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Is it me or is (desktop) Linux still a terrible experience?

Every so often i start believing all the posts about how Linux really made a lot of progress, and the desktop experience is so much better now, and everything is supported, and i give it another try.

I've got a small intel 13th gen NUC i use as a small server, and for playing movies from. It runs windows 11, but as i want to run some docker containers on it, i thought, why not give Linux a try again, how bad can it be. (after all, i've got multiple raspberry pi's running, and a synology diskstation, and i'm no stranger to ssh'ing into them to manage some stuff)

Downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop (23.10), since it's still a highly recommended distro, and started my journey.

First obvious task: connect to my SMB shares on my synology to get access to any media. Tough luck, whatever tool Ubuntu uses for that always tries SMBv1 protocol first, which is disabled on my synology due to security reasons. If i enable it on my synology i get a nice warning that SMBv1 is vulnurable and has been used to perform ransomware attacks, so maybe i'd rather leave it disabled (although i assume that's mostly the case if the port were accessible from the internet, but still). Then i thought "it's probably some setting somewhere to change this", but after further googling, i found an issue that whatever ubuntu is using for SMB needs a patch to not default to SMBv1 to get a list of shares.... Yeah, great start for the oh so secure linux, i'd need to enable a protocol that got used in ransomware attacks over 6 years ago to get everything to work properly... (yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)

Then, i installed Kodi, tried to play some content. Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it's not switching to the refreshrate of the video i'm playing. Googling further on that just felt like walking through a tarpit. From the dedicated librelec distro that runs just kodi that has special patches to resolve this, to discussions about X not supporting switching refreshrates, and Kodi having a standalone mode that doesn't use a window manager that should solve it but doesn't, and also finding people with similar woes about HDR. I guess the future of the desktop user is watching stuttering videos with bad color rendition? I'd give more details about what i found if there were any. Try googling it yourself, you'll find so little yet contradictory things...

Not being entirely defeated yet, i thought "i've got this nice GUI on my synology for managing docker containers & images, let's see if i can find something nice on ubuntu", and found dockstation as something i could try. Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and ... "no app installed for this file"... google around a bit, after some misleading results regarding older ubuntu versions, i found the issue: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/10/install-deb-ubuntu-23-10-no-app-error

Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn't replace it yet. Wouldn't want a user to just be able to easily install files! what is this, windows?

For real, i see all the Linux love here, and for the headless servers i have here (the raspberries & the synology), i get it. But goddamn this desktop experience is so ridiculous, there has to be better than this right? I'm missing something, or doing something completely wrong, or... right?

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  • (yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)

    I think you're expecting Ubuntu to behave exactly like Windows. There are tasks which any Linux machine is going to be better-equipped for than Windows, and it'd be silly to say that Windows "is a terrible development experience" because it doesn't run valgrind or strace or whatever. Contrawise, there are things which will definitely be easier or more intuitive to set up on Windows as opposed to any Linux distro you find, but that doesn't mean it's a bad desktop; just that it has a different set of strengths and weaknesses. For me, adding to fstab would be more of a normal thing to do than to use the Ubuntu GUI by quite a lot.

    It kind of sounds like you're not interested in a lot of the benefits of having a Linux installation, just interested in something that works exactly like Windows and is good at exactly the same things. In which case, and I'm not trying to sound sarcastic, Windows might be more what you're interested in.

    (Or, actually, a Mac may be more specifically what you're looking for -- similar "it just works" ness like Windows but works better for most things, outside a handful of specific tasks Windows still does better)

    (Also - if Ubuntu really is refusing to talk to an SMB v2 machine I'd be very surprised by that. Which tool were you using? The built in Ubuntu desktop SMB browser I assume? What did you do to verify that it was the lack of XMB v1 that was the problem (e.g. enabling SMB1 temporarily and seeing if the tool started working)? As you noted, SMB v1 is terrible and if it's forcing the use of it, that's a for-real problem.)

    Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it’s not switching to the refreshrate of the video i’m playing.

    I have literally never in my life had my monitor's refresh rate switch to match the framerate of the video I'm watching. What refresh rate was it, and what's the framerate that you wanted it to match? I'm trying to wrap my head around what it is that you're watching that just letting the screen refresh at 60Hz or whatever speed it was going at won't cut it.

    The HDR is a fair point. That's a legit example of something where I could easily see Windows working better than Linux, which is why I wouldn't try to use one as a drop-in replacement for the other. This exact type of thing -- some niche feature which genuinely is pretty useful but requires a bunch of different softwares to play nice with each other when Windows just sort of works out-of-the-box -- is something where Linux tends to lag behind.

    Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and … “no app installed for this file”…

    This just isn't the way to do it -- installing Debian .debs on Ubuntu definitely won't work reliably, and downloading and installing random .debs from the internet is rarely the way to do it even if the distros do match (flavor and exact version). Does Rancher fit your needs? Looking over this it looks like that's the first thing I would try if I wanted "something like Dockstation that works well on Ubuntu."

    I think overall -- just realize that Linux was created for very different reasons than "I want exactly the same thing as Windows, just to do all the work to create Windows over again and give it away for free." It was created for people who wanted a very specific type of development-friendly and Unix-friendly environment, and since the majority of it is still being made by those people for those people, it's gonna be constructed according to those parameters.

    • I have literally never in my life had my monitor’s refresh rate switch to match the framerate of the video I’m watching. What refresh rate was it, and what’s the framerate that you wanted it to match? I’m trying to wrap my head around what it is that you’re watching that just letting the screen refresh at 60Hz or whatever speed it was going at won’t cut it.

      was also heavily wondering this. Most TVs don't change their refresh rate to their content. they just output 1080p 60hz (or whatever) and only do the updates every 24hz and will just double up frames. Expecting to change your output based on the content feels real weird.

      if this person has stuttery video, its something else or they have a very niche use case.

      • Yeah. That's why I asked for some details. That said I think the underlying root of the complaint ("I did cool stuff on Windows, now I'm trying Linux and it can't do my cool stuff, WTF I hate this") is probably pretty valid. I think the solution is, either learn about the cool stuff Linux can do that Windows can't, and start there instead of trying to duplicate your Windows setup, or just stick with what you're already happy with.

        • If "cool stuff on windows" is going to your file manager and browsing to a network share, and that working, and not having the stable version of the OS suddenly lose its installer for a specific kind of files.... Then yeah, i should probably stick to windows. I can kind of get the refreshrate thingy, although it's still pretty pathetic after all these years. And reading up on HDR (which is 20 years old by now), feels equally pathetic. Yes, i'd like to be able to use my linux desktop to be able to play video files as intended: with the monitor/projector switching to the correct refresh rate (so you don't see a slight stutter whenever the camera pans), and with HDR if applicable.

          I made this thread about 5 hours after i installed ubuntu, you guys seem to be avoiding actually knowledging that these are some huge glaring issues that completely ruin the user experience, and be like "but look at the cool stuff linux can do". I know the cool stuff linux can do, i've got a dozen docker containers running on my synology doing home automation/downloading/servers of all kinds/... I just hoped the linux desktop experience would be... at least tolerable and not 5 hours of frustrated googling trying 'advanced things' like... browsing to a network share, installing a package i get when i click on ubuntu/debian on the site of a linux application (and i didn't post the whole ordeal, then installed a tool to install the package, that failed due to some dependency, then installed it via the command line, that then also gave all kinds of errors, which the instructions found perfectly normal), or playing a video file the way it's supposed to be played.

          If you really think those 3 above usecases are "cool windows stuff" and "it's unrealistic to expect these from linux", can you please say that explicitly? Browsing to a network share, installing a .deb package supported on a debian based OS, and playing a HDR video file in HDR and at the correct framerate with your display are "unrealistic expectations". The last one you might be able to make a tiny bit of a case for, but the other 2... for real??

          • I feel like I'm sorta repeating myself here, but you didn't answer the questions from before:

            Browsing to a network share

            Worked perfectly for me 20 years ago. What was the error message you got, again?

            not having the stable version of the OS suddenly lose its installer for a specific kind of files

            You said later that when you did it via the command line, it didn't work anyway. Which was more or less what I told you might well happen because downloading .debs from the internet is a bad idea.

            IDK, man, I'm a little reluctant to continue this because I keep trying to tell you about how you should use Linux and you keep seeming to think that I'm trying to trick you or something. Like, hey I think Rancher might work more simply, what do you think of that? And it's like no that's a trick I want to keep failing to install this other thing!

            • Worked perfectly for me 20 years ago. What was the error message you got, again?

              failed to retrieve share list from server invalid argument

              You said later that when you did it via the command line, it didn’t work anyway. Which was more or less what I told you might well happen because downloading .debs from the internet is a bad idea.

