Linux is not ready
Linux is not ready
627 comments
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I wish I could use linux, most (not all) of the apps I use regularly are better on a linux distro. I self host a lot of services on linux machines, and god I would love to rid myself of Microsoft. But my main computer OS? still stuck with Windows.
I just (a few years ago) upgraded my graphics card and at that time NVidia had a better deal then AMD.... I'm not sst to upgrade for at least 5 years still. Every distro I've tested have weird problems that cannot be solved by a few lines of code, all seem to point to Nvidia, but it's hard to say without testing without.
My main computer is working as is with Windows, until there is a linux distro that just works with nvidia, I'll stick to it and the many tools I have to keep my things as private from Microsoft as I can. One of the many problems I've had is the task bar/desktop/windows hang/freezes, have to go in the terminal to reboot or force a shutdown. If I have to reboot everytime I want to use the computer and reset all my apps, when the only times it happens now is when windows forces it : not for me thanks.
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Ever since I stopped gaming as much, linux has become infinitely more fitting to me. My main driver is Mint 21.3, it does everything i want it to. Its fun, and a great learning experience. Though obviously you gotta want to learn how to fix things if things go wrong, which they still do, but mostly at the beginning. After installing the right graphics drivers, and fixing touchpad scroll speed, everythings smooth sailing.
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ready ready ready, i'm not a gamer but i want to have a 600 gb ram and 160 tb storage laptop and use xfce on it!! that'd be a nice thing because everything is ready
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everyone in the comments is talking about linux, not a single comment about how this meme format is used exactly wrong
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This isn't really how this format works but ok
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Fractional Scaling (Done)
Can you please tell my computer that? 😄
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No more excuses bird!
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Linux isn't ready.
While many things will work 'out of the box', many won't. Hell, for like 3 months HDR was causing system-wide crashes on Plasma for Nvidia cards, so the devs just disabled the HDR options until there was an upstream fix.
There are still a host of resume-from-sleep issues, Wayland support is still spotty, and most importantly - not every piece of software will run.
Linux is my daily driver, I have learned to live and love the jank. My wife uses windows and does not want to be confronted with a debugging challenge 5% of the time when she turns on her computer, and I think that is fair.
These kinds of posts paper over lots of real issues and can be counterproductive. If someone jumps into the ecosystem without understanding, these kinds of posts only set them up for frustration and disappointment.
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And it still doesn't work with my NVIDIA GPU causing my monitors to freeze and stop working.
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Wish it was ready. I have it dual booted with windows. Until these things work for me I can't permanently switch:
Adobe H264/5 in davinci free Battle.net working (I can't get it to work even with tutorials. Works in windows) AMD adrenaline/Nvidia control panels and shadow play. AMD frame gen.
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I used only Linux for years... guess i not care about games.
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I'd love to move to Linux but I play some old ass games that I've no idea if they'll work. I missed out a lot of games since my PC was pure ass and it's just something I like doing.
For eg I want to play OG Deus Ex (never done before), and do a replay of Morrowind with fancy mods. I also recently replayed Splinter Cell because I felt like it.
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HDR isn't all that great for gaming yet, in my opinion. It takes too much tweaking just to get it working, because apparently games/proton still aren't able to natively pass that metadata to Wayland?
Running every applicable game or all of Steam through Gamescope brings its own problems with how it handles the window, so I end up never using it at all. I just want it to be as simple as it is on Windows, man! 😩
Also, VRR seems to make my screen flicker at an unnoticeably-high-but-still-irritating rate at random whenever I alt+tab, never figured that out yet...
Finally, I do wish there was a simpler, more paint.net-like editor rather than GIMP, and I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but otherwise basically every thing on that list of features works well enough for me.
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I agree with Linus Torvalds. Linux is too fragmented. This makes consistent software deployment and support expensive and far too varied. Maintaining documentation alone requires an unlimited number of distros. From a user's perspective, I really think Linux needs a universal install method like .exe. No user should ever need to use the CLI install software, no matter their distribution. Radarr, for example, is a very popular home media server application. It is one-click install on Windows. It is fucked on Linux.
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+1 for kdenlive!! Kickass software
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Only real Linux users are devs. But devs aren't users!
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If the average person can not use your OS, it is not ready. Period.
For example:
Windows - Open File Explorer > Add Network Drive > Find/plug it in > Enter creds > Bam. Ready to go and will automatically log you in at boot. Very nice, very intuitive UI.
Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
In my own experience, I was able to get the hang of Windows with no one showing me how a computer ever worked, at the age of 10! Intuitive enough a child can do it.
On Linux, you have to read manuals/documentation, ask random (mostly rude) people on the internet, or give up because why the fuck would I want to go and enter 5 commands just to have something as simple as auto mount a network share? Not intuitive, therefore not easy to learn as you go.
I get it, Linux people like knowing how their computers operate, they like ensuring everything is working the way THEY want to, and that's awesome! What's not awesome is recommending Linux to the general populace and then getting upset at them for asking why they can't do something or why don't they just do these steps to do whatever it is they are having issues with. Then, you have a person who doesn't even know what a terminal is confused as hell because they were told Linux is so much better than Windows.
