These are the problems you're facing on Linux, and I'm baffled!

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Go to ground.news/TLE to to know where your news is coming from. Subscribe through my link for 40% off unlimited access this month.

[@trajectoryunown]

I wonder if the crashes and bugs are related to trying to run Windows programs using WINE.

[@andrive]

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[@DavidJonSpem]

NVIDIA is only fine on wayland with the 555 drivers but a lot of distro's don't ship these drivers since they're in BETA. By the time you made the survey NVIDIA didn't have these drivers. Also the 555 drivers aren't perfect and we still have to hope the 560 drivers, which will ship everywhere, are better.

[@TheSensationalMr.Science]

so TL;DR the main troubling issues of Linux are: Application Issues [Installation, Bugs, Crashes, Gaming, etc. {office suites? huh? what about them?}] Graphical Issues [GPU, Wayland vs. Xwayland vs. Xorg, etc.] Sleep/Wake [basically issues with C-states and weird noises because of either lack of support or too new and thus not properly adapted for normal use.] yeah, with Xwayland I can see why [constant crashing until recent update]. same with gaming why that is an issue. one moment you are playing minecraft and the next you find out after an update you installed, that it has a background [red mojang logo background or black screen] stutter into and out of frame [in front of the actual gameplay]... BTW personal issue of mine due to Nvidia GPU drivers not working with minecraft possibly regarding OpenGL and framebuffers. [or it's another issue... don't know the exact issue right now... would be nice to have some sort of method to the madness of troubleshooting applications to make them work. maybe you could make that into a video series.] also some issues that rise specifically with WINE [and some other apps with dependencies] it seems is that once it updates that it no longer works with that specific config for a game that worked before... also Wayland and WINE seem to not have had connected as of yet... though that might be my ignorance getting in the way of my progress. though for install? nope, no issues [on Nobara Linux BTW, also calameres {the installer package for most Distro's} is why installing Linux isn't hard]. Gaming if not in steam, but in WINE? oh yeah... definitely some issues... mostly with performance... but also anti-cheat or other "Digital Rights Management" software [Corpo Malware like Uplay]. Hope you have a great day & Safe Travels!

[@TheSensationalMr.Science]

@@DavidJonSpem that explains the minecraft stutter bug I have been having [two different frames taking turns to be displayed like a solid red background and the actual game itself]. didn't know that. thanks. Hope you have a great day & Safe Travels!

[@bloxxer02]

Please post a short video to alert me of these polls in the future. I don't use mastadon and youtube never shows me community posts I want to see.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Not a bad idea! This could definitely boost the number of answers!

[@Lampe2020]

@@TheLinuxEXP I would have answered in that poll too if I had kniwn it was around :D

[@revmaillet]

I had no idea the poll was going on so I would have voted if I had known

[@brawndottm]

Genuinely could have done with this.

[@praetorxyn]

Seconded. I didn’t know about this.

[@temari2860]

Regarding your experience being better than the stats - I think it has to do with the fact that you're running modern hardware specifically compatible with Linux, while many people run hardware from manufacturers that don't care about Linux. Especially the devices from lesser known brands with most aggressive prices.

[@afriquelesud]

I have used old and new; recently retired my 2005 laptop running MX Linux Xfce 32-bit, no problems as everything just worked. I can relate so many true stories of several Linux distros simply just working. It was my Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit that didn't have drivers for any of my array of peripherals. Anyone that loved that Win 7 crapware is certifiable insane. A lethargic, top-heavy, resource hungry beast incompatible with everything including itself.

[@Jeycht]

@@afriquelesud I must be the lucky one then (as the guy repeat in vid). W7 was pretty stable for me, resources wise it was fine (not like a lite linux but compare to actual windows it was nothing) but I didn''t use a laptop and I could even still use really old stuff without up to date drivers for W7 that I had to dl by myself but still works. (not the case anymore for some of them on W10-11)

[@lumeronswift]

I don't buy any hardware specifically intended for Linux. I occasionally double check if other people have TRIED it, but it's fairly rare for hardware to be incompatible - especially if you use something Arch-based like EndeavourOS or Manjaro, as they have the latest hardware covered. Manjaro probably the better option for complete newbies.

[@RadikAlice]

@@lumeronswift I would suggest Endeavour over Manjaro if we have to stick to rolling releases

[@0hN0es203]

Yes. I installed Linux on an HP AMD laptop recently. Its a few years old and everything worked, except for the backlight controls. It took me an hour to find the solution online (a kernel module that needed to be disabled in GRUB) and I've been using Linux for literally 30 years.

[@Winnetou17]

15:46 The need of using the CLI question needs an extra answer "I actually like using the CLI, so I don't know if it works without it"

[@carlosgois2097]

Also Arch and other advanced distros would skew the data

[@computerguymiguel]

Absolutely, I have no idea if there is nice GUI app and I don't care

[@Winnetou17]

@@carlosgois2097 Yeah, that's the thing, I'm on Gentoo and I actually wanted to have fewer programs in general, and fewer GUI ones or intermediary or "just management" ones. Like, before I struggled for 2 days to make the work VPN ... work, I was connecting to Wi-Fi using wpa_cli. Then I gave up and installed NetworkManager, which I'm using only from CLI (I don't even know if I can have something GUI from it, in dwm). So I absolutely have to use the CLI, but that's only because I set it up like that.

[@MaryamMaqdisi]

This, the cli changed my life

[@LoL-hx1fo]

And then there are people like me who despise using CLI tools unless they are related to development

[@lilBugger35]

I've been using Linux for a long time now but I remember when I started I never once was able to ask a question without being told it was a stupid question. So I stopped asking questions and figure stuff out the hard way. To this day I will never ask anything on a Linux Forum. I might read them but I will never add anything.

[@AM-yk5yd]

And when they answer, when they answer, it's often a nonsense. I had difficulties with wifi from intel not working and was told to install broadcom drivers

[@kevinsteinman8967]

@@AM-yk5yd I've found the best way to get the right answer on toxic forums is to use well in windows we can do this or do that to fix this or that. Been working for me a long time instead of RTFM answers all the time.

[@1pcfred]

You know what the Duke said, don't you? Life is hard. Life is harder if you're stupid.

[@1pcfred]

@@AM-yk5yd I'd have told you to plug in an ethernet cable. Screw wireless. Twisted pair gang!

[@AM-yk5yd]

@@1pcfred I want to use laptop on the go. Can't exactly bring ethernet to the restaurant. (Can bring usb cable and attach phone and USB modem though)

[@ismaproton]

Another important point regarding Linux users is to ask if they are developers or not, Linux experience is often linked to people being devs

[@fakecubed]

Yes, this is an essential question to ask, and would really skew things.

[@SvenHeidemann-uo2yl]

I automatically assume that more than a quarter here are at least dabble in dev.

[@SvenHeidemann-uo2yl]

I am a dev myself, but I am still on windows. I require Linux compatibility and use cygwin as of now. Got a new pc arriving soon and I will try mint on it.

[@nifftbatuff676]

Computers make sense only if they can be programmed.

[@SegNode]

@@SvenHeidemann-uo2yl I highly recommend WSL, very useful.

[@Beryesa.]

Nick: has the most optimal hardware vendors and software picks Also Nick: I'm really lucky, I guess :D

[@poligarpi]

Linux admin here, and I'm facing issues with the WiFi adapter that came soldered in my motherboard, it's working relatively fine, but the signal is not as stable as in windows (disconnected often in the middle of a game and download speeds were bad), I managed to have an overkill workaround with a full networking redesign in my house and connecting everything via cable, but I can see how people are still facing small issues like this. Also I had an issue with the speakers in a HP Laptop that I had to patch and recompile the kernel to get it working, not a very newbie friendly process, this is fixed now in mainline though but still not as easy as just install and forget.

[@eivis13]

Having similar issues with an old Qualcomm chipset (killer N1202) on an even older laptop (inspiron 1520(yes, the 8600mgt is still original and fully functional)). I'm guessing my issues are more related to the 5ghz bandwidth and original antenna not being meant for 5ghz connections (even ye old PocoF1 is getting a better signal). Having tried Linux on an infamous Miix 2 10 all in one back in 2015 i can attest that there needs to be a better way to diagnose audio drivers/codecs not working. Also touch pad gesture support OBE is something to be desired.

[@esphilee]

I am having issue with the speakers. I am using Linux mint on my Lenovo slim 7i the current model. It works with Headphone, just not the built-in speakers. It doesn’t bother me much as i use Headphone most of the time anyway. I am waiting for the new Kernel update that might solve it. I think they have the problem sorted in version 6.5

[@poligarpi]

@@esphilee we are actually at 6.9.3 kernel, you can update your kernel manually and get it solved, 6.5 is already end of life

[@mrfuzzy2954]

I had that issue 4 years ago with wifi on ubuntu and mint. Worked fine on fedora. I'm too much of a layman to even begin to look for a solution so i just stuck with fedora

[@Corporatizm]

Same, Linux admin too, and just couldn't make my Wifi work well. That being said, have you tried tweaking the power management settings of your Wifi card ? I think it solved 90% of the performance issues I had, try to Google it, it's a config file tweak I can't remember rn.

[@grheavy]

My biggest problem with Linux is, when I encounter any issue and I can't find a solution online, I don't want to spend time to report it. I work as an API support guy and I'm tired of discussing with people at the end of the day 😂

[@1pcfred]

The very last thing I ever want to do is ask for help. But sometimes I've gotta. I will spend weeks on some problems. But if I exhaust every avenue I can think of then I've just got to ask for help.

[@TurntableTV]

I have a friend that plays competitive CounterStrike and he wanted to switch to Linux, due to Microsoft crapifying the Windows 11 operating system. I guided him to use a distro like Fedora or Ubuntu and what he struggled with was setting up a custom resolution. He plays with 1440x1080 stretched on a 1080p monitor. I did help him set that up but it involved making bash scripts with nvidia command line that are executed via CounterStrike's launch options. That's messy. You could argue that this is an edge case.... well it's not. Even non-pro players play with these wacky resolutions (it helps them see the player model better as it is stretched). In Windows you can just go to nvidia control panel and add that custom res. You'll never touch the command line. In Linux, that can be a headache for a normal user.

[@lumeronswift]

You can't make the adjustments in the NVIDIA X Server Settings app? It's essentially NVIDIA Control Panel but in Linux. Showed up in my EndeavourOS install without any manual adjustments at all... can't speak for Fedora.

[@weab]

I'm pretty sure gamescope could accomplish this but might introduce latency when running in a full desktop environment. CS is my forever game but thankfully I've always preferred a correct aspect ratio and haven't had to deal with this issue.

[@mmstick]

> it helps them see the player model better as it is stretched This is a myth that does not actually work in practice. I say this as someone who used to play a lot of Counter-Strike, DOD, TF2, etc. back in the day. In reality, this is narrowing your field of view and significantly hampering precision. Tweak mouse DPI instead of display resolution.