              Are you serious? I just googled "is installing deb packages on ubuntu good", from ubuntu.com ( https://ubuntu.com/about/packages#:~:text='Deb' packages are the heart,with rich and dynamic dependencies. ) :

              'Deb' packages are the heart of Ubuntu The 'deb' package format comes from the Debian Linux distribution and is widely considered the best package format for system-level libraries and applications with rich and dynamic dependencies.

              If i have to describe gaslighting, i would give this as an example. The websites of linux application offer deb packages mentioning explictly they are for ubuntu. The ubuntu site itself says "Deb packages are the heart of ubuntu". I try to install one, the linux community: "are you stupid? What gave you the idea that downloading a deb package that said it was for ubuntu and trying to install it was a good idea?"

              DK, man, I’m a little reluctant to continue this because I keep trying to tell you about how you should use Linux and you keep seeming to think that I’m trying to trick you or something

              I'm trying to install a package the way the developer says i should, and the distro says is the very heart of the distro. And you find it strange that your replies come across as blaming the user and a bit ridiculous?

              All this then says to me is that i should find myself a linux teacher to teach me the arcane linux knowledge, since the most direct documentation of app developers & distro developers is the exact opposite of what i should do?

              I'm sorry, but to me it just sounds like you're making excuses for linux since you like it. This comes more across as the infamous "you're holding it wrong" iphone issue. I'm sure there are many ways to do things in linux, but you can't blame me for being skeptical when you say this so very well documented & recommended way of doing things by both the app developer & distro creators is not the way to do things...

              • Oh, .debs are great. When you install them using apt, they work great, because they're provided by your distribution and designed for it. When you download them from somewhere on the internet and stick them into your system, they may or may not match with your system and they may or may not have been well packaged. They might break your system, or they might just not work. In general, I wouldn't recommend doing that as a new user. For Google Chrome? It's probably fine, Google pays enough attention to it that it'll work. I still think it's just a bad habit to teach.

                If i have to describe gaslighting, i would give this as an example. The websites of linux application offer deb packages mentioning explictly they are for ubuntu. The ubuntu site itself says “Deb packages are the heart of ubuntu”. I try to install one, the linux community: “are you stupid? What gave you the idea that downloading a deb package that said it was for ubuntu and trying to install it was a good idea?”

                I am not the Linux community. The more I learn about how Ubuntu does things, the more I don't like it. That's fine -- you're welcome to think they are right and I am wrong.

                I mean -- I'm not trying to say you did anything wrong or illogical in just looking for software and downloading the .deb that said it was for Ubuntu. I'm just saying that that's not the easiest way to do it.

                I’m trying to install a package the way the developer says i should, and the distro says is the very heart of the distro. And you find it strange that your replies come across as blaming the user and a bit ridiculous?

                All this then says to me is that i should find myself a linux teacher to teach me the arcane linux knowledge, since the most direct documentation of app developers & distro developers is the exact opposite of what i should do?

                Ha. This is fair. But, I mean, kind of, yes, that's exactly how it works. It's not like an "end user application" you can just pick up and start clicking stuff. Some people have been lying to you and telling you that it is, and now it sounds like you're discovering it's not and you're understandably unhappy about it. When I went to school, they spent a whole semester teaching us Unix before starting to teach any kind of computer science or programming applications, so we'd understand the environment and the tools in a lot of detail. Once I was familiar with it, it was fuckin magic, and still is. But yes, I think a lot of what Ubuntu in particular wants you to do, in service of making it "easier to learn" even though in reality it isn't, is more or less the opposite of what I would do.

                • First, I sincerely applaud you for your texts you posted on this topic, they are level-headed and stock-full of information, much better than I could have ever written them. Thank you!

                  I am not the Linux community. The more I learn about how Ubuntu does things, the more I don't like it. That's fine -- you're welcome to think they are right and I am wrong.

                  I mean -- I'm not trying to say you did anything wrong or illogical in just looking for software and downloading the .deb that said it was for Ubuntu. I'm just saying that that's not the easiest way to do it.

                  Here I would like to differ, because I think it is important to explicitly tell and guide what is a good, reliable way of installing packages (using apt) and what not (directly installing untrusted packages of any kind or form from $randomSite)

                  I feel this is especially important for new users of Linux because I think they need strict and good guidelines to prevent future havock and disappointment by following extremely bad advice they have not yet the experience to spot as bad advice.

                  • Amendment to my previous comment: Actually, I looked back a little, and in one of my very first messages to him I covered this in I think a pretty crystal-clear manner, and he completely just failed to even acknowledge that part in his response. A lot of his comments continuing to be upset that he couldn't click on .debs came after that one.