Until we get a more intuitive (GUI focused) way of doing what I would consider normal computer tasks, it will not ever be ready. That's just the way I see it.
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Average people don't even use networked drives. What are you talking about?
They're happy with Chrome and Steam.
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Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
I put into the dolphin path sftp://myusername@remoteip.address. Then I give it my password, and check the box to save it. Then I right click any folder in the destination and do "add to places" and in the future I just navigate to it like a local folder.
I guess I'm supposed to do it a harder way? I've done essentially the same but with smb:// when forced to work with a samba share like an animal.
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Mine is set up that way, but the issue is when I go to click the folder that we added to places, on next boot, it will ask for my password to mount it.
I use the NAS for storage and backups, while running a program on the desktop that will also upload those files to the cloud. The program isn’t able to see the path on boot, because the NAS isn’t mounted on login.
It’s doable I’m sure, but if it is editing some config file somewhere or with some terminal command, I’m going to just shrug and move on because that’s quite silly in my opinion.
And yes, it is samba, but it’s the only thing I’ve used since it was set like that at default. Why would I look into other ways if it’s working just fine, exactly?
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The average person does not mount network drives themselves.
I would hazard a guess that for the truly average user, booting to a desktop with Firefox and LibreOffice installed is like 90% of what they need.
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If the average user
Proceeds to describe a task average users never perform.
And no, you having been a smart child doesn’t excuse you being an obtuse adult.
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the average person doesnt know how to mount a drive on windows or even what that is or why you would want to, they just need to be able to open a browser
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Very good point!
Example 2:
I need to drag this file into my browser to upload it to the website I'm visiting for whatever reason. I'm an average user that has only ever really needed a browser. My OS came with Firefox, but when I try to drag the file onto my browser window like I've always done, nothing happens. Is my computer broken?
No, it's installed as a snap/flatpak that doesn't have the "privileges" to do that, and I will never know that since I'm an average user who only needs a browser.
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When I was on help desk I often talked about meeting the client where they were at in their technical skill level. Sometimes their technical skill level was "Can you click the icon in the bottom left that looks like a window with four pains, and then click the settings icon it looks like a gear". If mounting a file share was involved I just remoted in, none of the people that called could handle those instructions.
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Meanwhile my experience with automounting network drives with dolphin is
Open Dolphin > Add Network Folder > Enter creds > Check automount box > done
I haven't had to use the terminal for anything in years. There's some things I do in the terminal, but that's because I like it better, not because there isn't an intuitive way to do it.
The reason guides tell people to use the terminal is because it's the same across DEs, not because there aren't DEs that make it more intuitive.
Would I throw a random non techy friend on Linux? No, because it's not what they're used to. If they had no computer experience at all though I absolutely would.
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No automount check box on openSUSE, my Linux OS.
Also, we're talking average users here, not some techy people who at least understand the differences between the OS and the file manager they use.
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I once wanted to change my mouse scrolling direction on Windows. In KDE it's a toggle in the mouse settings and on Windows it's some dubious registry editing (apparently). I think there are about as many things that are easier on Linux than on Windows as there are things that are easier on Windows than on Linux (assuming you're using a modern distribution with a beginner-friendly, sensible configuration).
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I'm with you on this. As Zaps said right above you ... "from an age when I had the curiosity and patience to figure stuff out" has a lot of bearing. BUT, I'm an "old dog" and I've taught myself a lot of programs. What they NEED is to create a bunch of video tutorials like Adobe did. I have my own problems with Adobe, but I use their programs for work and am still learning how some of them work. I don't always get it on the first, third or tenth watch ... but being able to rewind, pause and watch videos over really helps when things aren't "adult friendly". I once tried Linux. When I was not a child, but much younger. I never got past loading it for the reasons everyone mentions. I was proud that I got that far, but that was as far as I could get without someone to help me.
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Thunar + (i think) gvfs does fine with network drives, it mounts them as soon as I try to click on them. If I wanted otherwise I wouldn't use the tool that's meant to show me files when I want to look at them.
When administrating (an admittedly horribly set up) computer system I hate that Windows automatically saves the address without asking because then after turning the protections back on after installing a program from there, the users still see the network drive and want to play around with it.
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I think the hard disks thing, looks like gparted kindve, can add fstab entries automatically for you.
I could be wrong
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While I agree linux has some pants on head stupid shit that needs to change, like right click new file being something you need to diy for some reason on fedora, linux now is better than windows was when I was 10. Most things work, you don't need to troubleshoot. I remember spending more time troubleshooting games than playing them back in the day on windows while linux desktop didn't even exist at the time.
There are some issues to work out but majority of them are things that are done differently on linux and you hate cause youre used to windows bullshit.
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I mean, I was able to figure out how MS-DOS worked as a child just be flailing on the keyboard and reading the errors. It was "easy" because now I know it while Macintoshes may as well have been alien technology. A "mouse"?, moving windows?, you have to find programs and click on them instead of just typing?
You're just used to Windows annoyances and not used to Linux annoyances, that's all.
For example:
Installing and updating a program on Windows is a horror show compared to using a package manager. It expects average users to find, download and run executable files from the Internet and conditions them to approve elevation for anything that asks.
