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Proton the gaming tool
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I really, REALLY wish the Affinity suite would work on Linux. They are the only ones even remotely comparable to Adobe.
Yeah, it’s what I use these days and yeah, that’d be nice. It isn’t the all-in-one package you get with PS, but for casual use in photo editing it’s decent and there are alternatives for some of the other use cases of PS that are closer while still being a fraction of the cost when stacked on top of Affinity.
You’re telling me this free, volunteer-run feature full software isn’t almost as good as the multi-million dollar product from a multi-billion dollar company?
If this dude can edit his videos and images on Linux so can you Mr Van Gogh. https://youtu.be/lm51xZHZI6g
Yes, that’s what we’re saying. It’s fine though, I don’t expect developers to work miracles for free, they are doing an amazing job, but In the context of “Linux being ready” it’s important to recognize some honest truths.
But also, whenever someone pulls that card I just point at Blender until they go away.
Hell, there is such a widespread appetite for a PS alternative you’d think it’d be easier for Gimp than Blender at this point.
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Thank you. All of this libre software is amazing, and impressive as hell, but that doesn’t exempt it from having usability issues and other valid points of criticism.
Calling that out isn’t inherently anti-Linux or anti open source. I want all of these tools to improve to the point that there’s no fucking contest and they are the de facto standard (like blender is), but shit is going to have a harder time improving if people have blinders to valid criticism.
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Users do not care about how hard the devs are working for free. If the software doesn’t have the features, it’s not ready.
Really think about this. You’re saying two entirely contradictory things:
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Linux software is ready to compete with Windows
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Users cannot expect Linux software to have comparable features to Windows
How will it compete without comparable features? Passion and morals aren’t valued over effectiveness by most users.
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No. I am saying if you expect people to make the swap with the argument “you can do anything on Linux that you can do on windows more or less” then offer gimp as a photoshop replacement, you’re going to get some pretty strange looks.
None of what I’m talking about has to do with developer passion or competing with billions of dollars. We are talking about software people need. And the fact is there just isn’t a good photo editor on Linux which is a huge problem. Gimp is not suitable at all to fill that role.
gimp is ass sorry
GIMP’s engine is very good. It’s UI is cuntpuke.
Somebody write a QT front end for Imagemagick and you’ll probably see Linux adoption jump.
You’re telling me this free, volunteer-run feature full software isn’t almost as good as the multi-million dollar product from a multi-billion dollar company?
You’re describing the truth about Linux vs windows, except many Linux oses are better than anything ms makes.
I think Windows could be a far better OS than Linux if Microsoft gave a single shit. Instead they want to add AI and recall and various invasive updates.
The only thing windows has going is the market share.
Could, true, but never has, never will. As long as it uses a janky non-standard kernel underneath, I’m gonna be hating on it.
Yeah. it’s dogshit but they certainly have the capacity to improve. it’s clear where their priorities are: milk users for profit
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I use gimp for pixel art for game textures and to make memes. It has tons of features that nobody knows about becuase they’re fucked by horrendous UI. But theres never been anything I needed to to but couldnt after looking up a tutorial on the internet. Valid points against gimp but lets not pretend people used to photoshop arent also kind of stuck in their old workflow habits and unwilling to relearn new software UI.
Theres photogimp but it hasn’t been worked on in a while.
Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
Also also, most people who use gimp on linux probably did so on a stable distro like Mint installing with default package manager. This means their experience with gimp is from a terribly old outdated version. Flatpaks have some issues but being able to easily install the most current version of software like gimp or kdenlive is night and day difference.
Another reason to use Gentoo: https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/media-gfx/gimp
You can install 3.0.0rc2 or even git version.
Oh cool! Let me just spend three weeks crawling through wiki articles, setting flags in the config files, and patching out 15 different issues with various drivers then installing 20 dependencies compiling them all from source.
Hyperbole, but yeah no thanks I’ll take the L on some optimization and 2gb of storage space and some wierd file system locations for files to load a flatpak if old stable doesn’t cut it. you might want to be careful recommending gentoo to people they might not know better. Most Linux nerds don’t want to open that can of worms, but good for you if it works.
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I’m pretty sure Photoshop was better in 2003 than gimp is today
I’ve been using the Gimp for decades to great effect. Git gud (pin intended). Also, all phone photo editors are garbage.
For decades to do what?
Trim my toenails, obviously.
It was a legitimate question not bait or something so I don’t know why you’re being an ass about it. What is your use case?
Image editing.
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What else is the program for? I haven’t used Photoshop since the '90s.
Photopea was written by a single college grad, and it’s miles better than gimp. While gimp has more resources and manpowers. Something is seriously wrong with their team.
Photopea uses rendering by browser. And probably doesn’t have plugin system.
And? so what? It doesn’t matter if GIMP has a plugin system. The UI is so shit you have to google everything to figure out how to use it and even then it’s still complicated.
