You need a degree in "Alternative Operating Systems and Their Applications" before being able to use Linux effectively.
by _galen from LinuxQuestions.org on (#6KRJN)
Debian Gnome. Every time I felt I was coming close to winning with it, something else would come up. Whether it be MP4 files not being supported; the tiny UI on certain apps; the Top-Bar and the Dash flickering out of view at times when trying to select them, rendering them un-selectable; bizarre scroll-speed issues; etc. etc.; there was always a new splinter in my foot with it.
And then switching Desktop-Environments, or even Distributions, fixes some problems but shoots other holes in the hull.
Be real please--becoming familiar enough with Linux so that it works like your customary OS probably takes months if not YEARS of study. More than half of the commands I find online for problems I enter into the Terminal and they just don't work, and it looks like to understand those commands properly in order to know what-on-earth they mean will take hundreds of hours.
Yes Windows is a mess. But at least pretty-much any problem on there can be fixed with a Clean-Install, and at least it doesn't take weeks of fiddling after a Clean-Install to get it to a place where it works very nicely again--a day at most--and if you don't mess around with the deeper System-Files and settings then you probably won't need to Clean-Install very often honestly; in comparison to the days I've sunk so far into trying to personalise and optimise my Gnome set-up.
I was initially scared away from Windows because the Samsung T7 portable-SSD model, of which I have two units, is bugged on manufacture in such a way that on both Mac and Windows you cannot Safely-Eject it because the OS 'locks' it into deep System-Processes. But there's a work-around of just shutting-down the PC and then unplugging the SSD, and supposedly you can just unplug USB-Drives now without Ejection anyway so long as they're not being written to. And then also File Explorer was crashing, which made me fear for data-corruption, but I think Windows just has difficulty when you are tabbing back-and-forth between two windows of File Explorer constantly, rapidly searching through and comparing Directories, for a long period of time--I can just restart the PC every ten minutes or so when using it intensively like that, before a crash occurs, to avoid this crashing problem probably.
The question should be asked of anyone thinking of coming to Linux: are you prepared to basically learn a new coding-language from the ground-up? for which language any previous coding-knowledge you have will be of little to no use to you, because this isn't really a coding-language as such, it's a different beast altogether. That's how demanding it is, it's like learning to code from scratch. It's like learning to code, but harder, honestly, because there's so little support for it: which is no-one's fault, it's just because the user-base is so small by comparison with Windows; with most coding obstacles it doesn't usually take more than a few googles to find the answer, and failing that there's even a tutor website called codementor.io where you can pay for expert help; whereas with Linux, and seemingly especially with anything that isn't Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Arch, pretty much your only chance for real-time help is here where it seems the rate at which questions get answered is comparatively low compared with elsewhere on the internet, or else on the Stack Exchange hell where you'll be lucky to even be granted a permit to ask your question in the first-place. There's a veritable wealth of support for Windows online, on the other hand, as well as in-shop experts and technicians dotted around the country, with necessary recourse to Stack Exchange being very minimal.
Windows may be unstable, and it may even corrupt some of my data at some point down the line. But I keep THREE different updated copies of all my data, with one being kept with MEGA.nz, and two on brand-new portable SSD's that are very securely kept and for which I may even get a fire-box, and I live in the middle of nowhere in Wales so the odds of theft are extremely low; if ALL THREE versions of any of my data somehow get simultaneously corrupted, then it will be because the universe intended for it to happen.
In the meantime, Windows is very nice and easy to use and enables me to do all my writing and coding and drawing and image-and-video-editing very efficiently,; besides a couple of bugs in GIMP--which may even be evaporated with a re-install--it all otherwise works very very well.
I don't doubt that with enough study and application, Linux can be tamed to be very very nice. But I just don't have that sort of time on my hands right now; bar Windows actually almost deleting ALL of my back-ups as above (it won't ever manage completely such a deed on it's own, there's no way; if it ever does it will only be with the aid of a malicious paranormal demon), and bar Windows imposing an Adobe-esque tithe-subscription on the OS, I probably won't actually ever have the time to learn Linux, with so many other things to do.
I'm basically just journalling here, at this point, for the sake of therapy--to mentally unwind with a long vent after all that effort of trying to migrate here.
Yes I'm sure Linux is great once you know it, but it seems to me a pretty heavy time-price is required for that.
