Sorry if this is not the right community to ask this, but I just wondered this today.
Users often think of Linux as being more complicated to use than something like Windows or macOS, but I’m sure there are plenty of things made easier in Linux than the other two more common consumer OSes.
What are some that come to mind for you?
The really big one for me is installing things. Installing packages requires 0 interaction, can be easily automated, wide availability of packages, etc. On Windows, Winget sucks. It’s just running the regular installers. MacOS is better since it has Homebrew, but it has some problems. Homebrew struggles to update “casks” (aka GUI apps) so you still have to rely on app’s in-app updaters. MacOS’s gatekeeper also is annoying about third part software. And for anything not in Homebrew, you have to install it from the web.
Programming is also easiest in Linux. MacOS is a pain sometimes. The preinstalled toolchains are outdated. Installing new ones from homebrew also requires reading through a large block of text in order to find out what manual steps you need to do.
- Git
- (Less so now that it’s preinstalled in Windows) OpenSSH
- Using the file manager (dual pane support in dolphin, most have tabs built-in, renaming files in dolphin with large directories doesn’t jump the view position around)
- tabbing out of exclusive fullscreen applications
- installing and updating most applications
- installing the OS
- using AMD, Intel Graphics (somewhat less awful if drivers actually autoinstall in Windows)
- Not getting screen tearing in games
avoiding ads
Detecting and setting up printers
Installing softwares is much safer and easier.
Windows:
- Search app on a search engine
- Maje sure it’s the legit app and not a trojan
- Download the app
- Find and run the .exe
- Going through the warning if not a Microsoft app
- Going through the wizard
Linux:
Either do something like…
“sudo dnf install (name of app)” in the terminal
Or simply click on “Install” in the software manager.
Worst case scenario you add some repositories, I love it
That only works though, if the app is in the official repos. Otherwise it gets as complicated as Windows, if not more so. Which technically also has a software manager (Microsoft store), albeit a bad one.
That’s more because of you not using winget, not because windows doesn’t have package manager.
The main thing I notice is piping audio around from one piece of software to another.
It’s braindead simple in Linux (so long as you have JACK or Pipewire setup and the software is JACK aware), but as far as I could ever figure out, it’s pretty much impossible in Windows.
I use voicemeeter on Windows and really struggled to find a good alternative to the software for Linux. Found something, but it was kinda trash. Any tips? This is one of two things holding me back from switching my gaming pc over.
First time I’ve heard of that DAW. The UI reminds me a bit of Aurdour or MixBus. Personally I prefer Reaper.
Aurdour is FOSS and under heavy development, so if you’ve tried it in the past you might want to take another look at it. Reaper and MixBus are both proprietary. Played with MixBus some but it wasn’t for me. UI kept flummoxing me. Reaper made more sense to me off the bat and so I stuck with it.
If your needs are really simple though you might see if Audacity might work. Also FOSS. It’s more an overgrown voice recorder than a DAW though.
There are a lot of options in that space and it’s strongly a personal preference thing.
Dev stuff for my part, and I like the aesthetic of KDE plasma or LXQT that I am using, or the efficiency of tilling window manager like sway/i3. I also know how to troubleshoot Linux but not windows, and for gaming, Cyberpunk 2077 was better on Linux with proton than windows at launch and on Castlevania Lord of shadow, I had some graphic glitches on windows that made the game unplayable that never happened on linux
Managing a install
A installed system can last indefinitely when done correctly.
I find that classic gaming experience is vastly better in Linux for its lack of exclusive fullscreen windowing.
