Obviously, a bit of clickbait. Sorry.
I just got to work and plugged my surface pro into my external monitor. It didn’t switch inputs immediately, and I thought “Linux would have done that”. But would it?
I find myself far more patient using Linux and De-googled Android than I do with windows or anything else. After all, Linux is mine. I care for it. Grow it like a garden.
And that’s a good thing; I get less frustrated with my tech, and I have something that is important to me outside its technical utility. Unlike windows, which I’m perpetually pissed at. (Very often with good reason)
But that aside, do we give Linux too much benefit of the doubt relative to the “things that just work”. Often they do “just work”, and well, with a broad feature set by default.
Most of us are willing to forgo that for the privacy and shear customizability of Linux, but do we assume too much of the tech we use and the tech we don’t?
Thoughts?
After all, Linux is mine. I care for it. Grow it like a garden.
We live in a world where the idea of community has been destroyed by rampant capitalism and the death of third spaces.
While there is indeed a lot to be said for something that “just works,” that “just works” demand is borne from a capitalist/consumer process that is literally in the process of going off the rails.
Why do we get so mad at Windows? Because it isn’t ours. Microsoft grows it like a weed on our property. Its roots begin sticking out new places all the time (“hey what’s that new bullshit on my taskbar?”) and has zero respect for your needs as opposed to its needs. Windows only cares for Microsoft’s needs, and it makes that readily evident in how you’re forced to use it.
Linux is the communal kibbutz, Windows is the corporate city.
In other words, Linux is better than we think it is.
Love the image of wheeds just popping up all over your garden where you don’t want them.
It’s a great metaphor for the “HEY, TRY THIS NEW THING!” shit microsoft pulls.Sort of like the difference between the cathedral and a bazaar?
No, because a kibbutz (planned intentional community) would be the “cathedral” in that analogy, and the city (incrementally developed community) would be the bazaar.
Thank you for this. It is brilliantly put.
Linux is the communal kibbutz, Windows is the corporate city.
I was 100% with you until you decided to go and diss cities.
Cities are great and neighborhoods within them can have plenty of sense of community; it’s soulless car-dependant suburbs that are like Windows!
Tbh it’s more like Raccoon City than an actual city.
I think they dissed “corporate cities,” which I interpreted as related to company towns, like the so-called Foxconn City or iPhone City in China. Not cities in general.
Some suburbs are nice, too.
it’s soulless car-dependant suburbs that are like Windows!
Some suburbs are nice, too.
It’s precisely the streetcar suburbs that are nice, and they are nice precisely because they are not car-dependent.
I like to think of Windows as the Zelda sidekick of OSes.
Non-stop interrupting what you’re doing to tell you something you don’t need to know or care about, and constant “HEY LISTEN” nags for all sorts of shit that you either already figured out, knew about, or don’t give a shit about.
Don’t you dare talk about Navi like that!
Linux is the answer, it’s not about choice, the choice was eradicated years ago.
The community alone and fact in 2024 it still not just exists but thrives shows how much we need things like Linux which buck the trend
When I’ve thought about this is in the past I’ve concluded that my expectations of Linux are actually higher than Windows or Mac. It’s given me the expectation that if something doesn’t work the way I want it then it will be possible to make it do that, whereas with other operating systems I have been more inclined to just accept a limitation and move on.
E x a c t l y! On Windows/Mac, you’re less inclined to be charitable, because most of the time you’re facing down artificially-imposed limitations on how you can interact with your own machine. They seem to say “You’re too dumb to be allowed to mess with that,” which is a tolerable slight if it Just Works every time… But when it doesn’t, ohhh boy…
But that aside, do we give Linux too much benefit of the doubt relative to the “things that just work”.
No, I don’t think so. There should be an expected difference between Windows (for example) and Linux as far as “it just works” goes, simply by virtue of the fact that one is actively developed by a company with eleventy-bajillion dollars and the other is developed by lots of hobbyists and a handful of profitable companies.
If Windows doesn’t work, it’s not unreasonable to expect that it should. If Linux doesn’t work, it is unreasonable to expect that it always will.
To be fair, a big portion of the work that goes into Linux (at least the kernel) is done by paid developers working for big corporations.
