The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[big pauper]

In short: for some reason people refuse to put a modicum of research into making their Windows experience a bit better, suffer though Microsoft's defaults assuming they cannot do anything about them, but the moment they switch to Linux they find an entire new world of customization, where a good fraction of it that they find personally valuable already existed in some extent on Windows, but they refused to even consider looking for it. I really don't understand this mentality.

windows sucks shit and i hate it but i have been using it for my entire life. i've tried to switch to linux 3 separate times and each of them i ran into an issue and consulted the greybeards and was told linux can't really do what i already use windows to do, so this entire paradigm of thought has always struck me as a manipulative rhetorical tactic.

linux, despite presenting itself as a single project, is really multiple contradictory things all wrapped into one name. like sure gnu/linux is a complex ideological concept pursuing the platonic rational ideal of the best software suite imaginable - but most people engaging in the linux community are not stallman groupies, linus himself wasn't, they're just people who want to use a computer. linux is caught in between the ideological ideals of its creators and the pragmatic ideals of its maintainers and that is why there are 200 different distros that all say that they do things the best

 

[analrapist]

200 different distros that all say that they do things the best

No, it's mostly zealots (see this thread for more, eg. pug-fag) who "all say that they do things best". The designers mostly realize that their points of differentiation are small (eg. glibc-replacement, systemd-replacement, etc.) or negligible (no difference, just different context).

 

[Carpe Jugulum]

Even if it's just a few new converts It's good. Like he said, Linux is not for everybody. But for those who it is for it's like an awakening

I may be shit at it and still a total noob but it’s been nearly three years and there’s no going back.

It’s given me an increased interest in all kinds of things and I’m slowly learning. I just got a pi to fuck around with which will be fun.

 

[big pauper]

No, it's mostly zealots (see this thread for more, eg. pug-fag) who "all say that they do things best". The designers mostly realize that their points of differentiation are small (eg. glibc-replacement, systemd-replacement, etc.) or negligible (no difference, just different context).

in a pragmatic project if you have four people that all say "this is the best way to do things" you just make it so you can choose which one you want. that's kind of just how linux has always worked as far as i'm aware. but that's also why there's autism distros. the entire framework that gives the zealots ammo to be zealots is the ideology, because otherwise they would just pick one of the arbitrary choices and move on (or one would eventually become the most popular for certain uses, etc)

but in the current world i still have people telling me to install arch and i think that's a good statement about the current state of linux affairs

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

but in the current world i still have people telling me to install arch and i think that's a good statement about the current state of linux affairs

Arch is a good distro, but never listen to /g/, especially for your first time.
There's really only about 8 real Linux distros (depending on how you count it), everything else is essentially Debian with a different wallpaper.
The fragmentation is the #1 reason why Linux will never be mainstream, but its also why nerds love it so much I guess.

 

[Susanna]

There's really only about 8 real Linux distros (depending on how you count it), everything else is essentially Debian with a different wallpaper.

Which is the eight one?

1. Red Hat
   • Fedora
   • CentOS
2. Debian
   • Ubuntu
   • Mint
   • Pop!_OS
3. SUSE
4. Arch
   • Manjaro
5. Slackware
6. Gentoo
7. NixOS

 

[big pauper]

Arch is a good distro, but never listen to /g/, especially for your first time.
There's really only about 8 real Linux distros (depending on how you count it), everything else is essentially Debian with a different wallpaper.
The fragmentation is the #1 reason why Linux will never be mainstream, but its also why nerds love it so much I guess.

fragmentation itself isn't an issue if you have a community that's created a framework to navigate it, and linux has done the exact opposite for theirs. in gun forums there's a lot of bravado and jingoism about what guns are better, but most people will just tell you that it's personal preference with minor procedure differences. the most vocal are the normies with normiecore opinions that you won't really fuck up anything by choosing

 

[Redeemer]

>April 2025 join date
>responds to a post from 2019
>from a user that's been inactive since 2022
>incomprehensible schizo babble

Based!

 

[Betonhaus]

Which is the eight one?

