Personally I haven't. While Linux is imperfect, choosing the right distro makes the rest of the experience straightforward. And with it's whole complexity, I find Linux more user friendly than Windows. Even driver issues, broken shadow file ownership and KDE specifics only made me more confident about my choice to use Linux after I solved everything.

OQB @pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works

Is it perfect? No. It does have bugs and issues which can be hard to track down. But it is free, respects my privacy, respects my choices, doesn't use dark patterns, doesn't contain ads, has lots of options to configure it, it's super fast.. so I love it.

I'm going to make the switch but I find the sheer number of distros overwhelming. I only know unbunto, but everyone says it's shit. Just gotta do research.

Not on the kernel itself, just a minor bug that got fixed in the next release but could still choose the older kernel until then. OOM sounds like a bad idea when running out of memory - let the user chose what program to stop and handle it gracefully. Picking random process is bad. Others? DRM video at 1080p does not work on raspberry pi and it is not Linux fault really. Transition between X11 and Wayland took a long time to happen. Needed it earlier. Like before Ubuntu MIR. What impressed me is Linux and live cd. It is golden. Be able to surf the web while installing or just troubleshooting. Tiling Windows Manager and you can do whatever you want and customization.

If you're not disappointed at something with Linux, you're lying to yourself.

And I love Linux and wouldn't use anything but.

Yes. Bluetooth has never worked correctly for me, NEVER.

Across multiple distros and multiple adapters, I've gotten various problems. Right now on NixOS, reconnecting a peripheral never works, I get an error that br-create-socket failed, and the only solutions are to restart the computer or forget and re-pair the device. I've gotten this error on two completely different Bluetooth adapters.

My Bluetooth works perfectly on Windows. I don't know why Linux is so finnicky about it.

Is it a bluetooth issue itself, or an issue with the drivers for that particular bluetooth hardware. Imperfect drivers has always been an issue under Linux, and will remain an issue as long as Windows has over 90% market share.

Trying to find the path of a mounted USB stick is painful as well. Is it at /mnt, /media or /run? Who the fuck knows.

At least with windows you just have drive letters

If we're comparing Linux to Windows, then it should be noted there's Plasma and Gnome that will auto-detect any USB stick in existence and show you its path in the GUI.

Oh yeah, totally, but when using the terminal it's a pain

Does lsblk not work? I checked on my machine and it shows the correct path, assuming you know your stick is sdb or whatever. Something like lsblk -o MODEL,MOUNTPOINT is (generally) a bit more clear but admittedly getting into the 'pain' territory.

Oh god this one, I never understood why mounting drives in Linux needs to be so convoluted. It's the whole reason my NAS is running on LTSC. Adding drives to my NAS under windows is literally plug and play where as with linux theres always some bullshit.

I have neither the time nor the inclination these days to troubleshoot that bullshit.

No.

I've only even been disappointed at myself.

And Nvidia.

I'm now completely free from Windows in my personal life. After running Linux on my notebook for years and occasionally dual-booting on my Main PC, I purged the Windows partitions back in March and switched over to Bazzite. Everything works like a charm - with Firefox being the only exception. I can't get the new profile manager to work in the flatpak version or native via rpm-ostree. I have a workaround using distroshelf, which is not perfect (e.g. not being recognised as a browser by the "Webapps" application) I never had any problem with this feature on my Notebook (EndeavourOS). Anyone with similar experiences?

Not being able to use middle click as a scroll tool. For an OS that's supposed to be about user choice, this option is stupidly baked into the depths of the kernel.

It's because X-Window, the original Unix (and thus Linux) desktop system, supported 3 button mice WAY before Windoze did. It used it for the clipboard paste operation; you highlight some text in one window, and it's immediately put on the clipboard; then when you middle-click, it's pasted into whichever window is under the mouse pointer. Most old hand Linux and Unix users like this behaviour.

It's been optional, and configurable for a long time. It's mainly controlled by the receiving window's configuration, but you can set it globally to do just about anything supported by your version of X-Window, including to scrolling. It's been like this since about the late 1990's, but it's just not the default behaviour, probably because for much of that time, most Linux users preferred the X-Window behaviour.

'Kernel' is probably the wrong term to use. 'Not easily user accessible setting' might be more accurate.

but you can set it globally to do just about anything supported by your version of X-Window, including to scrolling

I'm not aware of any way to get Windows-style autoscroll on any distro without a lot of hacking. That was my takeaway from when I spent several hours researching this a year ago.