[@twiistedpanda4781]

​@@mmstickwell why in the flying fuck most pros use a 4:3 res stretched Like you know, the fucking cream of the crop of cs players

[@mmstick]

@@twiistedpanda4781 They don't. Higher resolutions make it much easier to aim precisely at a distance. Ultrawides give you the advantage of seeing what's around you.

[@dejsasm123]

To be honest, Nick, I would hazard a guess that some of your surprise is because you've been using Linux for so long. For myself, I find that the more I use something the more I'm okay with its limitations, and that applies to Linux. Like "all the single-player games work perfectly, I guess they're trying to play new AAA titles" - I once wanted to play those on Linux and was unhappy I couldn't, and now I'm less interested in them because I've grown to accept what I can't use. In the same vein, back when I had a Mac I was totally fine with the limited controls it gave me, but that's because I had just accepted them as part of life on some level. Linux has come a long way; it also has a long way to go! Personally I don't feel the need to e.g. play new AAA games with anticheat, but plenty of people (especially newcomers) do and it's not ideal thst they can't do so easily on Linux.

[@CookiLover311]

I feel like it's important to note that some of these issues might have been getting a lower amount of votes because it's not something everyone does in general. Of course not a lot of people have problems with scientific work, not everyone is a scientist

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Of course !

[@definitlynotbenlente7671]

There are no almost no professional CAD programs avaliable on linux and if you have a nice usecase like medical imaging or using scientific equipment there is almost no suport on linux at all ​@@TheLinuxEXP

[@Capiosus]

this is such great feedback

[@Guishan_Lingyou]

@@TheLinuxEXP Yeah, if you wanted to gauge how much of an issue doing scientific work is, you'd have to have a question asking if people do it, and then follow up how many of them have problems. But it's unlikely you would get enough data for a significant result.

[@SeanKent69]

Application issue here. VLC having sound issues. The fix? Go to tools - preferences - audio - output module and select ALSA audio output. After thats done, go through all the devices until you find something that works. Why is this still an issue? Most users dont want to have to troubleshoot their video/audio player. This is just one example....

[@AlucardNoir]

because open source is developed by developers for developers, we're only allowed to use the shit they put out.

[@SeanKent69]

@@AlucardNoir Until the end user is put first, Linux just isnt going to become used by most users. I have tried over and over again through the years and every time I just end up finding more and more things that should never be an issue in the first place. An OS should just get out of the way and allow the user to work. Im pretty sure Stallman himself said that in the Revolution OS documentary. Windows (while annoying the heck out of me) at least gets out of the way and just works. I would love to use Linux but these nasty little issues need to be resolved.

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

if you mention Linux's compatibility issues with developers they become so rude but they take every opportunity to bash Windows. Well guess what, Windows is developed for a wide variety of hardware and works!

[@anonazerty165]

You are not supposed to have VLC sound issues out of the box

[@jinglebells-bv2lw]

@@Robbie-mw5uu more like a wide variety of hardware is developed around windows lol

[@justinmalcolm6287]

A lot of the “surprises” here feel like they simply follow from the fact that Nick buys hardware designed to run Linux. He also uses the distribution designed to work with that HW I believe. So, of course he is not going to experience the problems NVIDIA users run into in general including what will appear to be bugs in the DE. On the office suite side, he may be right about Only Office. Again though, he is not trying to interact with people heavily leveraging MS Office. Just failing to install the MS fonts can totally screw-up PowerPoint and Word. It does not take a very complicated spreadsheet to uncover missing features. I have used Linux exclusively for years but I get what people are saying. In LibreOffice, I just had a problem where spellcheck was not working ( due to a dictionary issue apparently ) and I sent out a resume with a bunch of errors. It may have cost me a job. For office environments, Outlook is also still a big problem. I use Outlook on the web but that does not work for everyone.

[@1pcfred]

I use Nvidia on Linux and I don't have any problems. But I started using Nvidia on Linux with a MX 200 board. That was the second board they ever made. I was using Nvidia on Linux before Nvidia released their binary driver for Linux. So the good old nv driver. Which really wasn't all that good. Then I ran the binary driver within the first hour it was ever released. I was on that like flies on honey. Nvidia devs personally got me up and running in fact. It wasn't like you could Google how to do it back then. Google didn't even exist. Asking Jeeves wouldn't have helped either.

[@joeschmoe7324]

Wine tricks can get you those core font just fine. Finding upto date Lutris install scripts can automate installing the font required for your application.

[@dutchbachelor]

I use a Lenovo Gaming Desktop with an Nvidia RTX2080, running PopOS without any issues whatsoever, no config needed. That PC was definitely not made for Linux. I hear you on Office applications though. Most documents I send out are converted to PDF however, so the formatting is not that much of an issue. As for sending out the resume with errors: I would never just rely on the computer for that anyway and always have a friend or someone you trust read it over. There are errors that no spellcheck will ever catch. ;-)

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

yeah spreedsheets in libre office and only office are missing features. BUT I have heard that google docs spreedsheets are very matured now and also it is possible to use them offline. BUT at the same time I guess people who answered the survey are not using google docs, either because they don't want to use google stuff or because they didn't even thought about it or don't know taht they can use them offline.

[@1pcfred]

@@dutchbachelor PDF export is smart. That gives you more control over document formatting.

[@thekidneystoner6183]

Hardware absolutely does not work out of the box on linux. GPU issues are very common. Take a laptop with a hybrid GPU setup (Intel plus Nvidia) - a very common setup. Just does not work in most cases, and every update breaks something. Bluetooth is hit or miss. Device connections break on reboot often. Tons of specialised devices like audio interfaces have problems. Try using multiple monitors with different refresh rates on Linux, neither Gnome or KDE work with it. Operating systems that do not support fractional display scaling are very hard to use for me. I am a developer, and servers I work on run Linux, they work really well, but hardware support on desktop Linux has to get better if people want it to gain marketshare. Is the responsibility on the hardware device manufacturers? Sure, but they don’t care because linux users aren’t numerous enough. If you are using a computer to run Linux, then things are fine. If you are using Linux to get something done, like gaming, audio work, video work etc, you will have issues with the hardware often used for these things.

[@AlucardNoir]

true.

[@Ash_18037]

Yeah hardware is still a complete lottery on linux. If you have an existing system running windows with important internal hardware and external peripherals (for getting your work done or gaming) then you have no option but to create a few USB live distros and actually try them out to see which is looking the most compatible (or even works) on your setup. There is no other way. Even this is not perfect. I wish it was a simple process to create a proper (not just readonly) USB distro as often driver installs need a reboot which is obviously pointless on a readonly install.

[@ancalagonyt]

@@Ash_18037 You can install Linux to a USB drive. I had a hard drive crash, so I used a random Linux boot DVD (Mageia, which I hadn't ever used or even heard of prior to this), and once I had the live system up, I pressed the install button and it installed on the thumb drive as if it were a hard drive. There has been one drawback; sometimes things take significantly longer to respond than you'd expect, especially using firefox with multiple open tabs loading a lot in the background. This is because the USB drive is slower than a regular hard drive; I've used Linux on this exact machine on the hard drive before it crashed, without that problem. So, with the caveat that installing on a thumb drive is definitely not ideal and you can get lag issues you wouldn't otherwise get, it is an installation of Linux, so you should be able to test and/or troubleshoot drivers on this kind of setup, without putting it on a hard drive.

[@AzureSoukyuu]

Different refresh rates (or scaling) with multiple monitors not working is an X11 thing, not a DE thing.

[@jfolz]

Hard disagree on hardware compatibility. Would it be nice for everything to work perfectly with Linux? Yes. Is that realistic? No. That's not even realistic with Windows or MacOS. Why do people blame Linux in these situations? Mac people don't blame MacOS if some Windows peripherals don't work. They buy the stuff that says MacOS on them so they know it works. That's the real problem I'm facing before purchase: Finding out if a piece of kit will work or not can be really difficult. That's what we need to work on. And we need to buy from manufacturers that do support Linux.

[@theaninova]

Big mistake not asking if people were using an unstable distro by choice. Lots run betas, unstable branches, rolling distros, etc. (including myself), so who knows what the experienced bugs actually mean.

[@minion3806]

this ^^

[@weab]

There were a lot of people running bleeding edge distros in the previous poll, so I think a lot of the software bugs and crashes can be attributed to those users. These results definitely aren't representative of the experience one would expect when using a stable LTS release.

[@MrGamelover23]

​@@weabYeah, but a stable LTS release is a bad gaming system.

[@gerarderloper]

If your using newer hardware then rolling distro's often is the better experience as features and fixes are hot incoming down the pipe and running a older LTS release might mean you must put up with bugs on your newer hardware for MUCH longer.

[@weab]

@@MrGamelover23 That hasn't been my experience at all. Most performance improvements relevant to gaming still make it into the distro through kernel updates. The benefits of stability for a gaming system can't be overstated either. I don't want to worry about updates, bugs, etc. when I intend to play. As long as your distro is new enough to properly support your hardware you should be just fine.

[@paolozago6123]

I'm surprised that only 17% had issues with bluetooth, probably because the user base isn't accustomed yet to use BT extensively. In all the years I've been using Linux the compatibility with BT devices and the stability of BT itself was a major headache to the point I stopped using BT devices with my latest box

[@tedzards509]

Counterpoint: I use many bluetooth devices and so far only had an hq audio transmission issue once (where the signal would be distorted strongly) but that was fixed at some point.

[@Sollace]

To answer about software problems: Yeah. Lots. The most annoying has to be when I close an application and it doesn't close. The window goes away but the process hangs around until I close it using System Monitor. And whilst I'm on there, the default "Quite Application" in KDE when something isn't responding also doesn't work. Neither does the "Quit" option in System Monitor. To actually close a program that's not responding I have to specifically do "Send Signal > Sig K*ll".

[@RealFlicke]

For me it was package manager GUIs / app stores. I tried a few and they were horribly buggy. Having installs load endlessly, not detecting the app status correctly, installed apps not working correctly, loading extremely slow or just crashing. I also bricked systems a few times by installing or removing stuff via the package manager CLI or just by upgrading the system. That made me anxious about installing software on Linux and that's why NixOS is very appealing to me.

[@Sollace]

@@RealFlicke The default store that came with KDE or the Manjaro one worked well enough for me. Oh man, but I for sure had problems upgrading! I started the upgrade to plasma 6 and pamac uninstalled my kernel then crashed itselt! I had to dig out a usb stick and reinstall a previous version of the kernel from scratch just to get it to boot again, and when I did, KDE had messed up all my settings in the migration!

[@flagrama]

@@RealFlicke I always had problems with Gnome Software on Fedora distros up to about version 38, but this past year or so it seems to actually work. Haven't really experimented with anything on Ubuntu since that's a work system and doesn't really need a bunch of extra software installed from the repos.