1. Red Hat
   • Fedora
   • CentOS
2. Debian
   • Ubuntu
   • Mint
   • Pop!_OS
3. SUSE
4. Arch
   • Manjaro
5. Slackware
6. Gentoo
7. NixOS

1. Linux Mint
2. Debian
3. Arch
4. Gentoo
5. Ubuntu
6. CentOS
7. Red Hat
8. Manjaro

Nothing else is worth considering

 

[indomitable snowman]

This is an interesting conundrum though. People are so unwilling to try and figure out how to make their Windows experience better where it doesn't take much effort to do so, but the moment they switch to Linux they waste hours on ricing their DE and fucking around with the command line. So, what is it exactly that people want?

I'm one windows update away from them reverting any fixes and changes I made to unfuck windows and it's data-mining. I've done all those tweaks you've mentioned - and I've had to do them again after some update. The time people spend ricing is usually trying out different tools and DEs to find what they like. It's not hours spent fighting the OS like you would with windows.

1. Linux Mint
2. Debian
3. Arch
4. Gentoo
5. Ubuntu
6. CentOS
7. Red Hat
8. Manjaro

Nothing else is worth considering

CentOS is dead, CentOS Stream exists, but is a permanent beta for IBM/Redhat. Rocky is a pseudo replacement for CentOS, but it is not a 1:1 replacement for it or RHEL.
EndeavorOS is better than Manjaro. I had serious random issues with Manjaro, none with Endeavor.

 

[postfeetpls]

I like Linux and use it daily but I just can't make the full switch to Linux as a main OS. Tried it a few times, for a while I used Linux only for over a year. Then I switched back to Windows and felt at home again. The last time I tried switching to Linux I spent most of my free time for a few days time trying to get basic things to work. Tons of problems with Wayland. My second monitor doesn't work. My third monitor doesn't work. Bluetooth doesn't work. Sound isn't alright. GPU drivers were a hell. Gaming is great BUT forget about Wayland because FPS drops. Can't remember what else there was but by the end when I had my system the way I liked it I was like "fuck this I'm going back".

Don't get me wrong. I like Linux. I love it, even. I use Debian in WSL like 70% of the time I use a computer daily. But you can customize Windows a lot, you can diagnose everything, you get access to everything, and gutting all the spyware takes much less time than it takes to get everything working on a fresh Linux install.

There's lots of misleading an untruthful claims in that fag's video. Winget is basically apt/pacman. You don't need to go to websites and download things, it's all on Winget. As mentioned above - Everything is an excellent search engine. And the whole diagnostics and optimization this faggot claims comes naturally on Linux but is missing on Windows - there's fucking Sysinternals. It has great documentation and you can deep dive into everything. Windows is not a black box you're forbidden from looking inside of. And with WSL I get to use everything I need Linux for directly from Windows. The Terminal is super powerful. Desktop tiling is also great and very customizable. There's shortcuts for everything, using a mouse is not a necessity nowadays.

No hate for Linux whatsoever but, again, as mentioned above, instead of making a solid, consistent operating system, there are a hundred factions building a thousand different flavors with a million caveats each. I honestly don't really care about the whole privacy thing, it's long gone anyways.
As long as my important files are protected and my porn remains hidden from my gf, I don't mind of Microsoft has access to it. Go ahead Microfags and take notes, it's top tier content.

 

[Plastic Bag]

1. Linux Mint
2. Debian
3. Arch
4. Gentoo
5. Ubuntu
6. CentOS
7. Red Hat
8. Manjaro

Nothing else is worth considering

Personally, as a hobbyist:
1. Ubuntu-type for ease of use and gaming (main desktop/laptop)
2. Any OS close to the actual Linux kernel that isn't going to be overly time-consuming (second laptop/virtual machines)

Really want to stress: to me, what matters is what I build; a lot of empty-headed Linux users seem to obsess about their OS constantly, like it matters. There's a whole lot more to Linux/OSS than what interface you like the best. If you appreciate computers and are willing to learn, there is no limit, and you might realise Windows/Mint/Debian/whatever is a small piece of it.