I can guarantee you that no app on or for your phone can do a fraction of what GIMP is capable of.
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To run Resolve properly, you apparently have to run DaVinci’s flavor of Rocky Linux 8.6. If you’re doing other things with that machine, this may be undesirable. And as far as I know, there’s no equivalent for After Effects.
Gimp has a few weak spots but it’s an incredibly capable tool and if you think phone apps can do things it can’t then I don’t think you know how to use it.
Even for hobbyist needs the feature set is basically a decade behind.
I mean, Gimp 3 ia looking pretty good to me. Maybe it’s not fit for a workplace (even though it depends on the workplace imo) but it’s definitely more than enough for hobbyists.
Would you mind citing some example of fundamental missing features?
Not trying to be a smartass, just genuinely curious
Can you make circles yet?
I love that copypasta
Yup, circle select, menu bar, select->outline, select your thickness, then use the paint bucket.
This is what people mean when they say GIMP can do the same stuff, the process is just totally different.
What about a circle that isn’t filled in
That is for a circle that’s not filled in, that’s what the outline operation does.
If the average person can not use your OS, it is not ready. Period.
For example:
Windows - Open File Explorer > Add Network Drive > Find/plug it in > Enter creds > Bam. Ready to go and will automatically log you in at boot. Very nice, very intuitive UI.
Linux - Open Dolphin (or whatever) > Network > Add Network Folder/Find it > Enter creds > Does not automatically mount the drive when booting the computer back up > Must go into fstab to get it to automount > Stop, because that is ridiculous
In my own experience, I was able to get the hang of Windows with no one showing me how a computer ever worked, at the age of 10! Intuitive enough a child can do it.
On Linux, you have to read manuals/documentation, ask random (mostly rude) people on the internet, or give up because why the fuck would I want to go and enter 5 commands just to have something as simple as auto mount a network share? Not intuitive, therefore not easy to learn as you go.
I get it, Linux people like knowing how their computers operate, they like ensuring everything is working the way THEY want to, and that’s awesome! What’s not awesome is recommending Linux to the general populace and then getting upset at them for asking why they can’t do something or why don’t they just do these steps to do whatever it is they are having issues with. Then, you have a person who doesn’t even know what a terminal is confused as hell because they were told Linux is so much better than Windows.
Until we get a more intuitive (GUI focused) way of doing what I would consider normal computer tasks, it will not ever be ready. That’s just the way I see it.
the average person doesnt know how to mount a drive on windows or even what that is or why you would want to, they just need to be able to open a browser
Very good point!
Example 2:
I need to drag this file into my browser to upload it to the website I’m visiting for whatever reason. I’m an average user that has only ever really needed a browser. My OS came with Firefox, but when I try to drag the file onto my browser window like I’ve always done, nothing happens. Is my computer broken?
No, it’s installed as a snap/flatpak that doesn’t have the “privileges” to do that, and I will never know that since I’m an average user who only needs a browser.
Your second example is a newish problem and Ubuntu specific. I had never had a problem with drag-and-drop and I migrated from Ubuntu before the snap thing.
You will always find an example of something that works “better” in one OS than other. Linux is not trying to be a windows drop-in replacement, some thing are gonna behave differently. Linux have some problems for an average user but a lot is just different UX design and others, especially hardware compatibility is because companies don’t care for it to work on Linux so the OS is always playing catch up.
A lot of “beginner friendly” distros are Ubuntu based though, so while not strictly requiring you to use snaps, it might install Firefox as a flatpak though, which doesn’t have the privileges to do drag and drop when I last used a flatpak based browser.
You can correct me if I am wrong of course, as I truly don’t know if it is still a thing or if I just installed the flatpak. I didn’t understand the limitations back then.
Flatseal helps with managing flatpak perms, but yeah it’s not at all intuitive
Right, but we are talking about the average user. One who only needs a browser. They wouldn’t even think about flatpak/snap/appimage, and would probably look at you like you are insane if you said those in the same sentence as “Your browser is a flatpak/snap/appimage, so it doesn’t have the permissions it needs to allow drag and drop”.
I wouldn’t know if this is still a thing. You are right about the integration problem of snaps/flatpak, it is specifically bad on Ubuntu because Ubuntu goes out of their way to shove snaps on you and hide the fact. Case in point Firefox, if you want a non snap version you have to jump through a lot of hoops, or at least was like this when a last installed Ubuntu for my wife laptop, it was the 22.04 I think.
In any case that is Ubuntu specific, but a shame none of the least because like you said, Ubuntu and derivatives are the more popular beginner friendly distros. but if I recall correctly some derivatives do remove snap so you don’t have to deal with it and its problems.
That’s the distro’s fault, not linux. Same with your network drive. It’s not up to linux to provide a GUI for anything.