If Windows breaks, how do you troubleshoot it? Maybe Google knows, maybe rebooting fixes it, if not then possibly re-installing the entire OS. It's so bad that if you work with Windows clients you probably already have an image of a Windows install because troubleshooting is so much of a pain it's easier to just completely re-image the machine.
Don't even get me started on how often Microsoft changes the layout of administration tools and system menus or their tendency to change the name of various system components for no logical reason.
I don't think Linux is for everyone, but only because most everyone already has years of Windows experience and forgets all of the frustration and learning.
If you used Linux for just as long as you've used Windows, then editing fstab would seem as trivial a task as pinning an item to the
start bartaskbar, orlaunching a programstarting an app from thesystem traynotification areasystem tray.-
Yeah, this one gets me, but you are exactly right with "years of experience". Something goes wrong on my GFs MacBook or Windows PC and she just googles fixes, something goes wrong on her Steamdeck and she hands it to me "I don't know how to get around the desktop mode"........GOOGLE IT, LEARN, YOU ARENT STUPID! sigh
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I mean atleast in terms of the troubleshooting I've had to do it's much easier on Windows. Sure it can be more finicky but if I have a problem 99% of the time I google it and find someone else having the same problem and worst case scenario atleast reinstalling Windows fixes the problem. When I gave Linux a try the amount of times I googled something and either found an out of date solution that didn't work or was just told that that doesn't work and you can't do that was annoying enough that I gave up and went back to Windows. If Linux works for you that's great but acting like the problems with Linux are just people not being used to it is wrong.
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Installing programs through Windows is now (thankfully) more align with Linux.
winget install firefox > see two different forms, one from Windows Store (ew) and the one provided and hosted by Mozilla > winget install mozilla.firefox > program installs
When updating: winget upgrade shows available updates > winget upgrade --all updates all the listed programs
Not as good as Linux of course, but much better than the old method you stated. That point I will give to you, as it is still not simple for the average user. "Terminal? WTF is that?"
I generally don't have any annoyances with Windows because it does the things I need it to. I don't find a UAC popups as annoying, because it is supposed to help prevent people from messing their computer up. The same could be said for the average person on Linux running random commands they found online because the thing they were expecting their computer to do isn't doing the thing.
Windows has never broken on me, so I do not have a good rebuttal for that. I can at least say that when Linux has been borked before on my own hardware, I essentially had to put the ISO back on the single USB I owned at the time just to reinstall the entire OS again, because again, I didn't know anything about Linux at this time. While in Windows, if the computer doesn't boot properly 3 times, it brings up the Windows Recovery menu that has in plain English what available options you have to get your install back in at least some working manner. Again, you must keep the average person in mind. You and I are not what I would consider average in this context.
Again, point to you for the changes to UI that Micro$oft introduce. Very, very, very stupid UI/UX redesign choices, and without an alternate avenue at that! (there are a few programs that try to replace some of the Windows UI to get it back to how it should be, but of course that can introduce entirely new issues...)
I've been knuckle dragging my way into Linux more and more for 15 years. That's why I have such a strong opinion on what they could do better for the average people. UI/GUI is a must have to get people to even consider ditching Windows. That's without even taking into consideration that most of the programs I run personally do not even have a Linux alternative, and Wine/Bottles/Lutris/Heroic can not remedy without loads of understanding what you're supposed to change here and there for that specific program. That is a real nightmare in my view.
You are mostly correct that I am very much more used to the "plug and play and it just works" of Windows, but having to go and edit some config file somewhere on my computer, instead of it just being an option in the settings or in the file manager itself, is just insane to a person who just wants to set it and forget it, like I can do with Windows.
Obviously, my time with Windows is not the average either, so I can see your points. I love Linux, what it stands for, and how it is community driven. I want it to be better so I can finally delete Windows forever.
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Mounting a network share is beyond the usage scope of the DAU you describe. They need a functional default desktop environment, working standard drivers for their standard hardware, and a browser. That's pretty much it.
And let's not pretend there's anything intuitive about Windows distinguishing between accessing a network share, and mounting it as a virtual drive. This is just the staying power of "whatever I'm used to from an age when I had the curiosity and patience to figure stuff out".
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I’m sorry that I have upset you with my comments. Nowhere did I say that Windows is great, or better than Linux.
This is a meme about Linux. I’m talking about and taking the piss out of Linux.
Windows has its issues, macOS has its issues, and so does Linux.
The best part about Linux, though, is that we can actively make it better thanks to constructive criticism and thorough feedback. You can’t really do that on the other two, so, let me voice my gripes about it in a Linux meme community perhaps?
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The average person doesn't use network drives or know what they are.
The real problem is if people can't buy Linux laptops at Best Buy it literally doesn't matter how usable or not it is because the average person doesn't install an OS.
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I work with windows for over 10 years, and use Linux daily for private stuff, including being a nerd and a gamer, and some side gigs for at least 8.
If something is weird, doesn't work or breaks in Linux, I can usually find the culprit and help fast. It's out there or it's so obscure I need to puzzle it myself.
If something like that happens on windows, pray someone already had that issue or Microsoft decided to write an article about it, because nobody will help, and most search results point to bot responses about scf scannow, dism at best, and straight up reseting your system to factory defaults.
Point being, I like figuring out stuff in Linux, and I dread opaque bullshit Microsoft gets away with.