                    Again, I get why he's too upset to be receptive to help in terms of understanding the system better. Usually, being upset is the death of being calmly receptive to new information; it just comes across as "telling him it's his fault." IDK what I could really do at that point though.

                  • Yeah, that's fair. If the guy ever does get back to me I'll make a specific explicit point of that.

                    I really sympathize with the guy, both because I think the core of his complaint is pretty valid even if he's confused about some things, and because without even looking in detail I'm sure 100 different people have showed up to tell him how wrong he is and he's been arguing with 50 of them. He's probably just stormed away in frustration at this point but if we do wind up talking I'll make a little more targeted point about it.

      • If your screen is at 60hz and your source is at 24hz, some frames will last 2 frames, some will last 3 frames, it's a subtle stutter you see when for example the image is panning (and linux defaulted to 30hz on my monitor, so 24fps on 30hz refreshrate the effect is even more noticable), so i prefer the system to just switch to the proper refresh rate. The monitor/projector support switching to exactly 24fps, in the infinite power of linux, how hard could this be, for real. I get this is "advanced" and "a nice windows feature". But ffs, it's switching your display output. I can right click on my linux desktop, go to the display settings, and select 24fps refresh rate, and it switches. How hard could it be to provide an api to let an application do the same...

        If the community is like this on every nice to have feature that shouldn't be that hard to support, linux probably also isn't for me.

        (reminds me of another subtle issue i noticed in Kodi. on the windows version i can use the back button on my mouse to go back to the previous screen, on the linux version that didn't work. found an issue about it, where the replies were "we can't map every specific input system you have by default" (but the windows version can). And even better "wtf is a back button on a mouse" (that guy apparently missed the last decade of computer mouse development). And even after multiple users mentioning "we just want the linux version to behave like the windows version", but that question was just ignored in favor of "configure it yourself in the settings (even though the config didn't allow to map that button", and the ignorance of what even a back button on a mouse would be.

        • I understand that 24/60 doesn't divide evenly. My point is just that televisions don't have this feature either. When I watch movies, even if the source is 24hz, my TV stays at 60hz.

          Either way, there certainly is "an API" to do it. With xrandr you can just xrandr --refresh 24 and it would work. It's something that is absolutely doable. Whatever xrandr is doing clearly the X server is exposing ways to change it. So anyone saying "X can't do that" is probably wrong.

          I don't know much about Ubuntu other than everyone recommends it because it's overly simple and then inevitably things go wrong with it and it's impossible to fix because its overly simple. If I had to guess, this is something specific about Ubuntu and it using wayland by default. Wayland is the X replacement, so any fixes for Xorg refresh rate changing definitely don't apply.

          Potential solution : if you log out, on the log in screen it should give you an option of which desktop environment to log into (a gear in the bottom right corner with an option for "Ubuntu on Xorg")...

          It's possible that Ubuntu has removed this option recently. Wayland is the future, but it is different from X and not all software is ready for that change. My guess is that the checkbox in Kodi uses the Xorg APIs to change refresh rate, and Wayland doesn't use those APIs, so it just doesn't work. Wayland is in awkward teenage years where it's trying to pretend like it's ready to take on the world, but it's got a lot of rough edges still.

          I would say that refresh rate changing doesn't really reflect on "linux on desktop" (a normal desktop use case doesn't have refresh rates changing regularly), but rather "linux as a HTPC/media center". And furthermore, most of your complaints are specific about Ubuntu. The biggest "Linux has issues" problem is that people are still using Ubuntu and picking a distro is way too much work, and the wayland transition is breaking some functionality of some software that hasn't updated yet.

          I would like to point out that you have come into a Linux community and lead off with "this is a terrible experience" and then described quite a few issues that either "Ubuntu" (not "Linux") issues or otherwise somewhat non-standard uses. So if you're getting a weird mix of "defensive," "agreement that Ubuntu sucks, use something else," and "utter confusion about the use case" ... its probably the way the conversation started.

          Also, this wouldn't be the first thread where someone shows up and complains purely on the basis of "linux isn't windows" so the community is already primed to be agitated about threads like this. Kneejerk reactions aren't the best, but I'm sure you weren't trying to come in here and coming across as aggressive either.

          • but I’m sure you weren’t trying to come in here and coming across as aggressive either.

