“I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited.”

What DE are you using? Gnome?

Because they don’t know how to use a computer they only have experience with the windows/msc workflow that keeps users ignorant by design.

Some things just don’t work properly on Linux without doing a lot of tinkering, while on Windows doing the same particular thing works effortlessly. For example, if you want to have an overlay that shows performance stats such as FPS, CPU Temp, CPU Utilization,etc…, while playing a video game, on Windows you can just run MSI Afterburner, simple as that. On Linux, there this tool called Mangohud, while it’s a great tool, it doesn’t come with a GUI (of course it doesn’t, many Linux developers are GUI-phobic for some reason.) So, you either have to do a lot of tinkering with configuration files to get it work and then run it from the terminal, or you use another program called GOverlay, which is a graphical program that utilizes Mangohud among other tools. But guess what? It’s broken at the moment, the thing just outright refuses to work properly, so you’re stuck with using configuring Mangohud on your own! This is just one example of the many things that are frustrating on Linux but are otherwise convenient on Windows.

While I’m fine with Linux most of the time, the few times I got frustrated with Linux was when I was following instructions and getting different results because either information was wrong or there were steps that weren’t included. A few examples I can think of are:

1. There are a lot of games that I’ve played (mainly from Itch) that offer a Linux version, but that version isn’t tested and often times has mismatched libraries. In one case, they forgot to bundle the Linux version with the game’s assets and only included the executable.

2. A lot of Linux installation guides just tell you that you can just install the distro from it’s LiveCD. Maybe this is the case for some computers but every computer that I’ve installed Linux onto required some extra steps. I’ve always had to disable secure boot and then re-enable it after installing but I’ve never seen a guide mention that, just some random answers on askubuntu that suggested it. They also never mention that you should use the LiveCD to make sure that everything is working properly.

3. There are some emulators that I’ve never gotten the Linux versions of to work properly and I can only get the Windows versions to work properly. PCem keeps telling me it can’t find any bios even though I put them into the specified folder. Mesen (the pre-Mesen2 version) runs but I can’t change any of the settings and the only documentation that exists is for the Windows version.

There’s always software I can’t use properly (and not just Windows stuff), some stuff badly configured with weird error messages… last time I was not able to even use the apt command

I’m not sure what you were doing to break apt, but it was probably something pretty funky (or at least adding a bunch of repos without really thinking about it).

The thing with Linux is that it doesn’t stop you doing stupid shit as much as Windows. If you know what you’re doing, that’s a really good thing. It’s really annoying when your OS stops you doing something for your own protection if you know that you’re not going to break anything. Simple example: Windows locks any file that’s open, Linux doesn’t. That’s really convenient, but you can screw things up badly if you’re not careful.

If you’re a beginner, I would suggest sticking to the GUI, i.e. control panels, software installed, etc. in Ubuntu. If you ever go into command line, be really careful, and understand what you’re doing. Definitely do not copy and paste commands you find online without understanding them reasonably well. Ubuntu puts in pretty good protections in its graphical tools. You’ll be able to do whatever you need to do, but shouldn’t break anything. Over time, you’ll pick up some knowledge and be able to do more in the command line (etc.) without breaking things.

There are a lot of factors I think.

Some are pretty legitimate, like the lack of Adobe or Autodesk support on Linux, which means a lot of people just 100% cannot participate in their industry using Linux. It’s borderline illegal to use Linux if you’re a mechanical or civil engineer; Solidworks and MATLAB are pretty much regulatory requirements; you’d probably lose your engineering license if you turned in a drawing made in FreeCAD. In the art space, tell a publishers you drew something in Inkscape and watch their personality leak out their ears. Everyone hates Adobe, but glory to Adobe.

There are also legitimate culture shocks; there’s this LTT video where they had iJustine on, and Linus and Justine swapped platforms, he on a Mac, she on a PC, and they were given basic tasks like “install Slack. Take a screenshot. Paste that screenshot in a Word Processing document. Save it as a PDF. Send that PDF to James in a Slack message. Uninstall Slack.” Justine immediately started looking around the back of the monitor for USB ports, rapidly found that a fresh install of vanilla Windows doesn’t (or didn’t at the time) come with a word processor that could save documents as a PDF, Linus immediately went to the web browser instead of the app store…They did similar stunts with their Linux challenge later on, though I’d kinda argue about the tasks they were set to do (such as “sign” a document, which Linus started to do cryptologically but didn’t have any keys enrolled because who the fuck does, and Luke just…copy/pasted an image of his handwriting?) But anyway. Linux is different than Windows to use, and even a VERY windows-like DE like Cinnamon is going to have differences that will feel foreign. I remember tripping over “shortcuts” being “links or launchers depending on what you want to do.”

There’s also the fact that Microsoft has done a world class job at making the average normie hate and fear the command line interface. Because universally, when you see a cmd prompt appear in Windows, it is a bad thing. That hate gets transferred to Linux, where we do routinely use the terminal because while it can be a little arcane, with a little bit of learning you can do some powerful stuff. But, because people have been so conditioned to hate the CLI by Microsoft, you get exchanges like this:

“Hey I’m trying out Pop!_OS because you nerds keep saying it’s good, and my laptop can connect to the internet with ethernet but not Wi-Fi, what’s up with that?” “Well let’s see, could you open a terminal and type sudo lshw -C network, and then copy-paste what it says here for me to look at?” “NO!!!11!! NEVAR!!! How DARE you suggest I use a computer by doing anything other than pointing at little pictures?! The indignity! It’s current year!!”

