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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Probably just hardware compatibility and me specifically NVIDIA x) once you get the kinks sorted out it's a pretty stable experience
I found repartitioning the harddrive by far the biggest hurdle. That's a complicated and scary process that can delete all your data if you hit the wrong button. Picking the right partition sizes is another problem, as the Windows default EFI partition for example is far too small to be used with distributions that put their kernel on there (e.g. NixOS), but there is nothing warning you about that and resizing it, is complicated since there is a Windows partition in the way. The solution already existed in the form of Wubi, which made your whole Linux installation a file on your Windows partition, but that got sadly abandoned.
Next biggest problem is the boot manager, they still suck and are far to brittle. I'd wish we got rid of boot managers as is, and instead just booted into a mini-Linux has boot manager, that could not only be used to fix bad boot configuration, but also used as full recovery system. Having a full OS as boot manager means you can update and change the whole OS without fumbling with USB sticks and stuff, you can even update or switch distributions remotely. It's an extremely powerful setup, that as far as I know, none of the popular distributions uses.
Finally, just having stuff work. My amdgpu driver still crashes regularly. There is always some obscure crap I have to configure to make things work. And I regularly have to search the Internet to find solutions for my problems. Can we have some (opt-in) Telemetry here? A tool that can scan my hardware and error logs, tell me what I have and tell me if it works in Linux or direct me to an bug tracker with workarounds? ProtonDB for hardware, kind of. Why do I still have to do that manually?
Another big hurdle of course is just the software, even if everything runs perfectly on the Linux side, moving all your software over is always a big hurdle. Wine/Proton helps a lot, but still fiddle for stuff outside of Steam. Not really seeing any easy solution here. Something like Xen installed by default that lets you switch OSs without dual booting might work, or a VM that can boot into your actual Windows partition, but no idea if that would work well enough to solve more problems than it creates.
All that aside, the problems for new users are a bit overrated. Installing Linux is something you do once or twice, that process of course needs to work well enough to function, but it's far more important that the OS works well once you are past that point. If the OS fails in daily use, that's when people abandon it. Enduring a shitty installer for a weekend is not really that big of a deal in the bigger picture, if the OS you'll end up with is actually worth it.
Little aside: Why the f' is 'parted' not the command line version of 'gparted'? As far as I know, there is no command line tool left that allows you to move and resize partitions via command line in a single UI. That functionality was ripped out of 'parted' years ago, so you are stuck with manually fdisk, ext2resize, etc. which is not fun at all, since they all take sizes in different units and have different UI.
I think that is not a question Linux users can answer. I feel so out of touch with what the average joe needs and wants in an OS. Ask them.
I'm currently trying to run a Sven Co-op server under Ubuntu Server. This has been a five hour chore of trial and error, dealing with library incompatibility, architecture incompatibility, poor documentation and Stack Overflow messes.
Im currently using about twenty tabs of documentation and support requests. At this exact moment, I'm trying to compile a 32 bit version of libssl 1.1.1, at which point I will be able to test again. If it doesn't work this time, I absolutely do not have time to continue trying.
So what's the challenge here? Nothing is simple and nothing is well explained. This is a three-step process on Windows that just works. On Ubuntu, the first step requires you to add a new apt repo and install support libraries, and beyond that, you're on your own to figure out the compat issues further down the line.
Edit: Can't make it work, it's just one thing after another. I'm just gonna do a fresh install of the whole OS, considering how much bs I installed chasing these issues, and then, idk, just not play a game with my brother I guess.
I don't know how much time you have left, but if it's a dedicated server machine/system (I assume it is since it's running Ubuntu Server) you could look into installing Pterodactyl which is a game server panel + daemon which can take care of setting up and running game servers for you. It uses Docker under the hood which helps solve issues like this.
I see there is an egg for this game that someone has made for Pterodactyl (eggs are just basically instructions for Pterodactyl on how to create a game server) that you could import, and then just practically hit create. This particular one uses Ubuntu 16.04 as a container image, which would make sense if that game needs libssl 1.1.1
Could definitely be worth a shot, especially if you're planning on running other game servers down the line - that repo I linked to has a ton of game server configuration ("eggs") on it. Hell it even has some eggs for non-game servers, like if you wanted a Mumble/TeamSpeak server.
