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- Mar 30, 2023
Well now I want to know what the question was.
The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice
- Thread starter tehpope
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- Aug 28, 2015
Sure but what's that got to do with Linux? I mean IOS XR is linux now but...
Also yes, state the question.
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- Mar 16, 2021
It was years ago like a year or two post high school graduation so your guess is as good as mine. I do remember it making me feel out of depth because I thought I knew computers but I am no better than a surface level tinkerer.
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- Apr 1, 2024
I'm not going to defend mac, because I'm really not a fan of anything apple does. But those are two things I couldn't give less of a fuck about. And I'm probably not alone in that. In this thread I probably am. But in general.
Really, on backwards compatibility. To me it seems like a source of headaches rather than actually being something most people need. People bring it up for windows, and oh this other OS doesn't support this 14 year old binary! I wish linux would be more willing to wipe out cruft. Like the legacy stuff surrounding terminal emulators, that no one has used for years now. And people just have to work around now.
Also. running linux in virtual machines. I really wouldn't base my experience on using it, and how it is right now off of that. At least, when I run a distro in a vm. I run into weird issues that I've never had running it on hardware, or a live environment.
Actually, to people that mention virtual machines, to test linux. Since I've seen it brought up in this thread other than your post. I think that is actually some pretty bad advice. Telling people to test it in a vm. I think using the live environment on a usb is a lot better suggestion. It's a lot more complicated for people to get a virtual machine set up in the first place, even the simple solutions for it. Then they still run like shit, unless you have really good hardware, and can still cause little unexpected problems all over the place. When you can just make a usb, and plug that in, to play around with linux to test it.
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- Feb 3, 2013
If you need a healthy way to remind yourself of how bad Windows really is deep down, remember that up until the 32-bit versions finally got scrapped parts of the source for it had code comments so old they referred to fixing HPFS issues for “NT-OS2”. That kind of nonexistent housekeeping is how you get software that’s like digging out the sunken down ground level of Rome and it’s fucking bizarre.
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- Nov 26, 2024
Almost every ransomware attack in history has been on a Windows device for a reason
Retarded Weeb
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 17, 2022
Backwards compatibility can seem not worth the effort until you really want to get some old program working and then you're left frustrated to hell. Can't say if Windows is going about implementing it in the best way. I've seen people have more trouble getting old games to work on Windows 10/11 than I do getting them working in Wine/Proton. Perhaps it would be best if people made sure tools or instructions for getting old shit working are easy to find if you need them, while keeping the depreciated elements needed out of core libraries.
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- Apr 30, 2023
I could throw away literally everything else in an OS as long as I can a) do file management competently and fast and b) run any rando application I have saved on my hard drive in perpetuity. I have a directory of exes which I expect to just work forever, and as far as I'm concerned that's the job of an OS to just get out of the way and let me run my thingies.
As a sample, as seen from my mac:
"Oh but how often do you really need to run UMDGen.exe" well it's the only real tool that exists for manipulating files inside a PSP game iso, do I really care how often I run that? If I want to do that, I need to use UMDGen or bust so I want it to continue working forever. It's never going to get updated again. I'd expect it to probably maybe work in Wine or Proton or whatever but many of these tools talk to external devices via USB or in at least one case legacy serial COM ports, those generally break really hard in Wine.
Open source tools don't even really fill in this void as often just getting a build to run on any given repo can be a ton of work, especially if they have external dependencies pulled down via pip or cargo or whatever where you're praying APIs haven't changed or been deprecated.
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- Dec 17, 2019
That's the biggest mistake all those braindead "Year of the Linux now" cultists do when they try and force all the Win11 complainers to use Linux. The average person doesn't know how to use pre-installed Windows, let alone how to install a different OS. Hell, when you introduce them to the concept that you can just install or reinstall Windows they're shocked and think you're a computer god. And you're expecting them to install a completely different operating system and adjust to it?
Leave your NEET basement/sysadmin bubble for once and take a peek at average people using Windows. They are so tech illiterate they don't even know how to right click the taskbar to disable the Weather widget, and all they can do is complain and act like they're forced to be exposed to it and that they're helpless because their computer is a black box that controls them and not the other way around. You'll be way more productive ragebaiting on /g/ or having another X vs Wayland debate or whatever.
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- Apr 7, 2025
Even the archinstall script is completely alien to the average user. Disc formatting? Partitioning? UTC by default? Root user? Sudoer? Packages? DE? WM? Network management? LUKS? Drivers?
It's insane to throw anyone a text based pseudo-script that despite its convenience looks nothing like any traditional GUI OS install process without explaining what any of the poor user is actually choosing out of the myriad of options.
Then there's package management, security hardening, and system management which DOESN'T COME OUT OF THE BOX.
Linux is minimalist because YOU'RE the one who ends up bloating it. Either way, unless you're running a server, you'll end up with hundreds of dot files, configs for things you've tried once and forgotten, and in the end the ecosystem is hostile. With great power comes great responsibility - and the average desktop user is neither.
I've been ricing my Arch distro for two weeks now and I've been working with Debian systems for over a decade. I'm about to reinstall it from scratch because of the amount of reading I've done on the Arch ecosystem. AND THEY'RE BOTH LINUX DISTROS.
My laptop runs Mint and I maintain it easily - I've barely touched anything outside of themes, the shell emulator, and p10k. It works because I work on it and I depend on it. I know I can break it, and it's easy to break it. I've Timeshifted probably twice in five years.
Arch, despite being "just another Linux", is an order of magnitude easier to break and troubleshooting requires reading.
No one with a full-time job who wants an OS to work as a daily driver has the time or willingness to troubleshoot their system for the sake of being exceptional or flying the FOSS flag.
