Then im forced to use windows at work and get locked into a 45 minute forced update.
Not to mention how horribly slow win11 is even on 64 gb ram and an i7.
And the bloatware. Never seen so much bloat (and ai slop shit) ever before. And start menu ads. Yay.
How do people use this trash!
I build cross platform desktop software professionally.
Because of this I have to use and pretty deeply understand the inner workings of every OS.
I can state as absolute fact that every major operating system including Linux is an absolute pile of hot garbage.
The difference is that macOS and windows are garbage on purpose. There were deliberate decisions to enshitify them for profit. They spent time and money making the OS worse on purpose.
On Linux most of the shitty parts were designed with good intentions but just kinda suck (Wayland for example).
Linux IS a lot of work to keep up with. But it’s also way better to use after that work is done. And won’t be enshittified against your will with every update, unlike Windows.
It sometimes is, but then sometimes Linux is not to blame.
Yesterday I was installing CachyOS on my son’s laptop, because that’s what he chose to use instead of Windows 10. The desktop came up fine, but no wifi adaptor was detected. I could try another more mainstream distro, but I wanted my kid to have what he chose. So we went troubleshooting. Googled the laptop model, found the adaptor, found the matching kernel module, checked the logs… and there it was, a cryptic error -110. Googled that and there was an answer: disable Windows Fast Boot.
It turns out that Windows locks the wifi adaptor when shutting down in Fast Boot mode. So after disabling it and a couple of reboots later, CachyOS was installing flawlessly.
It served as a lesson for me and an example for my kid to persevere and learn more.
Your Windows install breaks because Microsoft fucked it up.
My Linux install breaks because I fucked it up.We are not the same.
It is a LOT of work indeed! In fact I even commented on that hours ago in https://lemmy.ml/post/36231170/21124115
… but as you mention the alternative is ALSO a lot of work PLUS frustrations.
So between learned helplessness and tiring empowerment the choice remains obvious.
FWIW whenever it feels like it’s “too much” I reminder myself how I browse through obscure
manpages decades ago… to still find them useful today! It’s crazy that so long after learning about tools likemoreorgrepis useful on :- a desktop
- a console (SteamDeck)
- a mobile phone (which basically didn’t exist back then)
- a VR headset (yes, via
termux) - the “cloud” (as in fine it’s just a server)
I got a new laptop with Windows 11 at work yesterday. This is the first time I’ve used 11. I must say, it’s not really that bad. Once you cut out all the enshittification, which our IT department does, it’s pretty decent. I would never dream of putting it in any of my own machines, of course.
Yeah, I installed Enterprise edition on my desktop, which allows you to cut out all the bloat and spyware. But it takes a long time to do, and I’m not sure I got everything since Windows Updates can change anything.
The nice thing is that Linux is always improving and Windows is always in retrograde. The more users Linux has, the faster it will improve. If the current state of Linux is acceptable enough for you as a user, then it should be possible to get your foot in the door and ride the wave upwards. If not, wait for the wave to reach your comfort level. People always say <CURRENT_YEAR> is the year of the Linux desktop but IMO the real year of the Linux desktop was like 4 or 5 years ago now, and hopefully that captured momentum will keep going until critical mass is achieved (optimistically, I think we’re basically already there).