Even your network drive example, in my experience is a coin toss. So many variables, hidden settings, weird registry keys with no documentation. Yeah.
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You are confusing the average user with the mids... average usage is equally easy to windows:
Open a file Edit a file Copy a file Open a browser
Most people i know does not care for anything else.
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eh, depends on the situation.
I wanted to print a paper. Very simple, right? (cue collective sighs from all I.T.)On Windows it's literally just "find printers on network" -> click mine -> print
on Linux id've had to input like 7 different commands depending on the distro and look through it.
I tried, got errors, got up, went to the family computer running windows 10, and printed from there.
There are situations where Linux is easier, but if you're new to the UI and you Google something like "how to connect to WiFi Linux" (ie what a normal person would) you'll get command line results that the person doesn't understand and they'll just give up
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Why is automounting at boot without credentials a necessity and intuitive for you. No, I would expect it to mount exactly once and to require me to input username and password before I mount my porn collection so that my sister does not see it.
I don't get why you claim that windows does this correctly and Linux does not. It would be the opposite for me.
Besides, the important point in this example is to actually mount the folder to do your job. In your example, both systems do this equally well with an equally well UI, before your automounting nonsense.
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Because that's how I want it to behave.
My network share is for file backups, and storage. I don't want to enter my 10-15 long password to mount my NAS AND my 4 dedicated HDDs that reside in my desktop machine at every boot. That's just ridiculous in my use case.
It's this type of mindset why I feel the need to bring these issues up, because while you think that's a great idea, I find that inconvenient. Vice versa for how you feel. Options are never a bad thing to have.
For example, if I have a program that is backing up files to a cloud, files that are being held on the NAS, I would have to remember to mount the NAS before that program can do it's thing. So, every boot, you expect me to go into Dolphin and manually mount each and every drive that I may need? That does not make sense at all to me, personally. I'm glad it works that way for you though!
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It's simpler that all that. Turn on new computer, open browser, install steam, install games, play games. Anything more complex than that makes it unusable. People have zero time to deal with even a slight hiccup. It is annoying to watch as people are getting into steamOS on Steamdeck and every little thing is the end of the world. I have seen "oh, to get that one to run smooth you gotta set the FPS locked to 30" met with "nah, I ain't got time for all that, I'll play it on the Xbox".
I don't know what the fix is, outside cloning windows GUI and making an ultra safe and familiar entry Linux (the replies will be various lists of "just use x,y,z" and "get this one and technobabble the dilithium crystals into the frondulator" and that just pushes people away instantly....there has to be a tiktok-dumb entry level OS before any real migration happens.
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There are entire distros that exist just to be a gaming desktop, they come with Steam installed and configured as a default so you just boot, login to Steam and install your games. All of the weird wine/proton stuff is handled automatically by Steam and if you have any problems, you can go to a single site (protondb.com) and see what settings you need to change.
The entire installation process is just as simple as Windows: click the drive you want to install on, choose a username and timezone, let the bar fill up and reboot.
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Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
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But once you leave Steam [...] it gets a lot worse
Heroic Games Launcher is pretty great for games from GOG and Epic. You can run games with Proton just fine.
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Lutris is also a great option, actively contributing to it. Got a slightly different focus than Heroic, but a lot more features as well. Basically a one-stop shop once you got familiar with it. Really needs more people that can contribute though given the huge amount of platforms and launchers it attempts to cover (literally all of them).
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Also, for folks out of the loop, let me explain what this entails. I installed Steam. I clicked install on a game. I clicked play in Steam. That was it. Proton isn't some sort of thing you need to install or launch separately. It really does "just work".
I'm able to play Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2, and even Marvel Rivals online just fine. All of these are online multiplayer games, the types that generally seem to have the most trouble on Linux.
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that is most definitely not the process. You have to explicitly go into Steam's settings > Compatibility > "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" (what in the world, it's called Steam Play, not Proton?) and then additionally select which Proton version you want. If you don't know this, or don't google it with the right keywords, you won't understand why literally 90% of your library isn't available (in my case it was 99% of my library, I think I only had 3 games available on linux natively). Also if you select the wrong Proton version some games won't run, so you have to know that and switch it for those games only.
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Agreed, but I think it's important to note that that isn't because of a shortcoming of Linux, it's because those companies are incentivized to support platforms that are more suitable for enabling massive profits, that's what it seems like to me anyways.
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lutris works just as flawlessly nowadays using proton with minimal config.
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Getting something brand new from EA is painful on any platform
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Can confirm, bought my son a FIFA game on pc that caused so much trouble and confusion on windows with their activation bullshit that I ended up buying him an xbox
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lol wut? Proton vpn sucks on Linux.
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Skill issue
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Proton is a tool for use with the Steam client which allows games which are exclusive to Windows to run on the Linux operating system. It uses Wine to facilitate this.
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Even for hobbyist needs the feature set is basically a decade behind.
I mean, Gimp 3 ia looking pretty good to me. Maybe it's not fit for a workplace (even though it depends on the workplace imo) but it's definitely more than enough for hobbyists.
Would you mind citing some example of fundamental missing features?
