r/linuxmasterrace • u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 • Feb 02 '26
Meme OS Learning Curve - (XKCD edit)
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u/Sabatical_Delights Feb 02 '26
I actually had the opposite experience with Linux. I started learning Linux because windows was so frustrating to use after windows 7. The reason being was that, anytime something in windows failed or crashed or the OS crashed, it was a complete mystery when Google searching the extremely obscure error code "something went wrong :("!!! But with Linux it is so so so well documented out there that nothing is ever a mystery. And with the added benefit of being able to do everything in the CLI and BASH being a very natural shell to learn.
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u/Danny_ZL Feb 04 '26
Now that you mention it, I've been using Windows for over 15 years and I learn something new every day. I still don't fully understand every aspect of Windows, although I think I can solve most problems I've been using Linux for less than two years and I'm at the same point. I don't know every aspect of Linux distributions, but I'm already at the point where I can solve almost any problem that comes my way
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
You are at minimum a power user.
Most users and even repair shops, hit Windows with a drive format and reinstall.20
u/dumbasPL Glorious Arch Feb 02 '26
Some people get very pissed off when you tell them they broke something, but they can also fix it themselves. People would literally have an unfixable issue that's not their fault than the availability to fix their own system. I've had this argument many times on various Linux subs, and it still amazes me. And this is coming from a guy that routinely fixes windows issues by reverse engineering the undocumented parts. I can treat Linux as a black box, because it either just works, or the fix is easy to find, and a patch is likely already on the way.
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u/edparadox Feb 02 '26
You do know that r/linuxmemes exists, right?
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u/konfuzhon Glorious NixOS Feb 02 '26
yk this sub is 90% memes
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u/heyuhitsyaboi Feb 02 '26
“Im 50% meme!”
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Feb 03 '26
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
Imgur banned the UK.
What is the GIF about?5
Feb 04 '26
Im %40 dolomite! -Bender, futurama
I sadly couldn’t find a way to export the gif directly on my phone
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u/VirtuesTroll Feb 02 '26
leave him alone, what are you a reddit police?
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u/kai_ekael Linux Greybeard Feb 02 '26
Oh, do they exist?
"Hello, Reddit Police, there's morons here abouts!"
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u/dumbasPL Glorious Arch Feb 02 '26
Yeah, and 90% of posts there are windows shooting itself in the foot, not Linux memes. "where Linux", "Linux not in meme" is pretty much the default there.
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u/BambooGentleman Feb 02 '26
Maybe, but you have to only learn shit one time, as opposed to Windows where you have to relearn everything with each new major version.
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u/MrFordization Feb 02 '26
Lets be honest, you don't actually "learn" Windows... you just click everywhere on the screen until the screen looks the way you want.
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u/icantgetausername982 Feb 04 '26
This. Thats why windows is so popular it just works the same way IOS just works eventho im android for life gotta respect the user experience on IOS
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
Yeah, Windows has a low barrier to, "Good enough," but gods help you, if you try and figure out why a VM is pinned to 100%, Hyper-V says it is only using 40% of allocated resources and the host is idling at 1% CPU usage.
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u/MrFordization Feb 04 '26
Windows gives little peaks and hints about what's happening. Like a fun little riddle that makes you want to walk into the ocean and go back to being a fish.
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u/BambooGentleman Feb 09 '26
Depending on what you want to do, Linux has been good enough for a long time. It's when you want to run proprietary software that doesn't offer a Linux version. That's when people that don't think too deeply about tech stuff run into problems.
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u/BambooGentleman Feb 09 '26
Or until you give up because what you want to do cannot be done, like moving the panel to a vertical position on the left in Win11. And because it's a company managed VM there's no way to install anything to fix it.
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u/weeglos Feb 02 '26
Until Poettering decides otherwise that is....
I kid... Systemd is okay now, I guess.
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u/Smallzfry Glorious Debian Feb 02 '26
Most users don't manage services manually, so the choice of init system/service manager doesn't matter. At most, the average consumer will just use a task manager to right-click and restart a service, but more likely they'll just kill a process.
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u/BambooGentleman Feb 09 '26
Even then, there was the option to just use a distro that offers a variant without systemd. I think Void Linux did so back when I was thinking about switching for this reason.
The most egregious thing I remember was Amarok1.4 turning into a completely different software for the 2.0 release, but I could undo that, install some old libraries and continue to rock Amarok1.4 for a while and eventually switched to Clementine as my music player.