That’s true, it’s not just hobbyists. I meant that the paid effort is relatively small potatoes compared to giant companies like MS.
Additionally much software (and hardware even more) primarely targets windows as a platform. The way printers mostly “just work”™ on Linux still amazes me, because printer vendors have all the incentives to make their stuff work for the most used platform, which sadly isn’t Linux right now.
And let’s not forget that printer vendors historically bungle even that much. That they work at all on Linux is a testament to the various Linux devs.
Also a testament to how much of a benefit it is when the vendors just get out of the way and don’t feel the need to add their own Special SauceTM to the drivers.
Pls stop giving billion dollar corporations so much credit.
The difference comes from windows dominant (home pc) market position meaning that almost all software and hardware is specifically made to work with it, with even things that officially support linux being afterthoughts.
You make an excellent point. I have a lot more patience for something I can understand, control, and most importantly, modify to my needs. Compared to an iThing (when it’s interacting with other iThings anyway) Linux is typically embarrassingly user hostile.
Of course, if you want your iThing to do something Apple hasn’t decided you shouldn’t want to do, it’s a Total Fucking Nightmare to get working, so you use the OS that supports your priorities.
Still, I really appreciate the Free software that goes out of its way to make things easy, and it’s something I prioritise in my own Free software offerings.
Sometimes making an iThing (iPhone) work with another iThing (Fiancée ´s Apple TV) isn’t as easy as it should. Streaming the nba app from my phone to the Apple TV was a nightmare a few years ago. Now I just use my PlayStation as the nba is hostile to Linux even in a browser.
So, taking into account the fact that Linux is free and works on almost any hardware, I can only congratulate the people making Linux possible.
Or the purposeful incompatibility between Android/iOS and others.
Like how Google pulled miracast from Android to push Chromecast as the standard. Now I can’t stream to an Amazon FireStick even though it’s also fucking Android at its core.
A lot of these private companies purposefully put in “pain points” to get you to spend more money in their ecosystems.
The “pain points” in Linux are “you have to learn something.”
This too is an excellent take. “Artificial pain points” for capitalism, or “learn some shit” for Linux. Love it.
A lot of these private companies purposefully put in “pain points” to get you to spend more money in their ecosystems.
Aka Walled Gardens.
Barbed wire gardens. Painful to get in, painful to get out.
I resonate with that point, since I do a digital art/tech class, which uses Macs. I find app crashes and the inaccessibility of certain menus quite infuriating, i even somewhat rage internally for a while until i either quit what i was doing or search it up.
When my 8 year old Fedora laptop freezes, crashes, or sound drivers crash like what happened yesterday, I stay very calm and think of a solution, such as updating and restarting.
even if I haven’t built the OS myself or really customised it at all, i find it more calming that i have options to completely change the software compared to locked down OSes.
Have you messed at all with macs “under the hood” so to speak?
Part of the reason my Linux nerd friend swears by them is because command line, they’re super similar to Linux since it’s actually certified UNIX.
So, it’s definitely not 1-to-1 but I’d say macOS is closer to Linux than Windows, including being able to fix shit via CLI.
Each time I go back on windows I realize it’s worse than I remembered, even though I never liked it. One thing I quickly realized after getting constantly asked for help about issues on windows : people tend to be greatly biased about how reliable it is, mostly because it’s all they’ve known for a long time.
People often talk about compatibility regarding Linux, but are somehow oblivious to all the devices and hardware made for windows that somehow fails miserably to work when it has no good reason to…while Linux, despite most hardware and software not being made with it in mind, can sometimes somehow work wonders.
Windows only «just works» because it’s made by a monopolistic monster of a company, with a ton of software and tools and stuff made for it because of how widespread it is, and despite that their OS is just plain garbage…
Just today, I was using windows on my laptop, playing a game made for windows, Black Ops. And it crashes every time I boot up the Call of the Dead. On linux, while it does stutter on that map depending on where i am, I can still play it surprisingly. Its very strange.
Just out of curiosity, aside from the good example posted below by @trslim@pawb.social, could you provide some examples of “devices and hardware made for windows that somehow fails miserably to work when it has no good reason to”? :)
The Xbox 360 controller wireless adpater was a pretty big piece of shit 70% of the time.
That is a good example. Thanks.