Not trying to be a smartass, just genuinely curious
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I really, REALLY wish the Affinity suite would work on Linux. They are the only ones even remotely comparable to Adobe.
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Yeah, it's what I use these days and yeah, that'd be nice. It isn't the all-in-one package you get with PS, but for casual use in photo editing it's decent and there are alternatives for some of the other use cases of PS that are closer while still being a fraction of the cost when stacked on top of Affinity.
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I use gimp for pixel art for game textures and to make memes. It has tons of features that nobody knows about becuase they're fucked by horrendous UI. But theres never been anything I needed to to but couldnt after looking up a tutorial on the internet. Valid points against gimp but lets not pretend people used to photoshop arent also kind of stuck in their old workflow habits and unwilling to relearn new software UI.
Theres photogimp but it hasn't been worked on in a while.
Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
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Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
Another reason to use Gentoo: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-gfx/gimp
You can install 3.0.0rc2 or even git version.
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Photopea was written by a single college grad, and it’s miles better than gimp. While gimp has more resources and manpowers. Something is seriously wrong with their team.
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Gimp has a few weak spots but it's an incredibly capable tool and if you think phone apps can do things it can't then I don't think you know how to use it.
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I'm pretty sure Photoshop was better in 2003 than gimp is today
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To run Resolve properly, you apparently have to run DaVinci's flavor of Rocky Linux 8.6. If you're doing other things with that machine, this may be undesirable. And as far as I know, there's no equivalent for After Effects.
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I can guarantee you that no app on or for your phone can do a fraction of what GIMP is capable of.
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Oh well if you can guarantee me then I must have no clue what I'm talking about and we can just wrap this up
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You’re telling me this free, volunteer-run feature full software isn’t almost as good as the multi-million dollar product from a multi-billion dollar company?
If this dude can edit his videos and images on Linux so can you Mr Van Gogh. https://youtu.be/lm51xZHZI6g
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Users do not care about how hard the devs are working for free. If the software doesn't have the features, it's not ready.
Really think about this. You're saying two entirely contradictory things:
- Linux software is ready to compete with Windows
- Users cannot expect Linux software to have comparable features to Windows
How will it compete without comparable features? Passion and morals aren't valued over effectiveness by most users.
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"Nvidia GPU working"
If the driver feels like it, lol.
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For me it works all the time on x11, on Wayland I still sometimes have some issues though.
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I know NVIDIA gets a lot of shit, but I've honestly never encountered a problem after using nvidia + Linux for well over a decade. Sure, it can be picky when it comes to kernel version, but deciding on a kernel that works well for you and the rest of the system is part of initial setup of a proper system anyway.
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For real?? 😓 I was rockin a 3080ti on a 4k panel for a bit there and Wayland was impossible to run on Debian-KDE. Like as soon as I got to desktop everything stuttered in slow motion, dpi was janky as hell, and wouldn't respond to DPI config changes... And that was on a fresh install from Debian's KDE installation media! 🤔 did ya'll have to do any tinkering or was Wayland cruising for ya outta the box?
Had to sell that card as I got tf outta the US anyways (been maining my steam Deck on a dock, which has been fun!), but I'm thinking I'll go AMD for my next build. VR & Wayland are way better on an AMD GPU, from what I hear!
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If the gpu doesn't burn
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I really want to transition to Linux but the dual boot issues that risk bricking my windows installation (I really have to use for work and for gaming) really put me off.. Is it even fixable? I'm not blaming Linux but just wondering if there's even a solution for what (from what I read) seems quite an serious issue and a deterrent for adoption..
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Unless computer companies include Linux with their PC's, it will never get general adoption.
No average user will follow instructions on how to boot Linux distro installer, especially when there are multiple steps needed to do so, such as on UEFI systems.
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This is the real answer. Defaults are king. Most people don’t even bother to customize their settings on any platform, let alone change platforms.
Very few people go out of their way to install a different OS than the one a device came with. Many people don’t even realize you can.
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Unless computer companies include Linux with their PC's, it will never get general adoption.
Ok, which version of Linux should go onto mass devices for users?
I'm just going to grab some popcorn and stand over here....
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Several companies sell computers that have Linux by default, System76's Pop_OS! being one example.
I get that its not a big brand like Dell or Lenovo (who I think sells some Linux laptops? Could be wrong), but they're out there and the distro is just gonna be dependent on the company selling the machines.
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Kubuntu. It's solid and similar enough to Windows UI-wise. Everyone should start there and later people can explore other options if they want.
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I didn’t think Linux had enough ads and wasn’t commercialized enough but then I tried Ubuntu.
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Fuckin gottem 🤣🤣 bullseye!
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HDR was solved?
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The colour management protocol on wayland got merged yesterday, and KWin has already switched to the now complete spec.
GNOME are surfacing HDR in GNOME 48.
With WINE’s wayland driver having a year of fixes, hopefully Valve will use it in Proton 10 allowing use of HDR in games running via proton.
I wouldn’t call it solved just yet, but it’s very close.
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That's very exciting. Once HDR in games is enabled I hope to try dual booting (probably still need windows for VR unfortunately)
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Oh? Exciting news! I've been hoping for some progress on HDR games, and I have a few holdout friends whose only barrier to leaving Windows was having their HDR games work seamlessly
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Yes, not super long ago but since a year or so.
