The way Linus is doing it is technically correct and the proper way if you're dealing with document security and verification but yeah, I don't think that's what the challenge intended, lol.
Me: Print it, sign it, take a picture with phone. LOL. That seems to be how people want it every time I've had to sign PDF documents. Otherwise it's in docusign.
Linus’ closing rant is an example of what’s bad in the software development world in general - it’s not exclusive to Linux. If you’re building software, it’s so difficult to see what the barriers to entry for new users can be, because you’ve lived and breathed the product for so long throughout the development lifecycle. These questions from new users are gold! They are coming at your product with fresh eyes and, in the majority of cases, their questions should tell you that you need to update your documentation to be more clear or your UI to be more intuitive or both! If you’re sick and tired of answering the same questions over and over again: you’re doing it wrong.
Programmer UI is a common term for shitty user interfaces that no one but the programmer of the application understands. It has all the functions you need, but it's just thrown in there without any thought on how someone would use it.
@@XBitX For real. People do a lot of things for 'free' out of principle or just the love of creating things. Luke had the most hard hitting point on that: "keep the pro-level distros but also make this stuff more accessible." Why can't we have both? Having more baseline users means you'll get more people who want to tinker and become adept with the more nuanced distros when they get acclimated. You can have an entry level UX/UI for your distro but also have the advanced features unlocked if so desired by the advanced users you want to work with. Windows does the same shit, they just make you pay for pro/commercial access but the core idea remains effective. Put tamper seals on things that will break the OS but allow people to take them off to dig into more advanced features.
@@XBitX Linux as an OS got a lot of money and effort goes in as an important mobile and server component. Desktop Linux is hard to be monetized making it less developed and less polished. Making emulator is possible by just hobbyists but making a good desktop UX is not. You have to have user feedback and when you have no user to start with it's really hard to grow.
@@Rcls01 This constant excuse drives me up a wall, the real reason linux has this issue is because people dont want to do it for one main reason: people who are hardstuck in their old ways of terminal like its still 1985 and gatekeep anyone who dares to think otherwise. This is also the reason why linux desktop has near zero marketshare, all i see are constant excuses and nonsense reasons for why we cant have a competent UX in fucking 2021. For example, way ubuntu etc handles printers is amazing, why cant we have that for other shit like wifi dongles/cards, it took me an hour to find correct wifi dongle drivers for one that auto detects in windows.
A few notes, as a fairly experienced Linux user: 1. Thanks for doing this! It's easy to forget what being new to Linux is like, and that was a lot of fun to watch. 2. I had no idea printing and network shares had become so easy on Linux. It used to be a pain. 3. Quite the unfortunate wording for the "digitally sign a PDF" task, as this is not a beginner's task when taken literally (i.e. pair the PDF with a cryptographic signature that proves that the file has not been altered). That's what Linus tried to do, and neither on Windows, nor on Linux, is that an easy feat. 4. Very, very sensible closing words.
i was baffled with the "digitally sign a PDF" being a "gamer daily task". I thought about payments and contracts, but at least in Mexico for that, they provide a Java app.
@@dashcharger24 I’ve found NFS to be very easy as well, but I’m used to doing it with “mount” command, so probably good to go the SMB route for GUI purposes (I don’t daily drive Linux as a GUI usually only in server contexts so NFS tends to be pretty simple in _those_ contexts, at least). I know both work pretty seamlessly out of the box in many cases though, especially if you’re fine with a quick adventure into the command line. 😬
@@R3lay0 7zip can do many of the compression formats multithreaded, it is Absolutely Blazing fast, within few seconds after starting your CPU fan will go full bore and the compression speed is limited by resources only. I save literal hours of my life each year when compressing work files and the like for archiving.
Luke just added an image to his pdf, Linus was actually trying to digitally sign the PDF with a either a soft or hardware based certificate (the latter is done using a PKCS11 token), these are two completely different things
And here I thought you'd PGP sign the file itself? I am so lost o.o How does digitally signing a PDF with a certificate (trying to be specific here) actually work, then? I only saw PDF programs allowing you to scribble a hand-moused signature into the page...
I'm loving these videos, guys! I noticed the compression wasn't finished when Linus tried opening it because the filesize kept changing and I literally shouted "it's still compressing" at the screen! And thanks for the shoutout!
Whole zip compressing thing is weird... I mean... I can imagine my grandma using that... And using any other compression tool even like 7-zip on windows has left me uneasy on the UX department. BTW: I use right click menu item on KDE, same as I do with 7-zip on windows. So it's weird how Linus could have fail that up
@@N1Zer0 Now way. I daily drive Linux on ultrawide 1440p with huge number of windows and never miss notification. It has sounds BTW. Linus just pays no attention at all
@@milesfarber what? to which of Linus and Luke's attempts were you referring to? I and many others have no issues saving files to our network smb shares under Linux (especially given the proliferation of home/soho NAS devices). Setting up the Samba server (be that on desktop/server hardware or embedded e.g. NAS) is another matter (so many interlinked moving parts). If the NAS is using sane defaults it should be no trouble. A big problem may be username mapping (especially usernames with spaces).
I have used Linux extensively. I'm way more familiar with both distros in this series than Linus or Luke in addition to several other distros not even mentioned. I program in Linux, my server is Linux, I've contributed to Linux projects on GitHub. It would be trivial for me to solve every single problem they had in this series. I love Linux, that's why it irritates me to see some other Linux users hating on the series. This is what a user would experience. Not even an average user, these guys are very good with windows. IMO Linux is far superior to windows for a lot of things but if Linux wants to be "as good" as windows it needs to make the daily stuff users do easier. I'm not saying I want more conformity between distros or anything like that. All I want is more people to contribute to wikis and to open bugs or contribute code when they run into a problem. It would be especially cool to see old solutions marked as obsolete or updated when new versions come out. Having things labeled better would also be helpful because I know why musl causes problems with some programs but a new user might not so mention at the top that only certain installs should follow the guide. Stuff like that would could help retain users and make it less frustrating for new people to try Linux. Additionally I think there is one issue that was glossed over here. Some games do not play well with Linux. Especially multiplayer games because several anticheats will ban you even if you do struggle through and get a game to work in Linux. I've even see people getting banned for using windows vm's on Linux hosts. This is something we will depend on game devs to improve in the future and I hope one day we see it happen. Thanks again Linus and Luke. Great series and I'm especially glad you showed some of the strengths Linux has despite the issues people may bump into.
@@lewismcdonald9691 While they seen to be aggrandizing through the roof. Valve is actually a huge part of why gaming on Linux is actually in good shape right now. Even with projects like DXVK that gave us incredible support for Direct3D that often surpasses the original implementation in performance. It was Proton that made it fairly trivial to run just about any game. Currently I use Lutris with Proton-GE builds, most I have to do is tick "virtual desktop" for games that have trouble reclaiming mouse/keyboard after losing focus. Really if you just stuck to launching games through Steam that would be enough. I just don't like having Steam running behind my single player games and shortcuts to Steam Proton must be manually updated if Steam updates the Proton runtime for a given game (to account for the install folder changes).
I think one of the biggest issues is that they (Linus especially) are Windows Power Users instead of regular users. This means that they are used to going in and fiddling thing things on Windows or at the very least doing things with their computers that "average users" wouldn't do. They're "more familiar" with Windows than the average user. I love Linux, though I do have many, *many* complaints about the UX or stability and such. That being said, I find at least some of the "problems" they run into are simply them thinking that things on Linux should work exactly like they do on Windows, or how they *think* things work on Windows.
I don't use Linux very often but had an easy experience installing mint and figuring it out. The only thing I had a problem with is reconfiguring dosbox in Linux to run exe version of a game that took me like 2 hours lol
You should let Anthony do the challenges as well. Not to see whether he can do more of them or faster but to see in what ways he does them differently.
As a long time linux user I would just like to thank Luke and Linus for this series. A lot of linux users seem to be underestimating the amount of publicity this is giving to linux as this will really help our community to grow and will encourage developers to provide more support for linux. The feedback they are giving is priceless as, for the most part, they represent the average windows or mac os user and the fact that we as a community can be shown the problems people have with linux will bring the year of the linux desktop ever closer. Please just be kind, there are people who only want to use intuitive and effective distros that 'work out of the box' and there are people who enjoy more DIY distros due to their flexibility and specific uses (I use arch as a software developer) and this is fine as everyone has their own needs and uses cases. Thanks guys for helping to publicise linux and keep up the good work. (would love to see a linux with Anthony series)
Absolutely right, but I sometimes do have the feeling they overlook what they actually got for free. Because Linux is quite the technical miracle given that it's not coming from a billion dollar company.
@@92kosta yes it is sine good since it shames those bad people... aka elite assholes that don't care their shit is causing damage most of *nix ants success and to crush winbloze. and with the pathetic shit of w10 and beyond we NEED it more than ever to finally get "its" act together for the avg users and gamers!! Its right now like OS2 warp (I was one of the inside dev testers) excellent improvements performance stability and massive potential... but the fukin asshats in marketing didn't play nice with others etc and/or were oblivious .. so all that amazing potential got sabotaged by malice, stupidity and general fucktarded crap *nix has the potential... and the asshat elitist wannabes ae the equiiv of the ibm marketing morons NOT playin nice and shooting themselves and everyone else the foot via their stupidity!!!
@@92kosta Dude, if you did not raise in a Microsoft Windows world, you'd probably had many issues learning Windows as well... Linux is not perfect, exactlty as anything is this life. Everything breaks, including Windows and Linux. They're learning a new system, with new concepts and new experiences... It's completely normal to find issues... But remember: Linux is free and doesn't have a multinational enterprise behind it
Linus was the one who did what I'd call digital signing (proving authenticity and integrity of a file), and that is for sure not a simple or everyday task for most people. Luke added a regular signature digitally, which is not the same as adding a digital signature.
Given that this was supposed to be simple everyday tasks, I think Luke got what they were going for. Linus misunderstood the assignment and overcomplicated it. I don't think most of us regular users would even know the difference (I certainly didn't before reading the comments) and would have done what Luke did.
@@DrigrX but what lyke has done is not digital signing, so the challenge should've been worded differently if 'draw a signature on the file' was the goal
Yeah, I was surprised when I saw that a digital signature was considered "an everyday task", it's an advanced task. Then I realized what they meant: add an image pretending to be a physical signature to the document.
I really resonate with Linus' closing about the online community answers. When I was first learning Linux, and trying to use it as my daily driver, I was discouraged, and shamed for not understanding the basics. These days, I'm a Linux power user and I use it for home and work, and I do everything I can to help mitigate that experience when people ask me basic Linux questions.
That's why i stopped using Linux. My sound card wasn't supported. I asked how i could get audio for my system. I was told to 'just write an audio driver' if you need audio. As if that's reasonable for a normal user. I'm a software engineer and that's still not reasonable. Why not tell me that my hardware is unsupported and suggest an alternative? Or tell me of an alternate driver option? Anything but the condescending reply that if i can't just make my own audio driver that I'm not worthy of using Linux.
It's hard when you're just starting out and don't know the toxic communities from the helpful ones. There are definitely a lot of really wonderful and super helpful people out there. There's also a lot of garbage human beings whose ego demands they demonstrate why they're better than a stranger on the internet.
@@beepboopbeepboop190 unfortunately the communities that do come up when you search for something end up being the toxic ones. Since I only use specialised distros and not DEs, thankfully I've not encountered horrible community experiences. Retro pie, omv to name a few have excellent communities with people who tell you if it's something a novice can or cannot do and if there is an alternative
@@christiangonzalez6945 Sadly I've run into that too, and it's not a joke - They were deadly serious. And even if it was a joke, it's still extremely discouraging.
@@LiveErrors yeah but if you need to be able to help yourself and formulate a good question. 90% of the time you need to just look somewhere than waste the super smart peoples time
Really wish Luke did more videos. I get that he has other stuff he's working on, but he's just such an amazing neutral-positive character on screen. Luke, Riley and now Anthony are easily my favorite hosts.
Part of the reason is not only that he's busy with floatplane, but the other part is that he's not even part of linus tech tips anymore, he's legally not an employee of the company that makes youtube videos, floatplane is registered as a separate company, so when he's on a youtube video he's either working for free on the video or maybe being paid as a contractor i imagine, he would have to say the details of how hes being paid or not paid when he's in videos now but i would imagine is one of those 2 scenarios since they have to abide by the law as registered companies.
I don't know if everyone being "neutral-positive" is the best for objective journalism. Sounds weird but you need people who lean many different directions to balance things out, not just a few people who are "neutral" on their perspectives.
I like it. It’s not perfect, but the criticism from Linus was simply wrong. He says most of the time you don’t need it, so why show it by default? Abe when you do need it, guess what? Right click the menu bar, customise, add it. Or go to settings and add it there. As for copying in root folders, there’s a plug-in included in Dolphin by default that you have to enable (they don’t want novices doing it so it’s hidden a little) and once you do, right clicking anywhere gets you “root actions”. Really easy. My only real complaint about it is it’s networking. For instance it didn’t mount nfs shares. It can find them and use them, but it has some sort of “support” for them and it expects apps to include that support to open files from it properly. If they don’t, the file is copied, then opened. Really bad for a media network share. Thing is, that’s entirely stupid and not needed because the kernel is capable of handling network locations as mounted folders perfectly fine.So I just command line mount it and’s open it in VLC or whatever and it’s all good.
@@IshayuG his criticism wasn't "wrong" lmao if it was intuitive he wouldn't have had the problem. You can't just say someone's criticism is wrong just because there's an obscure solution they don't know about. How would a regular user know to look for any of that? Not to mention Linus ISNT a regular user, he has had decades of advanced experience with computers.
@@LaCroix05 That's not true. In my part of the world, a personal signature made in a digital form doesn't hold legal weight. And if you, for example, want to submit papers to the government in a digital form, you actually need to sign all of them with a digital certificate. Granted, various lawyers and accountants probably don't do it by hand, most of the time, but overall point still stands.
LMAO... "Im just going to put things everywhere" while Luke was installing the font. LTT should totally develop challenge for people at home. So many people would benefit from learning an OS (windows included) from making a game out of installing fonts, copy\paste, printing, network share, etc. I would love to put my family and friends through this.
It's how Linus does things. I met him in Star Citizen when he was live streaming with Morphologis. He intentionally kills himself and gets himself in a world of hurt for the entertainment value. I don't blame him. Gotta do that on UA-cam for that magical 70% retention metric and it's a business. He knows what he's doing.
Its interesting because i hace used linux on and off for about 2 years and i never once noticed the flawless printer integration . Similarly tho, i also never had need to access network attached storage. I am definately gonna attempt the challenge. Ive had minimal issues with mint and im familiar with the package manager so i will be disappointed but not surprised if i cannot complete the challenge. Mint is defo the best startup os with popos!
Yeah, it would have been nice if they had made generic files for this challenge (instead of using what looks like their standard release form and something they had to blur), and made the whole package available for download as a "follow along at home" kind of thing. I think I could do just about everything but the 4K and HDR parts on Mac OS 9.
Most of the last 20 years for me and I whole heartedly agree with you. Many of the blinded fanbois just don't get it: Most people... don't care, they just want their computer to work for them.
@@bluegiger agreed, and honestly this goes for me too, even though i use linux. Thats because i just use things like mint, it gets the job done with very few bugs and very stable. Linux can be used as a daily driver for the average person very easily - just that like 90% of distros are made for people already familiar with Linux.
@@Big-Chungus21 Ehhh, I spent an entire day digging through forums across the internet just to get the wifi on my old laptop working in Mint. Even its got its difficulties.
Linux is genuinely a good & fun experience if you're into tinkering. My reason for using Linux is because i dont like bloatware, spyware, or adware, of which microsoft fills windows to the brim with. I also prefer minimalist setups - only programs I want, nothing else. Windows doesnt really let you do that without going through a convuluted process. Meanwhile, Linux in some cases starts off with literally a black screen & power shell, and allows you to build it from the ground up, exactly how you see fit. Im one of the users that uses qtile window manager on arch linux, & have configured it to a point that's it is basically my own operating system that no one else in the world has, and that feels fucking awesome. It works splendidly for me, however, Im also one of those types that likes to learn things and likes to tinker, and has the patience to deal with these things. Furhermore, Linux customization is off the charts, as you saw with Linus, you are quite literally allowed to erase key components with the bash console, & the freedom doesn't end there. You want new keyboard shortcuts? Open source code and program them in. For example, for me, ctrl+f1 is the file explorer, +f2 is brave browser, f3 is steam, f4 is my DAW, etc,l., literally two buttons and I can open the applications I use most. You want a whooooooole different gui? Do that. There's thousands of different configurations for several different desktop environments, and you can even create your own if you learn how. Its an operating system that is only as good as what the user is willing to put into it. If you learn its ways, and set it up, configure it right, it's genuinely a great OS. Plus, knowing microsoft isnt watching or controlling what I can do is a fucking blessing. There's a bunch of reasons to get into Linux, its honestly such a shame it is not so beginner friendly.
@@yukihanayuki Wow, this is actually pretty nice here//)) I always got the pain ass workin with them on the work9)( Just the setup is literally a death there
I've honestly never had any printer issues in Linux, only on Windows. I've an HP printer provided by my work, the driver is so massively bad that it loses connection to the printer on a weekly basis. Only solution is to reinstall the driver, repeatedly, for every Windows pc in the home network. I noticed that I as a Linux user never had this issue, only other family members using Windows... I've disconnected the printer from our network, connected it to a Raspberry PI over USB, then connected the RPI to our network as printing server. Works flawlessly on Windows now. The printer is also unable to update it's firmware, making it impossible to brick any third party ink in the process. It's a win win situation.
Linux has a weird relationship with hardware, most common hardware, including printers, will have drivers baked right into the kernel. Which works very well for printers. of course its sadly not so easy for niche hardware.
Because: linux Switched my last machine about a year ago. I've printed like 2 documents since, no setup, no problems - this shows how simple printing on windows could be
Oh man the weird ARK and Dolphin issues are things I encounter a lot. This was fun to watch. Really highlights how "basic usage" of Linux desktop is actually fairly easy, it's gaming and more niche use cases where it breaks. Dolphin's approach to some of those philosophies are TERRIBLE. They're supposedly working to change this, but the stances are astounding.
Managing Wine's .desktop files in general is pain. It was hell on GNOME as it was all over the place in default app menu and the default app menu of GNOME was just a mess for me. Sometimes I'm happy to start over just to get rid of my messes...
7-zip already included wit most Linux archive manger, you just need to get use with their interface, I didn't done file decompression via command line on Linux for years, and it just easy as in windows, BTW I found that XFCE is most users newbie friendly interface every tried, Gnome is trash from me now, other DE either too simple or too complex
Yeah, whenever I need to copy files to external storage, I switch to thunar, because it just works, so far. Oh yeah, and the bulk rename tool built in with thunar is awesome.
I learned Linux in college, and elitists are the worst, there's nothing worse than someone saying you suck and they're a superior being when you're just trying to learn something.
That said, as long as you are trying to learn, that's a positive thing... but I've run into people who refuse to learn more than the basics and then expect everyone else to fix things for them or help them to things they can figure out how to do themselves with just a little effort. But I hear you.
"Hey guys, I'm new to this stuff. How do I change [thing]?" "How could you possibly not know this stuff from birth? Just how dumb can an individual be? I'm so much smarter than everyone, look at me!"
@@randomstuff508 but most I've seen don't even show the relative evidence of what they have already done, like a log of what they have tried or something, just a bare minimum description.
I think the discourse in the comments about "signing the pdf" is a great example of the gap between hardcore users and what normal people want/expect. I've been sent PDFs for things over email that I needed to "sign," but by sign they meant an actual signature, because it's usually a contract or something that needs your personal signature. And I'm pretty sure that's what both Luke and Linus were trying to do. But the online tech world assumes that a "signature" is an ssl or something and Linus ended up on the wrong guides.
The problem is that pasting an image of your signature into the pdf doesn't legally mean anything. Yes, lots of normal people do that, but it is legally useless and trivial to forge.
No, signing by your PKI certificate is exactly what's required for that. At my work we have a PKI card that when inserted into your laptop or card reader, allows you to digitally sign a PDF as proof that it's myself signing and to confirm the document is unchanged since the signature(s). We create designs for safety related systems, so when a designer, checker and approved all sign a PDF, we know that those individuals have approved it, are responsible for their signature and it is the exact design as signed.
No - it's because the task used the word "digital" signature. If the task said "electronic" signature, then yes, I would have looked at just creating an image of a hand written signature. But "digital" signatures are something completely different. This task was always doomed to fail
@@theKiwii There is no law in the US or Canada (where they live and work) that states that pasting an image of your signature onto a pdf makes it not a legally binding document. A signature is a signature, theres no legal difference between printing the page and signing it and doing what Luke did, at least not in the countries that they care about.
I’ve stuck with Linux based OSes for almost 15 years. Watching people get started for the first time is eye opening. You guys are doing well. Each distro has its quirks and sometimes change radically between versions. Documentation is sparse and often written for more experienced users. There’s no Apple of the Linux world yet, even though some try. I remember for a year and a half a certain distro didn’t support dragging files to desktop, and search-ahead typing was intentionally stripped out (you couldn’t type “some” to select “some stuff.txt” in a file browser anymore) and I watched the developer responsible not only defend it but imply that everyone who wanted that feature was stupid. Linux faces always need to remember that they are responsible for the community just as much as their commits. Always be kind.
AFAIK Gnome as a desktop environment doesn't allow anything to exist on the desktop unless you use a tweak tool? Or is that an old behaviour now? I ran gnome (and before that Unity, R.I.P) a few years ago when I was first starting out.
i recently tried some Distros with Gnome, and i can certainly confirm that Gnome is still so bad, it still has that problem where the desktop is basically useless, i don't when Gnome team realize that they are supposed to make a DE for desktops not Mobiles and Tablets
I remember my father's philosophy that "if it is difficult, you will appreciate it more when you figure it out." Absolute BS. I have been in and out of Linux, and talked to many Linux users. My experience is that they feel "these things are so obvious, why are you even asking? So I eventually return to Windows where things are so obvious I don't have to ask.
Luke's attitude around USE CASE is one of the most perceptive points about operating systems in general. This series is an important one and on balance has obviously generated more curiosity to explore Linux specifically. Thanks for making this happen.
i learned linux with gentoo twenty years ago or so. the experience was a bit like punching a tree over and over again until your knuckles harden into a calloused leather; im probably better off for it but it was fucking painful for like a year and everyone was an asshole about it because i didnt already know everything before i knew everything.
LOL Reminds me of my Dad sitting me down with stacks of DOS books and having me learn the ins and outs because that was gonna be soooooooo important. You'd think it would help with command prompt but most if not all of the commands are ever so slightly different than they were in DOS 6.0
Yeesh--throw you right in the deep end. I got into Linux 15 years ago with Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper Drake"!) on a mid-range but very common laptop, and it was so incredibly painless. Everything either just worked... or it didn't, in which case I could boot to Windows from GRUB. That first experience really spoiled me, because my next few computers were custom built, and I'm still recovering from the trauma of editing Xorg.conf and futzing with nouveau drivers (oh, and I definitely borked at least one install the same way Linus did by uninstalling the Ubuntu desktop). Gradually I learned how to compile software from source, edit deep config files and write custom cron jobs and backup scripts, but the reason I haven't owned a Windows machine since that first laptop is entirely because my first OS experience made it so easy to get my feet wet.
Turns out that on average, people who make their evangelism for a niche and unwieldy power user operating system part of their personality, and think being able to do a simple thing in a more convoluted way counts as a "skill", are not very socially well-adjusted people.
