Additionally, what changes are necessary for you to be able to use Linux full time?
I got tired of everything taking so much effort. I was almost always able to eventually wrangle what I wanted out of the OS, but every change I wanted to make and thing I wanted to try needed so much searching and learning. I wanted stuff that just worked, even if it was “dumber.”
That, and some parts of the community I ran into were really prickly. One that was especially memorable: I was asking for help on a big-ish project with a lot of followers and helpers and didn’t expect the lead dev to answer my question, but when he did, he felt the need to make a snide as hell comment about how I have no business being there if I’m going to forget to start a service. On top of the exhaustion I was already feeling, I had a massive moment of “okay my guy, I guess I’ll just fucking leave then.”
Anyway, it just feels better being a poweruser on windows. I know enough to keep it clean, safe, and slim (like using powershell to disable the bits they don’t expose to a settings UI, for example) – to truly admin my machine – without having to work so hard for it day in and day out.
Yikes, that is why I hate tech forums. Too many times I’ve asked an informed/thought out question I’m unable to find via search and the first replier basically says “hey go FUCK yourself.”
I work in IT, this is how a lot of engineers and administrators are to be honest. I hate the dick measuring contests in my field.
Hahaha, SO TRUE!!
Unfortunately, those kinds of interactions are inevitable when the developer/user relationship is so close. And it goes both ways. I saw a thread just yesterday where a user reported an issue on github, a second user said they saw it too. Later the first user posted a workaround to the issue, and the second user came back with “took you long enough”, and that was the end of the exchange.
Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn’t mean we should reject interacting with everyone. Similarly, a community of user-maintained software is going to have some asshats, but that doesn’t mean we should hand our computing freedom over to one or two corporations. Just my two cents.
Some people in the world are just dicks, but that doesn’t mean we should reject interacting with everyone.
Corollary: Your personal aversion to corporations doesn’t mean users have have any motivation or obligation to keep trying when we’re getting pushback from both the software and those who maintain it.
Anyway, I’m not sure how you got that I reject interacting with everyone after my experience, but extrapolating my statement to that kind of extreme phrasing sure doesn’t fill me with confidence about future interactions, either.
Hey there, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I’m not discounting anything you’re saying, I agree that it’s definitely a very real phenomenon, and didn’t intend to provoke a defensive response. I didn’t say that you were “rejecting interacting with everyone”, on the contrary, I’m saying that in the physical world you deal with people who act like dicks, but you specifically DON’T reject interacting with everyone. I’m drawing a parallel between that behavior in the physical world with how I believe we should also behave in the digital one.
I also did not say that I have any personal aversion to corporations, I owe most of my daily comforts to corporations, so I would be a hypocrite to say as much. But if I had said that “I don’t think we should stick our hands in blenders” that doesn’t mean I have a personal aversion to blenders.
Cheers
I still can’t really agree that the comparison holds; we try harder in real life because the bar for being a dick is (usually) higher. On the internet, when all it takes is a few easy sentences to be a dick to a faceless stranger whose reaction we don’t have to see… to me, the response should be equally fluid, else we get bogged down being the only one putting in the effort and taking a constant beating to our self-esteem when we wonder why no one is bothering to hear us.
However, I appreciate you being chill about clearing up what you meant. I did initially miss the comparison you were going for and feel like I was getting cereal box therapy about not cutting people off (and thus staying in toxic communities) when that wasn’t what you meant.
Cheers back.
I hear you, perhaps there is a fundamental difference there with the digital world.
I really want to see some linux distro get to the point that users don’t have to wonder if something has gone horribly wrong for them. As much as I do disapprove of some of Apple’s repairability policies, and as much of a toxic human being Jobs was, Steve Jobs really was a visionary. He saw that if you paid attention to detail, you could turn a computer into something that “just worked” for people who weren’t tech savvy. Until that point, it was engineers selling to other engineers, they just couldn’t see the potential that technology had. As far as I can tell, the linux world has never had someone with such a relentless vision for user experience. I personally think it’s because the opportunity for profit just isn’t there, or at least no one sees it.