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I was thinking the same, where?
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And Dolby Vision?
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Yes?
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No. The only DE currently supporting it as experimental feature is KDE. Same with Hyprland. In Gnome it's still being worked on. Cosmic promised it to be supported in the first stable release, so also still in progress.
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TBH, so many people I know don't even know how to use Windows. Or even a browser. iOS or maybe Android is their PC, all through apps and feeds.
Like, if I explained laptop BIOS access for installing Linux, I’d lose them before I even started.
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iOS or maybe Android is their PC, all through apps and feeds.
So they're already using BSD and Linux.
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Yes yes, Linux is a kernel, but it's pretty obvious from context they mean desktop operating systems using the Linux kernel.
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Linux in the meme’s context has little relation to Apple or Android, unfortunately.
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It certainly sounds like wayland is just about ripe. Any DE recommendations for a lifelong XFCE enjoyer like myself?
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KDE. It's working very well with Wayland. I've been using both on my daily driver for a year now and it's come a long way since then. It was still a bit rough in the beginning but now I can't see myself going back. It's pretty polished.
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I've been using KDE Plasma with Wayland for a couple of months and it's been really good. The apps that don't support it properly open as an X11 window inside Wayland, which is perfectly fine. I'm not switching back to X11 either haha
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I'm not a Linux noob, but I've been out of the scene for a few years.
Recently tried debian with KDE and Wayland on a modern PC with a 3060. Just a default install.
My mouse could barely track across the screen, it was very choppy and stuttered like crazy.
This was in the last 6 months. I got it fixed by switching to a different compositor, but I shouldn't have had to do that. Even then I found YouTube to be super laggy.
It's just not ready.
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Xfce next major release will have Wayland support so no need to even change!
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Wfce?
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Best news I've heard all year
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KDE or Gnome.
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I'm jumping on the kde train. The experience has been solid since plasma 6 and the Wayland jump last year, especially if you are already stuck in the Nvidia family.
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Cinamon should be supporting it soon
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Discord screensharing is working on Wayland now? :O
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They pushed some sort of update to their Canary build which also includes stream audio.
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Yes?
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No. It's only in the experimental build as it's still unstable for many people. They briefly introduced it, then got lots of complains and pulled it again.
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Yes and yes. Been working in my install of Discord Canary for a few months now.
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Not from my recent experience.
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Have you guys decided which distro is the ready one?
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Not yet but I'd at least narrow it down to Arch and Fedora. I don't think either of those is a bad choice.
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Lol, Arch Linux is good to learn quickly if you like that. Suggesting it to non-experts however is an act of sadism. 😅
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I'm still waiting for ThanosLinux that's based on Ubuntu and only uses Snaps.
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I lost half of my system and didn't even have to rm -rf /
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Every time you need to use a Snap application half of your data will randomly disappear
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Can you use HDR in KDE? Only desktop Can you use HDR in game? Only with gamescope with dozen flags Can you use native wayland in proton? No unless you go through complex hoops.
"Finished" isn't worth a jack shit if it doesn't work out of the box
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"Finished" is a relative concept that dependa on an individuals needs and wants. I don't care about HDR. I've been able to play every game I want virtually without a hassle for more than a decade. Wayland is nice but ultimately I don't care.
Linux has been finished for me since some time between 2011-2014.
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I have been using hdr in kde for a few weeks now. I recently got a Dell oled monitor, and it has been working surprisingly well out of the box with hdr on plasma. I'm on Nobara btw
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Double space
Before single newline -
Proton in Wayland works well in Ubuntu out of the box. I don't think it matters if it is native or an X11 compatibility layer, since the games I played ran better than they did in Windows 7.
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Don't worry guys, we'll never have VR
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I can't tell if this is flippant?? steamvr works great for what I've used it for (mostly beat saber and taskmaster VR). using Nobara 40 rn
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It's just not competitive with the quality of support on Windows. It's bad enough, comparatively, that if you're a heavy VR user it's worth keeping a Windows install just for that use. There was a long post on /r/linuxgaming a few weeks back rolling up all the issues into one post, I'll try to find it. One of the best comments in the post was by a top-ranked Beatsaber player actually; he said that latency among other things was the reason he has kept dual booting -- only using Windows for VR gaming. I know that I just gave up on playing Elite: Dangerous in VR successfully because I didn't want to fuss with dual booting.
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Yeah not sure of their setup, but I had a big list of mandatory things that needed to work before I erased my windows partitions. VR was one of them. More specifically VR full room and VR sitting with my HOTAS and wheel setups. Everything game related works perfectly. Some VR applications I haven't gotten working or found replacements for like Virtual Desktop. (If anyone has any suggestions, that'd be amazing.)
But long story short, VR works and it works well. I've played on both an Nvidia 3090 and an AMD 7900 XTX. I'm using Ubuntu 24.10 with Gnome Wayland.
On occasion it complains about gnome not supporting vr. I just reboot and it works fine.
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We have: https://lvra.gitlab.io/
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Ah shit this rules! Cheers, yo!