Sure :
-
My worst/best personal one : had a Huion Graphic Tablet that would just refuse to work on my windows 10 pc, either with the drivers given to me on a small disk, or with the ones on the site, had to contact the company for help (eventually they did)…thought it would be a nightmare on linux…couldn’t be more wrong, it worked straight freaking up, even had the luxury to install Huion drivers that actually worked…or just a bunch of non Huion stuff to calibrate the thing if I needed to…although none of it was necessary…like how ??
-
More recently I got a Switch Pro Controller knockoff, thought I had to install some packages to make it work on Linux but no, worked out of the box wirelessly and plugged in, when I wanted to play with a friend who uses windows, had no choice but to plug it in with an awfully small cable (the only one my friend had at their house, didn’t bring mine), bluetooth refused to work whatever we tried…
-
Some years back I helped a friend to buy a decent microphone (don’t remember the brand)…only to have them call me the next day because windows didn’t detect it…the mic was your usual usb plug and play thing…spent an hour on the phone playing customer support. When I went at their house later, I plugged it to Linux for the fun of it and it just worked…
On the more usual stuff there is the great classic of printers not working, that must be the thing people asked me for help the most, didn’t try Linux on most of them, but some (friends, family) I had to and never had an issue…and the comical thing is, for our printer at home I had to install some drivers through the AUR to make it work and even with that it’s just awful (making it work on windows is even worse but it works a little bit better). I also got called for webcam issues, keyboard issues, usb, drives… That’s the device part.
Regarding hardware, it will be hard to be specific because I helped a lot of people with pc stuff over the years, it something I do on my spare time. What I can say is, each time I am called for something big like a pc (mostly old laptops) not working/dead, or some drives dying, or refurbishing some antiquities or part of them, I always bring my Linux laptop and a bootable usb stick with a bunch of distros on it, because I know it’ll be more usefull than using windows. I remember the nightmare of trying to reinstall windows on some laptops (that had windows, that are still within what should be compatible)…to no avail. Trying to get files on a dying disk to no avail, etc, etc. The only time I ever truly needed windows for this kind of stuff was to unlock an Iphone using Itunes.
Tbh it’s just dead easy to give examples because with windows, manufacturers or whoever have to make their product work on the OS, and the drivers are not always up to date, so old they aren’t supported anymore, or can just be a pain to get or configure…while on Linux it can be a community effort, and a lot of stuff is already within the distro you installed so you often don’t have to do much. I am sure people can have the opposite experience though and I know some stuff just doesn’t work on Linux, but really my point is : a lot doesn’t necessarily work on windows either.
Not what you asked but on an OS level, I could also mention people encrypting their pc by accident with bitlocker, windows breaking stuff, update issues, partition issues, and so on… when you spend time on other people issues you really start to notice how much of a mess it can be, far more than people seem to think.
Wow, thanks for all the information! Very fascinating, I think. I enjoyed reading it! :)
Yeah I did not expect to dump so much text 乁(•ิ◡•ั)ㄏ
I did my best to shorten it and tried not being too vague but it’s hard with all the stuff I’ve tinkered with. Keyboard issues have been the weirdest and funniest experience I’ve had of them all I think, while printers are one of the worst.
-
This one is more a case of «it didn’t work on windows for a reason but worked on Linux for no reason» : More than a decade ago, I got my first Graphic Tablet (yeah another one), it was from a dead brand, their drivers were still online but not supported anymore. But the tablet still worked out of the box on windows 8, only… windows wasn’t able to detect pressure so it looked like I was drawing with a mouse, Linux didn’t have such issue. At that same period my laptop (wich was the first that I owned) turned half dead after an update, wasn’t as tech savy as now but at the time all that I knew was that the disk had some issue that I could not fix…windows would not work on it anymore and that’s how I tried daily driving Linux for the second time, I lasted with this half dead pc under kubuntu until windows 10 came out (mostly because by then I got my first desktop and proton wasn’t a thing for games).
When Linux doesn’t do what I want, it’s never because it was deliberately designed not to do what I want in order to increase shareholder value
As an IT guy who has worked at a bunch of companies with exclusively Windows environments, Windows absolutely doesn’t “just work.”
I can’t begin to list all the random problems I have with Windows in my day-to-day job.
