Ray tracing on Linux doesn’t work well. Windows doesn’t have that issue
There was something that happened a while ago that made all the tech influencers look kinda silly in regards to Linux. I’ll never forget this comment on one of the videos around the kerfuffle. ‘All these computer experts have just been downgraded to Windows influencers.’ It’s so true how they can tell you all the inner workings of a Windows machine and the moment they try Linux their expertise just falls apart.
I have a working hypothesis, the short of which goes something like this:
windows makes one memorise orders of infinite submenus, while linux makes you understand the way it works.
is there a poop os?
i want to send it on a disk to my sister.
at least mac has a functional filesystem and shell lol
I feel like Mac is the right option for “normies”. Windows is basically malware at this point.
agreed
Shitting on macOS like that is completely unjustified.
Nah, worst os I’ve ever used
Better than fucking windows.
As someone who hates Windows and refuses to use it, if I had to choose between it and a Mac, I’d have to choose Windows. At least I can remove the bloat and my keybinds and devices will always work.
Skill issue
No skill issue involved when your team arrives to work and every single employee’s screen sharing functionality stops working…and there’s no warning or notification why it’s not working.
No skill involved when your sound drivers stop working during a presentation and you need to reboot to get them working again because there’s no way to restart the devices.
No skill issue when the file explorer has no way to access the root directory - you have to run finder from the command bar and that somehow works.
No skill issue involved when an update breaks all local domains and you have no way to override, so you have to change all dev domains for everyone across the whole org…TWICE.
No skill issue when wifi and bluetooth randomly stop working and the only solution is to reboot.
No skill issue when pressing the play button and it open iTunes when Spotify is already open.
Not a skill issue when desktop transitions don’t accept input until the transition completes. Reducing the transition time does not help, the transition must fully complete before you can provide input.
I could go on, but I can only recall so much anecdotal experience from the few years I suffered through that shit. Maybe some of these things have been fixed, but release after release the experience would worsen and usability would degrade. I’ll never use a mac again, my productivity is too important to me.
Anyone who stans for MacOS are just lying to themselves.
Don’t forget forced AI bullshit
I haven’t used a mac in a few years - there’s AI stuff now? The OS was pretty bloated considering what it was - it used more memory than a Windows machine which is impressive.
macOS uses more aggressive caching of the filesystem and other things. Using available memory isn’t bad.
Swap is also bette4 because Apple chooses actually fast SSDs.
Using a Mac with only 8 GB of RAM is a lot more fun and performant than a windows machine.
There are very few and limited AI features now. For example Mail has a button to summarize text. There’s also a mediocre local AI to generate images. Apple focuses on locally run small AI models that add small features. It’s not in your face and demands you use it. You can easily ignore the AI features.
Compared to windrows macos is a lot better.
Well after all it’s all proprietary bullshit. I personally don’t use Mac or windows. Windows is trash BTW.
None of these happen on a regular occasion, I can’t even remember the last time ANY of them happened in my office where macOS is the default. 90% of what you experienced is probably user created errors**. But then again I realize I’m in a Linux sub and it’s what we Linux users do, tweak shit.
** except for the play button. Apple does like to force Apple Music over my already open player.
macOS is perfect for every day use for most people and for those that know how to use it outside the normal, powerful.
This shit happened all the time, it was a non-stop nuisance, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Retina display would disconnect daily, peripherals would disconnect when connected through a retina display, the entire OS one time would not boot and there was no real error message but was fixed by clearing some battery cache after we already ordered a new macbook.
These issues plagued our entire office, but you just lived with it because you didn’t have a choice. One ycombinator commentor described these issues as “papercuts”, and they’re so abundant that they moved away from MacOS entirely. Another commentor describes that the most recent release is the most “breaking” version yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47440759
It’s pretty ignorant to say “it’s perfect for every day use” in the face of literal users struggling to use it for “every day use”.
It’s understandable that you had issues and I have quite a few gripes with it as well, but I never had any of the severe ones you mentioned.
I use it for backend development (Go and C#) and Game dev. I’ve used Linux for a long time, Apple silicon is what made me curious enough to try a macbook for work purposes and I’m generally happy with it after 4 years of heavy usage. Windows I use exclusively for gaming but that’s going to change very soon.
It’s fine if you don’t like it but calling it a “non-computer” is dumb, and that’s what my original comment was meant to convey.
Thank you for providing examples. Some are fair enough.
file explorer has no way to access the root directory
It has several ways. From the menu bar: > Go to… > Folder > /
By default Finder no longer shows your main drive in the sidebar. You can easily enable that in Finder settings though.