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The thing that's fucking me up in the last month since I switched is the fact that when I press Windows Key + P to switch Displays to just my second monitor (when I want to use my consoles), switching it back causes KDE to count the monitors as separated for some reason. Like they are virtually spaced apart, so I'm stuck in one monitor instead of being able to use both. It also resets my second monitor to the primary one for some reason. Very strange, never an issue on Windows.
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And I used to solve this back in the day with a KDE Widget that added Display Profiles as a function and I could press a button to switch them on the fly, unfortunately it hasn't been updated in five years and it only works on X11 and not Wayland.
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why do you need to switch? win+p is the switch between mirrored and joined mode right? why not just let the system handle it?
i too have a few consoles and i use a hdmi switch before monitor 1 and on the 2nd monitor i sometimes switch between hdmi and vga for an older pc, but i just let pop do whatever-
Oh it's because I don't have a proper HDMI switch, I'm using the three inputs on one monitor, so unless I switch the output manually thru the monitor, it won't automatically switch to the console. The solution for this is to select Laptop screen under the win+p menu in KDE
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Linux has been ready since 2008. Literally not had a single real problem since Ubuntu 7.10 kept turning my monitor off while booting. Everything just works and has for 17 years now.
Every problem I see people have now (IRL not online) is 'I don't like the default theme' tier nonsense.
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The "works on my machine" certification sure seems like an amazing barometer for usability.
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Works on Grampa's machine and he can't even figure out how how to unlock an iPhone. Which is 'stare at it' last I checked.
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It might be nonsense to you, but that's the first thing people see. No matter how amazing you business is, if your business card is a handwritten phone number on a piece of toilet paper, nobody will call.
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Yup. If the theme is causing a mental hang up for laymen, then it’s an issue whether you agree with it or not.
But I suspect it’s more than that, and Linux stans are playing down the shitty UI.
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Is fractional scaling a standard feature in GNOME now? Last time I needed it, it was still an experimental feature I had to enable.
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Pretty sure it's enabled by default on Fedora 41.
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And the text rendering (at least for me with flatpaks) is completely fuzzy garbage.
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And electron is shit, so you have to enable that experimental ozone thing, which kills off ibus somehow, meaning I have to decide between blurry chromium/electron apps and being able to write in Japanese.
Don't even get me started on VST plugins for music production (definitely far from ready)
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same with vrr
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Unlike with fractional scaling, fortunately, it seems to just work™, at least on my machine. I'm honestly not sure what's left to do with it before putting it in the Settings app by default.
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How many people actually need or use fractional scaling? Don't most people have displays that are around 1080p?
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I've never used fractional scaling but it's obvious you don't understand that it's not about resolution but about screen size+resolution. On small displays with big resulutions like modern laptops a fractional scaling is absolutely essential unless you want to squint your eyes even with 20/20 vision.
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Fractional scaling doesn't work well for me during initial startup of sdm. It's fine after that though until I reboot.
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wayland clipboard
Lol
Also kdenlive was still a pain for me to work with, but that was mostly because of its layout, shorcuts, and wording of some features.
Otherwise yeah, we've made it pretty far.
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https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/7236
The code is already there. Merged soon
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I worry about Wayland for the features it drops from X11. Wayland will never have xdotool support, due to its security model. I worry about onscreen keyboards for drawing tablets and screen readers for the blind.
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This is not true, ydotool already works and there's nothing against that in the wayland design, it just works differently than x, not not at all
gnome is working on an accessibility protocol for wayland called newton, check it out.
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ydotool is missing a lot of features. It emulates an input device, so it can only send inputs to the active window. xdotool can send keystrokes to non-active windows, and has features for searching for a window to send to. xdotool can minimize, dismiss, or move windows around.
I'm aware of newton. It's a work in progress, though, and doesn't have as many features as X11 accessibility has. Although it might have enough features eventually, I worry that X11 will be deprecated by operating system vendors before that.
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Requirement: let me play the video games I want to play that have anticheat
A stiff requirement
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They run well on Linux, go complain to the devs who don't allow them.
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Linux supports anti cheat just fine, just not Windows kernel root kits.
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This is less of a Linux problem and more of a kernel access problem. Microsoft hinted at shutting down kernel access, but I've learned not to hold my breath about anything Microsoft says. Personally, I made the sacrifice. I have plenty of other games I like to play that don't have kernel-level anticheat.
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Become less okay with installing kernel level malware to play mid AAA games
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Like what?
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Calling Linux's version of DVR a "viable video editor" is rich given that a. It doesn't work on most distros (it's designed for Rocky Linux. It throws a fit on any other distro. You need to jerry-rig it), requiring a whole thang to get it to play nice; and that b. It doesn't support any of the video formats and codecs people actually want to use, for seemingly no reason, since the Windows version supports those formats just fine.
KDENLiVe is like, fine for a simple project, but you quickly start hitting your head on its limitations. Plus its UI sucks just in general.
Video editing is the reason I keep a small Windows install, because sometimes I need to do video stuff for work and -- Sorry. No. No Linux video editor even compares to the likes of Premiere and Vegas. They're still barely above Windows Movie Maker.