It's not a kernel thing, more like a libinput thing. Libinput has an option to make it autoscroll, and if you're on KDE, you can find the setting under mouse settings.

Libinput allows you to activate omnidirectional scrolling by holding the middle mouse down, which is not the same behaviour as windows / (mac?) . It's confusing since both features have the same name.

What's the behaviour on windows?

Click to toggle enter / exit vertical scroll mode. While in that mode, moving the mouse up or down from the original position will scroll in that direction, speed depending on the amount of offset.

With Linux itself or with the broader realm of 'Linux software'?

By itself, Linux is a fantastic family of operating systems. Has never failed me and probably never will. At least not until I care enough about differences in userland handling in Linux vs FreeBSD, for instance. And even then, I might just switch out of preference, and not because one or the other disappointed me.

As for broader Linux software, or GNU software, or just FOSS in general - by far the biggest potential issue is probably systemd, and it's still meaningless for the vast majority of users. Other than that, my personal biggest issue was Hyprland breaking completely after updating. But it's not a super major issue, because I can just use Plasma instead.

I've definitely had consistently less issues with dev stuff on linux, but Bluetooth is consistently lacking.

And I don't know if I'd be able to get wifi drivers working on this laptop again if I had to reinstall

The worst annoyances of Linux are nothing compared to basic use of Windows or MacOS.

I am deeply disappointed in the Android flavor of Linux. 17 years of development, and your phone still does not have a terminal app built into the OS.

It does have one built in, you just have to enable it in developer settings

Available only on select Pixel phones, and the virtualization API that makes it possible is available only to preinstalled system apps.

So no, you cannot install Ubuntu image onto your Samsung phone, you specifically need to buy the newest Pixel.

You can use termux and some other thing to run Ubuntu on a Samsung, it's just not built in Iirc Samsung has some Linux thing with dex

Yeah I can, but soon I won't, because Google will block all apps not installed from Play Store, and Termux cannot be compiled for new Android versions because of Android 'security'

Disappointed at linux directly? No.

Disappointed at linux indirectly? Absolutely.

  • Nvidia's linux support: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
  • Ubuntu
    • ~~Unity~~ (at least it's gone from main installs now)
    • Snaps
  • ~~KDE~~
    • ~~Version 4~~ (at least it's good now)
  • ~~Fedora~~
    • ~~Forcing their own broken version of OBS that didn't work~~ (they finally removed it)
  • Wayland
    • ~~Not supporting screenshare~~ (fixed with portals)
    • Not supporting global shortcuts (currently being investigated)
    • Accessibility (currently being investigated)
  • Gnome
    • Not supporting system trays
      • Most people don't want their background apps (discord, teams, docker/podman, OBS, etc...) to be filling up the foreground.
    • Not supporting server side decorations
      • Literally the stupidest decision ever made
      • Not supporting it forces all other developers to spend their time integrating their own client side decorations just so users can move/close a window in someone else's desktop environment. (example: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-408#%3A%7E%3Atext=Client-side+window+decorations)
      • Not supporting it means every developer has to deal with issues being reported to them that aren't their fault.
      • Not supporting it means every developer now has less time to work on their own applications.
      • Not supporting it means that humanity has wasted a stupid amount of time reimplementing the same thing over and over again instead of just once.
      • Gnome saying that: "it's not part of the standard"
        • Buddy, you're the only one holding it back from being standardised.
          • Cosmic: Supported
          • Hyprland: Supported
          • KDE (Kwin): Supported
          • Unity (Mir): Supported
          • Niri: Supported
          • Sway: Supported
          • etc...: Supported
          • Gnome (Mutter, and those downstream like Muffin): Not Supported
          • It has... by all metrics... become... THE defacto standard.
        • "It's not in the official wayland standard"
          • Buddy, wayland needs to support more than just the desktop metaphor. It also needs to support things like phones, handhelds, kiosk machines, car infotainment systems, etc... where having a window on a screen doesn't make sense. You are a desktop environment using the desktop metaphor, you need to support the basic functionality of moving windows that pop up on the screen, and you are the only one failing, and not only failing but failing so hard you're negatively affecting all those around you, and not only that but not being accountable to how your actions are negatively affecting others.

Snaps, and things like it, are really the only one I can blame on "Linux" (or at least Linux distributions).

