The idea that Windows doesn't have it's own weird, mysterious, issues is hilarious to me. For months my windows 10 install would take nearly 5 minutes to start up after a full shutdown sequence. This was with the install on a fast SSD. I tried a whole bunch of things and never figured out what the issue was. Then, one day, it just....went away.

I'm not trying to make much of a point other than that: anecdotes aren't going to get you very far.

My problems with linux have nothing to do with the quality of the OS itself (which I personally haven't had many issues with), but rather with software support from companies that don't want to put the engineering effort into making their linux version as good as the windows version. And I can't really blame them, but some software I just need.

Two thoughts (I was in the same situation, constantly trying desktop Linux then pinging back to Windows after hitting issues).

1) Fedora is really worth a try, it's extremely polished. The best thing is the packages in the repo are generally much more up to date that debian based distros, which maeans less random PPAs to work around it, which cause issues.

2) The biggest change is having Claude Code/Codex able to diagnose and tweak things extremely quickly. If something goes wrong, I ask claude code (in a specific folder with various docs about workarounds) and it goes and fixes it 99% of the time very quickly.

Coding agents being able to fix Linux actually makes it _more_ stable than Windows for me. In my experience Windows is less buggy _in general_ than desktop Linux.[1] However, once you hit random issues you are basically screwed if basic attempts don't work. With Linux you can have a coding agent go thru all the reams of logs to find the issue and even clone the underlying source code to find issues.

[1] For example, there is some ridiculous problem with wayland and notifications on GNOME at least, see this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/work_items/358?... which has to be disabled with an extension unless you want to go insane

Contrary anecdote: I've installed and used Linux, mainly Ubuntu desktop (GNOME) on a dozen or so computers in the last ten years, including several older MacBooks, a Surface Go for my son and an HP I special ordered without Windows. I come from a Mac background and use the terminal, but I've never need to do so to get them to work. Sure I've tweaked them, but only cosmetic things like locales and default fonts. For install and use I haven't done anything special. Old MacBooks need wi-fi drivers, which usually Ubuntu will find. Besides that everything has honestly just worked for me.

> I subconsciously tell myself 'If I just used Linux, I could be like them!'.

Your intuition was right.

Learning to fix issues in Linux gives you long-term transferable valuable skills in troubleshooting and far-reaching knowledge. Learning to fix Microsoft's latest fubar gives you nothing, unless you're in corporate IT fixing other people's computers.

You'll become more confident and niggles won't bother you that much.

Linux friction is “unpredictable” but windows friction isn’t, because you have a lot of windows experience and not much in Linux. I don’t think you’d feel the same after a few months of Linux.

The article is really poor in details about what exactly is OPs workflow in windows and Linux, so we are only left to wonder. But it seems to me that the unpredictably of Linux and therefore the predictability of windows is in part because friction in windows is known to him while Linux is not, and also in part because maybe by accident the way he uses windows play nicely with it. Maybe if the user didn't distro hop so often he would have been more familiar with the architecture of the system and these issues like fedora update system breaking down (surprising because bazzite is based on fedora and it's been rock solid for a while, can't help but think OP is doing something really wrong there, but APT in Ubuntu for instance does tend to break for no reason, so I'll throw him a bone). It's like giving up often on something and blaming the thing for its unfamiliarity.

Does windows bloat bother you? It bothers me. Ever tried doing a windows install from something like tiny10 and then use the system? Nothing works quite right.

The rest of my argument as to why windows is less predictable than Linux is here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48150812

I empathize with the frustrations with Linux, and I certainly used to have them. But about 5 years ago I just... stopped having any issues at all. I switched to Debian around then, which may or may not fully explain the improvement. Point is, I've barely thought about or actively maintained or troubleshooted my operating system for several years now.

Hate to be the one to drag AI into every conversation, but I recently switched to arch linux and it's been delightful -- largely because of Claude. I have leaned on Claude heavily to diagnose and resolve issues that I probably could have theoretically solved on my own, but which also probably would have made me switch back if I didn't have help to resolve them quickly.

(Yes, I know arch linux is not what you want if you're a "I just want something that works" person switching from windows. That's not me, I'm more of a "I want all the control and responsibility guy". I just don't have four hours to spend figuring out how to get hardware video acceleration working in vlc by trial and error the first time I try to play a video. Twenty minutes though? OK. I'll even learn something in the process.)