[@m4sterred853]

@@SollaceManjaro is an absolutely broken distro anyway. The experience is very different on distros that actually follow the philosophy of their package managers. Not saying it’s gonna be flawless.

[@somenameidk5278]

i have exactly that problem with Don't Starve Together, i have to close the game with steam to make it actually close

[@Bench468]

Why make a poll and a video about these issues if you're just going to dismiss things because they either never happened to you, or because you think the user is just not informed enough? Shouldn't the goal be to try and find ways to improve the usability of the OS?

[@deadpants182]

As someone who's still fairly new to Linux, it's irritating having my issues dismissed as somehow my fault, especially when it comes to things that *just work* on Windows or macOS.

[@alexk4894]

Today we have way higher expectations than a few years ago. 2015-2020: "Look! My favorite game now works on Linux. That's amazing!" 2020-Now: "Ohh, this game with anti-cheat and two very specific apps don't work on Linux at all. Linux is not so good." Same with hardware. Almost everything works just fine and people feel disappointed when something does not work out of the box.

[@jorge86rodriguez]

I feel we are at a stage that linux is good enough that I wish the community could focus on selling pre installed hardware with linux like the orange pi neo, steam deck, system 76, etc... Instead of creating new distros and desktop enviroments XD

[@RealFlicke]

Between your comment and the top were already two commentors saying that WIFI didn't work correctly for them. And on my old ThinkPad were I recently installed NixOS (stable) it's always like a 50% chance that the trackpad will not work after booting. Also on another computer the new printer was not supported and I was forced to switch the distro. Not everything is fine just because it works for you.

[@DePhoegonIsle]

Look, I get what your going at, but here is the fact of the matter.... should your everyday user need to worry about if 'X' system will work or if it's not mainstream enough? Should the end user feel stress over 'well I bought more of an exotic solution compared to what the developers usually buy'. The fact is, the largest linux problem is ... 'drivers' and HW support. you just can't assume your system is everyone elses, and ... for an operating system all about user freedom and choice.... there is sure a hell of alot of limitatins and landmines laying around for those whom either don't want to buy the same thing, can't buy it because their used market is garbage or those models of pcs just never existed in their market or can never stay in stock. Windows has it's issues, for sure... .but when it comes down to it, I never go part shopping for my computer (for w/e reason) and think 'oh, I found a good deal.... now to see if my OS will play nicely with it.

[@FireFoxDestroyer]

Fortnite actually worked for me once on Linux

[@ignaciocampos8435]

You're exactly right but it doesn't mean it's not an important problem, the mentality of "It just works" means that we now have higher standards for how an OS experience should be, and in that regard desktop Linux, though improved, it's still an inferior option for the common person.

[@connivingkhajiit]

For me, the biggest issue with linux does not reside in linux itself, but its alternative softwares. I tried using FreeCAD recently and good god was it painful. Im no noob to CAD work. Ive been using Inventor for several years and can crank out a fairly complex model in only a few minutes. But with freecad, i could hardly get anything to actually wotk like extrusions and revolutions, and the damn thing just kept spitting out errors constantly. Took 10 minutes to get a single tangent hemisphere in the draft with proper precision, it takes seconds in Inventor. Most of the open source alternatives to proprietary productivity applications are just bad.

[@ComradePhoenix]

Oh, for sure. PaintDotNet? Learning curve is flatter than Kansas. GIMP? Cliffs of friggin Dover.

[@connivingkhajiit]

@@ComradePhoenix I found GIMP to be alright, but I dont do nearly as complex things with it as I do CAD.

[@ComradePhoenix]

@@connivingkhajiit I found it quite frankly indecipherable. I couldn't even manage to do things I would find simple to do in PDN.

[@connivingkhajiit]

@@ComradePhoenix I should also mention its the only image editing software Ive ever used

[@ComradePhoenix]

@@connivingkhajiit I grew up messing around in regular MS Paint as a kid. In my teens, I discovered PDN and GIMP at the same time, and decided to try them both out. PDN was superior. Maybe that's personal bias from years of MSP, but also, I feel its still fair, since most people will also have that bias. And GIMP's unintuitive user experience and lack of onboarding does it absolutely no favors. Its like going from an RC plane to the cockpit of a 747, without even training on a Cessna.

[@BYROXI5000]

Just a little bit of critic about the interpretations of results (i'm working on statistics analytics) 5:52 Here i see maybe the survivor bias. It's not because there is 7.2% of beginners saying they had problems with installing linux, that beginners don't have problems with installing linux (more than 7.2%). No. That means, the beginners who are spending time actively to search for linux information and did find the poll of the channel; didn't have much problems with installing. The people who didn't search your channel and documentation, who tried to install in a windows way for example can just say it's to difficult to install and quit. Why would you answer a poll when you are out of linux documentation or community? (I don't see many people searching for windows documentation when they want to install it) Same thing with beginners who actively use linux (like mint) but who don't have problems and don't use social media to find the poll except documentation. Yes the poll can be representative, but we have to take into account the representation of the people who can get into the poll first before making assumptions. (Btw begginers is also not defined here: people can considers themselves beginners at different levels even after years of documentation and using linux)

[@imzesok]

"people can considers themselves beginners at different levels even after years of documentation and using linux" at that point you're just an experienced user in denial though. 🤣 a beginner is pretty narrowly defined as someone whom has little to no experience with something. it's not commonly understood to mean anything else, tbh. 🤷

[@matthewmoulton1]

@@imzesok I agree with the OP that an objective definition of experience would have been helpful here. Different people expect different levels of mastery to describe their proficiency, but that doesn't mean they are in denial. Compared to a 5-year old, I am an expert in chemistry, but compared to a professional chemical engineer, I am a beginner. I honestly have no idea what amount of Linux knowledge is considered typical. There are some people who have been using Linux for 20+ years who know way more than I do. Are they in the majority or is my experience more common?

[@imzesok]

​@@matthewmoulton1 "I honestly have no idea what amount of Linux knowledge is considered typical." Compared to whom exactly? the average linux user, or all people on the planet? the former requires gathering every linux user around the world and testing them individually. The latter, any experience at all is probably considered pretty abnormal. This is why we don't really assume subjective factors like your 5 year old comparison. I feel like you're overthinking it. The various dictionaries exists for a reason after all. 🤷

[@PrezVeto]

​@@imzesok You just spent several sentences making the case for the poll needing to define terms (accidentally, I guess) before summarily implying the opposite. It's still subjective after consulting a dictionary. That's the problem.

[@imzesok]

@@PrezVeto if the point of the dictionary is to DEFINE WORDS, how would that be subjective? seriously, think about it.

[@computerguymiguel]

You have to take into account that this answers may not reflect the current state of Linux, but the overall experience of the users across the years. For example, you talk about GPUs not being a problem anymore, but if you ask someone if they ever had issues with GPUs and they had some a couple of years ago, chances are they still perceive it as a problem

[@hyperspeed1313]

Yeah, maybe next time set a time window (like within the last year) as context for all the questions

[@atrelios]

Well to be fair, if I was answering the survey (which I didn't have the changce to) I would have answered that I STILL have problems with GPUs. I am aware, that my problems are coming from the fact that I use(d) a wayland + kde distribution along with nVidia, but I was experiencing crazy issues with heavy flickering and some applications just being flat out unusable, because of graphical glitches etc. Luckily I knew enough to switch to X11, which solved all of those problems, but a (new) user that doesn't know about this, who installs let's say endeavourOS KDE (as it is quite recommended on youtube for gaming) will have a very bad first impression. The nVidia support is still bad in some cases - I know it can still be good and there are patches coming to fix those issues on wayland - but that doesn't change the fact that If a user doesn't know about the whole wayland x11 thing, they may just think that this is just "linux jank".

[@negirno]

You didn't mentioned Syncthing. It's basically a Dropbox-like file syncing option, but instead of using a centralized server, it just syncs between devices directly. You may not even know about it since you have your own Nextcloud server, but Syncthing is great for those who doesn't have the hardware to roll their own cloud at home. Also, I actually had GPU hangs on my Intel chipset on Linux, and having surround with AC-3 is still not working out of the box.

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

The problem I have with Synctihng is when using multiboot. It is still possible to manage it - for example when you use syncting on mobile phone then for exampke you phone sync files from your windows and after reboot to linux then this linux wyould sync from phone. But it can be "not ideal" sometimes

[@AlucardNoir]

Syncthing is not a viable solution. IT never was.

[@Capiosus]

gonna be honest I just hosted a samba file server on my PC because I have a firewall so it doesn't matter that samba is open (also samba is only sharing a single folder which is used exclusively for transfers.)

[@davey820051]

@@AlucardNoir I'm wondering why you feel that way-not trying to be confrontational, just curious. Syncthing has worked well for me over a period of a couple of years (using Linux, Windows, and Android devices). One thing I've learned is that everybody's use case is different and what works great for some folks may not for everyone.

[@AlucardNoir]

@@davey820051 Because I've actually used syncthing.

[@jameslewis2635]

The biggest issue I have had with trying to fix problems in Linux is that there are a lot of articles and videos that are designed to help people but they often only have command line instructions that either work for Debian (or Ubuntu) based distro's and don't translate to other distro's or point to controls that have become depreciated and have been replaced. I have had these kinds of issues fairly often (running OpenSuse) and the thing is, while this might not matter much to someone who has used the command line for many years, it is far from obvious how to get around the fact that these instructions often don't translate between different distributions for everyone else.

[@DavidStruveDesigns]

This is still the biggest off-putting part about Linux in general for me. I haven't interacted with Command Line since the MS-DOS days, and I absolutely do not want ANY interaction with the Command Line in my modern OS. Using Linux means you're basically guaranteed to, at some point, be required to interact with and use Command Line. Apple OS doesn't require it, Microsoft OS don't and even Android doesn't - it's daft that in this day and age Linux STILL DOES. Until the Linux community figures out a way to no longer EVER require or need the Command Line at all, it will forever not be the OS for me.

[@Jmvars]

The only big issue I've faced in Linux is all related to gaming. The obvious one is most anti-cheats do not support Linux at all. The second one is trying to play Windows games through Lutris/Proton, having to test every Proton version to see what works and having to try and find out which Visual C++ versions I need, then if nothing works scouring the internet for potential fixes.

[@PixelShade]

that's completely different from my experience. practically every game I try works with the latest Proton. I'm running them all through Steam, even if I have non-steam games, I just add the setup file as a "non-steam game" activate the latest proton version, run the installer. Once it's done I just change the path to the installed .exe. Works great. Anti-cheat has full support for Linux, developers just need to enable it. there are resources out there to look up which are supported, like areweanticheatyet. 54 anti-cheat games are currently fully supported, two more games are planned. Unfortunately a couple of heavy hitters aren't supported.

ProtonDB can be very useful, if you don't know.

