I use Linux since exactly 1 year - and I understand now!
Posted by MrKusakabe@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 55 comments
As the title says, I am "daily driving" Linux now since one year and I am so glad that I did switch. Okay, I am DualBooting for getting the best from both worlds, but I also built my PC (I usually overspecc my rigs so they last for 5+ years) with DualBoot in mind because I thought I will have to. If I'd have known how much I enjoy Linux (Mint) I'd given the Windows installation less storage and the regular SATA (on the other hand, giving that bloat OS the expensive nvme SSD might be the better option...).
Anyways, as one who switched to OSX in 2008 after the Vista debacle and coming back for Win7, I finally decided it's enough of Windows and the exponentially growing issues about Windows. I tried Ubuntu in 2010 and even bought magazines but hardware support was basically non-existant for my computers so I had a very crippled time trying it out. In fact, the last Mint Live system in 2024 had no sound and just when I planned my new PC, my SoundBlaster Z was recognized by the LiveDisk and I could finally order my PC.
Now let's be real: I traded in Windows issues with some Linux issues. I miss a real indexed file search like Everything or Spotlight. I have audio crackling which is a known issue, no matter how many ALSA updates happen. It's sometimes so strong I have eardrum-shattering noise for like 30 seconds straight until the actual audio builds up again. I tried the quantum changes in the config but nothing changes. I also hate the lack of fractional scaling under Mint, the (to me) unusable Wayland alpha state (boots me into a blackscreen), the fact I can't use my Ryzen's iGPU (boots me into blackscreen) and I really miss DirectX where sound and graphics "just work" since the mid-90s. But after diving into the Linux world and thus read more about the whole "movement" surrounding FOSS and Linux, I did not only start to understand - I also can tolerate these issues now knowing more about it.
Using Linux takes months to see its full potential. And the more I boot up Mint, the more I notice how Windows annoys me. I have a Windows laptop (Acer Nitro gaming laptop at my parent's house) which is constantly spinning its fans when plugged in just to see like 5 different Microsoft services using my hardware. (And no, it's not the file indexer ;) If I leave my desktop PC just for the bathroom, I can hear the fans spin up too because MS uses these "idle times" to do something on my PC, and it bugs me. If your control panel consists of ads for Office suites, penetrant Cloud services, unwanted CoPilot AI, no wonder why things require RAM, disk space and CPU power. When I leave Linux alone, it just sits there quietly like a trusty Golden Retriever waiting for commands.
Updates are so transparent with Mint displaying changelogs (except for Flatpaks sadly), the option to ignore updates and so many updates just happen without reboot that I am still amazed by that. I have control of what my PC is "eating" - most of the time low-calorie but high result ones, not being spoonfed Microsoft Updates with intransparent, super slow, high-calorie fake food.
I love Cinnamon very much, as I like how Windows is being used and looks (taskbar, Alt+Tabbing, Cinnamenu upon Windows key push, ...), so have that on top of a clean, fast, safe OS is basically exactly of what I could have dreamed of. So many QoL improvements (e.g. selecting several files bringing up Bulky for mass-rename rules - on Windows I had to install "Bulk Rename Utility" or the ALSAMIXER talking to my SoundBlaster natively to set up EQ settings - on Windows, "Creative Command" had to be installed, a 110 MByte tool in Startup!). Coupled with my favourite theme Mint looks great, works amazing and has the Linux engine (figuratively spoken) underneath. Fantastic.
The biggest straw was of course Recall. My CPU (and GPU?) power used to create screenshots of my bank statements while online banking to be a) send to MS servers in the USA where it can be accessed by the government at any time or b) clogging up my storage? What the actual f*ck. I buy a new PC so I have to tax GiB of data (on top of other GiB that we were getting used to in that bloat OS) and processing power for unwanted features MS uses to collect Big Data??!
Now since I use Linux, I started to consume news about. It also started up my curiousity for desktop computing again somewhat. And that is the other side of the same coin that makes Linux so great! Basically an OS for and by users. I think that can sum it up.
