Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
I guess the biggest thing I’m missing right now is VR gaming.
But since my VR googles need WMR to work, I wouldn’t be any better off with Windows 11 either.
I’m looking forward to the Steam Frame, hopefully it’ll support SteamOS out of the box
I would be a lot more excited if I wasn’t worried it was going to cost +$1,099. I hope that I am wrong.
that is just for the memory
They said they are shooting for less than the price of the index so that’s $999 or less, not sure if they will reneg on that due to ram prices.
It’s also unclear if they’re comparing it to the cost of the index with or without the Lighthouses.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
I mean it should. It’ll have a steam os installed on the device itself. It’d be a pretty silly oversight to not work with a computer running Linux.
Same. Quest 2. Fedora 43. 5700X3D / 9070 XT. Steam Link can’t find AMD video decoder on the pc to run. ALVR has death wobble-like reprojection jitter. WiVrn works when Envision feels like it, which is never as it constantly errors out compiling due to some dependency I can’t find for the life of me.
I know compiling from source is preferred as “the linux way”, but I would like to spend more time actually using my pc than fixing it. There’s no reason the VR software needs to be recompiled just to change a setting. Maybe bake in the ability to change settings instead of hardcoding everything.
Wine would be super helpful if they can find way to make older (2019 and older) Quickbooks run reliably. Lots of small businesses locked into old platforms because the accountants or the people who do accounting themselves can’t learn how to use anything else, and the linux alternatives require a phd in linuxology to learn and don’t offer the easy business-in-a-box functionality.
Waydroid is neat, but poorly integrated in the desktop. It runs as a full screen app, and doesn’t task switch easily.
Please, Valve, make Steam a 64-bit native client! So few people use 32-bit systems that the few that do probably aren’t running Steam to save on memory.
Pipewire audio devices and webcam support needs to be smoother. I’ve never seen so much console shim hacks just to get a virtual webcam working.
I haven’t even begun to try my NXT Gladiator flight stick in linux… that might be a whole nother can of trouble to open.
I had the same issue as you with steam link and my 7800xt. Putting this in my launch args for SteamVR fixed it
RADV_PERFTEST=video_decode,video_encode DRI_PRIME=1 ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR/bin/vrmonitor.sh %command%and if you try that and get a different error code from before, ( I think it was like 1033) swap your mesa drivers to the freeworld variety. That should besudo dnf swap mesa-vulkan-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers-freeworld.The only thing is, steamvr can’t display your desktop properly if you’re using wayland, it simply doesn’t support it. BUT here’s a cool project that can help you work around it, for some reason there’s currently a bug with their pipewire implementation (or something like that) such that you have to manually connect the display streams in the coppwr pipewire gui (helvum and carla don’t work), otherwise it’ll only show one frame of the display stream.
y’know what, I’m actually gonna make a post about this, since it took me many hours of searching forums to find this solution.
I was surprised to find my Valve Index work flawlessly after switching to Linux (Pop!_OS). Even had a better framerate in some games.
I’m using Fedora KDE, and for the first time in my life, an upgrade (42 to 43) completely borked the system, in a way that I couldn’t boot to anything else other than a kernel panic.
I had to boot up a live USB, mount and chroot into the old system, and manually fix each duplicated / corrupted package. And it still caused every now and then some weird issue with dnf, so in the end I just reinstalled the entire OS.
I feel like updates “offered” via a nice and convenient gui shouldn’t really do this out of nowhere - and I wasn’t the only one to report this in the past half year.
I found on the 42->43 upgrade, Wine 32-bit was removed, and the upgrader errors out instead of fixing it. Wht I did to fix was immediately, manually (via dnf) uninstall wine*, then immediately run the upgrade again, and it fixed itself, finishing the upgrade with 64-bit Wine installed.
I ran into the same issue with errors every time I tried to update. This fix worked perfectly, thank you for taking the time to comment!
Sure would be nice if they caught and fixed that before pushing the update and requiring users to do it themselves.
Sorry you had to go through with that.
Point-release distros like to tout stability, but they face all the same problems as rolling-release distros when upgrading between versions.