Driver problems, hardware compatibility problems, software crashes, OS freezes, random configuration resets, networking issues, performance issues, boot issues, etc etc etc…
New hardware causes problems, old hardware causes problems.
Almost everything is harder to troubleshoot on Windows than Linux.
I have several test servers set up at my current workplace, they are old decommissioned desktops that are 10+ years old. I use them for messing around with Docker, Ansible, Tailscale, and random internal company resources like Bookstack and OpenProject.
All run Linux, all are a head and shoulders more stable and functional than the majority of much newer and more powerful Windows machines at our company.
Debian, Mint, CatchyOS, they all are far more dependable than most of the Windows machines. They install fast, on any hardware I use, decade+ old Quadro cards and Intel CPUs, doesn’t matter, they all run nearly perfect. And the rare times I have an issue, it’s so much faster to figure out and fix in Linux.
I switched over one of the computers in our department to Linux Mint. Threw it on a random laptop I had laying around. I did it just as an experiment, told the guy who was working on it to let me know if he had any issues using it. I planned on only having it out there for a week or two… It’s been 4 months and he loves it.
He says it’s super fast and easy to use, he doesn’t have any problems with it. Uses Libre office for documents, Firefox for our cloud-based ERP system, Teams and Outlook as PWAs installed on Mint.
I use Ansible to push updates to it once a week, Timeshift in case something ever breaks. It’s great. About a month ago I told him I would probably need to take it back because technically, it wasn’t an official deployment and the experiment I was doing had long since passed. He put up such a fuss that I decided to just let it stay. I’ll probably clone the drive, put it on his old tower, and take the laptop back, and let him keep using it indefinitely.
Linux absolutely isn’t perfect, no technology is. But in my years of experience with both, Linux on the whole is far less finicky, and far easier to fix when it breaks.
Linux absolutely isn’t perfect, no technology is. But in my years of experience with both, Linux on the whole is far less finicky, and far easier to fix when it breaks.
I agree 110% but it’s also worth mentioning that windows isn’t as finicky as we complain about. If it was, companies wouldn’t by and large rely on it. People are delusional if they think Windows is only around because of some conspiracy or historical precedent. “It works” plain and simple. As you scale you’re going to run into issues regardless of the OS. It’s naive to think Linux is the be all that end all. As much as anyone I want to be Linux only. My home computers have been Linux for decades now. I’m a realist. There’s value and challenges with every OS. I hate the industry trend of Windows over Linux but I get it
It’s important to acknowledge that desktop Linux was much jankier even 5 years ago. I don’t think Windows 7 & Windows 10 would have been worse experiences on average than desktop Linux back in their heyday.
But times have changed pretty drastically. Desktop Linux has improved massively across the board. With so many applications going into the cloud and becoming web-based in recent years, Linux is more viable than ever.
Combine that with the fact that Windows 11 has become so bloated, so clunky, and just straight up unpleasant to use and maintain.
Historical precedent makes a big difference too. When an OS is dominant for so long, the ecosystem around it morphs to fit.
People are raised using Windows, go through school and college using Windows, get a job where their apps are all on Windows. Companies write software for their largest install base…which is Windows. And because the vast majority of companies and orgs use Windows, the IT ecosystem is based around managing Windows systems.
I worked at an MSP a few years back where almost every sysadmin there was far more experienced than me, I was the greenhorn. But when one of the sysadmins had their client’s Xen hypervisor go down, they called me because, “We heard you’re a Linux guy.” At that point, I had less than 3 years of Linux experience at all, and had almost zero actual Linux admin experience, I only used it personally and as a hobby. But I fixed their issue in less than an hour, got their client’s Xen hypervisor running which their entire ERP system ran on, all because I knew enough Linux basics to figure out what was going on.
Point is, people tend to become experts in what they use all the time. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Microsoft experts and admins are a dime-a-dozen where I live, but Linux/Unix admins, I rarely see a job posting that isn’t offering 20-40k more for people with those skills.
At my current company, roughly 50% of folks could be switched over to Linux without any issue. Their jobs all require basic document editing, email, Teams, and web browsing. All tasks that desktop Linux can handle now with zero issues.
