Have you ever been disappointed with Linux?
Personally I haven't. While Linux is imperfect, choosing the right distro makes the rest of the experience straightforward. And with it's whole complexity, I find Linux more user friendly than Windows. Even driver issues, broken shadow file ownership and KDE specifics only made me more confident about my choice to use Linux after I solved everything.
192 replies
To this day, I still grumble about the lack of universal middle-click autoscroll support in applications that aren't browsers or Electron/Chromium-based.
Well I'm not a fan of it, and I'd like to be able to use my middle mouse button to autoscroll everywhere instead. After all, isn't customization one of the main reasons to use Linux in the first place?
Been using linux for more than 10 years as a less technical user, and yeah pretty regularly.
Its still my OS of choice, but theres a fair bit of jank around the corners you interact with less and places where the GUI methods for things just kinda fall short.
But I like having an OS that shows me tech treating me with dignity and respect is possible. So many problems in this world are hard to know how we might solve, but technology that treats me justly is a thing I can have today, and given its actually able to meet my needs, thats pretty cool ☺️❤️
There's an insane amount of jank people are just used to with windows that blends into the background since that's just the way it is. I notice it more and more at work. Simple things like quality of life features just don't exist in windows, and the usual reasons are:
A) backwards compatibility jank
B) we're a monopoly, get fucked
C) fuck you! that's why.
And there's simply no way to circumvent it. At least on Linux I have multiple solutions typically since I am person # 9431007 to have this exact problem, and someone deeper into the autism spectrum than me made a FOSS solution to it.
Yes, in 1995, I was very disappointed that red hat 2.0 made me compile my own goddamn disk images before I had to write them to floppy. Which took several days on my 486SX 25 MHz processor, and that’s after almost a week I spent downloading all of the damn source code on a 28.8 baud modem. 7 disks, 13 if you wanted printer drivers. At least it had a somewhat helpful installer, not that it was capable of helping with much.
It wasn’t until red hat 2.5 that they started distributing pre-compiled disk images
Edit: tbf, nobody else did at the time, and at least red hat was one of the first start distributing it software in packages (rpm) like debian (deb), although both soon began offering software pre-compiled as they noticed people other than software developers were beginning to use Linux, and there was legitimate demand to put in the effort. By late 1995 in early 1996, pre-compiled install disks were available for both red hat, Debian, and SuSE for x86, RISC, and DEC/ALPHA, IIRC. It took a while for Slackware to come around.
The amount of issues I've had with sound on Linux, I'm currently running Cachy and I'm still not getting it through my laptop speakers. Bluetooth on Arch is tempermental at the best of times too...
Windows isn't much better, especially with Bluetooth involved. Audio never seems to get the attention it needs
I ran Arch on my rig in 2023 and didn't use it for a few months. The next update broke a ton of shit including KDE.
Next time I might go with Bazzite. Or Manjaro and just take better care of it.
Been in a bunch of situations where the best available software is 0.x and hella buggy. (Which I discovered after building the software and its dozen dependencies from source because of course no one had packaged it.) But I'm not mad, I'm just "oh well, the situation will improve in the future, I hope".
Not being able to use middle click as a scroll tool. For an OS that's supposed to be about user choice, this option is stupidly baked into the depths of the kernel.
Dynamic middle mouse scroll is something i miss
It's because X-Window, the original Unix (and thus Linux) desktop system, supported 3 button mice WAY before Windoze did. It used it for the clipboard paste operation; you highlight some text in one window, and it's immediately put on the clipboard; then when you middle-click, it's pasted into whichever window is under the mouse pointer. Most old hand Linux and Unix users like this behaviour.
It's been optional, and configurable for a long time. It's mainly controlled by the receiving window's configuration, but you can set it globally to do just about anything supported by your version of X-Window, including to scrolling. It's been like this since about the late 1990's, but it's just not the default behaviour, probably because for much of that time, most Linux users preferred the X-Window behaviour.
'Kernel' is probably the wrong term to use. 'Not easily user accessible setting' might be more accurate.
I'm not aware of any way to get Windows-style autoscroll on any distro without a lot of hacking. That was my takeaway from when I spent several hours researching this a year ago.
TBH the only time I've ever got involved with autoscroll was when a user accidentally clicked the wheel, and got "stuck in a funny mode" and the mouse was no longer working. I'm not sure how many regular users know it even exists - there are a lot who still don't even use the scroll-wheel at all.
In Linux, the scroll-wheel works as I expect it to anyway, so I've never wanted to change it.
It's not a kernel thing, more like a libinput thing. Libinput has an option to make it autoscroll, and if you're on KDE, you can find the setting under mouse settings.
Libinput allows you to activate omnidirectional scrolling by holding the middle mouse down, which is not the same behaviour as windows / (mac?) . It's confusing since both features have the same name.
What's the behaviour on windows?
Click to toggle enter / exit vertical scroll mode. While in that mode, moving the mouse up or down from the original position will scroll in that direction, speed depending on the amount of offset.
If you're not disappointed at something with Linux, you're lying to yourself.
And I love Linux and wouldn't use anything but.
Sure, I wanted nanokernels for massively parallel small-memory hardware since 1990s.
back in the bad old days yes all the time
not any more
I'm disappointed by the number of packages that aren't signed by developers.
Or that go with less secure package managers like flatpak instead of just working with Debian devs to add it to the official repos, because apt is actually secure.
Overall Linux has shifted over the past 10 years to be more of a dangerous place to download software. So more like Windows and Apple.
Correct me if I'm wrong, since I'm no developer myself, but it sounds like a huge hassle to add your software to the official repos of the most popular distributions instead of providing an .AppImage and/or flatpak
Nah, you contact a maintainer. They do it for you. You just have to supply code and licensing info and stuff
Oh, okay. That sounds easy. Is this a one-time thing or do you have to do this for every update you push?