I've had annoying headaches with drivers for 20+ years, but I expect that because Linux just doesn't have enough users for most companies to bother making sure they have working drivers for Linux. I've been annoyed when some software or some tool or process isn't as polished as the Windows version. But, mostly that's something I got for free thanks to someone donating their time and effort, so I don't want to complain about that.

But, I hate it when a major Linux distribution decides they're going to ignore the standard way of doing things and only do things in their unique way. It often seems like one vendor / distributor is trying to build a walled garden and lock people in. It's similarly annoying when vendors try to funnel people towards their "enterprise" version by making it harder to install certain apps that are "enterprisey".

I get that it's hard to make money selling Linux distributions. But, that's what you signed up for. You don't get to start behaving like Microsoft because it turns out to be hard to sell open source / free software.

Not supporting it forces all other developers to spend their time integrating their own client side decorations just so users can move/close a window in someone else's desktop environment. (example: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-408#%3A%7E%3Atext=Client-side+window+decorations)

This kind of things is handled directly at an engine or toolkit level - so no your average developer won't give a fuck. And for those that are reinventing the wheel there's libdecor (official gnome support btw) which your factorio developer is using.

Yeah, it's usually quality of life misses. An example: if I mount a network drive (mine auto-mounts upon login) and then that NAS goes down for whatever reason, if I open Dolphin it'll hang trying to connect to the offline network drive and never timeout. I can restart my NAS and then as soon as it's online again, my file manager will open 😅.

I'd have to manually unmount in terminal if that NAS became non-functional. Windows just times out and marks it as offline so File Explorer still works.

I've been using AutoFS and that's no longer an issue for me. How did you mount the NAS?

SMB mount via fstab, hadn't heard of AutoFS. That's usually how it goes, I learn about something better after going through the pain of doing it an inferior way.

kde got over a mil to fix network drive issues and I have no doubt they'll be best in class next year

When Pulseaudio and Wayland were still kind of rough I migrated to Macs for like 5 years.

The failure to properly protect against file access between programs is kind of disappointing. Flatpak has made great progress here, but it isn't quite universal.

I find Linux to be very bad at recovering from freezing. If something freezes on linux I almost always need to shut the entire PC down or go into TTY to kill the app. I expected it to be way more sturdy.

Is it your display driver that's freezing? I've never had issues with one thing freezing the PC. The only time I've had it seem like that was the case was when it was the nVidia drivers that were having issues. But, that situation is much better than on Windows because I was able to SSH into the machine and everything seemed normal over an SSH connection. It meant I could shut things down gracefully and then eventually do a clean reboot. Meanwhile, the screen still looked as if the computer was locked up.

My disappointments are few, and are outweighed by the fact that if I update the computer doesn't suddenly grow new advertisements or try to force new subscriptions onto me, or even break that many things? The skill floor is slightly higher sure, but the skill ceiling is so much higher, it doesn't feel like a thinly veiled Eldritch monster.

Just gaming on Linux Mint. Most big modern games work, but support for older and smaller games just isn't there. I tried to play Doom 3. It wouldn't start. Shadowrun Hong Kong was so slow it was unplayable.

For Doom 3, it does work with the original engine but I do recommend playing using the dhewm3 source port. It supports linux natively and has high resolution and framerate support.

I've had no issues with Doom 3 on Bazzite if you want to give that a try.

The sims 4 works flawlessly, but the sims 3 won't even boot

No, despite many problems, because it always teaches me something about computers

My installation of arch broke, kept breaking, and the AUR has been unusable for weeks, I switched back to fedora (after using Arch for about a year)

My Thinkpad X260 TrackPoint and mouse buttons under the spacebar still don't work. I have lost my mind trying to figure it out and gave up. I don't use the laptop that often.

I've had that Laptop and ran Arch (and other distros) on it with those working no issue. I've since passed it to a friend who also uses it with Debian and hasn't complained about issues. Are you certain this is a Software issue? Are the TrackPoint and buttons actually plugged in? Do they show up?

I haven't ruled out a physical hardware issue. The OS was detecting the device. Its not a USB device, its a PS/2 device which isn't something I work with often. This was a few months ago so don't recall much of what I was tried.

I've had Endevor then Mint on that device over a few years. I consider myself competent with Linux.

One of these days I'll make a post and ask for help. Making a Lemmy post that Linux isn't working with a old Thinkpad hardware is like dumping chum in shark infested waters.