            I knew i wouldn't come across too well XD. I might as well have posted this on the "off my chest" community. This was written in frustration so will be negative & harsh, but i'm technical enough to also know that at least 2 of the issues i mention are pretty unforgivable. But just browsing to an SMB share that is discover relying on a protocol that is deprecated and was exploited over 6 years ago by ransomware... Gotta love linux security focus. And that installer suddenly disappearing from ubuntu... nice way to ruin your user experience and make anything they google obsolete and unhelpful and make it hard to figure out how to install stuff when it's not in the default app manager.

            And i love how the refreshrate issue is like a magnet for people here to be like "yeah, but do you really need that" (and while they're at it ignore the other 2 issues, since they're inconvient to address). But our eyes are really god at detecting disturbances in smooth motion. I can at least easily spot it, try it next time you watch something on your tv, whenever the camera pans, if the refreshrate & framerate don't perfectly divide, it's visible. It can not bother you, good for you, it does bother me. It's like if i say "you're now on manual breathing mode", and for the next 5 minutes you'll be very aware you're breathing. If the camera makes a nice large panning movement, and i point out how you can see the framerate not matching the refreshrate, you'll probably keep seeing it whenever the camera pans...

            • Refreshrate is the magnet probably because it feels like the only one that isn't covered by "yeah, ubuntu is shit. I agree." And I understand fully how much refresh matters. I use 144 and 240hz monitors because low refresh bothers me. It was intended as less of a "this shouldn't bother you" and more of a "this is an edge case feature that not even my blu ray player handles, and that's built for the specific purpose of watching videos." It's purely a use case I had never heard of before, so declaring Linux not ready for desktop over a completely niche feature feels unfair. (But again, I would check for Xorg vs Wayland)

              Ubuntu has been moving more and more of their software away from deb packaging and towards "snaps" which are their own thing. And snaps are terrible. imo, Canonical is basically trying to figure out how to turn Ubuntu into a walled garden like Microsoft and Apple have.

              So Ubuntu handling it's packaging poorly and having out of date software with poor configurations doesn't surprise me at all. I can't counter your argument there because I agree with you that Ubuntu isn't good for desktop. I'm not ignoring those issues, I'm agreeing (just about Ubuntu, and not necessarily Linux as a whole, which has a separate set of issues, like driving you towards Ubuntu in the first place)

        • I'm currently typing this on a Mac. I literally went into the settings and couldn't immediately figure out how to change my refresh rate at all, let alone how to make my video player change the refresh rate automatically to match the fps of each video file it was playing. Does that mean MacOS isn't ready for the desktop?

          I'm actually trying to substantively address what I think is the actual root of your complaints, which I actually think is pretty valid. But this specific detail is a bonkers thing to seize on as something holding back Linux from desktop adoption.

          How hard could it be to provide an api to let an application do the same…

          Great question. Are you interested in a substantive answer?

          • I'm a developer, go for it :).

            • Haha sure. So one of the biggest weaknesses of Linux is that it's a big patchwork of stuff that was all put together by some particular person to solve some particular problem at some particular time. On Windows, it really is as simple as what you're saying: Make an API, these are the functions, done. It might not be simple under the hood but it's all at least under one entity's control, and it's clearly a nice thing to have, so they have the organizational will to make it happen.

              On Linux, you might have three or four pieces of software all which have to interact, some of which were designed decades ago. The video player is maybe using Qt or SDL or something like that. It needs to call library functions in whatever it's using. Those functions need to exist (and the video player's developers have to know which one to call, and make the changes). In order for those to actually work, the library API needs to make calls to Wayland. Oh wait, are you using Wayland? Or Xorg? Depends on your distro. Once it makes it to Wayland/Xorg, it's probably good. But there are already three different APIs that need to have the calls added to them, and the people involved have to all agree on getting it done, and if at any point something changes, it all falls down.

              (That's also the explanation for your back-mouse-button sadness. It honestly gets worse than that; I had some toolkit the other day which couldn't understand mouse scrolling which really should be a solved problem at this point. Actually, that was a python / matplotlib problem now that I think about it -- this type of problem impacts pretty much anything that comes from the free software side of the fence.)

              If your software is centrally organized, and the people putting it together are profit-motivated, you don't have issues like that, because no sane person would centrally organize it that way, and as you pointed out, end users tend to hate it. On the other hand, if your software is put together by people who want to be able to use it every day, you can say "install me a web server" "now put Wordpress on it" "now install GIMP so I can edit photos" and each of those is a single apt command which takes a few seconds, which is way better than the installation process on Windows. You don't have to hunt around on different web sites, and it all keeps up with security updates automatically. But the down side is that sometimes simple things turn into a big pain in the ass if they happen to cross over multiple boundaries of where different entities' softwares intersect. And as you've discovered, they genuinely don't care at all if you want your back button to work right; they're happy with how their machine works and consider it your problem if yours doesn't. Some people in the corporate-Linux space have been trying for a very long time now to make it "beginner friendly" but in my mind that's always going to be a pretty extreme half-measure just because it's not designed to be so.

