One Common Linux Myth You Should Stop Believing: there’s a FOSS alternative to every single proprietary software out there that can be used as a replacement in all and every use case.
I mean a lot of them are ok but it depends on what you are doing. Gimp can make memes but if you learned Adobe you are going to struggle.
I think half of it is people doing want to learn something new and half of it is that the tools are behind
Gimp can make memes
Yeah but if you’re a graphic designers and you’ve to share PSD files with others for your job then you’re going to have a very hard time with Gimp.
That may be a reason to run a dual boot with Windows and your special gfx or cad software that you earn your livelihood from.
But for the other 75% of the time when not working, you have Linux.
Till windows updates and over writes your Lilo or Grub boot. Might be less of thing with non-mbr setups not sure have not dual booted in a long ass time
I have not had an issue in… 9 years? Though I use separate physical drives which might help. I wouldn’t let that scare people away
Edit: I’m also using rEFInd Boot Manager. I have about 5 operating systems that I can boot into (good way to try various Linux distros)
Same here. That’s pretty much a myth. I also have a couple laptops that still have a small windows partition and never had any issues.
That happened ages ago and gets blindly parroted to this day. I’m fairly convinced it’s the same with the nVidia stories.
With EFI you can even install windows after Linux and it will not mess with your systemctl boot. Windows will only put its bootloader in the EFI partition and systemctlboot will continue working. My girlfriend made this and I lost my jaw.
Under EFI, each bootloader has its own folder in the EFI partition. Each of those are registered with the firmware, and one of them is designated as the default. Grub is still there, but you’ll have to mash (different key for every OEM) to get to the chooser menu.
More like: GIMP can do much of what PS can do, but you’ll tear out your hair trying to, cause it’s so unintuitive and slower.
More generally - stop expecting every program to have an alternative. Sometimes there’s just the one thing that does what you want.
I lost functionality when I moved from Ubuntu to Windows 7 circa 2010, and I lost functionality when I moved from Windows 7 to Mint circa 2020.
Agreed, but sometimes a compromise for a not as good alternative is sufficient depending on the task.
I don’t think that myth exists. If you thought that before trying Linux, where did you get that idea?
I don’t, but a lot of people around here do… and get really offended when you point it out.
A lot of people see articles showing how to do something and it uses the terminal and they think that’s the only way to do it. In reality, it’s just easier to say “copy and paste these commands” than it is to walk someone through how to do it in a GUI.
Furthermore, a CLI instruction is DE-agnostic. So you don’t need to cover the same topic with explanations for at least 3/4 desktop environments. GUI instructions also change a lot faster than their CLI counterparts; so by providing the commands one provides the method with the best longevity. Overall, it’s just so much more efficient.
Exactly, I switched to Linux mint a year ago and I’ve used the terminal like… twice lol.
I’m glad you’re happy with Linux. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that things have progressed that far. I’m stuck with the feeling that gui settings and such aren’t reliable, because they didn’t used to be. Moreso, I just know how to do things in the terminal because that’s how I’ve done them for decades.
But you do you. Its great to have options.
Yeah, a single
sudo mvcommand can easily be several steps in a GUI, possibly error prone too. Because if you do it in the GUI you have to navigate all the way to where the source file is, cut it, navigate to where it needs to go, paste it there. Or you can paste the command in a terminal, done in 0.1 seconds.If I want some information from someone, I can cook a big oneliner to copy paste that will give me exactly the information I want instead of needing a dozen screenshots all coming from different places and programs.
As long as you can trust the person feeding you the commands, I can get just about anything working on your computer effortlessly.
Two things. Linux certainly does have a difficult learning curve, at least compared to Windows and OSX. I’m currently in Fedora 39 and I had to dig up some terminal commands off the internet just so I wasn’t choosing between 100% and 200% scaling. That’s just beyond the average computer user.
Secondly, I wish people could stop trying to teach everyone that Linux isn’t the OS. Anyone that cares already knows, and anyone that doesn’t know doesn’t care.