Also “intuitive” should not have to mean “windows-like”. It’s hard for people because they spend over a decade on a fundamentally different OS. Adding a single line to fstab isn’t harder than searching windows’ menus. It’s harder for you/others because you/they are used to it working that way.
clicking the browse button to select the file is a hell of a lot easier than opening the file manager, navigating your way through your files to find the one specific one, then make both windows small so you can select a file in one, and drag it over to the other.
And look, its also an example of how you turn nothing into a big, complicated, multistep imaginary issue.
you don’t need to make the windows, just alttab while dragging. and maybe you already have open the directory in another window so why browse there again in the browser’s file picker.
probably not a big deal, but definitely not a small issue either
We were talking about average users. It’s most definitely not an imaginary issue, unfortunately. I have seen it with my own eyes. It’s how they have always brought their stuff into the browser, therefore, it is what they’ve always done. Yes, there is a browse option, but that isn’t always going to be the most intuitive way.
When I was on help desk I often talked about meeting the client where they were at in their technical skill level. Sometimes their technical skill level was “Can you click the icon in the bottom left that looks like a window with four pains, and then click the settings icon it looks like a gear”. If mounting a file share was involved I just remoted in, none of the people that called could handle those instructions.
I mean, I was able to figure out how MS-DOS worked as a child just be flailing on the keyboard and reading the errors. It was “easy” because now I know it while Macintoshes may as well have been alien technology. A “mouse”?, moving windows?, you have to find programs and click on them instead of just typing?
You’re just used to Windows annoyances and not used to Linux annoyances, that’s all.
For example:
Installing and updating a program on Windows is a horror show compared to using a package manager. It expects average users to find, download and run executable files from the Internet and conditions them to approve elevation for anything that asks.
If Windows breaks, how do you troubleshoot it? Maybe Google knows, maybe rebooting fixes it, if not then possibly re-installing the entire OS. It’s so bad that if you work with Windows clients you probably already have an image of a Windows install because troubleshooting is so much of a pain it’s easier to just completely re-image the machine.
Don’t even get me started on how often Microsoft changes the layout of administration tools and system menus or their tendency to change the name of various system components for no logical reason.
I don’t think Linux is for everyone, but only because most everyone already has years of Windows experience and forgets all of the frustration and learning.
If you used Linux for just as long as you’ve used Windows, then editing fstab would seem as trivial a task as pinning an item to the
start bartaskbar, orlaunching a programstarting an app from thesystem traynotification areasystem tray.It’s kinda funny that as a seasoned Linux user, I never had to edit fstab for years. I just use Gnome Disks if I need automount or format a USB drive.
Installing programs through Windows is now (thankfully) more align with Linux.
winget install firefox > see two different forms, one from Windows Store (ew) and the one provided and hosted by Mozilla > winget install mozilla.firefox > program installs
When updating: winget upgrade shows available updates > winget upgrade --all updates all the listed programs
Not as good as Linux of course, but much better than the old method you stated. That point I will give to you, as it is still not simple for the average user. “Terminal? WTF is that?”
I generally don’t have any annoyances with Windows because it does the things I need it to. I don’t find a UAC popups as annoying, because it is supposed to help prevent people from messing their computer up. The same could be said for the average person on Linux running random commands they found online because the thing they were expecting their computer to do isn’t doing the thing.
Windows has never broken on me, so I do not have a good rebuttal for that. I can at least say that when Linux has been borked before on my own hardware, I essentially had to put the ISO back on the single USB I owned at the time just to reinstall the entire OS again, because again, I didn’t know anything about Linux at this time. While in Windows, if the computer doesn’t boot properly 3 times, it brings up the Windows Recovery menu that has in plain English what available options you have to get your install back in at least some working manner. Again, you must keep the average person in mind. You and I are not what I would consider average in this context.
Again, point to you for the changes to UI that Micro$oft introduce. Very, very, very stupid UI/UX redesign choices, and without an alternate avenue at that! (there are a few programs that try to replace some of the Windows UI to get it back to how it should be, but of course that can introduce entirely new issues…)
I’ve been knuckle dragging my way into Linux more and more for 15 years. That’s why I have such a strong opinion on what they could do better for the average people. UI/GUI is a must have to get people to even consider ditching Windows. That’s without even taking into consideration that most of the programs I run personally do not even have a Linux alternative, and Wine/Bottles/Lutris/Heroic can not remedy without loads of understanding what you’re supposed to change here and there for that specific program. That is a real nightmare in my view.
You are mostly correct that I am very much more used to the “plug and play and it just works” of Windows, but having to go and edit some config file somewhere on my computer, instead of it just being an option in the settings or in the file manager itself, is just insane to a person who just wants to set it and forget it, like I can do with Windows.
Obviously, my time with Windows is not the average either, so I can see your points. I love Linux, what it stands for, and how it is community driven. I want it to be better so I can finally delete Windows forever.
I still use and support the users of Windows.
I do like winget (and chocolate), but the software repo doesn’t have everything and so people are still conditioned into going online and searching for executable file to run as admin.