Depends on the update. If you add new lib depends, they'll ask for the licensing of them (and if you include a closed source blob they might kick you out).
But most of the time you just do your own Dev and they'll update without needing to communicate to them.
Thank you for the insight :)
The number of things that want you to run a bash script to install is way too damn high.
I've also started to see more things recommend installation using homebrew on Linux.
Curl piped to sudo bash. My god.
Hardware acceleration sometimes makes videos play at low frame rates.
But overall much better than every other OS I've tried
And tgstd only because manufacturers are assholes with their support for open source drivers
Just a little bit with the direction of GTK and Gnome. Yes, I'm still salty about that. I miss GTK2 and Gnome 2 where everything could be customized and there were thousands of different themes. Of course, I switched to MATE and I'm still using it, but all my favourite GTK2 themes eventually stopped working and now my desktop looks very generic, like all the others.
Again, I know I'm free to be nostalgic as I want and install any project that wants to try to revive or keep GTK2 alive. There's apparently a few. But I'm just a bit disappointed that it went this way. I switched to Linux more than 25 years ago because I could customize it to look like I wanted, and the more time passes, the more those features are getting hidden or removed and now everything looks the same.
Yes. Bluetooth has never worked correctly for me, NEVER.
Across multiple distros and multiple adapters, I've gotten various problems. Right now on NixOS, reconnecting a peripheral never works, I get an error that
br-create-socketfailed, and the only solutions are to restart the computer or forget and re-pair the device. I've gotten this error on two completely different Bluetooth adapters.My Bluetooth works perfectly on Windows. I don't know why Linux is so finnicky about it.
Works OOB fine in CachyOS for me at least
Is it a bluetooth issue itself, or an issue with the drivers for that particular bluetooth hardware. Imperfect drivers has always been an issue under Linux, and will remain an issue as long as Windows has over 90% market share.
Having tested two different adapters, I'd be surprised if it is a driver issue.
Never. Sometimes it's a pain, but I can live with that.
Never. Very disappointed in the general software companies not wanting to make their software work on Linux though. That will be mandatory once I become king.
And a blanket ban on using noreply@ addresses.
Hey, when you become king and start fixing things, this peasant asks that you get all those stupid mailers that fill up my mailbox daily banned too. Especially since you're fixing one form of mail already
Sending Spam will be punished with death and shame of two generations of your family.
I'm so good at this. I'd be great king! 👑
Is it perfect? No. It does have bugs and issues which can be hard to track down. But it is free, respects my privacy, respects my choices, doesn't use dark patterns, doesn't contain ads, has lots of options to configure it, it's super fast.. so I love it.
I first used it in the '90s so a resounding yes.
More recently, trying to get video editing software to work properly and not break as soon as I upgrade was the one. Also I couldn't get a bunch of HAM stuff working properly on Mint and I just don't have time to throw at it.
Yeah. Ive managed to make it work now, but when I was starting off with installing Linux, my audio was broken and all sorts of other basic functions were broken. Headphones would work but laptop speakers wouldn't. I had to restart all over several times after already installing everything I needed, just because some stupid niche (but important) thing was broken. Never had these issues when doing fresh installs of windows. I'm still very much on the "team" of Linux though, I just hope that it becomes a large enough part of the market that drivers for hardware are faster to come out.
I'm going to make the switch but I find the sheer number of distros overwhelming. I only know unbunto, but everyone says it's shit. Just gotta do research.
Just pick one and start. People like to nitpick distros but they're more similar than not usually. You really won't be able to appreciate the nuances between the distros until you run into a specific thing, if you ever do.
Personally, I and most of my friends run Linux Mint. It's based on Ubuntu but strips away a few of their more stupid commercial decisions (the ones everyone calls it shit for). It's got wide support both directly and because most Ubuntu advice/commands work out of the box. And it's desktop and use feels similar to Windows so the transition is easier.
Not on the kernel itself, just a minor bug that got fixed in the next release but could still choose the older kernel until then. OOM sounds like a bad idea when running out of memory - let the user chose what program to stop and handle it gracefully. Picking random process is bad. Others? DRM video at 1080p does not work on raspberry pi and it is not Linux fault really. Transition between X11 and Wayland took a long time to happen. Needed it earlier. Like before Ubuntu MIR. What impressed me is Linux and live cd. It is golden. Be able to surf the web while installing or just troubleshooting. Tiling Windows Manager and you can do whatever you want and customization.
With Linux itself or with the broader realm of 'Linux software'?
By itself, Linux is a fantastic family of operating systems. Has never failed me and probably never will. At least not until I care enough about differences in userland handling in Linux vs FreeBSD, for instance. And even then, I might just switch out of preference, and not because one or the other disappointed me.
As for broader Linux software, or GNU software, or just FOSS in general - by far the biggest potential issue is probably systemd, and it's still meaningless for the vast majority of users. Other than that, my personal biggest issue was Hyprland breaking completely after updating. But it's not a super major issue, because I can just use Plasma instead.
People complain at something not working are missing the point.
It's open source. You spot something you don't like, change it.
Learn to code, contribute, fix things.
There is very little stopping you.
People who make suggestions like this are missing the point.
Most people want their device and the programs on it to just work.
Not everyone needs to or wants to code every time they're faced with a minor inconvenience.
I say this as someone who likes to tinker and code.
Sure, but imagine bitching and whining when there's a minor inconvenience and expecting someone else to solve your problem for you for free.
You mean besides the huge time investment required to get to the point where you can meaningfully contribute?
You've been trained to be consumers.
You see time investment as a barrier to access.
You see problems as something other people solve and sell to you as products.
This wasn't the intention with open source software.
