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

When I was still a Linux noob I used to want to do all of the cool customizations and would often end up rendering the operating system unusable. Eventually I just switched to KDE whoch has a lot of customization built in. Some distros make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but I think being able to customize and run the latest software out of the box makes a huge difference.

As a mostly windows user, I've tried a few times, using various distributions. When buying my last pc and installing a popular linux distribution, it did not recognise my network card at all. Researching online told me I had to compile the drivers myself, since my distri did not have any shipped with it yet. ...which is pretty hard, having no internet access because of the network card not working.

For non-tech users, I feel like some parts are still pretty hard to diagnose. If an issue arises you mostly have to touch the command line and I can understand people being scared of it, having to edit plain text files, or type and enter commands that aren't descriptive, much less finding the right command by guessing. It certainly improved, with GUIs being available for most stuff, but if you want something specific, is still feels pretty rough on the edges sometimes, from the eyes of a normal user.

If you mostly need your basic apps, like browser, some office apps or a music player it works great, though.

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.

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.

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)

Contrary to what is often claimed Linux may in fact be better for people with realtively simple needs. I basically use Linux to run a browser and Steam and don't run into many problems on a day to day basis.

I dunno, why would anyone be frustrated by having everything labeled with an incomprehensible acronym and an entirely unique and often vague directory structure with a stringent yet useless file level security?

Linux is amazing for it's ability to be customized. That comes with a cost in on ramping new users. Hell, I'm an old user, and what I know is half useless because it's so old. The end result is that I use linux to run a raspberry pi that shares out instrument data. And that's all it does. It's not a desktop, it's a tool that does a thing. It does that one thing reasonably well, and I don't have to screw with it. Because I never update it, never connect it to the internet, never install new things. Until I make a new one to do a new thing.

Honestly I have no idea why anyone would want a linux desktop for daily use. It's nice to have an environment to set up the device for what it's going to be doing. But beyond that, it's usually not even going to have a monitor attached to it.

I only touch windows when I absolutely have to, and luckily that is getting rarer over time

Basic features wouldn’t work properly if not at all.

I just installed Debian 12 on my Surface Go 2. The camera isn’t working, touch is broken, casting screen not working, on screen keyboard isn’t working.

Mind you I’m a full stack developer and i have a linux server at home so I have decent technical knowledge and a little bit of time.

It's not that Linux is hard, it's that people are used to other stuff and have very little interest in learning something new for no good reason.

Unless you really convince someone that there is a good reason to put in the work, how little it may be, to get used to something new, they won't do it and complain.

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.