Yup, i wish talking about issues like this would be more common here rather than "what if we accidentally create a better world", and other really populistic views of what's happening.

It would be if those weren't flac files i had for a long time and i knew didn't have any issues.

I figured out all the issues myself, as repeated here, i'm a professional developer with some headless raspberry pi's & synologies i know how to manage.

This is a rant on the abysmal state of the linux desktop (stable OS just losing random crucial features, relying on a vulnurable protocol for basic functionality, supporting nice to have features such as HDR & variable refreshrate (which are both decades old) being an absolute nightmare).

Hence the title being a complaint about the linux desktop being an absolute nightmare and total crap, and not "help me, i'm stuck". I was not stuck, i can figure out the workarounds, but i was appalled at what i saw, i expected issues & struggling, but this was way beyond & below what i could even imagine.

Also evidenced by the dozen of distros i've had recommended so far, and conflicting advice (i absolutely do, and do not need wayland for variable refreshrates, depending on who you ask).

This is just a nightmare ecosystem to participate in, and that's what i wanted to get across, and i think i succeeded pretty well :).

Yeah, someone else totally didn't link the ticket (open since 2019) here about whatever ubuntu uses for its SMB share discovery defaulting to SMB1 and giving the exact error message i got when trying to see the SMB shares list of the server it discovered.

So yeah, not all of ubuntu defaults to it, but discovery sure does, and it's embarrasing. I made this issue knowing full well that the things i complained about are 100% accurate.

You can continue to live in your imaginary world where Ubuntu is better, but it simply isn't.

I'm not blaming them for an unknown apps developers choices, i'm blaming them for putting on their site that deb packages is the heart of ubuntu, but when i complain here that installing one is a nightmare on the latest ubuntu i get thrown at my head that installing deb packages is a stupid idea and i should somehow know better.

You can keep throwing up strawmen, but that won't change my point in anyway. But you can keep ignoring the point i guess, you're quite good at it it seems.

That the ecosystem seems so complex that even developers don't know how they should recommend their users should install an application. Haven't encountered that yet on windows. And i've had plenty of people here tell me "yes, you CAN install deb packages, and many apps will GIVE you deb packages, and the ubuntu page says Debian packages is the very HEART of ubuntu. But you'd be insane to install something like that". Does that sound like a good ecosystem, where people aknowledge that the best way to do stuff is ignore everything app developers & the makers of one of the largest distros say, and do the opposite and ignore apps that you can't install in the way that i should magically know is the best way.

I stand by my words man, but you're free to try to convince me :).

To install something you have to install it from the repository, and not download something from some webpage.

Ah yes, i should have known better than to rely on the documentation of the website of an application i should install. Do you guys really consider this a sane ecosystem? I google what kind of apps there are for what i want. I find the site of one i want to try, it says "here is a deb package for ubuntu", and then hell ensues. And when i share this experience your reaction is "you should have known better" O_o... yeah no. This is just insanity. If according to you even the developers of applications fail to send their users in the right direction on how to get their application installed, there is probably little hope for a mere user like me.

I wasn't on the ubuntu machine anymore, so i couldn't quickly find the link to the SMB issue, but you're in luck, someone else in this thread already did (he linked it with (in capitals) WHAT THE HECK as link title): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/samba/+bug/1697817

And he understood my frustration that such a bug would be open for about 5 years now across multiple major versions. :) . Now i've manually mounted some of the shares, the file manager suddenly also uses a better version of SMB to fetch the shared folders and it suddenly works. But this should take googling & terminal work to just explore a network share from a desktop environment.

Right clicked the .deb package > Open with other application > Open with the Ubuntu software install center app

That's because you're so lucky to not be on a clean 23.10 install, since as i showed in the link i posted, it's not there in a clean 23.10 install for some reason :). I found tons of links saying i should right click, and open it with an application that for some mysterious reason was missing on my ubuntu install :).