[@breadpirateroberts4946]

last time i had a major issue with proton was in like 2021. i dont play any AAA live service slop though

[@meeponinthbit3466]

Yeah, the Steam Deck really helped mature most of this very quickly the last few years. If you haven't checked into it lately, you may want to give her another go

[@AnEagle]

@@meeponinthbit3466 The problem is that it's fixed a lot of stuff on steam, but currently it's still awkward using wine with lutris/heroic/bottles. the move to uwlgl(I think thats the abreviation), should solve that within, maybe, a year

[@SeanClarke]

A major pain point for me is the fact that so few hardware manufacturers seem to care about Linux and so few publications ever consider it. I'm looking for a new laptop and want one of the the very latest models. Finding out if Linux will work on them is really hard and its really annoying that all the really cool new stuff is made for Windows. Manufacturers need to know that Linux users want the latest gear, we shouldn't accept having to use 2 or 3 generation old hardware.

[@jfolz]

Basically this. It's not that hardware isn't supported on Linux - a lot of it does work - but finding out whether some piece of kit is supported or not can be really difficult.

[@SeanClarke]

@@jfolz a lot of new stuff isn't supported. Dual screen laptops with removable keyboards, fingerprint scanners, volume dials on keyboards. Often sleep modes don't work. Basically the cutting edge stuff is built for windows and then we have to wait for a kernel update or for the manufacturer to support Linux.

[@jfolz]

@@SeanClarke I've personally not had any button that didn't work as expected. The fingerprint reader on my T14s also works out of the box. It really does depend on what you buy.

[@only1muppet]

Google Linux laptops and you’ll see a few companies that specialize in make gaming laptops with Linux distros pre installed, Juno Neptune, System76. Dell even gives the option to have a Linux distro pre installed on their XPS, Alienware and office oriented products.

[@GoodGirlPeruru]

This is _mainly_ a laptop issue, but it _is_ incredibly widespread, and bar mass protests and boycotts eg. Windows refund day, there's almost nothing that could be done to stop the amount of money trading hands between Microsoft and OEMs that leads to stuff like this. I would love to see this somehow get fought off though- the idea of barely even being able to REINSTALL an OS on a laptop, god forbid a DIFFERENT OS is genuinely unfathomable to me.

[@obhwg]

I think it would've helped to have a question on what distribution they were using

[@danoblue]

I first used Linux about 17 years ago, and over the years my use has increased exponentially. I no longer need Windows and so have a single-boot Linux system running Kubuntu 24.04. My only issues have been with btrfs, which I still don't understand very well overall but use it extensively to back up my system. and recently, with trying to get Wayland to work with a Nvidia GEforce 730 graphics card. The Kubuntu Forums community has been most helpful any time I've had problems, and since there are no Linux experts that I know of where I live (Lima, Peru), I've had to depend on that community to fix all my problems, which they have. As for the Wayland-Nvidia issue, I tried using the Nouveau driver, and it worked for most things but eventually had issues with KZbin. By the way, I consider this channel very helpful in understanding Linux issues, and very entertaining as well. Keep up the good work.

[@jonschde]

The OneDrive client is blocked for my university OneDrive storage. This the major pain point for my friends.

[@23Vacuu]

I had also difficulty to get OneDrive to work, expecially with a organisation / teams OneDrive (not a personal one). I ended up buying a software which also supported linux and it worked great. Did'nt expect to put money on the table for that, but it was a quick fix for me.

[@lumeronswift]

Is it possible to use OneDrive in browser?

[@antoniopala8135]

@@lumeronswift Yes, but it doesn'have the file synchronization; you have to downolad every document, work on it, and upload it again. And that may cause issues if there are other people working on the same files, which is often the case since it's your team's drive. I actually managed to mount my workplace's OneDrive shares using rclone, but I can't remember how... 😅

[@jadesprite]

@@antoniopala8135 I used rclone for google drive, it wasn't as nice and clean as I would have liked but it worked! Stopped using it just because I wanted to reduce my reliance on google, so moved to local backup/personal server solutions.

[@SteveRowe]

I used to be a Linux expert. I used Slackware back in 2000. Compatibility with hardware was a lot worse than it is now, but overall the system was simpler. The past 10 years has seen changes to the fundamental infrastructure of Linux: different boot loader, different init system, Systemd taking over a bunch of system functions, and most recently Wayland taking over the display from Xorg. I'm not able to pick up new systems as fast as I used to, and I've resented every "new and improved" program that has replaced something I knew and was comfortable with. Now I don't call myself a Linux expert anymore.

[@greyspot00]

Crazy to me that instead of things like Xorg being updated and improved, the answer is "throw it away and use the new thing"

[@GoodGirlPeruru]

@@greyspot00 I understand the sentiment enough, but equally, i think it's necessary or else you wind up with a system that... behaves a lot more like Windows, with a bunch of crappy software that hasnt *really* been updated in fifteen years, layered on with a bunch of bandaid fixes. It's genuinely difficult for developers to work on something they never designed. And while a lot of people ARE willing to put in the effort, it's typically just more efficient to replace it outright anyway, and does avoid the windows bandaid fix solution.

[@tedzards509]

​@@greyspot00 As far as I understand, xorg contributors got sick of all the legacy code they had to update so they collectively decided to recreate it with wayland and weston, abandoning xorg. So it makes sense to have everyone move away from it aswell. Also throwing xorg away seems like a bit of an overstatement in this context. The devs surely reused the algorithms and ideas of xorg for wayland and even the codebase for Weston.

[@WhiteG60]

I think the biggest 'problem' people have with GPUs is that they don't understand that they DON'T need drivers to be installed. I know I went down the rabbit hole of installing the AMD provided GPU drivers for my 7800XT before realizing that I didn't really have to if all I was doing was gaming. And those drivers always posed some weird problems if not installing them on the exact distro and version specified (Ubuntu 22.04, 20.04, RHEL or SuSe). Even doing a Mint based on 22.04 I had weird issues with the install, but especially after upgrades because Mint had a different kernel version than Ubuntu did. Or that they don't install on Debian nicely, despite Ubuntu being a Debian derivative. When I finally figured out that you don't have to do ANYTHING with most modern (anything with 6.3 or newer) distros. It just works. This isn't clearly explained really anywhere that I looked and if you're coming from Windows you assume you need to install/update GPU drivers.

[@ThePlayerOfGames]

+1 to this. Coming from Windows I expected to need to go and get drivers. Only to painfully learn that you should try "without" getting anything first!

[@CuteSkyler]

I was used to going into the extra drivers tab on Ubuntu to change to proprietary but when I installed an AMD GPU into a different PC with Ubuntu I was confused as to what I should even do; so I downloaded drivers from AMD's site without it working at all before realising that it was pre-installed for me.

[@SvenHeidemann-uo2yl]

Does this apply to old nvidia cards as well? Gonna try mint soon and have a 980 ti

[@NevelWong]

I think nowadays a lot of new linux users apart from the devs are AI researchers. And getting the correct cuda drivers for your obscure mix of TPUs running is a nightmare, even for experienced users.

[@CuteSkyler]

@@SvenHeidemann-uo2yl 980Ti isn't that old, dude, it'll work fine.

[@CookiLover311]

Related to GPU issues: My biggest issue by far is using CUDA (and I've heard about problems with OpenCL on AMD too because of the AMD proprietary drivers). It's in general very messy, but the biggest problem with CUDA is that the nvcc compiler is usually an entire gcc compiler version behind, meaning it's necessary to have an old version of gcc installed, something that's difficult when using a package manager that wants to use the latest version (this also applies to clang btw)

[@BrainStormzFTC]

Ubuntu seems to handle having multiple GCC/clang/LLVM versions installed simultaneously just fine. Probably this is a distro issue rather than an overall Linux issue. Also, the OpenCL situation should hopefully be resolved nowadays with RustICL being a thing.

[@1pcfred]

It's not hard to install any version of GCC you want. You just don't install it globally. You do a parallel install. You don't do something like that with your package manager either. When you want to go off in the weeds you do that kind of thing on your own.

[@CookiLover311]

@@1pcfred and that is not something the average 3D artist who just wants to fully use their expensive GPU when rendering an animation I Blender knows how to do

[@AlexanderAnthis]

It's really annoying at times when package managers don't let you downgrade packages (looking specifically at Arch btw and Fedora). I think this is usually because it costs storage space to store old versions of apps which can add up to be quite expensive. Doesn't solve the issue though and it sucks.

[@Kris-od3sj]

Arch - a distro that likes newest packages - provides an older GCC for Cuda specifically. Currently, the only reverse deps of `gcc13` (excluding make deps) are `cuda` and `gcc13-fortran`. If you need to downgrade something, the easiest way is to use `downgrade`^AUR, but I'd rather not take the risk of downgrading a core part of the system like `gcc`.

[@FIRAGA]

From my personal experience, the issue with hardware support is not necessarily that hardware doesn’t work on Linux, but rather, that software made to configure said hardware is only available on Windows, and if you buy a product from a smaller brand, there is a very small chance that someone created a program to interface with it on Linux. For example, I have a Tecware Phantom keyboard. If I want to configure it, I need to connect it to a Windows virtual machine. This keyboard has its settings saved on-board so the program doesn't have to be running all the time in the background, but my solution wouldn't work for a keyboard that doesn't have on-board memory.

[@hopelessdecoy]

1 I couldn't ever get KDE Konnect to work 2 I couldn't connect my Google drive, Gnome's stuff just kept failing 3 I don't fully understand Warpinator When i voted peripherals i meant keyboard and mice with functionality more than typing and clicking. So many beginners could be just on a not fitting Distro, correlating your last survey a lot of people went to first or are on Arch systems so yeah much more command line. I'm not a non-technical person either.

[@agr-tech]

I had the same issue with kde connect. It was hit or miss. Try localsend

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

I started with Ubuntu-based Linux Mint and it still has the same issues I experienced with Zorin OS, PopOS, Ubuntu, Lubuntu (dont ask), and whatever the hell KDE Neon is trying to be cause it aint trying to be an intuitive operating system.

[@GoodGirlPeruru]

@@Robbie-mw5uusomeone finally says it. There... is SO much basic shit missing on that fucking repository

[@tedzards509]

For the KDE Connect problem, GNOME has an extension calles GSConnect, that is a full implementation of the KDE Connect protocol. Maybe you can give that a shot. As for the google drive, I am also annoyed that GNOME wouldnt let users authenticate on a website, insisting that we enter password and username, praying it works, but as far as I know they improved it with Gnome 46 and the german grant is being used to pay devs to improve online accounts even further. I think that KDE Connect/GSConnect and most things on Linux have a fragmentation and publicity problem, since Linux doesnt have a company that tells its users what to use.

[@TheLexikitty]

My biggest issues with Linux have been accessibility related, Kmag just stops moving sometimes, behind that is lack of support for video editing software and hardware. Would love to see it approach mainstream.

