Sure, will you call the it admin where I work and tell him I’m switching?
I want to switch to Linux just as much as you, but at work I have literally zero influence over this. Private OS choice and enterprise / corporate are very different things, and businesses refusing to switch away from Windows is a very big reason why Microsoft’s behaviour lately is a big deal.
Stability. For me, Linux on a VM (where I’m using it for development and getting myself familiarized with it) was a stability nightmare. Everything could go wrong after an update (I’m looking at you, Ubuntu 24.04), or even a restart, with no easy way to recover.
Lack of an easy recovery. On Windows, you can recover your OS from a faultry update easily. If a bit more things have gone wrong, just use the installer, to resurrect your own installation. On Linux, you’re on your own, and while sometimes it’s an easy fix, other times you’re better off reinstalling your OS, leading you to have to restart a lot of other things, which leads to lost time that could have spent better with doing something productive. I’ve wasted hours on recovering data from a Ubuntu 24.04 installation which decided to no longer work in GUI mode, and it ultimately ruined my sleep schedule.
A lot of settings are hidden deep within config files, which need manual editing, and even worse, googling, which on today’s internet, will likely lead you to an AI generated site filled with garbage. I managed to kill the Linux installation on my Raspberry Pi, which lead me to the previous point of having to reinstall, then having to google even more settings because Raspberry Pi OS had the great idea in the newer versions to “make setup easier”, thus tieing your location settings and your keyboard layout, so I had a Hungarian layout that I had to change, as it’s horrible to use for software development (a lot of commonly used characters are on the Alt Gr layer, and there’s only one Alt Gr key, the other Alt is a dedicated menu key - thanks IBM!).
Production software and drivers. While Wine is fine for a lot of games, but try to use software with way more sophisticated copy protection schemes. They’re already a pain to use on Windows with the original keys and such, now imagine them on a Windows emulator. Good luck with trying to find VST plugins, which copy protection can be 100% removed!
I’m not a good UX designer, but my first two rules for anything GUI related are:
If it can be done by a single button press, it should be a single button press on the GUI.
If it can be an easy configuration, it should be an easy configuration on the GUI.
Linux, alongside with many other projects in the FOSS community, regularly fail both of these, in favor of scripts, which are fine, but have their own issues. Your average user’s average usecase does not involve “very repetitive tasks that are just perfect for some shell scripts”.
I’m not here to argue that Linux is flawless if you just do this one obvious trick, but rather to say, for you in particular, with the issues you described: You might enjoy openSUSE more.
It comes with filesystem snapshots out-of-the-box. As in zero setup. And you can rollback to a previous snapshot from the bootloader, even if your system does not boot anymore.
So, assuming neither your filesystem nor hardware broke (and you noticed the breakage right away), it takes 5 minutes to get back to a working state.
It also comes with an extensive system settings GUI, called “YaST”. It certainly does not completely absolve you from touching config files. It also will not make you weap from how intuitive of a GUI it is. But it is a GUI and it covers lots of the common stuff that one might tweak on a computer.
I do also find openSUSE to be less error-prone than Ubuntu in general (my workplace makes me use the latter).
Main downside of openSUSE: It is more niche. The community is smaller. When you do run into an error, there’s fewer articles out there to help you. In particular, setting up specialty software like DAWs, VSTs etc., you may find less help for.
But the small community is more tight-knit and consists of lots of folks with higher expertise, so if you ask in the forum or some other place where the community hangs out, you will usually still get rather excellent help (and perhaps better help than what search engines unearth these days).
Ubuntu is bad, that’s why you are having stability issues. Stop using it.
Also it’s dead easy to recover a Linux installation that has snapshots. Just boot the previous snapshot and go. Also could just use an immutable Linux if not breaking things is your main concern.