I'll keep knocking on wood, but as a Thinkpad user who has used fedora as a daily driver since Fedora 19, I've rarely had any issues with Linux. Battery lasts way longer than the Thinkpad I use for work (windows machine), and mine is older. I don't game though, so there's nothing that I've wanted on windows.

I tried debian and found Ubuntu to be more stable, i.e., bugs are less annoying. Throughout the years I've been stuck with bug that would irritate but the linux experience is still miles ahead compared to windows. Not using terminal is a PITA that I just keep windows for whatever I really cannot run in Linux (the list is getting shorter).

With LLMs I've been able to tackle bugs to a level that either fix or lower down the annoyance level. It's still not perfect, but the tradeoff is in linux favor IMO.

"I've been distro-hopping for probably twenty years. Fedora, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Arch, and most recently Fedora with KDE Plasma."

Missing : good old debian :)

I gotta say, Fedora plus KDE - have not had any major issue, and certainly none as bad as desktop utility performance degradation on Windows 11. Probably a little more fragile feeling than Windows 10, but it honestly has felt basically same, which I wasn't expecting.

Absolutely agree with the OP! My first Linux installation was in 1993 when I hauled dozens of floppies from my Uni back home (X-Windows was like 15 floppies?). Even remember emailing to Linus about some issue and he responded. Ever since I _wanted_ to be using Linux but was always put off for all the reasons described in that post. I wanted a nice OS so I can do my school/work/hobbies but not constantly having to work on that OS, figure out dozens of config files, brick the system etc.

At this point WSL2 is more than filling this void. I even stopped using VMWare since WSL is that good.

I'm learning that while Windows has a bad rap in some tech circles, its surprisingly still pretty well regarded. This past school year my daughter and niece both moved from Windows to Macs. A couple of weekends ago I asked them both how they liked it -- they seemed to transition well to the Mac. They both said the same thing -- Windows was better at basically everything except the Message app and iPhone mirroring, but those two things made the Mac totally worth it since, as they put it, phone beats laptop.

But I found it interesting how, for non-technical users, they both really found the Mac still unintuitive and buggy compared to Windows.

I kinda switched to Linux when I realized that Microsoft had fractured the control panel into different areas in "Settings" and there was almost no pattern in how to get to the various system settings and diagnostic tools that had become ingrained in muscle memory for me over the course of 15-odd years.

I decided I'd rather start from scratch on Linux than Windows for reasons of Microsoft's various decisions and direction. Windows essentially pushed me away by saying my prior experience was no longer useful.

It's a decision I'm frequently reminded of how good it was.

This brings back all this nostalgia. I used to be all linux everywhere I could. The CD linux loaders on random machines work would make me use with work. Linux distros you'd get in a book from Borders. :) Loved it all. But then I had to edit video and images in a 24 hour film festival. And the pain. It just couldn't work constitently. Had to find someone with a mac to get it done. I know these days are so different with better image and video editors and many years of improvements. But still kind of shy from adopting linux again as a daily driver. Too stuck on Apple and OSX now

"¿Por qué no los dos?" A lot of the issues that he has seems to be running on hardware that Linux doesn't currently support well. Used 1 liter PCs that are old enough to have solid support under Linux but still fast enough to do serious work are $200-400 and can be accessed remotely from Windows by VNC or RDP.

To forestall the inevitable, yes, that's extra cost. Well, the person says the want to use Linux more. Do they want it badly enough to put money behind it?

> I don't want to use this thing, it sucks. Also, I don't want to change it one bit.

People really dislike change, it's the same thing about some freak thing that happens like twice that you heard of, like shark attacks, but still drive their ton and half vehicles for thousands of hours a year. People accepted those issues as part of the thing, they blame Linux in general when an application doesn't work, but never blame Windows in general when the OS doesn't work.

I really want to use linux but for me its the software. Games I play use anticheat that doesn't work. Software I use for 3d printing doesn't work without hours of workarounds. VR is poorly supported if at all. Usually every year I'll try linux, use it for a month or so, then be forced back to windows after running into a hard block, with the dozen ads forced down my throat welcoming me back. Hopefully one day I can commit to it.

