Linux

There's a lot of little things to you need to learn, that you don't learn until actually messing around with in Linux which absolutely make or break your experience with Linux, and that Linux users will mock you for asking about.

For a lot of people windows just works how they want it, so when they're convinced to switch by a friend/family member/youtuber they now have to relearn what was incredibly easy for them, which absolutely will cause frustrations regardless.

And a lot of Linux dudes get really defensive and elitist when you ask them to explain or help, like screaming that you're afraid of the command line when you've just never needed to use it before. So the initial learning curve is rough, to het more or less what you had before(For an avg user)

Like. I'm sorry, but having an issue keeping you from using your pc, and only getting advice to read the documentation of the distro, when you could have just kept windows, is going to frustrate people

Well lets look at what i did to switch to linux. It was about 2 years ago and I was still using windows 8 since I didn't all the spyware in my operating system. I went with linux mint first since it was stated to be super new user friendly. I was so new to linux that I had to ask what neofetch was and how to use it. It was easy to use but I mostly just use web browser, steam, and libre office, which I had been useing libre office for years before that. Linux mint made a very frictionless new user experience. But I still needed that motive to move onto to something now. For me that breaking point was windows just having so must spyware in the os. Rather then using windows 10 or 11 I held onto window to windows 8 and then moved onto linux mint.

It's the same way Mastodon and the Fediverse is so damn frustrating to many people. They don't want to have to think and just want shit to work.

I use a MacBook, a Windows PC, and Linux (school, games, work). A MacBook is by far the easiest to use, windows is a close second and Linux right behind it. Linux can be easy to use, but when stuff goes wrong, I think Troubleshooting for the average person is where it’s a bit harder. Just in general, people tend to freak out the moment they have to mess with the terminal, and memorizing commands isn’t as easy as visually remembering where to click for most people. That’s not to say that Linux is super hard to learn, I think windows and MacOS just offer a way of doing things that sticks much better in the memory than a line of commands.

I love all 3 and I believe all 3 have their strengths and weaknesses and I’m damn glad that we have choice! (Though right now I’m rooting for Linux a bit more due to the Steam Deck bringing a lot more attention to linux gaming)

One pain point I commiserate with mentioned here is the fractured nature of finding federated communities, which I don't see any easy way to solve.

When I was a child we had basic computer literacy classes in elementary school. They showed you how to get around Windows and use computers a bit. Somehow, I doubt that those kinds of classes ever taught Linux.

But the real problem I think is that Linux distros also never had Microsoft's budget to develop, assemble, test, and release the operating system + software suite. The fact that Linux is as good as it is in spite of that is really something special.

I started using Ubuntu at work with version 18.00. It worked without a hitch. Then, it updated to 20.00, and printing broke. I tried multiple "solutions" and none of them worked for my case. For literal years, I had to go to the front desk and print my shit there on the Mac which always printed without issue. Thankfully, in my case I don't print that much so it wasn't a huge problem, but I know for some that would be a complete deal breaker.

Cue version 22.00, and printing works again, albeit not always. My jobs get canceled periodically for no reason I can ascertain.

I had similar issues back in the mid-00s with a laptop I was trying to run Ubuntu 6.00 on. It mostly worked, but the webcam and trackpad were a lost cause to someone of my moderate abilities.

It's shit like this that hold Linux back. I've been running some form of Windows since 95, and I've never had unsolvable hardware problems with it.

Because "user control" has become an extinct feat after Windows came up, i.e folks really love their "Yes Windows, command me daddy" safe bubble.

In my experience, users get frustrated with Linux because they think they know a lot about computers, but in reality just know a lot about Windows. These people are unwilling to learn new workflows and OS concepts, so they get frustrated and give up. Of course, this isn't to say Linux can't be genuinely frustrating, because it 100% can be, but I think Linux and Windows are equally frustrating if you know them both well.

It's hard to say why your experience was frustrating without many more details.