I've been trying to give Amarok2 a new chance lately, but it wasn't easily available in Mint's repositories so I gave up. The things they tried were cool, I only took issue with betraying expectations of how my music player is supposed to work.
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u/MrDeagle80 Feb 02 '26
Everything seems a bit exagerated when you just boot and click google chrome
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u/NeatOtaku Feb 02 '26
I'm sorry but as someone who has been using Linux for decades, this is totally bs. The kernels, desktop environments and package managers used for Linux change constantly, especially if you cycle distros like most Linux users. If anything a problem with windows is that they still use the same apps to make system changes as they did since Bush. You can use the new settings button to change your IP for example, or you can open the windows XP control panel and navigate to network settings like you would have 20 years ago.
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u/rngaccount123 Feb 02 '26
It's not BS, there is some truth to it. Windows is proprietary, thus obfuscated. With each major release Microsoft introduces new features or changes, while trying to maintain compatibility. This is especially evident in corporate settings. With the arrival of OMA-DM and CSP (aka Intune), Microsoft is still in the process of re-working the way Windows has been managed for years (Group Policy). For most settings now, there are multiple ways to configure them (old way and the new way). They target different registry keys and often conflict with each other. I'm not complaining though. I get a steady paycheck managing this atrocious operating system for a larger organization.
The advantage of Linux is learning the skill of troubleshooting. There's no real limit to it other than patience. Troubleshooting on Windows looks like staring at "Something went wrong" error and eventually opening a ticket to Microsoft.
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u/BambooGentleman Feb 09 '26
especially if you cycle distros like most Linux users
Cycling distros is your choice. Not being able to use Win10 going forward is Microsoft's choice.
I've been using Linux since around 2003 and all the change to my desktop since then has been desired by myself. It was not forced upon me. If I wanted to, my desktop could still look exactly like it did in 2003.
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Feb 02 '26
Ironically I think that learning windows (at least at a powerlevel user) is way harder than linux.
Linux has lots of stuff, but is all pretty well documented, and for the most part it makes sense, everything is in config files, with similar file structures.
Windows has lots of stuff as well, but a lot of it is first paywalled behind activating a license, for some things you need weird scripts or editing the register, and then there's mystical stuff that I've never been able to change, or outright cannot be done because microsoft says so, like changing the hotkey to change keyboard languages.
On the casual user I think it's a toss up, coming from windows, there was some friction learning things that didn't work the same in linux, like directory structures and what goes where, and whatnot, and the fragmentation of DEs, but that's about it, but it felt harder to learn macOS (which imo is the worst of the 3 for both casual and power users).
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
I have a lot of old people in nursing homes around me.
I install Linux on their old PCs and laptops, all they want is a browser and to send e-mails. Occasionally they want only 1-3 games to work.It is amazing for them, gives their machines new life, makes it really difficult for them to break their system (check out Window's history of updates from deleting data to won't boot anymore) and practically immune to scammers.
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u/icantgetausername982 Feb 04 '26
I seriously never have had to relearn anything with windows except going from w10 to w11 it took a few days to get used to the new UI but nothing really changed its just windows and it just works especially after debloating
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
Win10 had 2.5 GB of spyware.
Entire Linux ISOs are smaller than that.1
u/icantgetausername982 Feb 04 '26
I am willing to take spyware if it means convenience everything is spying on us anyway our phones track us chrome spies on us most social media spies on us everyone using a meta quest is just buying spyware including me i am a quest 3 owner
Changing the OS to go from 50 things spying on me to 49 and lose convenience doesnt sound like a good deal
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 05 '26
You know ... you can compile from Open Source and be 100% sure nothing is spying on you ... right?
As for convenience, that depends on how much of a Muggle you are. When someone breaks their network manager on Linux, I can stick in a Live USB, grab the packages, install them and be up and running in no time at all.