Time investment is a barrier to entry.
I say this as somebody who has already made the time investment required to learn how to program, and as somebody who keeps investing time to maintain and to improve their skills in that area. Expecting the average Linux user to do the same is ridiculous.
Have you made that investment?
Also, investing in open source projects, as you know, doesn't just have to be about coding.
It can be in documentation, testing, visual elements, community support, website maintenance, marketing and Comms, management...
Let me remind you that you wrote that,
Do you think that you can fix something not working by writing documentation? Or do you think that you can fix something not working by testing? Or do you think that you can fix something not working by investing in visual elements? And so on and so forth.
No. Obviously not. If you want to fix something not working, then you have to get your hands dirty with the source code
No. It isn't.
Pay for commercial software if you want to complain, or fix it yourself.
I'm not expecting every Linux user to learn how to code, far from it, but I do expect them not to whine about minor annoyances like they deserve to be served by people working for free.
That's just wild expectations.
And yeah, I have made that investment.
All the time. I run both windows and linux desktops side by side windows is leaps and bounds better as a desktop idk what people are talking about they must only browse the web if they think this shit competes with windows at all. Im disappointed in windows too but it's not the same there isn't people claiming it is the best thing ever so there is not as high expectations. And just to clarify I have been using linux since I was little it isn't some foreign thing to me. Look at all these comments "great BUT" yea the buts are why it isn't great.
I'm now completely free from Windows in my personal life. After running Linux on my notebook for years and occasionally dual-booting on my Main PC, I purged the Windows partitions back in March and switched over to Bazzite. Everything works like a charm - with Firefox being the only exception. I can't get the new profile manager to work in the flatpak version or native via rpm-ostree. I have a workaround using distroshelf, which is not perfect (e.g. not being recognised as a browser by the "Webapps" application) I never had any problem with this feature on my Notebook (EndeavourOS). Anyone with similar experiences?
Disappointed at linux directly? No.
Disappointed at linux indirectly? Absolutely.
Unity(at least it's gone from main installs now)KDEVersion 4(at least it's good now)FedoraForcing their own broken version of OBS that didn't work(they finally removed it)Not supporting screenshare(fixed with portals)Snaps, and things like it, are really the only one I can blame on "Linux" (or at least Linux distributions).
I've had annoying headaches with drivers for 20+ years, but I expect that because Linux just doesn't have enough users for most companies to bother making sure they have working drivers for Linux. I've been annoyed when some software or some tool or process isn't as polished as the Windows version. But, mostly that's something I got for free thanks to someone donating their time and effort, so I don't want to complain about that.
But, I hate it when a major Linux distribution decides they're going to ignore the standard way of doing things and only do things in their unique way. It often seems like one vendor / distributor is trying to build a walled garden and lock people in. It's similarly annoying when vendors try to funnel people towards their "enterprise" version by making it harder to install certain apps that are "enterprisey".
I get that it's hard to make money selling Linux distributions. But, that's what you signed up for. You don't get to start behaving like Microsoft because it turns out to be hard to sell open source / free software.
This kind of things is handled directly at an engine or toolkit level - so no your average developer won't give a fuck. And for those that are reinventing the wheel there's libdecor (official gnome support btw) which your factorio developer is using.
Trying to find the path of a mounted USB stick is painful as well. Is it at /mnt, /media or /run? Who the fuck knows.
At least with windows you just have drive letters
Oh god this one, I never understood why mounting drives in Linux needs to be so convoluted. It's the whole reason my NAS is running on LTSC. Adding drives to my NAS under windows is literally plug and play where as with linux theres always some bullshit.
I have neither the time nor the inclination these days to troubleshoot that bullshit.
If we're comparing Linux to Windows, then it should be noted there's Plasma and Gnome that will auto-detect any USB stick in existence and show you its path in the GUI.
Oh yeah, totally, but when using the terminal it's a pain
Does
lsblknot work? I checked on my machine and it shows the correct path, assuming you know your stick issdbor whatever. Something likelsblk -o MODEL,MOUNTPOINTis (generally) a bit more clear but admittedly getting into the 'pain' territory.One thing I've been annoyed by for over a decade now is having to unmount USB drives before removing them or they'll brick. That shit worked fine on windows unless you were writing/reading iirc.
Not really. Windows and assume Linux cache writes and might actually write after you thought it's written, that's why you have to always unmount USB drives before you pull them out.
Later versions of windows recognise that the device is removable and don't cache writes. From the users point of view the copy dialog box only closes when writes are complete.
Yeah, that's really annoying with Linux filemanagers
Just tell me when you're done and not when the file is completely written into cache, that doesn't help me in any way
I love my Linux, but it's really annoying to open a terminal to run sync, just to be sure
I guess that depends on the settings. I'd still click sa
vfe remove, though.https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explorer/diy-builder/storage/do-you-really-need-to-eject-a-usb-drive/
Windows does not cache writes for removable media
I always do that and it still happened, probably because I had a drive as NTFS for compatibility. Last I checked (after failed attempts), the fix was "fix it with Windows" so I still have a borked external drive.
Constantly, I'm pretty sure that part of the experience.
However, anytime I have to use windows or mac I very quickly get over whatever my issue with linux is.
Yeah, it's usually quality of life misses. An example: if I mount a network drive (mine auto-mounts upon login) and then that NAS goes down for whatever reason, if I open Dolphin it'll hang trying to connect to the offline network drive and never timeout. I can restart my NAS and then as soon as it's online again, my file manager will open 😅.
I'd have to manually unmount in terminal if that NAS became non-functional. Windows just times out and marks it as offline so File Explorer still works.
I've been using AutoFS and that's no longer an issue for me. How did you mount the NAS?
