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Me after using the KDE: how the fuck Linux is better Windows than Windows?
They were supposed to focus on window managing, ITS IN THEIR FUCKING NAME. Instead you need extra things like Powertoys for basic functions that KDE has integrated.
KDE is the best desktop environment I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. So much better than Windows at everything I want out of my desktop!
I still like Cinnamon better. To quote Jeremy Clarkson, “This is brilliant, but I like this.”
What does Cinnamon have that makes you like it over something like KDE?
I’ve often compared Gnome, KDE and Cinnamon, and it usually boils down to KDE is often too complicated and busy, Gnome is often too simple and braindead, Cinnamon sits somewhere in the middle.
Gnome’s settings menu is missing a lot of things you’d think should be there. They don’t want you changing things, so you end up installing separate packages like gnome-tweaks to actually render the OS usable. They’ve got this weird attitude that they’re going to out-Apple Apple with a millionth of Apple’s budget, and where Apple offers “Just Works”, Gnome offers “Barely Does Anything.”
KDE has the opposite problem, they’ve got a setting for literally everything, if you can find it in their overgrown single settings menu. A basic applet will have several tabs crammed full of options and UI elements, making it probably the best tool for whatever mundane task it was meant for but you have to stop and figure out how it works, and it’s all rendered in janky misaligned QT so it looks like an amateur reskinned Windows 98.
Cinnamon inherits a lot from Gnome, but puts back in the shit Gnome gouged out. I tend to find things where I think to look for them, it tends to provide the functionality I need out of the box without excessive clutter. But, it’s a bit behind the times with stuff like Wayland, so it’s not the best choice for very modern hardware.
Yus!
That was so my take too, in 2003.
I switched because of WinXP, that insane bloater chewing up resources I could have been using for my art tools if not for their squander on pointless shiny.
So then, in SuSe, with KDE, it had even better shiny, useful shiny, not pointless, and it didnt run 10x slower than 95/98/NT/2000, like XP did, but instead ran 10x faster!
There was no going back to being abused by M$ after seeing that.
If we had fast windowing systems back then, why is modern KDE slower than XP?
KDE4. Plasma. The fattiest FOSS has to offer.
Worth looking at Trinity (KDE3 fork/continuation).
XFCE looks like it’s trying to go from lightweight to fattiest some upgrades too. Still, very elegant, and you wont notice that on new beefy hardware. But on ancientware, … best stick to LXDE, or even just openbox, or any other window manager, pretty much.
IceWM, calls itself a window manager, but it seems to cover all the main basics for a desktop environment feel.
There still be places to go to get the light, fast and shiny in FOSS, even if KDE went nuts around 15 years ago (whenever KDE4 was).
Didn’t KDE fix many of its mistakes from version 4? We’re on KDE 6 now.
It did. Even by KDE5 (which frankly I cant see much difference from KDE6).
But still, it’s never perfect.
And is still the fattiest FOSS has to offer.
Compared to GNOME, it’s still fairly lightweight.
Oh. Thanks. I wouldn’t/didn’t know. GNOME’s insanity is even greater than KDE4’s insanity. So insane (and anti-user) it overshadows its other flaws. I cant even bring myself to suffer it to find out its bloated.
Edit: Like, so far gone, I tend not even think of it any more.
Edit2: That’s even more astonishing now that I think about it. They’re heavier than KDE… KDE’s heavy with purpose, availing so much configuration to the user. GNOME have managed to be heavyweight, how? By depriving the user configurability?! That’s even more insane! Like genuinely, not just a flippant remark. The GNOME developers, need their minds examined, and offered help, to stop them being a harm to themselves and everybody. It’s simply not sane.
Edit3: … It’s GNOME who have that guy who did time for over a thousand instances of kiddy fiddling, right? If that’s right… like I say… there’s something simply not right in their heads.
Honestly W11 window management by default is better than KDE right now.
This was true for W10, but not any more.
KDE window outline defaults (don’t have a generic name for setting up the snap zones) take way more effort to set up than the windows version.
I don’t think requiring powertoys for extra features matters that much because its supported by the same company. In my opinion, when having something not default truly sucks is when its third party and is finicky and fickle because it requires developers developing vs a moving target.
When its an internal team, they have much more knowledge about how that target will be moving.