Easy mistake to make - the difference between adding a digital representation of a physical signature and a cryptographic certificate (for authenticity) the moral of the story is people need to be clearer with the terms they use. And for the former maybe keeping a .PNG of your signature to hand.
Signing a PDF challenge: The challenge didn't make it clear, whether it's about "fake signing" a PDF (aka inserting a spoof signature which makes it look like a handwritten signature) or whether it's about a cryptographic signature, using a certificate. This also became clear in the different solutions, where the "fake signature" was done within a few minutes, while Linus understandably failed to setup a full certificate setup within the timeframe. On the other hand, the applications themselves should probably also make it more clear, what this is about - what is a "signature"? A non-technical user might quickly fall into the trap of trying to understand the complexity of CAs, CSRs, certificates, certificate-chaining, different certificate formats, …
I think that the whole challenge was prepared pretty sloppily, with such inconsistencies and files not being well prepared for compression (people won't usually compress 3GB, rather smaller bits). I haven't done any signing like that either, but for someone who actually had an idea about what that is, they should have described which method to use indeed. I appreciate the concept of the challenge, but preparation for it was simply bad imho
Agreed, to me it seems that Linus was led into doing something that would be meaningful as a signature while Luke added a meaningless graphical element to the PDF. Unclear what the challenge actually wanted out of this, possibly they both failed?
@@KurosuKirie Stack overflow mods are the worst, and there is no such thing as the "Linux **Community**", I don't use Linux to make friends, I've used the OS as my daily driver for almost 20 years now, and never considered myself to be a part of some **Linux Community**
@@guestimator121 I agree i don't use my computer to make friends nor do I personally Identify my self with the Operating system I use like some lifeless bugman. Linux is just a tool I use.
@@guestimator121 I think there is a difference between not participating in a community vs saying one doesn't exist. I am curious as to how you define community.
@@guestimator121 Yes, there's definitely a "linux community", and they generally need to pull the sticks out their asses if they ever want Linux to take off as a mainstream platform. Then again, i get the distinct feeling most linux users _dont_ want it to ever be a mainstream platform.
As far as developers being condescending. I literally got banned from the developer's discord and got silenced for a month on their forum for pointing out a bug. They accused me of spreading false information and said everything would work correctly if I knew how to read. A few days later several other users called out the same bug.
Here, here, been using Linux and Unix near 40 years and while things have improved markedly as you have so effectively demonstrated. The biggest issue blocking Nix acceptance over the decades is as you point out. A poor user experience. Each distro is like "YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." The new user muddles along growing increasingly annoyed and eventually resorts to google digging where they encounter trolls, bafflegab, flames, downright incorrect answers, high priest incantations and occasionally some gold. It is a frustrating experience for new users simply trying out what should be after all these decades be at least a windows beater if not a world beater. Some of the best and brightest people work on and with Nix, but the community continually forgets what MS has long ago figured out - you need to get the UX right.
This right here is exactly why linux and unix like operating systems are still only a small part of the market. I don't get why all the linux elitists keep saying "It's not difficult to learn the operating system" when that's not the issue. The vast majority of the world aren't computer geeks and they're especially not as interested in tweaking their computer as us linux users. The elitists can say all they want about how great the operating system is and how people should just learn how to use it but it's not gonna change anything when most will just stick to windows due to it's user friendly simplicity and the only ones losing out in the market is the unix like OS'. You have people today constantly say that products these days threat the customer like they're a child and one look at the computer market world and you can see why. Windows has such a stake in the market (mac as well) because they cater towards inexperience computer users and are very friendly to use for anyone
@@D00000T I am not an elitist, I just have used it since 1995. Fully from 2016. And yes. You need to build up experience in order to use it. The same with every other OS. You dont ask someone to sign a PDF, that have never used a computer. That would be sadism.
@@D00000T Linux users build it for themselves because they do it in their free time. Windows is paid software and is designed by people who are essentially paid by their users. I think that is the core divide in philosophy. Why should someone who already has a day job and sacrifices his or her rare free time to improve the interesting parts of an open source operating system do boring UX tests for years on end for users who don't want to invest anything and who want everything for free? If users would give Linux developers as much money as Microsoft has I'm sure the UX would be way better. Also you don't always know what is actually better UX without doing huge amounts of testing with large groups of people and by catering to the masses you may make it worse for the core user group. For example, Gnome recently started showing the menu on startup in order to not confuse newcomers with an empty screen, however that frustrates power users who don't need the menu, have everything bound to hotkeys or do most things in the terminal and who now have to close that menu every single time after booting. If you want things to be better either participate or contribute a fraction of the money you invest for commercial software to support open source developers. I agree the UX needs to be better but it's not as simple to fix it.
@@D00000T Thing is Windows isn't *that* user friendly. It's just grandfathered in on everyone's workflow. It's what workplaces adopted in the late 90s, so it's what schools put in computer labs, and so now it's just what nearly everyone starts on, which makes it the obvious choice for workplaces, which makes it the obvious choice for schools, and so on. Most people's understanding of how a computer is used isn't about computers at all, it's about Windows.
As a 20 year linux user I can only say: "well done guys" Honestly, I can't deny it's a great video series that really shows how the average user might come into it. Anyway, I'm really enjoying the video's and really hope you guys will do some more linux related content in the future, and hope that even with the frustrations and sometimes not so nice comments you still enjoyed stepping into it for a bit. :)
Agreed, great job and some more Linux/BSD type content would be great - with how Windows centric they have always been sticking with the Debian/Ubuntu type derivatives that are good for Linux noobs and general users for the most part would be a good idea - most of the audience their previous content appeals to doesn't want/need you to slog through the deeper, purer and more challenging end of Linux. Though I will admit some videos are more power user - like the x gamers n cpu videos, that did get me digging through the Qemu-KVM stuff to craft my perfect VM start up scripts (sure they didn't actually use Linux for that, but as any Linux power user learns to recognize pretty fast most of these 'fancy' OS/tools are very often just nice wrappers for the open source tools making doing the basics easier/GUI-fied (which to me usually means more annoying - but GUI are great if you only do x once a year, just slow and clunky compared to a terminal when you do it so often you really know how) and it was actually the first time I'd seen proof GPU passthrough was mature enough to use, its just not a feature I had any normal need to know anything about). As an early topic suggestion with how many folks like streaming, have fancy audio setups, maybe even do media creation in this audience a run down on why you would want to choose Jack/Pulseaudio or now Pipewire (while not forgetting you can probably ditch them all and just use the wonderful ALSA base layer - I like it best as its soo simple compared to dumping one of the others on top - at least its great for more static setups) and how they can all work together to give you full control of your audio hardware would be a great video I think. Perhaps also going down the V4L2-loopback & gphoto-2 rabbit hole to turn nearly any DSLR into a webcam would be a good fit for this audience too. Though what they need to do is find a serious Unix/Linux/BSD/Mac user, or maybe just somebody who through some miracle has been exclusively Android/Iphone and consoles and dump them in Windoze too - all the struggles they hit in Linux are largely similar to what you would find in Windows, every OS sucks somewhere. But its always hard to see the irritations to daily use when you have spent the last 20+ years working around them automatically - you just don't notice how inconvenient something is when you have been working around that flaw so long its auto-pilot, until you get to witness/do it the better workaround free way, or really sit down and think about what slows you down in this workflow. And I would love to see somebody approaching Windows with no prior understanding of the Windows method to do things... Having used both enough I would personally say in every use case but gaming Linux is much much easier to set up to do exactly what you want after you know just a little bit about how to use it, just flat out superior in nearly all aspects to Windows (really all windows has is x software that won't play nice with WINE and your freinds/boss etc demand you use and gaming - just about, I've not had to fire up my gaming VM in a very very long time as Proton (etc) has gotten really damn good), and personally I'd rate it over Mac's for everything a Mac can do too (though I don't really have enough experience with Mac's to give them a fair chance to change my mind - and don't really want to get it as they are expensive walled gardens, and that doesn't appeal to me).
My only criticism is that they always talk about Linux like it's one big group. Every distro,every desktop environment or window manager, every GUI library, every application has its own group and its own culture and its own methodologies. There isn't one central place for people to make decisions about things and that's both great and terrible.
@@megan_alnico this is a valid point, but also understand that's the outsider's perception of Linux. However, I like that they constantly mention the distro they're using over and over again, which supports initial impressions from video 1 of just how many different distros there are. The wording could be better, but I don't think it's too harmful.
As a Linux-noob, I can see them run into a lot of the issues I had at first, so... yeah. Pretty realisitic scenario for anyone thinking about making the jump
@@megan_alnico yeah, well said. People like to believe Linux is a platform, like how Windows or MacOS is. But a Linux platform doesn't even make any sense. There are so many variables. For example, many package managers, different init systems, etc
@@korpijeesus Plug-n-pray is unfortunately more the state of things. Not only is PnP for printers not here yet, but the endless Windows version UI 'onioneering' means that if anything the relevant options for troubleshooting just get harder and harder to find over time...
Just the waves made from this series have made Linux Mint MATE, Video drivers, wine, and other things SO MUCH better now. Most of my games work on Linux now. I also learned a bit from watching you guys do various tasks on different distros. Thank you so much for making this series! Doing great guys!
I doubt this video series has done anything in the Linux community other than annoy people. If you ask me, the linux experience is roughly the same now as it was a few years back.
@@faequeenapril6921 not this video lol but steam deck really helped push tons of more devs into linux. Even now Linux is better than it was 1 year ago, FAR better than 2 years ago and 4 years ago is a joke. Linux is actually great now
These comments are hilarious lmao, especially regarding dolphin. Lots of Linux users saying Linus is trying to use things wrong and that he’s expecting it to be windows, and that normal Linux users never have these issues. At THE SAME TIME there’s a bunch of long time linux users saying they have the same issues with dolphin and hate it. People are just assuming that when Linus has an issue it’s his fault.
Stupid post. If dolphin could run as root then Linus would have complained "Why should you be allowed to break your system easily just by moving a bunch of files in the windows explorer" like he did complain about apt being able to remove gnome. Linus needs to make his mind. Does he want safety or does he want control? When he installed Steam and apt asked to remove Gnome and he did. He made 2 criticism. 1. Steam package shouldn't have been released broken 2. apt shouldn't be able to remove gnome I agree with him on the first point.
fhese comments are hillarious there are lots of people using windows and saying that he is using windows wrong, at the same time there are a lot of user of windows that have the same issues with windows explorer. people its just assuming its an user error. wow people having issues on a os, what a timeless realisation
@@hitler69 I refuse to believe you are this dense and not trolling. You are assuming the worst possible intentions behind everything. There is no point in arguing with people like you.
Not only that. Every third Linux meme is how Windows doesn't allow you to do things on your computer. Now here the same fanboys say that Linux doesn't do it for your own good.
I really like that they called out the toxic gatekeeping on "help" forums. It's a problem not just in the Linux community, but also (among others I'm sure) the general software development community. Imagine trying to self-teach a useful IT skill, getting a bit stuck, not being fortunate enough to know someone IRL who can help you, and then getting shit on by some idiot online for just reaching out. The irony is that this is often centred around Free Open Source Software (FOSS) - meaning software for everyone, not just you (clue's in the name).
It's even funnier when you see the usernames of the worst of the snide ones go whining on other topics about how a lot of people just don't "want" to switch from Windows or Apple, keeping FOSS adoption in limbo.
@PhazerTech you fail to understand that being able to keyword search with google is an experince driven thing, most often new people don't typically know what they are searching for and why should they? they're new.
Printing in Linux was something I was always afraid of, especially back when I first started using Linux, because on Windows it was a major pain half of the time. Surprisingly, I have never had any issues printing on Linux, it even let me still use my ancient HP 840c printer, which absolutely freaks out and prints garbage when connected to a Windows machine. Linux has its flaws and is not always user-friendly, even the newest distros, but somehow (at least for me), this one specific thing never fails to deliver perfectly.
I know it is too late to bother with now, but when I was a child, I removed the printer driver using device manager, unplugged the printer, plugged it back in, and windows installed a driver for it that now worked. as an adult I have no idea how my child-self was able to 'fix' the printer issue, and to this day I can only imagine, that windows screwed up and installed the wrong driver this second time, which ended up working fine, since the original driver wasn't working at all. also I have no clue how a child managed to even FIND the device manager, and on top of that, navigate it correctly and remove the driver using it...
Linux uses the Open Source/Standards for printers that older hardware use and Windows doesn't. So basically the Linux one is simpler and may have less functionality, but the compatibility is going to be there, especially for legacy hardware like linus said his printer was
only times I've ever really had issues printing on linux were when the printers themselves were refusing to work for anyone or when the network itself wasn't cooperating. Either way it wasn't the fault of the OS
Yep, remember first swapping to Linux on an old machine when the HDD was corrupt in the boot sector, windows could only install in a certain spot while Linux picked up the issue and installed in a different spot (not sure if W7/8/10 properly do it now, XP did not). First started with Ubuntu, was a good experience, but then my mom wanted to use that machine as well (it was a travel laptop, so basically cheap enough that if stolen, no issue, important work should always be on flash drive instead, so HDD issue is not a problem) and couldn't figure it out, saw Mint had this nice start menu and stuff, now she's been on Mint for ~7 years already. I recommend Mint as an entry point to everyone instead of Ubuntu, just because most are older people used to their XP build, and even after all software/security support gone etc., they are still using it, and I found Mint was the least frictional change (W7/10 seemed to have freaked them out a lot since they were used to small quick launch bottom left that they had pinned, rather than the "big" icon that then they couldn't click to open a new browser tab, they kept forgetting about right-click).
Just the fact Mint comes with GPU drivers and the optimus-manager already set up is worth the praise Already. That shit is a pain to configure on Manjaro.
Really enjoying this series. As a Linux user, I feel you guys are giving it more than a fair shot. Making the move to Linux has traditionally been almost completely based on the users personal dedication/stubbornness which is why the Linux desktop hasn't really taken off. Things have come so far though, and I think you guys have demonstrated that well. Good on you 🤙🏽
Ya, it is really too bad that Linus tried the switch when there was that bizarre Pop_os error that only lasted for a few days, as Pop has been more easy for me to use than windows. I switched to pop (my first time using Linux ever) about 4-5 months ago on my desktop. I never once had an issue with it, everything was easy and I never had to break open the terminal for the first three months. I started getting into the terminal about 2 months ago, mostly because I wanted to test it out and see why the linux chads love it so much. After about a month of using the terminal, I felt comfortable enough to replace windows on my laptop with Fedora 35. I still love pop, but I want to try out the FDE Plasma feel on manjaro, so I am now installing that on my desktop. Based on my experience with linux, I believe Linus would've enjoyed himself FAR more if he didn't have that steam error on Pop.
I've been trying for over 25 years to get a Linux machine running. Every 5 or so I give it a shot on an older box and it's always the same issue. Drivers, and I get frustrated and quit. This goes back to early Red Hat days. I'm just not stubborn enough or willing to put much effort into it at the end of the day because even though windows sucks too, it's doing the suck that I know...and the suck that I know is easier to deal with than the suck that I don't know. :)
@@lennyghoul Drivers always seems to be hit or miss, even on Windows. I've had the experience of my touchscreen (I can get by), touchpad, and WiFi card not working after reinstalling WIN 10. Thankfully I have a type C dongle with LAN port in it, if not then I'd be screwed :)
The last point you are mentioning is exactly why I switched from Arch to Manjaro. It took me years to get proficient enough in Linux to solve all of my system issues myself. Before getting there I had to read a lot in the Arch Wiki (which is great btw) and also ask a ton of stupid questions in the forum. One day one of the the Arch maintainers snapped and basically told me that after years I couldn't solve the most basic issues myself, which was the reality he lived in but not mine. I could solve basic issues, but understanding dmesg, udev etc. sufficiently enough to solve your own system issues can take years. In the Manjaro forum it is not regarded as a faux-pas to ask stupid questions, whereas in the Arch forum you often don't get an answer because people don't want to deal with those simple issues. I completely understand that the same person having written the Wiki article doesn't want to explain everything multiple times in the forum again, but it seemed to me like the general attitude of Arch users at the time.
It's from distros and support wikis like that that give Linux a reputation as being for geeks only. (Personally, I just wanted something easy to install and noob friendly that would work on a bunch of old hardware that I had. That's why I settled on Linux Mint.)
Most of those "simple questions" are because people ignoring wiki or not reading it enough. But I agree with the Arch forum not being beginner friendly just like the distro itself. I also believe that not being able to understand Arch and still using Arch based distros creates more problem than it solves because you don't know the underlying system you are using. Just don't use these types of distros until you get the hang of Linux in general and you will be fine.
Simple questions are answered with a link to wiki. Arch wiki is great source how to work with linux. Arch or gentoo wiki are main source of knowledge for everyone :)
I'm sad to hear you had a bad experience with the Arch community. To me it was the oopposite, I got very condescending and hostile treatment to my beginner questions in other distros' communities, eg. SuSe, RedHat pr Ubuntu... but with Arch, for the first time I actually got people answer my questions instead of just telling "If you don't know that you should use Windows". Yes, there is some gatekeeping in the Arch community but so far in my experience it was rare and minimal. Tho if you ask something that is clearly explained in the wiki, they will likely just tell you to read the wiki, but that's kinda justified. Overall, gatekeeping is a problem for the entire Linux community, regardless of distro, and until that changes, Linux will never become more popular, which is sad. I think Linus summeraized it very well by saying that there is a lot of good people doing good work, but a few toxic gatekeepers are more than enough to turn people away. And Linux gatekeeping is really the most stupid of all gatekeeping, because Linux is very specifically the kind of thing where you have to learn a LOT before you can really be comfortable with the basics, and let's be honest, it's complicated and hard learning. Nobody dropped out of ther mother's womb already knowing all that, they all started as noobs and had to learn a lot, as well as made a lot of mistakes and asked "stupid" questions before they became the skilled users they are today. You need significantly less learning to get started with eg. WIndows or OSX, than you need to get started with Linux, so gatekeepers need to stop acting like it's easy.
I like how this entire challenge is Linus: going through twelve different steps and hoops to do something as simple as cut and paste, while Luke: click, done. next?
Linus, Luke, you guys are both champs for taking on this challenge and being open about your experience. I've been using Linux since 1997 on an ancient Redhat server the Cyber-cafe I worked at used as a dialup ISP with a bank of 56k modems. I've mainly used it in server scenarios but I have daily drove a linux desktop or a few months in the early 2000s. At the time I had to drop it as my daily driver because I am too much of a gamer. This series is encouraging me to buy tertiary SSD for my machine to dive back into linux daily driving. (Probably after the holidays.)
Do it. It is really a great experience. Personally I am not a total techie, but I still managed to configure myself a nice arch with a budgie desktop (that's a gnome fork) and I almost never run into any sort of issues day to day. It has really gotten rock solid from my experience and I would probably suffer a lot, if I tried to go back to windows. Altough I must say I am very fortunate to have a couple of friends, that really help me a lot when I used to have some struggles with my system.
I too thank them for this series. Everyone else is a fan boy with their Linux experiences as to not piss off the "experienced" Linux users that plague the forums with sarcastic remarks against new people. Especially those that seem to hate any comparison to Windows. These guys have chosen to take the abuse from those guys...
@@betalars The instant Hunt Showdown and Apex enables linux EAC I'm in. I'm exclusively a multiplayer gamer, no point installing until the anti-cheat engines work in Proton.
@@fly_8659 yeah I see that. If I played more multiplayer, I'd probably have at the very last a secondary Windows installation. Fortunately most games I enjoy playing anyway work. My only exception right now being halo, but I don't have the time for that anyway lol
@@Voyajer. but I also kind of get it. Games industry is really high stress and you don't want to take a perceived risk. And I've heard that reposts about cheating are great at scaring away investors, with... I mean really is flawed, but yeah ... Capitalism
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When someone starts getting interested in Linux and decides they want to give it a try, the first time it's inevitable they are going to have a few questions. Then they go and ask, usually about something they just want to learn and understand. So someone who has years of experience then sees the questions and they basically have 3 options: ignore them, shame them, or teach them. It's unfortunate that a minority of experts choose to flex their superiori.. um.. experience, and turn off curious beginner. It creates a bad rep for Linux as being for rude elitists only. That's unfortunate.
This. I also hate when people talk about things like it should be second knowledge to that person. Last week, I was trying to see if I could install a distro as a dual-boot on a T2 chip based Macbook Pro, as I had dabbled with Mint in the past and knew a bit about how to get some things up and running.... one of the things I had never encountered was GRUB.... and then after we opted it was better for me to just a different ISO than the one I had tried to set up on my own in a VM, he gave me a ISO he had tweaked to download, left a bunch of steps I didn't fully comprehend, and wished me a good night. Needless to say, I stopped trying to get this to work right after, as I felt more lost than before. And I've been nervous to type in the Discord server since that day, cause I already felt like I was dumb and should've gotten this easily.
@PhazerTech It's funny to think that a majority of the people that use google don't know it is a Keyword search, I've watched so many people type full questions into the search bar.
Unfortunately, most linux power users not only enjoy the smell of their own farts - but also relish in making you smell them too. Certainly this exists in other communities, but it's especially pungent within the linux community.
That speech by the both of you at the end was awesome and is very necessary for the Linux community. Thank you so much for using your platform to help spread that message. Thank you from a fellow Linux user (and probably many others too)
The opening statement of "anything is easy or hard depending on how much knowledge you have" is something I need to remind myself of. I've been daily driving Linux for so long, that I tend to take obscure knowledge for granted. I think what us in the Linux community need to ask ourselves is how we can make desktop environments more intuitive for new Linux users.
@@novideohereatall I'm so used to use the terminal that yeah, like you said I don't think about using a GUI anymore is Linux. sometimes focus is not on the GUI
Mint etc have that covered, when it works. The problem isn't that learning Linux is too hard anymore, the problem is the expectation that the user will eventually become a power user. The fraction of normal people who will accept that thought is the same number of people that are programmers OR windows user fraction that regularly uses powershell, most haven't even heard of it. Linux actually gives the correct answer in this series, Everything that a daily user wants to do must have a simple and fast way to do it via GUI. They don't all need to be 100% intuitive it isn't even on windows and users will get acquainted if there is more standardization not the key point is there must be a simple fast way to do everything a normal user would want to do that you can explain in one or at most two sentences.
@@zenodezeno454 There are reasons for it, even for regular users. The problem is that while it does have some great positives it also comes with a bunch of different kind of negatives, most of which relate to usability which is something most people will not sacrifice even for desired features. Can't say i disagree even if i wanted to.
I’m glad Linus and Luke are doing this series and bringing awareness to the Linux community so it can be made into a better and easier experience for the average user.
Except linux is not for the average windows user who want to do everything like he do on Windows. If you learn the basis of the terminal you'll see it's actually easier to do things like install a program. Linux is already good and easy, users just need to learn
@@auronkardek UsErS JuSt NeEd To LeArN It's clearly not intuitive in many instances. Before Linux isn't polished it won't grow. Which should be the goal of an operating system.
@@akuno7294 oh man you guys forgot the learning curve in windows? give windows you our old granny and see how will she use it vs you . the problem in linux is that you have many customization and one way isn't forced to you by the corporation. that's why it can be confusing but you can totally ignore that the other part is, linus is misleading the watchers and wrongfully advertising that linux got problems. a lot of things he did are trivial and i doubt a computer user can run into them
@@akuno7294 at some point you need to learn to install a program on windows or do things on windows in general. You propably don't remember learning but ask every old person you'll see they had to learn because OS are not intuitive for everyone from the start
Printers are the most cursed tech device ever. So I was fearing the worst when I first had to print using Linux. And it just magically worked and printed. So I guess it's Windows printer drivers that are cursed and not printers themselves? Maybe?
