You see, hexbear has been moving towards :tux: for quite a while now and it's scaring the :LIB:s and the :fedposting:s so expect a lot of anti-Linux posting and just nod your head and don't engage :penguin-dance:
Linux is easy to learn and anyone who says otherwise is being purposefully antagonistic.
I've given linux to some fairly low tech people and they just picked it up like it was nothing. My grandpa even learned how to install games from the software center without even asking me how.
If you're able to track down cryptic windows error messages and fix that black box, doing almost anything on linux is easy as shit and anyone who claims instability hasn't gotten past the initial install and configuration setup.
My desktop will bluescreen once a week on windows with a unique error message every time but Linux doesn't give a fuck. My arch install will go 6 months without an update and then upgrade just fine and continue with life. Ubuntu is slow but its on an abused spinning disk so who can blame it, still plays games.
Both distros discovered my scarlette interface and use it no problem while windows needed drivers. Same deal with my wifi/bluetooth card. Windows needed me to break out my 100ft ethernet cable while linux was like "cool dude this shit is new, I can use it."
edit: :sicko-hexbear:
And yes, each time I do this, I give them a clonezilla’d USB stick (created after getting the drivers sorted out) for quicker recovery next time. And each time they lose the USB stick in the intervening time. Sigh.
If you're doing it so often have you considered just keeping the USB yourself.
90% of the time a basic Ubuntu install doesn't need any configuration unless you're throwing it on a machine with weird hardware. Any dell, HP, or lenovo from the last 10 years that doesn't do wacky tablet things will load Ubuntu problem free.
the 10% of the time is when you get a weird machine, or its 15 years ago and lid-close suspend doesn't work.
Post install setup is needed for windows too, graphics drivers, wireless drivers, etc.
Okay I'm already trolling but this reads like a 4chan linux hate thread.
I've had some real fights with linux in the past but I get my self in trouble on purpose, I've never experienced things like this.
I'm really curious what machine/device combo you're running that could cause you so much pain.
The last time I experienced something like this was in 2009 when Ubuntu was still orange using a wifi dongle from 2005 and a machine from 2003.
Huh. Typically if I'm buying a wireless adapter, I'll quickly google "<adapter model> linux" and if i see bad things I pick another. I've only bought two adapters in the last decade though, one a pci model for like 40 bucks.
I mean it is very fair to want to try it out on what you have, and I'm sorry you had some pain in the ass hardware.
if you want ones that don't require "binary blobs" to work, atheros chips are the ones to look for.
How to install wireless drivers in Linux:
In my experience it is as simple as plug in USB, that's it. Make sure you're buying a compatible USB device and it's plug and play. Non-windows compatible devices are also not plug and plug on windows, that's how it works.
Who care, you're obviously mad about it so don't bother I guess, my bad for engaging on the subject.
Having installed Windows on a family member's machine somewhat recently I can guarantee that Ubuntu installs quicker and easier than Windows does, no contest.
Sucks to have hardware that isn't compatible, luck of the draw I guess.
I guess I don't buy new hardware enough that it's a concern more than once a year at most, maybe if you're buying stuff all the time it's too much to worry about.
I’ve given linux to some fairly low tech people and they just picked it up like it was nothing. My grandpa even learned how to install games from the software center without even asking me how.
I'm sorry but this is not the average experience. Nothing anti Linux, but my grandparents can't even figure out how a bloody iPhone worked
I don't know why they'd be more likely to understand Windows, then. If you don't get computers at all, how would you know the difference?
I installed Ubuntu on my grandmas computer a decade ago and she barely noticed, I just got fewer obscure tech support requests from her. My theory is that Boomer types might struggle but the greatest gen never got comfortable enough with computers to have a significantly harder time with major changes like a new OS
Same thing with my grandpa. I showed him where to click for the internet, where to click for solitaire, and where to click to find files and he figured the rest out.