You can also navigate the folder hierarchy up until you are at root.
cmd+upis the keyboard shortcut for that. You can also command + click the icon in the window title bar and then select the folder upwards in the hierarchy you want to navigate to.There are several other ways to do this as well.
reboot
A very common way to resolve problems on all operating systems.
update breaks all local domains
Weird.
release after release the experience would worsen and usability would degrade
I agree that macOS experience has worsened over the last couple of years. It’s still better than Linux and windows overall.
Same for Windows. It’s an opinionated meme.
Something is missing. Do you want a computer? No. Do you have money? Yes: Apple. No: Chrome OS
the interessting thing with linus is that he 1. plays the non tech person and 2. has pretty bad luck with linux fetures that are broken or bugs because he stumbles over them to 120%.
I also like the contrast between Linus and Luke because Luke drives Mint on his Laptop and cachy os on something other and he has very few problems.
Luke has had problems he mentions on the WAN show. But they two really arent comparable because Luke’s use case is completely different hes much closer to the average person. He only uses a web browser and some light gaming.
Average person?
In talking computer literacy, he is easily within the 1 percent of the 1 percent.
The difference is Linus is not an average person but for these Linux challenges tries to pretend to be (people who work in tech are generally very bad at pretending to be average users) meanwhile Luke wasn’t pretending to be someone he’s not
Oh does he do it like chess engines where it seems like playing at a low level is still playing with an almost prefect engine, only it adds random “inaccuracies” that are mistakes no human would ever make, like suddenly hanging their queen with no actual intent behind the move other then being a random mistake?
Like “oh, a average user would have made a mistake by now, so let’s remove an important directory to simulate that”?
Arch is goat. My first distro was Fedora. Absolutely hated DNF so then I switched to Mint but didn’t like Cinnamon— felt like I was using Android (I love Android but not on desktop lol). Also I has to wait longer for features. Switched to Arch with KDE and never looked back.
What were your issues with dnf?
It was a 5-6 years back so I don’t know the current state but I am sure it must great (also I was a Linux noob). It was terribly slow. Like my connection is 250 Mbps but I was getting downloads of like 10 Mbps with the repos even with the mirrors near to me. Every time it updated it like got stuck over there for a minute. I searched on reddit and there were a lot of complaints and the solutions involved the terminal to change the mirrors using nano (and I was scared of the terminal back then) so I just ditched fedora after a year (rest of the system was pretty fast though) and switched back to Windows for a few months then again to Mint.
There I learnt Linux fundamentals step by step for a year & a half and thought I want the latest and greatest stuff. I learnt something like the AUR existed. Installed Arch with archinstall with btrfs, first with KDE Plasma and I got excited and installed Hyde’s Hyprland script (lol) and shit broke pretty quick like in 2 months and I didn’t know how to fix. Went back to Mint, but thought naah. Took me a few days to learn but installed Arch the manual way by actually RTFM and a few YT Tutorials. Stuck with KDE and never looked back.
Heh, that’s quite the ride. Although not that unusual for Linux people, I guess
Thanks for sharing!
Ubuntu on a desktop, mint on an older laptop, and Pop_OS on my daily driver laptop…
What am I doing wrong here?
What am I doing wrong here?
Ubuntu on a desktop
See, that’s what I don’t get, it works fine. Plays games and browses the Internet. Why is that wrong?
Do you have any snaps installed? Each one slows down your boot time because every snap is virtually mounted on boot.
You think you don’t have any snaps? Ubuntu hijacks apt commands to install snaps.
You removed snaps completely from your system to avoid that? Ubuntu reinstalls it after an update.
And that’s besides the fact you’re trusting a closed source app store that’s managed by scum who sold user data to Amazon. They can literally add whatever spyware they want to FOSS and you won’t know it. And considering how many people accused them of illegally harvesting data through Azure Ubuntu images…
Linus has a skill for messing things up with Linux
Probably dropped it
cOnTeNt
You are giving him to much credit of you think he’s just pretending to break things.
Naw he’s just the ElectroBOOM of computers. Intentionally does shit wrong to show people how not to do things.
He wishes he were electroboom
It’s on purpose.
It’s a little crazy to me how the most popular tech youtuber struggles so much with Linux, meanwhile fucking PewDiePie, who’s not known for being particularly bright, has been making videos about Linux and selfhosting and how fun it is to configure his system lol.