Maybe it’s changing now with Windows 10/11, but I think historically Windows has had just as difficult learning curve as Linux. People who have complained about Linux being more difficult than Windows just thought so because they had already spent years learning how to deal with Windows, while if they switched to Linux they would have to learn new things. If someone who has used MacOS 100% of their life were to begin using either Windows or Linux then I don’t think there would be much difference in difficulty.
I’ve come across plenty of bugs and usability issues in Windows, and despite having 10+ years experience with the OS I sometimes found them very difficult to solve, often requiring copy-pasting cryptic texts into the command prompt and/or regedit. I also think troubleshooting on Windows is made worse thanks to them writing witty things like “oops, something went wrong!” instead of actually giving you a useful error message, some many issues are of course unfixable due to its proprietary nature. At best you get an error code which you can look up online, but the OS is not made to be debugged by the user.
In the past Microsoft had really good support which you chat with, but the last time Windows refused to authenticate after an upgrade all the human support appears to have been replaced by automated troubleshooters. It got stuck in an endless loop of “run local troubleshooter” -> “you should try rebooting” -> “run online troubleshooter” -> “you should try rebooting” -> “back to the local troubleshooter again”. At work I still have a help-desk I can call with people who have taken countless hours of Microsoft trainings to get certifications.
just so I wasn’t choosing between 100% and 200% scaling. That’s just beyond the average computer user.
So if I understood you right, Fedora lets you choose either 100% or 200% scaling but you wanted more options than that? I.e. you wanted to overcome a limitation of the OS, rather than having to fix something which was broken? I don’t think the average computer user could do something similar in Windows. For example when I got my work computer with Windows 11, AFAIK there was no option to only show the task bar on one monitor, so it was always visible and taking space on all monitors. IIRC Microsoft added this feature last year, but I think it would’ve been extremely difficult for the average user to find a way to find a way to do it before that.
Guesstimating 99% of the Windows users I know would just accept that kind of thing like “it’s annoying, but this is how computers are”. I have friends, family members and coworkers who use Windows, and I’ve found them all to be extremely forgiving towards computer issues.
While I agree that most of perception that linux is harder than windows comes from the fact what most people already invested they time into learning windows and not linux, there are certain difficulties users have to face then transitioning.
Linux is not uniform platform, and thus solutions to problems might depend on user enviroment. Average user want to have UI solution. But then searching it up they likely to not specify graphical environment or even distro, and thus they will likely mostly see terminal based solutions, mixed with UI solutions some of which will not work out of the box, because they assume KDE environment, while user has gnome.
This is a necessary trade-of for being able to provide extremely customizable system, as opposed to providing lowest common denominator system, but having docs for common tasks that easy to follow.
Linux learning curve is definitely steeper than windows - at least for ‘the basics’.
Simply because of terminal commands. Thats a lot of info to learn and maintain just to do ‘basics’.
Yeah you can search and find what you need to do, but again that’s a lot of work for someone who just wants things to work.
Windows pretty much holds your hand to get the ‘basics’ up and running.
What does this “the basics” consist of then? I would’ve thought it was something along the lines of installing the OS, connecting a printer, installing common software (productivity suite, games, etc), setting a desktop theme you like and browsing the web, but none of that requires you to learn how to use the terminal.
I wish people could stop trying to teach everyone that Linux isn’t the OS
Over my dead body!
Noob here. What do you mean Linux isn’t the OS?
THANK YOU FOR ASKING, NO IT’S NOT.
I know the name ‘Linux’ is used to identify a family of OSs, but in reality it is actually only the kernel (the part of the system that allows hardware and software to communicate)
Would this be what people are getting at when they say “Gnu/Linux”? Or is it closer to saying “Linux Mint” or something?
This is exactly what people mean when they say GNU/Linux. They are trying to say that it is “the GNU Operating Syatem” with the Linux kernel.
This nonesense though. Please ignore them.
Linux Mint is an operating system. It uses the Linux kernel. The fact that it includes a handful of GNU packages in no way justifies co-opting the branding. Linux Mint includes A LOT of software from many sources. Are you going to try to list them all in the name?