Anyhow, that is to say, I think KDE is great, and completely competent, and I love the level of customizability by default, but it certainly has many flaws. Of course its biggest flaw is not its own fault, but that of the catch 22 situation needed to gain critical mass, and the average linux proselytizer doing everything in their power to ensure people don’t want to try linux by somehow imagining themselves to be the every user, and constantly doing that annoying thing where they both say linux is powerful, and that the faults dont matter because the average user doesn’t use any of said powerful features or they themselves, personally got used to the faults.
Oh yeah? Can you pin windows? Can you have windows always under the others or above them? Can you manage the buttons in the top ribbon? And dont even start with custom layout or the magnetic attach of windows in KDE.
I didn’t download powertoys for fun. I needed a feature the windows did not have build in. After using KDE, even powertoys look basic to me.
Edit: Just remembered windows opacity, custom windows rules for almost everything and many more settings.
After using KDE, even powertoys look basic to me.
I think this is quite a bit exaggerated no? KDE lacks many of the tools Powertoys adds like the OCR, advanced clipboard, colour picker and more.
Also, yes, pinning windows on top exists.
kde has a builtin dedicated color picker. the clipboard does not have those features by default, but the clipboard history supports defining actions for the right clipboard content pattern, so it’s possible to do that and more
Oh man, don’t read the comments, sad to see the smartasses saying “report back when you install windows again in two months” while getting utterly fucked by Windows.
I mean, I understand being resistant to change but being a fanatic of Windows or anything for that matter just because that’s all you know is really ignorant, it’s not a sports team for fucks sake, of course it’s not easy switching and you will have problems just dont be afraid to ask and read the error warning.
Rant over
I use Windows for work and I miss Win10, I don’t like it but I’m aware that’s currently the target of most Consumer SW for good reason but that reason is starting to break (say it with me! BAD BUSINESS DECISIONS!!!).
Happy to see Linux getting mainstream, not all comments are bad but I the trolls got me.
Well, if you honestly think about it, Linux has always been tried by many of people that eventually went back to Windows because something wasn’t entirely straightforward. Don’t get me wrong, I love Linux, but I don’t blame people for thinking that. Trying Linux is very different than sticking to it. Linux is amazing OS for people who put at least some effort into learning it, but like it or not, it can be absolute pain for those expecting things to just work without any interest on why they experiencing issues. Given how many sets of hardware and peripherals people have, weird quirks, bugs and required workarounds aren’t unheard of. Maybe it’s just something very simple to fix for an advanced user, but normies will just run away.
it can be absolute pain for those expecting things to just work without any interest on why they experiencing issues.
I think that describes computers.
Windows does the same thing, only worse because it is harder to trouble shoot, and harder to fix if you find yourself at the point where a reinstall is the only way out.
I am dealing with a laptop like that now for someone else, and it would be simple if it was linux, but of course its a pain in the ass because its windows.
For me, I’ve been using Windows for so long that when I want to change something, there’ll be a UI for it somewhere. In Linux, you have to learn a bunch of text commands and modifiers. And if you don’t already know what they are, you don’t know what to search for to find them.
One of these days I’ll learn out of necessity. Until then, Windows it just too convenient
This is not true. People repeat it all the time but it not true at all.
(EDIT: I think the reason why people think this is because it is FAR easier to support someone by simply telling them a command. They can copy paste. Describing a GUI sucks horribly, and is very inefficient. Windows is like this too. Any support will tell you get out powershell.)
Windows is far more difficutlt even in this regard because now you have essentially two control panels.
Also discovery of what you want to do is harder in windows.
And the kicker is if your windows is broken and you need to fix it, guess what, it’s command line for you.
Not to mention the fact that windows is basically unchangeable now.
You want a menu at the top? Get out regedit or download a patch or use powershell.
While I have a GUI to simple click and edit my desktop, choose from several launchers and I can put them where ever I want. Even choose to have none at all.
So can you name one thing I would need a command line for instead of a GUI in Linux?
Maybe I’ve just had bad luck. I had an issue where my second monitor wasn’t being detected at all in Linux, but was fine in Windows. There was a fix, fortunately someone in a forum had the same issue, but it was a command line fix. And IIRC it wasn’t permanent either - I think I had to retype it on reboot.
I also have a 3 button mouse with the middle button set to double click in Windows. There was no linux driver for it. I’m sure its possible to get it working, but quite how, I’ve no idea.
Basically I’ve installed various flavours of Linux maybe 5 times, and each time had to abort and go back to windows after a day or two because I couldn’t find how to fix a particular issue.
