Linux Users Thread

I’m gonna guess that this thread is about “why do you like Linux” similar to the Mac thread, so here goes.

Actually, I’m not sure where to start - there’s many things:

• free software: I’m not really in on the “no non-free software shall run on my computer” story, but the fact that almost everything is done in the open, by volunteers, is just brilliant to me
• customizability: Installing or uninstalling something is a matter of one apt install, and keeping software up-to-date is equally simple. Configuring most things is just a matter of viewing the manpage for the service, updating it, and reloading / restarting the service. I know that systemd isn’t everyone’s favourite, but I like it for this exact reason: every piece of its documentation (that I need, anyways) is just one man away, such as man timesyncd.conf if I want to reconfigure my NTP servers.
• runs everywhere: I run Debian on my (second) home computer, my Raspberry Pi at home runs Debian Buster (custom Kernel), my servers run Debian, the list goes on. Learning something new on one almost always helps you with all others.
• free software, part two: Likely not super Linux-specific, but the package management probably plays into this. For most things there will be multiple projects accomplishing the same thing (in different ways) and you will rarely be locked in to using a single x or y. For instance, I’m currently messing around with systemd-container (see systemd-nspawn - ArchWiki and / or I Challenge Thee) which is a nice and simple alternative for running containers compared to all the other solutions out there, but using something else is a matter of a few shell commands.

A big part of the reason is probably also Valve’s excellent proton which works wonders to play games on Linux, and a lot of my “Windows-only” Steam games now run on Linux without any hassles. I love it

Not messing around with licenses and stuff also brings the benefit of failure.
If this machine fails me I’ll just spin up a new one.
Should be a familiar concept in this crowd

Literally, if you even want to run it on a MBP, sure, or your smart toaster! ^.^

I will always go with Linux for anything serious in 99% of the time.

That being said, macOS for desktop is unbeaten. I’ve tried 5+ Linux window managers and came out disappointed every time. There’s always some detail not thought through that ruins your work routine; there’s always that just one piece of desktop agent that crashes every 5 minutes. I can’t put my finger on it exactly but it adds up over the years, to the point I threw my hands up in the air and just said “Mac it is”.

Again though, for anything server, Linux is king.

I appreciate the simplicity and customizability about it. Of course this doesn’t apply to Linux as a whole, it depends on what distribution and desktop environment (or window manager) you choose. After a period of distro-hopping and trying out different window managers, I finally settled with ArchLinux + i3, and some of the things that I appreciate are:

• Very few things happen unless you do them explicitly: the operating system doesn’t force you to run updates, it doesn’t just run them automatically, and it doesn’t send your data to the OS vendor.
• Things don’t change and disrupt your workflow for no good reason: I read heated discussions about ubuntu putting window buttons from right to left, and then back from left to right. I see Windows 8, with an interface designed for touch devices, being used primarily on desktop devices. And I just don’t care, because the appearance of i3 hasn’t changed since its inception.
• It’s a system that doesn’t attempt to hide everything from you, do everything “automagically”, and then screw up so badly that you’re completely helpless and just reinstall the damn thing. I don’t claim that I never have any issues with Linux, but the difference is:

  1. When things go wrong on Linux, it’s usually because I have screwed things up myself. So I feel in control, kind of.

  2. Even if I don’t immediately know how to fix it, at least I have an idea how to troubleshoot the problem.

Wall of text incoming with some strong opinions.

To call the Linux desktop landscape “simple” is overselling it. It’s anything but simple and very often you have to fight idiosyncrasies for a while until you stabilise it to your liking.

Many of the hardcore Linux users I was acquainted with could never properly gauge – and even admit the existence of – the huge initial effort it takes to roll a good 100% personal-tailored Linux desktop environment because they did it years ago and are now religiously protecting it so they don’t have to start over.

The discussion with these people usually goes like this:

• “Oh, you have to use Manjaro / Ubuntu / whatever. It’s the only way!”
• “Use i3 / XFCE / that-WM-you-have-to-customise-for-weeks, everybody else is misguided”
• “Yeah, don’t forget those 10 PulseAudio settings splattered over 3 files in your entire filesystem, both in root’s files and your user’s”
• “Ah, also do this…”

…and they quickly forget the whole thing can easily take you 5 weekends which you don’t spend with your wife, kids, bike, or any hobby or happy activity in general.

Again, they did it long time ago and it’s very easy to underestimate how awfully hard it can be to make your own garden from scratch and fine-tune it so well that you can’t live without it.

I am not saying Linux is bad. I used Debian for years about 10 years ago when things were much worse than now and still loved it times more than Windows. And, as said above, I always use it for servers. And always will.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and pretend there are no issues. Freedom and openness don’t necessarily buy you ergonomy and convenience.

Here is something most Linux users simply refuse to accept: even professionals often do not want to allocate that time and effort just to find a good environment. I have a happy personal life, a job that I love and want to be very efficient and good at, hobbies I like doing occasionally, I do light workouts and a lot of cardio, I periodically ride a bike for hours together with my wife, and try to maintain a well-taken-care-of flat (hygiene, working tech, and a ton of other stuff).

I simply can’t justify a weekend (or several) of tinkering with a desktop environment… and then completely dump it and start over. And then do that several times until I find the perfect one.

Sorry, not going to do it. It’s not such a small and light cost as many Linux users pretend it to be.

That’s factually very, very, false in my practice and experience. I’ve had Debian, Ubuntu, and even the almighty-I-only-do-stuff-if-you-tell-me Slackware peace out on me by the mere virtue of rebooting a machine after installing 5-6 package updates. Most times I had to fight with the damn thing for 1-2 hours before X11 feels like starting again… and that’s if the kernel update didn’t remove my SSD’s drivers for no reason (that I know of) and if I can even get to a shell session with a working storage.

I appreciate that my experience is rather dated – I am talking between 2007 and 2012 here – and I am pretty sure things have been getting better, but Linux as a generic desktop machine lost my vote a long time ago. There’s always something more to surprise you behind the corner.

I have a lot of work to get done and personal life to enjoy. I am not willing to get subjected to daily anxiety attacks whether my otherwise rock-solid PC (at least under Windows 10) is going to kick me out to a textual console on reboot with no idea why the graphics or the storage drivers failed to start.

…and none of that even touches the fact that Ubuntu has 2-3x more daemons working on the background on a vanilla installation compared to Windows 10. Are you completely sure it doesn’t send your personal info somewhere? They got busted once btw.

Ok, I’ll admit it, I spent more than just a few weekends tinkering my setup, reading man-pages and discussing stuff on IRC and elsewhere. I’m not going to argue that this is a good time investment if you don’t enjoy doing so. That is why other linux distributions exist.

Ubuntu is created by Canonical, a for-profit organization. So of course it’s naive to blindly believe it doesn’t send your info somewhere. But the fact that Linux is open source enables community-driven distributions, and those have been (afaik) free from spyware and other corporate crapware.

Thank you. I seriously have no idea about these other distributions though. Is anything coming somewhat close to a Win10 or Mac machine with sensible and pretty defaults that require less tinkering to get to initial productivity quicker?

I am willing to try again at certain point but I have to say I am not informed enough to focus my efforts in the right direction.

I love Dennis Richie’s quote regarding the UNIX philosophy (which applies to Linux as it’s a UNIX-like OS):

UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity

I am not talking about the philosophy. We all reap its rewards 40+ years later in the form of pipe-able tools like sed, awk, find, grep and a ton of other useful stuff.

I am talking about the time investment until you are 100% comfortable with your Linux desktop environment.