I'd used Windows for 20 years and switched 5 years ago, and it took about 2 weeks to get the hang of everything for anyone apprehensive. I implore anyone to buy a 50-dollar old laptop and use Rufus to create boot USBs of old OSes that you can try out and use for a few hours. Mess around, have fun.

 

[Slav Power]

Winget is basically apt/pacman

Felix had no idea it exists. Lie by omission, but not an intentional one. But like I was saying, he refused to even humor the possibility that you can disable the retarded weather widget on the taskbar and instead acted like you're forced to live with that Microsoft experience.

Everything is an excellent search engine

Buuut it doesn't come preinstalled by default. Instead, you have the Windows Index, which is a steaming pile of shit. Every distro comes with grep by default which is a close second to Everything.

And the whole diagnostics and optimization this faggot claims comes naturally on Linux but is missing on Windows - there's fucking Sysinternals. It has great documentation and you can deep dive into everything. Windows is not a black box you're forbidden from looking inside of

True. Mark Russinovich develops the Sysinternals suite, as well as publishes the Windows Internals book that just tell you how Windows works under the hood. That's why I found it interesting, this refusal to do the most basic research to find out whether or not you can mess around with Windows, but then going off the deep end of research hell with Arch.

I'm yet to get an answer for that since everyone was answering "why people don't want to bother with customizing Windows", which wasn't what I was wondering about. The question was "why do people refuse to do any research on Windows tweaking, even if it's something as simple as disabling the weather widget that is just a few clicks from the taskbar, then complain about how you're forced to live with it, but the moment they touch Linux they suddenly fall in love with the command line"?

Felix's video was very one-sided, and in the most bizarre way possible. It's like he knew absolutely nothing about Windows, but the moment he tried Linux he already got very adept at it, but didn't bother to do the same type of learning and research when he was on Windows. So he had the mental capacity and skill to troubleshoot his issues to make his life better, but he had to have that mental/emotional signal of "I'm not using Windows anymore, I'm using Linux, so now I can learn and research how to make it work for me". In the video he riced Mint, and Mint is meant to be the type of distro that 99% of people won't need to personalize OOTB. I'm still confused why people act like this.

 

[Plastic Bag]

I'm one windows update away from them reverting any fixes and changes I made to unfuck windows and it's data-mining. I've done all those tweaks you've mentioned - and I've had to do them again after some update. The time people spend ricing is usually trying out different tools and DEs to find what they like. It's not hours spent fighting the OS like you would with windows.




CentOS is dead, CentOS Stream exists, but is a permanent beta for IBM/Redhat. Rocky is a pseudo replacement for CentOS, but it is not a 1:1 replacement for it or RHEL.
EndeavorOS is better than Manjaro. I had serious random issues with Manjaro, none with Endeavor.

My Windows would corrupt the user permissions sector without me doing anything. That was my biggest problem with Windows: they constantly tweak your system without your knowledge, and things can break that they could try to fix, but they refuse, and the burden is always on the user. I can't remember the exact problem I had, but they've added all this unnecessary account infrastructure, you have to do it their way, and if it breaks, your only option is to reset the OS. Then, months later, the same problem will happen. Can't just manually fix the accounts, even though there's no problem at all with any files or even really the operating system as a whole. You're forced to effectively delete every package you ever installed because of something so trivial. I want control, I demand control over the piece of metal that I spent money on.

I've been using EndeavorOS for a little while for my 2nd pc, ridiculously stable and reliable compared to other similar ones. I had Manjaro i3 Window Manager for a few months before that, pretty fun to mess around with, but it randomly broke itself a few times, and I got fed up of having to reinstall. i3 is also a bit of a gimmick, but I can see it being very efficient if you're on a low-end laptop and have very organised coding sessions.

 

[Gatdam Animal Person]

-snip-

I agree that you can customize Windows on a certain extent: I use ExplorerPatcher in order to have the superior Windows 10 taskbar back, and a friend of mine riced his taskbar to look more like Windows XP.

While you can do fun stuff like this, it depends on third party software that buck breaks Microsoft's software. They could do an update that breaks shit. For instance, ExplorerPatcher had to recreate the Windows 10 ui because they entirely removed it from Windows.