That distinction makes a difference. I was thinking you were saying once installed you had to do command line stuff. Like a person was here the other day that thought it passwords could not be changed without a command line.
But since you did clarify, hardware is indeed a pain if it isn’t supported. I put a lot of that on the vendors. Why would a mouse need its own drivers and software? That seems crazy.
And to put it into perspective: I have 3 monitors, different resolutions and refresh rates. I did nothing to make it work, it just did. My desktop and laptop have been pretty much zero effort on my part to make them work.
On the other hand I have 3 windows machines that I am dealing with for others and the audio driver is clearly the issue with one, nvidias driver with the other, and a failed MS update with the third.
Guess what? Every fix requires the command line. In Windows. Computers can suck. And after hours of working with the broken install (DISM, Scannow, ISO downoader extraction, and on and on, it looks like the only fix is a reinstall. It bluescreens and will not update. Yet the hardware is fine, its all drivers.
Who knows, maybe Autodesk will finally start thinking about Linux.
They already use Qt anyway, so the .NET part is all they’d need to fix.There’s Mono. I don’t know what portion of .NET compatibility issues that addresses in 2025.
Well of course, there’s probably other Windows stuff they are also using, considering how much they aren’t even trying to ship for something like Ubuntu, which would be super easy otherwise.
I can only imagine how big of a push Autodesk can easily put towards Linux. That would easily make the current rise to 5% be nothing in comparison. Maybe MS is paying them too, to keep them together.
Of course it might also just be that MS makes it easier for them to setup a DRM (Digital Rights Management) as compared to Linux, not that it matters considering how much they have been pirated.
Then there was this person who was not using Linux because of the CAD software he wanted to use and when I asked what exactly it was, he said, “KiCad”[1].
it’s available in Arch and Debian official repositories ↩︎
KiCAD is available for most distros. You can even get it via flatpak
Yeah, so you see, they just don’t know that the stuff is available.
They are also the types to download from stuff like Softonic/MegaUpload etc. when the official website has downloads available, so even if the website were to advertise Linux availability, they would never end up seeing it.
BREAKING: Man decides to install Linux.
More details to come.
“I deleted the recycling bin folder named /bin/ and it just froze what do I do?”
You need to remark your files !! Just runsudo rm -Rf /FYI to new users… Do not run any command without knowing what it does. Especially that one. Not even if they say “don’t worry, rm prevents you from deleting your hard drive’s contents now”, … like I fell for, 21 years ago. Doh!
FYI to old users… Stop telling people to do that. It’s not funny. Getting new users to delete their root directory… not cool.
you’re not wrong …
I am glad to see articles like this. For too long I have seen articles saying “sick of this windows bullshit??” Only to find advice on workarounds in windows, or suggestions to use a console, or a fucking phone app. For too long Linux has been treated like the evil twin locked in the attic, never to be spoken of or acknowledged.
IT IS TIME! TIME TO ANNOUNCE WE HAVE RELEASED THE LINUX AND IT WAS THE GOOD CHILD ALL ALONG! BART WAS THE EVIL ONE AFTER ALL! LET IT BE KNOWN!
BREAKING: Man breaks Linux, installs another distro, and lives happily ever after.
BREAKING: Man announces he runs Arch, btw
In general:
W11: fire up office, oops wait, it wants to set itself as default and for some reason needs you to buy a one drive subscription for that. How about some copilot? Are you sure? How about we wrap it in edge? Oh, but you can install Libreoffice by all means, but it’s not going to be the default app right? RIGHT?!!!
Oh you want to save the file to your harddrive? Look, how do I put this,… there is no more harddrive.
Linux: type one line in the terminal and there you go. Write a novel if you want.
Ironic that now Linux is the more “just works” os.
Unfortunately, it goes more like this…
Linux: type one line in the terminal? Lose 98% of the potential userbase.
The masses hate the terminal, for some reason, and it scares them away.
If you are doing stuff in Linux that requires the terminal, you were probably making edits to the registry in Windows or pasting in wild powershell lines from online guides.
No need for 98% of the user base to ever touch the terminal. Open whatever software store comes with your distro, click install next to whatever you want.
The only exception to that is that sometimes, when a trusted person is supporting you through something, giving them a line to paste into a terminal might be quicker than walking them through all the clicks of a gui. Sometimes.