Oh yeah, let’s get rid of a checks notes a common and basic feature of an OS, because it’s trendy with some programming languages to set everything to const, because people are not being taught what a debugger is and how to solve these issues with them…
Android and ChromeOS are also immutable, this isn’t just a trend. Stop being insufferable. You don’t have to go to using immutable OSes, using something sensible and stable with snapshotting would work just fine. Like OpenSUSE, or Fedora. Setting snapshots up on Debian I think is more work but still doable.
Also the reason I am recommending you move away from Ubuntu is because of what Canonical has done. I actually was a fan of earlier versions of Ubuntu, even Unity.
Just switch to Linux, problem solved.
Sure, will you call the it admin where I work and tell him I’m switching?
I want to switch to Linux just as much as you, but at work I have literally zero influence over this. Private OS choice and enterprise / corporate are very different things, and businesses refusing to switch away from Windows is a very big reason why Microsoft’s behaviour lately is a big deal.
OK, so what are you running at home?
I… don’t have a computer at home?
Jesus, have we gone full circle already? There are people with no real computer at home again?
Smart phones and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
I work with computers and clouds all day. I don’t really want to spend more time on it.
I respect that and I wish I could say the same. Sadly most of my hobbies and interests are computer based so I pretty much have to.
I haven’t had a computer in over a decade. I’m not a luddite, I just haven’t had a need for one since I got a smart phone.
That’s pretty much exactly what I meant with my comment. Not having proper computers at home because they’re replaced by smartphones.
Some problems:
I’m not a good UX designer, but my first two rules for anything GUI related are:
Linux, alongside with many other projects in the FOSS community, regularly fail both of these, in favor of scripts, which are fine, but have their own issues. Your average user’s average usecase does not involve “very repetitive tasks that are just perfect for some shell scripts”.
I’m not here to argue that Linux is flawless if you just do this one obvious trick, but rather to say, for you in particular, with the issues you described: You might enjoy openSUSE more.
It comes with filesystem snapshots out-of-the-box. As in zero setup. And you can rollback to a previous snapshot from the bootloader, even if your system does not boot anymore.
So, assuming neither your filesystem nor hardware broke (and you noticed the breakage right away), it takes 5 minutes to get back to a working state.
It also comes with an extensive system settings GUI, called “YaST”. It certainly does not completely absolve you from touching config files. It also will not make you weap from how intuitive of a GUI it is. But it is a GUI and it covers lots of the common stuff that one might tweak on a computer.
I do also find openSUSE to be less error-prone than Ubuntu in general (my workplace makes me use the latter).
Main downside of openSUSE: It is more niche. The community is smaller. When you do run into an error, there’s fewer articles out there to help you. In particular, setting up specialty software like DAWs, VSTs etc., you may find less help for.
But the small community is more tight-knit and consists of lots of folks with higher expertise, so if you ask in the forum or some other place where the community hangs out, you will usually still get rather excellent help (and perhaps better help than what search engines unearth these days).
Ubuntu is bad, that’s why you are having stability issues. Stop using it.
Also it’s dead easy to recover a Linux installation that has snapshots. Just boot the previous snapshot and go. Also could just use an immutable Linux if not breaking things is your main concern.
Oh yeah, let’s get rid of a checks notes a common and basic feature of an OS, because it’s trendy with some programming languages to set everything to const, because people are not being taught what a debugger is and how to solve these issues with them…
Android and ChromeOS are also immutable, this isn’t just a trend. Stop being insufferable. You don’t have to go to using immutable OSes, using something sensible and stable with snapshotting would work just fine. Like OpenSUSE, or Fedora. Setting snapshots up on Debian I think is more work but still doable.
I think you also want to call me a tourist, mallcore, fashiongoth, fake metal Linux user, for not wanting to join the Arch cult…😉
Also the reason I am recommending you move away from Ubuntu is because of what Canonical has done. I actually was a fan of earlier versions of Ubuntu, even Unity.
Erm, no lol. I don’t even use Arch. I’ve tried it don’t get me wrong, but I don’t understand the fascination with it personally.