Linux

Not flawless, but also not catastrophic.

It seems like the problems I encounter lessen (or lessen in difficulty to troubleshoot) as I use arch linux more and more.

If you use amd hardware, then I guess you'll have a good time with the distros. Most "user friendly" distros should work out of the box. Try switching to something other than debian based.

With the nvidia open kernel modules, it has been rather hassle free for me.

Also remember to check the arch wiki. It's a great resource.

For me the experience is not flawless, but it's not problematic either. For instance, I have never encountered random flickering just because a wrong program was open. In your case if you're using Nvidia as a GPU and are using Wayland as a display compositor that might explain some of your problems like Vivaldi flickering, where it might not be an issue in an Xorg session.

And the fact that you have to be potentially aware of these things is one of the annoying aspects of using Linux.

Been running the same Arch installation for a bit over a year. Minor issues here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary for general computer use.

Learning was hard. I'd say it took me a good year before I was really genuinely comfortable with Linux overall, and even then, it was quite a while longer before I felt I could call myself experienced or proficient.

I will say this, switching to AMD was a massive step up in terms of reliability. Also, and this is just my experience, but as someone who also started on Ubuntu, I've had far fewer weird obscure issues on Arch than on that, or any other distro I've tried. It's daunting, but it's so well documented that it's almost impossible to have an issue with no known fix.

It took a lot of learning, for sure, a lot of frustrated googling, but worth it. I wouldn't choose Ubuntu Studio as my first experience. Ironically my first experience was with Ubuntu, and it was awesome, but that's back when Ubuntu was good which was like 2008-2012 (my experience evidently is contrary to some here, but it was kind of the breakthrough of strong Linux desktops imo).

Not at all, but the benefits are worth it.

When installing distributions generally regarded as user-friendly on hardware that's well-supported, I usually do have pretty low-fuss experiences. It's usually no more trouble than installing Windows, though the average Windows user has never actually done that.

When installing Arch Linux ARM on an old Chromebook and trying to make tablet mode and rotation play well with various lightweight window managers, I did not, in fact have a flawless experience. Once I tried Gnome on it, the experience became much smoother, but that's a little heavyweight on a 4gb machine.

OS choice and hardware are a lot of it. I built a desktop in 2019 and it was the best experience I've had yet with Linux. Everyone works.

Nvidia 2070s, and ryzen 3800x, 64GB RAM. Even wifi and Bluetooth on the motherboard worked fine out of the box.

I used to have so many quirks once in a while on my last system and it was always to do with an update and an Nvidia driver, I'd have to drop to shell and manually reinstall it, or download a new one with cli browsers and install it lol.

But I persist because I love the idea and the mission.

While I use Windows for work and a steam deck mostly for gaming these days, any time I boot my desktop I'm blown away at how incredibly snappy it is compared to the windows of today.

Like I knew things were getting bad when the windows calculator started showing me a splash screen and needed to "load", and when the start menu started showing similar quirks. Now we have AI shoved in everywhere and it's just a gross OS to use.

But, I digress...

I’ve been distro hopping a little bit and honestly in my experience, anything based on Ubuntu has been inconsistent at best. Stock Ubuntu (or specifically Kubuntu since I prefer KDE) was the worst but Mint gave me issues too. Meanwhile, Fedora- and Arch-based distros have been perfect. Literally more consistent than MacOS or Windows for me, every single time. Personally I wouldn’t try another Ubuntu-based distro unless it was highly recommended.

Long time Windows user tried switching over to various Linux distros recently but 12 of them couldn't find drivers for my wireless card, ethernet, bluwtooth radio, or GPU. After 80 hours finally got to the point where I could sign in (mint Cinnamon) but it thinks my ethernet is wifi, wifi and bluwtooth don't work, the GPU usage is buggy, only uses 4gb of my 128gb of ram, uses way more CPU then it should and randomly freezes. Oh and it won't recognize my USB 3.0+ ports, only the 2.0 I've spent over 200 hours since trying to debug why to no avail. And none of my games run properly, even with Proton or Wine. They stutter, freeze crash, or spaz out.

There's a lot of people here saying that you just need to learn Linux, but I don't want to have to learn how to write my own hardware drivers thank you very much.

I can get fresh Windows installed, fully functioning with all the software I want in about an hour with full performance. Meanwhile after 300 hours with Linux I've turned a $5000 desktop into the functionality of a $200 chromebook.

Flawless? Fuck no. When have you ever come to expect a flawless experience from any software? I had to deal with so much shit on Windows though, over a very long period of time. I mostly learned to tune it out, but after switching to Linux full time it became obvious what I had just grown to ignore.