[@iodreamify]

More polls like this please! If devs and the community are so afraid of "telemetry" then proper regular communication is a must to stay up to date on important issues and to get a good picture where we're going.

[@weltsiebenhundert]

Theoretically a good idea - problem here. Windows has a dedicated Preview/Tester Program. I bet it is bigger than the Linux User base.

[@mmstick]

@@weltsiebenhundert Linux users are more likely to create detailed bug reports, and open source projects tend to use user-friendly bug reporting platforms like GitHub. Telemetry is a non-issue in practice if you're building software with a programming language which makes errors predictable and well-defined (ie: Rust).

[@FlyingJaco]

The biggest hardware pain points that I usually run into is running Linux on any older system with Broadcom Wifi/Bluetooth or Realtek. Broadcom chips in general can be a bit of a pain. Webcams on older Macs is a disaster that you are just better off accepting as a lost cause.

[@resistance1385]

Yea those Broadcom drivers but it's not linux issue due being propietory driver Bluetooth does not work until you add that driver. I wish there was way to find it easily online. I remember finding the driver on github to use.

[@AlucardNoir]

@@resistance1385 how exactly is this not a linux problem? People install windows and it works, they install linux and it doesn't. They're not going to blame the hardware manufacturer for not supporting an OS that was under 1% a few years ago. They'll blame the OS.

[@utube521]

07:45 - nvidia gpu works well in Wayland ... you make me laugh, or how many beginners know how to install nv. 555 42 beta driver - the first that makes my system run OK on wayland

[@bentels5340]

"*If you've never used computers before* and you're new to Windows, you'll look things up online." I don't know about that one...

[@AlucardNoir]

This generation grew up with phones in theri hands. Hell, smartphones are more common than laptops and computers in "third world countries". Chances are people that have never used a desktop or laptop will have used a smartphone before hand. Not a guarantee, but a high likelihood.

[@Capiosus]

as a person with friends who switched from mac to windows, people do look things up online. they often find the highly seo websites that have really bad answers

[@michaelwright2986]

@@AlucardNoir True that, but also Generation Phone expect things to just work, as indeed they mostly do on a smartphone, as on POTS. Means they're no better at trouble shooting a computer than a digital virgin.

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

Computer literacy being taught in schools ended for the Millenial generation which is why Zoomers and Gen Alpha are struggling to use anything other than mobile devices. Many workplaces report needing to teach Gen Z/A how to use printers, how to use internal phones, etc.

[@laurencefraser]

@@Robbie-mw5uu Mind you, even when it was taught, at least in my experience (I'm sure this varies wildly from place to place) it was frequently multiple OS generations behind, nevermind being up to date in any other respect. Also it was pretty much entirely basic word processing and file management (it's kind of amazing how much of that carries over to all sorts of other areas, but it still leaves a LOT of really large gaps).

[@ChristopherNyberg-iz6qv]

This video was rough to watch. The last thing the Linux community needs if it wants wider adoption is "don't know what your problem is. Works fine on my machine" which this video stated as the summary _to every section_ . You run a poll and then talk down and dismiss people's observations? How is this helpful to anyone?

[@whoeverofhowevermany]

If, for whatever reason, a person who is a software developer watches KZbin videos, this video could be useful to learn about user problems to address 😶

[@DaleDix]

This guy is all over the place. He has decided he doesn't like samsung phones because of loose sim cards.

[@svrsakura]

The problem is that you get hardware from Tuxedo, who as you keep reminding us, pick hardware specifically picked to be compatible with Linux... so you will have a skewed view on things... for instance, any Wireless radio (not final product, just the radio) (BT, Wi-Fi, GPS, PVR, etc) made by Realtek is a no-go for linux.

[@ThatPineappleBoi]

Sleep/suspended has been a problem for me on linux mint. After waking up from suspend, I'm guaranteed to encounter a crash within 5 - 10 minutes

[@NevelWong]

I had a similar issue. It went away when I switched DE.

[@vicmiklausic5415]

I have similar issues with sleep and suspend.

[@summerishere2868]

hibernation is also a problem on newer laptops.

[@1pcfred]

That's an easy fix. Just never sleep.

[@LePedant]

I have a problem with my sound card disappearing after my PC wakes from sleep. I have to restart for it to come back. In POP_OS.

[@lemonline3719]

It would be good to have open-ended questions as well, so that people can give more qualitative answers. Quantitative questions are obviously more easy to annalise, but it seems like it requires doing a lot of inferences as to why people answered the way they did. Some of these questions may also not get to the root of why people are having issues since they direct people to certain themes, while an open-ended feedback box would allow for people to express things that you may not even have thought of. Just my 2 cents

[@solidandshade]

I still see my Nvidia as a problem even tho it works on my mint with x11. 1- It works worse than it did on windows. 2- My 1660 ti doesn't work with wayland. I know there is a new driver but it is beta. And we are talking about now. Too many distros are pushing wayland but I can't just install their flag spins because of that. 3-Everyone keeps shilling wayland, says it is the future and x11 is dead. But same people also say "Linux is great with nvidia, just use x11". The stance is contradictory.

[@cameronbosch1213]

X11 isn't dead. XWayland will still be supported for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, XOrg _is_ about to die and Wayland _is_ the future. All I can say is that you're best bet is to wait for the kernel and Nvidia drivers to get better and support your GPU better. You still have a few more years before XOrg support drops off of a cliff.

[@1pcfred]

Wayland sucks. That's not a Linux problem. That's a Wayland problem. They need to learn to code.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@1pcfred Wayland may suck, but XOrg sucked more.

[@1pcfred]

@@cameronbosch1213 X only sucks if you're a goof and don't know how to use it. Which does describe quite a few people unfortunately. My .Xresources file is 237 lines long. There's some customization going on there. Mostly it's for my pimp xcalc I run.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@1pcfred Can XOrg run two or more monitors at a different refresh rate or scaling? Nope. That's a huge point for Wayland, as I have that setup for my desktop.

[@hyperspeed1313]

A lack of hibernation support has been a major pain point for me. Every single time I’ve tried setting up hibernation over the years, it failed to resume correctly and I just gave up after trying to poke around and getting nowhere. In Windows, I would always have my desktop use hybrid sleep (sleep + hiberfile backup) so I wouldn’t lose my work if the power went out while in sleep mode. I just can’t replicate that in Linux

[@paolozago6123]

In fairness, hibernation and sleep wake have always be a major chore on Windows too, I remember it was the first thing I disabled on my old laptop. The only system that really surprised me for how seamless sleep worked was macOS when I switched in 2013. I've not owned a Linux laptop recently so I don't know how it fares, but my current Windows laptop still has issues with sleep/wake :D

[@unnainconnu9098]

On Windows, the issue I had was that it sometimes wouldn't go to sleep / hibernation because a program (mostly a torrent downloader - even though that option was disabled - or the browser) was preventing it. I had to use the command line to find out which one. On Linux, since systemd v255 (12-2023) and mkinitcpio v38 (02-2024), if you have a (big enough) swap file or partition, it should work without changing anything.

[@CristobalWatsonHernandez]

I get the Bluetooth problems, I'm having one myself. My Bluetooth earphones worked out of the box, but it throws a notification every time the battery drops by one percent.

[@Capiosus]

less of a bluetooth problem and more of a hardware support problem.

[@321Jarn]

You need to add to your survey to ask what hardware they are using and what the community or youtubers promised about linux. Summary: community members including youtubers are overpromising (about linux breathing new life in very old laptops(which linux can't)) Because like me I used a very bad laptop using the free Zorin Os version (because it looked the nicest and I didn't notice any performance difference using it on the usb). For me the experience was overpromised by youtubers, youtubers saying things like "very bad and very old laptop" while they were only 8 years old with 4 or 8 GB ram and a good/decent cpu. While my laptop was a emachines laptop originally made for windows xp with 2 GB ram with HDD with a celeron processor. There is a lack of transparency because youtubers say linux is good for their own hardware or software but don't talk about how bad it is with other hardware or distributions.

[@KayloGL]

THIS.

[@stanzacosmi]

you didn't n otice any performance because you used zorin, you want to use a lightweight linux distro running lxqt, xfce, or just outright being tinycore linux or puppy linux.

[@ancalagonyt]

Linux can absolutely breathe life into very old laptops. I've used Linux since 1995, and the first computer I used it on had a 1GB hard drive. Not RAM, hard drive. I think it had 16MB of RAM, which is about 128 times smaller than your 2GB. I used to run Linux on a very old, very cheap netbook from about 2010. I used the XFCE desktop on it, because it was low powered even back when I got it.

[@piotrmazek540]

Zorin is slow, you should use something lighter.

[@321Jarn]

Ok I will maybe try something lightweight one day, But what is the most lightweight distro that is still fully functional? Alpine linux? Lubuntu? This might actually be the problem that I don't know which distro I need, because a lot of distributions market themselves as lightweight.

[@angelbob-q2s]

i hate that after i reboot on arch kde my bluetooth suddenly doesnt work

[@thiagoassisfernandes]

this. this happens with wifi and Bluetooth for me (same pcie card) and its effing annoying, only a reboot

[@akshatsingh4937]

It was a kernal issue and was fixed in later kernal version and it could be fixed easily by creating a symlink

[@User-83js7vaby]

Then please share the information if you're aware of the issue that is referring here to! That is the issue I've often encountered with the Linux community. It is inherently populated by more technically interested people than other OS. Making it sometimes actually hard to fix issues. Because everybody assumes you know programming, Linux and can find your way through a terminal. Some cannot. And for those "creating a symlink" might be a "what is that?" Moment. ​@@akshatsingh4937

[@unduloid]

@@akshatsingh4937 What's a "kernal?"

[@eivis13]

@@akshatsingh4937 this is why i'm using a debian distribution. Better working than latest.

[@JoelJosephReji]

To add some context regarding the Bluetooth issues: There was a very recent bug in one of the newer kernels which caused kernel panics with Bluetooth so that might have skewed the result a bit. I also faced another issue in the newer kernels where I was getting spammed with the Bluetooth connection notification from my wireless keyboard which faces no issues when connected to any other system. In general, pairing/unpairing things are generally finicky in non-desktop environment use cases where it is not responsive at all and if you click the pair or trust buttons in the GUI too much, the Bluetooth application (blueman or one of the similar ones) might freeze. I've heard online that freezing is due to the underlying Bluetooth stuff and not related to the application itself. Right now, I'm currently dealing with an issue in Endeavour OS with KDE and Wayland where I can't connect to the 5.0 Bluetooth of the keyboard and so I'm forced to use the 3.0 connection which doesn't have the battery indicator and some similar features.

[@paolozago6123]

I think the Linux dev community underestimates the importance of bluetooth, the fact that you can ship a kernel with a BT bug should be unacceptable like if you shipped a kernel that makes the keyboard non-functional

[@JoelJosephReji]

@@paolozago6123 I mean, Windows development introduces bugs many a times, it is just that people put up with it. Regarding the kernel bluetooth bug, it got patched up in the very next release so it only really affected folks in the bleeding edge. Not the end of the world, but annoying.