But there was a time when buying a windows license meant you got a copy of windows and that was it; now no matter what you do it’s full of ads and telemetry and constant popups about new features you never asked for. I would gladly pay the price of a windows license for a linux distro that was as thought out and usable as an Apple or Windows product in their prime, and maybe we’re entering a window (no pun intended) of time where that’s finally possible.
Unfortunately everyone has a limit for how much work they’d like to put in.
Currently my experience with 3D printing. It’s one thing after another, and the community, at least on Reddit and Facebook, fucking sucks. If I ask a question, it’s always “hey how about you go fuck yourself” or an essay that has zero relevance to what I’m asking. Made a post on Reddit the other day (I know, but have a single burner account until the 3D printing community here takes off more) and just asked to see some settings due to just constantly having issue after issue. Half of the responses were people just telling me they’re not fucking wizards and they need to know what kind of problems I’m having. I… didn’t ask for that whatsoever. I very explicitly just asked for someone’s slicer settings to compare to.
That’s absolutely the worst help forum experience, when you’re asking one question but everyone extrapolates the question they think you REALLY meant to ask and talks down to you about it.
And of course if you try to steer the conversation back to your actual question, you get painted as the unreasonable one placing all sorts of conditions on the generous free help others are allowed to bestow upon you.
The less reliance on others Linux requires, the better off it will be for general adoption.
Haha your second paragraph sums it up perfectly. A few folks did share their settings, but they were for completely different printers/hardware haha. Most of the online guides I’ve found are written under the assumption that you’re already a master at the hobby, and it’s strangely spread out in random little nooks of the internet - there’s not really a ton of centralized discussion forums. Maybe the hobby is way smaller than I thought, or maybe I’m just in way over my head, but I fix tech problems for a living - did not expect this to be as much of a challenge. Never buy a 3D printer if you value your sanity and living stress-free. Sorry, I just needed to rant for a minute haha.
Yeah 3D printers are fussier than I expected. Especially when printing anything involving supports and more specifically… small areas that need supports. I print a lot of stuff for D&D and have just started cutting things up into pieces with blender to print easier, then glue it together
I will say. My first thought was obviously to ask what printer you have, to see if I could send you my profile for you to compare (depending on the slicer you use). Then my second was to ask if you’re having issues and if so, what the issues are.
Only because sometimes a seemingly large issue could be a very small fix.
When I first started, I got it working great and then out of no where nothing would stick to the bed. I spent more time than I’d like to admit messing with settings only to realize it was the oils on my hands causing adhesion issues. Some 99% IPA fixed all my issues real quick haha.
That would be awesome! I’ve got an Ender 6 with a Micro Swiss NG extruder. I was printing decently with the stock hardware, but that stock extruder was a nightmare and kept slipping or completely losing grip on filament mid-print, so I upgraded to this extruder. Now I’m just trying to find that perfect spot to where it extrudes but doesn’t grind filament. I’ve been having some really messy prints.
I just had a feeler gauge arrive in the mail, so I’m about to use that to try leveling the bed more accurately. Everyone says to just use a piece of paper or something, but different paper is different widths haha.
I do have a PEI bed, so stuff sticks and comes off way easier now, but I would love to check out your slicer settings to get a good baseline! What kind of hardware do you have, and which slicer do you use?
Sure thing, I have a two Sovol SV06’s, one for a 0.4 nozzle and one for a 0.2 nozzle, and a Bambu Labs X1C.
The SV06’s took me a few weeks to tweak, especially the one with the 0.2 nozzle.
Here is my cura profile for the Sovol SV06 with the 0.4 nozzle https://filebin.net/ljh52w2lehipzbms
Just using that outright probably won’t work. What I would do is load up the default Ender 6 profile that Cura has, and then adjust settings based on mine. For instance. You went from a bowden extruder to a direct drive. So you can probably copy my retraction settings as a baseline and adjust from there. You need far less retraction on direct drive extruders (i.e. 0.2mm-1mm for direct drive vs 5mm-8mm for bowden).
