Tbh, with stuff like Winget and the respective GUI apps the process for installing or upgrading software is pretty much the same nowadays.
If I had seen this type of content when I was discovering Linux, I’d have probably stayed with Windows…
Open terminal
See whether the app is in my distro’s repos, flathub, or snapcraft (It’s not)
Go on the internet, search up the app’s name
Download the AppImage (might be a virus)
LibFuse2 is not installed (fuck me)
Install LibFuse2
Install Gearlever to integrate AppImage into my desktop
I can finally launch the app
Even if that’s needed, you can update apps w/o reboot usually (when sandboxed), and move opened files around (seriously wtf, Windows)…
When the hell would I need to update my Windows because of an app update? I only restart when there is a system update, which you have to do on Linux too if you want your kernel to stay up to date.
Well, it was what happened the last time I touched Windows in ‘22 (for work) – maybe a policy thing that a corporate app had elevated access and that’s why it forced a reboot on me for (some of the) “regular” app updates?
That’s more likely.
Good to challenge misconceptions regularly, so thank you! :D
On that topic… I assume not being able to move opened files (my “go-to” use case was a PDF in Acrobat) is still unfixed though, right? Seems like that’d require a major OS and applications change to be made possible.
Fuck, I hate AppImages so much. Never heard of gearlever, thanks i hope this helps a lot.
I haven’t had a DLL issue in Windows in like 20 years.
I haven’t had to restart to install / uninstall anything since WinME.
Only thing I can think of is installations that include drivers. And even then, not all of them.
I did
I don’t know about all the arguing and snark, but… I’ve been using Ubuntu (laugh it up) on my work laptop for the last 3ish years, and the vast majority of the time it really is “click install updates. wait 2 minutes. ok every program on your computer is up to date, just don’t forget to restart Firefox”. Can’t think of a time where updating sucked. Sometimes I even go through the terminal just because it makes me feel cool to be a hackerman.
I dread updating my windows pc at home. Cuts into my WoW time too much.
Coincidentally my windows PC needed to update when I got back to it. It took like 15 minutes and 2 restarts. I legit pulled out my Ubuntu laptop and Sudo apt-get upgraded that bitch just to flex on Bill Gates.
I’ve switched over a year ago and that’s the thing that, looking back, sticks out to me the most as well. It’s just insane that practically every application I used had its own update routine. Lesser used apps I had to update every single time before using them. Just constant interruptions everywhere.
Winget is a step in the right directions, but it still has to build upon and work around that same shaky foundation, and it shows.
Still pretty ez
no restart required
Not true for immutable
Nixos doesn’t need a restart
ohhh this one hit a nerve. the butthurt windows users community is out in full force :D And there are still Stockholm syndrome victims delusional enough to think that Windows is easier to install / maintain without realizing that the only thing that has them insist is habit.
Come get me when games are as easy to play on Linux as they are on windows
I mean they are. I game constantly and use a Linux only machine. The only games that don’t work are crappy anti cheat games from Epic. And they are crappy. So who cares?
I duel booted just for those and it wasn’t worth the headache. Linux is far superior in every way.
Most games on Steam work just fine when you turn on Proton. Gaming on linux has come a long way.
Moving the goal posts from OS handling to games is an admission that you know you are wrong.
Bro, all I do on my computer is websurf and game.
I usw Debian and all my games run just fine and are easy ti install. I have a 1k+ lib with various titles.
They are. I have about the same success rate with Proton and WINE(via Heroic Launcher) as to when I still duel booted Windows. If you’re talking about games with rootkit anticheats, I never played those in Windows anyway.
Okay, I took a quick glance at proton and it seems to be something you put on top of a Linux install. What OS do you actually use
I just use Mint. Just think of Proton as a feature of Steam. I just pick a game from my Steam library and select Force Compatibility mode on and install. Heroic Launcher (for GoG and some other things) is a few more steps, but I didn’t need a guide to figure it out. Heroic lets you choose either Proton or WINE, so I installed Steam first to minimize confusion.
Oh, and a nother nice feature of Heroic is that it will grab and Linux binary if it’s available even if that binary isn’t available on GoG. I was surprised that it grabbed the native client for Factorio instead of the windows version that’s on GoG.
Are there ever any performance issues from proton compatibility?
The overhead added by Proton, compared to the CPU time consumed by the actual game, is minimal. The greatest benefit is that you don’t have dozens of Windows services hogging half of your memory and CPU.
