TechConnectify@mas.to - Oh my gosh I just figured it out.
Okay, all you open source evangelist people: your knee-jerk reaction to come at people who are talking about a problem with whatever commercial software they use and suggest Your Favorite Alternatives™ is exactly like saying "why don't you just buy a house?" to someone complaining about their landlord.
TechConnectify@mas.to - Actually, to borrow from @DoubleA, it's worse than that.
It's like talking to someone who is in a crappy apartment as though they have the agency and skills to stake out a plot of land and build their own home.
You have to be at peace with the fact that some people just want to exist and not worry about so many things. And they still have a right to complain about their situation.
Link to thread: https://mas.to/@TechConnectify/111539959265152243
Is proprietary software any easier than that though? Don't you have to put in much more time removing all the spyware and bloat they put in and then spend all your time perpetually fighting against forced updates and applications being installed without your permission?
Whereas with Fedora my experience is more or less install it and forget it.
The "it's easier" argument for proprietary software I think died at least 15 years ago.
Choice of applications is a different argument.
Yes, take nvidia drivers for example, on windows I just download the installer and run it and done.
Last time I tried to move to Linux desktop (attempted Fedora and then EndeavourOS) about a year ago, none of that worked properly. Installing drivers was not in any way straightforward, needing CLI commands and google, where every guide I found seemed to have a different method used to install them, I kept getting outdated ones, and I had no idea what I was doing.
At the end of all that I still didn't have HW acceleration in my browsers, my desktop had screen tearing, gsync didn't work properly in windowed apps, the GPU wouldn't downclock fully at idle like it's supposed to, I couldn't figure out how to get shadowplay working, and so on.
And yes I do know this is technically mostly nvidia's fault for not having as good quality of drivers on linux. But as an end user all I care about is that my stuff works properly without googling things, needing the CLI, and spending a lot of time on it.
Definitely not, I don't really spend much time at all. I haven't experienced forced updates, my apps just update through winget manually when I want to. There are a few extra apps I don't need on windows but those take a minute to remove, I can't say I've ever experienced an app being installed without my permission other than edge I guess, but that replaces IE for embedded browser stuff so it's kind of needed.
Most of my 'admin' time is spent on the opensource apps I use, generally on my self hosted stuff. But also just on basic things like backup software, Veeam is my primary backup which is basically a 1 minute set up with a few clicks through the GUI, but I've been trying out Restic too which requires writing my own scripts to handle backups, more scripts to handle pruning and such, manually installing them as services so they run properly, and writing my own notification system on top of that just to get an email if something goes wrong.
Opensource is great, but it's usually extremely time intensive to get the same results, with lots of documentation, google, and just wasted time trying to figure out the basics.
Admittedly I do have the bias of experience which could blind me to the difficulties, when I phrased my first two sentences as questions they were genuine questions. Between work and personal life I must've installed Linux in some form at least 200 times over the last 20 years, so I'm not most users.
I've also not used Windows in many years, the last I think was when I had to use Windows 7 for work about 10 years ago and I found it extremely difficult to get it to do what I want. If it's improved then it's improved.
On the other hand a novice user can ask somebody to install Linux for them, what about that? That's what my non-techy parents have done, and it's easier for them to use Linux (they say so) and easier for me to provide technical support for them.
Also yes, avoid Nvidia.
Yes we do get sort of blind to what the average non-tech person wants out of their computer, I certainly have plenty of Linux experience on servers, but that just doesn't seem to translate across to being able to easily troubleshoot desktop Linux issues. I think because a server is a 'set up once' type thing, whereas running linux on my desktop feels like a constant battle with installing programs, and driver updates or new versions of a game breaking things.
IMO windows has vastly improved since W7. I can't even remember the last time I had to troubleshoot a game or program not working properly. I have W11 on 3 PCs and it's been extremely stable, almost every program other than games is installed via the winget package manager which also handles updates, and it doesn't get that 'windows slows down over time' feeling that used to happen on 7, vista, etc.. Obviously there's some bloat to remove when you first install it, and a few annoying settings to change, but that's not that big of a deal to me and I spend just as much time on a fresh linux install getting things how I want them.
As far as the GPU choice, right now nvidia just makes a better GPU IMO, with their DLSS and frame-gen that AMD so far can't compete with. Shadowplay also works a lot more reliably than ReLive in my experience. I briefly had an RX 6700XT for a few weeks before returning it due to driver/software issues.
I spend enough time fixing IT things at work and on my selfhosted server stuff, I just want to get home, hit the power button on my PC and play some games or work on some code for a project without anything getting in the way.
Yep, got the same experience as you. Not with nvidia drivers bit my huawei laptop had a broken audio driver where only half of the speakers worked.... Unless you plugges in a headphone... Then the headphone and the other half of the speakers worked.... All in all, it took me at least a da to get that working
Also, still no fingerprint support....
You can do a lot with opensource and tailor it to your need, but you have to invest a lot of time... And that's what a lot of people don't have
That is the thing, the software will function even with all the spyware and bloat.
Doesn't bother a non-tech person.
Or could it be that it might bother them but they just keep quiet and put up with it, assume that it's part of owning a computer and feel powerless to change anything?