This was soo much better than Part 2! That PDF signing from Luke was nice, because most instances of PDF work I'm using Adobe PDF Pro in Windows or Mac. Edit: I know Luke didn't "actually sign with certificate" but for most instances... this is good enough.
Yup, that wouldn't fly in Poland. Here, while using the Electronic Platform of Public Administration Services (government platform for doing basically anything i.e. asking for duplicate ID card), every document needs to be signed with a digital certificate you previously aquired from trusted certificate authority, i.e. Municipal and Communal Office.
I am in my 1st year of Linux-life. I am still in hybrid mode with my work PC in Windows 10 and my home PC on Linux Mint. Seeing Linus's pains confirms my notion that if the distro is not right, it's gonna be a nightmare. I used to use Ubuntu and Lubuntu, but now I use and love Mint. It's just painless. I have a new build, I want to try Zorin.
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I can vouch for zorin I’ve been following the project for at least 6 years now and I really like their premise. All in all If you are comfortable with the windows 10 gui, you are comfortable with zorin. (although the same can be said in regards to mint).
Hey man, great move. It's been 3 weeks since your move, how is it going on rn?? Good?? Bad?? Or somewhere in between?? I personally use Fedora, since the update is frequent which i like it alot, and personally I like experience a lot.
This has been *such* a great series. I love that Linus and Luke are challenging the Linux community in a way that's starting conversations around UX and shaking the foundations a little. I've long been a Ubuntu user and as a product designer I've often come up against things which I thought can be solved with a bit more care to the UX and UI side of things (but have never known how best to make suggestions or get involved). It's great that LTT have the voice and the platform to get the word out. Also, it's entertaining to see Linus wrestle with Manjaro. It's a shame he threw the baby (Debian based distros) out with the bath water (Pop_OS) because I really think something like Ubuntu would be right up his alley from a usability and applicability POV. I wonder if, once this series is all tied up, whether they'll both go back to driving Windows or if curiousity will pique and they'll continue with their distros (or go hunt for a new one)?
I'm thinking Luke might stick to Linux in some form, but I'm not expecting to see Linus back on Linux for another decade or so. Not only is he having an incredibly difficult time, but the _reason_ he's having a difficult time is because he is the _hardest_ level of user to transition - a superuser. The kind of user who knows tricks to make things go faster, except none of those tricks work the same way on Linux and he gets himself in huge trouble. Whereas someone just plodding along with their mouse click-by-click is in a far better position.
@@KillahMate Yeah that is a great take, and I fully agree. The super user in Linux I imagine would be completely at home using terminal. I think Linus is a super user who demands a sophisticated UI-based experience, though (like you said) and yeah…I guess that’s where we’re starting to see some gaps in the distros product design. Get me in there! I’d love to try designing a distro!
Luke is already testing a Debian based distro (by way of Mint being Ubuntu based, which is debian based). Better to cover different ones than both covering the same one. I'm glad Pop_OS failed so Manjaro/Arch could get some spotlight.
@@ProcabiakYT True re. covering different ground. I guess what’s weird in this situation is that Linus strikes me as the kind of user who would benefit from the friendlier Mint distro, whereas Luke, who is an experienced user, could probably tackle the nuances of something like Manjaro with less hassle. Ah well. Still entertaining and informative viewing 😊
As a long time Windows user who had to learn how to use RHEL for work, I can say that each has their pros and cons. Windows OS is second nature to me, so many tasks come easier for everyday use. However, when developing software using the Linux terminal is great. It helps me to easily move between the files and folders that I need. Bottom line is that you should learn both if you can and be able to apply the knowledge to make your life easier based on the task that you’re working on. The video was fun to watch as someone who went through many of those Linux growing pains when starting my career as a software engineer.
Not afraid of the terminal myself either but trying to justify making any software for an OS that normal users are repelled by, i want to like Linux, i do like the idea of Linux but getting some real adoption rates would help it enormously but it Needs a real final push on the UX side to be acceptable for normies, i don't get it why there is pushback against that. As in it isn't as if doing that would require getting rid of the terminal use if the user knows the syntax but it really is a Mile too far for regular users.
@@RiversJ I think users are repelled by it because of the steep learning curve. That being said, the changes they have made to make Linux distros have better GUI support have been great. I don’t think anyone will truly appreciate it until they use it functionally, as it’s not an IOS that’s great to use as a daily driver. Maybe with the rise of the Steam deck running well on a Linux platform, maybe some people will be intrigued by it.
rhel is awful. does it even have a package repository? i only see a handful of mostly useless programs in there. do you really have to follow the insane terminal instructions for every program you want to install?
This honestly is one of my favorite video series ever on the internet. Over the years I wanted to get into computer programming and sbc projects (raspberry pi & arduino). I tried several times to take the plunge and always run into the most frustrating issues I could never figure out how to fix. I've always struggled with a pessimistic view of myself and my abilities so I would internalize those struggles as something being wrong with me. Like I wasn't capable or it was meant for "smarter" people. Watching two people I really respect have some of the same infuriating problems as me has helped me realize there was nothing wrong with me. Everyone struggles even Linus!
I guess I'm just old and have been using tech for so long that I would never stop to think I'm the incompetent one. Whenever I have an issue with Linux I always think "This is such a needless pain in the ass, why the hell can't they make this easier?"
I am, right now, learning how to do microcontroller stuff. However I've been doing software development for 25 years. You're free to learn along with me if you like, just get some contact deets to me. I'm at Zero Knowledge but I got three projects to get my teeth into. 1) Add a smart home fan speed sensor to my drinks fridge fans and have alerts sent to my phone using Home Assistant 2) Build a PWN fan controller for the fan in my BBQ (it has a variable resistor which EATS batteries) 3) The big one, design and implement a computer OS for the Raspberry Pi Pico in assembler, turning this hobbyist arduino-type device into a computer. Keyboard, disk, programming language and sound and video output Again, feel free to get in touch, I can help you learn.
Not everyone can learn in a vacuum. Did you not inquire /research a "user group" in your area or an on-line user group.? Start again, but now ask questions to the user group members.
Being self-taught is an actual skill you may or may not have. So it's completely OK to ask around! Unfortunately for Linux, there's less desktop Linux technicians than there are Windows technicians. Tech support is key, especially in an unfamiliar environment. And chances are, you don't happen to know any Linux gurus IRL you could rely on when things get janky. But that's why there's always people lurking around the online forums, and once you find the right search terms to use, you'll actuallly get better instructions than Microsoft Support's boilerplate SFC scan...
Most printers "just work" on Ubuntu, without any installation necessary. As long as your computer can "see" a printer, it will automatically install it for you. Printing is therefore one of the easiest things to do on Linux. Now, if Luke and Linus had been asked to SCAN a document, that would have been much more interesting. I finally got my Xerox MFP to scan documents after jumping through some weird and confusing hoops. Even then, I have to do some prep-work every time I want to scan something. I blame Xerox.
@@tylerdean980 I had issues with my HP Printer with Arch but that's because I needed something called HPLIP until then it would send the document to the printer and say it was successful without printing anything, added HPLIP and it was golden.
Scanning depends on distro. Forgot which distro i used but it already had a scanning application already included by default and so when i used it, it just worked.
From my usage of different distros and such through all the years linux has been around features like printing and most hardware installation is like magic compared to days of old. I wish all the gripes could be fixed as well as these have been. If that were the case it would be the simplest and most powerful os to use. Windows can still be a big PITA to print with, hardware setup is generally ok but it's still not perfected. I realize that hardware on linux that is not auto installed or recognized can be a huge pain to get working, but sometimes it is not any better on windows.
I legitimately enjoy this series and I'm truly impressed with how far Mint has come. That was the fist distro I used as a daily driver on a netbook about 12-13yrs ago, and I was impressed then.
@@mitjapozar2725 Personally, I like the current aesthetic of cinnamon, but everyone has their own preferences. Overall though, Linux Mint is a really great jumping off point for people interested in learning Linux.
@@erikchumbley3014 unless youre on a surface. Getting the surface kernel installed on mint is a fucking nightmare that i couldnt get past after weeks of working
Linus has ADHD which is part of his success, he is the do -it-guy who built a successful company with 80 staff, reached certain fame and that while doing what he really likes But he isn't the guy to sit down and deeply understand that stuff because this doesn't come with his traits
I followed in Luke's steps and chose Linux Mint. So far I've been incredibly satisfied with the experience. If it weren't for the fact that I have to use Windows as my daily driver just to VPN into work via Azure VPN, I'd probably be booting to my Linux Mint environment daily and really trying to drive it. Everything I hear about Arch based Linux makes me agree with what Luke said about different distros for different skillsets. I'm an advanced Windows user, but still a noob on Linux despite having dabbled on and off over the years with it. So I find Mint to be a really good and soft landing place for me to test the waters. Kinda like running a Windows client SKU, and then later on deciding to run a Windows Server SKU instead. To the Linux gatekeepers out there, you're doing no one any favours at all. To those that are working to make it easier and a much more welcoming experience, thank you thank you thank you! Your efforts and your content are invaluable and it is YOU that are the real unsung heroes here.
I'm surprised the Azure VPN isn't easy to use on Linux. I know it's a Microsoft product but they tend to have good Linux support on their development related tooling, and VPN's are mostly used by devs and similar roles.
@@ricardoamendoeira3800 it *can* work, but it requires you to enable some additional security protocols that our IT team isn’t comfortable turning on since they aren’t quite as secure as using Active Directory Authentication with MFA.
Thank you for not pinning on Linux the fact that you tried to zip gigabytes of video and it was slow! However the messages could be more visible on KDE. It's probably meant for a "normal sized" display, not that behemoth that Linus insist to call his monitor. I really appreciated the conclusions, they felt more balanced than last time.
Also, yeah, they take a little longer than usual to do these tasks, but most of this is talking, finding where the GUI option is, and performing one-time configuration tasks when told to by the system. If you asked both of them to do this exact challenge again and actually made them race each other, they would finish the whole thing in less than a minute. Yes, even crypto signing a PDF takes seconds once the initial setup is complete and you were able to succesfully sign your first. And the 4K video zipping/moving/uploading doesn't count. The KDE messages are normal-sized on my end. Maybe Linus could use some display scale tweaking.
I think that printing is the one aspect of Linux that has been solved SO much better. Basically any network attached printer will work right away without the need of ever setting anything up.
Except if you need to do anything other than print a document. If I want it to scan to a folder on Linux, combine pages when scanning, etc you need the software from the manufacturer. And 9 times out of 10 that doesn't work on Linux.
@@DJFace147 THIS. So much this. I will say that Simple Scan can be a little slow or at the least it LOOKS like it's slow. It could use some... polish? But it works out of the box and it's in every box.
@@DJFace147 Unfortunately it doesn't work with all scans, I've tried to scan a document using Linux Mint with a Canon MB2110 and didn't work, I managed to print on the Canon without any issues
I have been using Linux for more than 20 years: I remember printing was a nightmare, just triying to chek if your printer is supported was a days task. When PnP it didn't make it easier, but worse. Now seeing how easily these two newbies are printing a page makes me realize how far Linux has progressed.
Printing in Linux has almost always been easier than on Windows. The biggest problem was always printers that needed weird drivers in order to work. In the past decade or so printer manufacturers all started to standardize their functionality which is why we have printers that basically “just work” today. Heck, the printing system that Linux uses, CUPS, is so good that when Apple started on OS X, they purchased CUPS outright!
@Sudo Pacman -R Window Happened to me too with a Samsung Express! I think they were actually quite lucky with their printers, as it could have gone very wrong. After months of issues with mine I eventually found some Linux drivers but I had to learn how to run them, which eventually solved the problem. But it certainly didn't take 15mins!
@@paulnortham I think actually it's the other way around you're the unlucky one. In recent years I have not encountered a printer that didn't just work with ubuntu xd
I remember when Lexmark inkjets started hitting the shelves and totally threw away any concept of the existing printing standards which had worked flawlessly for so long especially with LPT connected printers. I doubt a lot of those USB printers work at all even today. Thankfully the prevalence of mobile phones and tablets has forced their hand back to standard communication protocols.
I've used Linux Mint for years, and my wife just started using it. The Mint community forums have been very helpful, but I also think that's because many newbies will be using Mint and so the community is accustomed to helping inexperienced users.
Ya, most of the Arch based distros (Manjaro) have Arch chads trolling their forums, that are not the *ehm most friendly. But ubuntu and ubuntu based distros tend to be far more noob friendly, ESPECIALLY the Mint forums.
@@benruss4130 That's good to hear. Back when I was in high school the Ubuntu forums were brutally mean. It's why I ditched Linux. I ended up having a less frustrating time making my own CentOS-based distro in college than getting help with Ubuntu. At least CentOS had good documentation.
I use Mint myself with various Debian derivatives on my Pi depending on what it's tasked to do. The forums for Mint are great if you have newbie problems, not so much when you have to step outside newbie realm. A lot of threads die of inactivity because the problems required much more involved efforts to solve. Usually by that point you know other forums to look for though so it's a great start.
Mint community forums have been very helpful? That is... simply not true. I wish it were, but it isn't. Anyone posting questions on the Mint forums, from basic to advanced, is going to have an absolutely horrible, demeaning, and thoroughly unhelpful experience. I get that you want to increase adoption of desktop Linux. That's great. But lying to people by pretending that the community is more helpful than it actually is, isn't the way to do it.
That's my main issue with Linux. The bad eggs hate newcomers and get really pissed when people don't want to be forced to use a terminal for something that could be done in half the time by just using a mouse.
EndeavourOS is probably the best community I've ever had in a Linux distro. You do need a bit of knowledge of bash (it's an intermediate Arch-based distro after all), but they're very nice there.
If you can't use a terminal Linux is not for you unless you are just going to watch UA-cam videos or other basic web app things Linux has come a long way on gui interface but it still has a long way to go, lots of things using the terminal is required. And if you can't manage that, then paid software ie Mac/windows is what you should get
@@collegeoffoliage6776 yeah anyone absolutely can learn to use a terminal to do basic things. But if you read the comment I was replying to, he was complaining that he shouldn't have to use the terminal because he doesn't want to. And when someone has that attitude (most people do) then they simply shouldn't use Linux, it's not the best choice for them.
Linux Mint doesn't get the recognition it deserves, Cinnamon is often overlooked because it's default theme is kinda stinky, but it's honestly super handy
Yeah if I need a distro that "just works" either because I need it for work or I need to quickly boot up Linux somewhere to do something, I always choose Linux Mint. When all other distros fail, Mint still somehow manages to install compatible video card drivers & install properly on every machine I've ever tested. I don't tend to use it for personal stuff solely because it's so damn boring and lacks some advancements/ease of use that GNOME/KDE have made over the years. Theming could be fixed, but I have noticed that over the years theming has lost popularity - Cinnamon has fewer themes, way fewer up to date themes, and fewer well built themes now than it had 6 years ago.
To me it looks to bland and squared by default. Reason why I use Ubuntu instead (I'm not someone who likes to spend a lot of time customizing the look and feel of a de)
I've used various flavours of Linux as my main OS for around 15 years now. But even now I get a bit stuck from time to time. You are absolutely correct about the condescending attitude of some of the help forum contributors. I do call them out for their attitude when I notice it. I try to remind them that they are dealing with new users that are not aware of the terminology or really how to frame the question correctly.
The PDF signing challenge wasn’t really fair. It’s not really considered “digital signing” what Luke did and Linus was trying to go the right way. Should’ve specified what they were supposed to do better.
@jaffa fer I'm not sure what the person designing the challenge meant, but I hope it's not what Luke did, because that is a meaningless operation. I wouldn't call that "signing" it's just "filling out" a pdf with your name. I also wouldn't say that it is that uncommon nowadays, I regularly sign an official document with the certificate on my ID card. I do agree however that it is not the most "simple" thing to do. But if he would have had a certificate present already, he would have done it within the time limit.
@@jorsm.3893 But it looks like Linus was also trying to do the same thing as Luke but went down the rabbit hole of actual digital signing. This does show itself an issue when non-tech people use Linux, that a lot of the terms which have concrete meanings in computing (such as signing) can be really misunderstood by the public and so this create a barrier to entry.
@jaffa fer nah. I have no one who set up Jack shit for me. And I happen to have Adobe Acrobat so I use it to put my signature on documents all the time. The other option is literally printing things out and scanning them back in.
@@jorsm.3893 unfortunately that is what normies mean by "sign a pdf". adobe has a service where you can send someone a pdf to sign and all they do is get a link to put a picture of their name on the document. I had to "sign a pdf" like that to rent a flat.
Thank Apple for contributing a ton to the open source CUPS printer project years ago and making printing on Linux relatively painless. Printing on Mac OS used to be a real pain back in the early days (think Mac OS X 10.2) until they hired the guy that developed CUPS and had him really focus on making it great.
Don't really thank Apple. Just thank Michael Sweet who was the sole person responsible. Fine Apple bankrolled it by hiring him, but it was only because he wrote an open solution that things went as well as they did. Apple has made no further contributions to CUPS since Michael left. Give credit where credit is due! and not to corporations that are actively hostile to open-ness.
@@mattymerr701 this is the one thing that pisses me off about Windows. You need drivers to print shit, and then when you try and install the drivers, the installer wants to install all kinds of extraneous shit alongside the driver. Linux is just "you wanna print? Sure."
Speaking as a musician, I wish we could do the same thing with audio production hardware. The state of audio production hardware compatibility in Linux is just terrible.
Fun story: once I needed to print some documents, and I couldn't make the printer work either on windows or mac, so I decided to try to do it from a Raspberry PI with Raspbian, which is a Debian variant, and it worked immediately!
@@RicardoValero95 I know, but the printer I was using wasn't printing correctly from my mac book pro (It started and after less than a second it would stop), and I couldn't find the drivers anywhere. I gave it a go with my raspberry and I had no problems at all. I don't remember all the details (this was over a year ago), just that the printer wasn't compatible with osx (it said so in the box), but it did work from the raspberry pi. It was an HP Desk Jet Ink Advantage, not sure what the number was, just that it didn't showed in the list of models in my mac.
Oh, and osx sucks. I just have the mac 'cause I used to develop apps for iOS, but I don't do that any longer. Too many hoops to jump through just to get approved to publish it. BTW, I tried with a MacBook pro 13' mid 2012 and the a new MacBook pro 2021 that my company provided for my work, and none of those worked, being the latest the worst of all.
@@choopoopoo Wow, literalism in its purest form... When I said fun I meant "this is a weird story", but I understand your disappointment... I would pay your money back, but the story was free, so yeah, nope.
The PDF signing challenge shouldn't have been called digital signing as that is most definetly not what Luke did. Luke made an annotation signature, but the file was not signed with a certificate, so it was not digitally signed. If the challenge said "A signature annotation", then Linux would know what feature to use, rather than using a term that refers to something else.
I'm a little more knowledgeable in computers than the average person (just like everyone else in this comment section) and I've never in my life signed a pdf, I could not tell you how to do that even on windows
@@TheSaNdMaN5000 as they deal with their multimillion dollar company they probably deal with more paperwork and PDFs they would have to sign on a daily basis
@@TheSaNdMaN5000 There needs to be tools, services and whole infrastructure in place in order to digitally sign a pdf or any other file. You cannot digitally sign something in a vacuum. You need to have a pair of keys and a certificate from some trust entity that you own these keys before you sign anything. The one who will be verifying he signature also uses the resources of this infrastructure. Baltic states for example use ID Card smart card keys and government provided software.
I love that part towards the end where they talk about how non Windows friendly Linux can be and how, while pros should have their pro space, newcomers shouldn't feel like Linux is "The pro way or the highway".
@@Traumatree At least on Windows there is still a button, I believe on the right side of the address bar, and that's the point that was made in the video
I'm a professional Software Developer and Devops engineer, and I've been using Linux-based systems for over 15 years now (both on Desktop as well as server systems). I am using Linux on my work system as well as on my personal ASUS notebook/laptop for 6 years, and productivity wise, I don't want to switch back to Windows. Needless to say, I have had great experiences, and I have had bad experiences (leading me to reinstall...). I also still own a Windows computer which I use for gaming (though I do play Among Us on Linux :D). I would like to make one very important point here: Both of you have done a great job, and regardless of what others say, you're doing it right.
@@EpicBunty I always tell people to start with mint cinnamon (like Luke). I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the best distro (all distros have their own annoying quirks and bugs and mint definitely has a few that bug me) but I definitely think it’s a perfect distro to start on. For the most enjoyable experience though I would not recommend jumping into Linux expecting to be able to go full in on gaming. The amount of windows only games linux is able to run and run well is honestly incredible but getting games to run is often a total pain in the ass. If you can get it working with minimal to no effort that’s great just know that if you plan to game on linux that means you are planning to run software on an OS it was never built for.
Started using mint on my laptop and pi and never going back to windows except for gaming. Gotta say though, I still run nouveau graphics drivers because I can't get the official nvidia drivers to run. I always get a blacl screen, no matter how much I try and fiddle around. On my dual boot gaming rig I get extreme screen tearing (on nvidia drivers) when watching videos. If you have nvidia drivers, expect a less good experience if you are a multimedia user. Other than that, it is great.
@@Drazil100 If I was to recommend a DE for Mint it definitely won't be Cinnamon. It's an enormous pile of buggy garbage. MATE is much more usable and very user-friendly.
Yeah, they did great. I have been using Linux everyday since 2003, as desktop and server. We came from a looooonnng way. I remember it took me two week just for my SoundBlaster to work properly. Forget gaming back then. I recommend Mint too, debian based and rock solid.
I love the closing comments by Linus and Luke both. I love Linux and the whole Community. (As a matter of fact, watching this series inspired me to dig one of my old laptops out of the closet and try to main Linux mint again for the first time in a couple of years). I want to see this community and the software and even the Open source hardware community develop into a force to be reckoned with by main stream developers and manufacturers allowing for a growth in the community and a return to what computing truly meant to the enthusiast who started it all.
That's easier said than done. Open source doesn't and will never have the "business unit" full of MBA folks to tell developers to take their religious qualms about how things "should" be done and shove it all the way up their ass, like you'll find at any software company. Linux desktop will ALWAYS be plagued by interop problems and weird hurdles for users for this reason, 10 minutes browsing closed issues in any git repo for popular tools will demonstrate that quite clearly.
@@yourpreston1 You're not wrong, but you highlight the solution as well as the problem. The open source community is sorta meant to be very opinionated and diversified regarding different things. But, because the code is open source, a developer or group of developers can always fork a project to go in a new direction. Then, the two variants can take code updates from each other as they find appropriate for continued development. Granted, that's not always how the story goes, as much as we may wish. There's certainly an efficiency in software developers being told what to do, and that still exists in the open source community: there are for-profit businesses that make open-source software, sometimes exclusively and sometimes not. Companies like Cannonical, System76, and even Google all contribute to the open source community with the classical business paradigm you describe. In fact, I'd argue that it's this sort of culture that makes KDE developers as toxic as they sometimes are. Still, a lot of what makes open source software great is the passion that developers put into their software, trying to develop software that objectively serves their users the best. Typical users don't see this degree of quality (partly because attempting quality, user-friendly GUI's hadn't been an important facet to Linux for a long time), but there's a reason why Linux is widely considered the preferred OS for web servers: it's generally stable and efficient. When I look at Windows, as pretty and user-friendly as it may be, it's plagued by security issues and wonky performance; it's best features are primarily marketing propaganda. When I look at Linux, it's clunky and fidgety, but it's built on a solid foundation for an OS, with efficient software, fundamentally helpful features, and a plethora of options for those with differing tastes. Over time, user-facing Linux software will stabilize and improve. It's all just developing so fast right now that there are stability issues, and users sometimes try to take that out on the devs, and the devs might take offense to that... especially when those issues might be out of their control, and after they spent hours freely and generously developing the software. It'll get better, just like it has been.