Specifically with the Cinnamon Panel (taskbar) on Linux Mint during fullscreen gaming. I like to tab out during long matchmaking and under Windows the taskbar would be visible and usable when another window gets focused over the fullscreen game. With Cinnamon, the space for the panel is there, but not the panel itself. When you press Super, the menu pops up and shows the panel with it, but the panel isn't usable...

There is an active issue on the cinnamon github from 2012. No one even knows if this should be a bug or a feature request, so it's just all undefined behavior right now.

Edit: it's even worse, a newer issue was closed last year after a discussion that can only be described as very linux.

I wonder if the move to Wayland will fix this.

While I can point out a lot of times I was dissapointed in IOS, Mac and windows, only time I ever got dissapointed was in the beginning where I was aggressively distrohopping because my first distro (POPOS) was extremely slow and buggy. Gentoo felt too sluggish for daily use and other nuances that weren't exactly Linux's fault but I didn't know any better.

I use void btw

PoopOS

Lots of little extremely niche things people do on their computer on Windows are harder on Linux, I think the best example in general is video game modding. We can't say it's essential or barring anyone from making a switch and yet people like me wrankle. I'm disappointed no one ever put the honest time into cloning Mod Organizer and its amazing USVFS. Yes I know you can do it on Fuse, I know there are a couple other mod applications for Bethsoft games. The problem is ALL of these tools need a seamless way to talk between Proton instances, which would be a security risk I guess. And Mod Organizer was such a nice tool. The clone attempts I've seen have had shoddy UI, lacked core features you wouldn't even bother calling it an MO clone without (Amethyst was not storing -downloads-, just running whatever FOMOD it found immediately and deleting the archive), or were done heavily with LLM AI which I don't trust around proton instances.

It's the absolute lowest priority right now and if you're willing to accept a lot of potential suck you can eek by. I don't use EMACs or I'd probably be the kind of person using that as mod manager, but hearing it described I'd liken my agony over lacking good mod tools to trying to use EMACs on a broken cellphone screen, or a keyboard missing half its letters. I miss the tools MO set the industry standard for.

That's fair, some games are a pain to mod on Linux, or more cumbersome than it needs to be

I love Linux but for ease and convenience a iOS / Mac based home has been a lot easier to coordinate and orchestrate and tie together.

There is no equivalent tv box to the Apple TV on the Linux ecosystem without tinkering which makes it tough now that tinkering isn’t as fun cuz my time is so restricted.

Without a Linux phone and Integrated set top box I can’t mainline it, but it still is my go to for running all my services (saving for the odd bsd here and there)

I have been extremely disappointed with the broader Linux ""community"" at times, but never Linux.

One thing I've been annoyed by for over a decade now is having to unmount USB drives before removing them or they'll brick. That shit worked fine on windows unless you were writing/reading iirc.

Not really. Windows and assume Linux cache writes and might actually write after you thought it's written, that's why you have to always unmount USB drives before you pull them out.

Windows does not cache writes for removable media

Later versions of windows recognise that the device is removable and don't cache writes. From the users point of view the copy dialog box only closes when writes are complete.

I guess that depends on the settings. I'd still click sa~~v~~fe remove, though.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/explorer/diy-builder/storage/do-you-really-need-to-eject-a-usb-drive/

Yeah, that's really annoying with Linux filemanagers

Just tell me when you're done and not when the file is completely written into cache, that doesn't help me in any way

I love my Linux, but it's really annoying to open a terminal to run sync, just to be sure

I always do that and it still happened, probably because I had a drive as NTFS for compatibility. Last I checked (after failed attempts), the fix was "fix it with Windows" so I still have a borked external drive.

Once I was looking forward to the challenge of connecting a linux PC to a Windows domain, only to find out the current version of the distro had that functionality by default. 😐

So that was cool, I guess...

Constantly, I'm pretty sure that part of the experience.

However, anytime I have to use windows or mac I very quickly get over whatever my issue with linux is.

Nah I'm alright.

Recently I’ve been disappointed that my speakers keep switching which one is left and which is right, and I’ve been too lazy to figure out why. I don’t regret dropping windows at all, though.

That's weird. What kind of speakers do you have? Ye Olde Fashioned analog speakers tend to be hardwired for left and right. Of course, you can flip that in software, but unless you've touched that setting it should just work.

Every time I have tried to mainline Linux for my gaming rig. Although I haven't tried anything recently, IE since the Steam Deck has made large improvements. I am now waiting for SteamOS to be available for non-AMD GPUs and can be dual-booted so I can try it without also getting rid of Windows right away if it still gives me headaches. I know there are other options I could try now, but I'm fine waiting.