I would also look up CHEP and Teaching Tech on youtube. They have great videos on bed leveling and everything else related to 3d printing.
Most of the online guides I’ve found are written under the assumption that you’re already a master at the hobby
I’ve had exactly the opposite experience lol. Most of the stuff out there is dreadfully basic, and if you want detail like scientific comparisons of the strength-weight ratios of different infill patterns, good fuckin luck. Some chum on YouTube will have some half baked experiments and that’s as good as it gets.
everyone extrapolates the question they think you REALLY meant to ask and talks down to you about it
It’s true, but the “X-Y problem” is real.
The question may be “what’s the best way to do X”, when they actually want to do Y and they concluded, erroneously, that X is the best way to do it. Responders suspect this, so they want to steer the questioner to a best explanation to find out if that’s the case, just to watch the questioner’s tantrum when the immediate answer is not what they expect.
Speaking only for myself, if I want to know the best way to do Y, I ask about how I can do Y. If I’m at the stage where I’ve moved on to asking about how to do X, there’s a reason I want to approach the problem that specific way – personal preference, limitations of my setup, learning a new approach, whatever else – and I’m not there to get into some asinine argument defending my choice, I’m there to find out how to do X.
So while I’m well aware of the thought process behind it, I will never not find it incredibly disrespectful to disregard the question being asked in order to make snarky little guesses at intent and answer a totally different question.
This, of course, assumes perfect understanding on your part. That could be a mistake, specially as you are, you know, asking for help.
The standard “come prepared with a good question” is simply not as hard for a savvy user to meet as you’re making it out; certainly it’s far easier than scrying between the lines and derailing the topic on purpose, and it strikes me as arrogant that anyone would trust their own attempts at mind-reading more than the clear words on the page. I’ve got a very good idea why you’re taking this all so personally that you’re replying to it three weeks after any of it was active.
Well, at least the very fact that you’re taking it personally means it dug deep enough that you’re aware it’s a problem, even if you still have a bit of a journey before you accept it needs a change.
The standard “come prepared with a good question” is simply not as hard for a savvy user to meet as you’re making it out
Your mistake is presupposing a savvy user.
I’ve got a very good idea why you’re taking this all so personally that you’re replying to it three weeks after any of it was active.
Please enlighten all of us about the procedure granting you telepathy, or shut the fuck up.
did you level your bed first!?
I’ve found this same type of animosity and superiority all over tech forums in general.
You’re not wrong, but running Linux directly correlates to more time spent on “tech forums in general,” so it’s still a bigger problem with that OS than others imo.
Jeez that is nasty. What project was it?
I was trying to run my own personal-use instance of LiveJournal back 20 years ago when it was open source (and not owned by Russia). Just to see if I could, as is the spirit of a tinkerer.
There was a handful of paid staff as well as a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers, so I expected one of them to answer a low-priority newbie support request, not… what I got.
Unfortunate, but to be fair, things have changed a lot in 20 years.
There are definitely still angry linux nerds on forums, but I think the experience is a lot more streamlined.
I really, really want to love Linux.
Mate introduced me to Red Hat in the very late 90s and I keep trying various distros every year or two - last time was about 2020 so my views here might be a bit out of date now…
When Ubuntu launched I truely believed this would be the start of genuine transformation. While I do see the overall progression in modern distros - installing them is easier than ever - but at its core, it just doesn’t seem to truely improve when it comes to usability and user friendliness. As others have said, small changes or issues might require hours of research or a game of copy/paste/pray with commands found on a long lost forum page.
MS make plenty of mistakes and dumb changes but windows has had significant improvements over the years both to the interface but also functions:
W2k/XP dragged us kicking and screaming out of DOS and into the modern era.
Vista made much needed changes to security/driver issues - but it was still a slow pig - particularly updating.