@@yourpreston1 So you think it's going to take a corporate handle interested in making Linux user friendly to fix that? I guess I can see that, though I'd hope it wouldn't. Even then, sometimes that doesn't quite work out that way. Ubuntu/Canonical makes a good example. They used to put a lot of work into UX, to the point I used to recommend it to friends looking for a free alternative to Windows and they were quite happy with it. But they took on more and more community workers of the "my way or the highway" mindset, eventually leading to the disaster that was Unity Desktop. Is Ubuntu more user friendly than most of the others still? Yeah, from a purely academic measurement. But from a user experience point of view it still has many of the same problems the others do, and adds a couple new ones of it's own, like Snap packing everything leading to abhorrent performance and the base install eating over a gigabyte of RAM at idle.
Wow, the printer challenge was my favorite part. Such a success that was! If Linus does end up going back to Windows by the end of this challenge, one thing he should takeaway from this is at least a Linux VM just for printing. I also find it funny that neither of them even know what printer they have in their house.
I actually felt sad during this part because one of the greatest selling points of linux (which saved me hours of frustration in the past, too) is becoming less and less useful. I rarely print anything these days.
I've been using linux at home for 10+ years. It is now the only OS I use at home, and I would use it for work if I could. I think your critique at the end of the video was pretty damn accurate. It only takes one prick to ruin something for everybody.
I work from home. Most of my work takes place in the browser, but as a tech with an MSP, i need to be able to easily access what my user is going to see, and I might be putting myself at risk if I'm experiencing problems my in-person coworkers arent, so im stuck with a windows box for work, and linux for home
I love how Linus and Luke's points make a lot of sense and how KDE developer Nate Graham also supports those points with his ideas of making KDE simpler on surface for newcomers and making it powerful when needed for power users. Great job kde team keep up the good work!
Linux needs a beginner version that any "idiot" can run and do things with ( bloated, slow, but works "straight out of the box" ) that can be "unlocked" as needed to get to "power user mode".
@@Bakon Linus tried Pop OS, it's unfortunate he ran into the issue he did because these challenges would have been an absolute breeze on that distro. No google fu required
I think it really needs more pointing out that distros are perfectly legitimate to choose user-centric approach instead of the one that is user-friendly. The only disaster here is that Manjaro is being recommended as good for new people coming to linux. Arch distros do not abstract the user from the system complexity and can feel very overwhelming. Manjaro is good for new linux users that already know linux at leasta bit. This video demonstrated well that Mint is very newbie friendly by following the Windows paradigm to people coming over to linux. Also the difference between "free" and "free and open source" might not be clear to everyone without further explanation.
@@ActuatedGear free and open source has nothing to do with it being gratis (having no price) it can be a commercial product too. Its free as in Libre - freedom. It's about user's right not being spied on, his data gathered and having access to source code.
@@MeshVoid No. Free signifies EITHER. It is BOTH. He means ONE and that one is the price tag. He knows both are true. The relevant one to his point AT THAT MOMENT is price availability.
There is no reason an advanced distro can't have simple tools without giving up advanced capabilities. Until linux developers stop requiring memorization of dozens of commands and advanced flags just to perform simple daily tasks, they need to stop complaining that people aren't switching to linux.
Simple tools that cover the breadth of use-cases that a desktop offers is substantial and hard work to create. Desktops are generally (but not always) built by volunteer developers for free and the teams are quite small. For teams working on desktops I don't believe they want the GUI to feel complicated. But the scope of work is such that they need to pick and choose their battles.
No hatred towards Manjaro, but this actually shows how easy-to-use Linux Mint actually is. One of the most beginner friendly and polished distro I tried.
Or rather KDE is inconvenient. From the productivity perspective I haven't had a single issue with Manjaro GNOME. That said GNOME also has its own problems.
Luke works so quickly and he makes his version of Linux look a lot more user friendly than what Linus is using. Interesting watching them both tackle the same tasks and how they go about them.
Mint is actually less jankier than KDE. Its Nemo file system is far better than Dolphin. Take for example in their "zipping the file" challenge. While zipping the file, the zip folder should be hidden until zipping the process is successfully completed. And the progress bar should be in front and center while doing the zip or any other file manipulation. Instead KDE takes a more janky approach and simply confuses Linus. Where as Linux Mint does this correctly and Luke breezes through it. It has lot of issues which neither related to their past experience nor due to vendor lockin. Whatever happened here is totally on the devs. This challenge actually exposes that.
@@bestergester4100 As a KDE user, I can say this is very true. KDE is good because of its extreme customizability, but it's certainly built more for power users that are already familiar with the internal workings of Linux, and sacrifices user friendliness in the process. In a recent blog post, KDE says they want to change that, but we'll see whether that happens or not.
It's the most beautiful thing I love about "communities," especially Linux... "Oh, man... here we go again - why can't you just type 20 command line entries to do what you're asking, bro. If you wanted to use a windows GUI, why didn't you use Windows?" or "It's called search, bro... try using it" What's really exasperating is when the latter is found in an old post, and search results or links end up at pages that have been removed, so you spent 20 minutes looking for something the ass in the comment section could have told you in 5 seconds (and if he couldn't, he shouldn't have responded). 5 seconds typing the answer, or 30 seconds putting on your Fedora, growing a neckbeard, and acting like an ass? I know which one makes people NOT want to be part of your community.
And they be saying linux is better than windows at problem troubleshooting, when you just spent a whole day trying to get the second screen working that simply just plugs and works in windows Starting to feel like linux users have a lot of time on the hands
I've heard of a trick which pretty much guarantees some Linux guru to give you a proper explanation on how something is done. Instead of saying "Hey guys, a Linux newbie here, how exactly am I supposed to do X?" start your post with "Linux sucks because you can't do X". Someone will swoop in and tell you Linux doesn't suck because it can be done and they will tell how it's done.
[Meta-comment] Yeah whatever, dude. I stopped reading when you kept going on about bro's, donkies(?) and growing body hair in weird places. So whatever you were trying to say in your ill-manered North-American way, gets lost when the reader resigns after being confronted with off-topic language and/or obscenity. [/free feedback]
Thank you for showing real user experience of Linux. You are right how much Linux users make it seem easy while at the same time some basics are so confusing when you have been using Windows for 30 years.
Thanks a lot for this series btw. I've been using Linux nearly my whole life since my father started using it quite early and I literally grew up with it. Most things you guys encounter are just minor inconveniences for me and I can get these fixed most of the times, but I always forget that a beginner doesn't know all that stuff. Also, there are still many cases where even I nearly punched my monitor because shit didn't work after hours of tinkering and googling. This series hopefully shows the devs and the Linux community in general that it's easy to forget that people might know less about Linux than you and that they might ask stupid questions because they just don't know better. Really looking forward to the development of Linux in the next years regarding stuff like this series and the soon launch of the Steam Deck.
That's elitism in a nutshell. So SO many developers freak out if you don't know 100% of what THEY know. Or don't browse their forum for a decade to figure out a hundred tiny little quirks with their programs function, stuff that just became de-facto standards in the community with regards to dealing with something that is fundamentally terrible and/or broken. Hey developers - WRITE BETTER GUIDES TO YOUR DAMN SOFTWARE. Stop relying on forums for your documentation. And definitely don't rely on shitty wikis that are sadly way too common with projects these days. Nothing infuriates me more than some garbage half-assed wiki that isn't even complete. I've never released anything that wasn't documented out the ass for every damn feature. Even debug stuff.
While I agree, there is also this idea that everyone else uses Windows. What about those people that have never used any computer, or have rarely had to use a computer. Those people have the same steep learning curve no matter what OS they end up using. Even if they do use Windows regularly, there are often huge differences with each version of Windows, which creates that steep learning curve every few years. But it seems that is OK because not Linux (or Apple). I have a retired client who had an old store bought Windows box, but never really used it at all. She asked me if I could help. Since the box was so old, and had hardware issues, I said that it would be better to start fresh, and that I would build a basic box for her. She asked what Windows I used, and I told her I used Linux. She asked me to put that onto her new computer. Fast forward several years, and a hardware upgrade, and she uses her computer daily, and often wonders what she did before. Yes, she is still a basic user overall, but she has learned how to solve some of her own problems via Google. Her learning curve for the most basic things was an interesting thing to watch. Had she asked for Windows to be installed instead, she would have had the same experience learning. I think that a lot of the issues with Linux adoption (not counting Android phones, TV OS's, various other bits of technology that everyone uses), is that most people who become frustrated with Microsoft decide to try Linux, find it is different (thus "harder"), and then decide it is easier to just go back to what they know, even if they dislike/hate it. Those who take the time (a growing number) generally find that Linux is worth the steep learning curve.
I love this video because it reminds me of a lot of problems I encountered too when starting to use Linux. A lot of people, like myself, don't work in the IT field. Everything I learn for Linux, I learn purely for myself, with no use elsewhere. And spending hours setting things up is time I can't use to do sports, study, meet friends etc., and all that for a potentially broken system afterwards (happend while setting up Nvidia Optimus on a laptop).
Ugh, I can relate to the last sentence, having an Nvidia Optimus laptop and trying to install Fedora on it and get the GPU working only to break the stupid kernel, and then opting to install Pop! OS instead because it has an image tailored specifically for Nvidia drivers so you don't have to deal with all that kernel nonsense.
I quite honestly think this will go down as one of LTT's best series period. It's up there. Really enjoy the perspective from both gyus but, unfortunately from my own personal persepective of someone who works full time in a stressful job and has a lot of life on his hands says although Linux has gotten pretty awesome, it is still years off as i fall kind of in the LInus camp here.
Linux & guys, love what you are doing with your reviews and attempts to use Linux. I've been playing and working with Linux since v0.95 on 3.5" floppy disk since wayyyyy back. I am a software dev (linux/windows) and gamer, who likes Linux. The Linux OS has come a long long way since then. Still not quite there when it comes to gaming and it has some rough edges that will cut you, but it is an amazing Free OS that provides a check against closed source domination of the Big Tech corps. We need alternatives and everyone benefits from that. Keep up the good reviews and attempts to use Linux.
The printing experience on Linux is great, as long as your printer supports IPP Everywhere (also known as AirPrint). Fortunately, quite a lot of new printers support it nowadays.
@@valerafox7795 I work as IT and the printers driver in Windows is the most frustrated experiences I ever had, it's complete nightmare to any business out there they all have issues with their printer specially after mighty Win10 updates, Linux is just work I tried Ubuntu live CD back in ~2009 and it detect out printer immediately and the best thing OpenOffice were laready on that CD my colleague didn't believe what he saw, I told him this system comes with a lot printers drivers, sadly had didn't like OpenOffice interface and i din't know that time how to get Office to work .
My Samsung ML-1640 runs just fine on Linux than on Windows, it’s not a new one too. Printer support on Linux is overall great but some misses here and there
Been really appreciating this series as someone who has wanted to use Linux for the longest but can't stand a lot of it's quirks compared to just disabling everything I want on Windows 10. I hope this and the work Valve has been putting (and hopefully will continue to) towards the distro for the Steam Deck will serve to improve more in the next coming years.
Luke already used Linux a LOT in the past, so he knows quite a bit about it, especially Mint and all the quirks it has/had. Linux is coming in mostly fresh.
Great video: as somebody who has always been Linux-curious, this is a great series and has not turned me off from wanting to give it a try. So to all the haters saying that you’re bashing devs/Linux: what are you talking about? These are all fair criticisms and there has been a fair amount of windows criticism along the way as well. Not sure if Luke’s bird or keyboard is louder!
i started with vms, so basically 90% of stuff was configured, and I couldn't install applications if i wanted too, but that has helped me learn the linux terminal even if i can't do scripting yet
The problem is that they sometimes share misinformation, because they don't understand completely what's going on, and that's fair, but they should put Anthony to explain to the viewers what really happened. Like Linus said the *Pop Shop* bricked his system, but it didn't. What bricked his system was the *apt* package manager. That and some other stuff end up being misinformation on a giant tech UA-cam channel, which is not great.
You guys are making me appreciate all of the Linux knowledge I have acquired over the last 15 years. This stuff seems easy to me but only because I have spent such a long time doing it. It is interesting seeing less experienced users come at these problems.
I am disappointed that they barely ever touch the terminal though. I understand it isn't the point but it really is such a core part of the linux experience.
I laughed a bit when Luke didn’t think in a "Windows-way" enough and instantly searched for where the fonts folder is located instead of opening the folder of the font and double-clicking the font file. *EDIT:* I didn't laugh because I thought he was being stupid or that you shouldn't use the fonts folder - obviously there are use cases where you might want to copy the files in there directly. But for this one font and with Linus having said before that "Users switching from Windows will think in Windows-ways" (again, not criticizing) I just thought it was a little funny that Luke didn't think like the average Windows user in that moment.
Exactly. Just like Ubuntu, opening the font offers a button called "Install font" (or so). Click and there you are. Now, if you have 1000 fonts to install, you have to make that user-home-folder/Fonts folder or use the system fonts folder (what he did and needed root to write-access it), otherwise it takes a century.
@@ContraVsGigi Kinda ironic, considering Linus just made a video talking about Windows 11 removing many of the right-click options people are so used to. Point is that just because Windows does something a certain way, it doesn't mean Linux has to do it the *exact* same way. It does need to provide *a* way to do it, though - that's what the users above were pointing out.
@@chrisrnz Of course. I was offering another way, even simpler than the existing ones (opening font & press Install font / copy fonts to a system folder/user-made folder). One of the ways is not really functional for a large number of fonts. Anyways, I would like to have that option (of course, working for batches, not only single file), it is easier than the copy & recache thing (btw, is recache mandatory? And is there some other than Terminal way to do it (I only know the terminal method)?).
Fun story. Universities and Colleges used to use Linux CUPS servers to host their printers on the network (Network enabled printers didn't exist back then) And it's pretty common some of the same servers in use today. As a result of this, Linux is apparently unrivaled in it's support of printers in general. I have a nice Canon brand printer I could never get working on Windows but in Linux I don't even need "drivers" I just connect through my driverless network interface, on Garuda the scanner function also works out of the gate. This was very fun to see. Also- Linus not seeing the "size" field of his zip file gradually increasing is pretty funny. It's right there Linus.
Canon printer? I thought almost all model of Canon printer can't be usable in Linux as there's no official driver for Linux for most model in their website.
@@sophustranquillitastv4468 this is true but most network enabled printers nowadays have a "driverless" protocol where the accept https requests formatted to a specific standard. At this point the reason to use Canon printers VS HP isn't about drivers at all... it's just about who makes a better printer.
I am a linux and FOSS enthusiast and I am really happy to see this series. I would love to see the community see this (which they have) and to improve the user experience for linux. The main issue remains however that with fewer users on linux devs have less reason to provide adequate support. The linux community has some really crazy people involved. It's the freedom problem. It is great to have but it also attracts the creeps.
The problem is for devs it's very hard to justify supporting such a fractured ecosystem. Like, should we hire teams for each of the 100 linux distros? How can this be justified when there's like 1~3 people using it on each of those distros?
It's refreshing to see how much a person, which knows it all about watercooling pipes or how many cores this model of CPU has, can be humbled by simple stuff like how fonts work or how to zip a file. It actually shows how VAST the domain of computer knowledge is.
Luke: adds a picture of his name with a funny font
Linus: tries to digitally sign his document with cryptography
The way Linus is doing it is technically correct and the proper way if you're dealing with document security and verification but yeah, I don't think that's what the challenge intended, lol.
Me: Print it, sign it, take a picture with phone. LOL. That seems to be how people want it every time I've had to sign PDF documents. Otherwise it's in docusign.
I thought what Linus did or was trying was correct. That's what I've needed to do
printing and signing documents properly in an office environment is hell on windows too.
@@jr8656 Don't even get me started on creating a document and a signature block for another person(Windows). That is a PITA as well.
Linus’ closing rant is an example of what’s bad in the software development world in general - it’s not exclusive to Linux. If you’re building software, it’s so difficult to see what the barriers to entry for new users can be, because you’ve lived and breathed the product for so long throughout the development lifecycle.
These questions from new users are gold! They are coming at your product with fresh eyes and, in the majority of cases, their questions should tell you that you need to update your documentation to be more clear or your UI to be more intuitive or both! If you’re sick and tired of answering the same questions over and over again: you’re doing it wrong.
Programmer UI is a common term for shitty user interfaces that no one but the programmer of the application understands. It has all the functions you need, but it's just thrown in there without any thought on how someone would use it.
@@XBitX For real. People do a lot of things for 'free' out of principle or just the love of creating things. Luke had the most hard hitting point on that: "keep the pro-level distros but also make this stuff more accessible."
Why can't we have both? Having more baseline users means you'll get more people who want to tinker and become adept with the more nuanced distros when they get acclimated. You can have an entry level UX/UI for your distro but also have the advanced features unlocked if so desired by the advanced users you want to work with. Windows does the same shit, they just make you pay for pro/commercial access but the core idea remains effective. Put tamper seals on things that will break the OS but allow people to take them off to dig into more advanced features.
@@XBitX Linux as an OS got a lot of money and effort goes in as an important mobile and server component. Desktop Linux is hard to be monetized making it less developed and less polished. Making emulator is possible by just hobbyists but making a good desktop UX is not. You have to have user feedback and when you have no user to start with it's really hard to grow.
Can I give this +1000?
@@Rcls01 This constant excuse drives me up a wall, the real reason linux has this issue is because people dont want to do it for one main reason: people who are hardstuck in their old ways of terminal like its still 1985 and gatekeep anyone who dares to think otherwise. This is also the reason why linux desktop has near zero marketshare, all i see are constant excuses and nonsense reasons for why we cant have a competent UX in fucking 2021. For example, way ubuntu etc handles printers is amazing, why cant we have that for other shit like wifi dongles/cards, it took me an hour to find correct wifi dongle drivers for one that auto detects in windows.
A few notes, as a fairly experienced Linux user:
1. Thanks for doing this! It's easy to forget what being new to Linux is like, and that was a lot of fun to watch.
2. I had no idea printing and network shares had become so easy on Linux. It used to be a pain.
3. Quite the unfortunate wording for the "digitally sign a PDF" task, as this is not a beginner's task when taken literally (i.e. pair the PDF with a cryptographic signature that proves that the file has not been altered). That's what Linus tried to do, and neither on Windows, nor on Linux, is that an easy feat.
4. Very, very sensible closing words.
2. Depends on if you're using SMB or NFS. SMB should be easy in most cases.
i was baffled with the "digitally sign a PDF" being a "gamer daily task". I thought about payments and contracts, but at least in Mexico for that, they provide a Java app.
@@dashcharger24 I’ve found NFS to be very easy as well, but I’m used to doing it with “mount” command, so probably good to go the SMB route for GUI purposes (I don’t daily drive Linux as a GUI usually only in server contexts so NFS tends to be pretty simple in _those_ contexts, at least). I know both work pretty seamlessly out of the box in many cases though, especially if you’re fine with a quick adventure into the command line. 😬
@@sdlion7287 Same I've only done it once on windows... and it took like 2 hours cause I ain't installing adobe malware on my PC
@@sdlion7287 this is general daily task not gamer daily task ask a gamer the last time they printed something?????
"7zip is trying to use 100% of my CPU"
Welcome to 7zip, Luke
true
If it isn't using 95% or so i start immediately looking for another CPU cycle stealer that is slowing down my wait by whatever % missing!
Doesn't 100% there mean 100% of one core?
@@R3lay0 7zip can do many of the compression formats multithreaded, it is Absolutely Blazing fast, within few seconds after starting your CPU fan will go full bore and the compression speed is limited by resources only. I save literal hours of my life each year when compressing work files and the like for archiving.
@@R3lay0 TLDR; No it means all threads full burn like compression is the sole purpose of the computer.
Luke just added an image to his pdf, Linus was actually trying to digitally sign the PDF with a either a soft or hardware based certificate (the latter is done using a PKCS11 token), these are two completely different things
It's basically miscommunication.
Yeah that was James's fault for not being clearer on the instructions. Same issue with the zip file having a 3gb file that wasn't needed.
@@HDR95 the internet in one word, tbh
And here I thought you'd PGP sign the file itself? I am so lost o.o
How does digitally signing a PDF with a certificate (trying to be specific here) actually work, then? I only saw PDF programs allowing you to scribble a hand-moused signature into the page...
@@IngwiePhoenix_nb PDF has support for embedded digital signature.
I'm loving these videos, guys! I noticed the compression wasn't finished when Linus tried opening it because the filesize kept changing and I literally shouted "it's still compressing" at the screen! And thanks for the shoutout!
It happens when the screen is too big and fonts are too small, I guess.
I agree mate, fantastic videos. I found myself shouting "No, wait!!!" Bless them both, they certainly have jumped into the deep end.
Whole zip compressing thing is weird... I mean... I can imagine my grandma using that... And using any other compression tool even like 7-zip on windows has left me uneasy on the UX department.
BTW: I use right click menu item on KDE, same as I do with 7-zip on windows. So it's weird how Linus could have fail that up
@@N1Zer0 Now way. I daily drive Linux on ultrawide 1440p with huge number of windows and never miss notification. It has sounds BTW.
Linus just pays no attention at all
@@milesfarber what? to which of Linus and Luke's attempts were you referring to? I and many others have no issues saving files to our network smb shares under Linux (especially given the proliferation of home/soho NAS devices).
Setting up the Samba server (be that on desktop/server hardware or embedded e.g. NAS) is another matter (so many interlinked moving parts). If the NAS is using sane defaults it should be no trouble. A big problem may be username mapping (especially usernames with spaces).
I have used Linux extensively. I'm way more familiar with both distros in this series than Linus or Luke in addition to several other distros not even mentioned. I program in Linux, my server is Linux, I've contributed to Linux projects on GitHub. It would be trivial for me to solve every single problem they had in this series.
I love Linux, that's why it irritates me to see some other Linux users hating on the series. This is what a user would experience. Not even an average user, these guys are very good with windows.
IMO Linux is far superior to windows for a lot of things but if Linux wants to be "as good" as windows it needs to make the daily stuff users do easier. I'm not saying I want more conformity between distros or anything like that. All I want is more people to contribute to wikis and to open bugs or contribute code when they run into a problem. It would be especially cool to see old solutions marked as obsolete or updated when new versions come out. Having things labeled better would also be helpful because I know why musl causes problems with some programs but a new user might not so mention at the top that only certain installs should follow the guide. Stuff like that would could help retain users and make it less frustrating for new people to try Linux.
Additionally I think there is one issue that was glossed over here. Some games do not play well with Linux. Especially multiplayer games because several anticheats will ban you even if you do struggle through and get a game to work in Linux. I've even see people getting banned for using windows vm's on Linux hosts. This is something we will depend on game devs to improve in the future and I hope one day we see it happen.
Thanks again Linus and Luke. Great series and I'm especially glad you showed some of the strengths Linux has despite the issues people may bump into.