Once, there was talk about AI maybe coming to Linux and I was like "Nooooo!" and someone else was writing what I felt until people came in and reassured: "If there is AI, it's for you/us users, it will be good AI". I really have to learn that updates and advancing can be a good thing without fearing some megacompany trying to find a new way of screwing us over. I read about Thorvald's attitude towards even the slightest "bad direction change" or contribution to his "baby" which is fantastic! It just feels so "right" to be using this OS in times where Apple, Google, Microsoft, Adobe try more and more to get incredible EULA/ToS changes through. The real cure is what I am using and now being a part of: Linux.
mr_doms_porn@reddit
I think a lot of your complaints originate in Mint/Cinnamon. KDE and GNOME both have file indexing and actually they also are much better at navigating massive folders than Windows. It's one of my favourite things actually, I have some giant folders (well into the hundreds of Gb), on Windows anytime I changed the sort in explorer I would have to wait 5+ minutes for it to sort them properly. KDE and GNOME must be doing some passive indexing or something because I can open any folder instantly and change the sort all I want without any lag. It's beautiful. It even works on samba drives although I noticed that if you don't access a particular drive for awhile it slows down a lot so I think there's some efficiency logic going on.
skinnyraf@reddit
Interesting. I was using Ubuntu for 7 years after almost two decades of using Debian. I tried OpenSUSE recently before finally settling on cachyOS. I've never experienced this crackling bug, though I had encountered a bunch of audio issues both in Windows and Linux - and it was actually an unreasonable audio issue that made me switch from Windows to Linux for good in the first place.
I stick with major DEs. I feel that some issues you mentioned are related to Cinnamon. My experience with Wayland was great since Nvidia finally fixed their drivers, though I switched to AMD since. Indexing is a part of Gnome and KDE.
Cinnamon was actually the reason I decided not to use Mint. It's great, sure, but it just doesn't have development resources available comparable with KDE or Gnome.
BrokenNote442@reddit
But it is safer that windows?
DeafVirtouso@reddit
Most malware is written for Windows, not because Linux is inertly safer but windows simply has a larger market for malware to begin with. Besides that, most Linux user are savvier on average. Bonus point, you can get most of your software from one place, no scouring sketchy websites.
my_new_accoun1@reddit
Also, Windows gives tons of access to the computer without needing UAC. An app can lock the mouse, lock the keyboard, and display a borderless full screen popup that won't go away, and then set it to run at startup.
Meanwhile, with the rise of Wayland, apps like these need administrator privileges to do so.
ipaqmaster@reddit
That said if you run malware with WINE it'll still destroy anything your user account can touch.
j0rs0@reddit
Linux is on the foundations of the Internet and still nowadays. This should answer it hopefully!
BrokenNote442@reddit
It doesn't for me
j0rs0@reddit
Linux is OSS and this is developed in the open by everyone who wants to contribute. Its source code is public, anyone can audit it, improve it, find/fix bugs...
Also is the most used Operating Systemd of the Internet servers for a thing.
No company owns it, it is an Operating System done for and by the community.
piorekf@reddit
Welllll… no. Biggest contributors, by a huge margin, are not the community but big companies like Google, Amazon, IBM, RedHat, Intel and alike. And they are not doing it from the goodness of their hearts but because they use it heavily and want to make it nicer and more effective for them. The fact that it's an Open Source and that they have to give back (actually GPL says that you have to make the source available for everybody who uses that particular modified software not everybody in the whole wide world) is just an acceptable side effect for them.
j0rs0@reddit
Yeah, whatever, I should have referenced the Wikipedia entry 😅
Alaknar@reddit
Microsoft was the top contributor for a year or two.
CGA1@reddit
This doesn't get mentioned often enough.
piorekf@reddit
Linux on servers is a slightly different beast than on a desktop. Desktops run different software. In recent years there is more malware targeting Linux. Plus Linux is also just software and therefore bound to have it's own bugs and security problems. It's still more secure than windows but just saying "it runs most of the internet" is a great oversimplification of the problem.
j0rs0@reddit
It is, I didn't want to do a longer write up (lazy) 😆🙏
duplicati83@reddit
By a very, very wide margin.
GriLL03@reddit
Yes if you either leave it as-is or know what you're doing.
No if you open every single port, install an SMB server and allow the entire internet to connect to it and access your whole FS without any authentication, with an SSH server with root/password for credentials.
That's the beauty of it. It can be as safe and secure or laughably insecure as you want it to be.
Mastore84@reddit
I read the whole thing, and it was great. Welcome!
inventinyourself@reddit
I don't have any audio issues on Fedora Workstation. Gnome also indexes your files.
PavelPivovarov@reddit
From the memory Plasma also has baloo for file indexing.
SlightComplaint@reddit
I didn't read all this, but Welcome.
duplicati83@reddit
I pasted it into my AI model and it gave me a good summary.