Some games have some quirks that can cause performance issues when running under Proton. Deathloop, for example, was good on Windows, but unplayable on Linux with the same hardware (Ryzen 5 2600, 16G RAM, RX 6750 XT). There was massive stuttering even on minimum graphics, and every level took several minutes to load. It works now, but since then I’ve upgraded to a 7800X3D, so I’m probably just brute-forcing my way through the same issues.
Probably, but I’m already running ancient hardware and I tend to favor retro and indie games, so I’m not the best to ask about that. Some people do report better performance under Proton though. Windows has a lot of bloat that doesn’t exist with WINE/Proton running in Linux.
That completely depends on the game. Many play just as well if not better, some play worse or not at all. Check out a site called ProtonDB for a huge list of games and their level of playability.
Proton comes with steam, and you can get other versions on top of it if you want.
If you’ve got steam, you can run games through proton very easily
Honestly, in terms of ease to play, SteamOS (or clones like Bazzite) don’t do under Windows. Heck, I’d argue they might even be easier.
The real issue is anti-cheat. But that’s just the next hurdle we’ll have to overcome.
SteamOS don’t do under Windows.
I’m really trying to figure out what you meant here.
Apologies. Allow me to clarify.
I meant that it’s not harder than Windows, when it comes to playing games. And I even made that claim stronger by proclaiming that it’s probably even easier.
Edit: SteamOS is the operating system found on the Steam Deck. It’s basically Arch Linux (btw), but with Valve’s (very) special sauce.
Can you run league on Linux? I can’t run it on my windows anymore cause if some security thing lol
We were able to, up until Riot chose to mess it up for everyone (including us).
I’ve been a Linux user on and off since 1996, and there are still times when I give up trying to install software because of cryptic error messages.
Yes, I had my parents using Linux Mint for about 5 years, but eventually my brother who lived near them switched them to Windows because if there was a problem with Linux he couldn’t help.
Don’t worry, this is definitely the year of the Linux desktop.
Perhaps its just gotten better, but I’ve been on it for a year or two now, and I haven’t come across an error message that didn’t bring up solutions when copy/pasted into google. Definitely varies by distro though, I was on EndeavourOS for most of that time, and being Arch, it has like infinite documentation.
You people always come off as old people on infomercials.
Anyways Linus desktop is a mess. You are delusional if you think it’s easier. Maybe more efficient workflows for certain things but easier is a lol.
I appreciate Linux for how well it can handle single-purpose tasks, like if I wanted a media centre or such, but after daily driving it for 3 years on my Desktop I’ve had enough. Anyone who thinks it’s easy has a lot of spare time they wish to invest into a thing that’s supposed to just work.
I love it for long running services eg *ardar + Plex but the desktop is nearly unusable.
Ubuntu out of the box requires you to install pulse audio, grab your device id via cli, and then run a script at bottom to set that device as the default speaker.
Ubuntu out of the box needs scripting just to deal with an audio source that gets turned off and on. And zealots will scream it’s ready for everyone on steam to use.
When was the last time you installed Ubuntu?
I’ve installed Ubuntu a bunch and never had to do that
Anyways Linus desktop is a mess. You are delusional if you think it’s easie
Use it before saying shit that’s so blatantly stupid
Have a nix box upstairs. It’s much more of a pain in the ass than any windows install. Year of the Linux desktop in year 20xx 🤣
Missing dependency? Don’t you like living away from your parents?
Let’s not cherrypick scenarios to try and pretend Linux is easier than Windows. Most normal people are nervous interacting with a GUI pop-up that gives them two options, never mind putting them into a terminal window where they could seriously fuck yo their machine. What about clicking the download link on a webpage, clicking next a few times and having them software on your machine, compared to having to build something from GitHub (how many people here have never had to do that?).
Most normal people are nervous interacting with a GUI pop-up that gives them two options
Sadly no. They should be nervous if it’s about making changes to their system. In reality however Windows conditioned them to just click the button labeled “Yes” or “Okay” without even reading the pop-up in the first place.
Let’s also not conflate “ease” with historical behavior.
Taking previous experience out of the equation, it is easier to type
apt upgradeand reboot to update your entire system than to click through 300 times in the system and multiple apps with reboots.That is a fact.
Like 3 clicks lol
Huh? 3 clicks to update Windows, Adobe, Office, that random text editor, VSCode, Steam, on and on and on…
You don’t even need the terminal. There is a interface to update if you are using a DE.