Win7 fixed what Vista should have been - faster, cleaner and simpler, BSoD mostly a thing of the past now driver manufacturers have caught up from Vista fixed updates a bit.
Win8.1 improved boot speeds, had a lot of good under the hood changes that improved deployment and self-repair, good tools for power users (we just don’t talk about that start menu)
Win10/11 greatly improved the updating process - still far from perfect but significantly faster and more reliable. No longer the upgrade lottery it was in XP - 7 era.
Not wanting to start a fight here, just my perspective - unfortunately, every time I install Linux, the visuals look good but it always feels like a fancy modern skin over top of something akin to Win98. Sure, it’s fast, secure as a MF and not riddled with modern bloat but genuine advancement of the platform feels absent.
Maybe it’s because I don’t live elbow deep in Linux like I have in windows desktop for the past 20+ years. I do know that it’s versatility and power is incredible - from phones and Pi’s to world class infrastructure, so maybe that’s it. It’s designed for maximum power and flexibility that it’s not really suited as a general purpose desktop for the masses like windows. It might always remain as a oddity at the desktop level, insanely powerful in the right hands and just a little too complex and less refined to appeal to those not willing to go deep into really learning it.
Shit never works and I basically have to become a programmer and expert in CLI to get shit to work… until it breaks again. So after having to Google everything on how to do supposedly simple shit, I always end up going back to Windows and GUI’s because I don’t have time to become a developer.
It just doesn’t work. It’s a simple as that. Things are constantly breaking. When they do I look up support articles that are written in fucking Klingon and sent to the terminal to type in commands that always return some sort of generic error “command not found” or some shit because the solution is written for a different one of the 862700422 available distros.
I have no idea how to install all the different program types (flathub, db, appimage, etc.). Windows has exe. I click “install” and boom, it’s done.
Sometimes I try to remove software in the package manager and it acts like it is uninstalled but it’s still fucking there.
I can’t even select a file because there are no previews. Just a gazillion blue squares with names like “dlcosn_3947912947”.
And other reasons, but I digress. I don’t have time to learn a new career, I just want a computer that works.
Necessity. When most of the software you use is reliant on Windows it’s hard to make Linux your daily driver. That being said, the changes needed to make it worth it are already done in limited contexts. Steam deck is pure Linux, the user interface and everything is implemented in a way that the user does not have to deal with the complexity, but the underlying mechanisms for doing wonky shit is still there if you want to mess with it. It’s kinda the best of both worlds in that sense.
If we wanted a desktop experience to replicate that, you would just have to do the exact same thing. Abstract the user experience such that the layperson does not need to engage with the complicated bits, but leave them there for those that do want them. And arguably that is being done with some distros, but it’s just not quite there yet.
Steam works flawlessly with Linux now. If you have an Nvidia GFX card then you can even get a Pop!_OS install with the driver pre-configured. It’s pretty rad!
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Is Steam a necessity of yours? Do you work in the videogames industry?
No, and I explained that steam works perfectly fine on Linux.
I have to have a computer science degree to install a peice of software… I just wanna double click the installer icon. I don’t want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. And sometimes it’s different depending on distro.
Most major distributions come with a software center of some kind. And with Flatpaks, AppImages, and gag Snaps, it pretty much is just click and install these days.
What’s wrong with snaps? I’m giving Linux another go so I’m still learning. I’m trying Ubuntu on an ancient iMac right now but I also have Pop!_OS in a vm on my windows pc to play with. I haven’t installed anything on pop but I noticed Ubuntu had snaps.
Snaps are proprietary to Canonical (Ubuntu). Historically, they were larger, slower to load, and generally slower overall to use With a good SSD and system, I’m not sure that’s the case anymore though.
Ohh. Thanks for that info. Proprietary stuff and forced ads are two of the biggest things pushing me away from windows right now so that’s good to know.
There have been “app store” frontends for most distributions since at least 2012, and packagekit has the same CLI on every major distribution.
