Is it me or is (desktop) Linux still a terrible experience? (startrek.website)

submitted 10 months ago by racemaniac@startrek.website to c/linux@lemmy.world

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Every so often i start believing all the posts about how Linux really made a lot of progress, and the desktop experience is so much better now, and everything is supported, and i give it another try.

I've got a small intel 13th gen NUC i use as a small server, and for playing movies from. It runs windows 11, but as i want to run some docker containers on it, i thought, why not give Linux a try again, how bad can it be. (after all, i've got multiple raspberry pi's running, and a synology diskstation, and i'm no stranger to ssh'ing into them to manage some stuff)

Downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop (23.10), since it's still a highly recommended distro, and started my journey.

First obvious task: connect to my SMB shares on my synology to get access to any media. Tough luck, whatever tool Ubuntu uses for that always tries SMBv1 protocol first, which is disabled on my synology due to security reasons. If i enable it on my synology i get a nice warning that SMBv1 is vulnurable and has been used to perform ransomware attacks, so maybe i'd rather leave it disabled (although i assume that's mostly the case if the port were accessible from the internet, but still). Then i thought "it's probably some setting somewhere to change this", but after further googling, i found an issue that whatever ubuntu is using for SMB needs a patch to not default to SMBv1 to get a list of shares.... Yeah, great start for the oh so secure linux, i'd need to enable a protocol that got used in ransomware attacks over 6 years ago to get everything to work properly... (yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)

Then, i installed Kodi, tried to play some content. Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it's not switching to the refreshrate of the video i'm playing. Googling further on that just felt like walking through a tarpit. From the dedicated librelec distro that runs just kodi that has special patches to resolve this, to discussions about X not supporting switching refreshrates, and Kodi having a standalone mode that doesn't use a window manager that should solve it but doesn't, and also finding people with similar woes about HDR. I guess the future of the desktop user is watching stuttering videos with bad color rendition? I'd give more details about what i found if there were any. Try googling it yourself, you'll find so little yet contradictory things...

Not being entirely defeated yet, i thought "i've got this nice GUI on my synology for managing docker containers & images, let's see if i can find something nice on ubuntu", and found dockstation as something i could try. Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and ... "no app installed for this file"... google around a bit, after some misleading results regarding older ubuntu versions, i found the issue: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/install-deb-ubuntu-23-10-no-app-error

Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn't replace it yet. Wouldn't want a user to just be able to easily install files! what is this, windows?

For real, i see all the Linux love here, and for the headless servers i have here (the raspberries & the synology), i get it. But goddamn this desktop experience is so ridiculous, there has to be better than this right? I'm missing something, or doing something completely wrong, or... right?

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[-] http_418@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

so to summary your first steps were:

accessing a inhouse NAS
setting up kodi and trying to switch refresh-rates & HDR
running some docker UI

i have 2 question - if you want to run rather advanced stuff

why not invest some time to check how its done in linux?
why did you chose a beginner distro focusing on the 80% needs of a home user

all of your described usecases are possible - no exceptions, but after you obviously spent decades of time in other desktops, you might move out of your comfort zone to make the next step. ubuntu is pretty easy for the easy stuff, linux as it is makes a fantastic system if you want to do some advanced stuff, but it lets you do the decisions (which means you(!) have to gain the skill to do the decisions)

we're here - the community is here to help ... but not here to do pre-sales for someone .... my tipp:

check what you want to do
check how its done
do it
you face a problem - provide a description and ask for a solution, but do your part

long story short - i think 90% of users would be happy with windows, mac os and linux just the way all of them come out of the box. most of the time they spend in a browser, checking photos or consume some media .... all of before mentioned OSs can do that pretty much without any hickups

if you go into the advanced stuff its a different story. macOS will do lots of decisions for you (but they might not be in your interest). windows has such a big user base that you have a great chance to get some ready to use description because somebody faced the exact same problem years ago. linux - advanced stuff - but no willingnes to learn - yeah man, that won't be a good match

[-] sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

As others have said, I think this is an Ubuntu problem, not a Linux problem. I've used Linux Mint Cinnamon and Manjaro KDE on the desktop with literally zero problems. However, I installed Ubuntu on a server because I figured that Ubuntu's (former) popularity would mean there would be a much larger online knowledge pool to help with problems. Also, an IT friend recommended it. Unfortunately, I'm regretting installing Ubunbtu. Canonical's use of snaps at a deep level has caused me a bunch of random problems. Sure, problems can be fixed or worked around, but it is definitely the least friendly distro I've used. I should have heeded the warnings and stayed away from Ubuntu.

[-] Blaster_M@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Having tried everything here, Mint

[-] Reacher@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago

To be honest it seems like it's a specific problem to you. I use Linux desktop for many years and for 3 years exclusively and it's a much better experience for me than Windows (in every aspect).

I think it's just a lack of experience on your side. You are comparing your years of experience on Windows with a OS you barely know.

Just because you are a "power user" on Windows doesn't mean you can handle Linux the same way.

[-] racemaniac@startrek.website 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I can tell you i don't need any windows experience to browse a discovered network share, enable a setting in an application and have it just work, and click an .msi file and expect windows to not have removed the handler for that file type.

I get it, you like linux, but blanket statements like this are just so unproductive. "and it’s a much better experience for me than Windows (in every aspect).". Sorry, i just don't believe you. I'm sure you're happier with linux for many good reasons, but there have to be things that windows did better.

Just because you are a “power user” on Windows doesn’t mean you can handle Linux the same way.

I'm not expecting that, i just wrote this after 5 hours of frustration when trying to get imo pretty basic things to work. This is not just "i clicked or installed something and it didn't work". I'm a developer, i've got many docker packages running on my NAS, i know my way around a linux terminal. This is "they didn't work, so i started googling, then 2 hours of frustration later i settled on not being able to just browse to my network share in the file manager and mount them somewhere via some fstab editing in the terminal". and "ffs, i just wanted to try a docker gui, how hard could it be to install a deb package which the ubuntu site itself says "deb packages are the heart of ubuntu" (ubuntu must be stone dead if that's the heart). And the refreshrate & HDR is nice to have i guess. But yeah, i want nice things, they don't seem such unreasonable features to request. And i wouldn't mind if i had to follow some complicated guide to get there. It's just after hours of googling, i'm no closer then where i started.

What exactly would be the linux way? It's a nice thing to repeat, but how would you describe the linux way in this context? I'm a new linux user, i want kodi to switch my display to the correct refreshrate when i play a movie. I want to follow the linux way, what is that way?

[-] Reacher@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

That's just not true. If you give your 90yo grandma a Windows computer she is gonna struggle hard.

You are a Windows user for now. You need to learn Linux as you learned Windows years ago.

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this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2023

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