I don’t understand the obsession with presenting the terminal as “the best way”. There are literally app stores on every Linux distro for normies to use. Installing LibreOffice from Flatpak in Discover is literally “Search” and “Click Install”.
For those of us who love using the terminal…sure…but that’s not most people.
Yeah but fortunately is 98% of the masses will never have to touch the terminal at all. Unless they get curious. Hell my girl and boys have been on Linux for several years and they have no issues touching anything and doing anything like a standard operating system. Anything more advanced they just hand me the computer and I take care of. I’ve introduced other customers and people to Linux re-image laptops and desktops and servers to it and they’ve never had any issues running it without even worrying about the command line.
for some reason…
several.
mostly conditioning by their abuser pretending to be their salvation. atrophying their potential and capacity and curiosity, deluding them about the challenge and diminishing their curiosity, hiding from them their growing empowerment, terrifying them about calamities technical and social with slippery slope fallacies, all both subconsciously and overtly. + the biases implanted inside the controlled user-lock-in bubble.
Eh, I think it’s just about ease of use and discovery. When you open a terminal, it just shows a blinking cursor. If you’ve never used the terminal before, how do you know what to type?
In a graphical desktop environment, you see icons, menus, etc. If you open a GUI application, you usually see buttons and things to click, and maybe even some guidance on how to use the app.
A lot of people just want to use their computer without too much of a learning curve. Most people are not powerusers.
If you’ve never used the terminal before, how do you know what to type?
Start pushing buttons. Start typing things, try pressing tab variously. Look up guides, introductions, help. Yes it’s not like the discovery of gui where you get to discover whatever the developer of the gui made available to you. It’s a deeper kind of discovery of what more you can do with command line that you cant do with gui. The gui lets you point at pictures provided. The command line lets you string commands together, like stringing words together to form sentences, to have a more nuanced conversation of your own making. So yes, there’s a different initial hurdle and learning curve. Well worth getting over through. Understandable how this is missed by those coming from where the command line is really limited and the gui tries to be all (even if that all is limited). The good stuff’s over the hurdle, and keeps getting better as you progress along the learning curve, deep into the wide delta of potential, where we each become each others teachers.
If you’ve never used the terminal before, how do you know what to type?
Start pushing buttons. Start typing things, try pressing tab variously. Look up guides, introductions, help.
Sure, but my point is: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a terminal present those instructions when you open it. Unless it’s immediately shown in some MOTD or something, the average user isn’t going to take the time to figure it out if they don’t have to.
If my grandmother wanted to draft a letter on her computer, she’d use something that looks more like Notepad and less like Vi.
Yep, for sure there’s room for improvement here. Perhaps someone can provide some configurations, pull requests, forks, or even entirely new shells, that do prioritise upfront documentation for new users who wont go out of their way to find the documentation to learn.
“It came out of the box this way. I hate it but I paid good money for the device I own to tell me what to do!”
Yeah, really do it ok? Not only are you helping yourself, you’re helping everyone by shoving it up the clueless execs at microsoft who still have no idea why people dislike their stupid spy AI thingy.
🤞pleasejustpickbazzite pleasejustpickbazzite pleasejustpickbazzite🤞
I’m going to install CachyOS, an Arch-based distro
oh god dammit
Are you looking for fellow Bazzite users? (I’m one of them)
Good to meet you brother/sister! We walk a rather lonesome road but glad I stand alongside you
I am trying out Kinoite now but it’s very similar. I think the immutable distros are best for people who want a “Just works” experience to start with.
I’m standing slightly to the left of you.
I’m standing slightly to the right of you.
CachyOS has been flawless on my S/O’s desktop. From an easy install to plenty of documentation available, I couldn’t have asked for much more. During install, there’s an entire step dedicated to checking a box if you want to play games. (To enable non-free drivers).
I don’t think it was a poor choice.
Flawless wouldn’t require any documentation.
They didn’t say it required documentation, they said it had plenty of documentation should you need it.
And I’m telling you to grab a dictionary and lookup what flawless means
Damnit, you’re right!
But for real, I think you misunderstand the point of documentation. Even if something were truly, literally flawless, having documentation would still be a net gain. It isn’t only to fix something when it goes wrong, but explains how things are working. If the only way for something to be literally flawless in your world view is for it to be so self explanatory that an idiot seeing it for the first time still understands it perfectly, nothing in computing can be flawless in that way.