SMB mount via fstab, hadn't heard of AutoFS. That's usually how it goes, I learn about something better after going through the pain of doing it an inferior way.
Ah yes I did it like that before. At home it's not a problem since my NAS is always connected but taking my laptop outside would be problematic unless I had the VPN enabled.
i think if you have it in fstab that forces kio to wait. instead of adding to fstab i just right click and add smb to places in dolphin for a direct link. dolphin doesn't hang on load anymore, auto mounts and even sends wol, might comment it out from fstab or set noauto to see if it speeds up dolphin
kde got over a mil to fix network drive issues and I have no doubt they'll be best in class next year
my disappointment in Linux has lessened over the last few years as issues are being resolved.
Currently my only real disappointment is driver support, but that's less of a flaw on anything linux, and more of a flaw on the providers.
That being said, I also am disappointed with sound management. Trying to do anything in that hellscape on most distros leaves you with a pounding headache. It's a monkey-patch of multiple handlers that gets confusing really fast.
Inconsistent behavior with the Elan touchpad on the ThinkPad E16 Gen 1 (AMD). Works in a live image but not when I install. Adding kernel parameters and loading specific modules gets it working, but it stops again after a few minutes. Sometimes unloading/reloading the module gets it working again, sometimes it doesn’t. 4 different distros, 4 different kernel versions, still have to use Trackpoint.
Other than that, I daily-drive Debian on my home and office workstations. Those ones just work.
I had a an issue with Elan touchpad were one connects the laptop to the power and the touchpad input starts lagging. This happens in all distros too. It is not too terrible since most of my workflow is on the keyboard.
Similar situation on my workstations: mostly keyboard or keyboard-like devices (DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor, Micro Color Panel). The E16 is for when I’m being lazy on the sofa, so the lack of touchpad is just grating.
Once I was looking forward to the challenge of connecting a linux PC to a Windows domain, only to find out the current version of the distro had that functionality by default. 😐
So that was cool, I guess...
The worst annoyances of Linux are nothing compared to basic use of Windows or MacOS.
How could I be disappointed in FOSS? Conduct of people involved, maybe, software? Never.
Yep, people involved are the biggest problem sometimes.
I've had to figure how to fix many issues myself, because quite often upon finding a thread where someone already had an issue that I had, folks were tryna gaslight the OP why it's not actually an issue, eventually turning the thread into shit flinging contest. Or the good old "don't do that, you'll break something" (that I proceeded to do and was absolutely okay).
Not to mention how FOSS developers have to deal with entitled assholes every now and then.
Me: Ugh, X problem!? Fine, let's google it and find the answer...
OP: I have X problem, which is stopping me from doing Y.
Answers: Oh, you don't need X to do Y. Here's a solution for your Y problem!
Me: I don't care about Y! What about X problem!?
entitled assholes, and more recently waves upon waves of un-reviewed SLOP code from morons who can't even write a Hello World program.
It doesn't run on old 2010 year Intel/AMD laptop, while FreeBSD does. Maybe because of the philosophy of destroying the old to build something completely new (
pipewire,ip, firewalls etc.). Maybe I should spend more time finding working distro.Also, It's sad to realize that politics has actually always been a part of FOSS (when they removed Russian maintainers). Still I really like Linux.
Politics because "no man is an island" will not elaborate.
One word:
systemdHonestly, what's disappointing about sysd? I know it violates the whole does one thing principle and then the whole age bs, but overall I've never had anything major with it
Since “do one thing principle” is pretty abstract, I’ll give you one example of a downstream consequence.
I wanted to set up a NixOS microVM using docker sbx. Turns out, it was basically impossible (nothing is actually impossible, it just depends how much you want to modify/rebuild things).
Much of NixOS depends on systemd to manage lifecycles of this or that, but systemd only works properly if it’s the first PID, and when it runs in that mode it also wants to initialize hardware.
But the hardware is all managed by the microVM, so systemd blows up. All it needs to do is nothing, but that turns out to be very difficult to achieve.
If these were like 3 or 4 distinct utilities, there would be obvious seams where I could separate them and only activate the stuff that’s relevant to my use case. But it’s all one big ball of mud.
True, but Linux devs only have a limited amount of time. It's far easier to take a system that can handle server-farm complexity and apply it to a single user use case, than it is to take a system meant for single users and try to scale it up to a server farm, or to maintain two separate systems.
I'm saying that complexity could easily be modularized inside SysV init, not requiring a restructuring of things like "logfiles are no longer files in /var/log"
That phrase has proven to be a source of endless headaches any time someone in charge is stupid enough to believe the person that tries to sell them that.
Systemd (along with the various add-on services that come with it on most major distros) meddles with and tends to break critical functionality quite often, except on boring systems where the needs being served happen to be handled well by systemd's happy path(s).
If the computers you maintain fit Lennart Poettering's idea of how to do things, then you might never notice a problem. On the other hand, if you're responsible for systems with unusual or complex configurations, or have need of the flexibility that makes unix so very useful in the first place, then you might very well discover that systemd is a pushy, invasive, poorly considered, buggy, and in some ways just pain broken collection of software, maintained with a level of arrogance and carelessness not often matched in the unix community, and you might rightly come to despise working with it.
Sadly, my experience has been the latter. In the years since the systemd suite was adopted by Debian distros, I have been burned more times by it and spent more weeks of my life troubleshooting it than I can count any more. Because of this, I have come to resent systemd. And I know I'm not alone in this.
So, dear readers, when you see people complaining about systemd, please try not to be like the zealots out there who routinely cry "luddite" and demand proof when they encounter folks who dislike it. Try instead to remember that one size does not fit all, that some of systemd's detractors are very skilled and reasonable people who happen to run systems that are necessarily different from your own, and have encountered problems that you have not. It has been over a decade. Some of us are tired of it, and tired of talking about it.
