image caption: A Microsoft Windows screen showing “Active Hours” with start time set to 12 AM and end time set to 12 AM and an error that says “Choose an end time that’s no more than 18 hours from the start time”.
You know. It’s interesting. I’ve been trying out Debian 12 with KDE Plasma. It actually has been a joy and feels like what Windows 11 should have grown into, had Microsoft actually been designing software with the customer in mind.
…but then there have been times where things so easily critically break until you fix them. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll go mess with kernel code if I have to, so I’m comfortable, but… I just want my computer to work. Windows, for all its shittiness, still keeps working through it like a slow cargo train pushing through a park piled in millions of pancakes.
I had one event the other day where I was installing a Snap app for the first time. Decided rather than installing the Snap package manager because I wanted to avoid Canonical if possible, I’d just manually put it in /opt. Figured out how to edit the KDE “start” menu to add the app using the included GUI tool. Wanted to use the app’s icon. The snap app had an icon embedded in it that Dolphin file manager recognized and displayed.
So I went, “ok, sometimes applications can parse out images from binary files. I’ve seen this work for decades,” so I tell the menu editor to ingest the snap binary for the icon, to see if it will scrape the icon. No icon showed up, so I found a a svg online and assigned that to the icon.
Then I went and saved and launched another application.
GUI slowly started not working and eventually the entire OS locked, even the alt text consoles would not load. Ctrl+alt+backspace was dead, caps lock died, which was when I knew, “he’s dead, Jim.”
Tried rebooting, tried launching that program again, (bearing in mind, not the program I manually added to the “start” menu) and every time the whole OS freezes up. Tried launching apps in different order, launching from command line, etc. When the one app launched that wasn’t the one I created a launcher icon for, same thing. Freeze. (It is possible that the bug is in fact time-based or boot-sequence-based, and since I was trying to reproduce the bug rapidly, the other app had nothing to do with it.)
I go remove the start menu link, hoping that, what I assumed was part of Plasma was trying to load this binary as an icon even though it should have checked the file, recognized it as “no I can’t parse this,” and done nothing or displayed an error or parsed it and showed the icon. Especially after I assigned it another image. I just hoped whatever screwed up would be connected to the code executing that app launcher icon config, and deleting the config for that application would delete whatever mess that was created, and hopefully was created discretely.
Shit you not, the computer became rock solid stable again after that and one more reboot. Hasn’t glitched since.
It’s shit like that that makes me proooobably give up on this experiment and end up on a commercial OS like MacOS again despite the cost and downward trend they are also suffering in a lack of innovative energy.
With respect, you can screw up Windows by doing things in a non-standard way too. That’s not the fault of the OS.
Apples to oranges. Generally you can fix what you did wrong in windows. In Linux good luck.
Just to mention also, I’ve been running Debian for much longer than I care to think about (since my teen years, I’m now in my 40s), with config file requirements that make arch look like lazy mode by comparison.
If you have to use something, flatpak wins, but personally I’d lean away from any of it as much as possible. The Debian stable repos are stable, so what’s in there will work. Add flatpak to KDE Discover by installing plasma-discover-backend-flatpak to get that option in there.
But snaps should be strictly off limits. For everyone, tbh.
This was all good except I’d be remiss to not point out that millions of pancakes wouldn’t slow a cargo train at all.
Proceed.
I was trying to think of a mental image that was internet-safe to imply something like you’re stuck in deep mud that is pulling your boots off but at least you survived. Or less internet-safe, you’re trying to get home and have no ride and for some reason the weather turned to a storm of actual shit and you’re walking home with shit raining down upon you but you must survive.
It definitely wasn’t scientifically accurate.
Give Fedora Kinoite a shot. Atomic distros are the shit. If you fuck it up, you literally just reboot, roll back, and you are up and running again. I’m finally starting the process of migrating off of windows and onto Bazzite for my desktop (because it doubles as my gaming machine), but I’ve been using Kinoite on my personal dev laptop for a while now and it’s awesome! It’s a bit of a paradigm shift from a traditional distro, but it’s really not that hard to figure out and adjust to.
Am not gonna take away bootloader customization and going flatpack first hell nah dunno why people are like “ItS HaRd tO BrEaK ThE oS”
Debian tends to require a lot of tweaking to get it to work well with more modern things. I’ve never gotten video and audio hardware to work out of the box to my satisfaction, for example. Ubuntu is definitely easier to use out of the box. But I also don’t like the way Canonical has been taking it lately. And since I’ve been using CENTOS for servers for many, many years and more recently Rocky Linux, I decided to give Fedora another try after a failed attempt like a decade ago (I think the version at the time was Verne).
Combined with Plasma as a front end, Fedora is awesome. Some things aren’t there that I’d prefer and flatpacks and snaps always have minor, annoying issues, but for the most part it does everything I need and even supports my fairly new laptop with a touchscreen and pretty modern hardware without any tweaking.
I would use Linux more if:
1: I could host my desktop with Parsec (client support exists, but not host support).
2: Sunshine/Moonlight actually worked, as an alternative. It is broken and janky and isn’t a substitute. I’ve tried. A lot.
