What I learned from trying Linux Desktop as a WSL user
dnmc.inI totally sympathize with the author here, having tried Linux on the desktop multiple times for the last 20+ years. Back then the problems I repeatedly ran into were around hardware support, stability of the desktop environment, near total lack of documentation, system upgrades via built in package manager totally breaking the OS at random and fairly often, and way too much choice for literally everything imaginable. (So much fragmented attention means there’s not enough deep focus on one really good, well tested and bullet proof set of options, tools and integrations.)
20 years later the same problems remain.
And that makes me sad, because I have zero faith in Apple or Microsoft when it comes to privacy and security, so I need a seriously competitive Linux desktop experience really bad.
But even after 20 years, it’s still a shitshow.
I'm sorry your experience has been lackluster. Personally, I find that the documentation/wiki for systems like Arch are quite packed with useful information. Going from my hands being held and things mostly done for me in Ubuntu with a mostly-vanilla setup, to Arch with a tiling window manager, and setting up networking/audio/etc manually was not that difficult at all, thanks to the Arch Wiki. They do a great job.
And, so many problems have been encountered by others, that usually if you experience a problem, and look it up on the web, you'll get an answer at least 70% relevant to solving your own.
Maybe it comes from a stubbornness, or a heightened curiosity and intrigue, but it only took me ~6 years to go from Windows power user, to almost never booting Windows up, and feeling like I know Linux pretty deeply. I never felt like this with Windows. Things just... make sense.
This whole comment came off as me stroking my own ego, but I really just don't understand what people find so difficult about the process of transitioning from Windows/MacOS power user to Linux. I just never really met any significant resistance throughout it all. If someone really wants to take more control of their system, they'll get there no matter what.
> but it only took me ~6 years to go from Windows power user, to almost never booting Windows up
> but I really just don't understand what people find so difficult…
Are you serious? I practically grew up with Linux, and switched to using windows partially in my mid teens, and never had to boot up linux for any reason while using windows, I switched to Mac in my late teens and never had to boot up windows or Linux for any reason. I would say it took me less than 6 days to become proficient on a Mac, mostly due to getting used to slight differences to Linux on the command line and figuring out where the damn keys where hiding on the keyboard. Eg | under the I, what the hell!?
You can’t honestly be serious that you spent 6 years being comfortable in Linux and also claim that you don’t understand what others find “so difficult” the answer is everything! If you had a toaster that asked you to search Google to figure out how to rewire your kitchen to suit its expectations before making toast you’d also toss it and buy a win-toaster that worked 98% of the time but gave you frozen toast the last 2% or switch to a Mac-toaster that “just works” but due to design concerns only had one button, and charged it’s battery from the bottom meaning you can’t roast while it’s charging. Both of those are minor things compared to having by to rewire a kitchen just for a toaster.
I guess I should have clarified that. I can see the confusion. At no point were things too difficult to proceed as fast as I wanted to. I simply moved that slow because I wasn't motivated, at the time, to go any quicker. Perhaps the length of time was an unnecessary detail.
What I was trying to say is that at no point during my whole transition period, did I ever feel like I had no clue how to do the analogue of some action from Windows in Linux.
Then again my nother is using Ubuntu for the last 6 years and.. it just works.
Back when she still had Windows on the same hardware it was one call a week. Now it is one call every 4 to 5 months (and this is usually not about the system but about some button that moved in some userland application)
Shitshow? Seriously? You must not be very good at using a search engine. Solutions for most of the problems I've encountered on Linux appear in the top ~5 results when I cut-and-paste the error messages (with quotes!) in to google or duckduckgo. My modern Ubuntu install Just WorksTM.
Well that is part of the problem too, solutions may be fairly easy to find (assuming it's for the right distro and version you're running), but sometimes it feels like there are just endless problems that need fixing.
I disagree. I first tried Linux about 15 years ago and had the experience you describe, I tried each 2 years or so without much improvement. But for the last 5 years or so, Ubuntu has been my main OS without considerable problems on multiple desktops and laptops.
> hardware support
Did you buy Windows hardware that doesn't support Linux and then grumble that it doesn't support Linux?
"I keep trying to fit a Ford gearbox on to my Buick and it just doesn't seem to fit properly"
My first hurdle teaching me a valuable lesson was getting VS Code to work properly.
There's a very, very old website called 'Linux is not Windows' which details this failing mindset of Windows users. Why should VS Code work on Linux?? Next thing you'll be wanting Office365 (or whatever it's called today) to work on Linux too.
Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. If you want to run Windows, then just run Windows. If you want to run Linux then just run Linux. Your thinning hair will thank you.
> Why should VS Code work on Linux??
Because it's heavily marketed as "runs everywhere". The .deb package is flawless, honestly.
"WSL (running Arch)"
Why not Ubuntu ? Arch is not for newbies afaik. Anyway , the line "I switched from Mac to Windows a few years ago, right when they announced WSL integration. As an early adopter I instantly fell in love with it, even with WSL1. " makes me think that this individual has some issues (paid ?). MacOSX is a UNIX but the windowing system is not X11. And i do not think that development on windows is easier than on MacOSX.
As someone who does home dev on Linux, used to use Windows at work and for the past 2 years has used MacOS at work I honestly don't see the problems that people describe.
I can only assume that they have literally bought hardware with weird cheaped out Chinese unsupported chips and then complain that an OS that was never claimed to be supported, isn't supported.
The dev work on Linux has been much simpler to set up, especially since both Mac and Windows spend their time installing extra stuff to run Linux to run all the dev tools in the background anyway.