Every time I have tried to mainline Linux for my gaming rig. Although I haven't tried anything recently, IE since the Steam Deck has made large improvements. I am now waiting for SteamOS to be available for non-AMD GPUs and can be dual-booted so I can try it without also getting rid of Windows right away if it still gives me headaches. I know there are other options I could try now, but I'm fine waiting.
I have not been disappointed in Linux when used for servers, tho. Far, far more reliable than Windows when you want stability and long up times.
Long time nvidia on linux user. Use AMD.
I suspect you'll be disappointed or frustrated by SteamOS, since Valve isn't really all-in on maintaining a universal distro like other projects (and that's okay); more likely, it will always be Valve-hardware-first that just happens to work on some other hardware configurations.
IMO, you're better off jumping into whatever distro interests you rather than expecting SteamOS to fit your use case. My personal choice was CachyOS for daily use and gaming, and it's been great, but PikaOS would be one I'd consider for another build. I also run Bazzite on an older laptop for some light gaming and HTPC stuff, and that's been rock solid.
Valve said they're actively working with nvidia to support their gpus. While I'm sure valve hardware will always be the primary concern, they seem to actively pursue the goal of SteamOS being more widely compatible.
Sure, but "works with nVidia" isn't the same as "works with everything," since there's a lot of other hardware to consider, though I'd imagine the latter case would be mostly easy for an end user to work around.
That's all I'm really pointing out with that part, and if I'm wrong, then it's only good news for the rest of us.
But the benefit of SteamOS is going to be marginal at best since lots of distros are already highly capable for gaming. Waiting isn't going to bring with it some magical improvements that makes it the default choice over CachyOS, Bazzite, PikaOS, etc.
I went full Linux almost 3 years ago. Games worked very well when I first switched but it's improved significantly in performance and QoL since then. If your interested in gaming on Linux, I wouldn't wait for desktop steamOS, just get a distro and try it. I like Arch, but it's definitely not for everyone, especially if you're not into tinkering although even archinstall makes getting setup significantly easier now.
Most games are solid now on Linux thanks to Proton. Most of the time if it's Steam and it's not competitive it works out of the box. Sometimes you need some post install configuration to make it run better (more common with old games), you can usually find what you need to do in the protondb website.
I find Linux to be very bad at recovering from freezing. If something freezes on linux I almost always need to shut the entire PC down or go into TTY to kill the app. I expected it to be way more sturdy.
Is it your display driver that's freezing? I've never had issues with one thing freezing the PC. The only time I've had it seem like that was the case was when it was the nVidia drivers that were having issues. But, that situation is much better than on Windows because I was able to SSH into the machine and everything seemed normal over an SSH connection. It meant I could shut things down gracefully and then eventually do a clean reboot. Meanwhile, the screen still looked as if the computer was locked up.
Not sure whats freezing. I think its KDE plasma that freezes then everything dies.
Hmm, yeah, if it is the desktop environment that's having issues, that could be hard to recover from. I've never had that happen, or even heard of it happening. Maybe try out Gnome? Or try reinstalling? it doesn't sound like a normal problem, and if it's not a driver issue it could be just reinstalling will be enough to get things working.
Its not common enough for me to worry. Most versions are perfect sometimes i update and the new version is bad but after the next version its fixed and if next version is far away or its to bad i roll back.
Having to actually manually mount network shares to my filesystem in KDE in order to do simple stuff like drag-and-drop files from them to a browser window, which just works in ol' Windows.
But really, I'm generally very happy with my experience with Linux in 2026. Most problematic things are because of the behavior of shitty OEMs or publishers, not Linux developers. Things have improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years.
I’m disappointed by Linux on almost a daily basis. And MacOS. And iOS. And Android.
(I haven’t used Windows in a long time, so I guess it’s the only major OS I’m not routinely disappointed by? Whoa, that’s a realization…)
But this is just what happens when you’re constantly messing with stuff.
A little I guess. When I had finally convinced my dad to try out a dual boot, and was trying to install it for him on his new Threadripper system, it failed. The platform support Threadripper wasn't ready even though it had been out for at least a little while.
But I don't remember the details it has been around 8 years. Nowadays I know to confirm these things first, so in a sense it was my own mistaken assumption. But still it fits the question because at the time I was disappointed.
My disappointments are few, and are outweighed by the fact that if I update the computer doesn't suddenly grow new advertisements or try to force new subscriptions onto me, or even break that many things? The skill floor is slightly higher sure, but the skill ceiling is so much higher, it doesn't feel like a thinly veiled Eldritch monster.
My Thinkpad X260 TrackPoint and mouse buttons under the spacebar still don't work. I have lost my mind trying to figure it out and gave up. I don't use the laptop that often.
I've had that Laptop and ran Arch (and other distros) on it with those working no issue. I've since passed it to a friend who also uses it with Debian and hasn't complained about issues. Are you certain this is a Software issue? Are the TrackPoint and buttons actually plugged in? Do they show up?
I haven't ruled out a physical hardware issue. The OS was detecting the device. Its not a USB device, its a PS/2 device which isn't something I work with often. This was a few months ago so don't recall much of what I was tried.
I've had Endevor then Mint on that device over a few years. I consider myself competent with Linux.
One of these days I'll make a post and ask for help. Making a Lemmy post that Linux isn't working with a old Thinkpad hardware is like dumping chum in shark infested waters.
No.
I've only even been disappointed at myself.
And Nvidia.
i would like to see more cutting edge attempts. this is more of a linux ecosystem thing but try new things even if they dont work out. until very recently, parental controls have been non existing or barely functioning.
for the linux ecosystem to be mainstream it needs to cover more people.
