Here a few from them on latest video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E8IGy6I9Wo
Let’s address each point:
- “I try to apt-get install obs-studio on Manjaro”
Sound of everyone facepalming in Linux Community
If you’re going to pick Manjaro, at least learn what your Linux distro is about. There’s literally user guide that covers this here: User Guide If you’re going to be jumping into Linux, get comfortable reading documentations/guides, it’s your friend.
To install Obs studio on Manjaro, just run pamac install obs-studio and package can be found here: obs-studio
- “We couldn’t get Obs-studio to work at all, but when I try it again on different project, it worked…”
- “Hey you don’t have to reboot Linux to get things working…”
That tells me that you’ve installed the drivers and haven’t rebooted the computer right after installing the driver, Linux is great at updating, but close source drivers like Nvidia does warrant a reboot after updating, because you have to reload the kernel module and restart X11/Wayland. While you’re used to Windows forcing you to reboot the computer at it’s every whim, Linux doesn’t do that and we want to keep it that way.
- “Discord Screensharing doesn’t work on Linux”
X11 vs Wayland MATTERS! A lot of screen recording capability are either limited or unsupported in Wayland while majority of features are likely supported in X11. This can be a problem for Chromium based browser where it had some of it’s capability required specific experimental flags to be enabled and that applies to majority of electron based applications which by the way, you can’t enable such experimental flags as easily which therefore hamstringing anything you can do to fix it.
So if you want to use Discord Screensharing without issue, use Firefox and have it open up Discordapp website, chances are, it’ll work out of the box. (Just tested it myself.)
- “Let’s just download a script off from github randomly and hope they work”
For the love of god, DON’T do this blindly and at least check the script so you can be sure that you’re not inadvertently installing a rootkit. If you’re going to nuke your Linux installation, at least make a bloody backup first. On Linux, you can set up your installation to use LVM which also have a feature of LVM snapshot so you can restore your installation to working state. If that not an option, there’s always Borg Backup.
- “Double clicking Sh file should automatically prompt a terminal to run it…”
Most of the time when you save an sh file from a text editor, it would only have read and write permission flagged, but not executable, this is a part of Linux discretionary access control policy, that is literally it’s security feature, don’t be surprised that Linux isn’t trying to mirror that of Windows. You can set it to be executable by right clicking on it into property menu and checking on making this script executable and then right click the script again and run it in terminal.
- “Microsoft Team doesn’t work well on Linux”
Plays the world smallest violin
Microsoft sabotaged it’s own program on Linux, so why are you surprised? Don’t believe me?
My advice? Switch to Element Chat or literally anything else than Team/Skype, ffs.
To summarize, I have no respect for Linus after his video since it shows that they have no understanding of anything and yet they claim to be a tech journalist.
I understand what you’re saying and in some moments it hurts to watch (especially when Linus tried running apt-get on Manjaro), but you missed the point of the video. It’s not a Linux beginner guide or a review of Linux. This project was meant to show how user friendly Linux is and if an average person could easily switch from Windows.
Many of the things you listed are reasonable, but it’s totally unfair to expect a casual user to read documentation, know a difference between X11/Wayland or be aware that you have to set a file as executable if you want to launch something. Windows can be bloated, can violate your privacy, be clunky and to this day it has elements from Windows 97, but you know what’s great about Windows? It doesn’t require from a casual user to read documentation and know many technical details to get the basic job done and that’s what matters for most users.
The only thing I totally disagree is the MS Teams part. Is it a total dumpster fire on Linux? Yes. Is it completely Microsoft’s fault? Yes. Is it fair to talk shit about Microsoft because of it? Absolutely. But one thing really gets me and I heard it a couple times from people only using Linux and that’s that you can always switch to a different platform or if your organization is using a proprietary technology you can explain to them why it’s not a good idea and why they should switch. Seriously? In what universe are you living? If your company/school/university is using Teams, you’re using Teams if you want it or not. There’s pretty much 0% chance of you convincing them to switch to something different. If the whole Ltt is using Teams and it’s necessary to run the business, switching to something different would be a huge problem and doing it just because two guys were using Linux as a side project is ludicrous.
Again, even though your points are valid, they don’t really apply in this case, because it meant to show how the transition would look for an average user. It’s not a critique of Linux as a whole, it’s how Linux would fit in a daily life of a normal person.
but it’s totally unfair to expect a casual user to read documentation
How else are they supposed to know how it works?
switching to something different would be a huge problem
Only because they use proprietary software, so all the more cause to switch.
Also what the fuck is a “normal person”?
How else are they supposed to know how it works?
By making it intuitive?
How else are they supposed to know how it works?
Be honest, have you ever seen a casual Windows/macOS user reading documentation? People do what seems to be intuitive and if they can’t do it, they google it and check a few first links, that’s it.
Only because they use proprietary software, so all the more cause to switch.
People working in corporations don’t have a choice, the same goes for students. If a company/school uses proprietary software, employees/students have to use it too. Besides, tell me what’s an open source solution that can replace MS Teams in a workplace?
Also what the fuck is a “normal person”?
By “normal person” I meant not tech-savvy users. Believe it or not but if you asked people on the street if they can name at least one unix-like system command, they wouldn’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.
Be honest, have you ever seen a casual Windows/macOS user reading documentation? People do what seems to be intuitive and if they can’t do it, they google it and check a few first links, that’s it.
