Dae

My comment wasn’t “Linux works perfectly in every single regard.” It was “Linux isn’t hard to use for the things that do work on it.” I’m well aware Linux isn’t right for every use-case, nor did I say it was, I said it wasn’t hard to use. Compatibility is a separate issue here.

It depends! You’ll get a lot of recommendations. And they’re probably good recommendations. But there are most certainly Distros out there that are very simple. I would suggest you don’t be afraid to Distro Hop until you find one that you really feel at home on.

If you’re looking for something that’s simple, out of the box, and out of your way, I’d avoid anything Arch based. Ubuntu or Debian based Distros will have the most documentation and therefore minimize the amount of time you spend looking for answers, however, Fedora based Distros, in my experience, are rock solid and sit comfortably between stable and the bleeding edge.

I don’t get all this “gaming on Linux is hard” non-sense. All I have to do is set a specific flag on Steam and click play. That’s it. One step, and 99% of my library just works, sometimes better than on Windows.

If it isn’t on Steam, I search for it on Lutris and Lutris installs it for me, and I click play. And more often than not, it just works.

Hell, the mother fuckers that make Final Fantasy XIV’s quick launcher made that shit a flatpak! And it’s so fucking seemless, not a soul would know that game isn’t a native Linux game!

Where’s the difficulty?

Linux culture is about freedom of choice and movement. Any project can be forked, tweaked, expanded, or outright overhauled by anybody with the know-how in order to meet specific use cases. And those use cases are often the same as other’s use cases. But in most cases, they are still rooted in the project they forked from. I.E, any guide that applies to Ubuntu is likely going to apply to Pop!_OS or Mint, since they’re based on Ubuntu. So there’s rarely a downside to niche distros, because you can have something that’s close enough to a popular distro but that caters to your unique needs and wants.

For me, for example, I use Nobara. It’s rather niche and in most cases, it either works beautifully for you, or it doesn’t work at all, honestly. But it’s based on Fedora, so any guide for Fedora is likely to apply to Nobara. I get all the benefits of being on Fedora with tweaks and patches that make my gaming experience much more stable. And quite frankly, Nobara has made my rig run the best it ever has.

You write like you just came here to be angry at people who’ve made a personal decision to leave Windows like it affects you, and that’s gonna help neither you nor us.

At no point in my comment did I say you “write a single command.” I’m saying basic, every day things that I do are point and click. I want a new program? I open my distro’s app store, which is a GUI, and click download on the app I want. I want to play a game I have? I click play on Steam or Lutris. You know. With a mouse. No typing involved, my guy.

It also sounds to me like you’ve run into some real fucking assholes when you needed help. And unfortunately, they’re out there. But that isn’t all of us. I hope one day your negative first impression of our community changes, but it never will if you keep engaging in bad faith like this. So please stop.

I don’t mean superficially. Linux Mint was very similar in feel to the Windows 7 days. Just thinking about it makes me nostalgic.

I mean in the way that sometimes you gotta run something in WINE, or trying to mod a game only to run into how different the file structure is. Back end things that make you go “Oh, this really isn’t Windows.”

And it’s not. But that’s okay. It doesn’t need to be. It shouldn’t be. We moved to Linux before it’s not Windows. It’s a little frustrating at first, but taking the time to learn how it works was worth it. I’ve never looked back.

I swapped away from Windows about a year and a half ago. The last straw was them sticking ads in the OS. And from everything I’ve heard, they continue to boil the frog; they continue to add more and more telemetry and unasked for “features” and bloat the system more and more and more with every update. Even my own parents are growing tired of Windows; it’s a clunky, poorly optimized operating system that’s positively frustrating to use.

I will concede that not everything that runs on Windows will run on Linux. It’s true. But I severely disagree that Windows is “easier to use.” Of course, when you grow up on Windows, Linux has a learning curve. It’s different OS. But once I got past that? Nah, Linux is far easier and more intuitive in most cases.

Installing programs? Open your software manager and click a button.

Playing video games? Open Steam or Lutris and click a button. Occasionally you might need to tweak things, but you have to do the same on Windows sometimes, especially for older games!

I could go on but those are the biggest two examples that come to mind immediately.

As to another point you made, I personally gave up almost nothing. Destiny 2 and League of Legends don’t work, but I quit league before fgsh added Vanguard and neither of these games want me. That isn’t my fault, and it isn’t a short coming in Linux’s fault, it’s the devs being assholes.

In spite of this, I do acknowledge some people would have to give up more than me, and for some people that’s too much, and that’s valid! I hope one day they truly get a choice.