              Does that help?

              • I guess it kind of helps, but that means that the linux desktop will always be a shit experience, and i should just stick to my headless linux servers and find something else if i want a GUI... which is kind of sad...

                And the strength you see in linux... ok, WSL in windows is probably a bit less efficient, but for most usages all those windows downsides are now moot with WSL & docker. if i want to install a web server and wordpress, it's just as easy as any linux server. And installing programs like image editors, can't say i've ever encountered issues doing that on windows.

                Of course i know the main advantage of linux is no spyware crap, but it's kind of sad if after all these years that's pretty much still the only advantage. And i do use many open source apps in spite of free(mium) or cheap commercial/cloud alternatives existing that are more user friendly, if it gets the stuff i want done done, it's good enough. But it seems i'm still not ready for the linux desktop experience, no matter how often it's repeated on the fediverse here how good it is now...

                • I mean, I don't think it's a shit experience at all. It's different. If you're not aware of the strengths, then weaknesses like this are going to turn you off a lot. For me, I would never try to run Windows as my main desktop unless some weird situation came up that really required it, but some of the stuff you're picking out as issues are real issues, yes.

                  And the strength you see in linux… ok, WSL in windows is probably a bit less efficient, but for most usages all those windows downsides are now moot with WSL & docker. if i want to install a web server and wordpress, it’s just as easy as any linux server.

                  I'm such a dickhead that I literally just spun up a totally fresh Debian server just so I could type time apt install apache2 wordpress and can report that it took 46.314 seconds including me starting blankly at package lists for a little bit before hitting enter. Go install a web server and Wordpress on a fresh-installed Windows machine and come back and tell me how long it took and how many steps. The point is not that one literal example -- it's that once you learn how to use it, you'll be able to work faster and more happily on it than you will on a Windows machine. If you need something in the domain where Linux shines, networking or development, it'll be as far ahead of Windows as Windows is on things like consumer-hardware support and end-user experience. If you don't need that, then it's not relevant to you and its weaknesses will piss you off and of course you won't like it.

                  Of course i know the main advantage of linux is no spyware crap, but it’s kind of sad if after all these years that’s pretty much still the only advantage.

                  This is a very strange statement.

                  But it seems i’m still not ready for the linux desktop experience, no matter how often it’s repeated on the fediverse here how good it is now…

                  I mean... maybe those are the same people telling you to download Google Chrome .debs so I'm not sure I would put much stock in their statements. I've been hearing for over 20 years that Linux is obviously ready for the desktop, and I'm honestly not really convinced (with experiences like yours as pretty good examples of why).

    • So expecting the stable version of ubuntu to not just have thrown away its installer for one of the main ways of installing things on it, and for it to have disabled a protocol that was used in ransomware attacks almost a decade ago is... "i'm expecting ubuntu to behave like windows".

      I'm sorry, but you're just ridiculous.

      Regarding the refreshrate: this also connects to a projector, and i don't think it's able to wait for frames, it'll just push out x frames per second, and if it doesn't match your video source, you'll see smooth motion isn't quite that smooth. It may be an "advanced" usecase, but if supporting something like this is "expecting ubuntu to work like windows", then yeah, maybe i better stick to windows... I had expected linux to also be good for htpc usage, but maybe not then.

      But for real, i've got multiple headless linux machines here, i ssh in to them, got docker containers on them with some complicated usecases too, i know what to expect from linux and i don't expect it to be like windows. But for the very first 3 things i try on a popular "beginners distro" to be this awful. This is not expecting "this works like windows", this is me expecting a vulnurability of 2017 having been addressed, them not fucking up something as major as a package installer in a "stable" version, and the refreshrate is maybe a tiny bit specific, i can kind of forgive it that (but it would make linux bad for my usecase sadly, but for a modern desktop OS, i don't see why it wouldn't be supported).

      Regarding the deb files not being the way to do it. I'm sure that's why plenty of sites have install instructions for ubuntu be like "here, install this deb file". You say this is not the way to do it, SO MANY APPS say it is. can this community please make up its mind??