Think it really depends on the distro. Some are more arcane then others. Some may even be better for boomers since they preserve older design conventions and may be more familiar
Some Snoonet libertarian who uses OpenRC because Systemd was created by a bunch of SJWs at Fedora getting shit on by an oldtimer who has been dealing with shell script init systems since SunOS in the 80s and ditched them the moment it was viable.
Not to throw shade at OpenRC. Just the wierdos who flocked to Gentoo like moths to a flame after every other distro embraced systemd. Fortunately, these folks have mostly been beaten down within the community.
not my experience at all, literally never had a windows pc crash or have driver update problems, all my linux using friends are constantly having to deal with incompatibility or crashing. from my experience as the family/friend tech support, i genuinely think most pc problems in general are user error, on any operating system. i literally dont know how you can be getting a bsod per week, ibe seen maybe one in my entire life. and that was a hardware failure. i get an error maybe once a year or less. on a related note i switched to waterfox based on this comms suggestion and it crashes constantly, and cant even load youtube videos most times. never ever had chrome or edge crash.
edit: and to borrow your rhetorical trick, anyone who says otherwise must be intentionally misleading you.
I think it is hardware failure tbh. Machine is from 2014, ram doesn't match either.
My windows install is just a basic W10 edu license with various steam/epic games and a few ides for embedded stuff installed. Nothing crazy, no viruses. It just likes to shit the bed.
Conversely, I don't think ubuntu/arch notices or cares and will just carry on for weeks on end.
idk what an ide is but i just use the free w10 install and leave the activate windows text on to piss off ol bill hates. i did build all my pcs myself instead of using prebuilts or laptops, which may have helped. id be sus of an edu license honestly if its through school, in my experience school tech support barely knows what theyre doing at best and is filling it full of spyware at worst.
I called the Microsoft support line and played dumb, like I didn't understand why windows wouldn't activate. When they asked for my key, I gave them a random windows 7 key off the internet, and they gave me a free windows 10 key. It only took like five minutes.
Its not through a school account really, I just kept the license key after I graduated and tried it out when I upgraded from my previous windows install (W8.1 embedded)
Its basically a bit better than home and a bit worse than professional I think.
My arch install will go 6 months without an update and then upgrade just fine and continue with life.
Teach me your ways. I feel like everytime I upgrade my Ubuntu server, some random dependency gets broken.
Ubuntu breaks harder than arch for me usually. No clue what it is. Typically if arch breaks, the issue will be on the front page of arch.org and fixed almost right away. most issues clear up in under 5 minutes.
When Ubuntu breaks it tends to break harder and be more annoying to fix for some reason, in my experience its because the packages on the repos are too stable and so it takes a while for a fix to hit downstream.
the packages on the repos are too stable and so it takes a while for a fix to hit downstream.
That's a really good point. I often find myself having to add some random non-official repo just to get the correct version of some dependency, then a couple of years down the line that repo gets quietly deprecated and I have to scramble to figure out what's going on.
Thats why I really like the more user friendly arch based distros. Installing from scratch has gotten a lot easier than when i first did it, and after my first real arch install I just used antergos until that project closed. Now that the install is easier, I just DIY it but like I said, my installs last a while.
My laptops install is still antergos from 2016, my desktop was fresh 2 years ago when I bought an ssd, and I threw it on a chromebook after chromeos support dropped.
I typically use ubuntu if A: trying to match compatibility with coworkers, or B: want to do Linux gaming without reading a wiki for an hour, or C: its plugged into the TV for streaming stuff.
I love arch for dev tasks but bare arch can be annoying if you set it up 2 years ago and relied on Ethernet then, and now wonder why you have zero wifi related packages. That was a half lie about my wifi card, I did need to install packages on arch but no drivers. Ubuntu was literally out of the box.