I can’t count the amount of times that I’ve had to reinstall Windows because a user was tricked into downloading the wrong file and infected themselves (and the rest of the network).
I’d say that if you had a brand new person who needed to learn an OS then Windows and Linux are very close in difficulty as of today. I prefer to use Linux because I like the amount of information and control that is afforded to me
But, I play video games, use VR and deal with applications that only support Windows so I have a Windows drive handy.
Sure, mapping a (Samba) network drive is easy, and possible via GUI, in Windows, but have you tried to use NFS?
You need a Professional license ($100) first of all, and even then, you can only use NFSv3. The Powershell
commandcmdlet to mount is a trainwreck: >!New-PSDrive Z -PsProvider FileSystem -Root \10.40.1.1\export\isos -Persist!<. It’s so bad that Microsoft implemented an alias, ‘mount’, so you can pretend it’s a Linux command and it translates it into Powershell-ese.Now you gotta upgrade to Windows 11 by next year, use a Microsoft account (Yes, I know the workaround) and let your computer’s contents be indexed and fed to Microsoft in the name of integrating an AI feature that’s complete opaque to the user.
I’m not a frog that likes to be boiled, so I deal with Linux problems which seems quaint by comparison.
I mean atleast in terms of the troubleshooting I’ve had to do it’s much easier on Windows. Sure it can be more finicky but if I have a problem 99% of the time I google it and find someone else having the same problem and worst case scenario atleast reinstalling Windows fixes the problem. When I gave Linux a try the amount of times I googled something and either found an out of date solution that didn’t work or was just told that that doesn’t work and you can’t do that was annoying enough that I gave up and went back to Windows. If Linux works for you that’s great but acting like the problems with Linux are just people not being used to it is wrong.
Linux has problems but he is not wrong that a lot of it is not being used to the OS. Finding solutions on the Internet is like a popularity context, of course there is much more of it for windows but even on Linux there is much more for big distros line Ubuntu than other smaller ones.
Now reinstalling windows is not a solution or a good argument, it is saying the problem cannot be fixed. When I used windows that was also my go to solution and very feel things I solved by googling, but I guess in part because I was not as tech savvy as I am now. But I tell you, when I started with Linux I could find solution for all problems that I have that had solutions, now a lot have changed so you do get that some things are outdated but it is just a matter of paying attention if the solution is old or new (side not rant, sites that do not put date on the articles are the worst).
Oh yeah, I naver had to reinstall a Linux machine, maybe I lucked out and didn’t royally fucked anything, but I could always solve problems with the OS without a reinstall. I guess because more easily you can find and know where things changed, like what config files you changed and you can always make a copy. The works case is like booting a live USB and rolling back the changes if the OS does not boot anymore.
Yeah, this one gets me, but you are exactly right with “years of experience”. Something goes wrong on my GFs MacBook or Windows PC and she just googles fixes, something goes wrong on her Steamdeck and she hands it to me “I don’t know how to get around the desktop mode”…GOOGLE IT, LEARN, YOU ARENT STUPID! sigh
The average person doesn’t use network drives or know what they are.
The real problem is if people can’t buy Linux laptops at Best Buy it literally doesn’t matter how usable or not it is because the average person doesn’t install an OS.
Why is automounting at boot without credentials a necessity and intuitive for you. No, I would expect it to mount exactly once and to require me to input username and password before I mount my porn collection so that my sister does not see it.
I don’t get why you claim that windows does this correctly and Linux does not. It would be the opposite for me.
Besides, the important point in this example is to actually mount the folder to do your job. In your example, both systems do this equally well with an equally well UI, before your automounting nonsense.
It’s simpler that all that. Turn on new computer, open browser, install steam, install games, play games. Anything more complex than that makes it unusable. People have zero time to deal with even a slight hiccup. It is annoying to watch as people are getting into steamOS on Steamdeck and every little thing is the end of the world. I have seen “oh, to get that one to run smooth you gotta set the FPS locked to 30” met with “nah, I ain’t got time for all that, I’ll play it on the Xbox”.
I don’t know what the fix is, outside cloning windows GUI and making an ultra safe and familiar entry Linux (the replies will be various lists of “just use x,y,z” and “get this one and technobabble the dilithium crystals into the frondulator” and that just pushes people away instantly…there has to be a tiktok-dumb entry level OS before any real migration happens.
I work with windows for over 10 years, and use Linux daily for private stuff, including being a nerd and a gamer, and some side gigs for at least 8.
If something is weird, doesn’t work or breaks in Linux, I can usually find the culprit and help fast. It’s out there or it’s so obscure I need to puzzle it myself.
If something like that happens on windows, pray someone already had that issue or Microsoft decided to write an article about it, because nobody will help, and most search results point to bot responses about scf scannow, dism at best, and straight up reseting your system to factory defaults.
Point being, I like figuring out stuff in Linux, and I dread opaque bullshit Microsoft gets away with.