      • expecting the stable version of ubuntu to not just have thrown away its installer for one of the main ways of installing things on it

        Not at all what I said. Distros are generally made as coherent wholes; the stuff that comes through apt install generally works great, and you never interact directly with a .deb. The whole model of "I found this thing on a web site and I want to download and run it on my system" is going to be a little more difficult on Linux. Since that's the only way on Windows, since Windows doesn't come prepackaged with thousands of different packages you can install through package management, it'll seem to a Windows person like that's "the way," and when it's not easy on Linux, it'll seem to you like a deficiency in Linux.

        and for it to have disabled a protocol that was used in ransomware attacks almost a decade ago is

        You didn't answer my question. What steps did you do that led you to conclude that SMB v1 was the issue? I actually agree with you that that's pretty bad and needs to be fixed in Ubuntu if it's true, but I'm not convinced based on your description that that was what was making it not work. It sounds like maybe it didn't work, and when it wasn't working you decided it was trying to speak SMB v1 and didn't test your conclusion. No?

        Regarding the refreshrate: this also connects to a projector, and i don’t think it’s able to wait for frames, it’ll just push out x frames per second, and if it doesn’t match your video source, you’ll see smooth motion isn’t quite that smooth. It may be an “advanced” usecase, but if supporting something like this is “expecting ubuntu to work like windows”, then yeah, maybe i better stick to windows… I had expected linux to also be good for htpc usage, but maybe not then.

        Like I say, I'm not trying to tell you not to have that as a feature if you want it or that you're wrong for wanting this to work. I'm just saying that this seems like getting pretty far into the weeds of weedy things to raise as criticisms.

        Was the video quality noticeably off in any way? It might have been that there was a genuine issue, unrelated to the frame rate. Given the history of interlaced video and vsync in video games, I'd be pretty surprised if the average human could even tell the difference between 24Hz and 24Hz-sampled-at-60Hz even paying close attention.

        But for real, i’ve got multiple headless linux machines here, i ssh in to them, got docker containers on them with some complicated usecases too, i know what to expect from linux and i don’t expect it to be like windows. But for the very first 3 things i try on a popular “beginners distro” to be this awful.

        I'm gonna be a little harsh. Having several Linux machines doesn't mean you know what you're doing. You say stuff like:

        Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn’t replace it yet. Wouldn’t want a user to just be able to easily install files! what is this, windows?

        not fucking up something as major as a package installer in a “stable” version

        Regarding the deb files not being the way to do it. I’m sure that’s why plenty of sites have install instructions for ubuntu be like “here, install this deb file”. You say this is not the way to do it, SO MANY APPS say it is. can this community please make up its mind??

        You, just like the person who wrote this thing you linked to, seem to be under the impression that Ubuntu is supposed to install .debs you downloaded when you click on them, and that not doing that means they "removed" it. That's wrong. I have no idea why Ubuntu removed that behavior, but I suspect that it's because installing some .deb you downloaded from the internet is almost never the right thing to do. The underlying package management can definitely still do it. If you know enough for it to be a safe thing to do, you'll be able to do it without the GUI, and understand the messages you might get back and be capable enough to get it done to the point that the .deb you downloaded might actually work. If you just want to download and double-click and don't know how to use the relevant tools, then it's extremely unlikely that what you were doing was ever going to get your software to install and run in the first place.

        I know this is kind of gonna be offensive me saying this, or unhelpful, or "see this is why it's not ready for the desktop!" But I'm honestly just trying to communicate, this is how it works. Linux is designed as more of an integrated whole; in a lot of respects, that's a really good thing. It sure is a pain in the ass when you want to install certain types of third party software though, yes, definitely. Windows (of necessity) has pretty good support for installing third party apps as self-contained entities. Again, on Windows the whole model of how you install software is to download something from some random internet site, so it's even a little hard to process the concept of doing it some other way, or why that way wouldn't be simple.

        If you want to say "this is a big problem, we need Flatpak and Docker to improve in X Y and Z way so they can be viable replacements for drop-in installation of third party software like on Windows," that sounds great. But -- again, I apologize about this for being a little harsh -- if your whole model for solving this problem is that Ubuntu should install .debs when you double-click on them, I don't think you know enough about it to say what needs to happen to make it better.

        • What steps did you do that led you to conclude that SMB v1 was the issue?

          I typed in the exact error message i got in google, and found the issue is that it tries to use SMBv1 to get the list of shares, and if it's disabled on the server, you're out of luck.