I did something similar with 4 15 year old optiplexes for a student lab. IT wasn’t happy until the saw how well they ran
It’s pretty incredible how well it works. I installed Arch with Plasma 6 on a 2015 T450 thinkpad and it was so crazy how fast everything was.
Felt like a brand new machine, almost a decade old, and bottom of the line specs for that model, but it still ran cutting edge Linux like it was meant to.
My other desktops are even older, but it’s the same with Debian 12 and Plasma, they are super responsive and stable. It’s pretty wild to see a desktop that’s over 10 years old feel smoother and snappier than Windows 11 on a 3 year old, enterprise grade laptop.
The only thing holding me back from asking for an Ubuntu laptop at work is email certificates that we need to install on windows for outlook. Otherwise I’d love to be able to switch
They don’t even let us install wsl2, so annoying
Generally, when things work on windows, it is the effort of whomever made the device or software. Microsoft generally does not develop drivers. However, when things work on GNU/Linux it is the effort of GNU, Linux, or the community. The manufacturer probably did nothing. This simply explains why we are generally relaxed or “give Linux too much benefit of the doubt relative to the “things that just work””.
So fairly comparing a Linux distro to raw windows, Linux is better. When you install a distro, things just work, when you install windows, most stuff do not work and you need to complete setup. Unless you use tools provided by the manufacturer, but then again, it is same story.
Windows works nearly every time any more - I don’t have to do anything during setup. Drivers are automatic during setup.
Not sure where you get this idea from.
My Logitech mouse doesn’t work at all on Linux unless I search for why and go find third-party software for it. Windows sees it as a generic HID and treats it as such. I can go get the Logitech software if I want, but have no need of it. Linux? Nope. Probably the most prolific mouse on the planet and Linux can’t even use it, at all, natively.
On windows it just works.
Now let’s go deploy 300, or 3000 machines.
Linux is far, far better at handling generic USB devices than Windows. Your inability to plug in a peripheral seems like PEBCAK.
You forgot to mention you use Arch, btw.
No, because I’m not a pretentious twit.
You get your panties in a twist because you have to install Solaar?
It’s a very simple, very functional piece of software Built For Logitech Devices.
All my keyboards & mice are (mostly second hand) Logitech. No problems here.
Not even sure I’ve had to install Solaar with Mint or Ubuntu in the last 10 years.
Then you must not be very bright. All my Logitech and Razer hardware just works on every Linux distro I jump on while distro hopping.
First of all you’re missing the point.
Drivers are automatic during setup.
That still means third-party drivers, so it’s still not a Windows win but rather a “windows is so ubiquitous that Logitech (or whoever) was forced to release a driver for it”, which is what the comment you’re replying was talking about.
Secondly, bullshit. In my 20 years using Linux I have never, ever, plugged in a mouse that didn’t get immediately recognized and worked as expected. What mouse do you have? You said Logitech, which model? The only thing that I ever needed specialized software on a Logitech mouse was to configure extra buttons or to pair it to a different dongle (both stuffs that also need specialized software only provided by Logitech on Windows)
I have the opposite. Old Logitech bluetooth mouse on W10, Windows will pair with it but next boot it totally will not reconnect, no matter what, unless I delete paired device and re-add it. It was fine on W7. Linux has no issue reconnecting to it.
Weird. My Logitech G502 Lightspeed just plug and plays on my Linux distro. Only thing is that I cannot configure it but I can read the battery w/o additional software unlike the other platform.
My logitech mx master 3 works instantly on fedora with all it’s features. I also have various wired and worless keyboards and mouses that work instantly on Fedora.
For same mouse on windows, I need to wait for it to download and install outs drivers.
Maybe you got things confused or are using LinuxFromScratch or something.
I’d clarify that the shear customizability of Linux is optional.
Take a SteamDeck with SteamOS versus a RPi with e.g Debian.
If you “just” play with the SteamDeck and you don’t tinker, well, it “just works”. In most, even though not all, normal situations, e.g plugging a screen, pairing a BT headphone, mouse, keyboard, etc it is solid. It has no problem even while using a compatibility layer like Proton for games themselves made for Windows. It even enable some tinkering thanks to its immutable OS and let the player switch to desktop mode. Not everything works but my personal experience since it’s been out has been pretty much flawless.