So anticheat is getting better with linux due to Valve's proton push. We're getting there though
@@urmum8540 honestly I disagree but only time will tell
@@lewismcdonald9691 While they seen to be aggrandizing through the roof. Valve is actually a huge part of why gaming on Linux is actually in good shape right now. Even with projects like DXVK that gave us incredible support for Direct3D that often surpasses the original implementation in performance. It was Proton that made it fairly trivial to run just about any game. Currently I use Lutris with Proton-GE builds, most I have to do is tick "virtual desktop" for games that have trouble reclaiming mouse/keyboard after losing focus. Really if you just stuck to launching games through Steam that would be enough. I just don't like having Steam running behind my single player games and shortcuts to Steam Proton must be manually updated if Steam updates the Proton runtime for a given game (to account for the install folder changes).
I think one of the biggest issues is that they (Linus especially) are Windows Power Users instead of regular users. This means that they are used to going in and fiddling thing things on Windows or at the very least doing things with their computers that "average users" wouldn't do. They're "more familiar" with Windows than the average user.
I love Linux, though I do have many, *many* complaints about the UX or stability and such. That being said, I find at least some of the "problems" they run into are simply them thinking that things on Linux should work exactly like they do on Windows, or how they *think* things work on Windows.
I don't use Linux very often but had an easy experience installing mint and figuring it out. The only thing I had a problem with is reconfiguring dosbox in Linux to run exe version of a game that took me like 2 hours lol
You should let Anthony do the challenges as well. Not to see whether he can do more of them or faster but to see in what ways he does them differently.
He must do it from the command line.
(He will actually be faster.)
I mean it would just be a cli screen with the commands and that's it.
>Anthony gets linux challenge
>Completes it in 5 minutes with a script
@@darkinin and thats why it wouldnt make for a good video
@@ruinfox4108 In your opinion. I think it'd be hilarious to watch him complete it so trivially, while Linus and Luke struggle.
As a long time linux user I would just like to thank Luke and Linus for this series. A lot of linux users seem to be underestimating the amount of publicity this is giving to linux as this will really help our community to grow and will encourage developers to provide more support for linux. The feedback they are giving is priceless as, for the most part, they represent the average windows or mac os user and the fact that we as a community can be shown the problems people have with linux will bring the year of the linux desktop ever closer. Please just be kind, there are people who only want to use intuitive and effective distros that 'work out of the box' and there are people who enjoy more DIY distros due to their flexibility and specific uses (I use arch as a software developer) and this is fine as everyone has their own needs and uses cases. Thanks guys for helping to publicise linux and keep up the good work.
(would love to see a linux with Anthony series)
I wish I could spam that like button man!
if there is somethjng that the community agrees (unveliabable especially in linux) its that its free publicity.
Absolutely right, but I sometimes do have the feeling they overlook what they actually got for free. Because Linux is quite the technical miracle given that it's not coming from a billion dollar company.
@@92kosta yes it is sine good since it shames those bad people... aka elite assholes that don't care their shit is causing damage
most of *nix ants success and to crush winbloze. and with the pathetic shit of w10 and beyond we NEED it more than ever to finally get "its" act together for the avg users and gamers!!
Its right now like OS2 warp (I was one of the inside dev testers) excellent improvements performance stability and massive potential... but the fukin asshats in marketing didn't play nice with others etc and/or were oblivious .. so all that amazing potential
got sabotaged by malice, stupidity and general fucktarded crap
*nix has the potential... and the asshat elitist wannabes ae the equiiv of the ibm marketing morons NOT playin nice and shooting themselves and everyone else the foot via their stupidity!!!
@@92kosta Dude, if you did not raise in a Microsoft Windows world, you'd probably had many issues learning Windows as well...
Linux is not perfect, exactlty as anything is this life. Everything breaks, including Windows and Linux.
They're learning a new system, with new concepts and new experiences... It's completely normal to find issues... But remember: Linux is free and doesn't have a multinational enterprise behind it
Linus was the one who did what I'd call digital signing (proving authenticity and integrity of a file), and that is for sure not a simple or everyday task for most people. Luke added a regular signature digitally, which is not the same as adding a digital signature.
Given that this was supposed to be simple everyday tasks, I think Luke got what they were going for. Linus misunderstood the assignment and overcomplicated it. I don't think most of us regular users would even know the difference (I certainly didn't before reading the comments) and would have done what Luke did.
@@DrigrX but what lyke has done is not digital signing, so the challenge should've been worded differently if 'draw a signature on the file' was the goal
I agree. when I think of signing something digitally I think of a verifiable way to sign something not just pasting a picture onto a document
Yeah, I was surprised when I saw that a digital signature was considered "an everyday task", it's an advanced task. Then I realized what they meant: add an image pretending to be a physical signature to the document.
Well, James could've been a little more specific formulating the task. I agree, a digital signature is not what Luke has done.
I really resonate with Linus' closing about the online community answers. When I was first learning Linux, and trying to use it as my daily driver, I was discouraged, and shamed for not understanding the basics. These days, I'm a Linux power user and I use it for home and work, and I do everything I can to help mitigate that experience when people ask me basic Linux questions.
That's why i stopped using Linux. My sound card wasn't supported. I asked how i could get audio for my system.
I was told to 'just write an audio driver' if you need audio. As if that's reasonable for a normal user. I'm a software engineer and that's still not reasonable.
Why not tell me that my hardware is unsupported and suggest an alternative? Or tell me of an alternate driver option? Anything but the condescending reply that if i can't just make my own audio driver that I'm not worthy of using Linux.
It's hard when you're just starting out and don't know the toxic communities from the helpful ones. There are definitely a lot of really wonderful and super helpful people out there. There's also a lot of garbage human beings whose ego demands they demonstrate why they're better than a stranger on the internet.
@@matthewblackwood9653 you took that joke very seriously my friend
@@beepboopbeepboop190 unfortunately the communities that do come up when you search for something end up being the toxic ones. Since I only use specialised distros and not DEs, thankfully I've not encountered horrible community experiences. Retro pie, omv to name a few have excellent communities with people who tell you if it's something a novice can or cannot do and if there is an alternative
@@christiangonzalez6945 Sadly I've run into that too, and it's not a joke - They were deadly serious. And even if it was a joke, it's still extremely discouraging.
Honestly, Linus discovering how toxic stack overflow is, is hilarious
people just ask bad questions all the time.
Almost like it's news and greenhorns that asks questions
@@LiveErrors yeah but if you need to be able to help yourself and formulate a good question. 90% of the time you need to just look somewhere than waste the super smart peoples time
@@OinSonOfGloin "super smart people"
@@OinSonOfGloinTMW a new programmer asks a question on the website specifically designed for new programmers to ask questions: 😱😱😱😱 😤😤😤❌❌❌❌❌❌
Really wish Luke did more videos. I get that he has other stuff he's working on, but he's just such an amazing neutral-positive character on screen. Luke, Riley and now Anthony are easily my favorite hosts.
Part of the reason is not only that he's busy with floatplane, but the other part is that he's not even part of linus tech tips anymore, he's legally not an employee of the company that makes youtube videos, floatplane is registered as a separate company, so when he's on a youtube video he's either working for free on the video or maybe being paid as a contractor i imagine, he would have to say the details of how hes being paid or not paid when he's in videos now but i would imagine is one of those 2 scenarios since they have to abide by the law as registered companies.
Luke is the best. I do miss him in videos.
I don't know if everyone being "neutral-positive" is the best for objective journalism. Sounds weird but you need people who lean many different directions to balance things out, not just a few people who are "neutral" on their perspectives.
I like it. It’s not perfect, but the criticism from Linus was simply wrong. He says most of the time you don’t need it, so why show it by default?
Abe when you do need it, guess what? Right click the menu bar, customise, add it. Or go to settings and add it there.
As for copying in root folders, there’s a plug-in included in Dolphin by default that you have to enable (they don’t want novices doing it so it’s hidden a little) and once you do, right clicking anywhere gets you “root actions”. Really easy.
My only real complaint about it is it’s networking. For instance it didn’t mount nfs shares. It can find them and use them, but it has some sort of “support” for them and it expects apps to include that support to open files from it properly. If they don’t, the file is copied, then opened. Really bad for a media network share. Thing is, that’s entirely stupid and not needed because the kernel is capable of handling network locations as mounted folders perfectly fine.So I just command line mount it and’s open it in VLC or whatever and it’s all good.
@@IshayuG his criticism wasn't "wrong" lmao if it was intuitive he wouldn't have had the problem. You can't just say someone's criticism is wrong just because there's an obscure solution they don't know about. How would a regular user know to look for any of that? Not to mention Linus ISNT a regular user, he has had decades of advanced experience with computers.
Digitally sign the PDF
me: *expecting signing with digital certificate*
Luke: *adds sign picture to the document*
I thought it was supposed to be a digital Certificate too
This is supposed to be daily job simulation
No one in this world (as non specific IT job) daily sign a PDF with SSL.
Luke has the right mindset.
@@LaCroix05 sorry man, I feel like I sign pdfs every day in non IT-related tasks
@@LaCroix05 That's not true. In my part of the world, a personal signature made in a digital form doesn't hold legal weight. And if you, for example, want to submit papers to the government in a digital form, you actually need to sign all of them with a digital certificate. Granted, various lawyers and accountants probably don't do it by hand, most of the time, but overall point still stands.
@@uranium_donut Please elaborate.
LMAO... "Im just going to put things everywhere" while Luke was installing the font. LTT should totally develop challenge for people at home. So many people would benefit from learning an OS (windows included) from making a game out of installing fonts, copy\paste, printing, network share, etc. I would love to put my family and friends through this.
that's actually a great idea!!!
...maybe by doing some task lists, we all will finally agree on what "intermediate level user" really means XD
I've been thinking that making a "Linux Tutorial" application would be a good idea. Of course, it should be called the Tuxtorial.
It's how Linus does things. I met him in Star Citizen when he was live streaming with Morphologis. He intentionally kills himself and gets himself in a world of hurt for the entertainment value. I don't blame him. Gotta do that on UA-cam for that magical 70% retention metric and it's a business. He knows what he's doing.
Its interesting because i hace used linux on and off for about 2 years and i never once noticed the flawless printer integration . Similarly tho, i also never had need to access network attached storage. I am definately gonna attempt the challenge. Ive had minimal issues with mint and im familiar with the package manager so i will be disappointed but not surprised if i cannot complete the challenge. Mint is defo the best startup os with popos!
Yeah, it would have been nice if they had made generic files for this challenge (instead of using what looks like their standard release form and something they had to blur), and made the whole package available for download as a "follow along at home" kind of thing. I think I could do just about everything but the 4K and HDR parts on Mac OS 9.
I've been using Linux as my daily driver for almost a decade now, and I totally agree with your assessment of the good and the bad of our community.
Most of the last 20 years for me and I whole heartedly agree with you. Many of the blinded fanbois just don't get it: Most people... don't care, they just want their computer to work for them.
@@bluegiger agreed, and honestly this goes for me too, even though i use linux. Thats because i just use things like mint, it gets the job done with very few bugs and very stable. Linux can be used as a daily driver for the average person very easily - just that like 90% of distros are made for people already familiar with Linux.
@@Big-Chungus21 Ehhh, I spent an entire day digging through forums across the internet just to get the wifi on my old laptop working in Mint. Even its got its difficulties.
Are you a masochist?
Linux is genuinely a good & fun experience if you're into tinkering.
My reason for using Linux is because i dont like bloatware, spyware, or adware, of which microsoft fills windows to the brim with.
I also prefer minimalist setups - only programs I want, nothing else. Windows doesnt really let you do that without going through a convuluted process. Meanwhile, Linux in some cases starts off with literally a black screen & power shell, and allows you to build it from the ground up, exactly how you see fit.
Im one of the users that uses qtile window manager on arch linux, & have configured it to a point that's it is basically my own operating system that no one else in the world has, and that feels fucking awesome. It works splendidly for me, however, Im also one of those types that likes to learn things and likes to tinker, and has the patience to deal with these things.
Furhermore, Linux customization is off the charts, as you saw with Linus, you are quite literally allowed to erase key components with the bash console, & the freedom doesn't end there.
You want new keyboard shortcuts? Open source code and program them in. For example, for me, ctrl+f1 is the file explorer, +f2 is brave browser, f3 is steam, f4 is my DAW, etc,l., literally two buttons and I can open the applications I use most.
You want a whooooooole different gui? Do that. There's thousands of different configurations for several different desktop environments, and you can even create your own if you learn how.
Its an operating system that is only as good as what the user is willing to put into it. If you learn its ways, and set it up, configure it right, it's genuinely a great OS. Plus, knowing microsoft isnt watching or controlling what I can do is a fucking blessing.
There's a bunch of reasons to get into Linux, its honestly such a shame it is not so beginner friendly.
"Why do you use Linux?"
Me, an intellectual: Printing
true, I've always had a way better experience printing there than on windows
@@yukihanayuki Wow, this is actually pretty nice here//)) I always got the pain ass workin with them on the work9)( Just the setup is literally a death there
@@valerafox7795 I'm not a printer expert but if that printer required drivers then it probably didn't have drivers for Linux. That's one case.
😂😂😂
@@yukihanayuki how do you even have a better experience with printing? (im make a joke but im confusion)
how do these guys seem to find issues with all the most basic stuff yet the printer (the most temperamental machine known to man) worked perfectly?
Linux be like that.
I've honestly never had any printer issues in Linux, only on Windows.
I've an HP printer provided by my work, the driver is so massively bad that it loses connection to the printer on a weekly basis. Only solution is to reinstall the driver, repeatedly, for every Windows pc in the home network.
I noticed that I as a Linux user never had this issue, only other family members using Windows... I've disconnected the printer from our network, connected it to a Raspberry PI over USB, then connected the RPI to our network as printing server. Works flawlessly on Windows now. The printer is also unable to update it's firmware, making it impossible to brick any third party ink in the process. It's a win win situation.
Linux has shit tons of drivers readily baked straight to kernel. Amost all printers are plug&play.
Linux has a weird relationship with hardware, most common hardware, including printers, will have drivers baked right into the kernel. Which works very well for printers. of course its sadly not so easy for niche hardware.
Because: linux
Switched my last machine about a year ago. I've printed like 2 documents since, no setup, no problems - this shows how simple printing on windows could be
Oh man the weird ARK and Dolphin issues are things I encounter a lot. This was fun to watch. Really highlights how "basic usage" of Linux desktop is actually fairly easy, it's gaming and more niche use cases where it breaks. Dolphin's approach to some of those philosophies are TERRIBLE. They're supposedly working to change this, but the stances are astounding.
Managing Wine's .desktop files in general is pain. It was hell on GNOME as it was all over the place in default app menu and the default app menu of GNOME was just a mess for me. Sometimes I'm happy to start over just to get rid of my messes...
7-zip already included wit most Linux archive manger, you just need to get use with their interface, I didn't done file decompression via command line on Linux for years, and it just easy as in windows, BTW I found that XFCE is most users newbie friendly interface every tried, Gnome is trash from me now, other DE either too simple or too complex
But man I do love dolphin and ark just for that extract here, autodetect subfolder
my beloved.
Dolphin does have a refresh button though.
Yeah, whenever I need to copy files to external storage, I switch to thunar, because it just works, so far. Oh yeah, and the bulk rename tool built in with thunar is awesome.
@@huantian I think the problem might be Baloo. That thing is a mess. If I'm not a lazy person who uses KRunner, I'd just disable it.
I learned Linux in college, and elitists are the worst, there's nothing worse than someone saying you suck and they're a superior being when you're just trying to learn something.
and then you accidentally nuke ur desktop
That said, as long as you are trying to learn, that's a positive thing... but I've run into people who refuse to learn more than the basics and then expect everyone else to fix things for them or help them to things they can figure out how to do themselves with just a little effort. But I hear you.
"Hey guys, I'm new to this stuff. How do I change [thing]?"
"How could you possibly not know this stuff from birth? Just how dumb can an individual be? I'm so much smarter than everyone, look at me!"
@@WraithAllen people wanting help with something that they "should" be able to figure out themselves is probably them TRYING TO LEARN SOMETHING.
@@randomstuff508 but most I've seen don't even show the relative evidence of what they have already done, like a log of what they have tried or something, just a bare minimum description.
I think the discourse in the comments about "signing the pdf" is a great example of the gap between hardcore users and what normal people want/expect. I've been sent PDFs for things over email that I needed to "sign," but by sign they meant an actual signature, because it's usually a contract or something that needs your personal signature. And I'm pretty sure that's what both Luke and Linus were trying to do. But the online tech world assumes that a "signature" is an ssl or something and Linus ended up on the wrong guides.
The problem is that pasting an image of your signature into the pdf doesn't legally mean anything. Yes, lots of normal people do that, but it is legally useless and trivial to forge.
@@theKiwii So is a real signature on real paper
No, signing by your PKI certificate is exactly what's required for that. At my work we have a PKI card that when inserted into your laptop or card reader, allows you to digitally sign a PDF as proof that it's myself signing and to confirm the document is unchanged since the signature(s).
We create designs for safety related systems, so when a designer, checker and approved all sign a PDF, we know that those individuals have approved it, are responsible for their signature and it is the exact design as signed.
No - it's because the task used the word "digital" signature. If the task said "electronic" signature, then yes, I would have looked at just creating an image of a hand written signature. But "digital" signatures are something completely different.
This task was always doomed to fail
@@theKiwii There is no law in the US or Canada (where they live and work) that states that pasting an image of your signature onto a pdf makes it not a legally binding document. A signature is a signature, theres no legal difference between printing the page and signing it and doing what Luke did, at least not in the countries that they care about.
I’ve stuck with Linux based OSes for almost 15 years. Watching people get started for the first time is eye opening. You guys are doing well. Each distro has its quirks and sometimes change radically between versions. Documentation is sparse and often written for more experienced users. There’s no Apple of the Linux world yet, even though some try.
I remember for a year and a half a certain distro didn’t support dragging files to desktop, and search-ahead typing was intentionally stripped out (you couldn’t type “some” to select “some stuff.txt” in a file browser anymore) and I watched the developer responsible not only defend it but imply that everyone who wanted that feature was stupid. Linux faces always need to remember that they are responsible for the community just as much as their commits. Always be kind.
AFAIK Gnome as a desktop environment doesn't allow anything to exist on the desktop unless you use a tweak tool? Or is that an old behaviour now?
I ran gnome (and before that Unity, R.I.P) a few years ago when I was first starting out.
Damn
i recently tried some Distros with Gnome, and i can certainly confirm that Gnome is still so bad, it still has that problem where the desktop is basically useless, i don't when Gnome team realize that they are supposed to make a DE for desktops not Mobiles and Tablets
I remember my father's philosophy that "if it is difficult, you will appreciate it more when you figure it out." Absolute BS. I have been in and out of Linux, and talked to many Linux users. My experience is that they feel "these things are so obvious, why are you even asking? So I eventually return to Windows where things are so obvious I don't have to ask.
yep, keen to watch how system76 progresses, looks promising (pop-Os on their laptops, not general hardware)
Luke's attitude around USE CASE is one of the most perceptive points about operating systems in general. This series is an important one and on balance has obviously generated more curiosity to explore Linux specifically. Thanks for making this happen.
i learned linux with gentoo twenty years ago or so. the experience was a bit like punching a tree over and over again until your knuckles harden into a calloused leather; im probably better off for it but it was fucking painful for like a year and everyone was an asshole about it because i didnt already know everything before i knew everything.
LOL Reminds me of my Dad sitting me down with stacks of DOS books and having me learn the ins and outs because that was gonna be soooooooo important. You'd think it would help with command prompt but most if not all of the commands are ever so slightly different than they were in DOS 6.0
stackoverflow gets its users from gentoo forums confirmed
Yeesh--throw you right in the deep end. I got into Linux 15 years ago with Ubuntu 6.06 ("Dapper Drake"!) on a mid-range but very common laptop, and it was so incredibly painless. Everything either just worked... or it didn't, in which case I could boot to Windows from GRUB.
That first experience really spoiled me, because my next few computers were custom built, and I'm still recovering from the trauma of editing Xorg.conf and futzing with nouveau drivers (oh, and I definitely borked at least one install the same way Linus did by uninstalling the Ubuntu desktop).
Gradually I learned how to compile software from source, edit deep config files and write custom cron jobs and backup scripts, but the reason I haven't owned a Windows machine since that first laptop is entirely because my first OS experience made it so easy to get my feet wet.
For real my guy! I cut teeth on Slackware in 97ish and one places I leaned the most was working with Gentoo. Currently on Arch :)
Turns out that on average, people who make their evangelism for a niche and unwieldy power user operating system part of their personality, and think being able to do a simple thing in a more convoluted way counts as a "skill", are not very socially well-adjusted people.
I died when Linus is trying to sign the PDF and he ends up reading about making a SSL Certificate 🤣
well, he can sign it that way... And tbh with "digital Signature" I would also go to pgp, not plonk a scanned/text signature below it.
Easy mistake to make - the difference between adding a digital representation of a physical signature and a cryptographic certificate (for authenticity) the moral of the story is people need to be clearer with the terms they use.
And for the former maybe keeping a .PNG of your signature to hand.
Yeah I hated how that assignment was unclear.
I sign PDFs with SSL Certs all the time, Lukes method, you might as well not even have a signature. you can just use the same font...
If you died, then who wrote this?
Signing a PDF challenge:
The challenge didn't make it clear, whether it's about "fake signing" a PDF (aka inserting a spoof signature which makes it look like a handwritten signature) or whether it's about a cryptographic signature, using a certificate.
This also became clear in the different solutions, where the "fake signature" was done within a few minutes, while Linus understandably failed to setup a full certificate setup within the timeframe.
On the other hand, the applications themselves should probably also make it more clear, what this is about - what is a "signature"? A non-technical user might quickly fall into the trap of trying to understand the complexity of CAs, CSRs, certificates, certificate-chaining, different certificate formats, …
the PDF had a huge "signature" section at the bottom which should have made it clear what to do
@@Lue_Duck could you explain how the signature box makes it clear what was required? I'm not that familiar with cryptographic signatures for PDFs.
I think that the whole challenge was prepared pretty sloppily, with such inconsistencies and files not being well prepared for compression (people won't usually compress 3GB, rather smaller bits). I haven't done any signing like that either, but for someone who actually had an idea about what that is, they should have described which method to use indeed. I appreciate the concept of the challenge, but preparation for it was simply bad imho
Agreed, to me it seems that Linus was led into doing something that would be meaningful as a signature while Luke added a meaningless graphical element to the PDF. Unclear what the challenge actually wanted out of this, possibly they both failed?
clearly it was about adding a signature in the file, but to your point it should have been clearer.
The thing that I love about this series is actually calling out the toxic elements of the stack overflow.
@@KurosuKirie Stack overflow mods are the worst, and there is no such thing as the "Linux **Community**", I don't use Linux to make friends, I've used the OS as my daily driver for almost 20 years now, and never considered myself to be a part of some **Linux Community**
Those guys are gonna die single correcting someone's post in their basement.
@@guestimator121 I agree i don't use my computer to make friends nor do I personally Identify my self with the Operating system I use like some lifeless bugman. Linux is just a tool I use.
@@guestimator121 I think there is a difference between not participating in a community vs saying one doesn't exist. I am curious as to how you define community.
@@guestimator121 Yes, there's definitely a "linux community", and they generally need to pull the sticks out their asses if they ever want Linux to take off as a mainstream platform. Then again, i get the distinct feeling most linux users _dont_ want it to ever be a mainstream platform.
As far as developers being condescending. I literally got banned from the developer's discord and got silenced for a month on their forum for pointing out a bug. They accused me of spreading false information and said everything would work correctly if I knew how to read. A few days later several other users called out the same bug.
Wow that's nasty. What was the bug tho i am kinda interested
@@nabilrady6767 the software couldn't read certain types of storage after the update. Specifically direct_io.
