I’m an educator, and my Windows PC crashed during my first period class.
I had a cinnamon mint USB drive in my bag. I booted to it, and it saved the day!
I don’t have anybody to tell just how much of a godsend that was, but I figured you guys might appreciate it!
As someone who is only starting to delve into Linux recently I must admit it’s not as great as you guys make it all seem. Maybe I’m just having lots of issues cause I missed some wiki or chose the wrong distro or something
My experience with Linux:
Step 1) wow, that was surprisingly easy to install and get set up. This is working great!
Step 2) God dammnit, another small little thing I want to change and have no idea how to do without a half hour of research. Maybe I should just go back to Windows.
Step 3) [Logging into windows after having used Linux for a couple weeks] Holy fucking shit Windows is a nightmare. I forgot how much the OS hates me, wants to control and resit everything I do, and how much of its bullshit I need to disable in roundabout ways. Back to Linux! I’ll learn it over time.
The best way to make the final move and be happy in the end is a slow one, IMO.
I have two PCs. One is still windows but I do plan on moving it to Linux when I get more experience. The other pc is my old one that I put Linux on recently to try and get more used to it. I just don’t have much time/desire to tinker with it, I just want something that works. I have enough things to tinker with already. At some point I’ll make the jump but I think I need to try another distro maybe
What problems are you seeing? To avoid getting your hopes up, this question is more about curiosity about what problems some users moving to Linux still face rather than volunteering tech support, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you get some suggestions to solve your problems anyways.
I feel you. I also don’t find the idea of tinkering with my PC all the time very pleasing, especially since I’ve got family. I picked openSUSE for the start and I’m happy with it after like 5 years? It’s a bit “boring” diatro, isn’t as hyped as Arch nor as rock solid as Debian, but it just works and I went it with because of snapper which is a lifesaver.
Its because we have gained experience from using it for a while, and we forget the annoyances we had in the beginning. :)
Hang in there and you will feel the same.
I don’t get this at all. im in IT but im an old guy who does not have the patience for mucking about. If you can install windows on a machine then you can install linux and zorin installed and ran and did not really need anything special. Then since it comes with so much out of the box pre installed software I would call it a bit easier than windows. more akin to a mac.
I’ve never even heard of zorin until now. That’s part of the issue. Even just deciding on a distro was a whole topic to research and I just don’t have the time since I work 6 days a week. I just want something that works and I thought Debian Trixie would have been that but it’s more work than I anticipated.
Yeah there’s a tendency to not get that some of us are interested in Linux but prioritize boring. I’m using nobara (a gaming focused fork of fedora) and am loving how boring it is. It just works.
yeah there is sorta an issue I see in a lot of these types of things. You get people asking how a newb should get into something and people have these strange biases. I think in some cases its the folks that can’t understand that people don’t understand everything they understand. Or its just a particular religious like ferver around a philosophy. Like with biking you get folk who hate bike lanes and insist all biker should aggressively take the lane. I think I had another example of a group but it escapes me now. Anyway I do see a lot of folks pushing like arch and saying its way easy. I mean it is not as bad as it used to be but they don’t get that someone wants to install and it to work without doing a single solitary additional thing. Zorin actually gets hate because it has a paid for version with support along with a community edition. I don’t get that as its actually the oss model for making money and is how red hat got going. You don’t really buy the software you buy support. Some see ubuntu and its respins in general as a sell out maybe because you can opt to have the non open source video drivers from nvidia. Anyway they do a disservice by pushing things that are not really set it and forget it. Like im doing bazzite now and if somone asks for a system that is good with gaming I will mention it but assume a gamer is willing to go to a bit greater lengths. The install requires you to get an iso particular to your hardware. Mainly video card. So its like one extra step and not quite as easy as installing windows. Some folks seem to not like it because steam is intalled by default which means it has proton which is why its great out of the box for gaming.
What kinds of issues have you had? I haven’t had a single problem since switching a couple years ago. Sometimes there are driver issues with specific hardware.
Yesterday I downloaded a mod manager for Valheim and it opened to a blank screen so I had to google around and find out I need to set an environment variable. Then how to do that via terminal but I also wanted a way to automate it and so I found out about .bashrc and alias. And there’s probably easier or better ways but like half the crap I find online feels like I’m trying to decipher another language and/or its a 15 year old post so idk if it’s even valid anymore.
I play Valheim on Linux and have hosted a server before.
Easiest way is just to use R2 Mod Manager. It’s available for Linux too. You just launch the game through it instead of Steam / wherever you launch it. I use PikaOS now which is based on Debian but had Bazzite in the past and it worked there too.
You do have to tell it where Steam / the game is installed though, but that’s true of it even in Windows.
PS: fastest way to get help is probably venting/ saying something isn’t working in a Linux community lol. It’s a useful thing to know. That’s how I sometimes get my answers too.
environment variables are a thing on windows as well. I grew up with windows and had to set environment variables for random stuff there as well. That is just a (depending on what you do) fairly normal thing. i hate to say it because obviously we all want people to switch to linux and have a good time and want to be helpful but … that’s just a skill issue
Most programs work on Windows though without needing to set an environment variable.
same is true for linux
Well that would depend on what you use to run that mod manager, as that’s probably a Windows application using wine (or proton, which is still based on wine). If you always just launch it from bash, .bashrc is the easiest. Launchers like Bottles or Steam will let you configure launch options per program/game. e.g ENVVAR=value %command% (%command% is a standin for the actual launch command, you leave that as is - it’s necessary because you can add things both before and after the command)
But yes, overall, running Windows software is still the most annoying part of using Linux. At least usually for games run from Steam there’s not much tinkering needed assuming the game works (so no kernel level anticheat games)
WhyWouldTheOSDoThis.jpg
I downloaded r2modman and it worked out of the box. I found out shortly after that some modders moved to a new site and gale mod manager was now the recommended one. I tried and it didn’t work out of the box so I had to do some tinkering. Both of themworked fine on windows with no issues. Yes I am new to Linux and its a learning experience for me. I didn’t blame the OS, I said it didn’t seem as easy as everyone says. There is so much conflicting info and a million different distros that it all applies to differently and people neglect to mention all the details and a million of other little things that compound. Will I get it at some point after using it more? Yes. Has that time come when I’ve used the OS for a collective of maybe 4 hours here and there? No.
To pour oil on the fire (since you said you already decided on an OS), a lot of people recommend Linux Mint as a goto OS when moving from Windows, supposed to be the most similar experience.
Do you see why this might not be the right approach to build a community when someone is asking for help in a polite way?