Even your network drive example, in my experience is a coin toss. So many variables, hidden settings, weird registry keys with no documentation. Yeah.
If the average user
Proceeds to describe a task average users never perform.
And no, you having been a smart child doesn’t excuse you being an obtuse adult.
Meanwhile my experience with automounting network drives with dolphin is
Open Dolphin > Add Network Folder > Enter creds > Check automount box > done
I haven’t had to use the terminal for anything in years. There’s some things I do in the terminal, but that’s because I like it better, not because there isn’t an intuitive way to do it.
The reason guides tell people to use the terminal is because it’s the same across DEs, not because there aren’t DEs that make it more intuitive.
Would I throw a random non techy friend on Linux? No, because it’s not what they’re used to. If they had no computer experience at all though I absolutely would.
The average person does not mount network drives themselves.
I would hazard a guess that for the truly average user, booting to a desktop with Firefox and LibreOffice installed is like 90% of what they need.
I didn’t think Linux had enough ads and wasn’t commercialized enough but then I tried Ubuntu.
It certainly sounds like wayland is just about ripe. Any DE recommendations for a lifelong XFCE enjoyer like myself?
KDE. It’s working very well with Wayland. I’ve been using both on my daily driver for a year now and it’s come a long way since then. It was still a bit rough in the beginning but now I can’t see myself going back. It’s pretty polished.
I’ve been using KDE Plasma with Wayland for a couple of months and it’s been really good. The apps that don’t support it properly open as an X11 window inside Wayland, which is perfectly fine. I’m not switching back to X11 either haha
I’m not a Linux noob, but I’ve been out of the scene for a few years.
Recently tried debian with KDE and Wayland on a modern PC with a 3060. Just a default install.
My mouse could barely track across the screen, it was very choppy and stuttered like crazy.
This was in the last 6 months. I got it fixed by switching to a different compositor, but I shouldn’t have had to do that. Even then I found YouTube to be super laggy.
It’s just not ready.
well it’s again more about nvidia driver for wayland u need manually do some tweaks such as https://github.com/CachyOS/CachyOS-Settings/blob/master/usr/lib/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
I’m glad there are ways to get it working, and thank you for sharing it, but this doesn’t qualify as “it just works, why are you idiots not switching from Windows when Linux just works”.
This is directly why a lot of people don’t take the arguments that Linux is ready for the average user seriously.
opensuse leap has those settings by default. and people say it’s not beginner friendly…
I had the exact same experience with Debian. The thing is, Debian is so many versions behind, it’s really no surprise that you thought it wasn’t ready yet. Try a less “stable” distro, you’ll be surprised.
i am a Linux noob. i installed debian KDE wayland with an Nvidia card just like you.
i experienced similar issues. i couldn’t set my refresh rate above 60Hz, my screen was really dim and stuttering, and video playback was lagging. worst of all my Minecraft framerate was abysmal! (<20fps default settings)
i read the dang wiki and got everything running smoothly in an afternoon
it’s ready as fuck
i read the dang wiki and got everything running smoothly in an afternoon
that means it’s not ready…
Xfce next major release will have Wayland support so no need to even change!
Wfce?
Best news I’ve heard all year
KDE or Gnome.
I’m jumping on the kde train. The experience has been solid since plasma 6 and the Wayland jump last year, especially if you are already stuck in the Nvidia family.
Cinamon should be supporting it soon
Thanks to the likes of Proton, gaming on Linux is a hell of a lot better than it was ~5 years ago. You can actually do it now for the most part without to much fuss in my experience as long as you stick to Steam.
But once you leave Steam or get something brand new made by an EA type and have to lean on third party implementations of Proton or raw Wine to get things working it gets a lot worse.
But once you leave Steam […] it gets a lot worse
Heroic Games Launcher is pretty great for games from GOG and Epic. You can run games with Proton just fine.
Lutris is also a great option, actively contributing to it. Got a slightly different focus than Heroic, but a lot more features as well. Basically a one-stop shop once you got familiar with it. Really needs more people that can contribute though given the huge amount of platforms and launchers it attempts to cover (literally all of them).
Agreed, but I think it’s important to note that that isn’t because of a shortcoming of Linux, it’s because those companies are incentivized to support platforms that are more suitable for enabling massive profits, that’s what it seems like to me anyways.
“it’s important to note that [insert speculation]”
Um yeah that’s why I qualified it how i did 🙄
It’s not important to note something that is speculative.
“It’s important to note that YarHarSuperstar probably doesn’t even run Linux.”
See?
That’s your opinion and you have the right to express it. I disagree obviously, that’s why if you’ll pay very close attention to the words I used, it says “I think” before I said that.
Also, for folks out of the loop, let me explain what this entails. I installed Steam. I clicked install on a game. I clicked play in Steam. That was it. Proton isn’t some sort of thing you need to install or launch separately. It really does “just work”.