Recently I’ve been disappointed that my speakers keep switching which one is left and which is right, and I’ve been too lazy to figure out why. I don’t regret dropping windows at all, though.
That's weird. What kind of speakers do you have? Ye Olde Fashioned analog speakers tend to be hardwired for left and right. Of course, you can flip that in software, but unless you've touched that setting it should just work.
ORA by Kanto speakers using USB. I think maybe they swap when I alt tab out of a game then back in?
Hmm, I don't have any experience with USB speakers. I wonder if it's using a standard driver or a custom one.
No, despite many problems, because it always teaches me something about computers
I have been extremely disappointed with the broader Linux ""community"" at times, but never Linux.
I am deeply disappointed in the Android flavor of Linux. 17 years of development, and your phone still does not have a terminal app built into the OS.
Also lack of cron is extremely limiting
It does have one built in, you just have to enable it in developer settings
Available only on select Pixel phones, and the virtualization API that makes it possible is available only to preinstalled system apps.
So no, you cannot install Ubuntu image onto your Samsung phone, you specifically need to buy the newest Pixel.
You can use termux and some other thing to run Ubuntu on a Samsung, it's just not built in Iirc Samsung has some Linux thing with dex
Yeah I can, but soon I won't, because Google will block all apps not installed from Play Store, and Termux cannot be compiled for new Android versions because of Android 'security'
It can absolutely be compiled, and you can install it but you either have to use adb or wait 24 hours
Isn't the 24 hour wait a one-time thing anyway? Or did they change that?
I thought it was per apk, but I could be wrong
I mean, yes it can, but installing any packages won't work. Every binary that you wish to run on Android 10 or higher must be included inside the app, so
aptnaturally fails, and compiling your code inside Termux will also fail.I'm running Android 17 on my Pixel 8, and Termux runs just fine; apt packages included.
Aside from having to go through the Advanced Flow to run unverified APKs, I'll honestly be surprised if this changes when the app verification restrictions roll out, since going through the Advanced Flow gives you the option of installing unverified APKs indefinitely.
Now, if Google raises the minimum SDK version apps can use so that Termux can't run, that will be an issue...
Even with Google's new restrictions they can't stop you from installing an app with adb, much less stop you from compiling stuff. The restrictions are on the phone, not the sdk.
For what purpose? -To take pictures and farm karma on Reddit? or to run Htop and Fetch and stare at it for hours?
Linux has desktop applications, yo.
The one time I needed to cut a voice recording on my phone, I had to install Audacity inside Termux, after trying three top-rated 'audio editors' on Play Store, which had ads and AI but no editing beyond boosting volume.
Great, it's like a kid's toy for the less technical minded people, but also a waste of the potential of a computer.
My printer has a regular paper tray and a photo paper tray. I find it very difficult to print things properly to the photo tray. And I had to get drivers for one of my PC's Wi-Fi adapter off github. Other than that, I have been quite happy over the last few years of daily-ing Linux
I mean i'm currently in a learning process with Linux, i would like to be a power user like in windows, but i'm just not yet. I don't know if i would say disappointed, but i tried to use KDE first and would say my experience was rather bad, it was a bit buggy here and there and i didn't found out how to fix my problems. I'm surprised by it because i though i would like KDE for sure more, but i'm happy i switched to Gnome. So as the op said, part of the experience is choosing the right distro or in my case desktop enviroment is part of the experience.
Sure had few driver issues, or installing japanese was a bit of a struggle, but i have fun solving problems.
Every couple of years I give KDE Plasma a spin, and I've found it disappointing every time. Nothing terrible, just a lot of tiny bugs and inconveniences. I find it strange that it gets recommended as a beginner DE so often just because the layout resembles Windows a bit more. Gnome is so much more consistent and aesthetically pleasing... not that I use it, but it's always my strong recommendation for beginners.
Good luck on your Linux journey!
Yes.
I'm a bit disappointed with packaging/updates. Specifically Arch, I have slow-ish shared internet and didn't update frequently enough now my system is too outdated (1050Ti, them moving legacy nVidia drivers to AUR is another reason I haven't updated in a while).
Looking at alternatives.
Void (I still might want something more user-friendly) musl? (but optional and interesting for creating static binaries)
Tumbleweed/Slowroll might be perfect if it weren't for patterns (and I wish update structure were smarter* than just scheduling).
NixOS is a fun idea but not with declarative desktop settings (I have my own XFWM window theme not uploaded anywhere) and extra mess when it comes to compiling/exporting also running non-packaged executables (especially if I decide to stop using Steam, running what library I can w/o client)
User packaging is also generally questionable, too. I know not to rely on it too much, but I'm also not going to be inspecting package scripts especially not every update.
Other package distribution is a neat idea, but needing to download another graphics driver for Flatpack sort of ruins the point for me (redundant data too). That, and less integration+more manual updates.
* it probably doesn't exist, but I'd like something that has some sort of awareness of compatibility (be it simple/explicit versioning, build bot troubles, user reports etc). If I haven't updated in a while, give me a safer update (hold more Major.Minor.newest packages to known-good). If I'm updating regularly, tell me if an update on tuesday might not be great and remind me on friday if it seems better. Let me mark software with some general issues (stability, rendering, features) and alert based on potential fixes.
What are your thoughts on Debian Stable?
It's not a rolling release, and you'll need to use Flatpak if you want newer versions of certain apps; unless you're willing to deal with the Backports repos and their limited level of support, but I think it might be a good fit for your use case.
I'm not sure about about using an older kernel.
I've already mentioned having issues with Flatpak's redundancy*, but I also imagine sandboxing could potentially have other issues too. Specifically I use Godot 4.6+ with bindings for a compiled language. (I haven't used it thus far, but Godot can potentially have a pipeline from Blender)
So, maybe something like that might be viable with a different package distribution system. I haven't looked into it though.