Generally though, Arch is very reliable just because it only has what you installed. If you use care and like semi minimal installs it will last forever if you update every few months. It gets complicated when you add tons of stuff without the will to manage it. The AUR is great for weird packages too, you don't have to manually manage tarball installs and random debs.
To be fair, anything a normal user would do in a terminal on Linux, a Windows user would do by picking through ten layers of inconsistently themed control panel dialogs, or opening one of the truly cursed tools like the registry editor or mmc.
First thing I do now on any windows machine is enabling WSL. I never want to use cmd again if I can possibly avoid it.
What were you doing that required the terminal? Linux has come a long way if you haven't tried in a while... I haven't really needed to open the terminal in a few years for anything that isn't quicker in terminal - for me that's stuff like dig, editing hosts, pinging, etc. Otherwise it's not necessary for the average user installing/using a daily driver OS like Ubuntu or any of its related projects.
You got unlucky with hardware, that sucks. For plenty of off-the-shelf hardware it is as simple as plug and play. No doubt it can be annoying to have to make extra sure whatever you're buying is compatible (and abuse the shit out of return policies if it isn't) but this is a minor hurdle we can thank MS and Apple for.
linux is absolutely more than a hobbyist thing, maybe not on the desktop but the vast majority of internet infrastructure, embedded devices, and mobile phones (Android) run on some flavor of the linux kernel
pretending it was something that could ever be more than a hobbyist thing.
I have literally used linux exclusively for over a decade, my mother in her late 60s uses linux on her desktop. It is not just a hobbyist thing. Your experience sucked, it does not represent the totality of the linux experience.
It will continue to be for hobbyists and people who want it while being ignored by the rest of society. I
It literally runs the internet and most anything else that needs to work reliably. You can buy brand new computers, both desktops and laptops, with Linux, from the manufacturer. You're just wrong. You're mad at linux because it didn't work for you. What was the cost? Nothing? Move on, then.
imagine your computer with the mouse unplugged and no 3D rendered shadow corners
why would i want a pc with almost no user interface lol, human like picture
How is telling your computer what to do by typing words less user interface than clicking buttons?
a GUI can display all relevant options for quick and easy use instead of relying on memorizing command line phrases and syntax. humans are generally good at reacting to visual stimuli, and generally worse at memorizing abstract symbols or computer file structures that may not even be displayed. It takes most people years of classes or practice just to be able to type normal english quickly and accurately, let alone computer commands, while just about anyone can click on a thing or guess what the trash can icon means.
Even in windows, the fastest way to open a specific program is windows key + type the name, instead of poking through menus. Text entry is pretty handy and fast.
the ideal user interface has both to some degree imo, but i pretty exclusively use desktop icons or the start menu. but i'm also not speedrunning my OS.
That's the thing, Linux doesn't make you use the terminal these days unless you want to. Much like Windows, you're welcome to just use menus and icons.
im fully aware of all the super special versions of linux that all have their own UI designs. but every time i've seen a linux pc in person its been terminal only.
Terminal-only machines are usually not meant to be used directly, they're servers. Try a modern linux desktop, it's better than Windows in many ways including the UI.
it was a friends pc with arch linux i think, they just dual boot windows for games and non-programming stuff. again, i'm fully aware of all the different UIs out there, but i have had no issues with my current setup in terms of UI or function and have no intent of changing until it stops working. i really don't understand how people have so many issues with windows, ive used nothing but windows for decades with barely a handful of problems ever between all versions combined. I haven't heard of anything useful (to me, in a subjective sense) i can do with linux that i can't with windows. meanwhile everyone i know that uses linux has constant problems, whenever we hang out for pc gaming stuff they spend half the time trying to get their computers working while mine just turns on and works every time. i'll admit i don't do much but browse and game and do occasional digital art, and my friends are probably doing weird programmer stuff to mess with their PCs for fun. but like people complain about windows driver updates all the time, i've never had a single error or problem. people complain about constant BSOD, i've never seen it in over a decade across several desktops. and here every day theres some post thats like "USE LINUX OR UR A LIB (who this site believes are mostly indistinguishable from fash)" or something? like this OP is a 'joke' but its 'jokingly' fed-jacketing (or worse, lib-jacketing!) people for using windows or for getting annoyed at instigating, petty bait posts.
lib is a meme in this community, I'm not fed jacketing the entire community for example when I say I am the one true leftist and you are all :LIB: i am memeing
https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
Here's a big list of the most popular desktop Linux distributions "versions"
How many do you see that are "terminal only"?
