misconception I think. “Stable” from a development point of view (which is what Debian is) is not the same as “Stable” from a user point of view. It can be, as long as no other variables are changing. But a typical desktop user IS a variable, and they change other variables all the time. “Stable” makes sense on a server, where the server has a defined role and a specific purpose that basically never changes. It’s “stable” and if the OS is also “stable” that gives you assurance that nothing is going to break unexpectedly… ONCE you have it tested and set up properly to be stable in the first place.
But installing on a fresh system where you’ve never run this OS before is the antithesis of stable. You are initially in an “experimental” state, and you may need the latest updates and patches to even be compatible with the hardware you’re running. Then you’re going to use this system daily, downloading stuff, installing new apps and tools regularly, changing configurations when you feel like it. None of this is stable. And that’s fine, it’s not wrong, it’s just the reality of being a user with a desktop system. It’s not stable, it’s not supposed to be. It’s your daily driver.
To paraphrase George Carlin, a bad driver, driving a safe car doesn’t really make you safe, at all. First, learn to drive THEN get your safe car. A stable distribution like Debian is for people who already know how to find all the compatible-by-default hardware and do the configuration necessary to make things safe and stable and using Debian assures them that once they have got it into that state, Debian isn’t going to undo their work and make unexpected changes.
For users, especially on the desktop, you often want bleeding edge latest updates to fix these kind of compatibility issues as soon as they’re identified, even without absolutely rigorous testing and validation that it won’t mess up someone’s “stable” configuration. You really do want the opposite of “stable” development, in order to make your own system more stable as quickly and reliably as possible in the circumstances. It will never be as stable as Debian running on a server, but that’s normal, and expected. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
Debian is a good OS, but as a desktop user, on your main system, it might be counterproductive. For what it’s worth, I run PikaOS, which is a gaming-focused distro derived from Debian (Debian’s stable foundation is a huge asset for people building distros on top of it) but provides prompt access to all the latest updates and patches needed for gaming and includes configurations and drivers for supporting the latest consumer level hardware and all the common tools and things that power users want, that are becoming popular day by day. This is the opposite of “stable development” but it’s perfect for a desktop system in my opinion and they do a great job.
Yea, I get that. Stable is from the developer POV, my expectation though was that I could at least finish the install process without running into an issue. I didn’t expect that a built in driver would decide to just black screen and the official driver to just not work period(Linux Mint), or that the installer wouldn’t be smart enough to properly configure the X server to allow for a login(Debian 12).
I somewhat expected it of Mint, but for Debian 12 I was pretty surprised to see it. You would think something that was good enough to reach a point where they did a package freeze would be able to at least reach a desktop before showing signs of an issue. But I guess considering that the installer itself crashes if you try to manually partition a server, and then decide to go back in and set up luks in the installer, I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Being said, I have not heard of PikaOs, I might actually look into that one if its a Debian derivative. (and yes before you ask it is exclusively because it contains “Pika” so I think it would be funny to try it 😂)
I just put my desktop on pika, its nice. Maybe a little better performance than stock Debian in games, but i could be imagining things.
I like the bird sounds it uses as system sounds. Drives my dog crazy looking for whats making tge sound.
Haha I just noticed your name, that’s a funny coincidence. But yeah I’m a big fan of Debian in general. The problem, as you noticed, is often it doesn’t have great support for the latest hardware. On the other hand, it often has great support for older hardware, and PikaOS refuses to install at all on some of my older, less capable systems, so those are running Debian right now. So it’s kind of a “right tool for the job” sort of situation. They have their purposes, it’s definitely not one-size-fits-all.
Some random Indian guy on YouTube with a tutorial that somehow perfectly solves your weird issue.
Waiting patiently for commercial software to be ported to Linux:
- creative suites, I think Canva is working on Affinity for Linux but they want to release their iPad version first. Wine is working right now but there are a few things I’m getting tired of (navigating folders and trying to print). I know, Gimp, Inkscape and Krita.