[@paolozago6123]

@@JoelJosephReji What about people on LTS distros? I think my Ubuntu LTS is still affected (BT works for a couple of hours then just stops working and I have to unplug the PC)

[@JoelJosephReji]

@@paolozago6123 I was of the belief that LTS releases were unaffected. This happened in kernel 6.8.2, I think which got fixed in 6.8.3. (Also, Bluetooth itself is a very finicky protocol in my experience with Android being the only platform where I experienced almost perfect Bluetooth connections.)

[@Arkevorkhat]

On the topic of Wifi and bluetooth, Realtek has some significant compatibility issues with their networking cards, especially the ones used by HP in their low to mid tier consumer laptops.

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

Yes and Realtek recently removed a bunch of the Windows version of their drivers so soon it could be impossible to get the drivers we need for our laptops!

[@RipCityBassWorks]

Lack of Excel support is probably an issue for many people. VBA macros are just super useful for people who use them.

[@skudnu5462]

3:00 I wonder how many of these 10% 'Linux systems have no secrets for me' is dunning kruger

[@RealFlicke]

None because the dunning kruger effect paper had a fatal flaw and the effect is actually not real :P

[@skudnu5462]

@@RealFlicke elaborate

[@_sneer_]

@@skudnu5462 The Dunning-Kruger effect is (mostly) a statistical artefact. All people are biased and almost all overestimate their abilities in a similar manner. @RealFlicke is right.

[@sashakoshka]

whoever says "linux systems have no secrets for me" is lying. the kernel has an absolute ton of features that the vast majority of people have no clue exist, and that's just the kernel, it's to say nothing about the software ecosystem surrounding it. for instance, one of my favorite things to tell linux users no matter how much they think they know is that polkit uses javascript as a configuration language. nine times out of ten they don't believe me, and have to look it up. if linux truly has no secrets for you, you are either a kernel dev, os maintainer, or a desktop environment dev, or something along those lines.

[@kajojo2399]

Yeah, also I feel like the answers could be worded better, like "I understand how things work" and "I know my way around" are a bit too similar, I wonder if the results would be different if there was a 1 to 5 scale of how experienced you are instead.

[@PassengerMX]

Part of the problem of connecting with other devices, particularly mobile phones is not Linux fault. For example, I cannot use KDE Connect because my phone's Android OS has very aggresive restrictions on what an App is allowed to do. In my case, even if I enable App permissions, file transfers are a no go.

[@kote315]

As an example of a stability issue related to the GPU or software freezes/crashes, I've had video playback freezes after watching KZbin for a long time (more than 1 hour or so) in Firefox. Even though I used Intel integrated graphics, which should work fine. This problem never happened in Windows. Now it seems to be working fine (I can’t say for sure whether I did something or the problem was solved with updates). But I'm pretty sure it was due to hardware video decoding issue or something like that.

[@michadybczak4862]

Sleep/suspend issues are real. I have Tuxedo's Sirius laptop and although it supposes to be Linux compatible, it won't suspend on any distro aside Tuxedo OS, where there is a kernel patch fixing it. Hibernation works but... there is an obscure bug that makes laptop to heat up during hibernation when it's not plugged in to AC, so basically, I shouldn't use it. So yeah, no suspend or hibernation on a laptop is a big problem. As to crashes, this is also weird for me. 10 years ago crashes were frequent, but nowadays, everything is incredibly stable, even on Wayland.

[@Winnetou17]

7:34 "Intel GPUs work flawlessly" 😄😄😄 Seems like Nick needs to get an Intel ARC card and play with it.

[@necuz]

In my experience Arc works perfectly, as long as you don't try to run games. Flawless Wayland desktop experience, no problems with video decode/encode, fully working power management and sleep/wake.

[@1pcfred]

Depending on what I hear when Battlemage comes out I might try Arc out then. Hopefully by then distros will have the packages it needs to work. I do not need the headaches it takes to get Arc working now.

[@Winnetou17]

@@necuz That's the thing, gaming is what some people might actually want to do. Compelling Bytes, a channel here on YT, has all kinds of tests. It's not horrible, some things you can play, but there's also many where they kind of don't work.

[@AlucardNoir]

@@necuz ... why even own a graphics card as weak as an Arc one if you're not going to use it for games? They are too weak to do any work that's demanding on the GPU and are overkill for any computer that doesn't need a GPU to begin with. If you're not going to play games with them you might as well buy something that only has an integrated GPU. IF they're not good for gaming they're not good for anything.

[@briandewolfe]

@@necuz Makes sense since what's left is essentially the stuff they've been baking into their CPUs for years... desktop graphics with video playback.

[@TheHyperGamerVideos]

The weirdest thing I've experienced is I recently switched from Arch to Garuda KDE Lite and for some reason Bluetooth wasn't installed out of the box, I had to install Blutie and Bluetoothctl myself in order to get it to work, which was so Odd because in Arch, no matter what desktop I selected, Bluetooth just worked out of the box.

[@lootria]

for me one of the biggest issues when using linux is the fact that i have a gaming laptop, and im completely unable to change the fan speeds even when using tools that usually can change them based on temperature (i believe it was called greenwithenvy but that was about 2 years ago or so). what ends up happening often is that my laptop is always blasting fans at full speed and STILL somehow manages to overheat enough to make it shut down, due to some setting i cannot change through any means ive tried. pair that with having to do video editing, audio production, wanting to do more than casual gaming from time to time and you get a recipe for something you cannot use no matter how much you love it, and i absolutely loved using linux as a desktop operating system outside of those issues. gnome and kde are amazing and i wish i could try out some tiling window manager but unfortunately for me i will have to be stuck on windows for at least a little while longer.

[@pyepye-io4vu]

Unfortunately these are mostly hardware based problems. Many motherboards / GPUs don't comply with Linux / Posix standards or they don't give Linux kernel enough access to fan speed control. YOU HAVE TO BUY LINUX COMPATIBLE HARDWARE! Manufacturers are hostile to Linux. If you bought a laptop with Windows installed on it, chances are you'll have problems.

[@BrainStormzFTC]

If your system is overheating to the point of shutting down despite the fans running full throttle, you have a hardware issue. Probably clogged heatsinks and/or old thermal paste. Thankfully both are very easy to fix, and will make the computer run much better no matter what OS you are running.

[@Capiosus]

hey there, heard of your uefi settings menu? it is what your supposed to use to adjust your fan speeds. Don't use OS apps to do what the uefi settings do.

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

yo seriously! Linux bas NOTHING for fan speed control!

[@lootria]

@@BrainStormzFTC actually ive never had that issue on windows both before installing linux, and after having to uninstall it for more storage, so it cant be a hardware issue

[@michaelarighi5268]

Your interpretation of your question about finding help/how easy to find it was, I think, a bit off the mark. What you asked was about finding solutions to "all" your problems. I've been using Linux for ~20 years. I can generally find whatever answers I need. I recently changed from using Mint to Debian 12, due to needing Wayland support for external monitors on my new Framework machine. That part works fine (and discovering that the issue was the need for full Wayland support was an answer I found fairly quickly). Nonetheless, I've found that Blueman on Debian, for some reason, fails to detect my Bluetooth headphones, which worked under Mint and still work under Android on my Samsung tablet. It detects SOME, but not ALL, my Bluetooth devices. Why? I've been searching off and on for about 4 months, with little success. Not a critical function, but I'd like it to work. So, I can solve ALMOST ALL, but not ALL, my problems fairly easily, which is what I would have had to answer.

[@zipforth]

In my experience Linux works well, but there's edge cases that just aren't handled when something does go wrong, where windows at least knows it screwed up. For instance, on kubuntu, sometimes when I wake my machine from sleep, my second monitor goes back to the default wallpaper, and sometimes an app will just crash with no error or popup to tell me something happened. They aren't generally big issues, just annoying and makes it feel less polished than it could be. I think it just comes down to that nowadays I expect an OS to run its own modules flawlessly, and handle errors for everything else in a way that gives me a clear picture of what went wrong and when. On the plus side I haven't had any issues at all with gaming, even new multiplayer games run exactly the same as they did on windows.

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

I recently had a BSOD with Windows while playing a game. When I rebooted back into Windows, I was able to run a system scan and Windows found some operating system files that were corrupted...and fixed them by itself! Windows is really amazing sometimes.

[@EpiX0R]

I don't think the issue with troubleshooting linux comes from lack of documentation. In comparison to Windows or MacOS, Linux has very good documentation. I think the issue lies with the fact that we have so many more alternatives that the issues can come from. Have an audio issue? A regular use would probably google "Linux audio not working". This would probably return 3+ years old results which may or may not be relevant since a new user doesn't know what PipeWire or PulseAudio is, even less which one they use, and even less what problem within each might cause the issue. The same scenario can be applied for display issues (Wayland or X11?) and GPU drivers (mesa or vulkan. or noveou for AMD; proprietary or open-source for Nvidia). Especially Nvidia GPU users about 3-6 months ago who had no clue which driver to use or where to find it (its definetly not on the Nvidia website atleast).

[@sulfur2964]

Because of Linux I finally understood that my 2009 wifi usb stick isn't cutting anymore, using my phone as wifi adapter for now, lol

[@uglycustard11]

usb tethering is the way lol

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

its likely because your wifi stick uses 2.4ghz and that is very crowded radio signal with lots of interference. If you use 5ghz from a dual-band-compatible network adapter, you would likely have more breathing room. Additionally, you might need an antenna if the stick doesnt already have one. Then again it could just be because the modern Internet uses too many resources that old adapters arent capable of transmitting fast enough.

[@Daikuro1]

Have to wonder how many of these issues are issues that also pop up on Windows. For instance, the DualSense controller can cause some headaches due to it's haptic feedback being recognized as a default audio output device. But the issue is equally annoying on both Windows and Linux. A big factor in my switching to Linux completely was when I realized any problems I had on Linux were also problems I'd had on Windows and weren't specific to Linux - just computers in general lol.

[@Romaoplays]

My gtx 1060 on my laptop doesn’t actually work with wayland at all. Like straight up refuses to be used. It works fine on X11 though

[@cameronbosch1213]

That is going to be a problem possibly forever, unless Nvidia is forced to open source non GSP driver support for those 9 and 10 series GPUs...

[@neuroflare]

My real problem is lack of vrr for multiple monitors with Nvidia. Disabling a monitor to play a game sucks

[@moinbagban87]

The issue I am currently facing, is copying files and folders to my USB drive is way slower than windows. I tried using cp and rsync but still they don't match the speed I get on windows.

[@Deezter16]

I really like this video format, keep making them ;)

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Yeah, they’re nice to make!

[@alirahimi92]

It's really amazing how you are aware of statistical pitfalls and actively inform viewers of them.