          Was the video quality noticeably off in any way

          It was running 24fps video on 30hz refreshrate. It's subtle for sure, but easily noticable. It means every 5th frame last twice as long as the others. If the camera pans, you just see it isn't perfectly smooth. It isn't a complete disaster, but is it really that hard of a feature? I can kind of get the "you don't need it" in some cases, but i've spend all this time & money on a nice projector & sound system to watch movies. I don't want to see some slight stutter whenever a camera pans since my OS can't match my refresh rate to the video it's playing. Even though i can manuallly switch to that exact refresh rate if i wanted to.

          seem to be under the impression that Ubuntu is supposed to install .debs you downloaded when you click on them

          Dude, it is. Google it yourself. Pretty much every single link you find when googling why clicking on deb files gives an error that the application for such files is not founds shows you how to assign the default installer in ubuntu to those files so it works. You're really gaslighting me here. this is expected behavior, everything you can google indicates it is expected behavior, i gave you the link about someone helping with alternatives now they suddenly broke it, but that link also says they expect it to soon be fixed again in ubuntu. But now i complain about it being broken and you're all like "that's totally not expected behavior".

          Look, i get it, you like linux and are happy with it. But you can't just wipe any negative experience under the carpet with gaslighting like this. That's just ridiculous. It is expected behavior for a distro like ubuntu, and pretending it is not is just ridiculous.

          • I typed in the exact error message i got in google, and found the issue is that it tries to use SMBv1 to get the list of shares, and if it’s disabled on the server, you’re out of luck.

            What was the error message? I want to investigate this a little bit.

            It was running 24fps video on 30hz refreshrate. It’s subtle for sure, but easily noticable. It means every 5th frame last twice as long as the others. If the camera pans, you just see it isn’t perfectly smooth.

            Hm, yeah, I could see that, actually. I just didn't expect it to be running at 30Hz is part of where I was coming from, I assumed minimum 60Hz.

            Yeah, I mean, all I can really tell you is what I said before -- this is a down side, yes. A lot of the people who build the technology aren't too invested in solving this type of problem, and in general there's no one with money at the center of it trying to ensure a good end-user experience, so you may have to just set 60Hz and hope for the best.

            seem to be under the impression that Ubuntu is supposed to install .debs you downloaded when you click on them

            Dude, it is. Google it yourself.

            Hm, I was just indicating my personal opinion on it. I don't think recommending to anyone who doesn't have the knowledge to muck around with the command line to mess around with .debs they found on the internet is going to end well. I see some people on the internet (this is a good example) saying they recommend it for stuff like Google Chrome, but I just think that's a recipe for trouble.

            For me, I would tell them to install Chromium through apt and explain that it's the same without some Google crap. I think people's natural tendency is going to be to try to install software on Linux by finding it on a web site, downloading it, and clicking it, and I think if you're teaching someone Linux, part of your job should be to educate them out of thinking that way. I get why the Ubuntu people would want to emphasize that in service of a good end user experience I guess, but I would not do it that way.

            You’re really gaslighting me here.

            But now i complain about it being broken and you’re all like “that’s totally not expected behavior”.

            Not true. What I said was "I have no idea why Ubuntu removed that behavior, but I suspect that..." IDK, maybe you're right that they want users to be able to do that, and they just managed to cock it up in one particular version of Ubuntu. In which case, I actually fully agree with your assessment that that's a bad thing about Ubuntu (on top of me already thinking that it's a bad thing if they want users to be able to do that). All I really take away from that is "Oh no, maybe the people telling you Ubuntu isn't the right 'easy mode' distribution to use" are maybe onto something.

            Look, i get it, you like linux and are happy with it. But you can’t just wipe any negative experience under the carpet with gaslighting like this.

            Let me use an analogy. Someone always eats at an Italian restaurant. Then, they go to a Mexican restaurant one day. They look at the menu and try to look for their chicken piccata. Then they ask where is the bread for the table. Someone says, well we can get chips if you want to start with chips, but they're not really bread. They say, no I want bread. You can see where the analogy is going. It's just a different restaurant.

            Someone could say, well, you're just trying to gaslight me into saying that bread wasn't terrible. It was hard and stale and thin and there was no butter. It was salty and horrible, I barely wanted to eat it. I'm trying, right now, to get you to eat the salsa. I'm actually happy to talk with you about all kinds of bad things about Linux and the reasons behind them, but you have to understand why things are the way they are and the upsides before. Or, I mean, you can do whatever you want, but it'll lead you to a better experience (whether or not you keep it on the desktop, it'll probably help you with the headless servers in some regard).

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