- 3D modeling software for engineers, like solidworks or NX. I’m trying Blender add-ons for CAD but it’s not as capable. Don’t you dare suggest FreeCAD.
- Music production software, esp. Ableton.
I wish I could just go in and use freecad but it just doesn’t make sense to me. the software I’ve tried before I could just go in and make something by winging it but freecad that seems impossible
- Music production software, esp. Ableton.
For what it’s worth, REAPER works great on Linux. Ik it doesn’t fill quite the same niche as Ableton but it is very capable, especially paired with yabridge for using VSTs via WINE.
and if you’re into a tracker-like workflow, renoise works really well on linux (assuming you can set up jack/pipewire properly or undo the horrror upon linux audio servers that is p*lseaudio. i feel this applies to most daws on linux)
Solidworks and NX works on Linux?
i’m just dreaming of a good after effects clone (or port) for linux (preferably open source). left-angle autograph kicked the bucket, and pikimov is just a bit too limited. at least fusion360 can be streamed in a browser now, but freecad seems to be getting quite good as of lately.
i pretty much only use windows at school now for ae/cad work.
Seems like someone posted a update or extension or something for Freecad that changed the interface and made it more familiar. I don’t mind it the way it is, but apparently others like the change. Might be worth searching for.
Don’t you dare suggest FreeCAD.
I have a Hope/Hate relationship with FreeCAD. Sometimes I can get it to do something useful and I get hopeful. Then I try to do something simple and ruin the entire design and have to start from scratch and I curse the developers lineage for all of time. I want it to be great, and it is closer than it has ever been. But it isn’t a replacement for professional design suites.
And drivers too. Yeah, we’ve got the big stuff covered, Intel, AMD, NVidia all release Linux drivers. But peripherals manufacturers mostly target Windows, maybe macOS, but leave Linux drivers to be developed by the community.
Install Linux Problem Solved.
Linux can be intimidating. And there is going to be a learning curve. Especially if you’re the kind of windows user who’s familiar with gpedit and has custom .bat files.
But what get’s left out is the joy and satisfaction that comes with learning how to Linux. I just re-installed my OS a week ago, and I was able to recognize and resolve dependency and permissions issues without having to look anything up. I also finally learned and started using rsync for backups over SSH/SAMBA. I know it’s not much, but it made me feel like a real hackerman.
The only thing I learned in my last few years of Windows was how to disable features that annoyed me.
I would think someone who is taking advantage of bat files would feel right at home with shell scripts in Linux. In my experience, shell was much easier to pick up than batch
Batch is probably the same, but what always made me laugh about shell scripts is you could ask a bunch of people how to do something, and they’d all have a different way, it’s like there’s always a new tool to learn and try to fit into your workflow if you want, I love it
I think I agree with this. I believe that if you are heavily into group policy or a centralized registry it would be a harder conversion. But you can even “hack” bat files to work for both Linux and Windows depending on what launches it. I had to do that with a testing bot that I sometimes ran on windows, sometimes ran on Linux. It involves abusing the label system on bat (which translates to a command true which accepts no arguments on sh). Granted you are still writing both files but, using this method you can have the windows version of it on the same page as the bash version so you can go line by line instead of having a second file open
i was that person. i had custom windows isos to remove the bloatware and tweak it to my liking.
its frustrating as fuck at first because linux does some things completely differently, it a way that does look weird as hell for power-windows people. i banged my head at it for a couple of years before i had that level of comfort again.
but once you get the hang of it oh boy. it’s a blast and you ask yourself why you didn’t do this sooner. it truly changed computers for me and renewed my love for them, who would have thought computers can be so awesome when they aren’t enshittified.
I switched months ago after some full screen pop up for Windows 11 took over my whole screen in the middle of me doing stuff. In a blind rage, i plugged my usb in and downloaded Pop. Did a full clean install and never looked back. There have been some hiccups, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed right away.