That's linux developers in a nutshell.
no wonder every distro feels about as user friendly as windows vista.
Well those are some shitty devs then. Every time I’ve reported bugs to FOSS devs they always ask me what the bug is and how to reproduce it
Here, here, been using Linux and Unix near 40 years and while things have improved markedly as you have so effectively demonstrated. The biggest issue blocking Nix acceptance over the decades is as you point out. A poor user experience. Each distro is like "YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE." The new user muddles along growing increasingly annoyed and eventually resorts to google digging where they encounter trolls, bafflegab, flames, downright incorrect answers, high priest incantations and occasionally some gold. It is a frustrating experience for new users simply trying out what should be after all these decades be at least a windows beater if not a world beater. Some of the best and brightest people work on and with Nix, but the community continually forgets what MS has long ago figured out - you need to get the UX right.
This right here is exactly why linux and unix like operating systems are still only a small part of the market. I don't get why all the linux elitists keep saying "It's not difficult to learn the operating system" when that's not the issue. The vast majority of the world aren't computer geeks and they're especially not as interested in tweaking their computer as us linux users. The elitists can say all they want about how great the operating system is and how people should just learn how to use it but it's not gonna change anything when most will just stick to windows due to it's user friendly simplicity and the only ones losing out in the market is the unix like OS'. You have people today constantly say that products these days threat the customer like they're a child and one look at the computer market world and you can see why. Windows has such a stake in the market (mac as well) because they cater towards inexperience computer users and are very friendly to use for anyone
Honestly . That's what turns me off it
@@D00000T I am not an elitist, I just have used it since 1995. Fully from 2016. And yes. You need to build up experience in order to use it. The same with every other OS. You dont ask someone to sign a PDF, that have never used a computer. That would be sadism.
@@D00000T Linux users build it for themselves because they do it in their free time. Windows is paid software and is designed by people who are essentially paid by their users. I think that is the core divide in philosophy. Why should someone who already has a day job and sacrifices his or her rare free time to improve the interesting parts of an open source operating system do boring UX tests for years on end for users who don't want to invest anything and who want everything for free? If users would give Linux developers as much money as Microsoft has I'm sure the UX would be way better. Also you don't always know what is actually better UX without doing huge amounts of testing with large groups of people and by catering to the masses you may make it worse for the core user group. For example, Gnome recently started showing the menu on startup in order to not confuse newcomers with an empty screen, however that frustrates power users who don't need the menu, have everything bound to hotkeys or do most things in the terminal and who now have to close that menu every single time after booting. If you want things to be better either participate or contribute a fraction of the money you invest for commercial software to support open source developers. I agree the UX needs to be better but it's not as simple to fix it.
@@D00000T Thing is Windows isn't *that* user friendly. It's just grandfathered in on everyone's workflow. It's what workplaces adopted in the late 90s, so it's what schools put in computer labs, and so now it's just what nearly everyone starts on, which makes it the obvious choice for workplaces, which makes it the obvious choice for schools, and so on. Most people's understanding of how a computer is used isn't about computers at all, it's about Windows.
As a 20 year linux user I can only say: "well done guys"
Honestly, I can't deny it's a great video series that really shows how the average user might come into it.
Anyway, I'm really enjoying the video's and really hope you guys will do some more linux related content in the future, and hope that even with the frustrations and sometimes not so nice comments you still enjoyed stepping into it for a bit. :)
Agreed, great job and some more Linux/BSD type content would be great - with how Windows centric they have always been sticking with the Debian/Ubuntu type derivatives that are good for Linux noobs and general users for the most part would be a good idea - most of the audience their previous content appeals to doesn't want/need you to slog through the deeper, purer and more challenging end of Linux. Though I will admit some videos are more power user - like the x gamers n cpu videos, that did get me digging through the Qemu-KVM stuff to craft my perfect VM start up scripts (sure they didn't actually use Linux for that, but as any Linux power user learns to recognize pretty fast most of these 'fancy' OS/tools are very often just nice wrappers for the open source tools making doing the basics easier/GUI-fied (which to me usually means more annoying - but GUI are great if you only do x once a year, just slow and clunky compared to a terminal when you do it so often you really know how) and it was actually the first time I'd seen proof GPU passthrough was mature enough to use, its just not a feature I had any normal need to know anything about).
As an early topic suggestion with how many folks like streaming, have fancy audio setups, maybe even do media creation in this audience a run down on why you would want to choose Jack/Pulseaudio or now Pipewire (while not forgetting you can probably ditch them all and just use the wonderful ALSA base layer - I like it best as its soo simple compared to dumping one of the others on top - at least its great for more static setups) and how they can all work together to give you full control of your audio hardware would be a great video I think. Perhaps also going down the V4L2-loopback & gphoto-2 rabbit hole to turn nearly any DSLR into a webcam would be a good fit for this audience too.
Though what they need to do is find a serious Unix/Linux/BSD/Mac user, or maybe just somebody who through some miracle has been exclusively Android/Iphone and consoles and dump them in Windoze too - all the struggles they hit in Linux are largely similar to what you would find in Windows, every OS sucks somewhere. But its always hard to see the irritations to daily use when you have spent the last 20+ years working around them automatically - you just don't notice how inconvenient something is when you have been working around that flaw so long its auto-pilot, until you get to witness/do it the better workaround free way, or really sit down and think about what slows you down in this workflow. And I would love to see somebody approaching Windows with no prior understanding of the Windows method to do things...
Having used both enough I would personally say in every use case but gaming Linux is much much easier to set up to do exactly what you want after you know just a little bit about how to use it, just flat out superior in nearly all aspects to Windows (really all windows has is x software that won't play nice with WINE and your freinds/boss etc demand you use and gaming - just about, I've not had to fire up my gaming VM in a very very long time as Proton (etc) has gotten really damn good), and personally I'd rate it over Mac's for everything a Mac can do too (though I don't really have enough experience with Mac's to give them a fair chance to change my mind - and don't really want to get it as they are expensive walled gardens, and that doesn't appeal to me).
My only criticism is that they always talk about Linux like it's one big group. Every distro,every desktop environment or window manager, every GUI library, every application has its own group and its own culture and its own methodologies. There isn't one central place for people to make decisions about things and that's both great and terrible.
@@megan_alnico this is a valid point, but also understand that's the outsider's perception of Linux. However, I like that they constantly mention the distro they're using over and over again, which supports initial impressions from video 1 of just how many different distros there are.
The wording could be better, but I don't think it's too harmful.
As a Linux-noob, I can see them run into a lot of the issues I had at first, so... yeah. Pretty realisitic scenario for anyone thinking about making the jump
@@megan_alnico yeah, well said. People like to believe Linux is a platform, like how Windows or MacOS is. But a Linux platform doesn't even make any sense. There are so many variables. For example, many package managers, different init systems, etc
Printing on Linux is either the easiest thing ever or the most difficult - never anything in between.
you man understood what technology is all about ahaha
Installing a printer on Windows is just pain. Printers have been here for decades and they still are hardly ever plug-n-play in Windows.
@@korpijeesus Plug-n-pray is unfortunately more the state of things. Not only is PnP for printers not here yet, but the endless Windows version UI 'onioneering' means that if anything the relevant options for troubleshooting just get harder and harder to find over time...
Printers are the devil's work.
@@Ithirahad I pinned the control panel to my start menu because of how frustrating it is. I generally just start there most of the time.
Just the waves made from this series have made Linux Mint MATE, Video drivers, wine, and other things SO MUCH better now. Most of my games work on Linux now. I also learned a bit from watching you guys do various tasks on different distros. Thank you so much for making this series! Doing great guys!
I recently switched to Linux and my experience have been painless and I wonder if it's because that this video series got things to work better.
@@faequeenapril6921 I'm pretty sure. It made a big wave.
I doubt this video series has done anything in the Linux community other than annoy people. If you ask me, the linux experience is roughly the same now as it was a few years back.
@@Proletarian-ud8du No one did. Ask you I mean. Touch grass.
@@faequeenapril6921 not this video lol but steam deck really helped push tons of more devs into linux.
Even now Linux is better than it was 1 year ago, FAR better than 2 years ago and 4 years ago is a joke.
Linux is actually great now
These comments are hilarious lmao, especially regarding dolphin. Lots of Linux users saying Linus is trying to use things wrong and that he’s expecting it to be windows, and that normal Linux users never have these issues. At THE SAME TIME there’s a bunch of long time linux users saying they have the same issues with dolphin and hate it. People are just assuming that when Linus has an issue it’s his fault.
Stupid post. If dolphin could run as root then Linus would have complained "Why should you be allowed to break your system easily just by moving a bunch of files in the windows explorer" like he did complain about apt being able to remove gnome.
Linus needs to make his mind. Does he want safety or does he want control?
When he installed Steam and apt asked to remove Gnome and he did. He made 2 criticism.
1. Steam package shouldn't have been released broken
2. apt shouldn't be able to remove gnome
I agree with him on the first point.
fhese comments are hillarious there are lots of people using windows and saying that he is using windows wrong, at the same time there are a lot of user of windows that have the same issues with windows explorer. people its just assuming its an user error.
wow people having issues on a os, what a timeless realisation
@@hitler69 I refuse to believe you are this dense and not trolling. You are assuming the worst possible intentions behind everything. There is no point in arguing with people like you.
Not only that. Every third Linux meme is how Windows doesn't allow you to do things on your computer. Now here the same fanboys say that Linux doesn't do it for your own good.
@@lobsterbark dw I've seen that person post similar bad takes on other threads. Must really not like Linus
I really like that they called out the toxic gatekeeping on "help" forums. It's a problem not just in the Linux community, but also (among others I'm sure) the general software development community. Imagine trying to self-teach a useful IT skill, getting a bit stuck, not being fortunate enough to know someone IRL who can help you, and then getting shit on by some idiot online for just reaching out.
The irony is that this is often centred around Free Open Source Software (FOSS) - meaning software for everyone, not just you (clue's in the name).
It's even funnier when you see the usernames of the worst of the snide ones go whining on other topics about how a lot of people just don't "want" to switch from Windows or Apple, keeping FOSS adoption in limbo.
@PhazerTech that's usually true but also everyone is an unhelpful asshole about it
Linux Mint Forum has been kind and non-gatekeepery when i switched up to now
@PhazerTech you fail to understand that being able to keyword search with google is an experince driven thing, most often new people don't typically know what they are searching for and why should they? they're new.
@PhazerTech How are you supposed to use keywords in google if you're brand new and don't know what the proper keywords are?
Printing in Linux was something I was always afraid of, especially back when I first started using Linux, because on Windows it was a major pain half of the time. Surprisingly, I have never had any issues printing on Linux, it even let me still use my ancient HP 840c printer, which absolutely freaks out and prints garbage when connected to a Windows machine.
Linux has its flaws and is not always user-friendly, even the newest distros, but somehow (at least for me), this one specific thing never fails to deliver perfectly.
I know it is too late to bother with now, but when I was a child, I removed the printer driver using device manager, unplugged the printer, plugged it back in, and windows installed a driver for it that now worked.
as an adult I have no idea how my child-self was able to 'fix' the printer issue, and to this day I can only imagine, that windows screwed up and installed the wrong driver this second time, which ended up working fine, since the original driver wasn't working at all. also I have no clue how a child managed to even FIND the device manager, and on top of that, navigate it correctly and remove the driver using it...
Linux uses the Open Source/Standards for printers that older hardware use and Windows doesn't. So basically the Linux one is simpler and may have less functionality, but the compatibility is going to be there, especially for legacy hardware like linus said his printer was
My 1990's scanner finally gave up. Couldn't even scan on 7 without arcane magic on the .inf file. On linux it worked day one.
only times I've ever really had issues printing on linux were when the printers themselves were refusing to work for anyone or when the network itself wasn't cooperating. Either way it wasn't the fault of the OS
@@lonergothonline you have plenty of time to figure it out when you're still young
Luke: adds his name with a funny font
Linus: attempts to create an encrypted SSL certificate from the ground up
Woah Mint developers have really done a great job at creating a beginner friendly distro
Yep, remember first swapping to Linux on an old machine when the HDD was corrupt in the boot sector, windows could only install in a certain spot while Linux picked up the issue and installed in a different spot (not sure if W7/8/10 properly do it now, XP did not).
First started with Ubuntu, was a good experience, but then my mom wanted to use that machine as well (it was a travel laptop, so basically cheap enough that if stolen, no issue, important work should always be on flash drive instead, so HDD issue is not a problem) and couldn't figure it out, saw Mint had this nice start menu and stuff, now she's been on Mint for ~7 years already.
I recommend Mint as an entry point to everyone instead of Ubuntu, just because most are older people used to their XP build, and even after all software/security support gone etc., they are still using it, and I found Mint was the least frictional change (W7/10 seemed to have freaked them out a lot since they were used to small quick launch bottom left that they had pinned, rather than the "big" icon that then they couldn't click to open a new browser tab, they kept forgetting about right-click).
Just the fact Mint comes with GPU drivers and the optimus-manager already set up is worth
the praise Already. That shit is a pain to configure on Manjaro.
My optometrist girlfriend uses Mint on my 10 year old iMac, and she's non techincal. Loves it for what she uses it for!
Mint is shit, enjoy spending all your fucking time configuring stupid fucking audio drivers.
@@drn3079 what is there to configure? i always download cinnamon version and they use to work out of the box.
Really enjoying this series. As a Linux user, I feel you guys are giving it more than a fair shot. Making the move to Linux has traditionally been almost completely based on the users personal dedication/stubbornness which is why the Linux desktop hasn't really taken off.
Things have come so far though, and I think you guys have demonstrated that well. Good on you 🤙🏽
Ya, it is really too bad that Linus tried the switch when there was that bizarre Pop_os error that only lasted for a few days, as Pop has been more easy for me to use than windows. I switched to pop (my first time using Linux ever) about 4-5 months ago on my desktop. I never once had an issue with it, everything was easy and I never had to break open the terminal for the first three months. I started getting into the terminal about 2 months ago, mostly because I wanted to test it out and see why the linux chads love it so much. After about a month of using the terminal, I felt comfortable enough to replace windows on my laptop with Fedora 35. I still love pop, but I want to try out the FDE Plasma feel on manjaro, so I am now installing that on my desktop.
Based on my experience with linux, I believe Linus would've enjoyed himself FAR more if he didn't have that steam error on Pop.
I've been trying for over 25 years to get a Linux machine running. Every 5 or so I give it a shot on an older box and it's always the same issue. Drivers, and I get frustrated and quit. This goes back to early Red Hat days. I'm just not stubborn enough or willing to put much effort into it at the end of the day because even though windows sucks too, it's doing the suck that I know...and the suck that I know is easier to deal with than the suck that I don't know. :)
@@lennyghoul ya I can understand that, but if you use pop_os, they atleast slam dunk the drivers for all Nvidia and amd GPUs.
@@lennyghoul Drivers always seems to be hit or miss, even on Windows. I've had the experience of my touchscreen (I can get by), touchpad, and WiFi card not working after reinstalling WIN 10. Thankfully I have a type C dongle with LAN port in it, if not then I'd be screwed :)
Yea imma just stuck with windows
The last point you are mentioning is exactly why I switched from Arch to Manjaro. It took me years to get proficient enough in Linux to solve all of my system issues myself. Before getting there I had to read a lot in the Arch Wiki (which is great btw) and also ask a ton of stupid questions in the forum. One day one of the the Arch maintainers snapped and basically told me that after years I couldn't solve the most basic issues myself, which was the reality he lived in but not mine. I could solve basic issues, but understanding dmesg, udev etc. sufficiently enough to solve your own system issues can take years.
In the Manjaro forum it is not regarded as a faux-pas to ask stupid questions, whereas in the Arch forum you often don't get an answer because people don't want to deal with those simple issues. I completely understand that the same person having written the Wiki article doesn't want to explain everything multiple times in the forum again, but it seemed to me like the general attitude of Arch users at the time.
It's from distros and support wikis like that that give Linux a reputation as being for geeks only. (Personally, I just wanted something easy to install and noob friendly that would work on a bunch of old hardware that I had. That's why I settled on Linux Mint.)
Most of those "simple questions" are because people ignoring wiki or not reading it enough. But I agree with the Arch forum not being beginner friendly just like the distro itself. I also believe that not being able to understand Arch and still using Arch based distros creates more problem than it solves because you don't know the underlying system you are using. Just don't use these types of distros until you get the hang of Linux in general and you will be fine.
Simple questions are answered with a link to wiki. Arch wiki is great source how to work with linux. Arch or gentoo wiki are main source of knowledge for everyone :)
I'm sad to hear you had a bad experience with the Arch community. To me it was the oopposite, I got very condescending and hostile treatment to my beginner questions in other distros' communities, eg. SuSe, RedHat pr Ubuntu... but with Arch, for the first time I actually got people answer my questions instead of just telling "If you don't know that you should use Windows". Yes, there is some gatekeeping in the Arch community but so far in my experience it was rare and minimal. Tho if you ask something that is clearly explained in the wiki, they will likely just tell you to read the wiki, but that's kinda justified.
Overall, gatekeeping is a problem for the entire Linux community, regardless of distro, and until that changes, Linux will never become more popular, which is sad. I think Linus summeraized it very well by saying that there is a lot of good people doing good work, but a few toxic gatekeepers are more than enough to turn people away.
And Linux gatekeeping is really the most stupid of all gatekeeping, because Linux is very specifically the kind of thing where you have to learn a LOT before you can really be comfortable with the basics, and let's be honest, it's complicated and hard learning. Nobody dropped out of ther mother's womb already knowing all that, they all started as noobs and had to learn a lot, as well as made a lot of mistakes and asked "stupid" questions before they became the skilled users they are today. You need significantly less learning to get started with eg. WIndows or OSX, than you need to get started with Linux, so gatekeepers need to stop acting like it's easy.
You should try Zorin OS 16 Pro. That OS is closest to Windows as you can get. lol
I like how this entire challenge is Linus: going through twelve different steps and hoops to do something as simple as cut and paste, while Luke: click, done. next?
Linus, Luke, you guys are both champs for taking on this challenge and being open about your experience. I've been using Linux since 1997 on an ancient Redhat server the Cyber-cafe I worked at used as a dialup ISP with a bank of 56k modems. I've mainly used it in server scenarios but I have daily drove a linux desktop or a few months in the early 2000s. At the time I had to drop it as my daily driver because I am too much of a gamer. This series is encouraging me to buy tertiary SSD for my machine to dive back into linux daily driving. (Probably after the holidays.)
Do it. It is really a great experience.
Personally I am not a total techie, but I still managed to configure myself a nice arch with a budgie desktop (that's a gnome fork) and I almost never run into any sort of issues day to day. It has really gotten rock solid from my experience and I would probably suffer a lot, if I tried to go back to windows.
Altough I must say I am very fortunate to have a couple of friends, that really help me a lot when I used to have some struggles with my system.
I too thank them for this series. Everyone else is a fan boy with their Linux experiences as to not piss off the "experienced" Linux users that plague the forums with sarcastic remarks against new people. Especially those that seem to hate any comparison to Windows. These guys have chosen to take the abuse from those guys...
@@betalars The instant Hunt Showdown and Apex enables linux EAC I'm in. I'm exclusively a multiplayer gamer, no point installing until the anti-cheat engines work in Proton.
@@fly_8659 yeah I see that. If I played more multiplayer, I'd probably have at the very last a secondary Windows installation.
Fortunately most games I enjoy playing anyway work. My only exception right now being halo, but I don't have the time for that anyway lol
@@Voyajer. but I also kind of get it. Games industry is really high stress and you don't want to take a perceived risk.
And I've heard that reposts about cheating are great at scaring away investors, with... I mean really is flawed, but yeah ... Capitalism
When someone starts getting interested in Linux and decides they want to give it a try, the first time it's inevitable they are going to have a few questions. Then they go and ask, usually about something they just want to learn and understand. So someone who has years of experience then sees the questions and they basically have 3 options: ignore them, shame them, or teach them. It's unfortunate that a minority of experts choose to flex their superiori.. um.. experience, and turn off curious beginner. It creates a bad rep for Linux as being for rude elitists only. That's unfortunate.
This. I also hate when people talk about things like it should be second knowledge to that person. Last week, I was trying to see if I could install a distro as a dual-boot on a T2 chip based Macbook Pro, as I had dabbled with Mint in the past and knew a bit about how to get some things up and running.... one of the things I had never encountered was GRUB.... and then after we opted it was better for me to just a different ISO than the one I had tried to set up on my own in a VM, he gave me a ISO he had tweaked to download, left a bunch of steps I didn't fully comprehend, and wished me a good night.
Needless to say, I stopped trying to get this to work right after, as I felt more lost than before. And I've been nervous to type in the Discord server since that day, cause I already felt like I was dumb and should've gotten this easily.
@@codyssmith73 if you need any help, fire away!
This is literally 4chan's /g/
@PhazerTech It's funny to think that a majority of the people that use google don't know it is a Keyword search, I've watched so many people type full questions into the search bar.
Unfortunately, most linux power users not only enjoy the smell of their own farts - but also relish in making you smell them too. Certainly this exists in other communities, but it's especially pungent within the linux community.
That speech by the both of you at the end was awesome and is very necessary for the Linux community.
Thank you so much for using your platform to help spread that message.
Thank you from a fellow Linux user (and probably many others too)
The opening statement of "anything is easy or hard depending on how much knowledge you have" is something I need to remind myself of. I've been daily driving Linux for so long, that I tend to take obscure knowledge for granted. I think what us in the Linux community need to ask ourselves is how we can make desktop environments more intuitive for new Linux users.
And you need to heavily reduce the dependency on the console. Functional GUI is extremely important.
@@novideohereatall I'm so used to use the terminal that yeah, like you said I don't think about using a GUI anymore is Linux. sometimes focus is not on the GUI
Mint etc have that covered, when it works. The problem isn't that learning Linux is too hard anymore, the problem is the expectation that the user will eventually become a power user. The fraction of normal people who will accept that thought is the same number of people that are programmers OR windows user fraction that regularly uses powershell, most haven't even heard of it.
Linux actually gives the correct answer in this series, Everything that a daily user wants to do must have a simple and fast way to do it via GUI. They don't all need to be 100% intuitive it isn't even on windows and users will get acquainted if there is more standardization not the key point is there must be a simple fast way to do everything a normal user would want to do that you can explain in one or at most two sentences.
Just us windows, cheap, better, more intuitive, much more program support, basically no reason to use linux unless you are a nerd with no life
@@zenodezeno454 There are reasons for it, even for regular users. The problem is that while it does have some great positives it also comes with a bunch of different kind of negatives, most of which relate to usability which is something most people will not sacrifice even for desired features. Can't say i disagree even if i wanted to.
I’m glad Linus and Luke are doing this series and bringing awareness to the Linux community so it can be made into a better and easier experience for the average user.
hahahaha, yeah right ;D Good one!
Except linux is not for the average windows user who want to do everything like he do on Windows. If you learn the basis of the terminal you'll see it's actually easier to do things like install a program. Linux is already good and easy, users just need to learn
@@auronkardek UsErS JuSt NeEd To LeArN
It's clearly not intuitive in many instances. Before Linux isn't polished it won't grow. Which should be the goal of an operating system.