Linux Mint would be an OS built on the Linux Kernel.
Some people have a hang-up on calling any Linux kernel based OS “Linux”, because unlike its competitor, there is a lot of OS flavors.
You have “main” OSes (Debian, Fedora, etc.) and derivative OSes based on these “main” OSes.
Linux Mint for example, is based on Ubuntu, which is based on Debian.
At this point, it is semantics.
Interesting. I can imagine this crowd making a big deal of it. The biggest hurdle for many of us to switch is the user base we have to turn to for help. There’s a lot of dissenting opinions and gatekeeping to muddle through. I’m liking Mint so far though. Thank you for the straightforward answer.
Mint is solid. I hope you have a great time on it!
I’ll also add that sometimes people project a lot and have a hard time understanding that recommending advanced stuff to beginners is counterproductive more often than not, no matter how much they like said stuff. It’s frustrating. It’s important to meet people where they are and take their needs and goals into account.
Secondly, I wish people could stop trying to teach everyone that Linux isn’t the OS. Anyone that cares already knows, and anyone that doesn’t know doesn’t care.
Ironically, the people who need to hear this don’t care.
It’s 100% stallman trying to coat-tails Linus.
What I’ve learned in 30 years of using Linux is the gnu/Linux distinction only matters to the kind of whacko I can’t work with. It’s a great mineshaft canary to let me know whom not to invest any time in.
Linus wrote a kernel, and GNU wrote the majority of the userspace at the time.
How is that coat-tails-ing? Both projects had a tremendous amount of effort poured into them. And let’s not forget GCC was the only free compiler for 20 years.
If people were asking for it to be called “GNU” only, then it’d be unfair. But they aren’t.
Actually, Linux is just the kernel, not the whole OS. The full operating system is called GNU/Linux because it combines the Linux kernel with GNU tools. Teaching people about GNU and why it was made is important. It’s not just about using software but understanding the freedoms behind it – the freedom to use, study, modify, and share. Free Software is about more than just open-source, it’s about user freedom, and that’s a crucial distinction. Now, I’m not forcing you to say GNU/Linux, I say Linux most of the time myself, but you should still teach people about GNU.
Actually that is a common misconception by people who have read political blogs from the 90’s.
The OS that you are calling GNU/Linux is usually less than 2% GNU these days as the GNU Project is only responsible for about a hundred packages. Most Linux distros have between 3,000 and 80,000 packages depending on the distribution.
In fact, if we are talking about software licenses, calling it MIT/Linux would be more appropriate. If we are talking about attribution, Red Hat contributes more code than anybody so perhaps Red Hat/Linux is more up-to-date. That may cause confusion with Red Hat Enterprise Linux though so perhaps IBM/Linux is the best term to use as IBM owns Red Hat these days and is therefore the top contributor to most Linux distros.
Of course, most people just call it Linux because everything above is ridiculous ( including GNU / Linux ).
All that said, teaching people about the FSF, copyleft, and Free Software more generally is super important. The GNU Project itself is more of a historical artifact at this point ( in my view ) but there is no denying its extreme historical importance. It would be great if people knew more about it. Much like BSD.
Teaching people to say GNU / Linux is not only not important but is downright political and factually incorrect. Not a fan.
Or as I’ve taken to calling it; GNU+Linux
It’s far from just GNU utils, though.
Should we say “I don’t use Linux, I use GNU+Linux+systemd+pulseaudio+Wayland+Gnome+[etc]”
The feature you’re referring to is called Fractional scaling. What Desktop are you using? Are you using Fedora Workstation (GNOME), Fedora KDE, or something else?
Not OP. But curios on the subject. I use debian bookworm with an older Nvidia 1050.
I currently tend to use gnome. As I have multi res monitors. Mainly due to vision issues. 2x32inch 2k 1x28inch 4k and a 24inch 1k
Dose any desktop allow stable fractional scaling for each monitor independently. Its been a good few years since I looked into it. But in the past it was unstable.