Yeah same but I'm out of options. I don't like Linux on the desktop but I like Windows' privacy stance and use-hostile behaviour less. My Mac isn't much better. What I really hate is being forced into this corner.

Instead of dealing with this I have taken to doing activities where I don't need to use the computer now. So for example photography is a major hobby for me. I went back to film just to get away from the bloody computer.

You can just use Windows and run your required Linux distro inside WSL2. That's exactly my setup—I'm a heavy user of both, as I need both systems daily.

WINE via Crossover Linux has become very good. Also webapp versions of Office apps are mostly there and respectable if used in mixed environments.

WSL is okay but you are better going full Linux as host. Linux Mint is a good platform for most. Stable, keeping modern kernels updated, but not crazy bleeding-edge wastes of time.

You don't have to quit Windows but you can quit being hostage to Windows.

I think the battle linux vs windows showcases how, in the long run, free software tends to win. In 50+ years, windows will be a footnote in the history of technology, in 100+ years, linux will still be going strong as a multi-generational human endeavor started by a young nerd in the early 90's.

My experience too: "Linux friction is unpredictable. The update tool freezing for no reason. System-wide slowdown I can't diagnose. Notifications telling me too many programs are listening for file changes and asking me to decide whether to increase the limit (a decision I don't understand why I'm being asked to make)."

It's not really applicable nowadays as you can just ask any agent to solve most linux issues for you, it's literally 1 prompt away and you can snapshot your FS to be safe prior and lock it down to avoid agent mistake.

Haha, I love Linux, but I can't quit MacOs/iOs.

As many complaints as I have about Apple and MacOS and iOS, their products hit a niche and commoditized it.

There are much more annoying defaults in windows that are unmentioned, for instance the autoupdate automatic restarts.

MS-Windows ME was the reason I jumped ship to GNU+Linux.

I'm honestly surprised why it's taking the rest such a long time.

The distro-hopping and vanilla installs are the problem imo -- with Linux it is possible to strip your system down to the basic functionality so that you can actually understand everything what's going on and not be surprised. What is so refreshing is to realize that you don't need to pull in some baroque package you don't understand because the part of it you want is just 3 lines of bash and one line in a config file or whatever. But to get there you have to learn how to use the tools.

I always see the same when someone says things like this in any article, video or comment. There will be like 20 replies saying that it's because they chose the wrong linux distro. And of course each of those 20 will recommend a different one! Sometimes distros that I had never even heard about before...

In Windows, problems are felt universally... everyone and their mother is having the same problem and googling surfaces it easily.

It's the fragmentation in linux that will always make it tough for "normies". Distro differences is obvious first thing, but the two big ones are desktop environments (gnome/kde/etc) and app package formats (flatpak/snap). These add friction and more problems (I heard you like packaging: here's another package format and big ass repository for you. And portals? really?).

I just keep to a simple desktop in fedora using rpm/dnf and build from source if I have to. Yes, I know that's not an answer for normies, but there's not going be simple answers.

I had a similar experience some years ago. On-off with Linux/macOS, but it was clear that I only had to take the pain long enough to overcome the urge to switch back to my good old macOS.

And what can I say: It worked. There are still aspects I'm missing (Preview app, Mail) and other Aspects I really hate (Printing on my Canon MB5150 just does not work) but I stayed. I found workarounds and solutions, fought my way through the distro-jungle and I'm glad I made it.

All in all I think it is more a know-how Problem, than a Problem with the system itself.

However, if you don't have this time, it's understandable but how much time goes into experimenting every year and then switching back?

This was my experience with linux the first times I used it years ago when I lived in a different state, but I tried it last year and it's night and day.

Kubuntu (Ubuntu with the KDE plasma desktop) is quite windows-like without the advertising and crappification. KDE is doing a great job honestly.

I've never experienced what the writer has, and it would be interesting to know more about their system setup to diagnose the alleged network slowness. Package manager is a network app, so it sounds to me like there is something strange going on system-wide. Perhaps the writer has a new-enough network card from a vendor that doesn't have driver support?

FWIW I am essentially full-time Linux on all my devices for the first time in my 20 years since first using it (Ubuntu 6.06). The only issue I had is with a wifi card that is a brand-new spec without Linux support - I happened to have another wifi card that has a more open chipset that is also wifi7 that works great.