Mobile… I want a Linux phone 😭
@Sprocketfree @cm0002 the problem is not that they don’t exist it’s that they barely have apps.
I know… And I’m sad
Just dusted off one of my old Android apps and I completely agree with you.
Android has to be one of the least-competent, hacked-together, yet overengineered pieces of shit on the planet.
It saddens me that people were paid 6 figures to make it. They did not deserve that money and did a horrible job.
The biggest difficulty is music production plugins. Some have a Linux version, some work via yabridge and wine (with some GUI bugs), and some don’t work at all.
On top of that, my initial attempt was using Mint with all of the audio optimisations (including kernel) but it was stuttery and slow. Unfortunately, oving to another distro is not painless when you have to move all the plugins too but CachyOS has been much better so far.
Native Linux audio plugins are frustratingly uncommon. I’m gradually trying to replace my Windows plugins with Linux native ones but it’s hard to do sometimes. My thing lately has been building my own replacements with plugdata.
Plugdata seems like a deep rabbit hole, so I’m a little afraid of it but maybe that’s the next step.
For now, I’ll share my latest Linux plugin find: https://store.harrisonaudio.com/all-products/harrison-32classic-channel-strip says it doesn’t support Linux but if you buy it and download the “old” version from here https://support.harrisonaudio.com/hc/en-gb/articles/19516617411613-Harrison-AVA-downloads-OLD-VERSIONS (it has the same version number as the most recent Windows copy), then you can activate it and it works well. I think I had to say no to linking iLok when purchasing. It’s crap that they’ve recently stopped supporting Linux (because they’ve moved to using iLok) but I’ve been happy with the plugin.
Plugdata is a rabbit hole, but thankfully you only need to learn a few dozen of the most common objects to start making things. It took me a week of low effort learning before I could make patches without needing tutorials or outside help. The built-in documentation is all you need after that.
Does that plugin have a distinct sound you like? To be honest I’ve never moved beyond my DAW’s stock eq and compressor. And god, iLok is a scourge.
Okay, that doesn’t sound too bad then!
I’ve been looking for a good channel strip for a bit as I’ve heard good things about them as a workflow. Also, aa it’s an emulation of a physical device rather than a more perfect compressor etc, it adds some nice colouration that works really well for some instruments. The saturation is particularly nice and I’m surprised how much I like using the EQ.
And yeah, iLok is awful.
I have the same problem with nixos. It’s partially solved but some plugin derivations are behind the times or something (or maybe I’m the problem and I can blame documentation :P)
I don’t like that I get zero feedback when typing in my boot-time decryption password. Like, I can’t even tell if my keyboard is working. Did I press Enter or am I wasting my time staring at the prompt: “enter password for drive whatever (random guid)”.
I’ve literally sat there with my keyboard not even plugged in, not realizing it wasn’t dong anything because there’s no feedback. Like, can’t it show some asterisks? Or maybe “attempting decryption” after I press Enter, or anything? The only feedback is: it will either boot or say “invalid password” eventually.
It’s a minor frustration, but it’s every day that it bugs me.
(OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. LUKS2 or whatever, using the built-in encryption when I first installed it on my laptop.)
crypttab provides “password-echo” option, something related on archwiki here
that should fix it
Interesting, I don’t have this issue using rhel8. It always shows asterisks for keystrokes.
If I had to name a thing … My only issue is the lack of support from organizations. Drivers, though It’s getting better for printers/scanners etc. but like HW identifiers from banks etc are still windows (and mac). And no, i’m not gonna install windows or anything wine-like for it. (so far I’ve been able to take the alternative route/work around it)
Probably the banks don’t even check HW identifiees, they see that you are using Linux and just decide to block you, at least, many reported that with many banks but it’s not a universal rule ofc
I use Linux daily for work and personal tasks, but I sometimes have to resort to either a Windows VM or Windows running natively for the following:
Hardware
- Gaming with the Oculus Rift S
- My third-party Xbox One wireless controller adapter for the non-bluetooth models
- Brook controller adapters
Software
- Microsoft Office. I absolutely need the documents, spreadsheets, and presentations I work on to be interoperable with Windows users who exclusively use Microsoft Office. I am no position to ask them to change what software they use. OnlyOffice is the closest to achieving interoperability and its UI is very similar, but it still falls short. Multiple animations on 1 slide don’t carry over, none of the macros my coworkers have made seem to work, slide formatting may look different, and transformed cells don’t seem to automatically update.
