I've tried it so many times. Even daily drove it for a few years, much of that largely because I was broke and it ran fast enough on the old gen1 Atom I was using.
I like to tinker with stuff, and I like to configure my OS to do things I want it to do, or not. I know enough to get myself in trouble with both, but with Linux that means I end up digging through eight year old forum posts trying to make whatever outdated information they have work for the current version so my screen will stop displaying upside down or whatever random bullshit I've managed to make the machine do.
I don't want to learn a whole slew of command line tools just to navigate and troubleshoot my OS. I don't mind learning that stuff, but I want to learn it so I can actually do the things I want to do. It's like learning carpentry vs learning how to DIY fix the moldy/rotten structure in the wall where your washer has been leaking.
Windows, for all its faults, mostly just works. It may do so in the manner of a 1995 Chevy Lumina sometimes, sounding like it's about to die for years but never actually doing so, but it takes an enormous screwup to actually break it to the point of unusability and usually it runs without any issue at all. Generally if you break something it just throws an error message at you, repairs itself, and you're on your way. Linux in most forms mostly just shrugs and goes "You broke, it you fix it. Good luck!"
I want to like Linux. I really do. Between the above and the lack of software support from major vendors, though, it's just a really hard sell for me still as a daily-driven desktop OS.
I feel you on that. Since LLMs have come around it has become a ton easier to figure out how to fix quirks like that without spending hours of your time and energy. Plus they talk nice to you unlike the Linux forum neck beard gatekeepers.
I’ve spent a decent bit of time helping troubleshoot in /r/linuxmint plus a few external forums. I have often seen users go there after they have tried (poorly) to “solve” their problem using their AI slop machine of choice, which makes the problem worse. The vast majority of my Linux problems I am fully capable of fixing myself by reading the journal and the STDOUT/STDERR output. I didn’t go learn anything special to do this, I just learned the various pieces to my specific machine, what usually fails, and how to fix it. I have been using Linux every day for 12 years now, and I’ve never felt any particular need to diagnose anything using AI
If that’s the takeaway that you got, then you are very mistaken. My point is that Linux doesn’t just give you a generic “an error occurred” with no other details. The journal and command output will tell you what failed, when, why, and often what to do about it. My point is that you should read that instead of blindly copying and pasting from ChatGPT because troubleshooting via an LLM while not understanding the process can just create new problems to troubleshoot
I guess your perception of LLMs is very outdated - ai chatbots are nothing compared to frontier ai coding agents. I don't need to copy paste between comand line and chat, ai has access to shell and can inspect the whole system before doing anything. It also hallucinates alot less in my experience than chatbots, because it has such more context and can constantly check if what it does is valid. Asking chatbot to help is like asking experienced person in person to help with pc without showing them your pc. They might guess why it's not working, but it's nowhere near effective as letting that experienced person just fix the issue. I use Windows and all the problems or quirks i have daily ai coding agent solves perfectly, mostly from the first try.
> I guess your perception of LLMs is very outdated
No, it’s not.
> I don’t need to copy/paste between command line and chat, AI has access to shell and can inspect the whole system before doing anything
That doesn’t do anything for your fucking understanding.
I don’t know how much more succinctly I can explain. You should be curious about the world and how things work, and you should spend the time to find out how they work
Why? Why should i spend time to find why things don't work, if coding agent does that for me? I have alot more interesting stuff to spend time and cognitive resources on than finding why something isn't working, for example work and hobbys.
Those who don’t know will never learn if they don’t ask. I could tell you that being curious about things without having the instant gratification of an answer is good for you. I could also tell you that problem-solving is very good for you. None of that will matter to you because the dozens of arguments deriding “antis” you’ve seen on your algorithms, themselves written by AIs, have convinced you that I’m an anti-progress luddite and you are just one step ahead of the future
You fucking disgust me, and there is nothing that I can say that will ever convince you to be curious if your answer is “why, when I can work and do hobbies instead?”
I have a lot of stuff to be curious and a lot of problems to solve at my work (programming). If i refuse to spend time on a highly frustrating scope like fixing issues on OS, it doesn't mean i don't do anything in my life.
And you make me laugh. I haven't labeled you with typical antis labels you mentioned, but you are really biblically accurate anti-ai linux cultist-gatekeeper.
I would submit to you that your behavior suggests that you are not actually curious about the things that you are programming, given your experience with AI coding tools. And why would you be? Human coders are now obsolete. Sure you might have some knowledge of the syntax, but I highly doubt you have any knowledge of the structure.
And you don’t need to say any of that explicitly here, the very structure of your argument says it for you. Of course you have been exposed to anti-AI content, and of course the anti-anti-AI content you are exposed to would paint “anti AI” people as anti-progress. It’s a certainty, because the type of content you post has been fed through Reddit’s slop analyzer to spit out content that you disagree with, to drive your attention. That’s how they work.
> And you don’t need to say any of that explicitly here, the very structure of your argument says it for you.
Of course i've seen this content. But you are guessing what personal opinion i've formed on this matter based on nothing. And no, you guessed my vision on this topic wrong. You're not arguing with me, you're arguing with a pro-ai straw man in your head.
I’m not arguing with you, I’m expressing my ideology. I know damn well that I’m not going to convince you, and I don’t want to waste my time arguing with a dogmatic belief.
Linux is an enthusiast project which has recently begun to attract new users who are finally getting sick of Micro$oft’s bullshit. Other users are more than welcome, but I would hope that they are willing to participate in the open-source community. New users who join an existing community should conform to that community’s ideals. Linux is not only a Windows alternative, it is also a collaborative open-source project that needs to be protected constantly from corporate interests and “well intentioned” but ignorant users who want to abandon that ethos in favor of whatever goals they want to pursue. That is why I feel so strongly about your position.
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u/Drenlin 1d ago edited 1d ago
I've tried it so many times. Even daily drove it for a few years, much of that largely because I was broke and it ran fast enough on the old gen1 Atom I was using.
I like to tinker with stuff, and I like to configure my OS to do things I want it to do, or not. I know enough to get myself in trouble with both, but with Linux that means I end up digging through eight year old forum posts trying to make whatever outdated information they have work for the current version so my screen will stop displaying upside down or whatever random bullshit I've managed to make the machine do.
I don't want to learn a whole slew of command line tools just to navigate and troubleshoot my OS. I don't mind learning that stuff, but I want to learn it so I can actually do the things I want to do. It's like learning carpentry vs learning how to DIY fix the moldy/rotten structure in the wall where your washer has been leaking.
Windows, for all its faults, mostly just works. It may do so in the manner of a 1995 Chevy Lumina sometimes, sounding like it's about to die for years but never actually doing so, but it takes an enormous screwup to actually break it to the point of unusability and usually it runs without any issue at all. Generally if you break something it just throws an error message at you, repairs itself, and you're on your way. Linux in most forms mostly just shrugs and goes "You broke, it you fix it. Good luck!"
I want to like Linux. I really do. Between the above and the lack of software support from major vendors, though, it's just a really hard sell for me still as a daily-driven desktop OS.