Most normal people are nervous interacting with a GUI pop-up that gives them two options, never mind putting them into a terminal window where they could seriously fuck up their machine
Maybe this is a problem that we should be addressing, rather than just making technology more of a black box, and raising generations of people who have no fucking concept of how any of it works.
Lots of people don’t care enough to learn
and raising generations of people who have no fucking concept of how any of it works
Only two generations were got to be technologically literate.
Let’s not cherrypick scenarios to try and pretend Linux is easier than Windows. Most normal people are…
Let’s not cherry pick users then. I don’t care about your normal users. My experience is better on Linux.
Unless you have a system without a GUI, you don’t need to open a terminal in order to update or install stuff. There is a GUI for that. And no, you don’t need to build stuff from GitHub for normal user stuff…
I tried that on linux, it doesn’t work if you want to do more than browse the web and other basic stuff.
You can do some seriously advanced stuff on windows using only GUIs
We were talking about normal user stuff that normal users do, not “seriously advanced stuff”… And I agree that most normal users probably don’t want to use terminals because they are not familiar with them. But normal users probably don’t and shouldn’t do “seriously advanced stuff”, no?
Yes, if you are trying to do “serously advanced stuff” (whatever that means), chances are you will probably need a terminal (or a terminal will at least be easier), but you shouldn’t be doing “seriously advanced stuff” unless you know what you are doing anyway…
I just wanted to install steam, but it wasn’t in the package manager list.
Then I tried apt-get and that didnt work, I forgot why.
You don’t have to do seriously advanced stuff on linux to run into issues without using the terminal.
My point was, even if you actually do some advanced stuff on windows you still don’t have to use the terminal.
It’s not realistic that you don’t have to use the terminal on linux if you want to do any more than web browsing and some text editing, etc.
That doesn’t mean that linux is bad, but let’s be realistic about what it is.
That experience is highly dependent on the Linux distro you’re using. Steam comes preinstalled on gaming-centric distros like Nobara or Pop!_OS. More “general purpose” distros like Mint or Ubuntu might require adding an apt repository before you can install steam from their GUI package managers, but adding an apt repo can be easily accomplished with a GUI as well.
Basically, if there’s no guide for installing steam for a given distro, or the process of installing steam is more than a couple easy steps, that specific distro probably isn’t well suited to run steam.
Weird, I would expect Steam to be in the Ubuntu repos (assuming that’s what you were using, since you mention apt), but maybe not. As for apt, or apt-get, they are just the terminal equivalent of the GUI package manager (synaptic? it’s been a minute since I ran ubuntu), so if something isn’t in the repos, apt at the terminal won’t find it either. If it’s not in the repos, you should be able to download and install steam from the website just like you would in windows. It gives you a .deb file which will launch just like an executable installer in Ubuntu. But to your point, yes, sometimes things in linux take a little extra thinking to get to work. Getting accustomed to the way Linux works can help overcome hiccups like this. Windows has many quirks as well, it’s just that if you use WIndows often you know your way around them.
This applies to pretty much all “Linux good, Win/MacOS bad” memes. I just assume that people either aren’t really serious about them and it’s just tongue in cheek, or they don’t have any contact with regular people.
I used to work as a(n assistant to the) sysadmin and the things I got called over never stopped to amaze. For instance, there was a case when software was updated on the work machines and I got called because some lady couldn’t use Adobe Acrobat. “It is asking me something, I don’t know what”. I come over and it’s just a TOS Accept/Decline window.
Some people do not understand computers to an extent that they can lock up in a state of confusion when a button has been moved 100px in any direction from its usual position.
or they don’t have any contact with regular people.
This gets my vote, the memes are so disconnected from reality they feel forced and not funny
been using linux for a few years both on servers and my pc and I never had to build sth myself
Chocolatey is the best option I’ve found for this on Windows:
Chocolatey was created by Rob Reynolds in 2011 with the simple goal of offering a universal package manager for Windows. Chocolatey is an open source project that provides developers and admins alike a better way to manage Windows software.
You can install & uninstall software from the command line and update everything installed through it with one command.
It’s not a real package manager of course. It can’t update the operating system, and Windows applications aren’t built for modularity and shared libraries the way Linux applications are. But it does automate application management like nothing else. I highly recommend this if you use Windows.
There’s winget now too, which is the official Windows package manager. I’ve used it a couple of times now and worked as expected, not sure how it compares to chocolatey outside of simple app installs though.
I always prefered scoop with which I had fewer issues and which installs everything without needing admin rights.
Windows side of things is getting better though, thanks to winget. Not perfect and it f’s up with certain packages but already a lot better than updating by hand.