- Some games, such as Fortnite and CastleMinerZ either have bug-breaking issues or the publisher/anti-cheat sucks and blocks Linux. I don’t particularly care for these games, but I’m also not willing to give up game nights with lifelong friends over these. I’ll play them, suck at them, and have a good time. Then there are games such as Halo: MCC that mostly work, but then co-op campaign de-syncs.
- Original Xbox and Xbox 360 development and modification tools/programs don’t work. I can’t even FTP a file over from Fedora without it being unrecognized. I obviously don’t expect any of this to change.
And I desperately miss the native Stream Deck software. StreamController’s page-changing is very slow, in general is finicky, buggy, and less intuitive.
Unfortunately, the anti-cheat is a conscious decision by the developers to forego any sort of Linux compatibility. Anything that allows it to be run in Linux will likely result in the anti-cheat software being updated to block that workaround.
Not that it’s Linux fault, but access to and compatibility with popular creative tools like Ableton or Adobe products.
Sure, it’s feasible to use Wine to run these products, but not in any professionally usable manner.
Yes, I am aware there are Linux-friendly alternatives, but they lack the plugins, compatibility, features, and quality of their industry~standard counterparts.
I second this. I use Gimp, but it’s UI and UX is just the worst I’ve ever seen. (It has some great tiny features here and there, though.)
I hope this situation would improve over time, and I’d try to contribute as much as I can. So, fingers crossed. Otherwise, I’m quite happy with Linux being my primary OS for many years.
This plugin might help you https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP
Thanks, I use it, but I could mention it, so it’s great you did! To me, Gimp became usable, I cannot stand its interface without it!
I agree, GIMPs UI is pretty nasty. Same as LibreOffice Writer, but I still use them.
The current Virtual Keyboard solution on KDE (
maliit) isn’t working quite as much as i’d like. It only works on GTK apps, and only sometimes shows. When it does, it won’t relaunch after dismissal untill you kill it. Add to that it’s not as feature-dense as its windows alternatives.I hear that they are working on their own
plasma-keyboard, and I hope that will fix most of these issues, but I haven’t had the tim to update my system.The only two issues I have at the moment are that Nemo is not a reliable file browser. It crashes almost daily. Some of its behavior is also frustrating when I go up a directory and it reshuffles my view and loses where I was. I deal with copious files and directories so this can be painful sometimes. Maybe need to play with Dolphin more or find another manager. Open to suggestions. I miss the expected behavior of the file manager in windows, but I don’t miss windows at all.
That second issue is not having an easy method to manage my iPhone with Linux. Pulling images is awkward and always requires fiddling. No iTunes of course for backup and updates. I don’t like OTA updates. So I keep a W10 VM (with no route out) for that stuff.
Otherwise, Linux works for everything else perfectly fine.
Edit: Mint btw. I do love how Linux makes the OS a tool for me rather than a tool for them.
I think you should try out different file managers like GNOME files or Dolphin from KDE. One might solve your issue with iPhone
I can get to the phone data with Nemo. It’s just flakey. I’ve used Dolphin, but when comparing then the look of Nemo seemed to win. In practice, having nemo bomb out every other day is frustrating. I’ll take a peek at Hnome files. Thanks for the suggestion!
And I do enjoy the command line plugin(?) for Nemo. It is handy for sure (it provides a command prompt that follows along wherever you cd to. Maybe enabling some of the plugins is causing the instability with Nemo….
Perhaps for the phone you could try something like KDE Connect. You have to be on the same wifi, but once connected, you can do things like remote input, sharing the clipboard, sending sms, sending files, and you can browse files from the PC.