Windows got the advantage of having the most software for it (I use it for work or for running weird chinese software), but aside from some software I need to run inside a VM, Linux gives me everything I want, including that sweet 4 finger swipe, letting me switch from vmware to my normal desktop in an instant.

 

[postfeetpls]

So he had the mental capacity and skill to troubleshoot his issues to make his life better, but he had to have that mental/emotional signal of "I'm not using Windows anymore, I'm using Linux, so now I can learn and research how to make it work for me". In the video he riced Mint, and Mint is meant to be the type of distro that 99% of people won't need to personalize OOTB. I'm still confused why people act like this.

To me it feels like he didn't rice shit himself. The point of the video was running the GFuel™ ascii art script and pointing out how easily accessible NordVPN™ is from the waybar.

 

[Slav Power]

I agree that you can customize Windows on a certain extent: I use ExplorerPatcher in order to have the superior Windows 10 taskbar back, and a friend of mine riced his taskbar to look more like Windows XP.

While you can do fun stuff like this, it depends on third party software that buck breaks Microsoft's software. They could do an update that breaks shit. For instance, ExplorerPatcher had to recreate the Windows 10 ui because they entirely removed it from Windows.

Windows got the advantage of having the most software for it (I use it for work or for running weird chinese software), but aside from some software I need to run inside a VM, Linux gives me everything I want, including that sweet 4 finger swipe, letting me switch from vmware to my normal desktop in an instant.

To be clear, when I say "customize Windows", I don't mean "rice it to look like something completely else", but rather "unfuck all the little nitpicks and annoyances". That's the level of ricing I do nowadays since I just want a base for running my software. I keep bringing up the weather widget as it's the single most glaring direct annoyance in modern Windows. On by default, open up MSM on hover. Horrendous idea, but Microsoft doesn't force you to forever be exposed to it. They offer you the option to disable it and it's all right there at your fingertits. Right clicking the taskbar is the only action you need to do for the GUI to guide you to the option to disable it. Yet no one even thinks to try that.

But on Linux? Suddenly this mindset of "I'm gonna fuck around to see what I can do with it" suddenly opens up. It's not that those people were complete nigger cattle that were incapable of doing basic tweaking and customization, it's that mentally it never occurred to them that maybe they could when using Windows. And that's what I cannot understand.

 

[filthypenguin]

That's why I found it interesting, this refusal to do the most basic research to find out whether or not you can mess around with Windows, but then going off the deep end of research hell with Arch.

He didn't like the bloat that came with windows, and the way I understood him he used to remove all the bloat every new install. For his main PC, he switched to Mint, which looks and acts like debloated windows out of the box. Every time you install Windows you have to live with Microsoft's bullshit or go through and rip it out, which sometimes requires third party tools and sometimes comes back on the forced windows update. Mint already saves you the majority of the time you spend on making Windows suck less.

On his laptop he installed Arch, which is completely debloated. Windows can not be slimmed down as much as arch is on install.

 

[WatterBottle]

Bit of a PL but as a full time sysadmin I'd only use RHEL for licensing/support/stability/vendor supported OS reasons if your dealing with serious business. RedHat ticks the boxes of having long term support and makes some sane choices of ripping out features or supporting like older versions of software for the lifecycle even if the community has abandoned it. I've worked without the support model or homelab and would lean to whatever cloud provider distro is supported or Rocky if doing it in-house.

As for desktop linux? Fuck that, I'm older I don't have hours to tune x11/Wayland or whatever the fuck it is now. MacOS all the way as it's *nix enough without being offensive. Microsoft has had a massive reversal in the past decade with .Net (core) and in the desktop space WSL has made some major gains but the hardware/os that Apple puts out is quite kino when you just want to get shit done and if you value your time.

Also fuck off with linux on arm hardware hector, it's so retarded that it's one of the key things that makes the experience. Why after paying for the hardware/software would you rip it out, it's mind boggling.

 

[PixarsTedKennedy]

Now that Pewdiepie has gone Linux does that mean that Josh will finally return to the fold as well?