I have not been disappointed in Linux when used for servers, tho. Far, far more reliable than Windows when you want stability and long up times.

Long time nvidia on linux user. Use AMD.

I suspect you'll be disappointed or frustrated by SteamOS, since Valve isn't really all-in on maintaining a universal distro like other projects (and that's okay); more likely, it will always be Valve-hardware-first that just happens to work on some other hardware configurations.

IMO, you're better off jumping into whatever distro interests you rather than expecting SteamOS to fit your use case. My personal choice was CachyOS for daily use and gaming, and it's been great, but PikaOS would be one I'd consider for another build. I also run Bazzite on an older laptop for some light gaming and HTPC stuff, and that's been rock solid.

Valve said they're actively working with nvidia to support their gpus. While I'm sure valve hardware will always be the primary concern, they seem to actively pursue the goal of SteamOS being more widely compatible.

Most games are solid now on Linux thanks to Proton. Most of the time if it's Steam and it's not competitive it works out of the box. Sometimes you need some post install configuration to make it run better (more common with old games), you can usually find what you need to do in the protondb website.

I went full Linux almost 3 years ago. Games worked very well when I first switched but it's improved significantly in performance and QoL since then. If your interested in gaming on Linux, I wouldn't wait for desktop steamOS, just get a distro and try it. I like Arch, but it's definitely not for everyone, especially if you're not into tinkering although even archinstall makes getting setup significantly easier now.

I’m disappointed by Linux on almost a daily basis. And MacOS. And iOS. And Android.

(I haven’t used Windows in a long time, so I guess it’s the only major OS I’m not routinely disappointed by? Whoa, that’s a realization…)

But this is just what happens when you’re constantly messing with stuff.

I'm very disappointed about Discord on Linux. I've been having a problem for months where the audio input stops working for several seconds at a time during voice calls.

Oh, is it a Discord problem? I spent half an hour yesterday debugging my setup, should've eliminated Discord from the chain.

I dunno, but I get it on discord. Did you make any progress fixing it?

I was actually trying to fix low input volume, but noticed the cutting out on the discord loopback. People were complaining that I'm hard to hear, but fixing the volume won't help if the audio is dropping entirely (-.-')

I don't think I can fix Discord, I'll just focus on the volume right now and see if I can use a different Discord client.

I just use it in a browser honestly

If you don't need the rich presence features, the browser should handle everything. The desktop version is just a web wrapper anyway and ships its own browser that may have bugs (to support native binding)

No not really. Just people.

my disappointment in Linux has lessened over the last few years as issues are being resolved.

Currently my only real disappointment is driver support, but that's less of a flaw on anything linux, and more of a flaw on the providers.

That being said, I also am disappointed with sound management. Trying to do anything in that hellscape on most distros leaves you with a pounding headache. It's a monkey-patch of multiple handlers that gets confusing really fast.

I've been using Linux for long enough to have been disappointed multiple times. And 90% of the time it's about regression. In no particular order:

  • Liferea losing the ability to start hidden.
  • KDE 4.0, a trainwreck that made me leave KDE altogether back then.
  • Network Manager bug forcing my local IP to change, even if I need it static and predictable.
  • Ubuntu ads. I think it was the straw that broke the camel's back and forced me into Debian.

etc.

Inconsistent behavior with the Elan touchpad on the ThinkPad E16 Gen 1 (AMD). Works in a live image but not when I install. Adding kernel parameters and loading specific modules gets it working, but it stops again after a few minutes. Sometimes unloading/reloading the module gets it working again, sometimes it doesn’t. 4 different distros, 4 different kernel versions, still have to use Trackpoint.

Other than that, I daily-drive Debian on my home and office workstations. Those ones just work.

I had a an issue with Elan touchpad were one connects the laptop to the power and the touchpad input starts lagging. This happens in all distros too. It is not too terrible since most of my workflow is on the keyboard.

Similar situation on my workstations: mostly keyboard or keyboard-like devices (DaVinci Resolve Speed Editor, Micro Color Panel). The E16 is for when I’m being lazy on the sofa, so the lack of touchpad is just grating.

A little I guess. When I had finally convinced my dad to try out a dual boot, and was trying to install it for him on his new Threadripper system, it failed. The platform support Threadripper wasn't ready even though it had been out for at least a little while.