[@RemindMeToCheck]

A friend of mine is very interested in switching to Linux but they work with CAD software and they mentioned all of the CAD software they need (or their alternatives) don't work at all on Linux (even with Wine). Personally, I've been comfortably using Linux for quite a while.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Did they try running Linux on their hardware and running Windows in a VM, and passing the dGPU into their VM?

[@m4sterred853]

CAD software is an industry that is actively hostile towards Linux. It’s not to the same degree as Adobe, but it’s close.

[@Daniel_VolumeDown]

There is OnShape that works in browser but to be fair that is probably it. Although I saw github pages with sctipts to run some CAD software via wine. This year is also the year when FreeCAD biggest problem (TNP) should finally be fixed. Recently also new project emerged: ondsel. It is based on freecad but have nicer interface and is adding a lot of little fixes and improvements, so I hope we will have in the near feature a lot of improvemets to open source CAD. Btw. Freecad is not the only open source cad. There is also much less known salome (tbf cad is onpy part of that whole fem suite), but idk how good it is.

[@sol_mental]

@@cameronbosch1213 I guess you never tried to work with 3D. You need raw power, not vm.

[@paolozago6123]

@@sol_mental For light to medium 3D MCAD work I used for some time parallels VM on a macbook pro with emulated GPU and it was usable, if the VM supports graphics acceleration it's not much slower than native. That said, I agree that you want "the real thing" and the real thing today is 99.9% Windows for heavy CAD work

[@patocarrasco6266]

I have pain in terms of using office related apps in linux. Excel has a few features that are very confortable to have: Macros; dynamic tables (not pivot tables); and "new" matrix functions. Libreoffice offers macros compatibility, onlyoffice offers dynamic tables, and none of them offers the autoexpandable matrix functions. Those functions allow excel to be a complete turing language by itself, allowing me to replace 99% of the macros that I had. Today, I use macros for specific UI needs, like changing color on mouse click, switching pages and stuff like that, but not for calculation anymore, unless those calculations run over an important amount of cells, performance fix is really needed and automatic calculation is disabled. If not the case, then matrix functions work great.

[@haraldbackfisch1981]

If u want a Turing complete datastorage why not go straight to SQL with a viewer? Then u could actually talk about features... making excel the "everything app" is just lazy und honestly if you're using regex or similar within excel you're doing it wrong.. use python or sth - same as using classes on python... that's not what the tool is made for, it's glue. Excel is a high-level table editor not a low-level data Manipulation tool, but have fun auditing your scattered excel functions... when r they bringing unit tests to excel?

[@haraldbackfisch1981]

Sry but : January, 1900, has annoyed me more than once...

[@patocarrasco6266]

@@haraldbackfisch1981 hahahaha, jan 0th of 1900, a nice memory. Indeed, for enterprise level apps, it is not the way to go for a final solution, but you must accept that excel is the defacto tool for not devs to solve any problem. I learnt excel at a point that I became a guru to them and I help fixing their spreadsheets. At the same time, I can make sample apps even faster than with power apps. Those apps iteroperate well with local python if needed, and I have solutions in no time. Remember that excel is a low-code tool and that means it lacks of scalability, but shines in fast iterations for demonstrations. Later you should go for a traditional language, not cell oriented xD, and develop a nicer app. Btw, people (not devs) usually have excel already installed, which is not the case for DBMS, and they will never understand why you must separate data source from views, and that's why spreadsheets are so persuasive. In my personal computer I went full linux and I use libreoffice just for one table that I have, but back to my office computer, I have no option, so I decided to master it, became a fullstack cells dev, and it's been paying me for 3 years now. That alone is pretty sad, but you can't imagine how happy I am when I hit the point at which a spreadsheet must turn into an "actual" app and everyone says "ok".

[@patocarrasco6266]

​@@haraldbackfisch1981 maybe I need to clarify that I am a full time eployee and I'm solving issues inside my office. Also, no one has admin privileges, but we have excel and python preinstalled. The better sql I can use is the sqlite module packaged with python hahaha (don't get me wrong, I love sqlite).

[@patocarrasco6266]

@@haraldbackfisch1981 hahahaha, jan 0th of 1900, a nice memory. Indeed, for enterprise level apps, it is not the way to go for a final solution, but you must accept that excel is the defacto tool for not devs to solve any problem. I learned excel at a point that I became a guru to them and I help fixing their spreadsheets. At the same time, I can make sample apps even faster than with power apps. Those apps interoperate well with local python if needed, and I have solutions in no time. Remember that excel is a low-code tool and that means it lacks of scalability, but shines in fast iterations for demonstrations. Later, you should go for a traditional language, not cell oriented xD, and develop a nicer app. Btw, people (not devs) usually have excel already installed, which is not the case for DBMS, and they will never understand why you must separate data source from views, and that's why spreadsheets are so persuasive. In my personal computer I went full linux and I use libreoffice just for one table that I have, but back to my office computer, I have no option, so I decided to master it, became a fullstack cells dev, and it's been paying me for 3 years now. That alone is pretty sad, but you can't imagine how happy I am when I hit the point at which a spreadsheet must turn into an "actual" app and everyone says "ok".

[@bvd_vlvd]

App bugs and crashes are an everyday part of my desktop usage. Not necessarily in core apps though. Paper, the best GTK4 markdown editor otherwise, crashes every time I use it. Speaking of bluetooth, my old bluetooth mouse was crashing my gnome shell on newest kernel versions at the time. No idea how any of that was correlated. My new mouse works well.

[@1pcfred]

Have you debugged the crash? On Linux you can debug software. There's ways of finding out precisely what is going on. Set your ulimit to dump core and then run the core file through gdb.

[@bvd_vlvd]

@@1pcfred That sounds out of the scope of my skills. App mostly crashes when I click close anyway. I don't really mind it, though it is a little annoying that it doesn't ask me to save changes because of the bug.

[@1pcfred]

@@bvd_vlvd it probably is beyond your scope now. But you can't learn how to ride a bull except by getting up there and trying. You'll get thrown and trampled. But you keep getting back up there. Then one day you can say, This ain't my first rodeo. You may win the ribbon then too.

[@2greenify]

I notice the Linix steam client had all kinds of bugs that are not solved in 2 years time. Eg forcing compatability mode on al games works, but disabling is impossible.

[@Lampe2020]

For me KDE 5.27 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS crashes almost every time I connect a second monitor to a running session. It only affects plasmashell, so my session doesn't get killed, but it's annoying nonetheless.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Don't use KDE Plasma on Kubuntu or Ubuntu Studio at the moment. Try Tuxedo OS, that has been fixed in Plasma 6.

[@lanceg1312]

I wasn't aware of the survey and while I wouldn't have answered that crashes are a pain point for me, I have only had two in the last ten years but they were both this week. It was on Fedora 40 with KDE. I never really could figure out what was causing it. I moved from Arch to Fedora to spend less time configuring and fixing things, and after the second crash I just installed Debian instead of troubleshooting 🤣

[@nerdon2]

The GPU thing might be about just installing drivers for nvidia. Some people run into issues with that on distros like fedora and arch, as the commands in my experience don't always work perfectly. As for wifi and bluetooth, it's all about hardware that has no support for Linux or closed source support which you need to first find and then install. You haven't come across that because you use hardware from a vendor who only uses parts that have good Linux support. Same goes for audio issues btw.

[@WhiteG60]

I said it in a standalone comment, but also the fact that Intel and AMD don't require GPU driver installs, but the drivers exist on their sites. So, coming from Windows, you go 'ok time to get GPU drivers', head to the site, see them, download them and they're not exactly SUPER easy to install and can cause issues later on as you update the system. And not only that, you kinda have to take it on trust that they're installed. There's no easy to look at panel that says 'Yup, you've got version XX.XX installed!' like there is in Windows. At least with nVidia you get the control panel, but I wish AMD and Intel would do something similar for Linux. A few years ago, I had a ThinkPad given to me at work that had RHEL on it. It had an nVidia GPU in it and you could get it working just installing the driver package just fine. But every time the kernel updated, it would break and you'd have to go in to the CLI, and reinstall/rebuild the new kernel with the nvidia drivers to get back into a graphical environment. That was a pain and I kinda mostly knew how to use linux. The people in the office that had only used Windows were lost. After two years of that, the company took them all back and gave everyone MBPs instead. They said the difference in up front capital was dwarfed by the amount of support time needed on the Linux laptops.

[@stuner1337]

GPU drivers are probably the main reason why I don't use Fedora. I've had so many problems with Fedora specifically, while all other distros have been fine... The first time I tried, I managed to completely break the display output (black screen after reboot). The second time I got that issue even on the first boot of the Live DVD. And the last time I tried, it plain refused to recognize my second display... I may just be too dumb for Fedora xD

[@SS-ARYAN]

@@stuner1337 The main issue with NVIDIA on Fedora is that simply running the command is not enough, you have to wait about 5 minutes as it compiles in the background AFTER the terminal is free for new input. You are not warned about this anywhere except in the install documentation, which must be read thoroughly.

[@briandewolfe]

A very common GPU related issue has been poor performance compared to Windows in the same game and using the same settings. My own experience on various distros over the last few years has seen framerates during gameplay at around half (50-60%) of what you'd get with Windows, with the same overall power draw, even for the native Linux build of the game.

[@SS-ARYAN]

@@briandewolfe I got NVIDIA and usually get only a 5-10% penalty, are you installing the proprietary drivers? (Open-source drivers will be recommended in the next month though)

[@needsLITHIUM]

I have MX Linux KDE on my laptop and my desktop. Neither one can connect to the KDE Connect app on my phone. Network printer works fine, bluetooth headphones and mice and things like game controllers, wired and wireless, all work fine. I use Mega and Google Drive for my storage and they work fine, desktop integration and all; Mega even has a separate command line tool for powershell and Linux (I reserve my OneDrive for Windows specific/related storage). My two USB audio interfaces, both from different brands, work fine. Also, I see a few comments about people not seeing the poll, and it's good to know I'm not the only one who missed it, despite watching several videos from the channel.

[@szaszm_]

I had some serious issues with laptops, especially around nvidia and KDE Plasma 5 not starting at all or crashing on startup. Obviously the devs fix issues on their systems, but some hardware-related issues remain in a large portion of the cases.

[@snekulcire]

One thing I've noticed is the signal-to-noise ratio on searching for fixes on Linux. You search for an issue, and you get an answer in the first result that might even pop up on the screen without having to click a link--but the answer is for Ubuntu 12.04. So no Wayland, no systemd, old display managers, etc. This can really, really confuse people and break things if they try to use those answers. I've just learned that I have to include version numbers or code names in when searching. But some users aren't in that habit.

[@corviraptor]

i answered GPUs because Nvidia's newer drivers (before 555's release) would break xwayland apps. after 555's release which implemented explicit sync for wayland , basically all of my GPU problems on wayland have been totally solved even without KDE's compositor support for explicit sync, so if the poll came out like a week later i would've answered differently LOL

[@qy9MC]

I had issues with: installation, bios, kde, wifi, bluetooth. Yes "things of the past" are still an issue on linux.