A good question to ask at this point is, where is the Windows documentation located? Answer: it’s all online! Online in articles Microsoft posts to the web. If one goes to the Microsoft website to solve an issue and reads an article or watches a tutorial, that is using the official documentation. The closest one can get to up-to date offline documentation is by buying the e-book Microsoft releases, though I don’t know anything about the update cycle or offline usage there.
Sure, one could also get a book made by a third party that catalogues how to use Windows 10, but that’ll go out of date after awhile for more niche tasks.
To add to this, the most important piece of advice I heard after switching to Linux from Windows is:
“Linux is not Windows.”
In a similar way, as someone who grew up using Windows, I have no idea how to operate a Mac. I have no idea where to look for things in settings, how to close programs properly, why the taskbar keeps disappearing, what the default programs are called, etc. None of the keybindings I’m used to work. Where is the task manager? What do you mean I shouldn’t be downloading .exe files from the web for the programs I want? Why isn’t there an install wizard asking me where I want my program?
Mac is considered to be extremely user-friendly for someone who wants the computer to just work. But if I don’t learn anything about it, using it is difficult.
At the end of the day, Linux is not going to be “normal-user” friendly without some guided help and one of those is documentation/user guide that can alleviate the process. UI/UX is partially the problem that is exceedingly difficult to solve and is the big reason why it’s easier to use on Windows than it is on Linux. QT/GTK are the mainstay on Linux, the problem is, both of them have significant technical and legal barriers that are not feasible or appealing to third party developers to use and that is why we’ve been seeing a lot of Electron applications across the board.
At the end of the day, if they needed Microsoft products, they need to be using Windows operating system which is the “supported” Operating Systems. Microsoft doesn’t support Linux in good faith despise the marketing “Microsoft Heart Linux.” Linux is not a Windows replacement and it shouldn’t be and people should adjust their expectations accordingly, it’s perfectly valid to dual boot or use virtual machines.
I wouldn’t say that he lost my respect, but it seems like he doesn’t have the time or doesn’t want to take the time to do this challenge properly. I’ve done this before with some project and nothing worked and then I read the documents and understood all my mistakes.
I would have expected that Linus would have done a better job of preparing or doing some research before jumping in and then pointing out every little issue.
While a lot of problems he has are legit the apt thing in Manjaro bothered me a bit. It’s a linux problem because he didn’t know how to use an operating system without reading how to use it.
It feels like he is going into it with the mindset of, “This should work just like Windows.”
But it wouldn’t just work for windows. Take for example someone that only ever used macOS. I knew somebody like that and they couldn’t even navigate in windows’ file explorer… damn windows! It should work just like windows!
I’m still bewildered that he tried to right-click “save as” a webpage, hoping it would be executable. Then saying you have to be a developer to click the the “download raw” or “download zip” buttons 🤦♂️
At this point they should just ask help to Anthony since Linus has no idea what he is doing. Although Luke is having a better experience and not too many complains. In a recent WAN show Luke said that he likes Linux mire for working since “it gets less in the way that windows”
They stated pretty clearly in episode 1 that they COULD get help from the specialists on the team, but it is supposed to be the “average user” experience, so they limited themselves to online searching only for troubleshooting.
Well the ‘average user’ would have been begging for help on Reddit or something like that without actually reading the docs.
My advice? Switch to Element Chat or literally anything else than Team/Skype, ffs.
Easier said than done when his entire company already uses it. You’re not going to get more people to switch by acting like that. Of course it’d be great if they could just switch everything in a second, but it’s not how things work.
Then it’s on them, they don’t want or can’t use Linux and it’s open source software and that they should keep using Windows. They could just keep Linux in a virtual machine, that’s perfectly valid.
They will (unfortunately) keep using Windows because it’s what works for them. But then again they’d never do the Linux challenge otherwise. It’s content, and what they are facing are valid problems that need to be solved if Linux desktop wants to be a real competitor to Microsoft and Apple.
Of course, there’s not much we can do besides call out these bad practices and ask for Linux versions of the software we need, so I also think most of the criticism of the second episode is kinda bland.
One comment: if you install a rootkit, all your LVM/Btrfs snapshots should be considered untrustworthy because they may have been tampered with by the virus. Only a full wipe and restoration from an external backup can save you in that case.
Yeah, though realistically, if rootkit is sophisticated enough which we can’t be sure until we de-compile it and analyze it, it could potentially replace the firmware on the devices and make itself resilient to install wipes. Generally, people shouldn’t be running script off of Github blindly and actually check the code themselves before running it, if they don’t understand something, ask on forums, linux chat or read documentations.
It’s a lot easier to corrupt a disk snapshot than it is to corrupt firmware. But yes, strictly speaking, once you get a rootkit, that entire physical computer may no longer be considered trustworthy depending on how secure you need it.
Yeah, there were some facepalm-worthy moments in the video, but that (now fixed) error Linus got when he tried to install Steam? That one was on Pop!_OS. Seriously, all he did was open up the software manager, find steam and click the install button.
What do you expect from LTT? I’m really not sure why people look to LTT as a bastion of technical knowledge, when in reality they are just script readers without much innovation.
I refuse to watch these click-bait videos, but it seems like his whole thing is about manufacturing controversy in linux spaces to get more engagement and views: IE the youtube / twitter model of social media.
Yeah Linux has always been someone to beat up on in the gaming space (rightfully so in some aspects), and this at the end of the day, is just good content for their viewers.
We should ask them to stay away from Linux, this BS they’re pulling only hurts the Linux community!
I think gatekeeping like yours hurts the community significantly more.