I know that a lot of work is being done across all Wayland desktops to get this supported but I don’t fully know about the levels of support, as I don’t use a DE and I have no need for fractional scaling. From what I’ve heard, KDE Plasma supports pretty much everything now, which includes fractional scaling.
Thanks ill lookninto that sometime soon.
Idk, trying to solve something on Linux is usually just running some command on the terminal and your done. In windows you have to edit some special file on the registry or something like that. I think it’s what you are used to use, I’m being a Linux user for 14 years now, I can’t even think of how to solve something in windows (windows XP was my last windows install)
I wish people could stop trying to teach everyone that Big Ben isn’t the name of the clock. Nobody cares.
I wish people would stop trying to explain the difference between “to” and “too”, it really doesn’t matter.
Nock it off, people. If misconceptions are common, that means they’re right.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that common misconceptions somehow become correct, just that having that discussion with someone who doesn’t care is pointless. Also, pedantic discussions like that are something that might turn people off from trying out Linux
The article perpetuates another myth:
And of course, you have dedicated software stores in many Linux distributions.
Repositories are not “stores!” Repositories maximize convenience of discovering and installing Free Software, while “stores” exist to extract money from chumps for enshittified, proprietary crap. There’s a huge fucking difference.
Some GUI package applications use the store metaphor. Pop! OS uses Pop Shop currently and will use COSMIC Store in 24.04 without transactions being involved.
Yeah, and that’s a terrible, misguided thing to do.
Bold words to describe a user friendly metaphor.
Linux Is Only Free if You Don’t Value Your Time
This one is my favorite.
My co-workers SSD failed, and he was out most of the day. My SSD failed, and I was back up and running in about 10 minutes.
After several years of using Linux for work and school, I made the leap to daily driving linux on my personal computer. I stuck with it for two years. Hundreds of hours I sunk into an endless stream of inane troubleshooting. Linux preys on my desire to fix stuff and my insane belief that just one more change, suggested by just one more obscure forum post will fix the issue.
Yeah, but you can also run as a windows user and be happy. I have my moments of “from scratch” guy, but sometimes I just throw all away and reinstall (or install another) my distro when I feel the issue is too obscure and should not be occurring. A lot of ppl judge me but I’m using only Linux for the past 3 years and I’m happy as fuck with it. Even liking problem solving sometimes I just want to open a game and run, and yeah, I can do it in the exactly same lazy way of windows.
If the user sees the following
Linux Is Only Free if You Don’t Value Your Time
one must immediately counter with
Windows Is Only Free if You Don’t Value Your Privacy
The Windows user will immediately disintegrate if performed optimally
The cynic in me says maybe your coworker was just taking their time
How were you able to do this?
Most likely through a combination of backups and the fact that all your apps can be redownloaded from the repos with a single terminal command followed by a list of packages. I literally keep a list of installed packages. When I reinstalled my system years ago. I restored all configs from my backups and just installed all the same packages I had last time. Reboot and boom you are up and running in no time flat. Depending on your internet speed.
That makes sense, can you please guide me to a term that I can google or perhaps a guide article, if you dont mind, please?
You will come across all sorts of different solutions by just searching for linux backups. I personally use the app vorta which uses the command line tool borg under the hood. As for the list of packages, that will differ per distro, so just search how to list all installed packages on your distro.
Boot to USB drive and load documents from backup. After my shift is over, I restore or replace the bad drive.
The article’s “valuing your time” argument is problematic in certain contexts. My brother has had so much trouble with his dual-boot (Windows and Linux). Yes, he could learn how to solve something in Linux every time a problem arises, but he also has to deliver his projects on time. Because of that, he mostly spends time on his Windows dual boot. Yeah, it sucks ethically and has its own pragmatic issues, but he has never had issues resolving dependencies or hunting down the most recent version that can actually be run in NixOS.
I don’t doubt these will become issues that will not be as problematic in the future, but right now my brother cannot use Linux reliably for his assignments.
Edit: My brother has tried what I use: Fedora and NixOS. He has also tried PopOS.
In Fedora, he found some of his software didn’t exist as .deb, and struggled to make .tar files work smoothly for him.