I’m able to play Deep Rock Galactic, Helldivers 2, and even Marvel Rivals online just fine. All of these are online multiplayer games, the types that generally seem to have the most trouble on Linux.
that is most definitely not the process. You have to explicitly go into Steam’s settings > Compatibility > “Enable Steam Play for all other titles” (what in the world, it’s called Steam Play, not Proton?) and then additionally select which Proton version you want. If you don’t know this, or don’t google it with the right keywords, you won’t understand why literally 90% of your library isn’t available (in my case it was 99% of my library, I think I only had 3 games available on linux natively). Also if you select the wrong Proton version some games won’t run, so you have to know that and switch it for those games only.
They’re likely using a gaming distro that has those settings enabled by default.
It isn’t perfectly seamless but enabling Steam Play or changing proton versions isn’t any more of an advanced task than verifying game files (something that Windows users are asked to do the moment that they have a problem).
It has come a long way from the days of manually creating wine environments and writing custom launch files.
If you can install Skyrim or Minecraft mods (not using Steam Workshop) then you’re sophisticated enough to game on gaming distros like Pop and Bazzite.
If you can use cheat engine without a guide and write your own mods then you’re ready for Arch.
I’m using CachyOS, I think it was set up out of the box.
Getting something brand new from EA is painful on any platform
Can confirm, bought my son a FIFA game on pc that caused so much trouble and confusion on windows with their activation bullshit that I ended up buying him an xbox
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“Nvidia GPU working”
If the driver feels like it, lol.
If the gpu doesn’t burn
I know NVIDIA gets a lot of shit, but I’ve honestly never encountered a problem after using nvidia + Linux for well over a decade. Sure, it can be picky when it comes to kernel version, but deciding on a kernel that works well for you and the rest of the system is part of initial setup of a proper system anyway.
Same here. I really don’t know what people do with their machines. I’ve had numerous nvidia gpus for ages without trouble (and litteraly decades of linux).
Never on laptops though, maybe that’s where problems arise.
Laptops exclusively for decades here, so nope, that’s not it.
Well, there goes my pet theory then.
Can you use HDR in KDE? Only desktop Can you use HDR in game? Only with gamescope with dozen flags Can you use native wayland in proton? No unless you go through complex hoops.
“Finished” isn’t worth a jack shit if it doesn’t work out of the box
“Finished” is a relative concept that dependa on an individuals needs and wants. I don’t care about HDR. I’ve been able to play every game I want virtually without a hassle for more than a decade. Wayland is nice but ultimately I don’t care.
Linux has been finished for me since some time between 2011-2014.
I have been using hdr in kde for a few weeks now. I recently got a Dell oled monitor, and it has been working surprisingly well out of the box with hdr on plasma. I’m on Nobara btw
Double space
Before single newlineProton in Wayland works well in Ubuntu out of the box. I don’t think it matters if it is native or an X11 compatibility layer, since the games I played ran better than they did in Windows 7.
Don’t worry guys, we’ll never have VR
I can’t tell if this is flippant?? steamvr works great for what I’ve used it for (mostly beat saber and taskmaster VR). using Nobara 40 rn
It’s just not competitive with the quality of support on Windows. It’s bad enough, comparatively, that if you’re a heavy VR user it’s worth keeping a Windows install just for that use. There was a long post on /r/linuxgaming a few weeks back rolling up all the issues into one post, I’ll try to find it. One of the best comments in the post was by a top-ranked Beatsaber player actually; he said that latency among other things was the reason he has kept dual booting – only using Windows for VR gaming. I know that I just gave up on playing Elite: Dangerous in VR successfully because I didn’t want to fuss with dual booting.
ahhh yeah I’m not good at beat saber at all, I just think it’s fun. it’s easy for my smooth brain to just be happy that vr works at all 🤣
Yeah not sure of their setup, but I had a big list of mandatory things that needed to work before I erased my windows partitions. VR was one of them. More specifically VR full room and VR sitting with my HOTAS and wheel setups. Everything game related works perfectly. Some VR applications I haven’t gotten working or found replacements for like Virtual Desktop. (If anyone has any suggestions, that’d be amazing.)
But long story short, VR works and it works well. I’ve played on both an Nvidia 3090 and an AMD 7900 XTX. I’m using Ubuntu 24.10 with Gnome Wayland.
On occasion it complains about gnome not supporting vr. I just reboot and it works fine.
Did you get audio working? I could never get sound out of the headset.
We have: https://lvra.gitlab.io/
Have you guys decided which distro is the ready one?
At this point it should be obvious, btw
Obvious to whom exactly?
Hint: the answer lies within the last 3 letters of their post. And is probably a joke.
it may have been an obscure reference to the “btw I use Arch” meme
I got the joke!
Enlighten me.
Is it Zorin?
Everyone loves to shit on Zorin but I like it. Fedora is way too slow with updates for me. Mint is nice, but Zorin feels more cohesive with its UX.
Mint? Arch? Anything you like
Redstar?