@@akuno7294 oh man
you guys forgot the learning curve in windows? give windows you our old granny and see how will she use it vs you .
the problem in linux is that you have many customization and one way isn't forced to you by the corporation. that's why it can be confusing but you can totally ignore that
the other part is, linus is misleading the watchers and wrongfully advertising that linux got problems. a lot of things he did are trivial and i doubt a computer user can run into them
@@akuno7294 at some point you need to learn to install a program on windows or do things on windows in general. You propably don't remember learning but ask every old person you'll see they had to learn because OS are not intuitive for everyone from the start
Printers are the most cursed tech device ever. So I was fearing the worst when I first had to print using Linux. And it just magically worked and printed. So I guess it's Windows printer drivers that are cursed and not printers themselves? Maybe?
Yes they're!!! 😂😂 And not only the printer ones9))(): While the Linux ones are doing their work, and they doing it great!! (Checke on my own)
Have you not been following the news on windows printing? The answer is yes.
In my experience, printer support on Linux is amazing. It usually "just works".
Printer hardware is still cursed. Paper Jams, claiming low ink when there is plenty left, exc. But at least client software side is a lot better!
it magically works until you need to print on some ancient piece of shit that does not have drivers
This was soo much better than Part 2! That PDF signing from Luke was nice, because most instances of PDF work I'm using Adobe PDF Pro in Windows or Mac.
Edit: I know Luke didn't "actually sign with certificate" but for most instances... this is good enough.
Oh, the Titus himself. Hello!
But he just signed it as an image. Not really a real signature.
@@flamemon11 Who cares though? Do you really think they meant certification? Who the hell uses that?
@@Koffiato used in businesses constantly. Master PDF works quite well. Libre office has it built in as well (though it's not as fancy)
Yup, that wouldn't fly in Poland. Here, while using the Electronic Platform of Public Administration Services (government platform for doing basically anything i.e. asking for duplicate ID card), every document needs to be signed with a digital certificate you previously aquired from trusted certificate authority, i.e. Municipal and Communal Office.
I am in my 1st year of Linux-life. I am still in hybrid mode with my work PC in Windows 10 and my home PC on Linux Mint. Seeing Linus's pains confirms my notion that if the distro is not right, it's gonna be a nightmare. I used to use Ubuntu and Lubuntu, but now I use and love Mint. It's just painless. I have a new build, I want to try Zorin.
I can vouch for zorin I’ve been following the project for at least 6 years now and I really like their premise. All in all If you are comfortable with the windows 10 gui, you are comfortable with zorin. (although the same can be said in regards to mint).
Hey man, great move.
It's been 3 weeks since your move, how is it going on rn?? Good?? Bad?? Or somewhere in between??
I personally use Fedora, since the update is frequent which i like it alot, and personally I like experience a lot.
Mint is the best distro out there. Btw I use arch.
Try EndeavourOS
This has been *such* a great series. I love that Linus and Luke are challenging the Linux community in a way that's starting conversations around UX and shaking the foundations a little. I've long been a Ubuntu user and as a product designer I've often come up against things which I thought can be solved with a bit more care to the UX and UI side of things (but have never known how best to make suggestions or get involved). It's great that LTT have the voice and the platform to get the word out.
Also, it's entertaining to see Linus wrestle with Manjaro. It's a shame he threw the baby (Debian based distros) out with the bath water (Pop_OS) because I really think something like Ubuntu would be right up his alley from a usability and applicability POV. I wonder if, once this series is all tied up, whether they'll both go back to driving Windows or if curiousity will pique and they'll continue with their distros (or go hunt for a new one)?
I'm thinking Luke might stick to Linux in some form, but I'm not expecting to see Linus back on Linux for another decade or so. Not only is he having an incredibly difficult time, but the _reason_ he's having a difficult time is because he is the _hardest_ level of user to transition - a superuser. The kind of user who knows tricks to make things go faster, except none of those tricks work the same way on Linux and he gets himself in huge trouble. Whereas someone just plodding along with their mouse click-by-click is in a far better position.
idk Pop is an excellent distro too imo, I woulda loved to see what happened if he just didn't hit the "nuke my GUI" bug lol. alas...
@@KillahMate Yeah that is a great take, and I fully agree. The super user in Linux I imagine would be completely at home using terminal. I think Linus is a super user who demands a sophisticated UI-based experience, though (like you said) and yeah…I guess that’s where we’re starting to see some gaps in the distros product design. Get me in there! I’d love to try designing a distro!
Luke is already testing a Debian based distro (by way of Mint being Ubuntu based, which is debian based). Better to cover different ones than both covering the same one. I'm glad Pop_OS failed so Manjaro/Arch could get some spotlight.
@@ProcabiakYT True re. covering different ground. I guess what’s weird in this situation is that Linus strikes me as the kind of user who would benefit from the friendlier Mint distro, whereas Luke, who is an experienced user, could probably tackle the nuances of something like Manjaro with less hassle. Ah well. Still entertaining and informative viewing 😊
Linus using Linux during the first and second time: *I'm too weak.*
Linus using Linux now: *UNLIMITED POWER!!!*
So Unlimited he completely nuked his GUI from Pop_OS
@Joe Anyway the difference is small as the name was based on it))() 😀😀😀😂
his h4ck3r level is growing!
LOL
Noticing "Why is the name system volume information?" while actually trying to save a file is the most accurate linux experience I've ever seen.
In case of pdf, folders can be hidden some way, but fat32...
isn't that folder something windows creates everywhere?
The folder created by windows ofc
delicious fish
Linus knows what that folder is for on windows. he was asking why his USB drive was named system volume information
As a long time Windows user who had to learn how to use RHEL for work, I can say that each has their pros and cons. Windows OS is second nature to me, so many tasks come easier for everyday use. However, when developing software using the Linux terminal is great. It helps me to easily move between the files and folders that I need. Bottom line is that you should learn both if you can and be able to apply the knowledge to make your life easier based on the task that you’re working on. The video was fun to watch as someone who went through many of those Linux growing pains when starting my career as a software engineer.
Not afraid of the terminal myself either but trying to justify making any software for an OS that normal users are repelled by, i want to like Linux, i do like the idea of Linux but getting some real adoption rates would help it enormously but it Needs a real final push on the UX side to be acceptable for normies, i don't get it why there is pushback against that. As in it isn't as if doing that would require getting rid of the terminal use if the user knows the syntax but it really is a Mile too far for regular users.
@@RiversJ I think users are repelled by it because of the steep learning curve. That being said, the changes they have made to make Linux distros have better GUI support have been great. I don’t think anyone will truly appreciate it until they use it functionally, as it’s not an IOS that’s great to use as a daily driver. Maybe with the rise of the Steam deck running well on a Linux platform, maybe some people will be intrigued by it.
rhel is awful. does it even have a package repository? i only see a handful of mostly useless programs in there. do you really have to follow the insane terminal instructions for every program you want to install?
This honestly is one of my favorite video series ever on the internet. Over the years I wanted to get into computer programming and sbc projects (raspberry pi & arduino). I tried several times to take the plunge and always run into the most frustrating issues I could never figure out how to fix. I've always struggled with a pessimistic view of myself and my abilities so I would internalize those struggles as something being wrong with me. Like I wasn't capable or it was meant for "smarter" people. Watching two people I really respect have some of the same infuriating problems as me has helped me realize there was nothing wrong with me. Everyone struggles even Linus!
I guess I'm just old and have been using tech for so long that I would never stop to think I'm the incompetent one. Whenever I have an issue with Linux I always think "This is such a needless pain in the ass, why the hell can't they make this easier?"
Linux can either be your best friend or your worst enemy, it depends on if you are used to using it or not and how your box is set up.
I am, right now, learning how to do microcontroller stuff.
However I've been doing software development for 25 years.
You're free to learn along with me if you like, just get some contact deets to me.
I'm at Zero Knowledge but I got three projects to get my teeth into.
1) Add a smart home fan speed sensor to my drinks fridge fans and have alerts sent to my phone using Home Assistant
2) Build a PWN fan controller for the fan in my BBQ (it has a variable resistor which EATS batteries)
3) The big one, design and implement a computer OS for the Raspberry Pi Pico in assembler, turning this hobbyist arduino-type device into a computer. Keyboard, disk, programming language and sound and video output
Again, feel free to get in touch, I can help you learn.
Not everyone can learn in a vacuum. Did you not inquire /research a "user group" in your area or an on-line user group.? Start again, but now ask questions to the user group members.
Being self-taught is an actual skill you may or may not have.
So it's completely OK to ask around! Unfortunately for Linux, there's less desktop Linux technicians than there are Windows technicians. Tech support is key, especially in an unfamiliar environment. And chances are, you don't happen to know any Linux gurus IRL you could rely on when things get janky.
But that's why there's always people lurking around the online forums, and once you find the right search terms to use, you'll actuallly get better instructions than Microsoft Support's boilerplate SFC scan...
Most printers "just work" on Ubuntu, without any installation necessary. As long as your computer can "see" a printer, it will automatically install it for you. Printing is therefore one of the easiest things to do on Linux. Now, if Luke and Linus had been asked to SCAN a document, that would have been much more interesting. I finally got my Xerox MFP to scan documents after jumping through some weird and confusing hoops. Even then, I have to do some prep-work every time I want to scan something. I blame Xerox.
Install simple-scan, and be amazed.
I’ve had no issues with HP on Linux
@@tylerdean980 I had issues with my HP Printer with Arch but that's because I needed something called HPLIP until then it would send the document to the printer and say it was successful without printing anything, added HPLIP and it was golden.
Scanning depends on distro. Forgot which distro i used but it already had a scanning application already included by default and so when i used it, it just worked.
From my usage of different distros and such through all the years linux has been around features like printing and most hardware installation is like magic compared to days of old. I wish all the gripes could be fixed as well as these have been. If that were the case it would be the simplest and most powerful os to use. Windows can still be a big PITA to print with, hardware setup is generally ok but it's still not perfected. I realize that hardware on linux that is not auto installed or recognized can be a huge pain to get working, but sometimes it is not any better on windows.
I legitimately enjoy this series and I'm truly impressed with how far Mint has come. That was the fist distro I used as a daily driver on a netbook about 12-13yrs ago, and I was impressed then.
Cinnamon in probably the most usable DE at this moment but it looks so outdated. SMH
@@mitjapozar2725 Personally, I like the current aesthetic of cinnamon, but everyone has their own preferences. Overall though, Linux Mint is a really great jumping off point for people interested in learning Linux.
@@erikchumbley3014 unless youre on a surface. Getting the surface kernel installed on mint is a fucking nightmare that i couldnt get past after weeks of working
@Dawn if you are a beginner and like to do more gaming popos should be easier but i'd choose mint
@Dawn i personally didnt use it much but the desktop environment is much better
It was hilarious that Linus didn't realize the ZIP file was in the middle of being compressed and didn't want to wait 🤣
This is actually the same with him copying a file to a drive, but there was no warning of it beforehand which is fair
@@luphoria There is a persistent notification on his screen, but he sits so close to his screen that he doesn't even see them in the bottom right
especially considering the file size was increasing in front of his eyes.
Linus has ADHD which is part of his success, he is the do -it-guy who built a successful company with 80 staff, reached certain fame and that while doing what he really likes
But he isn't the guy to sit down and deeply understand that stuff because this doesn't come with his traits
@@luphoria He's used to super fast drives and Windows in-your-face pop up notifications. You can't really blame the man.
I followed in Luke's steps and chose Linux Mint. So far I've been incredibly satisfied with the experience. If it weren't for the fact that I have to use Windows as my daily driver just to VPN into work via Azure VPN, I'd probably be booting to my Linux Mint environment daily and really trying to drive it. Everything I hear about Arch based Linux makes me agree with what Luke said about different distros for different skillsets. I'm an advanced Windows user, but still a noob on Linux despite having dabbled on and off over the years with it. So I find Mint to be a really good and soft landing place for me to test the waters. Kinda like running a Windows client SKU, and then later on deciding to run a Windows Server SKU instead. To the Linux gatekeepers out there, you're doing no one any favours at all. To those that are working to make it easier and a much more welcoming experience, thank you thank you thank you! Your efforts and your content are invaluable and it is YOU that are the real unsung heroes here.
Thanks for giving it its fair shake. That first episode with Linus nuking his DE could've been the death of the whole series :D
I'm surprised the Azure VPN isn't easy to use on Linux. I know it's a Microsoft product but they tend to have good Linux support on their development related tooling, and VPN's are mostly used by devs and similar roles.
@@ricardoamendoeira3800 it *can* work, but it requires you to enable some additional security protocols that our IT team isn’t comfortable turning on since they aren’t quite as secure as using Active Directory Authentication with MFA.
Thank you for not pinning on Linux the fact that you tried to zip gigabytes of video and it was slow!
However the messages could be more visible on KDE. It's probably meant for a "normal sized" display, not that behemoth that Linus insist to call his monitor.
I really appreciated the conclusions, they felt more balanced than last time.
It's kinda small compared to my secondary monitor. 😁
Also, yeah, they take a little longer than usual to do these tasks, but most of this is talking, finding where the GUI option is, and performing one-time configuration tasks when told to by the system.
If you asked both of them to do this exact challenge again and actually made them race each other, they would finish the whole thing in less than a minute. Yes, even crypto signing a PDF takes seconds once the initial setup is complete and you were able to succesfully sign your first. And the 4K video zipping/moving/uploading doesn't count.
The KDE messages are normal-sized on my end. Maybe Linus could use some display scale tweaking.
I think that printing is the one aspect of Linux that has been solved SO much better. Basically any network attached printer will work right away without the need of ever setting anything up.
Except if you need to do anything other than print a document. If I want it to scan to a folder on Linux, combine pages when scanning, etc you need the software from the manufacturer. And 9 times out of 10 that doesn't work on Linux.
@@williameldridge9382 Not true. Simple Scan included with Mint, combines pages when scanning into either separate images or a pdf doc.
@@DJFace147 THIS. So much this. I will say that Simple Scan can be a little slow or at the least it LOOKS like it's slow. It could use some... polish? But it works out of the box and it's in every box.
@@ActuatedGear Alos it's not the only software out there, you can just install another one
@@DJFace147 Unfortunately it doesn't work with all scans, I've tried to scan a document using Linux Mint with a Canon MB2110 and didn't work, I managed to print on the Canon without any issues
What this really shows is that it's better to pick a fool-proof distro like Linux Mint to get started on Linux.
Linus: *Tries to sign his PDF*
Manjaro: "So you have chosen death"
I have been using Linux for more than 20 years: I remember printing was a nightmare, just triying to chek if your printer is supported was a days task. When PnP it didn't make it easier, but worse. Now seeing how easily these two newbies are printing a page makes me realize how far Linux has progressed.
Printing in Linux has almost always been easier than on Windows. The biggest problem was always printers that needed weird drivers in order to work. In the past decade or so printer manufacturers all started to standardize their functionality which is why we have printers that basically “just work” today.
Heck, the printing system that Linux uses, CUPS, is so good that when Apple started on OS X, they purchased CUPS outright!
@Sudo Pacman -R Window Happened to me too with a Samsung Express! I think they were actually quite lucky with their printers, as it could have gone very wrong. After months of issues with mine I eventually found some Linux drivers but I had to learn how to run them, which eventually solved the problem. But it certainly didn't take 15mins!
@@paulnortham I think actually it's the other way around you're the unlucky one. In recent years I have not encountered a printer that didn't just work with ubuntu xd
@@wujekcientariposta Epson SX-235W .. good luck with that.. does not work.. can't be made to work.. no manufacturer support
I remember when Lexmark inkjets started hitting the shelves and totally threw away any concept of the existing printing standards which had worked flawlessly for so long especially with LPT connected printers. I doubt a lot of those USB printers work at all even today. Thankfully the prevalence of mobile phones and tablets has forced their hand back to standard communication protocols.
I've used Linux Mint for years, and my wife just started using it. The Mint community forums have been very helpful, but I also think that's because many newbies will be using Mint and so the community is accustomed to helping inexperienced users.
Ya, most of the Arch based distros (Manjaro) have Arch chads trolling their forums, that are not the *ehm most friendly. But ubuntu and ubuntu based distros tend to be far more noob friendly, ESPECIALLY the Mint forums.
@@benruss4130 That's good to hear. Back when I was in high school the Ubuntu forums were brutally mean. It's why I ditched Linux. I ended up having a less frustrating time making my own CentOS-based distro in college than getting help with Ubuntu. At least CentOS had good documentation.
@@matthewblackwood9653 RIP CentOS 😢
I use Mint myself with various Debian derivatives on my Pi depending on what it's tasked to do. The forums for Mint are great if you have newbie problems, not so much when you have to step outside newbie realm. A lot of threads die of inactivity because the problems required much more involved efforts to solve. Usually by that point you know other forums to look for though so it's a great start.
Mint community forums have been very helpful? That is... simply not true. I wish it were, but it isn't. Anyone posting questions on the Mint forums, from basic to advanced, is going to have an absolutely horrible, demeaning, and thoroughly unhelpful experience.
I get that you want to increase adoption of desktop Linux. That's great. But lying to people by pretending that the community is more helpful than it actually is, isn't the way to do it.
That's my main issue with Linux. The bad eggs hate newcomers and get really pissed when people don't want to be forced to use a terminal for something that could be done in half the time by just using a mouse.
Yeah I have the same issue. The gatekeeping is intense
EndeavourOS is probably the best community I've ever had in a Linux distro. You do need a bit of knowledge of bash (it's an intermediate Arch-based distro after all), but they're very nice there.
If you can't use a terminal Linux is not for you unless you are just going to watch UA-cam videos or other basic web app things Linux has come a long way on gui interface but it still has a long way to go, lots of things using the terminal is required. And if you can't manage that, then paid software ie Mac/windows is what you should get
@@rylandavis2976 apropos gatekeeping xD I think what you meant to say was 'anyone can easily learn to use the terminal on a basic level'
@@collegeoffoliage6776 yeah anyone absolutely can learn to use a terminal to do basic things. But if you read the comment I was replying to, he was complaining that he shouldn't have to use the terminal because he doesn't want to. And when someone has that attitude (most people do) then they simply shouldn't use Linux, it's not the best choice for them.
Linux Mint doesn't get the recognition it deserves, Cinnamon is often overlooked because it's default theme is kinda stinky, but it's honestly super handy
Yeah if I need a distro that "just works" either because I need it for work or I need to quickly boot up Linux somewhere to do something, I always choose Linux Mint. When all other distros fail, Mint still somehow manages to install compatible video card drivers & install properly on every machine I've ever tested.
I don't tend to use it for personal stuff solely because it's so damn boring and lacks some advancements/ease of use that GNOME/KDE have made over the years. Theming could be fixed, but I have noticed that over the years theming has lost popularity - Cinnamon has fewer themes, way fewer up to date themes, and fewer well built themes now than it had 6 years ago.
Linux Mint, and Ubuntu which it's based on, are definitely the distros to use if you want things to work with minimal hassle.
To me it looks to bland and squared by default. Reason why I use Ubuntu instead (I'm not someone who likes to spend a lot of time customizing the look and feel of a de)
the x-server fell apart right in front of my eyes as i was using it the first at the last time ever but i am sure that it has matured now
I'm on Manjaro but my DE is ALWAYS Cinnamon. I love it
I've used various flavours of Linux as my main OS for around 15 years now. But even now I get a bit stuck from time to time. You are absolutely correct about the condescending attitude of some of the help forum contributors.
I do call them out for their attitude when I notice it. I try to remind them that they are dealing with new users that are not aware of the terminology or really how to frame the question correctly.
Just out of curiosity, how do they respond to that when you call them out?
The PDF signing challenge wasn’t really fair. It’s not really considered “digital signing” what Luke did and Linus was trying to go the right way. Should’ve specified what they were supposed to do better.
i think it was miscommunication, yeah. the task should have said "add pen signature to pdf file" or something.
@jaffa fer I'm not sure what the person designing the challenge meant, but I hope it's not what Luke did, because that is a meaningless operation. I wouldn't call that "signing" it's just "filling out" a pdf with your name. I also wouldn't say that it is that uncommon nowadays, I regularly sign an official document with the certificate on my ID card. I do agree however that it is not the most "simple" thing to do. But if he would have had a certificate present already, he would have done it within the time limit.
@@jorsm.3893 But it looks like Linus was also trying to do the same thing as Luke but went down the rabbit hole of actual digital signing. This does show itself an issue when non-tech people use Linux, that a lot of the terms which have concrete meanings in computing (such as signing) can be really misunderstood by the public and so this create a barrier to entry.
@jaffa fer nah. I have no one who set up Jack shit for me. And I happen to have Adobe Acrobat so I use it to put my signature on documents all the time. The other option is literally printing things out and scanning them back in.
@@jorsm.3893 unfortunately that is what normies mean by "sign a pdf". adobe has a service where you can send someone a pdf to sign and all they do is get a link to put a picture of their name on the document. I had to "sign a pdf" like that to rent a flat.
Thank Apple for contributing a ton to the open source CUPS printer project years ago and making printing on Linux relatively painless. Printing on Mac OS used to be a real pain back in the early days (think Mac OS X 10.2) until they hired the guy that developed CUPS and had him really focus on making it great.
Don't really thank Apple. Just thank Michael Sweet who was the sole person responsible. Fine Apple bankrolled it by hiring him, but it was only because he wrote an open solution that things went as well as they did. Apple has made no further contributions to CUPS since Michael left. Give credit where credit is due! and not to corporations that are actively hostile to open-ness.
CUPS is great.
Printing on Windows is completely screwed.
Especially if you are trying to do it programatically
@@vika3750 yeah, well, no company bothered to hire him to fix this issue besides Apple. Stop trying to find every opportunity to sh*t on Apple.
@@mattymerr701 this is the one thing that pisses me off about Windows. You need drivers to print shit, and then when you try and install the drivers, the installer wants to install all kinds of extraneous shit alongside the driver. Linux is just "you wanna print? Sure."
Speaking as a musician, I wish we could do the same thing with audio production hardware. The state of audio production hardware compatibility in Linux is just terrible.
You can tell James didn't give AF when he wrote the challenges or when Linus called him about it 🤣
Fun story: once I needed to print some documents, and I couldn't make the printer work either on windows or mac, so I decided to try to do it from a Raspberry PI with Raspbian, which is a Debian variant, and it worked immediately!
Weird… Mac use the same standard called CUPS
@@RicardoValero95 I know, but the printer I was using wasn't printing correctly from my mac book pro (It started and after less than a second it would stop), and I couldn't find the drivers anywhere. I gave it a go with my raspberry and I had no problems at all. I don't remember all the details (this was over a year ago), just that the printer wasn't compatible with osx (it said so in the box), but it did work from the raspberry pi. It was an HP Desk Jet Ink Advantage, not sure what the number was, just that it didn't showed in the list of models in my mac.
Oh, and osx sucks. I just have the mac 'cause I used to develop apps for iOS, but I don't do that any longer. Too many hoops to jump through just to get approved to publish it. BTW, I tried with a MacBook pro 13' mid 2012 and the a new MacBook pro 2021 that my company provided for my work, and none of those worked, being the latest the worst of all.
That story wasn't very fun you lied to me buddy
@@choopoopoo Wow, literalism in its purest form... When I said fun I meant "this is a weird story", but I understand your disappointment... I would pay your money back, but the story was free, so yeah, nope.
The PDF signing challenge shouldn't have been called digital signing as that is most definetly not what Luke did. Luke made an annotation signature, but the file was not signed with a certificate, so it was not digitally signed. If the challenge said "A signature annotation", then Linux would know what feature to use, rather than using a term that refers to something else.
I'm a little more knowledgeable in computers than the average person (just like everyone else in this comment section) and I've never in my life signed a pdf, I could not tell you how to do that even on windows
This!!!!¡!