Last time I was hired as a code monkey we used Linux with a dual-monitor setup. The setting would not, under any circumstances, see one of those 1080p monitors as anything more than 480p.
I spent literally half the first day of work looking for solutions, and eventually settled on running some random command i don't understand copied from the internet running on startup.
The biggest issue ive had (ive only used ubuntu) is the file management. Disks and file system is a bit different from boyh mac and windows, and i had a hard yime figuring out where and how, etc.
I couldnt figure out how to get my home network to work (so my windows pc could grab files off the linux pc) and such.
I had no issues setting that up, between my mac/windows pcs
I do plan on installing linux for my sons pc which he will then be forced to learn to some degree.
It's the first step of installation, making a bootable usb/CD. Most non-technical people can't be arsed to create a bootable drive, then go into the bios boot settings to run it. I haven't used Windows in a long time so I don't know how it's installed these days, but the fact that it comes installed out-of-the-box when people buy a computer lets them skip the first and biggest step to running linux, which is getting it installed in the first place.
Distros have come a long way that a Windows user trying Linux Mint can hit the ground running. It's no longer about the learning curve for USING linux, it's INSTALLING linux that's the problem.
Exactly. I'd argue that some supposedly mainstream distros are hard to install even for the competent. Last time I checked, Debian's funnel for newbies consisted of a 90s-era website with "instructions" in the form of a rambling block of jargon-filled text with mentions of "CD-Roms" and a vague discussion of third-party apps for burning ISOs. I mean, on Linux flashing a USB stick is matter of a single dd command with some obscure switches, but even that was nowhere to be found and I had to search forums for it. Incredible! Hard to imagine how forbidding it must all seem to the average Windows user! No Debian for them!
IIRC Ubuntu's process was much easier but still not as easy-peasy as it could have been.
The only hope for desktop Linux is a crystal-clear, bulletproof, 1-2-3-style onboarding funnel that takes the user from "this is the distro's website" to "I have a bootable USB". From that point on it's plain sailing.
The absolutely never ending jank. My latest grippe, Ubuntu 22.04 . Remote desktop needs password reset after every reboot, no idea why, grdctl set password doesn't help, only doing it in the Ubuntu settings UI works. Never ending stream of tiny annoyances like that
How to make Linux better:
Better quality control eg. no more issues like Ubuntu shipping a broken version of systemd that wont allow the system to boot.
Prioritize performance over FOSS purity in newbie friendly distros. A graphics card driver that gets 1/30th the FPS should not be the default for a 1,000 dollar graphics card. Anyone that wants the FOSS driver can install it if they want.
Avoid homogenization of software features. i.e. better support of the feature outliers. eg. KDE does not have an option to adjust contrast of scrollbars without a theme that specifically has that contrast. This makes it harder for the vision impaired like myself to use software.
Fragmentation, there is so many WM, DE, Distros, package managers. This is the beauty of open source but it is also the plague.
Toxic communities, where people are thrashing you if you don't understand sometimes the overly complicated wiki and you dare open a thread in one of the forums to seek for help.
Driver support, sometimes installing your OS requires a lot of manual configuration to make everything work ok your machine the way you want it.
To me, the big problem is still updates breaking things.
Everybody needs to update their system from time to time, but if doing so leaves your system in an unusable (for the average person, not a linux terminal guru) state, users aren't going to stay.
I think immutable/atomic OSes like Silverblue, VanillaOS and SteamOS are heading in the right direction to solve this issue. Particularly if they allow users to easily rollback a bad update. Otherwise maybe there is some way to detect and warn about potential compatibility issues before people update.
it need to work like how your microwave works. You don't don't have to know ANYTHING about how any thing related to computer. Just click stuff to make it work. Also get more companies to ship things with Linux
I'd say its probably, among other thigs, hardware compatibility issues.
Running Linux on a mashine, most notably portable, that is somewhat recent and is not specifically built with linux in mind is, imo, almost certainly going to cause some, for the average user unfixable, issues. Things like wifi, bluetooth, audio, etc. not working due to missing or broken drivers.
The best way to fix that would be official Linux support by the OEMs, which realistically is never going to happen. Or extremely time consuming reverse-engineered community drivers.
The number one issue for me was games.
Like seriously, why do most developers not give a damn about their Linux playerbase?