The pedantry on this point is so unhelpful as to be actively harmful to the rest of the discussion.
I’M FED UP, GOING TO INSTALL LINUX!
- picks a complicated distro where you really need to read the manual or do some heavy google searches to do gaming *
I’M FED UP, THIS IS TOO HARD, I’M GOING BACK TO WINDOWS!
If you want to use arch for the first time use an already setup distro like Manjaro.
Honestly, Day 1’ers, I’d rather they run Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, or Fedora. There are strong communities that are noob friendly. Go ahead and install Steam, get some games working, get their feet wet. 99% of the time, they don’t need more than basic stuff. Once they’re over being afraid of not being in windows, then start distro hopping to whatever they want.
I can really suggest Mint for beginners simply because it has an UI for about everything you need somewhat regularly. This means, that you can use GUIs to get familiar and aren’t forced to know your way around the terminal. Its the Ideal beginner Distros (at least from my experience)
That’s exactly it though. For most people using an OS isn’t about using the OS but about getting stuff done.
I don’t run an OS because I love writing config files and running obscure CLI commands. I run an OS because I want a working browser, text editor, development setup and games. The OS is nothing but a means to an end.
If I want to tinker, I got dozens of more fun projects in my life than trying to setup an OS.
And if there’s a good GUI way to do what I need, that’s a win, not a downside.
To put it differently: Do you want a hackable microwave that you can tweak and modify, where you can swap out the guts at any time, or do you want a microwave that heats your food? Most people are in the second camp, and PCs are just like microwaves a tool to get things done.
Not being forced to know your way around the terminal is an absolute win. Don’t be afraid, nobody’s going to take your CLI from you. It will always still exist. But dumping on people who don’t want to tinker but want their stuff to work without having to google and read through manuals is just elitism and nothing to be proud of.
Too bad Linux completely abandoned accessibility with Wayland by putting accessibility API implementations up to the distros. Which, by far, don’t. And when they do it’s fragmented as fuck.
Making Linux an absolute no go for anyone that needs accessibility tools like Talon, which does work on X11 APIs. Since those were actually consistent.
Wayland is responsible for kneecapping linux desktop in so many ways its infuriating, especially since linux basically figured out the golden standard of UX design back in the 2000s with stuff like GNOME 2 and Compiz.
It’s such an unnecessary burden with progress as slow as ripoff projects like star citizen.
I hope valve picks up the slack with frog protocols or at least gets PRs merged, because it would be stupid to ship steam machine and then explain to the user that the clipboard doesn’t work yet, even though it used to work perfectly fine in X11.
Except accessibility, Wayland has been a huge upgrade over X11.
Much better security isolation, proper HDR, full multi-monitor support, full VRR support, better application scaling, no screen tearing and reduced latency. (The clipboard also works fine)
Without Wayland I would not be on Linux right now.
Latency actually is increased on Wayland: https://mort.coffee/home/wayland-input-latency/ and Dedoimedo’s Wayland articles.
Please correct me if I’m wrong and provide a source.
Their measurements are correct but not surprising, Wayland triple buffers everything on desktop. Currently triple buffering is only disabled in fullscreen applications, when the compositor supports it.
I wanted to take my own measurements with the newer tearing control protocol but didn’t get to it yet.
Almost nothing you mentioned here has to do with accessibility and accessibility tooling.
I get the feeling that most of the people replying here and downvoting the folks that are right don’t actually know what accessibility means.
Which… Honestly tracks. If the community in general doesn’t actually understand what accessibility is of course the projects themselves aren’t going to give a shit about accessibility.
And the Linux community, par for the course, shits on anyone who has real critical feedback.
I really do not like such comments. Do free alternatives always have to be better than everything else? Even if people would find out that Facebook was always watching them via their cameras and were selling their nude pictures to the Hezbollah, someone will jump into the comments and say that they can’t use Mastodon, because some bogus reason. Yeah, accessibility could be better, but have you even taken a look at whatever nightmare UIs Microsoft has been pushing for years?
“…Based on listening to two and a half episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and a brief text conversation with Will, I’m going to install CachyOS, an Arch-based distro optimized for gaming on modern hardware, with support for cutting-edge CPUs and GPUs and an allegedly easy setup…”
One of the most important lessons I learned from using Linux: Follow the packs, use the distros that a lot of people use not just some recommendation on some ranking sites / youtube vids. Ffs, might as well use vanilla Arch at that point so you can find answers faster. . Even Mint or Ubuntu LTS is a solid option.