Everyone in this thread saying shit like that hasn’t tried Linux since 2004
"I don’t want to have to write out some long String in terminal to install software. "
I’m no expert, but isn’t it literally just apt get (name of software) to download and install through terminal?
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It is much easier, os long as that version is in main repo. If not, it can still be easy (run this one extra command), or you are gonna pull your hair out trying to figure out how to install some antique proprietary software on fedora, using an installing guide made for Ubuntu 16.04. :)
Fortunately VMs are fast to set-up.
I wouldn’t force the issue. Some people belong on Windows and I’d rather they don’t use Linux simply because I don’t want them complaining to developers that it doesn’t act like Windows. Linus Tech Tips already caused enough damage by doing exactly that.
I have to have a computer science degree to install a peice of software
No you don’t, you can search on wikipedia what a computer science degree actually is.
I feel like it’s pretty obvious I was exaggerating. There’s just extra steps that I’ve always had to take. It’s never been simple for me. A lot of terminal commands in not familiar with.
because i like driving but hate fixing my temperamental car
It kept working.
Linux, every time, without fail, commits suicide after a few weeks/months. It’s never something big, always small stuff. A conf file which got fucked by a package. Init.d calls something stupid. Mbr bullshit.
And the same applies to get stuff to work. It’s not hard, but researching the issue and fixing it takes time. Those issues do not exist in windows.
It gets annoying. Windows, for all it’s shit has gotten more and more self repairing over the years.
I want to work. I want to play. Now, preferably.
My PC only gets used for gaming and I was fed up of switching into Windows for every other game. I WANT to use Linux but game developers just aren’t allowing me.
You should look into VFIO. I was in the same place where I wanted to have a Linux desktop but I don’t want to dual boot to play games because that shit is CRAZY annoying. However, there’s a way to virtualize Windows inside of you Linux desktop and get 99% of your GPU’s performance due to VFIO. I think if you use Kubuntu specifically there’s a really strong guide for setting it up, although admittedly it’s not trivial. Good luck!
Have you tried asking one of these developers why they aren’t allowing you playing on linux?
I think it comes down to my level of proficiency with computers. I’m a photographer and an artist. However, I am above average tech literate but with absolutely no formal training compared to anyone in the computer sciences.
When I use a Mac or PC I am a power user and most people think of me as very tech inclined there. I used terminal or command prompt for commands that I have learned from Google for a specific tasks and can follow most guides and tutorials online, but I can’t come up with strings of commands creatively to fix a problem.
With Linux, there’s all these weird little problems that might be unique to me and looking them up is really difficult and when someone says “oh it’s easy. Use the terminal” as if this incredibly confusing thing that I have zero fundamental knowledge of can solve my problem. A genuinely feel illiterate when I use Linux. I can write sudo though 🤷♂️
I feel like saying “just use terminal” is like telling a kindergarten kid to just use creative writing, algebra and calculus. The fundamentals have not been taught yet, I have no idea what to do.
When I learned Mac or PC, I was shown how to use a mouse, I could read and just clicking around and opening things and reading help files let me intuitively learn on my own what to do. With Linux, this way of learning achieves nothing. Maybe I can turn wifi on and off assuming it works when I install it.
And then when an update breaks everything and I have to mess around and terminal for hours or days between doing actual work, It’s a nightmare. The only Linux thing I’ve managed to keep running for years on end is a Synology. I use it for a bit of backup things but thank goodness the OS updates and app updates all work. Nothing is broken and I barely touch the machine. It just grabs my files from the network and backs them up. You should have seen how shocked I was when I was trying to install something on docker and it took days for me to realize I just type the name of the thing I want and it grabbed it from the web and installed it automatically. I spent way too long trying to figure out how to grab the actual package files and open them like installing something via an MSI file in windows.
I am literally a Linux system admin, I bang on a command line interface for a living.