If your focus in life is making things that are not themslevescomputers, but nonetheless are made with the essential utility of computers, I think in this day and age you're probably doing to have to settle with a fairly imperfect computer to do that with, and then to just pray.
Peace.
And then switching Desktop-Environments, or even Distributions, fixes some problems but shoots other holes in the hull.
Be real please--becoming familiar enough with Linux so that it works like your customary OS probably takes months if not YEARS of study. More than half of the commands I find online for problems I enter into the Terminal and they just don't work, and it looks like to understand those commands properly in order to know what-on-earth they mean will take hundreds of hours.
Yes Windows is a mess. But at least pretty-much any problem on there can be fixed with a Clean-Install, and at least it doesn't take weeks of fiddling after a Clean-Install to get it to a place where it works very nicely again--a day at most--and if you don't mess around with the deeper System-Files and settings then you probably won't need to Clean-Install very often honestly; in comparison to the days I've sunk so far into trying to personalise and optimise my Gnome set-up.
I was initially scared away from Windows because the Samsung T7 portable-SSD model, of which I have two units, is bugged on manufacture in such a way that on both Mac and Windows you cannot Safely-Eject it because the OS 'locks' it into deep System-Processes. But there's a work-around of just shutting-down the PC and then unplugging the SSD, and supposedly you can just unplug USB-Drives now without Ejection anyway so long as they're not being written to. And then also File Explorer was crashing, which made me fear for data-corruption, but I think Windows just has difficulty when you are tabbing back-and-forth between two windows of File Explorer constantly, rapidly searching through and comparing Directories, for a long period of time--I can just restart the PC every ten minutes or so when using it intensively like that, before a crash occurs, to avoid this crashing problem probably.
The question should be asked of anyone thinking of coming to Linux: are you prepared to basically learn a new coding-language from the ground-up? for which language any previous coding-knowledge you have will be of little to no use to you, because this isn't really a coding-language as such, it's a different beast altogether. That's how demanding it is, it's like learning to code from scratch. It's like learning to code, but harder, honestly, because there's so little support for it: which is no-one's fault, it's just because the user-base is so small by comparison with Windows; with most coding obstacles it doesn't usually take more than a few googles to find the answer, and failing that there's even a tutor website called codementor.io where you can pay for expert help; whereas with Linux, and seemingly especially with anything that isn't Linux Mint, Ubuntu or Arch, pretty much your only chance for real-time help is here where it seems the rate at which questions get answered is comparatively low compared with elsewhere on the internet, or else on the Stack Exchange hell where you'll be lucky to even be granted a permit to ask your question in the first-place. There's a veritable wealth of support for Windows online, on the other hand, as well as in-shop experts and technicians dotted around the country, with necessary recourse to Stack Exchange being very minimal.
Windows may be unstable, and it may even corrupt some of my data at some point down the line. But I keep THREE different updated copies of all my data, with one being kept with MEGA.nz, and two on brand-new portable SSD's that are very securely kept and for which I may even get a fire-box, and I live in the middle of nowhere in Wales so the odds of theft are extremely low; if ALL THREE versions of any of my data somehow get simultaneously corrupted, then it will be because the universe intended for it to happen.
In the meantime, Windows is very nice and easy to use and enables me to do all my writing and coding and drawing and image-and-video-editing very efficiently,; besides a couple of bugs in GIMP--which may even be evaporated with a re-install--it all otherwise works very very well.
I don't doubt that with enough study and application, Linux can be tamed to be very very nice. But I just don't have that sort of time on my hands right now; bar Windows actually almost deleting ALL of my back-ups as above (it won't ever manage completely such a deed on it's own, there's no way; if it ever does it will only be with the aid of a malicious paranormal demon), and bar Windows imposing an Adobe-esque tithe-subscription on the OS, I probably won't actually ever have the time to learn Linux, with so many other things to do.
I'm basically just journalling here, at this point, for the sake of therapy--to mentally unwind with a long vent after all that effort of trying to migrate here.
Yes I'm sure Linux is great once you know it, but it seems to me a pretty heavy time-price is required for that.
If your focus in life is making things that are not themslevescomputers, but nonetheless are made with the essential utility of computers, I think in this day and age you're probably doing to have to settle with a fairly imperfect computer to do that with, and then to just pray.
Peace.