The hardest person to convert is a Windows “poweruser”. They have an unfounded confidence in their ability to do things. They think because they know Windows well they should be immediate pros at other OSes as well.
LTT isn’t known for being bright either.
The main draw of his channel is that he has no idea what he’s doing.
Like his budget builds that rely on buying parts later so they aren’t included in the price. Or that he stands on the cases to close them.
It’s just about watching a monkey play with tech.
no pewdiepie 1000% messed things up on linux. the difference is he didnt show it in his videos
If you mess up and then fix it/start over and get it right the second time around, did you mess up?
Second time? That’s master level pengwinning if you ask me.
Well yes, but you also learned something.
What did he do this time?
homerQuietEveryoneHesAboutToDoSomethingStupid.jpg
He chooses pop over and over again at the worst times. The beta of cosmic was buggy for his use. And he installed it in the middle of a lanparty no less. That said. He eventually switched to mint same as Luke I think. Luke who has also been using, by the way. And he and Luke have had pretty positive things to say this time. Between windows actively going to shit and Linux continuing to chug along and improve.
The beta of cosmic was buggy for his use
was there no testing, alpha or pre-alpha builds available?
I have personally had a lot of issues with pop os on my laptop (related to power management, waking up the WiFi card, overheating leading to a kernel panic, GPU refusing to go to sleep), which disappeared as soon as I installed Endeavour OS.
What is supposedly wrong with my operating system?
he installed pop and it shipped cosmic by default with no warning that it was unstable. He had a bad experience for 2 days then switched to another distro.
A YouTuber entered a command, it warned him it would delete system files. He said yes and concluded Linux was flawed.
The joke is that if you’re that guy then even Pop won’t work for you.
Stupid take - the warning came when he ran sudo apt install steam, not even a joke. He said yes but there is literally no reason that command should break his entire OS. If it wasn’t flawed then why was it fixed later on?
He actually did a video after that where they do s “Linux challenge” and he, again, chooses PopOS, and again is the only one of the three participants to run into issues.
Nothing, just the national sport of complaining
Jesus it’s like Linux kids have a constant hate boner towards LTT
It’s almost like LTT fucking sucks.
Meh I’ve realized I’ve entirely outgrown LTT. I watched them back when it was just 4 dudes filming in that house, I learned a ton from them, then went on to learn stuff on my own, went to college and started an IT career, meanwhile they only just hired an actual admin after their organization already had over 250 employees or however many? It took longer for them to hire an admin than it took for me to grow up, go to college start my career and become a system administrator myself.
At this point it’s clear that the education level of LTT’s videos is CompTIA A+ at best and that’s just where they want to stay, which is fine, but they really need to stay in their lane if that’s where they plan on staying
They keep doing stupid shit with unrealistic scenarios, blaming the os and then claiming it’s fair. I enjoy the occasional LTT, but I get the hate too
Tbf they did address the pop os shenanigans on wan show, like, a week ago. I suspect the next video could be summarized as: “pop os should be considered beta, mint is your solid bet for something that just works, but cachy/Bazzite are neat and worth a look. Kernel anti-cheat and professional software are still show-stoppers for some people”
This really shouldn’t be a hot take but I think the people here will disagree. “Linus unironically did nothing wrong in his linux challenge video” The linux community really shouldnt act like he was using it wrong because its a terrible look.
No reasonable person can pretend there are no issues with linux. Sure you can get good at using linux and not run into these issues but they still exist and people will still run into them and you shouldnt blame the person.
On the other hand though, Linus isn’t exactly an ‘average user’, having spent most of his life working in the IT industry. I’m not sure it’s completely fair judging him as if he was a random clueless person either.
I don’t think LTT’s approach is bad exactly. I really just take issue with their argument that “there are thousands of ‘switching to Linux’ videos on YouTube, so we don’t need to cover that ground again.” It’s ignoring the fact that, for better or worse, they have the biggest audience and furthest reach in the space. There’s still room for “we’re approaching this like normies would,” but I really think they need to close it up with “if you want to do this, here’s how to do it right.”
Why would we want a “heres how to switch to linux right” from ltt? Even the big linux youtubers get roasted for making those videos incorrectly.
That video wouldn’t be for us. Also, the videos as they are are getting roasted heavily already, so it’s not like that’s gonna stop them.
Its pretty well received. I think only the fringe parts of the linux community who love linux but dont understand it are getting upset.