Some things I have listed here may differ as I am on an Android
I am currently using dolphin, and I would highly recommend. I tried xfe before. It’s highly customizable, but opening files was king of annoying (you had to manually input the path of the application)
E: more information
Thanks! I did see a couple of tools like KDEC, but my main system is wired only. I suppose I could pop in a WiFi card and give that a whirl. If I can do some of those things that’d be nice. To move a file from Signal off my phone I had to use VLC. It worked, but yeesh.
Appreciate the input!
no problem!
P.S. You don’t need a WiFi card to use KDE Connect. I have it set up on my desktop (Ethernet only), and it works perfectly. I think you do have to make sure that it connects through the same router that the wired connection uses.
Why duplicate this thread? There’s now at least 3 copies…
This is certainly one of the strength/weaknesses of Lemmy. I wish there were a way to, I don’t know how to phrase it, federate the different community posts into one. So like in this case, replying to any of the three would be seen on any of the three threads. As an option at least.
Sure, but there’s also no reason to make the post 3+ times in the first place
I agree.
RE engine games like monster hunter and dragons dogma are a mess. I blame Capcom and NVIDIA, but because not everyone is having the same issues I do it’s safe to assume there is some Linux solution out there that isn’t documented. So I guess my pain point is lack of good documentation, a tale as old as time tbf.
What’s the problem?
Played Wilds on launch and had pretty much no issues other than the game freezing for a second or two every hour or so.
On the other hand, my friend on Windows would crash from time to time, which I didn’t experience.
Although it should be noted that neither Wilds nor Dragon’s Dogma are technological marvels. They run bad everywhere.
Vertex explosions. Also some weird shader compiling stuff that I was able to solve.
For DD it’s actually fine but there’s this hilarious bug where the very last Cutscene causes the game to crash. I’m not even mad enough to try and fix it tbh, it’s just funny.
Haven’t had any Vertex explosions or shader compiling issues in Wilds but I also assume that’s Nvidia related.
Do you have those issues in their other titles like their newer Resident Evil games as well?
Huh, I played through worlds without any issues but I’m pretty sure it was because I’m on amd
On Fedora KDE.
Office, specifically Excel. I use it professionally for work and the lack of feature parity in Linux alternatives (Libre Office and Only Office, specifically) are a perpetual thorn in my side.
I do my best to use Linux alternatives in my personal life, and, if necessary, use the MS web version of Excel but every so often I run into something that can only be done in the full desktop version and I have to boot back into Windows.
I’ve heard of WinBoat and https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps, but at least when I tried them they were too resource heavy to realistically run on a laptop
What features do you find missing from open office? The way I use it open office calc is better than Microsoft excel
Basically any of the power features (power pivot, power query).
App stores are always terrible no matter which distro you use.
- Images don’t load
- Stuck waiting 30 seconds for a page in the app store to load (if it loads at all)
- last rating is 7 years old
- random utilities written 12 years ago are at the top of the page
- “featured” apps haven’t even been tested on that distro
Yeah, “app stores” are some new-fangled thing that was added in response to the Apple Mac app store.
Most Linux users just use the main package repos which don’t come with all that stuff.
I assume they’re just talking of the GUI front-end, so it’s almost the same.
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Laptop OEMs seem to go with fingerprint readers that have no Linux support.
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A number of distros out of the box have some IMO dumb things you need to change.
E.g. Fedora insisting on having their own Flatpak repository that isn’t as well-stocked or updated as Flathub, and missing audio/video codecs (I realise this is due to licensing concerns, but other distros get around it).
- I’d like Linux to feel more like an ecosystem. If I could sync my DE’s settings, installed apps, etc as trivially as I can sync my Firefox bookmarks/settings/extensions then I’d be happy. Frankly I’m amazed that Gnome and KDE haven’t attempted this.
Yes, I know I can manually and painstakingly do a lot of this with Syncthing. It’s not the same. It’s a lot more time/effort and you need the knowledge to set it up.
Laptop OEMs seem to go with fingerprint readers that have no Linux support.
This was also such a big downer for me on my Lenovo Yoga 370. I could not (for gods sake) get the fingerprint reader to work because it was missing key material that was baked into the Windows Driver but required to communicate with the Fingerprint Reader Hardware.
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