Finally, before I hit the character limit for this post, there’s just a reputation around Linux. I’ve had this happen more than once, someone will ask to use my computer to look something up on the internet. “Sure.” They find the Firefox icon on the quicklaunch bar just fine, it pops open, they’re doing fine, then they notice the color scheme and icons are a little different and they ask “uhh, what version of Windows is this?” And I say “It’s Linux Mint.” And they lift their hands off the keyboard with the same gesture as if I just told them my cute furry pet in their lap is actually a tarantula. They have it in their head that Linux is deliberately hard to use because it’s for computer nerds–they think all Linux is Suckless–and because they’re not computer nerds, they can’t use Linux. So the second they know it’s Linux, they “can’t” use it.

The average person wants the iphone experience. They want the device to just work. Sometimes, in Linux, you have to install things that aren’t so straight forward and the average person has no clue how to do that.

If we want more people on Linux, we need to dumb it down a lot.

I put Linux Mint on my grandmothers old computer because the hardware was preventing it from upgrading from Windows 7 without massive slowdown. Back when she was using windows (albeit windows 7) she would call me every week with a new issue. Since installing mint she very rarely has issues and whatever issues she does run into can usually be solved very easily over the phone. I would say that Linux is what you make it. If you want to copy and paste commands from sketchy guides, things are going to break. But if you just use it like my grandmother does, browsing the web and writing emails, nothing can really go wrong

I used elementaryOS back in 2016. It was the best system, the best experience, the best look and feel. That was amazing.

Everything went to shit with one of the updates. It destroyed the graphics drivers and I wasn’t able to reinstall it correctly. Shortly after they released the new big version of elementaryOS which was just bad. Looked bad, worse user experience. It was also slower. And even small update killed my graphic drivers. Again. That was it. Back to Windows. Few years after that I moved to MacOS and now it’s stable, looking nice and I am confident that the os will work pretty much the same on the next day.

It’s crucial when you have a freelance work. I just can’t imagine waking up to see that my Linux machine decided to fuck me up on a that particular day. Nope.

There is some software that it will plain just not run. I moved over to fedora from Windows and was loving it for about 6 months, but I needed CAD software for work that I could just not get to work, no matter what tinkering I did.

I am a windows power user because Linux just plain doesn’t do what I expect it to.

Call me an idiot or inexperienced, but trying to transition over and do everything I can on windows doesn’t happen. When I first tried Linux in middle school, I couldn’t manage to install a single program. Software that should work doesn’t, and I still sympathize with Linus Sebastian typing in “Yes, do as I say” when all he thought he was doing was installing Steam. I’d love to transition over my daily OS to Linux, but I’m already in so deep with a million custom tools for Windows and a decade of in-depth and occupational knowledge it would be a pain to start from scratch.

I usually end up in need of redoing a fresh install until it breaks up again.

That’s common when you start adding random PPAs, running some commands without understanding (we all do 👀) and whatnot, but you can save yourself from reinstalling over and over by using an immutable distribution so at any point you will know what changed in your system and if it breaks you can just roll back to the previous working point and either fix your mistake or wait for a fix from upstream when an issue happens there (this year there were a few kinda major hiccups on Fedora for example).
I suggest you try one of the Fedora immutable spins (Silverblue, Kinoite, Sericea) or Vanilla OS, though I would hold off from it until Orchid comes out.
If you want to go all in you can use NixOS, but it takes a lot of reading

It’s like so many other things, it’s simple when you know it well but when you don’t have a lot of experience it’s very daunting. A lot depends on understanding the file system, like what is the difference between /run and /media and / and /root? So much is command line with some pretty arcane commands and parameters. And not knowing what tools there are to help, and not knowing how to fix things when they break.

For most people computers are just the same as cars. People want a car that will drive them from place to place, are easy to refuel, easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for anything difficult or that requires specialized knowledge. Same for computers. Most people want a computer to navigate the web, install the apps they are used to and that their friends use, is easy to operate, and can be taken to an expert for any involved work.

Even the friendliest of Linux distro don’t check all those boxes. You cant get ready support from a repair shop, many of the apps are different or function differently, and it doesn’t receive all the same love and attention from major third party developers as Windows does.

Most people could learn to use Linux; it’s not that hard. Most people could learn to change their own oil. But for most people, it’s not worth it. For most people it’s not the journey, it’s the destination and cars and computers are just tools to get there.

I use Ubuntu as my main operating system in my Desktop, but I always end up feeling very limited.

I used to use Ubuntu for a long time and had a similar experience where there were constantly annoying issues. I have since distrohopped around and ended up with fedora, which even though it is a more cutting edge distro, the experience has been a lot smoother and more stable, even compared to windows.

Maybe Linux is not good for beginners working full time?

I mean any OS takes time until you get fully into it and I would say Linux does take maybe a little more effort simply because there are more options in terms of pretty much everything. First, you need to be familiar with the concept of having different distros and be familiar with the differences between distros. Then you need to actually figure out how to install a new OS, which can be tricky to most people who are not that familiar with IT.

Another thing is that an experience with an OS can depend largely based on what hardware you are using. That’s why apple strictly controls the hardware on which their OS can run on. Microsoft has also started restricting this slightly. Linux goes the complete opposite direction by trying to allow running linux on any possible system.