Comment by dwazou@jlai.lu on PewDiePie: I installed Linux (so should you)

PewDiePie made a video on why he installed Linux and explained why everyone should do it too. Due to his number of followers, this might be the year of the Linux Desktop? Hooray?

Installing Linux was a good decision.

I have not gone back to Microsoft Windows.

Don’t listen to people telling you it’s hard. I don’t have an IT degree or engineering degree. Installing it was easy. Linux is elegant, secure and powerful. I love it.

Currently the bar to installing it is in the tech savvy area. If you have enough knowledge about computers to be a gamer you can be a linux user. Of course if you have to ask your SO or child for help with a computer, its not for you but tbh windows is also too complicated for some people. Once you have it installed, someone with 0 computer knowledge will find mint easier than windows for example.

If you don’t use many devices it’s fine.

What do you mean? I’ve never had any issues with multiple devices. They’re… Just different devices.

I don’t know if this is what they meant, but what’s stopping me from fully switching is that I have a bunch of peripheral devices with windows-only drivers

Many of them work without having to install anything. You could try a live boot USB and see what of them doesn’t work to get an idea how difficult it’ll be.

(possibly needless) anecdote

My dad is a Windows “power user” and it’s funny trying to talk to him about Linux because there are so many things unique to Windows that were essentially OS problems foisted onto “power users” that he is concerned about and a lot of them don’t really apply (e.g. anti-virus, drive letters, installing drivers for everything, etc.).

Oh yeah I’ve already dual booted. Its mostly musical instrument related stuff that’s stopping the full switch over. Like the programs to edit presets on my guitar pedal and synth are not huge fans of Linux. I would say for most people though, you could probably switch them to Linux and they wouldn’t even notice

TBH I kinda like the whole “drive letter” thing. But I also understand mount points, so I don’t really miss it, but still. It’s nice to have one single window to see all of your internal & external drives, home folders, and network shares. And yes, I’m aware I can do this in Linux as well. Just needs extra configuration - which is not a bad thing.

Nautilus shows me that stuff next to each other out of box on Ubuntu. It just doesn’t have drive letters.

I was surprised to have a fairly unusual setup with fairly unusual peripherals, and everything pretty much worked out of the box, except for one software (philips hue sync) for which there is an open source alternative (huenicorn, and it wasn’t built-in as Linux drivers are, because it’s specialized and requires a special interface)

Ah, that makes sense. I thought they were talking about laptop, desktop, kids computer, tablet, etc. and was like ¿…? Linux works next to everything better than anything else.

Anyway, I see what you mean. I got a temperature monitor that needed to be set up using their proprietary software that they only made for Windows, wine didn’t work so I actually ended up setting up a tiny win 10 VM so I could set it up. Easier and safer than dual booting with Windows around. Besides that though, I’ve always been able to find a workaround.

Or rely on software that is not available in Linux and can’t be emulated, which unfortunately applies to both my work and personal use

It’s exactly this. There are SteamOS-like systems out there (Bazzite and CachyOS) but it’s a pain if you don’t know what you’re doing. Needless to say, Enterprises will be using Windows for a very long time since they can easily restrict software and such - and a lot of their software is Windows-based only.

Yeah every thread is basically “lol bro just use Linux, skill issue”… I’m very comfortable with Linux, shell scripting and all those things. Been doing is almost 30 years. There are a wide range of things that are just not supported, which makes it a non-starter for a lot of people.

It’s because, for the vast majority of people, it isn’t an issue. Web browsers work fine and gaming is pretty much solved. If you’re doing something technical enough to require specific software then you’re technical enough to figure out if it works for you. If you aren’t then it will work for you, and solve a lot of the issues Windows causes too.

I wanted to give new life to an old acer laptop/tablet hybrid. I installed Linux, but the webcam and microphone just won’t work no matter what. The power button also doesn’t work.

There’s still a long way to go before any casual user would accept this.

Your edge case is not indicative of a larger trend.

The good news is this isn’t an issue for most people, it was free, and your device was already doing so poorly with Windows you felt it was at the end of its life, so even not working perfectly it still worked.

Edit: Also, Linux isn’t one thing. Your distro may not have included the packages to make those devices work, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. You could have searched for a solution, or perhaps a different distro would work.

Work should supply you with a managed device. That’s out of your control.

I’m genuinely curious though - what ‘personal use’ software do you run that isn’t supported in Linux?

I have 2 servers, 6 containers, a raspi, a desktop, and a laptop all running linux just fine. My two phones send notification updates to my laptop via kde connect

I have lots of devices on linux and they all play nice together

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PewDiePie: I installed Linux (so should you)(www.youtube.com)

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