3: I could wirelessly link my Quest 2. VR support is a hot mess and I’m still waiting for a solution to wirelessly link my Quest 2 in linux that actually works and doesn’t require a month of programming a solution myself.
4: Better compatibility with some stuff. Proton gaming works most of the time, but not for the titles I play.
I started using linux by setting up a dual boot: using windows only for things I couldn’t do at the time on linux. That were gaming and some apps only supported by windows After usig it for some time I now have everything on linux (or an alternative) and uninstalled windows. Still in the process of figuring out some very specific stuff like you with your Quest, but someday I just couldn’t have it with windows anymore.
There are a lot of ressources online and some distros are really great for gamers/ newcomers. Just give it a try and some time. You will have to learn some things like you had to with first using windows.
The only way to stop having an abusive relationship with your computer is to ditch the OS for something that isn’t Microsoft.
As opposed to:
- Calling your neighbourhood tech bro with a nanoscale fab for a RISK-V CPU
- Sourcing laptop parts from nearby manufacturers providing full schematics
- Designing your own cooling setup to match all the component sizes
- Machining your own enclosure and assembling it al yourself
We’re not there yet. I’m still dreaming.
I dislike that they’re out of the CCP now too, but thinkpads are still some of the best big-name laptops out there these days, and their keyboards are absolutely the best in the business, bar none. The keyboards are the primary reason why I still buy them.
Not to mention, keep an eye out for deals on their refurbs site, as well as specials (check slickdeals.net). Their stuff goes on pretty aggressive discount every once in a while.
Another person discovers that big tech has taken control of our computers without asking permission.
Well, your computers. I run Linux. It only does what I tell it to, not the other way round.
You can have Linux without systemd. Though I’m not sure what systemd does that would be similar to how Windows tell you what’s going to happen.
Systemd haters never have and never will be able to provide a single valid argument against it.
Same goes for Linux and macOS, actually, but Linux will happily let you keep your machine vulnerable to getting hacked for months.
Linux “reboots” every program and service it updates separately.
So the only update that needs a reboot is one of the kernel, which doesn’t happen often.
With Enterprise Linux, you can update the kernel without a reboot, too.
Obviously there’s a small handful of things that would require a reboot, but unlike Windows, the vast majority of programs in user space don’t require reboots on update.
There’s also the fact that restarting Windows to update is a much slower and more disruptive experience than restarting Linux.
That’s why Linux and software like Firefox constantly complain when you haven’t restarted after an update.
Can’t confirm. Linux hasn’t complained and I don’t remember Firefox complaining. Maybe it doesn’t happen with the flatpak
the only update that needs a reboot is one of the kernel
Okay, that’s not true. Glancing at dbus sideways will result in a reboot. But in systems free of systemd and all its entourage of shit, that’s still true.
Linux will happily let you keep your machine vulnerable to getting hacked for months.
Sad you included this misinformation in your otherwise good comment. Linux fundamentally works different and you can often update binaries as well as the kernel without rebooting.
And even if you couldn’t, that’s 100% a user problem. Every distro I’ve ever seen makes it clear as day when you do need to restart, so this is 100% a user issue. But I guess people will also complain if their OS forces them to reboot (like this post), so… 🤷🏼♂️
Replacing /usr/bin/firefox doesn’t fix anything if you don’t restart Firefox itself.
On my box updating firefox and then restarting it won’t even launch the new version because NixOS knows I’m logged in and won’t just change things in my environment. But unless there’s a kernel update yes nixos rebuild switch followed by logging out and logging in is equivalent to rebooting as it will automatically shut down and restart all system services, I think even systemd itself. Modulo some wibbles around kernel modules but those fall under kernel updates in my book.
Contrast Ubuntu, which really likes to prompt your for reboots. The difference between a distro primarily for desktop use and one that can also do desktop because also devops want a desktop. Hey I could spin up 1000 cloud instances of my desktop with a couple of keystrokes isn’t that impressively useless :)
I don’t know what Windows needs to do to get as good of a state as Linux but you rarely need to do a full reboot as you seemingly are forced to do on Windows.
ROFL
If Microsoft really cares for more users keeping their system updated they should fix their update process.
While some updates require a reboot on other OSes for them to take effect they don’t require work during the reboot maximizing the downtime.
Which is on top of the work done before rebooting, on the background, unprompted, destroying system performance.
With windows pro you can use Group Policy to disable them completely actually, though it’s obv not a good idea
Open Group Policy Object Editor. Navigate to Computer Configuration > Policies > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Update. Set Configure Automatic Updates to Disabled.
Mine doesn’t reboot on it’s own and I don’t recall ever changing any settings to prevent it other than messing with the thing OP is talking about which wouldn’t let me turn it off. I get nag screens daily after a while but it never actually restarts. Maybe one of my applications prevents it or something.
I’m not saying Winaero Tweaker kinda breaks the updates (if you try to open the update page it just does show an error) but it does exactly that
- Permanently disable Windows Telemetry and Data Collection.
- Permanently disable Windows Defender.
- Permanently disable Windows Update.
- Disable ads and unwanted app installation (Candy Crush Soda Saga, etc).
Also O&O Shutup 10