@@TheSaNdMaN5000 as they deal with their multimillion dollar company they probably deal with more paperwork and PDFs they would have to sign on a daily basis
@@TheSaNdMaN5000 There needs to be tools, services and whole infrastructure in place in order to digitally sign a pdf or any other file. You cannot digitally sign something in a vacuum. You need to have a pair of keys and a certificate from some trust entity that you own these keys before you sign anything. The one who will be verifying he signature also uses the resources of this infrastructure.
Baltic states for example use ID Card smart card keys and government provided software.
At work we use Docusign for company to company agreements or our Bluebeam accounts for less critical items. None are free to the individual...
I love that part towards the end where they talk about how non Windows friendly Linux can be and how, while pros should have their pro space, newcomers shouldn't feel like Linux is "The pro way or the highway".
You can reload in Dolphin by pressing F5. Once more something you "just have to know", but it's there :D
Nice video again!
Just like in Windows, macOs and other Linux distro!
Should also be in the context menu.
If you enable the menu bar you can refresh using view -> refresh with dolphin as well
@@Traumatree At least on Windows there is still a button, I believe on the right side of the address bar, and that's the point that was made in the video
I'm a professional Software Developer and Devops engineer, and I've been using Linux-based systems for over 15 years now (both on Desktop as well as server systems). I am using Linux on my work system as well as on my personal ASUS notebook/laptop for 6 years, and productivity wise, I don't want to switch back to Windows. Needless to say, I have had great experiences, and I have had bad experiences (leading me to reinstall...). I also still own a Windows computer which I use for gaming (though I do play Among Us on Linux :D).
I would like to make one very important point here: Both of you have done a great job, and regardless of what others say, you're doing it right.
nice! can u recommend some good linux distros? preferably user friendly and gaming friendly?
@@EpicBunty I always tell people to start with mint cinnamon (like Luke). I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the best distro (all distros have their own annoying quirks and bugs and mint definitely has a few that bug me) but I definitely think it’s a perfect distro to start on.
For the most enjoyable experience though I would not recommend jumping into Linux expecting to be able to go full in on gaming. The amount of windows only games linux is able to run and run well is honestly incredible but getting games to run is often a total pain in the ass. If you can get it working with minimal to no effort that’s great just know that if you plan to game on linux that means you are planning to run software on an OS it was never built for.
Started using mint on my laptop and pi and never going back to windows except for gaming. Gotta say though, I still run nouveau graphics drivers because I can't get the official nvidia drivers to run. I always get a blacl screen, no matter how much I try and fiddle around. On my dual boot gaming rig I get extreme screen tearing (on nvidia drivers) when watching videos. If you have nvidia drivers, expect a less good experience if you are a multimedia user. Other than that, it is great.
@@Drazil100 If I was to recommend a DE for Mint it definitely won't be Cinnamon. It's an enormous pile of buggy garbage. MATE is much more usable and very user-friendly.
Yeah, they did great.
I have been using Linux everyday since 2003, as desktop and server. We came from a looooonnng way. I remember it took me two week just for my SoundBlaster to work properly. Forget gaming back then.
I recommend Mint too, debian based and rock solid.
I love the closing comments by Linus and Luke both. I love Linux and the whole Community. (As a matter of fact, watching this series inspired me to dig one of my old laptops out of the closet and try to main Linux mint again for the first time in a couple of years). I want to see this community and the software and even the Open source hardware community develop into a force to be reckoned with by main stream developers and manufacturers allowing for a growth in the community and a return to what computing truly meant to the enthusiast who started it all.
That's easier said than done. Open source doesn't and will never have the "business unit" full of MBA folks to tell developers to take their religious qualms about how things "should" be done and shove it all the way up their ass, like you'll find at any software company. Linux desktop will ALWAYS be plagued by interop problems and weird hurdles for users for this reason, 10 minutes browsing closed issues in any git repo for popular tools will demonstrate that quite clearly.
@@yourpreston1 You're not wrong, but you highlight the solution as well as the problem. The open source community is sorta meant to be very opinionated and diversified regarding different things. But, because the code is open source, a developer or group of developers can always fork a project to go in a new direction. Then, the two variants can take code updates from each other as they find appropriate for continued development. Granted, that's not always how the story goes, as much as we may wish.
There's certainly an efficiency in software developers being told what to do, and that still exists in the open source community: there are for-profit businesses that make open-source software, sometimes exclusively and sometimes not. Companies like Cannonical, System76, and even Google all contribute to the open source community with the classical business paradigm you describe. In fact, I'd argue that it's this sort of culture that makes KDE developers as toxic as they sometimes are.
Still, a lot of what makes open source software great is the passion that developers put into their software, trying to develop software that objectively serves their users the best. Typical users don't see this degree of quality (partly because attempting quality, user-friendly GUI's hadn't been an important facet to Linux for a long time), but there's a reason why Linux is widely considered the preferred OS for web servers: it's generally stable and efficient.
When I look at Windows, as pretty and user-friendly as it may be, it's plagued by security issues and wonky performance; it's best features are primarily marketing propaganda. When I look at Linux, it's clunky and fidgety, but it's built on a solid foundation for an OS, with efficient software, fundamentally helpful features, and a plethora of options for those with differing tastes.
Over time, user-facing Linux software will stabilize and improve. It's all just developing so fast right now that there are stability issues, and users sometimes try to take that out on the devs, and the devs might take offense to that... especially when those issues might be out of their control, and after they spent hours freely and generously developing the software. It'll get better, just like it has been.
@@yourpreston1 So you think it's going to take a corporate handle interested in making Linux user friendly to fix that? I guess I can see that, though I'd hope it wouldn't. Even then, sometimes that doesn't quite work out that way. Ubuntu/Canonical makes a good example. They used to put a lot of work into UX, to the point I used to recommend it to friends looking for a free alternative to Windows and they were quite happy with it. But they took on more and more community workers of the "my way or the highway" mindset, eventually leading to the disaster that was Unity Desktop.
Is Ubuntu more user friendly than most of the others still? Yeah, from a purely academic measurement. But from a user experience point of view it still has many of the same problems the others do, and adds a couple new ones of it's own, like Snap packing everything leading to abhorrent performance and the base install eating over a gigabyte of RAM at idle.
Wow, the printer challenge was my favorite part. Such a success that was! If Linus does end up going back to Windows by the end of this challenge, one thing he should takeaway from this is at least a Linux VM just for printing.
I also find it funny that neither of them even know what printer they have in their house.
I actually felt sad during this part because one of the greatest selling points of linux (which saved me hours of frustration in the past, too) is becoming less and less useful. I rarely print anything these days.
@@costascostas1760 Oh that's true, same. It's not the best thing about Linux, though. There are so many other great things.
I've been using linux at home for 10+ years. It is now the only OS I use at home, and I would use it for work if I could. I think your critique at the end of the video was pretty damn accurate. It only takes one prick to ruin something for everybody.
I work from home. Most of my work takes place in the browser, but as a tech with an MSP, i need to be able to easily access what my user is going to see, and I might be putting myself at risk if I'm experiencing problems my in-person coworkers arent, so im stuck with a windows box for work, and linux for home
I love how Linus and Luke's points make a lot of sense and how KDE developer Nate Graham also supports those points with his ideas of making KDE simpler on surface for newcomers and making it powerful when needed for power users. Great job kde team keep up the good work!
I recently found Niccolo Ve and his videos about KDE development have been really cool to follow as well
Linux needs a beginner version that any "idiot" can run and do things with ( bloated, slow, but works "straight out of the box" ) that can be "unlocked" as needed to get to "power user mode".
@@alanhilder1883 ubuntu exists. literally the most popular linux distro yet none of them used it for whatever reason.
@@Bakon Linus tried Pop OS, it's unfortunate he ran into the issue he did because these challenges would have been an absolute breeze on that distro. No google fu required
@@ryanb6503 Would you be so kind as to link said videos?
I think it really needs more pointing out that distros are perfectly legitimate to choose user-centric approach instead of the one that is user-friendly.
The only disaster here is that Manjaro is being recommended as good for new people coming to linux. Arch distros do not abstract the user from the system complexity and can feel very overwhelming. Manjaro is good for new linux users that already know linux at leasta bit.
This video demonstrated well that Mint is very newbie friendly by following the Windows paradigm to people coming over to linux.
Also the difference between "free" and "free and open source" might not be clear to everyone without further explanation.
Well, Linus was literally just saying that it doesn't cost a penny. From the basic User perspective, that's a key selling point.
@@ActuatedGear The way Linus said free could be seen as non-payed and as "libre".
@@ActuatedGear free and open source has nothing to do with it being gratis (having no price) it can be a commercial product too. Its free as in Libre - freedom. It's about user's right not being spied on, his data gathered and having access to source code.
@@MeshVoid No. Free signifies EITHER. It is BOTH. He means ONE and that one is the price tag.
He knows both are true. The relevant one to his point AT THAT MOMENT is price availability.
@@ActuatedGear Time is money which mean Linux does cost more than windows if you make more the $5 an hour.
There is no reason an advanced distro can't have simple tools without giving up advanced capabilities. Until linux developers stop requiring memorization of dozens of commands and advanced flags just to perform simple daily tasks, they need to stop complaining that people aren't switching to linux.
Simple tools that cover the breadth of use-cases that a desktop offers is substantial and hard work to create. Desktops are generally (but not always) built by volunteer developers for free and the teams are quite small. For teams working on desktops I don't believe they want the GUI to feel complicated. But the scope of work is such that they need to pick and choose their battles.
No hatred towards Manjaro, but this actually shows how easy-to-use Linux Mint actually is. One of the most beginner friendly and polished distro I tried.
I was thinking the same thing and I am a Manjaro user. Linux Mint is awesome
i use zorin that thing is friendly too
How does Ubuntu compare to Mint? As a new user, I am going with the popular Ubuntu distro.
@@tenforward3601 You'll be fine with Ubuntu.
Or rather KDE is inconvenient. From the productivity perspective I haven't had a single issue with Manjaro GNOME. That said GNOME also has its own problems.
Luke works so quickly and he makes his version of Linux look a lot more user friendly than what Linus is using. Interesting watching them both tackle the same tasks and how they go about them.
Luke had past linux experience while Linus didn't
Also mint is the de facto beginner distro.
Mint is actually less jankier than KDE. Its Nemo file system is far better than Dolphin. Take for example in their "zipping the file" challenge. While zipping the file, the zip folder should be hidden until zipping the process is successfully completed. And the progress bar should be in front and center while doing the zip or any other file manipulation.
Instead KDE takes a more janky approach and simply confuses Linus. Where as Linux Mint does this correctly and Luke breezes through it. It has lot of issues which neither related to their past experience nor due to vendor lockin. Whatever happened here is totally on the devs. This challenge actually exposes that.
linux Mint has been trying to make the desktop usable (and traditional) to normal people, for years.
@@bestergester4100 As a KDE user, I can say this is very true. KDE is good because of its extreme customizability, but it's certainly built more for power users that are already familiar with the internal workings of Linux, and sacrifices user friendliness in the process.
In a recent blog post, KDE says they want to change that, but we'll see whether that happens or not.
It's the most beautiful thing I love about "communities," especially Linux...
"Oh, man... here we go again - why can't you just type 20 command line entries to do what you're asking, bro. If you wanted to use a windows GUI, why didn't you use Windows?"
or
"It's called search, bro... try using it"
What's really exasperating is when the latter is found in an old post, and search results or links end up at pages that have been removed, so you spent 20 minutes looking for something the ass in the comment section could have told you in 5 seconds (and if he couldn't, he shouldn't have responded).
5 seconds typing the answer, or 30 seconds putting on your Fedora, growing a neckbeard, and acting like an ass? I know which one makes people NOT want to be part of your community.
The Linux community is toxic
The worst is when you're googling something and the first result is a thread where someone tells you to google it.
And they be saying linux is better than windows at problem troubleshooting, when you just spent a whole day trying to get the second screen working that simply just plugs and works in windows
Starting to feel like linux users have a lot of time on the hands
I've heard of a trick which pretty much guarantees some Linux guru to give you a proper explanation on how something is done. Instead of saying "Hey guys, a Linux newbie here, how exactly am I supposed to do X?" start your post with "Linux sucks because you can't do X". Someone will swoop in and tell you Linux doesn't suck because it can be done and they will tell how it's done.
[Meta-comment]
Yeah whatever, dude.
I stopped reading when you kept going on about bro's, donkies(?) and growing body hair in weird places.
So whatever you were trying to say in your ill-manered North-American way, gets lost when the reader resigns after being confronted with off-topic language and/or obscenity.
[/free feedback]
Thank you for showing real user experience of Linux. You are right how much Linux users make it seem easy while at the same time some basics are so confusing when you have been using Windows for 30 years.
I haven't heard many Linux users call it easy. Generally hear the opposite.
Thanks a lot for this series btw. I've been using Linux nearly my whole life since my father started using it quite early and I literally grew up with it. Most things you guys encounter are just minor inconveniences for me and I can get these fixed most of the times, but I always forget that a beginner doesn't know all that stuff.
Also, there are still many cases where even I nearly punched my monitor because shit didn't work after hours of tinkering and googling. This series hopefully shows the devs and the Linux community in general that it's easy to forget that people might know less about Linux than you and that they might ask stupid questions because they just don't know better. Really looking forward to the development of Linux in the next years regarding stuff like this series and the soon launch of the Steam Deck.
That's elitism in a nutshell. So SO many developers freak out if you don't know 100% of what THEY know. Or don't browse their forum for a decade to figure out a hundred tiny little quirks with their programs function, stuff that just became de-facto standards in the community with regards to dealing with something that is fundamentally terrible and/or broken.
Hey developers - WRITE BETTER GUIDES TO YOUR DAMN SOFTWARE. Stop relying on forums for your documentation. And definitely don't rely on shitty wikis that are sadly way too common with projects these days. Nothing infuriates me more than some garbage half-assed wiki that isn't even complete.
I've never released anything that wasn't documented out the ass for every damn feature. Even debug stuff.
While I agree, there is also this idea that everyone else uses Windows. What about those people that have never used any computer, or have rarely had to use a computer. Those people have the same steep learning curve no matter what OS they end up using. Even if they do use Windows regularly, there are often huge differences with each version of Windows, which creates that steep learning curve every few years. But it seems that is OK because not Linux (or Apple).
I have a retired client who had an old store bought Windows box, but never really used it at all. She asked me if I could help. Since the box was so old, and had hardware issues, I said that it would be better to start fresh, and that I would build a basic box for her. She asked what Windows I used, and I told her I used Linux. She asked me to put that onto her new computer.
Fast forward several years, and a hardware upgrade, and she uses her computer daily, and often wonders what she did before. Yes, she is still a basic user overall, but she has learned how to solve some of her own problems via Google. Her learning curve for the most basic things was an interesting thing to watch. Had she asked for Windows to be installed instead, she would have had the same experience learning.
I think that a lot of the issues with Linux adoption (not counting Android phones, TV OS's, various other bits of technology that everyone uses), is that most people who become frustrated with Microsoft decide to try Linux, find it is different (thus "harder"), and then decide it is easier to just go back to what they know, even if they dislike/hate it. Those who take the time (a growing number) generally find that Linux is worth the steep learning curve.
I love this video because it reminds me of a lot of problems I encountered too when starting to use Linux.
A lot of people, like myself, don't work in the IT field. Everything I learn for Linux, I learn purely for myself, with no use elsewhere. And spending hours setting things up is time I can't use to do sports, study, meet friends etc., and all that for a potentially broken system afterwards (happend while setting up Nvidia Optimus on a laptop).
Ugh, I can relate to the last sentence, having an Nvidia Optimus laptop and trying to install Fedora on it and get the GPU working only to break the stupid kernel, and then opting to install Pop! OS instead because it has an image tailored specifically for Nvidia drivers so you don't have to deal with all that kernel nonsense.
ah the nvidia... :D
The Nvidia experience on Linux is best summarized by the famous quote from Linus Torvalds himself: “F#ck you, Nvidia!”
@Shea Martin yup AMD is the way :)
I quite honestly think this will go down as one of LTT's best series period. It's up there. Really enjoy the perspective from both gyus but, unfortunately from my own personal persepective of someone who works full time in a stressful job and has a lot of life on his hands says although Linux has gotten pretty awesome, it is still years off as i fall kind of in the LInus camp here.
Considering you spelled Linus "LInus," I take it your on Linux right now? My keyboard driver doesn't like me either.
Linux & guys, love what you are doing with your reviews and attempts to use Linux. I've been playing and working with Linux since v0.95 on 3.5" floppy disk since wayyyyy back. I am a software dev (linux/windows) and gamer, who likes Linux. The Linux OS has come a long long way since then. Still not quite there when it comes to gaming and it has some rough edges that will cut you, but it is an amazing Free OS that provides a check against closed source domination of the Big Tech corps. We need alternatives and everyone benefits from that. Keep up the good reviews and attempts to use Linux.
The printing experience on Linux is great, as long as your printer supports IPP Everywhere (also known as AirPrint). Fortunately, quite a lot of new printers support it nowadays.
The most ironic thing most of printer users using Windows, but it's mostly is it because they don't care, the PROGRAMMERS DO!!!!!!
@@valerafox7795 I work as IT and the printers driver in Windows is the most frustrated experiences I ever had, it's complete nightmare to any business out there they all have issues with their printer specially after mighty Win10 updates, Linux is just work I tried Ubuntu live CD back in ~2009 and it detect out printer immediately and the best thing OpenOffice were laready on that CD my colleague didn't believe what he saw, I told him this system comes with a lot printers drivers, sadly had didn't like OpenOffice interface and i din't know that time how to get Office to work .
@@مقاطعمترجمة-ش8ثagreed, i rackin suffered with them!!!!!
My Samsung ML-1640 runs just fine on Linux than on Windows, it’s not a new one too. Printer support on Linux is overall great but some misses here and there
CUPs is great. Hell a fuckin lot better than windows sorry excuse.
Been really appreciating this series as someone who has wanted to use Linux for the longest but can't stand a lot of it's quirks compared to just disabling everything I want on Windows 10. I hope this and the work Valve has been putting (and hopefully will continue to) towards the distro for the Steam Deck will serve to improve more in the next coming years.
What I'm taking from this is that Linus is over thinking everything, while Luke is looking for simple ways to do things.
This
Luke already used Linux a LOT in the past, so he knows quite a bit about it, especially Mint and all the quirks it has/had. Linux is coming in mostly fresh.
@@mataskart9894 the amount of autocorrect errors with Linux and Linus in all the comment sections is hilarious
typical arch-based user
I love the way that you guys are approaching this project. I switched my daily driver to Fedora and i am never looking back
Great video: as somebody who has always been Linux-curious, this is a great series and has not turned me off from wanting to give it a try. So to all the haters saying that you’re bashing devs/Linux: what are you talking about? These are all fair criticisms and there has been a fair amount of windows criticism along the way as well.
Not sure if Luke’s bird or keyboard is louder!
i started with vms, so basically 90% of stuff was configured, and I couldn't install applications if i wanted too, but that has helped me learn the linux terminal even if i can't do scripting yet
The problem is that they sometimes share misinformation, because they don't understand completely what's going on, and that's fair, but they should put Anthony to explain to the viewers what really happened. Like Linus said the *Pop Shop* bricked his system, but it didn't. What bricked his system was the *apt* package manager. That and some other stuff end up being misinformation on a giant tech UA-cam channel, which is not great.
You guys are making me appreciate all of the Linux knowledge I have acquired over the last 15 years. This stuff seems easy to me but only because I have spent such a long time doing it. It is interesting seeing less experienced users come at these problems.
Same here, though in that time I have also forgotten pretty much anything other than basic user stuff on windows
I am disappointed that they barely ever touch the terminal though.
I understand it isn't the point but it really is such a core part of the linux experience.
"7zip is trying to use 100% of my CPU. Soo.. things are happening." - Luke Lafreniere
one does not question the motivations of 7zip's resource usage lol
Linus: explains everything and takes a million years for everything
Luke: BONK PEW POW BONK BONK POW POW PEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I laughed a bit when Luke didn’t think in a "Windows-way" enough and instantly searched for where the fonts folder is located instead of opening the folder of the font and double-clicking the font file.
*EDIT:* I didn't laugh because I thought he was being stupid or that you shouldn't use the fonts folder - obviously there are use cases where you might want to copy the files in there directly. But for this one font and with Linus having said before that "Users switching from Windows will think in Windows-ways" (again, not criticizing) I just thought it was a little funny that Luke didn't think like the average Windows user in that moment.
Exactly. Just like Ubuntu, opening the font offers a button called "Install font" (or so). Click and there you are. Now, if you have 1000 fonts to install, you have to make that user-home-folder/Fonts folder or use the system fonts folder (what he did and needed root to write-access it), otherwise it takes a century.
Yeah as a long time linux user, wtf are they doing?! click the damn file and press add.
@@Mastermind12358 That is a sign that it must be done easier. I thing you have a right click option of Install in Windows. That is needed here, too.
@@ContraVsGigi Kinda ironic, considering Linus just made a video talking about Windows 11 removing many of the right-click options people are so used to. Point is that just because Windows does something a certain way, it doesn't mean Linux has to do it the *exact* same way. It does need to provide *a* way to do it, though - that's what the users above were pointing out.
@@chrisrnz Of course. I was offering another way, even simpler than the existing ones (opening font & press Install font / copy fonts to a system folder/user-made folder). One of the ways is not really functional for a large number of fonts. Anyways, I would like to have that option (of course, working for batches, not only single file), it is easier than the copy & recache thing (btw, is recache mandatory? And is there some other than Terminal way to do it (I only know the terminal method)?).
Fun story. Universities and Colleges used to use Linux CUPS servers to host their printers on the network (Network enabled printers didn't exist back then)
And it's pretty common some of the same servers in use today. As a result of this, Linux is apparently unrivaled in it's support of printers in general.
I have a nice Canon brand printer I could never get working on Windows but in Linux I don't even need "drivers" I just connect through my driverless network interface, on Garuda the scanner function also works out of the gate.
This was very fun to see.
Also- Linus not seeing the "size" field of his zip file gradually increasing is pretty funny. It's right there Linus.
I think CUPS is actually made by Apple! Which was surprising to learn at it's open source
@@gabe_dunn wrong. Apple bought it. Theres a new open source fork.
@@prydzen cool, I was unaware!
Canon printer? I thought almost all model of Canon printer can't be usable in Linux as there's no official driver for Linux for most model in their website.
@@sophustranquillitastv4468 this is true but most network enabled printers nowadays have a "driverless" protocol where the accept https requests formatted to a specific standard.
At this point the reason to use Canon printers VS HP isn't about drivers at all... it's just about who makes a better printer.
I am a linux and FOSS enthusiast and I am really happy to see this series. I would love to see the community see this (which they have) and to improve the user experience for linux. The main issue remains however that with fewer users on linux devs have less reason to provide adequate support.
The linux community has some really crazy people involved. It's the freedom problem. It is great to have but it also attracts the creeps.
Yeah honestly couldn't have said it better myself
@Sol Have you even genuenly tried to use it? If not then your statement is trash
It's okay if you can't figure out how to use linux,stay on the OS that has to do everything for you since it knows you can't. No big deal
with all the affair regarding closed source compagnies, creeps are everywhere. That has no link with freedom.
The problem is for devs it's very hard to justify supporting such a fractured ecosystem. Like, should we hire teams for each of the 100 linux distros? How can this be justified when there's like 1~3 people using it on each of those distros?
It's refreshing to see how much a person, which knows it all about watercooling pipes or how many cores this model of CPU has, can be humbled by simple stuff like how fonts work or how to zip a file.
It actually shows how VAST the domain of computer knowledge is.