Maybe we have different expectations on roasting levels then. I’m particularly thinking of all the comments making fun of Linus doing a fresh install at a LAN event, picking PopOS again, setting himself up to fail changing all his devices at once to one distro constrained by handheld support, etc. For an honest followup advice video, I’d expect them to consult with someone like Wendell first, so I wouldn’t actually expect it to be a bad video.
My issue is the categorization which in turn paints a picture on a lot of OSes. Call it a Pop OS challenge, or debian challenge, etc. In people’s minds there is windows, ios, and everything else is “linux”. Just leaves a bad taste. Just like in your comment you’re broadly painting “linux” issues as if windows or such doesn’t also run into problems at times (especially with windows updates lately).
This is an extremely bad take.
99% of Linux distros behave the same for the most part. There are outliers, like immutables, or NixOS, but whether you’re using Ubuntu, PopOS, Kubuntu, or Mint, your experience with the “linuxness” of your OS will be mostly identical. I’m not talking about things like “the DE looks different”, or the overall “look and feel”, I’m talking about software compatibility, driver compatibility, etc.
You could, I guess, argue if they should say “we’re testing a Debian based distro” instead of “Linux”, but that’s about it.
As already mentioned, Ubuntu/PopOS/Kubuntu/Mint are maybe the four most identical distros in the entire ecosystem. But your point really does hold true even with less-identical distros.
Currently, I have an Ubuntu Server, an Arch PC, and an old laptop “test machine” running Fedora. These are totally different limbs of the Linux family tree, but things pretty much work the same in all of them. The main difference is the package manager: Apt vs Pacman vs DNF. But like, they’re all doing basically the same thing under the hood: checking your installed software against some repository to see if anything needs an update. The actual workflow is pretty much the same with any of them.
After that it’s pretty much just a question of downloading the desktop environment and software you like. Or finding a distro that comes pre-installed with what you want. To make a gaming analogy: linux distros are like Dark Souls classes: starting stats and equipment, but the starting point doesn’t lock you into your you build in the future.
NixOS is a different beast for sure.
They are similar overall, yes. Skills and knowledge also transfers between distros. The experience can vary significantly.
If your hardware is correctly detected gets the correct drivers including non free firmware installed, and is correctly configured varies wildly.
For some distros you might have to switch to the iwd instead of networkmanager for wifi to work correctly. You might have to disable powersaving on your wifi or Bluetooth to work correctly. If keyboard backlight works out of the box also varies. Bluetooth audio without cracks, distortion, artifacts might also need tweaking of bluetooth or wifi. Some drivers might only work well with certain kernel versions too.
Software compatibility has gotten a lot better thanks to flatpak and appimage. However having a current version in the package manager instead of having to search for it is nice. Even then you might have to try several options until you find one that works.
The quality of the documentation and the user community also matters a lot in practice. Do they yell at noobs to RTFM or answer welcoming and politely?
Ubuntu, PopOS, Kubuntu, or Mint
Did you just say Ubuntu four times?
For some distros you might have to switch to the iwd instead of networkmanager for wifi to work correctly. You might have to disable powersaving on your wifi or Bluetooth to work correctly (…)
And unless the people doing the “let’s use Linux for however many days” challenge have that specific issue, they won’t learn about it anyway.
On top of that - even if they said “OK, we’re using specifically Mint for 30 days”, and then you go out and try Mint, YOU might end up with massive issues, because your hardware is not supported properly.
They’d have to specify the OS and the hardware if you want a “reproducible experience”.
The quality of the documentation and the user community also matters a lot in practice. Do they yell at noobs to RTFM or answer welcoming and politely?
In my experience, after looking through r/Linux, r/Linux4noobs, or the various Linux communities on Lemmy - you’re going to get yelled at no matter the distro. It’s a matter of timing and luck (who’s currently online, and are they having a good day).
Did you just say Ubuntu four times?
That was kind of my point.
Kind of, but some distros are still much more stable than others.
It’d be like only ever trying windows ME or vista, rather than 2000 or 7.
You’re still getting ‘the windows experience’, but you happen to be using one of the least stable options available. Much like choosing pop vs debian.
The culture of different distros matters. Lots of people had issues with Manjaro because the devs let their certificates expire. Other distros weren’t affected by that.
It’s not a problem that’s going to pop-up during a “let’s use XYZ for ## days” challenge.
In the talk show they do, he talked about how even with the issues he loves Pop OS and even mentioned that very argument–that he has problems with Windows too, and at least this way one of those problems isn’t copilot.