The problem with new distros is that it is very hard to find answers to problems. General questions? Sure you can find help. Some bugs that mess up your system? You better pray to the GNU Gods that your distro spins are not that different from the original, e.g. Regolith’s i3wm vs normal i3wm…
Mainstream : 3% lol
Might want to calculate out what the actual number is those “small” 3% represent. Or how the curve looks over time. how it changed from a mostly flat line to a very clearly and relatively steeply climbing curve.
Gaming on Linux has gotten way better than what is was a few years ago.
I was blown away by it. Just install steam and maybe proton-ge and good to go. I recently installed CachyOS and that way I even skipped the driver install chore I usually had to do. Anno 117 just works out of the box. It has gotten so good and easy!
Best desktop in the world, no joke.
*Least terrible
If yours is terrible then that’s a skill issue tbh
Being fanboy elitist is not helping. In fact it’s cringe. Don’t be cringe.
I will remind you : Nvidia is not easy on Linux. And so far as my research it never has.
Windows you don’t have to think about it.
That said, there is good help on it.
So help.
Be part of the solution. Not the problem. And especially don’t be another problem.
It is terrible indeed, but I’d rather say that is because linux development is not focused enough on the desktop. KDE does a decent job out of the box, but still cracks in too many corners (still, after so many years…). GNOME looks cool but has terrible usability. People praise it for its design, but none of those people are designers or have any idea about design beyond color combinations. I know, your obscure other window manager is great and I will try it out soon.
I’m a bit optimistic that things will get better eventually. We have a decent service manager now and half-standardized packaging solutions. It also seems like the biggest pain with X vs. Wayland is over. Things kind of work, but it’s far from a good desktop experience.
Terrible still, but dude I’m happy I’m over here and not in one of the other camps right now.
I will remind you : Nvidia is not easy on Linux. And so far as my research it never has.
So far for me, NVidia has been easier on Pop OS than on Windows. The proprietary NVidia driver comes pre-installed on Pop OS downloads (the ones intended for NVidia).
If we compare from bare metal:
Windows: download the OS, prepare the media, install the OS, look for the correct driver, download it, install it, make sure to avoid the unnecessary junk that comes with the driver.
Pop OS: download the OS, prepare the media, install the OS.
Edit: It’s early days still though. Only installed it this week.
kde plasma, changing the explicit driver is not such an easy task. And have to manually mess around with nouveau
Or have a card that needs the bios set before defaulting nvidia for plasma.
stuff you never ever have to think about on windows.
Linux is not something that works out of the box for every need.
Not a stab on Linux but this is more of a stab at the fanbois really gotta back down from gatekeeping as this is what I find the cringiest about Linux user base. Which I’m part of now so I see it as my duty to call this shit out and tell them to knock it off. It is full on obnoxious.
Got you, I understand now that you were more countering Linux fanbois than putting down Linux itself. In any case, I’m not sure I understand several of your points and would like to understand them better.
Are you saying that you prefer KDE Plasma, so that Pop OS being based on Gnome is a non-starter? On a related note, if you haven’t yet, take a look at the Pop OS beta for their COSMIC desktop. It’s kind of in-between KDE and Gnome and written in Rust. It’s more like gnome, but has more features and allows more tweaking out of the gate. Plus it seems very fast. It’s pretty close to being released, I think I heard December 11th or some date around that?
What do you mean about changing the explicit driver and manually messing around with nouveau? How about the bios setting part?
I feel that Linux can work pretty well for a lot of people. Sure, nothing works for everyone though.
Kde plasma is imparative to run for some 3D simulation programs if you’re going to go Linux. Like you cannot run them in any other distro. Full stop. The kits for these licenses just aren’t widely built in Linux land. Lots of restrictions even by the software developers themselves. I learned this while troubleshooting with them directly.
As such you can end up with a black screen of nothing if you haven’t forced the dynamic display (on new ROG system only) forced onto dGPU in order to force nvidia. and yet I don’t have to do this with MSI. That said , unlike the asus, MSI is too dumb to understand in dual boot to keep the safe boot unlocked if switching between windows and Linux.
it’s not just Linux vs windows. It’s the motherboards. I was not expecting that going in but here we are.
And I don’t know why any of this requires nouveau to be blacklisted but it does
Are there instructions for the laymen? How difficult is it to install and actually use it?