Linux isn't flawless, and never will or should try to be. It's just better than the alternatives. You have to spend some time with it and figure out it's quirks, just as you did with Windows but forgot. You need to also not expect it to be Windows. It's a new thing and you have to learn it knowing it's not trying to copy Windows.

Not flawless but on windows I couldn't find solutions so I gave up and forgot about whateer it was I was trying to do or fix, on linux I fix it and rememeber next time a similar issue occures, I have a flawless experience because I make that flawless day to day experience through the ocasional day each month I fix something. Windows is always just mid, like I've had apps refuse to open or work no matter what solution I tried, always had weird issues and crashing, linux I find the source fast or the app crashes/freezes not my whole system, it's better at preventing that.

cpu hungry and eating memory? ram? 3gb is lowish for a browser, you must use very few active tabs

If you want to install any apps go with Flatpaks for reliability. Since Ubuntu has snaps, install the snap variant of available. Imo Flatpaks have greatly reduced the number of issues like dependency problems for me.

Have you tried any other distro ? I'd recommend any of the universal blue projects or fedora silverblue as it is relatively maintainance free and just like using windows/macos. If you game just go with Bazzite, otherwise try Aurora/Bluefin. In most cases you won't even have to use the terminal that much, but if you do they have really nice cli tools too.

If you still want to go the traditional approach - Arch based distros can also be very good, ateast you will be able to find answers on the archwiki and try those solutions. It's not like Ubuntu is bad, it's kind of janky sometimes and I kind of liked the conveince of finding all that I need within the archwiki. Arch has fast updates, so things will break once in a while.. however my experience has been really good with arch for many years now. if you want to try it then go with either EmdavourOS or CachyOS - both are setup quite well out of the box.

TL;DR - try Flatpaks, try low maintenance distros like Bazzite and use it like you normally do.

I just use linux mint and don't have issues

My linux workflow: Try installing with apt. Try installing with snap. Try installing with npm. Try installing with flatpak. Try installing with cargo. Try building with git. Try installing with the shady curl script from stackexchange. If it breaks or refuses to work in the first place try a similar application from a completely different dev.

I like Linux, use(d) various flavors of it, and have had experience with / exposure to it for over 20 years. But no, I've never had a remotely flawless experience with it on a desktop or laptop environment. Wish I could offer more help or encouragement, but figured I'd at least chime in with some emotional support by affirming that you are not alone in that experience.

I would recommend Linux to technologically adept people (ex: tech professionals, computer science students) and only indirectly to less technically proficient people in the form of suggesting something like a Steam Deck for portable PC gaming to someone who might be interested.

But for an aging parent or my best friend's kids? No. Sometimes I already feel like I'm a free on-call 24/7 IT support tech for friends and family, and that's with mostly Windows and Android devices that pretty much just work the way folks expect (even if that way is broken/crumby/irritating/etc).

I've always had issues with it too. You're not alone. Thanks to Windows 11,I plan to convert my laptop to Linux and I'm hoping since I only use it lightly for a few simple tasks it will be ok. But my desktop daily driver will have to be Windows. Rock and a hard place.

Honestly depends on the hardware. I still had an Nvidia card for the first year I used Linux and 90% of my issues stemmed from that...

As for everything else I've had a much easier time with Linux than most people I know because I unintentionally bought peripherals that already worked great with Linux before I was even thinking about switching.

A few people I know have tried Linux but ran into issues with their mice or audio equipment that require proprietary drivers or dedicated software to fully function. Most of these are the big name "gamer" brands like Razer.

I had issues with Razers software all the way back on Windows 7 so I swore off buying anymore keyboards or mice that require 3rd party drivers so I never had an issue with them when switching over.

I'm on AMD, but I do still run into frequent issues. Normally with Ubuntu variations most things just work but not everything.

Linux is created mostly by unpaid volunteers, so it's gonna have it's faults. For so many reasons I'm inclined not to use Windows so finding that a feature doesn't work isn't a big deal for me.

I've always found that there's generally a new way to do things in Linux, but I rarely have issues. I have an Acer Nitro laptop with a Ryzen integrated AMD graphics and then an Nvidia 3060, and I had to look up how to install the drivers, which was rpmfusion, click, click, done. Instead of the usual launcher for games, it's either Steam or Lutris. The only real bitch of a thing was some school stuff. Like, gnomes boxes handles all my virtualization, but school demanded VMware Workstation, which was legitimately a pain on Fedora. Likewise, Microsoft Teams. But web Office was fine, Libre locally... I get hella better frame rates on MHW in Linux than Windows. I didn't pick the machine for its Linux compatibility, it just worked.