99% of the time the terminal is interacted with in a window in a graphical desktop, chosen over the existing graphical tools because it's faster and easier.
Wait didn't you just tell us you don't know what a terminal is? 🤨
A TUI or CLI is just as much of a UI as a GUI.
Sure a GUI is more approachable but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better. There are uncountable things you can do with the terminal that aren't possible with GUI on any OS. Most of the time people interact with the terminal via a terminal emulator, a window on your graphical desktop where you can use terminal applications. People choose to use the terminal because often it's the best tool. If you want a list of everything a program can do you can run(program) -horman (program)You can easily get away without using the terminal at all in linux and have feature parity, or by simply copy-pasting a line into the terminal occasionally without really understanding what it does.
for like 90% of people a command line interface is borderline unuseable. i'm sure there are specific tasks a TUI is more suited for. but' a list of all options' is much less navigable than a well designed GUI menu with visual cues imo. ive used pcs for over a decade and have literally never even opened up the CMD line. i know versions of linux have GUIs i'm being slightly facetious because internet reward hot take.
why would i want a pc with almost no user interface lol, human like picture
You asked why you would want a terminal and I told you. It also has a lot of features that make it far more user friendly than you might think.
Much less navigable
That's a matter of perspective. An airplane is hard to fly to you and me because there are thousands of buttons but a trained pilot would have difficulty trying to use an Xbox controller to fly a commercial airline. Having a learning curve is only one aspect of navigablity and in fact the most efficient interface is rarely the one that your grandma would be able to pick up and use with no effort.
I'm obviously joking!
It's true though that I haven't been engaging with the anti-Linux posting for a while now but that's because I'm satisfied with what we have achieved :)
Unironically all the the Linux posting got to me about a month ago and I've never looked back. It's been nothing but a positive experience so far.
Linux can take some setting up to get it up and running sure, and that can be a pain sometimes. But once you get everything set up it's just as easy as Windows to use, more pleasant, and it's free and open source, which is as close to communism as we can get in our capitalist hellscape.
Windows costs a $100 or more if you want to have any control over your machine, is bloated and hostile to its users, and is made by a shitty corporation that's monopolized the whole computing industry and made computing worse for everyone with its anti-competitive business practices.
As far as I'm concerned running Linux is praxis, and people who are so resistant to trying it out are either lazy or reactionary.
They did already. It's called proton. They even (had to) released the code: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton
The only games it doesn't work with are some games with anticheat, as the anticheat detects you're using Proton/Wine and stops the game.
Proton is pretty sweet and tons of stuff just works out of the box. I barely check compatibility anymore.
Over 90% of my steam library works on Linux with zero tweaking. Getting pirated games to work requires a little know how but I can still get most of them running.
I tried switching to Linux and frankly, I loved it. But, unfortunately, I need to use Google Drive because of our work and none of the third party alternatives worked well enough. I felt disgusting when I reinstalled Windows :doomjak:
I tried Vgrive, which mostly worked, just not well enough for my purposes
When will everyone be freed from the shackles of proprietary shit! Spread the word, comrade! :libretion:
With all the windows and Linux hate going on, I propose the Centrist Solution. Let's make a Hexbear OS
Centrism as an ideology isn't real, you'll have to build on top of Linux :cool-bean:
Let’s design it so that it only runs on old Soviet hardware from the 80s :sicko-hexbear:
