Personally, as much as these little things annoy me, the big things just work. Games just work. My hardware just works. Updates just work. Software just works. I never, ever, ever have to open fucking terminal. That alone is worth all the bullshit in the world. I got into an argument the other day with someone who was chastising a Linux user for updating their distro without checking dependencies first. Like doing homework before an update is a normal thing everyone should be expected to do. It's not, and until Linux figures this shit out, it's going to stay niche in the consumer space.
Just to be perfectly clear, I am rooting for Linux to succeed. I think our best chance at this stage is Valve. I suspect the use of immutable SteamOS will begin to creep into the desktop space. Developers will love it because they can build exactly one repo and call it a day. Users will love it because shit will "just work." Yes, we lose some control, but no one will care because the biggest flaws will be gone.
I suspect the use of immutable SteamOS will begin to creep into the desktop space. Developers will love it because they can build exactly one repo and call it a day.
Fedora Silverblue does this.
It's a cool experience where you primarily use flatpaks, or containers for legacy / dev work, it would work great on a phone.
You can also fork the OS and customize the base installation and share it from a container registry. It would be awesome from the "I am my family's IT support person" perspective.
You think I check for dependencies when I update? I just click a button that says update on my Nobara distro. Idk what you think Linux users do that is so much more difficult than Windows. All of my apps except for Tresorit was a click to download. This is easier than Windows's "search for website, click download, run .setup, get the program".
That's great for you. Sadly it's not everyone's experience. I've broken plenty of things with updates, and I'm not even a heavy Linux user. you'll find millions of Linux users making arguments like that I described above, blaming users for updates, all over the internet.
The same can be said for Windows but instead of breaking with wonky updates, it breaks because of constant bloatware that creeps in to a computer to slow it down to the point of being unusable.
Everything has flaws so people have to adapt to those flaws or use something else. OP was complaining about the search bar being there, so since they don't like it, they should go somewhere else. If they're not going to do that, then adapt. Whining to a community that has a lot of Linux users is just asking for " just use Linux " comments.
Yes, not everything needs to work. But everyone needs the things they want to work, if that makes sense. In other words: everyone has different requirements.
I require SteamVR to run acceptably in order to play VR games on my main computer. I have yet to find a distro that satisfies this requirement, so I must use Windows since it is the only thing that works for that use case.
Conversely, I do not require VR support on my laptop. Everything I want to do with my laptop can be done to an acceptable level with Linux, so I run Linux on my laptop. Simple.
You literally just have to figure out how to set up a USB to boot Linux. Then figure out how to install a few apps you don't see on the app store with chatGPT or Google. People don't need to master the command line because I use Linux and I suck at it. All I know is "sudo dnf install" and "cd". You're making it out to be rocket science science when it isn't.