He tried NixOS afterward. He really liked the whole immutability thing, as well as the idea that apps would have their own dependencies.
His dependency problem happened in PopOS. If I remember correctly, it was a code editor that required a version of something that was different to what a package he used in his software was.
I think the order he tried was Fedora -> NixOS -> PopOS -> NixOS -> ? (Haven’t talked to him about it recently)
I would argue that NixOS absolutely is the OS you get if your time is worthless, but not every distro is the same. I’d argue that if you need something that doesn’t have so many issues a stabler or easier to use distro (Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Linux Mint, and even Fedora or openSUSE) is going to be a better option than trying to bend specifically NixOS to do what you want.
I personally use a mix of Pop, Debian, and Fedora, not because they’re particularly powerful, but because they tend to be more straightforward for what I want to do than NixOS, Gentoo, or Arch. I don’t mind tinkering, but for my main machines I don’t want to tinker much.
Edit: I should clarify that there are plenty of reasonable uses of Windows and I don’t fault anyone for using it especially if their familiarity is keeping them from understanding Linux as well as they want to. But I also would make the case that there are a lot of distros out there.
I would argue that NixOS absolutely is the OS you get if your time is worthless
Hard disagree. Does it require you to climb through heaps of trash documentation? Absolutely. But, if you persevere, you got yourself a rock solid system that will even make Debian Stable jealous; all while requiring no maintenance.
- Better documentation has been made available since relatively recently.
I’d argue Fedora Atomic does the job with even less fuss for a larger number of people. NixOS is great if you want/need to tinker, but Fedora Atomic is just giddy up and go as long as you don’t require any specialized programs or drivers.
I say this as someone who currently uses NixOS on both of my computers.
I agree that Fedora Atomic, especially if you consume it through uBlue, provides (somehow) even less headache with only a fraction of the investment.
I say this as a very happy user of Fedora Atomic; who has (almost) exclusively been using Fedora Atomic on all of their systems (read: 1 laptop) for over two years.
Does it require you to climb through heaps of trash documentation? Absolutely.
That’s why I think the previous commenter’s statement rings true. I’ve been using Linux exclusively for over a decade across multiple distros. NixOS is not intuitive for new or seasoned users, making good documentation vital.
An example: I spent a good weekend day or so poking at NixOS. Live boot worked as expected. When I finished, I had a bootable system but no network stack, despite following the docs. This means that my only route forward would be going back to the live boot since there was no way to pull packages in that state.
I decided to go with Fedora Silverblue as my next test. After dding the image to my USB, it took about 10 mins to get up and running. I was able to setup libvirt and other similar software quick and easy. And once I’m happy, I can write my config to a repo and have my base system wherever, whenever.
I just wanted to offer some nuance to the table. After everything has been learned, enabling some (otherwise complex and obscure) features can be accomplished by a single line in your NixOS config. Like, this efficiency can not and should not be ignored.
You can find some of my thoughts on Fedora Atomic in another comment found under this post. Spoiler alert; for a lot of people, it’s what they seek from NixOS but (by contrast) with excellent delivery. I won’t ignore that it doesn’t have some of the more insane/interesting functionalities that NixOS provides. But, some just want atomicity, reproducibility and (some) declarativity; and Fedora Atomic does deliver on those without requiring you to go into the deep and learn an entire new language that’s only used for managing your distro 😅.
I just wanted to offer some nuance to the table. After everything has been learned, enabling some (otherwise complex and obscure) features can be accomplished by a single line in your NixOS config. Like, this efficiency can not and should not be ignored.
I really appreciate it. I really WANT to like NixOS. The level of efficiency and portability (ex. Nix as package manager) is incredible and, I think, well worth learning about both for users and distros - I hope we see the ideas propagate further. It’s just not in a place that I can be happy using it. But, it is going to tickle some people the right way and that is something that makes me happy.
Fedora Atomic does deliver on those without requiring you to go into the deep and learn an entire new language that’s only used for managing your distro 😅.