Also, welcome. I started playing with Linux a few years ago. What started as a me using an old computer as a plex media server has grown into me building my own server from scratch, switching to the server version of ubuntu (no GUI... mainly did it because it's so lean and efficient), hosting my own mailsever, AI server, N8N automations, finance system for my partner's business... this stuff is very addictive.
Lawnmover_Man@reddit
I pasted your reply into my AI model, and it disagrees with your views on the dangers of AI usage.
mobilecheese@reddit
I pasted your reply into my AI model, and it told me to commit my credentials to a public repo and then delete my home directory.
ipaqmaster@reddit
I hope you replied to it with: "Based"
zhongcha@reddit
I pasted your reply into Gemini, it said sorry for deleting my home directory and killed itself
Pendlecoven@reddit
🤣
KlePu@reddit
Nope.
Source: Been using Linux for >10y. Still discovering new (or old) stuff regularly.
Good friend who's ~20y in the game says he's finding new stuff now and then ;-p
Nice write-up though.
tonymurray@reddit
FYI, there are tons of indexed search options.
campbellm@reddit
I need one for that wall of text.
Lawnmover_Man@reddit
KDE and Gnome come with those. And there's pretty much no way to not realize those solution, because they are built-in into the regular way to use the "start menu". Kinda sounds like a troll posting or something.
Daell@reddit
People are so mad at Recall, rightfully so. But here I am using ManicTime for years and I did have the same screenshot feature deliberately enabled.
masterzeng@reddit
Linux mint is great, but I think you will benefit from fedora much more as you have a new configuration.
DoctorJunglist@reddit
Excellent write up, I read all of it. It brought me joy to see someone new to Linux enjoy it, and get what it's all about.
Informal_Bunch_2737@reddit
Pipewire/Pulse is known for that. You can just do it yourself in the config files, or just use Lutris to run things and always enable the "reduce pulseaudio latency" and it wont happen.
Lawnmover_Man@reddit
It's a common misconfiguration.
sxdw@reddit
You can use locate from the command line for an indexed file search, or if you like Spotlight and/or Alfred on macOS you can try Albert.
BinkReddit@reddit
Cheers Windows expat brother!
On KDE this is done by default with baloo.
ALSA is legacy; update to pipewire.
KDE has been doing this for a while.
Maybe you need a newer kernel? I have no issue with mine.
openbroadcast123@reddit
if you want a good Everything replacement for linux, consider an application launcher like rofi, or the recently released vicinae, which you can bind to a shortcut to search your applications, files, commands and more. it will show up as a GUI on your screen that will show the results. plasma comes builtin with its own launcher called Krunner. you can always resort to 'find' command if you are running a complex search.
I also had a crackling problem with proton emulated games on my pulseaudio on pipewire system, i fixed it by increasing pulse latency by 40ms. export PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=40
azotosome@reddit
Have you tried using an audio interface to resolve these issues rather than depending on the motherboard chip?
behohippy@reddit
Try the onboard audio instead of the Soundblaster Z. Physically remove the card as well just to see if it solves the crackling noises.
kinleyd@reddit
Welcome aboard! I got on the Linux train in 2010 and NEVER looked back. Tried different flavors along the way and have had Arch configured just so with Wayland, Hyprland and Emacs for some years now. It's been a fantastic ride.
XanderNvk@reddit
Very interesting read! I'm surprised by the similarities in the timeline that you and I have regarding OS experience. I was running macOS around the same time, and just very recently discovered Linux in general, and I also went with Mint. I tried Ubuntu about a year or 2 later, '11 or '12, but pretty quickly moved straight back to what I was used to before.
Anyways, very well said, very much agreed 👍
FluxUniversity@reddit
You have to tell it to scan the documents first, but you can use DocFetcher to do a real time "google search" of local documents
https://docfetcher.sourceforge.io/en/index.html
victoryismind@reddit
You mean like pops? That can be due to power management.
My experience is OK IDK what it is about your hardware.
However I know with linux you usually lose some functionality for me it was the SD card. Getting the WIFI to work was tricky and I don't think that GPS works.
I had a few bugs but it kinds settled. I had to hop between various solutions until I found stability, and had to manually patch a few things, which is kinda ridiculous. I guess Linux never changes.
poiret_clement@reddit
Just use WinApps and get rid of your dual boot 🫶 https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
Albos_Mum@reddit
Hah. If only, audio especially has been crappy on Windows since NT6 dropped and even prior still had its issues.