Hanna Montana Linux
Yes sir
Not yet but I’d at least narrow it down to Arch and Fedora. I don’t think either of those is a bad choice.
TBH, so many people I know don’t even know how to use Windows. Or even a browser. iOS or maybe Android is their PC, all through apps and feeds.
Like, if I explained laptop BIOS access for installing Linux, I’d lose them before I even started.
iOS or maybe Android is their PC, all through apps and feeds.
So they’re already using BSD and Linux.
Yes yes, Linux is a kernel, but it’s pretty obvious from context they mean desktop operating systems using the Linux kernel.
Linux in the meme’s context has little relation to Apple or Android, unfortunately.
“Linux is ready” - which distro? Fractional (sometimes even non-fractional) scaling is a mess. Most things that go beyond changing the wallpaper image need some command line stuff. Linux Desktop is for nerds and definitely not ready.
Yes it works fine if you know what you are doing but most people don’t. There is often not one thing of doing stuff, but hundreds. It already starts with the selection of a distro how would a “non-computer-person” decide on a distro. Just try them out? Install twenty different distros because reasons?
Unless resources are pooled into a single distro to polish it and make a defacto standard for ordinary people, homes and offices, Linux is not ready. If I need the freaking terminal because I want to see the day of the week next to the date it’s not ready.
You could just said you havent used linux, muchacho.
I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted.
Lie: “Most things that go beyond changing the wallpaper image need some command line stuff.”
Incomprehensible: “There is often not one thing of doing stuff, but hundreds.”
“It already starts with the selection of a distro how would a “non-computer-person” decide on a distro. Just try them out? Install twenty different distros because reasons?”
Yeah, go install a distro, don’t like it , try another or go back to windows. We don’t really care but making crap up to be a gatekeeper? That’s a bit much
“Unless resources are pooled into a single distro to polish it and make a defacto standard for ordinary people, homes and offices”
Ohh so even if every option works fine, it’s not ready unless it’s windows…
Going back to look at his history, he’s just a ball of incoherant complaints.
I’m with ya buddy: Today, Linux is good enough for most purposes. If you try it and don’t like it, go buy a new PC for windows 11.
Linux is a kernel and not an operating system. My phone is runs Android, two of my root servers run debian bookworm, my living room media center runs Ubuntu, so I guess I have used Linux at least a little bit. But no distro I’ve seen (tried even more on some VMs) is really enough for me to suggest it to anybody that isn’t a “computer-person”.
I’m neck-deep in Linux and am responsible for getting developers at work up and running with it in servers, WSL and in 3 cases desktops.
I would suggest you’re just blind to the new user experience at this point. You’re focusing on a lot of stuff that works out of the box on most hardware these days. (but were kagey a year ago)
Bookworm on a late model laptop installs with 0 work. Onboard Nvidia is fine, sound is fine, steam is fine. Printer is fine.
No terminals required, Gui’s and Settings are fine.
Scaling (even fracitonal) is fine on KDE for the past few months.
You know who has had scaling issues for a decade? Windows.
Drag that notepad from your 4k screen over to your 1080 screen in windows an watch it blow up 6x, if you accidentally let go before it resizes it on the 1080, the top bar is off the screen. We’ve been dealing with that forever.
Servers are fine. VM’s are fine.
What non expert level things are you expecting a newb to open a terminal and do?
IMHO, The majority of the issues at this point are apps only supporting X when trying to run under wayland.
Do some testing. Put a non-technical Windows or Mac user on Linux for a week. Don’t explain anything to them, so they can figure it out on their own. Let me know how it goes.
How about a few million school kids on chrome books. My 6YO is AOK.
Can you open a web browser? Done, Ship it.
My Parents and my Ex were fine on it 20 years ago. (given back then I HAD to do the setup)
The only problem they ever had was when my mother bought bargain bin CD full of shareware and I said no, that’s not going to work. She shrugged and I pointed her to some online solitare games.
Then they’re better off with a Chromebook or tablet. The only reason to be on a pc instead is to access all of the additional functions that would be a nightmare for them to figure out on Linux.
The only reason to be on a PC
The vast majority of people don’t need to be on a PC.
I’d argue that steam on Linux PC for casual gaming is pretty ready mainstream. Video drivers just work in anything that support non-free, Gui steam Install, the only thing you need to know is to check proton on each Windows Game you want to run. If they’d turn that on by default they’d be fine for light PC gaming.
I was pretty shocked the last few times I did a setup for someone and it needed nothing.
Hell, even NixOS works out of the box, that’s just nuts.
My grandma is using it without problems. What now?
The average Steam Deck user does not even know it’s running Linux. How it’s going: millions sold and counting.
Right. Because they’re interacting with an overlay the entire time, so they don’t have to deal with a shitty UI or manually performing any tasks.
So that’s an irrelevant example.
So that’s an irrelevant example.
SteamOS is Linux.