Linus installed popOS at a friggin LAN, under pressure, and was rushing to get stuff working then got bent out of shape by comments on protondb about how to get his game to work. His colleagues sat at home, with all the time in the world to figure stuff out and were pleasantly surprised by their experience.
Linux has issues for sure, I run into them daily, but there’s a big difference in giving it a fair shot and saying “could’ve happened on Windows” and making a video as it only happens on Linux. If Linux came on hardware by default, and people had no idea it was Linux, they’d be complaining about their computer, just like people complain about Windows. Linus acts like everything is a Linux issue whenany things are just computer issues you get used to.
There is nothing wrong with installing linux at a LAN. Its quick to install and configure, its actually a layup situation for linux. If Linus had installed it at home he would have had an equally poor experience since the issues were completely out of his control. PopOS shouldnt have labeled Cosmic as production ready and shipped it. Valve should have fixed left4dead2 as its been a known issue for 5 years.
Weren’t people giving him commands, and he was running them without understanding what they did? Or am I thinking of somebody else?
That’s what the average Linux noob or casual user does.
Aha you were probably thinking of every one that is learning Linux ever born?
The big problem is Linus decides to pretend to be some “average user” when he isn’t one, and therefore ends up making absolutely bonkers decisions. It was super obvious in the last video because Linus was the only one participating who had major issues, and the only one participating who pretended to know nothing.
If they actually wanted to give Linux an honest shot and see if they can replace windows on one or more of their computers, the format would be entirely different. I think the format would probably start with a Q&A session with a well known Linux YouTuber like Wendel (who they still appear to have a good working relationship with) where they get the initial “here’s what you need to know and what I recommend for the best experience right now” then a check in call after 24 hours, 72 hours, 1 week and 2 weeks where they touch base, discuss pain points and how to alleviate them. Such a format would give an easy transition as well as great advise for the audience, but still present plenty of opportunity to directly see real world pain points and rough edges but instead of those rough edges being “haha Linux bad” they can instead be “here’s how to overcome them” or “this is an area that needs some developer time, anyone want to dive into improving this?” And maybe if they were really feeling crazy they could offer up some bug bounties for the pain points they find! Because that’s the power of open source is if you have the knowhow you can go in and fix it!
I honestly suspect Linus just doesn’t want to change, and that’s why he keeps failing to actually give Linux a shot. This might be an unpopular opinion here but it’s okay if he doesn’t want to change, but he should not be trying to tear down the Linux community for content in the process
I don’t know if I agree that Linus’ decision making can be attributed to role playing as an “average user” so much as it being a case of too much experience hindering him. He’s someone who has been interacting with tech for his entire life and has become very proficient at it within his domain of knowledge. He is definitely someone who is used to tossing the user manual aside when he gets a new device and stumbling his way through until he groks it, and he is using that same approach with Linux. This ends up meaning that he just does stuff that should work the way that he’s used to (i.e. follows the Windows paradigm) and then runs into problems because of it. I think that a lot of his issues basically stem from his ego not permitting him to take a step back to re-learn some of the fundamentals, or least map them onto his Windows-focused mental model.
All that said, Linux distros have varying levels of issues and quirks that have to be learned/dealt with, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with pointing those pain points out. Linus just needs to take a step back and realise that he’s going to have to actually learn something if he wants to be successful.
What do you mean it’s possible for a multi millionaire ceo with a mansion and a private jet to lose touch and not want to change? Preposterous.
I think this perspective is insane. They should absolutely not approached switching to linux by leveraging expert linux advice through their youtube contacts. Its fine for Linus to have issues switching to linux, most people do and the video wasnt just Linus having issues it was also Luke and Elijah having a good experience. When it comes to switching to linux Linus is an average user, he doesnt know about the system and is going in with little experience. LTT has gotten these pain points fixed and their video did not come off as “haha linux bad” did you watch it?
As a linux user I want linux to be an approachable thing, I would be pissed if it was presented as a thing that required expert consultation from wendel.
I doubt people with private jets use computers. Especially privately. Linux even less so.
He hardly even had to pay for it!!!1!!
Ummm if anything he’s actually making money lol. Seriously though its crazy that Jake quit because LMG didn’t want to give him a raise, then Linus buys a 5-million dollar jet.
HE HAS A FUCKING JET NOW? WHAT THE FUCK? Tell me that it’s an inside joke please. 😭
He’s always been a clown. I never understood why anyone took him seriously. He’s an entertainer (which is fine, it’s just not the kind of entertainment that’s useful to me personally).
It"s real and full of gold plated everything.