Here's my quick intro to anyone interested in running a Linux machine for gaming and everyday use.

https://docs.zeropolis.net/doku.php/tech:cachyos

Sorry but wtf is that guy on?

> I need my machine to work. I can't spend an afternoon tweaking my computer anymore.

Until Microslop OS decided on its own that you haven't had a reboot in a while and since we're at it some of the drivers you desperately need suddenly are not kosher anymore.

When stuff breaks I prefer something I'm actually allowed to repair. That's just me.

I switched to bazzite-dx for my personal computer ~6 months ago. i7-13700K / 5070 Ti / 32GB DDR4 / 5120x1440 240Hz HDR

It's been perfect for me. The included Bazaar app store is very impressive compared to something like the apple app store. It reignited the lost joy of opening up the app store to find something new and interesting. A wonderful contrast to current meta of app stores just being a front to push expensive SaaS products, with platform operators taking their slice at gunpoint on the payment processing side.

It also includes a lot of development related packages by default, so you don't need to worry much about layering your basic tools with rpm-ostree. I generally found that most things I wanted as a developer and gamer were already installed or easily installed. The default KDE software is all good too. Perfectly functional utility software for viewing media, calculator, paint, remote desktop, text editor, filelight (so fast. way better than windirstat).

Flatpak is a treasure. With Flatseal you can view and manage application-system permissions with a level of granularity I have not seen in other systems. And most importantly Flatpak gives application developers a powerful common target to create a Linux bundle that will work on ~every~ distro. Downloading and installing my common apps like discord/.was extremely fast.

The singular deficiency I've seen is games that require anti-cheat. I'm not a heavy competitive gamer, so I simply do not play those games. I still keep a small windows partition around, should I fancy a game of league of legends, but I haven't booted it in at least two months. Last time I did all I could think was "holy shit. it really is this bad. it wasn't my imagination."

Nvidia drivers have been rapidly improving recently. HDR support in KDE 6.6 is really good. Better than windows actually. I have less HDR related problems on Linux now than I did on windows 11.

Old game compatibility is OUTSTANDING. On Windows I literally could not play CivCity: Rome with my ultrawide. With no windowed mode option, this 1280x1024 game was stretched across my entire screen and I couldn't stop it. On Linux the gamescope tool provides a custom isolated graphics context to any game you designate at your desired resolution/refresh rate. I can simply add "gamescope -W 1280 -H 1024 -r 60 -e -- %command%" to my steam properties for CivCity: Rome. And I get a properly sized window in borderless mode running at the correct frame rate for the game. Mouse jitters are fixed. Resolution size is fixed. Game runs perfectly.

As a longtime dabbler, the Linux ecosystem has made crazy progress in the last few years in bringing about the fabled "Year of the Linux Desktop". For me, that year was 2026. At this point I don't see why I would ever go back.

Fedora + KDE feels like coming home to windows 7. Anything else, YMMV.

> Second, the update utility got stuck. Just frozen. Couldn't open it. I hadn't tweaked anything, hadn't installed anything unusual, hadn't deviated from the vanilla setup. Day seven of a fresh Fedora install and the update tool was bricked.

"update tool was bricked"? What?

Is this AI generated? The “two things broke” reasons are just so laughably bad in a real world context yet strangely vague.

you can now ask a coding agent to debug & fix these issues

this resonates with my experience. once every 3 years I try linux as primary OS for my home PC, I do small stuff with C/python, browse web and play factorio. I use linux in VM on my job daily, so I am not a beginner, but gosh, linux sucks. Everything breaks constantly even when doing NOTHING. Nothing ever works installing first try, you always end up googling stupid error message and stumble upon 250 other idiots that try to solve same issue. after trying 5 solutions, one (or combo) will hopefully work. Then, you can hang-up entire system by a stupid python script or your own buggy program and I miss unkillable always working task manager that can recover almost every hanger (and just stfu about reisub) without needing to restart the whole system and killing my FKIN FLOW! ugh. I just use WSL2 for rare cases where I need my unix build tools and forever abandoned the idea of switching to linux. Life is too short wasting it on googling some nonsense shit that just have to fucking work.

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