But I don’t use Linux at home, it’s just so much work. Every single thing is complicated. Last time I really tried in earnest to switch to a full Linux setup I was somewhere in the middle of a quick and easy 24-step process to get my webcam working, compiling the drivers from a modified source - and it was just a moment that broke me. Like, I’ve been working on this for an hour and I know I can do it but this is stuff I don’t even think about with windows.
So I broke down and bought Windows 10. It’s what I was trying to avoid, being a tight ass and didn’t want to buy an new OS.
I just don’t have the patience to troubleshoot every tiny thing like a big endeavor. I can, I just don’t want to. Everything I install, every peripheral I connect, it’s always a big deal getting it to work. Heck with that, not worth the trouble.
And here I use Windows and get into a blind rage within 5 minutes at how much fucking around there is getting devices working properly, and then they just drop out for no apparent reason.
I don’t think anything like this has really been the case for a long time. How long ago was this?
Bullshit… I honestly can’t believe half the comments here… so much conjecture, straight up bullshit, or opinions outdated by like 10+ years. Yours is another… if you are actually familiar with Linux, there is absolutely no way that you would put up with the lack of control and customization, the god-awful workflows, and knowing there are ads and telemetry data being sent from Windows.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head… many of us grew up using Windows and/or Mac. Incremental changes to the OS aren’t a hindrance because of the baseline familiarity with the OS. Without OS familiarity, you’re going to feel like a fish out of water.
I’m getting better with linux, but I still daily drive on a Windows machine and I’m not sure if that will ever change.
The Windows command line is just so far removed from linux/mac terminal. Powershell is the closest Windows has out of the box really, and it’s a poweruser tool exclusively. Not to mention that by default, Powershell comes with aliases for common commandline inputs, so users are still not learning the correct commands and syntax.
This builds an ignorance problem, as you alluded to. I’ve done a lot in android and linux, but not enough where I can hammer away at a linux terminal and do anything but cause damage.
And I don’t think this is a “fault” in linux so to speak, but it’s an issue that needs to be overcome for most users to make the switch from something where the terminal was strictly and “optional” tool for them.
WSL? Windows for GUI programs and WSL for any CLI work. All my servers are Linux but I just ssh into them. Everything runs this way all nice and happy and I never ever touch PowerShell.
First time I ever seriously used Linux was for work, back when I was a developer. You’d have to pay me to use it again. I like gaming, but I don’t like wasting my time troubleshooting games. Nor do I enjoy debugging random crashes/black screens in random drivers. Sure, it’s fun, but if I’m gonna work for it, someone somewhere better be signing my overtime slip. Cause I get a few hours free per day, and I’d rather not deal with sigsegv anymore if I can help it.
Not to mention sound. My job as dev included using ALSA for some use cases. I don’t know if you ever had the misfortune to need to do that or how it went for you, but if I ever need to touch that shit again I will scalp Torvalds with a goddamn headphone jack.
I installed windows 11 when I bought my last PC. I figured I’d give it a shot, see if it’s as bad as all my dev friends say it is. You know how many drivers I’ve had to fix to make my games work? Zero. You know how many hours I spent debugging weird issues? Also zero.
There’s a reason windows has a price tag. And part of that reason is that it works better than free stuff. I’m a believer in FOSS, but if you’re a craftsman and you can’t hammer a nail without needing to adjust your hammer every few swings, you should find a hammer that’s not made out of silly putty and dreams.
My employer 😢
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This is entirely valid and unfortunate.
Microsoft “community” is a bunch of salarymen who’s job is to try to empty your pocket and boost the company profits at your expenses. Linux community is people helping you for free.
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You have ro spend some time making things work, I don’t always have the time.
Although I’m using WSL2 with Ubuntu because of the terminal.
Wsl2 is great, but why no apt?
Quite simple: When using Linux, I tend to play around, try different stuff, switch distros every couple of month… When using Windows or MACOS, I just use it as is and don’t try to break stuff. And while I could use Linux quite easily without breaking it, my inner child prevents me from using it this way…