* and this could be another nVidia thing with the size of the driver?
EDIT: Hopefully this isn't too TL;DR. I got a bit carried away writing this response.
Debian Stable uses an LTS kernel, so while it's based on an older codebase, it still gets regular security updates. You won't get the most bleeding-edge performance features, but since you're using an older Nvidia GPU, not being on the bleeding edge might actually be helpful.
I honestly wouldn't be too concerned about the space used by Flatpak dependencies, unless you have a really small SSD that you're trying not to use too much space on. If you use a separate home partition, it's helpful to set up Flathub as a user repo (add --user to the usual install command) so that the space that gets used is on your home partition and not on root.
As far as sandboxing issues go with your development workflow, I'm not super well-informed on that subject, but I know that Flatseal gives you a fair amount of control over what Flatpak applications can access.
I think if Debian Stable has one big caveat, it's that it's not the lightest distro, particularly when you're running it with a full DE and Flatpak applications.
On machines like my Thinkpad X230t or my HP Elitebook 840 G1, EndeavourOS has been noticeably snappier. However, EOS is basically Arch, and I don't like running Arch on machines I don't intend to use regularly, since it tends to break when it hasn't been updated in a long time.
Space is a concern but not the concern, it's about download time. It's a considerable price of admission (worse with updates, though maybe not so anymore with legacy). I actually tried Flatpak at one point for Krita, and that is part of why I switched back to native.
Yeah, I'm more worried about backtracking from my current setup (a bit more than half-a-year out-of-date but still newer kernel than Debian stable EDIT: correction). Particularly snappiness, I expect optimizations are a big part of that (CPU is Ryzen 2700, might be more important for that).
I wasn't sure how powerful of a machine you had. The Ryzen you have likely slaughters the CPUs in both of the laptops I mentioned; an i5 4300U in the HP, and an i5 3320m in the Thinkpad. I should've been more specific about that.
I have Debian 13 running on a desktop i5 4570 box, and it seems to run well, though I have it set up differently than the laptops since it's a headless machine I mainly access over RDP and SSH. It also has twice the RAM (16GB vs the 8GB in both laptops), an NVME SSD for a boot drive, and XFCE instead of KDE Plasma.
Whatever the case, I feel like if your machine is powerful enough, the performance difference between Debian and more aggressively optimized distros shouldn't matter too much, BUT, I can see not wanting to use it if you're adamant about squeezing every last drop of performance from your machine.
You don’t have to use patterns on Tumbleweed (and maybe Slowroll also?), if you don’t like them. It’s just a handy shortcut to get most, but not all, relevant packages.
It's annoying (compared to anything similar on Arch) and will reinstall things you've removed. There is conflicting information on the best way to deal with this, either way more complicated than 'off'. It's a problem that shouldn't be a problem, and it seems to be a common issue people have.
It is possible to lock packages an those would not be reinstalled, even if they are part of a pattern -
zypper rm foo,zypper al foo, thats it. Yes, the list of addlocked packages could be long depending on the starting point. But users have full control over everything what gets installed in the first place.I have decided i don’t care much about patterns. There is no perfect distribution, but tumbleweed is pretty close for me.
Give NixOS another look. It's no problem to run a declarative system as a base, and plain old dotfiles on top if you want, especially for user stuff. Not sure what you mean by "non-packaged executables" exactly, but I don't see how NixOS would give you a disadvantage here. Heoric works fine as a Steam alterntative.
I'm not the type to put my dotfiles in git, though. A lot of things I just plan on starting fresh and configuring in-session.
Pre-compiled, non-system binaries.Typically, stuff downloaded from GoG and itch without a client (also the odd thing like BrogueCE). I don't know if this is always an issue, but it is for anything that uses dynamic linking (checking with
lddis a thing, though can be misleading with runner scripts).I've never been interested in the Epic store even for free games. I'm sure there are 10 ways to "solve" this each with their own benefits/drawbacks, but I feel like this is a philosophy issue that creates more problems than it solves for me. And this is without the ability to create static binaries (out of the box) like I'd get with void-linux musl.
That, and seeing talk about how great Nix is but also people having trouble later on too (major updates? bleeding edge woes?).
That's what I'm saying, you don't have to! Just install the package (like
neovimor whatever) through NixOS and it will use your ad-hoc dotfiles like it would on any other distro. For a lot of stuff you can make use of declarative NixOS options (programs.neovim = { ... };), but you don't have to, except for really basic system stuff like networking I guess.Gotcha. There's several ways do do this on NixOS (
steam-runworks like a charm!), but I'll concede that there's an extra step involved here that you don't have to do on other distros.There's a learning curve for sure, but I haven't looked back or experienced any major issues (where I hadn't shot myself in the foot) since 22.11.
And changes will last on reboot, y'know with the whole immutable thing?
EDIT: I couldn't find straightforward (to me) info on this even searching for stuff like 'NixOS mutable home', but after the reply to this I tried different terms and found the wiki page on impermanence. Specifically, the persisting+home managing sections:
and
Absolutely! I'll give you an example. In the NixOS config for my desktop I have the lines:
So Firefox is installed every time I build a system with this config. This is just like
apt-get install firefoxin that very user can use it after installation. The config lives in the respective user's dotfiles (.config/mozilla/firefox) and will of course survive reboots.What I chose to do additionally (but this is in no way required!) is a
home-managerconfig for my main account with the lines:This is a declarative configuration that basically handles my dotfiles (profiles, extensions, themes, ...) for me. I think you have the impression that this is mandatory, but it is really a very specific behavior through the home-manager module, but you can absolutely run NixOS without it.
Just gaming on Linux Mint. Most big modern games work, but support for older and smaller games just isn't there. I tried to play Doom 3. It wouldn't start. Shadowrun Hong Kong was so slow it was unplayable.
