cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100
Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
I still have win on my laptop, but I barely use it. I decided to install CachyOS on my new desktop, and it works better than I expected) Still have some problems, though, and they mostly come down to my reluctance to do research. Here are the main ones: My azeron is not supported. There is antimicrox program recomended to map inputs, and it worked first time I configured it. But then I decided to change it a little, and changes will not apply, keeping my first configuration. After I leave computer unattended for several minutes, it won’t properly wake up. Strangely, it wakes up normally if I send it to sleep manually. Some programs (mainly Steam). Take unexpectedly long to startup after boot. What is worse, window system completely freezes while it starts up, the experience I last had with Windows))
Anyway, I’m happy and not going back
I’ve used a few different distros over the years: Debian, Ubuntu, Neon, openSUSE Leap
Never once has a major version upgrade ever gone 100% successfully. Even on a bog standard system with no 3rd party repos or niche hardware. I don’t know why it’s still so difficult
When my PC goes into sleep or hibernate, my keyboard won’t work after it wakes up. I have to unplug and reconnect my keyboard every… single… time…
Except for this issue, my PC works perfectly fine and better than Windows in nearly every way.
Energy management is the part that still complicates things most for me. Rfkill not being managed correctly. Machines that suspend but don’t hibernate, or that hibernate but don’t suspend. Laptops that de-suspend during transport. Batteries that overdrain during suspend. Bluetooth. And most annoying of all, NVidia (insert Torvalds iconic scene).
I can’t figure out how to run game mods that are arbitrary .exe programs that are meant to hook into a running game. Specifically, otis_inf camera tools with, for example, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. I’ve tried protontricks but its so damn complicated and poorly documented I don’t really know how.
For me it’s the fact that there’s no “perfect setup” for anything. This likely only applies to my specific machine (kids, don’t buy an asus rog strix, trust me) but I can never get the “ok this setup is perfect, everything works exactly how I like it, I can’t complain”
What I mean by this is for example KDE Plasma 6. All my apps and everything work on it. games work flawlessly, all my dev tools, great. so I should be happy right? no. workspaces suck on multi-monitor setups, no native auto tiling and the third party script that does it is kinda wonky. Ok fair enough lets use something else like say Niri or Sway or Hyprland whatever. cool I got my tiling, I have my vim nav, awesome right? no certain games don’t work with these WMs as they all have issues with mouse constraints on certain xwayland stuff that KDE has managed to solve.
OK fair enough lets try an x11 WM. nope can’t do it on my laptop as I have both an integrated AMD gpu and and discrete Nivida gpu therefore x11 can’t handle it as far as gaming goes.
There’s a few other things like that. Like I want to use something that isn’t packaged for whatever distro so you go with the app image of it but it’s pretty much useless since it won’t integrate with your system. i.e. the appimage of Tabby. Or waiting on a package to get approved but the maintainer drops out at the last minute so either you have to pick it up or wait on someone else to which essentially resets the process (yay nix pkgs).
Essentially with linux in most cases the focus always seems to be on fixing the complicated things while ignoring the easy user experience things. Like workspaces shouldn’t suck as much as they do on Plasma and the “fix” coming next month isn’t going to improve things that much. oh boy I can pin a single app on my second monitor…that doesn’t fix the dreadful workspace experience on Plasma. ALL they have to do is allow independant sets of workspaces per monitor. that’s it. that’s all I want. but the devs at KDE, just like their opinions on tiling, will say “well we don’t use workspaces like that so you won’t either”.
I have to turn on my screen before turning on the PC otherwise Linux doesn’t appear on the screen.
Also if the screen goes into standby In often have to restart my computer.
I have Nvidia so not sure if thats the reason
In my case is Kernel Anticheats that work exclusively on Windows. It’s a pain to switch to Windows just to play those games. Obviously the fastes way to fix this is to directly not play those games anymore.
Not a real big issue, but sometimes (not all the time) when my Ubuntu OS (24.04.3 LTS) puts my desktop to sleep (automatically after 2 hours idle) when I go to wake it up it’s as if I’ve rebooted. All my applications are closed, I have to login etc, but it doesn’t really do a full boot sequence with the option to enter BIOS etc.
Like I said, not a big deal as I’m not (usually) dumb enough to leave unsaved work sitting around, but it is kind of annoying.
I use Fedora on a laptop, NixOS on my PC and Debian for the servers. It is better than Windows in almost every way. Except:
When connecting a bluetooth headset to the Fedora laptop, lock it for a break and unlock it again, the headset won’t work. Only a few times bluetooth on and off helps, sometimes a whole restart. And connecting two devices the same time (like mouse + headset) can lead to both not working.
On NixOS/Hyprland Drag and Drop feels very wonky, for example re-arranging the toolbar in FreeCAD by drag and dropping the elements is more of a game of luck, if everything ends up in the place where it should be.
Getting the AMD-GPU to work with darktable always requires some time of tinkering, after setting up a new OS.
Permissions management. I recently tried creating a new exfat partition on my external HD using the default KDE Partition Manager. When finished, I found that only the current (admin) user had write access to the drive. I tried changing this using the Dophin file explorer. It appeared to let me change these permissions through the Properties menu and the drop downs within the Permissions tab, but nothing changed after hitting OK. I was eventually able to fix it using the chown command in the terminal, but I feel like I should have been able to set this when creating the partition as well as in the file explorer.
remote desktop is pretty much useless. i can do most things through ssh, but some things i just want a gui for, like changing gnome settings or something. i can’t figure out how to remote-login a gnome session or vnc. of course, i can pass a firefox session or similar, but that’s not really enough.
Nvidia drivers (I assume) cause random freezes requiring system reboot, maybe once or twice a week.
Tempered by the modern miracle that it runs windows games at all! I barely game on windows now except for a couple troublesome titles and the lack of wireless xbox controller support.
Audio is always the final straw for me. I usually have multiple devices, multiple headsets, whenever i want to switch it’s a mess and things don’t always work. Also have hit or miss support for higher bitrates.
Also moved to a rodecaster for my audio and it does not support all the bells and whistles in linux.