Windows is not getting better,
CoPilot, Recall, all more unwanted spyware…UniGetUI is a good way to maintain software on Windows in a Linux fashion through package managers,
however that does not change that the underlying OS is pure spyware.Sure, but since the meme was talking updates my response is about updates only as well.
No restart require on Linux is a joke, right? Because I get updates that require restarts as often as I get them on Windows when updating Mint.
Yep. I’m on EndeavourOS which is about as far as you can get from Mint without going to like Slackware, LFS, or BSD. Basically every single run of pacman prompts for a reboot. I’m sure I could restart individual services or subsystems instead, but that’s not what the OS popup says.
Really? I need to restart my Windows less often, Fedora asks me every other day restart my PC to install updates
Fedora issue. I restart my Debian machines maybe once every 4-6 weeks.
I have the save experience with popos
Afaik mint just says you have to restart but don’t forces you. Iirc it was there to avoud any glitches which could be caused by apps interacting with each other in different versions(say some system app got updated and desktop environment is still the old since its loaded before update then cause gui mismatch due to different versions of ui toolkit)
I mean, in this case Windows doesn’t force you to restart either, you can just keep chugging along with the restart icon set the bottom right… That icon can stay there for weeks on my girlfriend’s laptop
Unless you’re updating the kernel itself, there is little chance you actually need to reboot your machine. Just restarting whatever service or application you’re using should do the trick.
This is the same on Windows, you can just carry on and then complete an update when you go to shut down the machine. Can’t remember the last time an app install or update required the whole OS to be restarted immediately.
I remember what it’s called, but at some point there was an app for windows that would check if your machine actually needed a restart or not. Basically the “restart your machine” prompt is mostly just a boilerplate. It’s very rare that those installers touch anything that can’t actually be loaded without a restart.
And on some distros you can also just reload the kernel without rebooting
Just following the update manager instructions
Kde neon made me reboot Everytime it updated. Turns out there was a setting I could disable. Afterwards I was never bugged about rebooting.
Used discover for updates
Maybe you have such a setting?
You do you, it can’t hurt to reboot and work on a fresh restart. But if for some reasons you need to keep your machine up, you’ll know it is less of a problem than on windows typically
Besides a kernel update… Which one?
Honest question, as I usually just restart to be sure I haven’t missed to restart a service or something, but theoretically I could restart every program and service, that got updated.
Maybe Mint is very conservative here…
Fedora requiers them all the time. Sometimes there is a driver update in there.
they’re not required, only the update manager thing wants you to. if you update via dnf you don’t need to restart 90% of the time
Probably driver update, like nvidia?
Ah yeah, mostly kernel module updates go along with a kernel update. But you are right, yeah.
Although, should be possible to just reload the module and restart X/Wayland, no?
Depends on your kernel, the distro kernel, and your package manager settings. One of the biggest selling points for Redhat is the live patch kernel updates with zero down time. However, Redhat is the original Linux distro and their devs do a lot of the kernel code maintenance and development.
Redhat is not the original. Just of the ongoing projects, there is both Slackware and Debian, which are both older than Redhat. Redhat stands out because they are a commercial, for profit company, so they have more money and resources to invest in Linux development than most organizations, and they have a vested interest since it is their product base.
somepackage requires otherpackage version >10.1.79
otherpackage is already at latest version
Have fun compiling it yourself and messing up what is managed by the package manager and what’s not. And don’t forget that the update might break some other package along the way
Huh, pacman always seemed to automatically work out those dependency loops, or whatever you want to call them, when I was on EndeavourOS. The only time I had an issue with updating was when I went like two weeks without updating, and then ran out of harddrive space halfway through installing the 600 updates.
I’ve been running Bazzite for several months now, and updating is absurdly easy and unintrusive. It’s basically impossible to fuckup (and if you do, it’s extremely simple to rollback). I can really see immutable/atomic being the future of Linux.
Manjaro, is that you?
If your distro maintainer’s do a good job, that situation never happen’s.
Or just use gentoo where that problem doensn’t exist at all.
Don’t use apostrophes wherever you see an “s” at the end of a word. If you’re unsure about whether or not to use an apostrophe, just don’t. Because statistically, there are far fewer cases where you need 'em than there are cases where you do. Plus if you missed the apostrophe where it should be, people will just assume you didn’t bother to type it or it was a typo. Whereas if you do type it where it shouldn’t be, it’s a clear case of “this person doesn’t know how apostrophes work”.
Shut’s the’s fuck’s up’s.