Now, take a RPi, with just as stable hardware, with Debian, even stable, and put on it some IoT device, make some weird modifications for it, try a bunch of stuff, remove package, tinker more, chances are it will still work. Tinker more, make stranger modifications to the point it becomes unstable. Is it Linux itself? I’d argue it’s not. I’d argue that instead because we CAN tinker we sometimes do then forget that it’s not the same context as something expected to run without hiccup because it’s been limited to basically the same verified usage.
So… IMHO Linux is even better than it is, we just shouldn’t confuse weird (and important) tinkering with how it can be actually used day to day.
This. I distrohopped for about 4 years. I am now on Bazzite since 4 months ago and I love that it just works.
Is Linux As Good As We Think It Is?
No, it’s better.
Seriously, when something that I paid for it doesn’t work is annoying when something that I choose to use doesn’t work is somewhat my fault, I think that’s the difference.
No, not really. I believe it is because a lot of us linux users have more understanding of our systems, so we know why a certain outcome happened vs “it just works tm”.
Also I would like to point out something that I have been telling people for years whenever a post like this comes up. Windows and Mac users do the same thing. They constantly overlook bugs, bad design, artificial limitations, and just the overall lack of care when it comes to various details that more community oriented projects cater to. The reason is because of familiarity. Just like many of us will often not see issues with new comers struggles because we have already worked around all of the issues. These users do the same.
At least on Linux you can have some kind of control while on Windows or Mac there is an illusion like “can’t do that, fuck you”, while Linux is like “can do that… will you manage”?
Which inherently makes it so that specific demographics of people will never be able to use it.
Exactly. I give more credits to linux, and it deserves this. I like your garden metaphor, yes my linux pc is like my garden and linux behaves to be, unlike windows.
Thing is, a well configured Linux system will just work, and continue to work for the foreseeable future. You have zero guarantee of this with Windows.
After being in tech for like 30 years, i’d say that every OS sucks, but the way they suck and the intensity of said sucking is very much not the same across them. Linux VERY MUCH has issues, yes, but most of the time they’re in your power to diagnose and fix, in Windows the main troubleshooting advice has remained mostly the same across decades, the 3 R’s, Reboot, Reinstall, Reformat, because many times you just don’t know and CANNOT know what went wrong.
You forgot Read. As in read answers.microsoft.com. And then just give up
Yep, because there’s always the same conclusion there: reinstall Windows.
I’m in IT too. Recently discussed with the help desk team that we should probably spend less time troubleshooting issues with only the affected device and just re-imaging it.
I am not a massive fan of this since sometimes the fixes are kind of interesting but they take far too long to get to while working around MS’s hidden walls. Mean while our Linux servers and clients are usually pretty damn easy to troubleshoot, documentation is readily available, not to mention it makes sense…
This is a great point. It is also an issue that I have with certain (not all) users who try linux. Where when things go wrong in Windows and Mac they have no power to do anything and they just give. If something goes wrong in linux they start yelling, complaining, and sometimes harassing maintainers.
Things don’t just work on any operating system.
With Windows, you have to hope there’s a solution that you can implement that doesn’t require rooting around in the insanely-outmoded registry and doesn’t require uninstalling some specific KB12345678 update.
With MacOS, you will do as Apple says, and you will like it. Otherwise, enjoy the $3000 doorstop. Granted, there is plenty you can tweak, but when there is a problem, and you find some Apple Communities post with a copy/paste official reply that has steps to take, none of which ever actually solve the problem, you will be treated with a cheeseburger on your way to the insane asylum. Full disclosure: a MacBook Air is my daily work driver.
With Linux, you are in charge — for better and for worse. This means that when there is a problem, while there is likely a solution, it will depend on many, many factors such as hardware configuration, kernel version, desktop environment, graphics card, display manager, etc. But, you can fix it with research and perseverance with no company getting in the way.
The main difference with Linux, is that you are given the freedom to deal with problems as you see fit.
So, yes, to me, Linux is as good as I think it is — not because it’s better or more stable (though subjectively I would say it is), but because it respects us by keeping the ownership and power where it belongs.
I’m annoyed when things don’t work. I’m even more annoyed when something can’t be made to work.
I find the first kind of annoyance much more ephemeral.