For Doom 3, it does work with the original engine but I do recommend playing using the dhewm3 source port. It supports linux natively and has high resolution and framerate support.
This worked great! Thanks!
I've had no issues with Doom 3 on Bazzite if you want to give that a try.
The sims 4 works flawlessly, but the sims 3 won't even boot
Power management on a laptop.
Use a 10 year old Logitech mouse out of the box.
Mint's stupid annoying print monitor.
Dealing with cached samba creds though the box to save creds wasn't checked.
The lack of real competitors to office. And no, Open Office doesn't come close to replacing MS office.
There's lots that's annoying.
But Linux is excellent as my servers, as my VM host, as my dedicated systems. Still has it's issues, but works great for always-on systems with very specific tasks.
Linux and Windows serve different purposes.
What do you mean with regards to the Logitech mouse? I've been using M185's for two decades now without issue. The only issue I have is with the newer version of them which doesn't drop an easily readable battery state in /sys/class/power_supply/hidpp_battery_{0..9}/capacity_level .
Also; Libre Office exists.
Try using one on Mint. A mouse that's been around longer than Mint has been an idea doesn't work at all until you search and discover a third party app to enable it.
ANY Logitech mouse works with generic windows drivers since 2000. Under Mint they don't work at all without the third party app.
That's more a Mint problem than a Linux problem. I'm running Debian stable without issue.
Uhh, isn't that old, like really really old?
I'm pretty sure the only reason Open Office exists is because of Oracle's lawyers.
Everyone shifted from Open Office to the Libre Office fork back in 2010-2011-ish.
Have you been trying to use Open Office? lol
Or Libre Office. None even compare to MS Office, by a long shot.
They're fine for the average person, but any business user is going to run into major walls.
We need to be brutally honest about what works, and the limitations. I'm not going to recommend a business use any form of OSS office.
Now Aunt Sally? For sure, because she's not doing anything complex.
I’ve had some sound issues here and there, but those are largely resolved. My only issue at the moment (which I suspect is mostly a skill issue) is figuring out an easy way to install games to the drive I want. With Epic for example on Windows it was easy to pick which drive I wanted to install the game on, but since Epic runs in WINE on Linux I haven’t figured out an easy way to do that. It works fine on Steam since the Steam client is Linux native.
What about Heroic client for Epic games?
I installed it, but I haven’t really had time to mess with it.
I've definitely had consistently less issues with dev stuff on linux, but Bluetooth is consistently lacking.
And I don't know if I'd be able to get wifi drivers working on this laptop again if I had to reinstall
I love Linux but for ease and convenience a iOS / Mac based home has been a lot easier to coordinate and orchestrate and tie together.
There is no equivalent tv box to the Apple TV on the Linux ecosystem without tinkering which makes it tough now that tinkering isn’t as fun cuz my time is so restricted.
Without a Linux phone and Integrated set top box I can’t mainline it, but it still is my go to for running all my services (saving for the odd bsd here and there)
The one recurring unsolveable problem I run into is not being able to kill a process that's stuck in D state. If something has broken in the layers between that process and hardware (not uncommon when working with old cheap "box of scraps" hardware, as I like to do), it can get stuck forever and you have to kill the whole system, sometimes forcibly. Not the end of the world, but it sucks when it happens.
While I can point out a lot of times I was dissapointed in IOS, Mac and windows, only time I ever got dissapointed was in the beginning where I was aggressively distrohopping because my first distro (POPOS) was extremely slow and buggy. Gentoo felt too sluggish for daily use and other nuances that weren't exactly Linux's fault but I didn't know any better.
I use void btw
PoopOS
I'm very disappointed about Discord on Linux. I've been having a problem for months where the audio input stops working for several seconds at a time during voice calls.
If you don't need the rich presence features, the browser should handle everything. The desktop version is just a web wrapper anyway and ships its own browser that may have bugs (to support native binding)
Oh, is it a Discord problem? I spent half an hour yesterday debugging my setup, should've eliminated Discord from the chain.
I dunno, but I get it on discord. Did you make any progress fixing it?
I was actually trying to fix low input volume, but noticed the cutting out on the discord loopback. People were complaining that I'm hard to hear, but fixing the volume won't help if the audio is dropping entirely (-.-')
I don't think I can fix Discord, I'll just focus on the volume right now and see if I can use a different Discord client.
When I first started using it I had the issue that every install would throw up a new thing not working. I suspect that was the hardware rather than Linux though.
Most of my disappointments with Linux come from the proprietary bits to be honest. Both the hardware drivers, and the games and other apps. And even the few times I'm let down by open-source apps, it's because of abilities from their proprietary counterpart that they are yet to implement.
No not really. Just people.
When Pulseaudio and Wayland were still kind of rough I migrated to Macs for like 5 years.
The failure to properly protect against file access between programs is kind of disappointing. Flatpak has made great progress here, but it isn't quite universal.
Specifically with the Cinnamon Panel (taskbar) on Linux Mint during fullscreen gaming. I like to tab out during long matchmaking and under Windows the taskbar would be visible and usable when another window gets focused over the fullscreen game. With Cinnamon, the space for the panel is there, but not the panel itself. When you press Super, the menu pops up and shows the panel with it, but the panel isn't usable...
There is an active issue on the cinnamon github from 2012. No one even knows if this should be a bug or a feature request, so it's just all undefined behavior right now.
Edit: it's even worse, a newer issue was closed last year after a discussion that can only be described as very linux.
I wonder if the move to Wayland will fix this.
having used windows long enough to know what the .11 brought you and having gone windows-free for well over a decade i can say i have never, ever thought "i wish i was on windows cuz this would be better/easier/faster/possible"