This right here is why I’m liking it so far. I’m like Alton Brown is to cooking gadgets when it comes to languages in computing, I really don’t like unitaskers. I get unreasonably resentful of software that forces me to use a DSL (this is a “me” problem).
And you learn something thatbis it applicable to NixOS. And the time to find stuff is just insane. Oh this used to work but doesn’t know cause now we don’t this way. It is a compete time sync trying to robot of stuff with Nix.
I have used a lot of different distros and I never had dependency problems whether on Linux mint, Debian, open suse or fedora. And yes, this can be a problem, especially on distros like Manjaro, but you still can use flatpaks/appimages/snaps and don’t deal with dependencies at all. NixOS and all rolling release distros can be great but they are not meant for people who are not ready to troubleshoot their system at any time. If you stick with a more stable distro like Debian you will most likely get a more reliable system then with windows.
Why does your brother use NixOS in the first place?
Don’t get me wrong; I think NixOS is a very interesting project with a very bright future. It probably wouldn’t be an exaggeration if I said that NixOS has single-handedly inspired the current immutable revolution. However, it’s also a distro that wants you to learn and digest its ways before it will return the favor.
But, based on my reading/understanding of your comment, your brother doesn’t strike me as a seasoned Linux user. Am I right? Btw, NixOS is hard unbeknownst of how many experiences you got with other distros. However, I would simply never recommend a new user to use (Gentoo, Guix System or) NixOS. There are definitely outliers, but they would have to find it themselves then.
i dunno ubuntu has been plug and play for my work, and it gets much less in my way.
“I don’t value my time. I value my braincells.”
– Me, every time someone says the “…value your time” argument.
I just recently switched to mint, and so far it’s been great. I will say though, I find it pretty ridiculous how many hoops I had to jump through just to get my second drive to mount on boot and for programs to maintain write permissions to it. Which is a situation that a lot of non tech savvy will deal with when switching, especially gamers.
A garbage to run ads again. Everyone already knows the myths and they don’t need the same post to pop up every year.
HowtoGeek used to be a legitimately good site back in the day but now has a proliferation of low quality articles. Also, uBlock Origin by default blocks it’s links sometimes since they redirect via awstrack.me as well.
This is Linux propaganda.
Notice they didn’t bother to give any truth other than sunshine and rainbows. It would be nice if they gave good information.
It starts with a blatantly llm-generated image, with the text possibly being a chatbot as well; good journalism is rare these days compared to this mass-produced slop
It honestly reads like a Linux fan wrote it. Just look at some of the comments on Lemmy. Linux is this magic operating system everyone is going to love. There are absolutely no issues and everyone’s ok using Linux native tools.
I think Linux is solid but to try to sell it to someone as absolutely perfect is frankly silly. To be fair I am not totally innocent in this regard but I at least try no to leave out information.
Just to be clear I am not taking about you in particular.
What I find funny is people act like windows just works. Windows has its own issues and work arounds.
True but this article isn’t about Windows
Agreed. As a self-proclaimed Linux fan, I’m also trying to give an unbiased perspective but I still find myself presenting things as nicer than they are sometimes.
How can you sell someone free stuff?
Words
I wonder what their ‘prompt’ was, especially with the demonic blowfish thingy. “Theo De Raadt as a FreeBSD convert assaulting Linux” – maybe?
Theo de Raadt doesn’t need FreeBSD. Because OpenBSD is much better.
It would also be nice if there weren’t ads littered throughout the article.
I have used Linux since 1999 and advocate its use for various purposes which includes being a daily driver, but I would never subject anyone to that article.
You are seeing ads? I just use Ublock origin and it works fine.
I was on my phone.
And that’s completely missing the point. This isn’t a useful article solely because the whole purpose of the article is ad space, not Linux. It shouldn’t be on me to have some ad blocker just to be able to easily read it. It’s a garbage article from what I’m guessing is a garbage site.
I didn’t even realize it had ads
Not part of the discussion but i can really recommend Firefox with ublock origin on mobile. I recently switched a lot of stuff i did in app on mobile back to the browser because of that, like YouTube, and it’s so great finally being rid of ads on mobile.