But I don't remember the details it has been around 8 years. Nowadays I know to confirm these things first, so in a sense it was my own mistaken assumption. But still it fits the question because at the time I was disappointed.

Having to actually manually mount network shares to my filesystem in KDE in order to do simple stuff like drag-and-drop files from them to a browser window, which just works in ol' Windows.

But really, I'm generally very happy with my experience with Linux in 2026. Most problematic things are because of the behavior of shitty OEMs or publishers, not Linux developers. Things have improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years.

My printer has a regular paper tray and a photo paper tray. I find it very difficult to print things properly to the photo tray. And I had to get drivers for one of my PC's Wi-Fi adapter off github. Other than that, I have been quite happy over the last few years of daily-ing Linux

How could I be disappointed in FOSS? Conduct of people involved, maybe, software? Never.

Yep, people involved are the biggest problem sometimes.

I've had to figure how to fix many issues myself, because quite often upon finding a thread where someone already had an issue that I had, folks were tryna gaslight the OP why it's not actually an issue, eventually turning the thread into shit flinging contest. Or the good old "don't do that, you'll break something" (that I proceeded to do and was absolutely okay).

Not to mention how FOSS developers have to deal with entitled assholes every now and then.

Me: Ugh, X problem!? Fine, let's google it and find the answer...

OP: I have X problem, which is stopping me from doing Y.

Answers: Oh, you don't need X to do Y. Here's a solution for your Y problem!

Me: I don't care about Y! What about X problem!?

Not to mention how FOSS developers have to deal with entitled assholes every now and then.

entitled assholes, and more recently waves upon waves of un-reviewed SLOP code from morons who can't even write a Hello World program.

It doesn't run on old 2010 year Intel/AMD laptop, while FreeBSD does. Maybe because of the philosophy of destroying the old to build something completely new (pipewire, ip, firewalls etc.). Maybe I should spend more time finding working distro.

Also, It's sad to realize that politics has actually always been a part of FOSS (when they removed Russian maintainers). Still I really like Linux.

Politics because "no man is an island" will not elaborate.

i would like to see more cutting edge attempts. this is more of a linux ecosystem thing but try new things even if they dont work out. until very recently, parental controls have been non existing or barely functioning.

for the linux ecosystem to be mainstream it needs to cover more people.

Yes.

One word: systemd

Honestly, what's disappointing about sysd? I know it violates the whole does one thing principle and then the whole age bs, but overall I've never had anything major with it

Since “do one thing principle” is pretty abstract, I’ll give you one example of a downstream consequence.

I wanted to set up a NixOS microVM using docker sbx. Turns out, it was basically impossible (nothing is actually impossible, it just depends how much you want to modify/rebuild things).

Much of NixOS depends on systemd to manage lifecycles of this or that, but systemd only works properly if it’s the first PID, and when it runs in that mode it also wants to initialize hardware.

But the hardware is all managed by the microVM, so systemd blows up. All it needs to do is nothing, but that turns out to be very difficult to achieve.

If these were like 3 or 4 distinct utilities, there would be obvious seams where I could separate them and only activate the stuff that’s relevant to my use case. But it’s all one big ball of mud.

Systemd (along with the various add-on services that come with it on most major distros) meddles with and tends to break critical functionality quite often, except on boring systems where the needs being served happen to be handled well by systemd's happy path(s).

If the computers you maintain fit Lennart Poettering's idea of how to do things, then you might never notice a problem. On the other hand, if you're responsible for systems with unusual or complex configurations, or have need of the flexibility that makes unix so very useful in the first place, then you might very well discover that systemd is a pushy, invasive, poorly considered, buggy, and in some ways just pain broken collection of software, maintained with a level of arrogance and carelessness not often matched in the unix community, and you might rightly come to despise working with it.

Sadly, my experience has been the latter. In the years since the systemd suite was adopted by Debian distros, I have been burned more times by it and spent more weeks of my life troubleshooting it than I can count any more. Because of this, I have come to resent systemd. And I know I'm not alone in this.

So, dear readers, when you see people complaining about systemd, please try not to be like the zealots out there who routinely cry "luddite" and demand proof when they encounter folks who dislike it. Try instead to remember that one size does not fit all, that some of systemd's detractors are very skilled and reasonable people who happen to run systems that are necessarily different from your own, and have encountered problems that you have not. It has been over a decade. Some of us are tired of it, and tired of talking about it.