From my current experience, Ubuntu seems a lot more annoying. Ok, it spies less on you but at least windows mostly works :p

Thanks for the reply, i didn't really want to make this post, but i thought "it's 2023, how bad could it be switching to linux", and then this stuff happened. And of course it's downvoted because... the harsh truth isn't popular...

And the even worse issue is that i'm a developer, i'm very technical, i don't mind looking up solutions, i don't mind using the command line, and i've got some headless linux servers here (and yeah, synology/raspberry pi is the 'easy' linux headless servers, but i know how to use them and have done things beyond beginner stuff on them).

But these 3 issues right from the beginning were just... wow... a protocol that got breached 7 years ago being the default you can't change. The installer for a package type that many applications use to get installed on your OS suddenly going missing on the current "stable" version. And while i can right click on my desktop and change the refreshrate of my display via the display manager, having an app do the same probably requires some arcane knowledge even an experienced developer can't google. And HDR is another layer of hell that requires specific software, because why support a nice feature that has been introduced (googles it)... 20 years ago.... be supported by default by linux...

I get multiple replies "you're expecting it to work like windows". If expecting a stable version to be stable, 7 year old vulnerabilities being closed, and 20 year old features working is expecting the windows experience... then yeah, the linux experience isn't for me. But if that's honestly what you guys are saying... i really don't think the issue is me...

Yeah, it's not as if memes like this are still all over here on the fediverse: https://lemmy.gockandgum.party/post/https%3a%2f%2flemmy.gockandgum.party/4488?thread=0.16856.18063

and everyone upvoting it and people getting the impression that starting on ubuntu is still a good idea.

i've probably got nearly as many distro recommendations as i've got replies here, because as if you guys know which distro would support a whole 3 complicated usecases i gave (not use a vulnurable protocol, have an installer, and supporting some slightly advanced feature for applications to use).

I gave ubuntu a try because i've seen regular posts here about ubuntu vs mint, and people being pretty balanced about both, maybe i missed all the posts that said "using ubuntu will cause you hours of pain avoiding vulnurabilities that are almost a decade old by now, with unstable 'stable' version etc...", but i do remember plenty of posts here being like "just start with ubuntu or mint, it'll be fine".

It's not that i don't believe you, but i just typed out the nice surprises i encountered while just trying some (imo basic) things on a fresh install.

the SMB thing, seriously... this is a vulnurability from 2017, and ubuntu not only defaults to this protocol, but doesn't even have a way to disable it??

the refresh rate thingy, maybe a bit specific, but in windows it's just a setting you enable in any app, and it works.

and the installer being "oops, we forgot to replace it"... if the ubuntu version was marked as "this is bleeding edge unstable", i would have just taken the LTS version. but from all i can tell 23.10 is just the latest stable, that seems to be anything but stable?

This is not about "being open to it", this is just 5 hours of googling, trying things, realizing that things that i expected to be pretty basic are just working sooo badly. and i know switching from windows would take some effort, but hours of struggling to have to end up working around a vulnurable protocol that i can't disable, having to struggle with just getting some package installed (defeating the entire point of why these packages would be easier), and for now giving up on a nice playback feature.

And of course in this thread i've already had at least 3 different distros recommended with noone really knowing if the kodi usecase is supported by them because even people who use linux for everything have no way of figuring out which distro, if any, supports refreshrate switching...

you can be all "you have to be open to it", as i've got multiple headless linux machines and even got some complicated stuff running on it requiring me to do some more advanced stuff via ssh and actually understanding some parts of linux. It's not that i don't want to learn, i wouldn't even know how. Read the replies yourself, people are already "do you really need refresh rate switching?" (aka, we also don't know how to figure out how to get this feature that just works in other OS'es to work in any linux distro).

I'm not expecting everything to just work, and don't mind googling. but these were literally the 3 first things i tried on this linux, and each of them was hell... and googling for solutions was also hell with a lot of outdated advice, and regarding the refreshrates... not really much advice at all, even though htpc on linux is relatively popular & this is something that can be a known benefit to the playback quality.

And of course i'm getting downvoted for this post because posting the reality of trying desktop linux (as an experienced IT guy) is something that's rather not seen?...