Much easier to run a VM on an only one drive that this laptop has, will never dual-boot linux with windows on the same drive.
Sorry you feel this way, because a Gentoo VM is a lot harder to setup as a VM than on bare metal.
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Iām impressed with the Gentoo project. I donāt have the time/energy/motivation to try it.
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Really nothing hard with Gentoo, but doing a Gentoo in a VirtualBox VM gives one the option to save and continue later. With a bare-metal compile one is in need of booting the cli before contining the build.
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Exactly. Find a job to do on Linux and learn as you go. Mistakes are part of learning.
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I just ran across a YouTube video where they discuss the same article that started this thread. I havenāt watched the video yet, but the host is someone that can be annoying but is also kind of entertaining at times.
After watching the video, he only really talks about the article for the first half.
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Really annoying and short on facts.
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Mostly (why donāt more people use Linux) 'cause itās by and large a steaming pile of inconsistencyā¦
Donāt get me wrong - I use Linux, I donāt use Windows (but will concede - I do use MacOS) - I can live / workaround the issues with Linux. And Iāll concede, the things I hate / loathe about Windows are probably niggling little personal issues and gripes - and - I can make Linux DE look and feel like MacOS - and in BOTH MacOS and Linux I get a native shell (in my case on both - I use zsh - there is no equivalent in Windows!).
Iām mainly using mainstream desktop distros - my desktop daily driver is Pop!_OS 22.04 and itās broken - but I canāt be arsed trying to fix it - and a recent update broke it yet more!
GDM (the login āmanagerā) wonāt ever present the graphical login - so - I have disabled gdm (gdm3) and I login via TTY, then manually run āstartxā - I can live with that - but - last weekend - I couldnāt break out of a black screen with a flashing cursor - imagine a new user being faced with this?
My fix for that? I used iTerm2 from my MacBook to SSH to Pop!_OS - noticed gmd3 was running - when Iād previously disabled it! So I killed it and disabled it again (remotely over SSH) - and within a minute or two - the TTY login screen appeared on my monitors! It took me about 4-5 reboots and power cycles to get that far - and each one takes a while 'cause I have LUKS and have to unlock my crypt ā/ā to boot further. Then I discovered that Pop! doesnāt even use GRUB - it uses systemd-boot!
And then thereās the inconsistency throughout Pop!_OS and other Gnome based distros - e.g. most apps, when presenting an open, or save dialog, do NOT show thumbnails (this seems to be fixed in Gnome 47 on Ubuntu 24.10 - also Gnome 46 on Ubu 24.04) - but this this glaring GLITCH in Gnome 42 really gets my goat - you can resize the sidebar in Nautilus / files - but itās dumb and broken :
Thereās an āejectā button where my phone is plugged in / mounted.
When I resize the āsidebarā - it moves the eject button - but doesnāt actually resize the sidebarā¦ I noticed this on Ubuntu 22.04 as well. But in Ubuntu 24.04 and 24.10 - you can no longer resize that āsidebarā - which makes a lot more sense. Itās obviously a Gnome 42 thing that was fixed in Gnome 46 (ubu 24.04) and Gnome 47 (ubu 24.10).
Iām thinking - due to all these issues with Pop!_OS 22.04, Iām not going to wait for Pop!_OS 24.04 with Cosmic DE - I reckon Iāll just format and run with Ubuntu 24.04 - which runs quite nicely (and consistently) on my Raspberry Pi 5 - and disable Wayland (because Synergy still doesnāt work on Wayland). Cosmic DE has too many unknowns for me - I know how to do stuff in Gnome (which is pretty awful without Gnome Tweaks and a few extensions) - I donāt know if Cosmic will have anything like Tweaksā¦
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Do you think, maybe, the reason you have lots of issues could be that you ask a lot more of your Linux distros than the average user?.
Number of issues might be proportional to complexity of the tasks attempted.
but
it might also be proportional to quality of tbe distro.
Then, of course, you may be one of those who go out of their way to complexify things, just so they can enjoy fixing issues?
Maybe perceived complexity scares off new users? Not sure.
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99% of the users probably just want a browser and a word processor. Linux can provide that with ease in a consistent way.
What do you get to see when you go out to buy a new computer? Right, Windows. People stick with what they got, and they donāt want to break warranty.
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Agree 100%.
So why? Why would I as a user want to go to all the work / problems of;
o Reading about Linux and try to pick a distro.
o Learn how to create a bootable USB.
o Learn how to install an OS.
o My PC is missing a driver, whatās a driver?
o What this CLI and why do I need to know it?
o Updates, I need to apply the updates was auto update before.
o I have a question, friends donāt use Linux, must find a forum?
o The DE is different, I must learn where everything is - I knew all this before.
I as a user go thru all of this and probably more just to get back to where I was. To a PC with
a browser and a word processor that was something that I already had.
Really, for the average user, is there any sense / logic to switch to Linux?
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Well, Cinnamon and KDE/Plasma look probably familiar enough, but the rest of the issues are definately issues.
Linux Mint is probably most familiar, but have a user do a test run in order to figure out whether their pc is supported is probably too much to ask for.
Add to that the requirement to configure obscure things in the BIOS (disable secure boot and fastboot) and you have all the ingredients of them giving up before they even tried booting it.
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There are a few pros
- it costs less
- it will extend the life of old hardware
- if you approach it the right way, you may get an opportunity to learn something
But really, you are right. It requires effort
Linux is suitable for those who wish to do something other than browse and email.
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Shouldnāt it be: āit costs nothingā?
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The main issue I have is that gdm (graphical login manager in Pop!_OS 22) is broken - there may be a fix - I donāt knowā¦ But what gets my goat is when I disable it (gdm3) - some patch / update comes along and enables it again - so that it takes me 4-5 reboots to figure out whatās going onā¦
The inconsistencies with things like the default file manager not being well integrated with the file operation dialogs in applications - thatās annoying - but - not a show stopper - however - Iām tempted to replace this Pop!_OS 22 with Ubuntu 24.04 - because Gnome 46 is more consistent across the whole desktopā¦
Yeah, nah, I was like that Iād be running Arch, Gentoo or Slackware as my daily driverā¦ I do use the terminal a lot and do stuff in the terminal - but I donāt really do any CLI stuff with my GUI settingsā¦ Just rely on a few gnome extensions and gnome tweaksā¦
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There are other login managers. Slim ( used by Devuan) is quite good.
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Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot. 
Thatās me too at times. I suppose weāre all guilty from time to time.
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Yes, me too, but I dont usually have to create issues, they find me.
I have learnt to not make things too convolutedā¦ every additional feature is a bug in disguise.
BTWā¦ have you heard of Liniphobiaā¦ that is why people dont use Linux
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Iād rather call it fear of change and fear of complexity, rather than fear of Linux in and of itself.
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Like multi-boot setups for say Devuan, MX, and various other distros?
Itās also good to play.
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Mea culpa .
I just spent a week finding out that OSās on one disk would not boot if I placed their root filesystem after a 2Tb data partition
All I started out to do was move my data partition to a new disk . It took 6 mins to copy the data partition, 6 days to debug the consequences.
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