  • It violates the whole does one thing principle. this is of course much more than a beauty-related offense. Modular design is central to good software engineering.
  • Log files are no longer simple text files you can watch, grep, or work with -- again violating a major Unix principle and making a zillion other things that would "just work", have to be done with special systemd hooks/options/yadda
  • The problems it solves could have been solved with a reasonably well contained change to SysV init, and probably made optional. Single-user setups don't need server-farm complexity.

Single-user setups don't need server-farm complexity.

True, but Linux devs only have a limited amount of time. It's far easier to take a system that can handle server-farm complexity and apply it to a single user use case, than it is to take a system meant for single users and try to scale it up to a server farm, or to maintain two separate systems.

I'm saying that complexity could easily be modularized inside SysV init, not requiring a restructuring of things like "logfiles are no longer files in /var/log"

that complexity could easily be

That phrase has proven to be a source of endless headaches any time someone in charge is stupid enough to believe the person that tries to sell them that.

I mean i'm currently in a learning process with Linux, i would like to be a power user like in windows, but i'm just not yet. I don't know if i would say disappointed, but i tried to use KDE first and would say my experience was rather bad, it was a bit buggy here and there and i didn't found out how to fix my problems. I'm surprised by it because i though i would like KDE for sure more, but i'm happy i switched to Gnome. So as the op said, part of the experience is choosing the right distro or in my case desktop enviroment is part of the experience.

Sure had few driver issues, or installing japanese was a bit of a struggle, but i have fun solving problems.

Every couple of years I give KDE Plasma a spin, and I've found it disappointing every time. Nothing terrible, just a lot of tiny bugs and inconveniences. I find it strange that it gets recommended as a beginner DE so often just because the layout resembles Windows a bit more. Gnome is so much more consistent and aesthetically pleasing... not that I use it, but it's always my strong recommendation for beginners.

Good luck on your Linux journey!

I’ve had some sound issues here and there, but those are largely resolved. My only issue at the moment (which I suspect is mostly a skill issue) is figuring out an easy way to install games to the drive I want. With Epic for example on Windows it was easy to pick which drive I wanted to install the game on, but since Epic runs in WINE on Linux I haven’t figured out an easy way to do that. It works fine on Steam since the Steam client is Linux native.

What about Heroic client for Epic games?

I installed it, but I haven’t really had time to mess with it.

I'm a bit disappointed with packaging/updates. Specifically Arch, I have slow-ish shared internet and didn't update frequently enough now my system is too outdated (1050Ti, them moving legacy nVidia drivers to AUR is another reason I haven't updated in a while).

Looking at alternatives.

  • Void (I still might want something more user-friendly) musl? (but optional and interesting for creating static binaries)

  • Tumbleweed/Slowroll might be perfect if it weren't for patterns (and I wish update structure were smarter* than just scheduling).

  • NixOS is a fun idea but not with declarative desktop settings (I have my own XFWM window theme not uploaded anywhere) and extra mess when it comes to compiling/exporting also running non-packaged executables (especially if I decide to stop using Steam, running what library I can w/o client)

User packaging is also generally questionable, too. I know not to rely on it too much, but I'm also not going to be inspecting package scripts especially not every update.

Other package distribution is a neat idea, but needing to download another graphics driver for Flatpack sort of ruins the point for me (redundant data too). That, and less integration+more manual updates.

* it probably doesn't exist, but I'd like something that has some sort of awareness of compatibility (be it simple/explicit versioning, build bot troubles, user reports etc). If I haven't updated in a while, give me a safer update (hold more Major.Minor.newest packages to known-good). If I'm updating regularly, tell me if an update on tuesday might not be great and remind me on friday if it seems better. Let me mark software with some general issues (stability, rendering, features) and alert based on potential fixes.

You don’t have to use patterns on Tumbleweed (and maybe Slowroll also?), if you don’t like them. It’s just a handy shortcut to get most, but not all, relevant packages.

It's annoying (compared to anything similar on Arch) and will reinstall things you've removed. There is conflicting information on the best way to deal with this, either way more complicated than 'off'. It's a problem that shouldn't be a problem, and it seems to be a common issue people have.

Give NixOS another look. It's no problem to run a declarative system as a base, and plain old dotfiles on top if you want, especially for user stuff. Not sure what you mean by "non-packaged executables" exactly, but I don't see how NixOS would give you a disadvantage here. Heoric works fine as a Steam alterntative.

and plain old dotfiles on top if you want

I'm not the type to put my dotfiles in git, though. A lot of things I just plan on starting fresh and configuring in-session.