And? Most of the web servers people interact with run on Linux, too. But in both examples, they are not interacting with the Linux UI whatsoever, which is the thing we are discussing.
You’re describing linux as it was when I switched. That was 30 years ago though. I don’t think you’re very familiar with current systems.
they’re very correct. Last month I tried out Zorin (which was recommended by one of the linux communities here) and sound didn’t even work properly. I plan on writing up a full doc for the linux community on the problems a staff software engineer had with a basic no-frills install (I’m trying to find a distro for my wife), but Linux is absolutely not ready for the general populace.
Sound is almost always the sticking point for me in Linux installs.
But as I said in another comment, this doesn’t actually matter for the general populace because they don’t install OSes. The only situation where they’d use Linux is if they can buy a Linux PC ready to go, so config issues like this miss the forest for the trees.
sure, but then you’re alienating an entire userbase that can install an OS (which is just a flash drive and hitting a few keys during startup), but absolutely does not have the willpower to sit and figure out configuration on their new OS that absolutely does not work out of the box. Shit, I have enough to deal with in my daily life, I don’t want to be debugging driver issues. I haven’t had driver issues in windows or mac for over a decade, yet it’s the very first thing you encounter on a new distro install.
Any system that doesn’t ship with the machine won’t be friendly to the end user.
And on pc, linux always has to work with (or against) hardware designed specifically for that other os. Including ignoring established standards, because why not. It’s honestly a miracle that it works as well as it does.then why is every linux advocate stating that all that matters is picking your distro? If the system needs to have the OS preinstalled then the distro doesn’t matter at all. Yet that still really isn’t the problem. Installing an OS from a flash drive (distros are just as easy to install as windows is and people have been installing windows fine from hard media for decades) is a different realm of troubleshooting than driver issues. Either linux is ready for people to start installing any distro on their gaming rig to migrate off of Windows or it’s not. And it clearly isn’t.
Because linux users are people familiar with computers. The general public can barely use windows, they can’t realistically install an operating system. If you think people can install windows, I’m afraid that’s quite unlikely.
You’re clearly surrounded by tech savvy users. Don’t confuse them with regular users. They have nothing in common.
Linux has been ready since 2008. Literally not had a single real problem since Ubuntu 7.10 kept turning my monitor off while booting. Everything just works and has for 17 years now.
Every problem I see people have now (IRL not online) is ‘I don’t like the default theme’ tier nonsense.
The “works on my machine” certification sure seems like an amazing barometer for usability.
This is unfortunately very common when interacting with Linux users. I’ve had general issues on Linux that never happened on Windows, and you mostly just get replies saying it works for them and everything is dandy. That’s great! It’s not how I use MY computer though, so…
I get your point, and it is a fair criticism of how these discussions tend to go. That said, I think it goes both ways. I’ve had problems on Windows I didn’t have on Linux and/or Mac. None of them are perfect. They all have their unique problems.
I think the main difference is that I never see Windows users say that “Windows is just SO great, you have GOT to install it right nooooooowwww!” nor Mac users. But Linux users will gladly rant and rave about their distro to normal people who are just now hearing about Linux for the first time, then get upset when that person doesn’t even know how to use a terminal command.
But then again, I only have myself in my life that has any sort of interest in tech, so maybe there are and I just have never experienced it.
I’ve definitely heard Mac fans rant and rave about Mac being the best.
Works on Grampa’s machine and he can’t even figure out how how to unlock an iPhone. Which is ‘stare at it’ last I checked.
It might be nonsense to you, but that’s the first thing people see. No matter how amazing you business is, if your business card is a handwritten phone number on a piece of toilet paper, nobody will call.
Yup. If the theme is causing a mental hang up for laymen, then it’s an issue whether you agree with it or not.
But I suspect it’s more than that, and Linux stans are playing down the shitty UI.
Is fractional scaling a standard feature in GNOME now? Last time I needed it, it was still an experimental feature I had to enable.
And the text rendering (at least for me with flatpaks) is completely fuzzy garbage.
And electron is shit, so you have to enable that experimental ozone thing, which kills off ibus somehow, meaning I have to decide between blurry chromium/electron apps and being able to write in Japanese.
Don’t even get me started on VST plugins for music production (definitely far from ready)
same with vrr
Unlike with fractional scaling, fortunately, it seems to just work™, at least on my machine. I’m honestly not sure what’s left to do with it before putting it in the Settings app by default.
How many people actually need or use fractional scaling? Don’t most people have displays that are around 1080p?
I’ve never used fractional scaling but it’s obvious you don’t understand that it’s not about resolution but about screen size+resolution. On small displays with big resulutions like modern laptops a fractional scaling is absolutely essential unless you want to squint your eyes even with 20/20 vision.
Unless computer companies include Linux with their PC’s, it will never get general adoption.
No average user will follow instructions on how to boot Linux distro installer, especially when there are multiple steps needed to do so, such as on UEFI systems.