GIMP is a perfectly serviceable image editor, and yes, GIMP 3 is a major improvement -- But it's kinda missing a lot of things Photoshop users take for granted, and its UI and hotkeys are very idiosyncratic, which makes migrating very hard (... I sorta have the opposite problem though. I learned image editing on GIMP and all my muscle memory is GIMP oriented, so even when I'm on my 'time to work' windows install, I only really open PS if I desperately need one of its exclusive functions)
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All on linux DVR https://youtu.be/lm51xZHZI6g
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Cool! But what does that have to do with ease of use compared to proprietary DVR tools?
Edit: Wasn't able to listen to any if the audio, just scrubbed through the video, read the title and description.
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HDR with an Nvidia GPU?
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Works on desktop for me but no games as of yet...
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Generally my experience as well. With gamescope, I've been able to get games to make the HDR setting available instead of being grayed out, but it's clearly still not actually displaying an HDR image when I turn it on.
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Which distro has full HDR support?
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Every single one that ships Wayland compositor that supports it. I'd say „finished” is still a bit of a stretch though, since HDR support in apps is still quite limited and the only way to play Windows games with HDR is via Gamescope.
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as far as I know you still have to set environment variables and use gamescope with a flag to enable it for games, but general desktop stuff anything with kde and I think also gnome will have a checkbox in the display settings.
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Can't wait for Wayland to be ready in cinnamon. Possibly mean that literally as X is a laggy mess with fractional scaling. Maybe fedora with gnome will be my first distro hop.
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As someone with extremely limited Linux experience I feel like I just read another language.
"Can’t wait for Frooperdum to be ready in meeperpeep. Possibly mean that literally as Momo is a laggy mess with Weeble trailing. Maybe goomervoobo with hermanin will be my first sprunk popple."
:P
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I'll never forget this tech headline from a the early days of android:
Google Nexus Android Ice-cream Sandwich Guinea Pig
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As a Linux user, I'll be the first to concede that a lot of terms and names are.... weird. It wouldn't surprise me if half of those made up words you just posted as satire are actual software projects.
Anyway, as for the ones you didn't understand, I can easily explain them for you (in windows-friendly terms) if you truly want to know. I just try to avoid unsolicited infodumping.
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I only started six months ago and still consider my experience to be limited. These are just the names of some flavours of Linux, desktop environments, and display servers.
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Honestly if you're still using Momo I pity you 💀
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Discord wayland sharing where? I'm using vencord but games still stop moving.
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Discord canary currently has it afaik. Haven't tested it myself
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it still makes games stop for me so I guess I'll wait a bit longer
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Also had issues with discord a few days ago. Trying to share anything (monitor, program) crashed discord
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Discord does still not work properly, the meme is wrong. They had the support for a short while and then pulled it again because it didn't properly work.
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For me it constantly keeps requesting sharing permission and I need to close discord to get rid of it.
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Using spectacle and vencord (or element for matrix) works fine for me on plasma, although element has a much lower bitrate sadly
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HDR is almost there not quite though.
Dolby Atmos is the other thing I'd love to see working
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Plain 9.1 surround works fine with pipewire, and you can pretty easily hack together a virtual surround for stereo headphones that works pretty great. I’m even using a preset that claims to be atmos, although that seems unlikely to me lol
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"Linux is ready" - which distro? Fractional (sometimes even non-fractional) scaling is a mess. Most things that go beyond changing the wallpaper image need some command line stuff. Linux Desktop is for nerds and definitely not ready.
Yes it works fine if you know what you are doing but most people don't. There is often not one thing of doing stuff, but hundreds. It already starts with the selection of a distro how would a "non-computer-person" decide on a distro. Just try them out? Install twenty different distros because reasons?
Unless resources are pooled into a single distro to polish it and make a defacto standard for ordinary people, homes and offices, Linux is not ready. If I need the freaking terminal because I want to see the day of the week next to the date it's not ready.
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You're describing linux as it was when I switched. That was 30 years ago though. I don't think you're very familiar with current systems.
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they're very correct. Last month I tried out Zorin (which was recommended by one of the linux communities here) and sound didn't even work properly. I plan on writing up a full doc for the linux community on the problems a staff software engineer had with a basic no-frills install (I'm trying to find a distro for my wife), but Linux is absolutely not ready for the general populace.
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You could just said you havent used linux, muchacho.
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I don't know why you're getting downvoted.
Lie: "Most things that go beyond changing the wallpaper image need some command line stuff."
Incomprehensible: "There is often not one thing of doing stuff, but hundreds."
"It already starts with the selection of a distro how would a “non-computer-person” decide on a distro. Just try them out? Install twenty different distros because reasons?"
Yeah, go install a distro, don't like it , try another or go back to windows. We don't really care but making crap up to be a gatekeeper? That's a bit much
"Unless resources are pooled into a single distro to polish it and make a defacto standard for ordinary people, homes and offices"
Ohh so even if every option works fine, it's not ready unless it's windows....
Going back to look at his history, he's just a ball of incoherant complaints.
I'm with ya buddy: Today, Linux is good enough for most purposes. If you try it and don't like it, go buy a new PC for windows 11.
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Linux is a kernel and not an operating system. My phone is runs Android, two of my root servers run debian bookworm, my living room media center runs Ubuntu, so I guess I have used Linux at least a little bit. But no distro I've seen (tried even more on some VMs) is really enough for me to suggest it to anybody that isn't a "computer-person".
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