[@SirRFI]

7:20 I am not sure, but I think I voted for GPU. I've had problems on laptop with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650Ti. It may or may not be solved now, but I can see how it could easily be a problem for new comers. Very recently I asked around how is the experience on NVIDIA laptops nowdays, and the responses were mixed - some people still stay on X11. So, I'll consider it a problem until the new official drivers will land in kernel or distros by default, so the experience is good for majority of users out of the box. After one of recent updates, I started experiencing random black-flickering on my AMD+AMD laptop. My coworker on KDE tends to have problems with multi-monitor setup too.

[@godminnette2]

I still get really bad screen tearing on Ubunutu MATE with a GTX 1080. No amount of configuration changes have helped. I am likely going to switch that machine over to NixOS and see what comes of it, though.

[@vlada909]

I selected both wifi and GPU issues. On my pc I have a Nvidia GPU and xwayland apps were flickering a lot. I've heard that not everyone has this issue because, if I remember corectly, it is a race condition or something like that. Fortunately the update that fixes this issue is out and I'm just waiting for it to release for fedora. As for wifi I have a 2014 macbook pro, 5ghz wifi doesn't work at all and 2.4ghz is insanely unstable. Sometimes it doesn't want to connect to wifi at all, even if I'm next to the router. I might be able to change the wifi card in that model but I have not looked into it that much tbh.

[@MrMediator24]

Same problem here. Though most apps through Xwayland/Proton work fine, few games and one critical for work app flicker insanely. Can't wait to finally get 555 on Fedora too

[@shib5267]

Also had wifi instability issues on a 2015 MacBook air, but it was similar on macOS and it turned out either the chip or the antenna were damaged. Might want to check for that The drivers do work decently on most of these pre 2018 models

[@jesse7631]

I don't understand people who still use sleep / suspend. If you get an SSD for the OS, you boot up in 5 seconds. What do you need sleep for? I used to have problems with coming out of sleep in Windows. It's wonky and frankly, not necessary.

[@tulsatrash]

Aw man. I didn't find out about this poll.

[@MindCaged]

Yeah, unless I'm missing something I side with the terminal as mandatory crowd. If for nothing else but to launch a text editor with sudo to edit protected config files. If there's a way to sudo something from the GUI I'm not aware of it. On windows there's a "Run as Administrator" option, but I didn't see one by default on linux in my experiments. As a side note I will admit the terminal is /much/ better than the windows command prompt, tab-completion for the win.

[@AaravKuxar]

The biggest issue that bugs me out in GNU/Linux is the unavailability of hardware video decode on chromium browsers. I have tried all permutations and combinations of flags associated with it and still can't get it to work. Due to this issue, the battery life sucks on my Ideapad.

[@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7]

Interesting, because hardware video decode is actually implemented in mainline. What distro are you using? Maybe the distro disabled it or your hardware doesn't support AV1 hardware decoding, which is what KZbin wants.

[@AaravKuxar]

@@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7 I thought KZbin wanted VP9. Also arch btw. And video decode on KZbin seems to work fine on Firefox. It's only the chromium-based browsers that I have this issue with.

[@AaravKuxar]

@@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7 IIRC, KZbin wants VP9. Also arch btw. And video decoding seems to work just fine on firefox. It's only the chromium-based browsers I have this issue with.

[@AaravKuxar]

@@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7 IIRC, KZbin wants VP9. Also arch btw. And video deciding on KZbin seems to work just fine in Firefox. It's only the chromium based browsers I have this issue with.

[@AaravKuxar]

@@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7 I know this is old. But youtube wouldn't let me reply the last time I tried. So anyways, I believe youtube uses vp9 and hardware video decoding works just fine on firefox. It's just the chromium browsers which seem to have this issue.

[@enderarchery2153]

I think some of the desktop bugs and missing features might be related to things like the plasma 6 transition that... doesn't seem quite perfect yet

[@flemtone]

I've managed to switch many clients to Linux Mint after having so many issues with Windows, and to date none of them have had an issue with using linux.

[@Robbie-mw5uu]

lol have you actually followed up with any of them and checked if they were still running Linux? Cause I would just install Windows instead of contacting a tech person if I had issues with Linux.

[@numipinkpanda5486]

Oh interesting stats and it just released, cool! I spent couple days just trying Linux (after a few years since my last try) and I would say that most thing I was able to get running (which is amazing, since couple years back that was a no-go), but there are things and apps that I need and it just does not work on Linux or it works with issues. Main reason why I will still stay on Windows as main OS for now and come back from time to time to check if I can fully switch already xD. Basically I can do most things on Linux, but things I cannot do or cannot fully do stop me from going full linux

[@dim3nt0]

for a non linux dude, main issues are permisions - this must be a way to handle this some simpler way, mounting partitions and drives - this is just stupid, but plus permisions is pure hell, file sharing is also a huge pain wich is basicaly rooted in first two problems

[@ComradePhoenix]

Having to type my password 20 damn times just trying to install apps only incentivizes stupidly simple passwords.

[@dim3nt0]

@@ComradePhoenix tbh you dont need a very long password for your local machine

[@Blue2x2x]

Kinda odd how "AMD GPUs is out-of-the-box". A couple of months ago, I got around to put Linux Mint onto my Lenovo Ideapad laptop, dual booting with Win10. Ran fine at first, then after I update to a newer version of LM. The screen looks like it's in pain. I did look online and found to put something like "amdgpu_aspm=0" to grub, and now the screen looks fine ever since. The thing is, I don't know what I did to cause and solved it.

[@WolfySnowy]

Damn, I missed interesting survey? I had to unplug/replug bluetooth for it to work, screenshotting x.x I still haven't figured out how to run standalone game from gog installer on linux... or install game with exe installer... Might be good idea to survey what distros are used.

[@korgalis]

wine/lutris were working for me as far as gog instaler is concerned and in like 70% of games

[@stuner1337]

To run GOG games I've found Heroic Games Launcher to be quite useful. For standalone exes I use Bottles, but that I struggled more with that (I didn't copy the installers to the Wine prefix and it caused me lots of issues).

[@just_some_dot]

I think the synchronization between devices is good on Linux, but I don't like the fact that (at least in my experience) it's too bounded to WiFi, I still can't find a way to easily share files with Bluetooth or something like that, for those times when the WiFi sucks or there's no WiFi at all.

[@rexthewild]

That moment when you can't watch it cus you need to go to work :(((

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Ah dammit! Say you’re sick!

[@sevenfacedsin]

Can’t come in today, installing Arch.

[@GoldenGrenadier]

Good thing I'm on lunch!

[@rexthewild]

@@sevenfacedsin used that excuse already

[@rexthewild]

@@TheLinuxEXP no more sick days :((

[@zerrubabbel]

I somehow missed the news that there was a poll going on... but in case it matters, I'll share a summary of my answers I'm almost up to 1 year on Linux. I'd describe myself as an intermediate user. I can navigate pretty well, but I do still encounter new problems from time to time. I also have the benefit of moderating a large Linux subreddit, which has actually helped accelerate my own skills. My biggest problem with Linux by far is Nvidia. I've tried dozens of solutions, fixes, drivers, etc, which all yeild the exact same result: Nothing changes, and my 2070XC runs Stardew Valley at 15 FPS, but my Intel 4425Y runs Minecraft at the full 60 Hz of it's respective display. I'm glad to see Nvidia playing nice with Red Hat, but I think it's too little too late... I'll be moving to AMD by this fall Because of this, I can't rule Gaming out as an issue, but I really can't rule it in either... The games my laptops are able to play all work just fine... but anything that touches my Nvidia card refuses to launch... Except FFXIV... I can launch it, and walk about 20 feet before it crashes... If I could, I'd be trying to play MSFS, Xdefiant, Civ 6, Forza, and maybe Cities Skylines or Xplane12 In terms of stability, I did encounter some issues while I was exploring distros, but since switching to Arch, I haven't had anything to complain about. What issues I did have, I'd guess were probably a product of my own misunderstandings of how things on Linux work... My satisfaction with Linux has been overall pretty good... Probably 8-9 out of 10... And Windows, of which I still have 1 partition left... It really seems like they're trying to suck, and since around March it feels like they've turned on the rocket boosters to suck as much as possible. The state of Linux is such that it's capabilities are satisfactory and improving, It treats the end user with the right amount of dignity, It's features are deep and expansive, and it's competition (maybe except BSD) is moving backwards on virtually all fronts. Command Line: I need the command line... I don't mind using the command line... In a way, I feel less like it's a scary cryptic tool, and more like it's just a better way for me and my computer to "talk" Overall, I'm optimistic about the future of Linux. It seems to have a lot of momentum in the right direction, If things aren't where they need to be today, I think they will be soon.

[@comosaycomosah]

weird top answer yea there is kdeconnect syncthing built in gnome accounts rclone plus a ton of other shit lol here is the other possibility...the people who answered dont know as much as they thought it seems

[@trajectoryunown]

I don't understand why my Android phone refuses to connect as a storage device. It works _very_ rarely, but most of the time it doesn't even get registered in my file manager or even get an alert that something is plugged in. It's just borked. Older Androids don't seem to suffer from this issue. Warpinator worked great to backup my files though.

[@cadywelp235]

I haven't been able to get KDE connect to work, but I'm also a noob

[@comosaycomosah]

@@trajectoryunown hmm that's weird idk tbh idek what could cause that besides maybe disconnecting for asec and reconnecting like if your wire has a short....idk tho really I barely use that I have syncthing setup amd then normally sshd into my phone via termux you can access your whole device that way too and wirelessly

[@comosaycomosah]

@@cadywelp235 I dont really use any kde stuff I've tried it before but it was years ago...depending on what functions your looking for I'd suggest scrcpy it broadcasts your phone to your computer wire or wirelessly it prolly looks harder to use bc you have to use the terminal but its documented well and only has afew steps ....if you wanna transfer files syncthing is really nice but also abit complicated to set up...just keep practicing and keep your shit backed up where you can just reset if you fr mess stuff up

[@barae05]

@@trajectoryunown adb-tools missing?

[@dr2okevin]

I have big problems with GPUs. The Nvidia hybrid in my 10 year old notebook isn't working at all, I have to rely on the Intel graphics. On my HTPC the new Intel card with all the nice modern video codecs, has only very limited support in the opensource drivers (no 4k, no video decoding) and the official installation guide for the property drivers forces me to manually recompile the kernel. I couldn't get it running.

[@sleeper789]

I wonder how many people who said they have problems with things like GPU's, WiFi, Bluetooth ...etc use distros like Arch. My hypothesis is that many of these issues are self-inflicted.

[@elecbaguette]

In my experience the older distros such as debian have issues that are far harder to solve.