Because social media amplifies and incentivises minority, hateful views to make it seem like everyone is concerned about these things.
The reality is, it’s the same small group of hateful idiots who are always in the spotlight.
In real life, even in small towns, people either don’t care or they celebrate how far we’ve come as a society.
Ok, I think I’ll grab another drive and try again over the weekend.
Their forum is pretty good, and there’s a dedicated linux section there, too. They also have extensive support documentation.
I’m sure I can get it working to be more stable, but man, it’s an effort for sure.
My laptop is a Framework and has official support for Fedora and Ubuntu. I wouldn’t expect these kinds of issue, TBH.
I can probably try a few more distros, but I’m just disappointed that the experience seems to always be the same :(
That is a fair point. I don’t expect every feature to match 1:1. But minimize and maximize window seems to be a no-brainer for basic use. At least, how I use floating windows.
But… I’m glad that there are options to bring those features (and more) back if someone chooses.
Is this only when using Linux? The drive’s S.M.A.R.T status is all perfect (it’s only got like 40 hours of use on it), and tests with no errors).
Maybe I can try another drive.
Well, I think my experiment might have come to an early end.
Yesterday, when I booted up fedora, I lost my wifi (like, it didn’t even give me the option to use wifi). Re-booted and it worked again.
Then I decided to get a copy of Fedora with KDE Plasma loaded up. Seemed fine, started setting it up.
Let’s try some Windows software through Wine (Bottles, I believe, is what the actual software was called). Program 1, installed, but won’t run. Program 2, installed, but wont’ run…
Then, out of nowhere: Blank screen.
After waiting several minutes, I hit the power button: FAILED FAILED FAILED messages “Failed to start plymouth-reboot.services” being the last. FFS…
I just don’t understand how I can break Linux so quickly without really doing anything. My experience over the last 20 years of trying Linux has always ended the same. Are there no stable distros available? Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Elementary, Damn Small… none of them last more than a few days/weeks before they crash and burn.
And when Linux crashes and burns, I really don’t know how to fix it.
It’s extremely hard to go from Windows 11, which has been absolutely rock solid. Literally no problems, no crashes, no BSOD, no compatibility issues, etc. to Linux, even though I value Linux more.
I would rather not use Windows, but I feel like I’m forced to at this point.
I may have another external SSD I can use, so it should be easy to just install another copy with KDE or whatever on it.
Or… I may just stick with GNOME, since I’d rather keep things simple anyway. Regardless, I’m glad I have options.
I’m sure by now you know about the troves of compatibility layers that exist in order to make this possible; depending on the software.
Yes, I’ll need to do a bunch of experimentation to see if I can get it working. But it’s a messy solution to something that isn’t even a thing on Windows.
This is more of a DE issue than Linux issue, I’m assuming you went with the default Gnome but you might like KDE or Cinnamon for a more windows like experience. I personally loved both of those DEs until I made the mistake of getting comfortable with a window manager
Fair point, I’m using what Fedora came with, but I can go with something else. Better if I do that sooner, rather than later. LOL
After some encouragement, I’ve been making an effort to switch much of my computing over to Fedora (at least, on weekends until it’s got everything I need on it).
My (Framework) laptop fully supports the OS, and even booting it up on an external SSD has been easy, and it works fast and smooth.
But, it’s absolutely not as easy to settle into compared to windows.
With Windows, the only “tweaks” that a user might make is installing a different browser, but everything else will work as it should.
Power Windows users will spend more time removing bloat and ads, I won’t deny that!
But on Fedora, I had to scour the internet to find out how to get a minimize and maximize button on a window (had to install another utility, then an extension…). Then I had to do the same to move things down to a dock.
Annoying, but it wasn’t a huge deal. These small add-on, tweaks, and personalization options all require that you know where to look and how to actually apply these fixes. Thank god I didn’t have to fuss around with device drivers.
Then, as I happily watched the Para Olympics while multitasking, my screen just went black. No warning, no way to recover it. Hitting my laptop’s power button throws up a series of errors and !!! “FAILED TO EXECUTE SHUTDOWN BINARY”.
If this is the equivalent to a BSOD on Windows, then it would be my first BSOD in many, many years.
Now I need to figure out how to get some Windows-only software to run, if that’s even possible, which adds another layer of time and aggravation.
If I were a novice computer user, I wouldn’t even bother with any of this and just stick to Windows. Hell, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with any of it!
But I’ll see how long I can ride this out, and perhaps I’ll be a full-time Linux user some day.
I can honestly say that I haven’t had to reformat a windows PC since the early 2000s because of a problem that couldn’t easily be solved.
Even a BSOD is exceedingly rare.
Stability has been excellent, but the threat of advertisement creep is beginning to annoy me.
It’s Google.
I’m certain that “Common violations” = “competes with our own products”.
For sure, but when every problem has 100 potential fixes, I no longer have time to experiment with trying to fix them.
Every fix in Linux seems like a hack that requires extensive terminal knowledge of small, random patches that seem to be strewn all over the internet.
Every fix in windows is usually self contained, and you just need to know where to look to access it.
In my teens, I would have loved the challenge to mess with Linux. But I have no desire to do that now.
I will get the itch from time to time to try a new liveUSB distro, and if Microsoft angers or annoys me enough, I might just stick with Linux.
My parents had a console that had knobs for the controls. I remember pong and hockey, but it had other games, too. I’m 99% sure it was a Sears Tele-Game system.
Some of my friends had Atari consoles (with stick controllers), but my first console was an NES, followed by a Game Boy (which I still have).
As a long time Windows user (~30 years), it comes down to “can I fix this if something goes wrong?”. This applies even more so when I’m talking about a computer that my wife might be using.
99.9% of the time, the answer is “yes” when it comes to windows.
Every time I’ve tried Linux, some experience breaking issue comes up within hours/days of starting it up, and I simply don’t have time to troubleshoot it.
No matter how “stable” and “easy” someone claims Linux to be, I’ve never had a stable or easy experience in the last 20 years of trying to use Linux. I hate that fact, but that is a fact for me.
I must be the only one who spend thousands of dollars getting my lawyer to read over the TOS, just so I can sign up to read grocery store flyers! /s
Ah, another thing to install on my Synology NAS! LOL Thanks for sharing that.
And priced for the average human! Wow.
Damn, if I didn’t need the fitness tracking support of my Garmin watch, I’d be all over that!
I held onto my Pebble for so long, wearing it from launch until about a year ago, where I got a Garmin Smartwatch.
So many things I loved about it, especially its simplicity and legendary battery life (at that time).
I’m actually pretty happy to be using mostly FOSS apps. The exception are banking or services apps, which I’d never expect to be available as open source.