With all that being said, in the hands of an experienced user, yes, Linux really is that good despite what distro you choose. But there simply don't exist that many experienced users.
Companies hire teams to maintain their Debian servers on contract because their in-house teams are Linux illiterates. Just thinking about that makes me thankful for my job security but so much more aware of the unintentional gatekeeping that (understandably so) Windows and Mac users frequently encounter, then run back to their familiar systems.
I want people to come to Linux, it's a good thing. Look what Valve did to launch Arch into the atmosphere as a competent graphics compositor.
This happened with Android as well, but limited in scope.
It's not a matter of if but when Linux becomes a common and major player in the user desktop market share. Two things are holding it back: Linux elitists and the incuriousity of users.
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Noyciciw
kiwifarms.net
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- May 5, 2025
The only thing I can agree with this on is the multiplayer gaming bit; everything else, Linux has worthwhile alternatives to a lotta of the propriety, "esential software," and what not, and there are plenty of beginner friendly distros out there if someone can get the newbie in question, pointed in the right direction.
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- Apr 7, 2025
That's THE feature of Linux though. It gives the user so much control over their system that inevitably the user will break something. I've done it on Debian servers even after years of maintaining and security hardening corporate data.
Issues are inevitable. Issues are good things - they're informative. Issues tell me who fucked up before I fucked up, who tried to fix it, and how the system WORKS.
Windows users download CCleaner, Malwarebytes, run a Defender scan, and wait for the next OS update and and they're ready to go (usually they are). They sacrifice their agency over their system for convenience.
Windows users aren't users anymore. They're more like guest accounts in a buggy sandboxed OS with restricted privileges and manuals. They've been institutionalised.
I thought this was the case until last week. I don't think a beginner friendly Linux distro exists at all. Mint comes the closest, but still needs setting up in case DNS resolution isn't hijacked by NetworkManager. The FHS is completely foreign, and the default firewall is ufw.
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- Mar 30, 2023
DNS resolution just works in my experience, and inexperienced users don't understand folders as it is so you'd be teaching them anyways if you just downgraded them to windows 11. And Linux Mint by default doesn't really have any processes listening for access attempts anyways, unless you're turning on passwordless ssh or some other nonsense.
Akerman
kiwifarms.net
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- Apr 12, 2023
The first thing I learned back in the day on Linux Mint which was my first distro was blacklisting GPU drivers on my Notebook in GRUB in order to force it to use amdgpu which is apparently an issue on older integrated Radeon GPUs defaulting to an old graphics driver instead of it. So yeah, not really beginner friendly if you run into issues but I have heard anecdotally from some people that Linux Mint tend to minimize a number of issues that happen on other distros, couldn't say if that is true though because I personally distrohopped away pretty quickly.
Noyciciw
kiwifarms.net
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- May 5, 2025
My first Linux distro was Manjaro. I had only used Windows 7 and 10 before that, and only knew how to use gui programs. I have a cousin who's an experienced Arch user, and directed me to resources on how to install Manjaro. I was able to figure out all the graphical stuff relatively easily, and after a few years of living in Manjaro and evenutally learning how to use the terminal, I eventually installed EndeavourOS, cause I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to install Arch, but I was getting too knowledgeable curious to comfortably live in the preconfigured environment that was Manjaro; so I've been using EndeavourOS ever since. I went the whole nine yards, and setup a standalone WM even, but now I've reverted back to Xfce4, cause it's just such a comfy DE.
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- Apr 7, 2025
Don't get me wrong: it's THE most beginner friendly Linux distro by far, but it's still GNU/Linux. Whatever culture shock a Mac user experiences porting over to Windows and vice-versa is nothing compared to porting over to Linux.
These are two household names users are familiar and comfortable with.
Linux isn't just an OS and people forget that. It's a commitment to being an active super user on your own system, and a majority of users just don't want that responsibility.
Just look at this shit:
Beginner friendly in Linux land is "advanced user" in Windows/MacOS land.
If your network uses dynamic IP ranges or DNS-based rules, UFW doesn't auto-update entries unless scripted from my experience. Chuck a VPN into the mix and it's doubly janky.
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- Joined
- Mar 17, 2019
something that affects the average user not at all
not like Windows with AppData folders full of shit, right?
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- Apr 1, 2024
Ah. So literally both of the arguments before. We're really just one, it's just playing new games, and you want to play old games. Sounds like sticking with windows is the better option for you. Since the only thing you care about is playing whatever games you have.
That's probably the reason people that aren't gamers will never care about backwards compatibility. I really have a hard time thinking of anything else where wanting an ancient binary to work is a more practical option than using something else. And the edges cases where it would make sense. I would think the operating system the program would be used in would be one where it is going to work anyway. Like so custom program for a company on some old computer system, that hasn't been updated since 2000 or something.
And the file manager thing. I actually think this is the first time I've seen anyone complain about not being able to use a file manager on Linux. I know I've never had any problems with file managers, that's for sure. They just do their job. And there like 10 or more commonly used file managers to pick from. I feel like most people just find one of those they like, and use it and never think about it again.
You know. I swear. Before that 4chan shit happened. This thread used to be about Linux nerd shit. Now it's just talking about windows and other shit. This is literally the only place I go where people are bringing up windows constantly. If people like windows more. Use that shit. No one here will stop you. And I know I don't give a fuck how much more you like windows. I'm definitely not going to go around evangelizing Linux because it just ends up with this shit.
If people want to use Linux, need help. I am always willing to help people with issues, or to understand things they don't. But that's not what I see here (well, there are some people asking for help but those aren't the ones I'm talking about)
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