Remember to do this on a machine you don’t care about, or are prepared for Windows to no longer work. Windows doesn’t play nice with other operating systems.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/you-can-try-linux-without-ditching-windows-first-heres-how/
Play with this first if you want
One could try a Live version for the distros that have that feature. For those unaware, the Live version is merely the bootable cd image (or USB image). Does no harm to the underlying OS. If you like it you can then install it.
Edit to add: If you use bitlocker (copy your keys), it can have hooks in the TPM/bios settings as well. Disable bitlocker prior to attempting a live boot.
https://www.linuxliteos.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=9145
Honestly, the most complicated part is getting the install media ready to go.
Once the installer starts, you’re just answering prompts like the local username and password you want, language and keyboard layout, and time zone, and it does the rest on its own.
Then the computer reboots, and you end up on the desktop of a fully usable computer. Most distros will have a one-time popup welcoming you and maybe leading you to some Flatpak “store” where you can search for free apps to install.
IMO the most complicated prompt would be for the partitions scheme and the filesystem but if you don’t do anything special you could simply accept the default settings.
What’s the easiest and most secure linux distro for a non-techie? This is for a spare thinkpad I want to try linux on.
Fedora (with KDE Plasma) or OpenSUSE tumbleweed (with KDE Plasma)
Mint is good but its kernel is usually slightly out of date and it still has upstream Ubuntu issues.
Other Ubuntu downstreams are subpar imo.
Plus Fedora & OpenSUSE ships with SELinux if you want MAC security support.
The only downside for Fedora is you have to enable 3rd party software after install and run a couple of commands to swap to full ffmpeg and Nvidia drivers if you have Nvidia hardware. I think OpenSUSE might ship with these enabled but I forgot.
Wait, I’ve been on fedora for a few years now and never noticed any ffmpeg problems, am I missing something? Maybe I ran the command at install and forgot, but I don’t remember that being one of the things I did on set-up.
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia
Check if you have ffmpeg-free or ffmpeg (from RPMFusion)
Honestly forgot which codecs+encode/decode aren’t included in Fedora’s free build, but I think they don’t include some parts of H264, H265, and other proprietary codecs.
Oh then I must, because I can run those two at least. Still gonna check when I get home though, thanks!
Just be forewarned:
Nvidia requires a bit of work.
SeLinux….it is a giant bag of gotcha.
That all said I’m not regretting my conversion.
I use Linux Mint and Nvidea and never had any problem what so ever with it. But maybe i just have been lucky.
If you haven’t had to deal with kde plasma for your needs, then yes: consider yourself lucky cuz more than two settings on the bios needs to change as well. And that’s not even going into the dual boot scenario. Which is fresh hell. Especially with the most recent upgrades with locks and dynamic cards. And learning that every motherboard handles it differently even if you have matched all other types of hardware.
Just a reminder everyone’s needs are different. And some of this is way easier on windows if you’re arguing at just out of the box working
Not that I’m regretting going Linux. I’m just regretting the fanbois who are insufferable and obnoxious since coming to Linux. Really rides on my patience after several installs and learning all this by hand.
So many reveal that after I put the foot down all they did was just install to do some real basic shit and call it easy. They know nothing and need to sit down. Either help or Shut up, let people work through their required build.
We can be better than this.
I have an Nvidia card and run plasma and everything “just worked” for me including the proprietary drivers. Zero configuration (I am using CachyOS but Manjaro was fine as well as mint).
Figured I would add another data point for those thinking about switching but are nervous about the Nvidia support.
Yeah, thats about why i wrote about my expeariance. There are enoth people who do have problems with Nividea, so it might help to know it’s not going to be a problem for everyone.
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“Tech journalists” installing linux in 2025 like it’s this hot new tech is not exactly the early adoptership I’d expect from them :)
Every time anyone rejects Microsoft’s shitty bloatware/spyware it’s a win. I just converted a few months ago. Win11 is going to push more and more people away.
Ive been getting a taste of linux setting up a few raspberry Pis. Its been really fun and it got me looking at installing a linux distro on my PC. Probably ubuntu or ive heard good things about mint.
If you have amd in your system mint is a pretty great choice.
I am following through. Prepped a mint boot drive and have a 1tb ssd on its way. Gonna dual boot for a bit but gonna try to move to mint as a daily driver. Because fuck windows