I've just gone back to stereo but 5.1 systems are outright easier to get working with Pipewire than under Windows these days imo.
zhandarmv@reddit
How much time do people really spend working with purely OS-related things? Like maybe some time with a file manager and… that’s all? 99% of the time you spend at Chrome, games, working-related apps like Excel etc. They all work super fast on any OS if you have a powerful PC. So what’s the point to compare operation systems if in the end of the day app quality is the most important thing?
FattyDrake@reddit
It's not so much working with OS-things, but what the overall OS does and how it treats the user. I work less with OS-related things on Linux than I did on Windows. Updates, changes (and lack thereof), etc.
Windows is very aggressive about updating every 2 weeks, and I did a lot to try and turn that off. Sometimes parts of it would get reset (like if a Windows update removed a certain policy or refreshed a part of the registry). On Linux I can just update whenever I have time for it. I try to once a month but it could be longer. Windows has been known to reboot for an update in the middle of a task.
Microsoft also adds unwanted things to try and upsell to subscription services. I already have a cloud storage setup, but after an update apps can start to save to OneDrive by default, etc.
You can't turn a lot of this off without third-party utilities. There's no, "Turn off" or "ignore forever" option for some things. Instead it's, "Yes" or "Remind me in 3 days."
I think the fact that there's an ecosystem of third party apps just to fix things people hate about Windows says a lot.
It's just very annoying, was affecting work, and I hit a breaking point (in addition to a couple other software-related things) that I decided to switch.
Basically, I don't want my OS to do anything I don't tell it to do. I want it to stay quiet and out of the way. I don't want to do OS-related things. Windows tries to force the matter.
duplicati83@reddit
Because, unlike Windows, Ubuntu just stays out of your fucking way and lets you use the computer.
Windows (and Microsoft software in general) is just so frustrating and annoying to use. The endless mandatory updates that require restarts, the shitty adverts in the start menu/file explorer, the constant fight to stop microsoft force-installing shit you don't want or need (like OneDrive or Candy Crush or fuck knows what else)... it just wore me down.
I use a Mac for my daily driver but if I didn't already have one, I'd happily switch to a PC with Ubuntu or another linux flavour on it.
meong-oren@reddit
Yeah, I use windows in my work computer (because it's not mine), and linux in my personal one, for years. Most of the time, I hardly notice any difference except the UI. Working, browsing, write documents, listen to music, it's all nearly the same experience to me in both machine.
mina86ng@reddit
There was a recent thread comparing performance of file extraction. I’m not convinced of its scientific merits, but it’s an example of a low-level operation which has effects on your high-level work. A software engineer will be impacted by the quality of the operating system.
Furthermore, a purely OS-related things affect how you can organise your work. Dunno if Windows has workspaces but it’s one feature which I basically cannot live without ever since I’ve switched to GNU/Linux.
Finally, what if I don’t have a powerful PC? My previous CPU was about ten years old when I upgraded. Why do I need to have a powerful PC to do the same work I was able to do ten years ago?
GriLL03@reddit
My 9950x3d and 14900k both disagree with the "super fast" statement. Windows and Office are a bloated mess of code. Also the constant pop-ups drive me insane. No, I do NOT want your copilot in notepad, my file manager, my, everything.
It's just jarring and annoying. I can't tell what connections my OS makes and where to and why (well one can ofc, but the average user doesn't look at router logs and MITM proxy).
Debian, on the other hand, will connect to absolutely NOTHING out-of-the-box. Zero connections. No network chatter.
Xzaphan@reddit
I started on Windows then MacOS for years then finally Ubuntu. I don’t see a reason to go back. Everything is better and available. I can tweak absolutely everything. I’m a developer so this is also an empowering environment. I know understand a lot more how things works under the hood. And this is making me more and more infuriating against MacOS and Windows. I now have bare-git for dot files, ansible for rapid setup and update, I work with terminal tools a lot… it is fun and so convenient !
GriLL03@reddit
I agree, and this post echoes my sentiments, except for the fact that I never used Apple's OS.
It's almost comical how stuff that requires gigantic software suites in Windows is a single tiny binary in Linux (looking at you dd, you beautiful binary).
I understand the need for a pretty GUI for some users (and honestly KDE Plasma is absolutely gorgeous, though the old-school simplicity of XFCE is more my style), but I prefer working in a CLI as well. I understand why some people are scared of it, though.
I also LOVED getting a deeper understanding of how the OS behaves. Learning how to set up a system from scratch also feels very rewarding (debootrstrap from Live, chroot into the new environment; I found it's very educational to set up a few systems like this).