Linux

I mean a lot of them are ok but it depends on what you are doing. Gimp can make memes but if you learned Adobe you are going to struggle.

I think half of it is people doing want to learn something new and half of it is that the tools are behind

More generally - stop expecting every program to have an alternative. Sometimes there's just the one thing that does what you want.

I lost functionality when I moved from Ubuntu to Windows 7 circa 2010, and I lost functionality when I moved from Windows 7 to Mint circa 2020.

Agreed, but sometimes a compromise for a not as good alternative is sufficient depending on the task.

I don't think that myth exists. If you thought that before trying Linux, where did you get that idea?

Furthermore, a CLI instruction is DE-agnostic. So you don't need to cover the same topic with explanations for at least 3/4 desktop environments. GUI instructions also change a lot faster than their CLI counterparts; so by providing the commands one provides the method with the best longevity. Overall, it's just so much more efficient.

Exactly, I switched to Linux mint a year ago and I've used the terminal like... twice lol.

Yeah, a single sudo mv command can easily be several steps in a GUI, possibly error prone too. Because if you do it in the GUI you have to navigate all the way to where the source file is, cut it, navigate to where it needs to go, paste it there. Or you can paste the command in a terminal, done in 0.1 seconds.

If I want some information from someone, I can cook a big oneliner to copy paste that will give me exactly the information I want instead of needing a dozen screenshots all coming from different places and programs.

As long as you can trust the person feeding you the commands, I can get just about anything working on your computer effortlessly.

Maybe it's changing now with Windows 10/11, but I think historically Windows has had just as difficult learning curve as Linux. People who have complained about Linux being more difficult than Windows just thought so because they had already spent years learning how to deal with Windows, while if they switched to Linux they would have to learn new things. If someone who has used MacOS 100% of their life were to begin using either Windows or Linux then I don't think there would be much difference in difficulty.

I've come across plenty of bugs and usability issues in Windows, and despite having 10+ years experience with the OS I sometimes found them very difficult to solve, often requiring copy-pasting cryptic texts into the command prompt and/or regedit. I also think troubleshooting on Windows is made worse thanks to them writing witty things like "oops, something went wrong!" instead of actually giving you a useful error message, some many issues are of course unfixable due to its proprietary nature. At best you get an error code which you can look up online, but the OS is not made to be debugged by the user.

In the past Microsoft had really good support which you chat with, but the last time Windows refused to authenticate after an upgrade all the human support appears to have been replaced by automated troubleshooters. It got stuck in an endless loop of "run local troubleshooter" -> "you should try rebooting" -> "run online troubleshooter" -> "you should try rebooting" -> "back to the local troubleshooter again". At work I still have a help-desk I can call with people who have taken countless hours of Microsoft trainings to get certifications.

just so I wasn’t choosing between 100% and 200% scaling. That’s just beyond the average computer user.

So if I understood you right, Fedora lets you choose either 100% or 200% scaling but you wanted more options than that? I.e. you wanted to overcome a limitation of the OS, rather than having to fix something which was broken? I don't think the average computer user could do something similar in Windows. For example when I got my work computer with Windows 11, AFAIK there was no option to only show the task bar on one monitor, so it was always visible and taking space on all monitors. IIRC Microsoft added this feature last year, but I think it would've been extremely difficult for the average user to find a way to find a way to do it before that.

Guesstimating 99% of the Windows users I know would just accept that kind of thing like "it's annoying, but this is how computers are". I have friends, family members and coworkers who use Windows, and I've found them all to be extremely forgiving towards computer issues.

I wish people could stop trying to teach everyone that Linux isn’t the OS

Over my dead body!

Noob here. What do you mean Linux isn't the OS?

Secondly, I wish people could stop trying to teach everyone that Linux isn’t the OS. Anyone that cares already knows, and anyone that doesn’t know doesn’t care.

Ironically, the people who need to hear this don't care.

It's 100% stallman trying to coat-tails Linus.

What I've learned in 30 years of using Linux is the gnu/Linux distinction only matters to the kind of whacko I can't work with. It's a great mineshaft canary to let me know whom not to invest any time in.

Actually, Linux is just the kernel, not the whole OS. The full operating system is called GNU/Linux because it combines the Linux kernel with GNU tools. Teaching people about GNU and why it was made is important. It’s not just about using software but understanding the freedoms behind it – the freedom to use, study, modify, and share. Free Software is about more than just open-source, it's about user freedom, and that's a crucial distinction. Now, I'm not forcing you to say GNU/Linux, I say Linux most of the time myself, but you should still teach people about GNU.

Some GUI package applications use the store metaphor. Pop! OS uses Pop Shop currently and will use COSMIC Store in 24.04 without transactions being involved.

After several years of using Linux for work and school, I made the leap to daily driving linux on my personal computer. I stuck with it for two years. Hundreds of hours I sunk into an endless stream of inane troubleshooting. Linux preys on my desire to fix stuff and my insane belief that just one more change, suggested by just one more obscure forum post will fix the issue.

If the user sees the following

Linux Is Only Free if You Don’t Value Your Time

one must immediately counter with

Windows Is Only Free if You Don't Value Your Privacy

The Windows user will immediately disintegrate if performed optimally

How were you able to do this?

The cynic in me says maybe your coworker was just taking their time

I would argue that NixOS absolutely is the OS you get if your time is worthless, but not every distro is the same. I'd argue that if you need something that doesn't have so many issues a stabler or easier to use distro (Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Linux Mint, and even Fedora or openSUSE) is going to be a better option than trying to bend specifically NixOS to do what you want.

I personally use a mix of Pop, Debian, and Fedora, not because they're particularly powerful, but because they tend to be more straightforward for what I want to do than NixOS, Gentoo, or Arch. I don't mind tinkering, but for my main machines I don't want to tinker much.

Edit: I should clarify that there are plenty of reasonable uses of Windows and I don't fault anyone for using it especially if their familiarity is keeping them from understanding Linux as well as they want to. But I also would make the case that there are a lot of distros out there.

I have used a lot of different distros and I never had dependency problems whether on Linux mint, Debian, open side or fedora. And yes, this can be a problem, especially on distros like Manjaro, but you still can use flatpaks/appimages/snaps and don’t deal with dependencies at all. NixOS and all rolling release distros can be great but they are not meant for people who are not ready to troubleshoot their system at any time. If you stick with a more stable distro like Debian you will most likely get a more reliable system then with windows.

Why does your brother use NixOS in the first place?

Don't get me wrong; I think NixOS is a very interesting project with a very bright future. It probably wouldn't be an exaggeration if I said that NixOS has single-handedly inspired the current immutable revolution. However, it's also a distro that wants you to learn and digest its ways before it will return the favor.

But, based on my reading/understanding of your comment, your brother doesn't strike me as a seasoned Linux user. Am I right? Btw, NixOS is hard unbeknownst of how many experiences you got with other distros. However, I would simply never recommend a new user to use (Gentoo, Guix System or) NixOS. There are definitely outliers, but they would have to find it themselves then.

i dunno ubuntu has been plug and play for my work, and it gets much less in my way.