Not sure what you mean by “non-packaged executables”

Pre-compiled, non-system binaries.Typically, stuff downloaded from GoG and itch without a client (also the odd thing like BrogueCE). I don't know if this is always an issue, but it is for anything that uses dynamic linking (checking with ldd is a thing, though can be misleading with runner scripts).

Heroic works fine

I've never been interested in the Epic store even for free games. I'm sure there are 10 ways to "solve" this each with their own benefits/drawbacks, but I feel like this is a philosophy issue that creates more problems than it solves for me. And this is without the ability to create static binaries (out of the box) like I'd get with void-linux musl.

That, and seeing talk about how great Nix is but also people having trouble later on too (major updates? bleeding edge woes?).

I’m not the type to put my dotfiles in git, though.

That's what I'm saying, you don't have to! Just install the package (like neovim or whatever) through NixOS and it will use your ad-hoc dotfiles like it would on any other distro. For a lot of stuff you can make use of declarative NixOS options (programs.neovim = { ... };), but you don't have to, except for really basic system stuff like networking I guess.

Pre-compiled, non-system binaries.

Gotcha. There's several ways do do this on NixOS (steam-run works like a charm!), but I'll concede that there's an extra step involved here that you don't have to do on other distros.

That, and seeing talk about how great Nix is but also people having trouble later on too (major updates? bleeding edge woes?).

There's a learning curve for sure, but I haven't looked back or experienced any major issues (where I hadn't shot myself in the foot) since 22.11.

you don’t have to! Just install the package
and it will use your ad-hoc dotfiles like it would on any other distro

And changes will last on reboot, y'know with the whole immutable thing?

Absolutely! I'll give you an example. In the NixOS config for my desktop I have the lines:

{
  environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    firefox
    ...
  ];
}

So Firefox is installed every time I build a system with this config. This is just like apt-get install firefox in that very user can use it after installation. The config lives in the respective user's dotfiles (.config/mozilla/firefox) and will of course survive reboots.

What I chose to do additionally (but this is in no way required!) is a home-manager config for my main account with the lines:

{
  programs.firefox = {
    enable = true;
    policies = {
      DisableFirefoxAccounts = true;
      DisablePocket = true;
      DisableTelemetry = true;
      DownloadDirectory = "${config.home.homeDirectory}/tmp";
      OfferToSaveLogins = false;
      ...
  }
  ...
}

This is a declarative configuration that basically handles my dotfiles (profiles, extensions, themes, ...) for me. I think you have the impression that this is mandatory, but it is really a very specific behavior through the home-manager module, but you can absolutely run NixOS without it.

Most of my disappointments with Linux come from the proprietary bits to be honest. Both the hardware drivers, and the games and other apps. And even the few times I'm let down by open-source apps, it's because of abilities from their proprietary counterpart that they are yet to implement.

Power management on a laptop.

Use a 10 year old Logitech mouse out of the box.

Mint's stupid annoying print monitor.

Dealing with cached samba creds though the box to save creds wasn't checked.

The lack of real competitors to office. And no, Open Office doesn't come close to replacing MS office.

There's lots that's annoying.

But Linux is excellent as my servers, as my VM host, as my dedicated systems. Still has it's issues, but works great for always-on systems with very specific tasks.

Linux and Windows serve different purposes.

Open Office

Uhh, isn't that old, like really really old?

I'm pretty sure the only reason Open Office exists is because of Oracle's lawyers.

Everyone shifted from Open Office to the Libre Office fork back in 2010-2011-ish.

Have you been trying to use Open Office? lol

What do you mean with regards to the Logitech mouse? I've been using M185's for two decades now without issue. The only issue I have is with the newer version of them which doesn't drop an easily readable battery state in /sys/class/power_supply/hidpp_battery_{0..9}/capacity_level .

Also; Libre Office exists.

having used windows long enough to know what the .11 brought you and having gone windows-free for well over a decade i can say i have never, ever thought "i wish i was on windows cuz this would be better/easier/faster/possible"

When I first started using it I had the issue that every install would throw up a new thing not working. I suspect that was the hardware rather than Linux though.

The one recurring unsolveable problem I run into is not being able to kill a process that's stuck in D state. If something has broken in the layers between that process and hardware (not uncommon when working with old cheap "box of scraps" hardware, as I like to do), it can get stuck forever and you have to kill the whole system, sometimes forcibly. Not the end of the world, but it sucks when it happens.

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