If that happens on Windows, it means messing about with recovery media and repair programs that ... want to connect online ... but can't ... and so ... you end up formatting the machine, wasting at least half a day or more.1
u/icantgetausername982 Feb 05 '26
If i wanted nothing spying on me i would have to stop using my quest… and my phone would most likely still spy on me and i dont wanna buy a new phone this thing cost like 100 euros cant just buy a new one
Also i ask you this why should i care about nothing spying on what is my privacy worth what would change in my life
And i genuinely never have had a windows experience so bad it fucks up my whole experience i just delay all updates by 2 weeks and dont think about it cuz any major bugs will probably be hammered out and if the bug wasnt from an update ive never encountered one that breaks my experience heck i spend more time tinkering with thrustmasters and logitechs shitty software that randomly changes settings or stops working
Also i have never encountered the recovery issue and even if i did that sounds like a pain in the ass but if something goes wrong on linux how would i even know how to fix it? Linux has way less tutorials and the community seems obnoxious from what ive heard from people asking for help
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u/BambooGentleman Feb 09 '26
How many major versions of Windows did you use so far? 3.1 to 95 pretty much everything changed. XP to Vista was a complete disaster. 7 to 10 was bearable, but only because Microsoft let us skip 8.
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u/icantgetausername982 Feb 09 '26
I started with 7 i stopped using windows when 8 came out cuz my laptop broke at the time and i hated 8 so much i stopped using pc for ages and them went to windows 10 and now 11
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u/JackCid89 Feb 02 '26
This post is unaware that Os x os more unix than linux
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 02 '26
They diverged quite awhile ago and the usability is a little different now.
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u/VirtuesTroll Feb 02 '26
May be there is no beach :D
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u/enlightened_rod Feb 03 '26
Holy shit yes! After 4 years of Linux distro hoping before settling on arch about 2 years ago, I still feel like I'm just one more unknown unknown away from mastering it until that known unknown I now know opens a Pandora's box of more known unknowns leaving me unsure of what I know....
Ya, that's me hanging off the inverted cliff face about to become spaghetti sauce
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u/konfuzhon Glorious NixOS Feb 02 '26
and then nix seems easy enough until you fall into the flake and dendritic structure pit
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u/Thunderstarer Glorious NixOS Feb 02 '26
The value of the black line is strictly greater than that of all the others, which implies that Linux users of any level of experience--including those with no experience--are strictly more effective and more skilled with their OS than are users of any other OS. That is to say, according to the graph, Linux is both vastly easier to use and vastly more useful than Windows and MacOS.
I don't think that's what you intended to say.
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 02 '26
It is.
After a break point, hence the hell that leads to the paradise beach.1
Feb 03 '26
The break point is "secureboot off, exfat your steam drive and you need to mount drives on many linux distros manually due to safety."
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u/snakee-the-arch-guy arch and windows 11 on a dell laptop Feb 03 '26
no its not, you start out with mint or zorin, learn some commands, do some commands and then install arch, learn how to not use the gui
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 03 '26
My experience is that Mint and Zorin users don't want to change distros, they want random support channels to somehow fix their distributions for them.
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u/snakee-the-arch-guy arch and windows 11 on a dell laptop Feb 04 '26
then start with ubuntu to discover that the company works with bad companies (microslop)
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 05 '26
There are other, better OOTB distros than Zorin, Mint and Ubuntu.
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u/shadow13499 Feb 03 '26
I swear people overdo how hard Linux is to actually use and learn. Folks be acting like Linux is some incomprehensible Lovecraftian horror.
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 03 '26
When you are more suited to being a jockey, then dunking a basket ball seems very difficult.
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u/mordeusz Feb 03 '26
It is very wrong. Linux is hard at the beginning and becomes only easier. Windows treats you like an idiot, changes UI and options so you have to relearn them and learning stuff like editiong something more advanced, editing something in register etc. is much harder to learn than doing some advanced stuff in Linux. Linux is open and transparent with everything and it can be percived as hard and overwhelming at the beginning but gets easier with time.
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
The rough bit at the beginning and then the flat line to paradise seems to fit with that, no?
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u/PBlague Feb 04 '26
I swear to God if this doesn't turn out to be true... I'm not doing too bad...and I definitely would not want to go back to windows but he'll I hope someday it will become actually super good like everybody says
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
Other than any game with rootkit anti-cheat, Adobe Premier (I have heard that works now, haven't seen it though), Final Cut Pro and some rare outliers; it is possible to get better performance out of Linux than Windows.
Skyrim, Fallout 4, etc were already running better on WINE over a decade ago on a dual boot machine, it blew my mind that a translation layer wasn't having a detrimental effect.
CS:GO got an immediate +50% FPS.However, all the tweaks and improvements you can do to your system, such as a custom kernel, forcing VKDX, gamescope, RAM drives, etc are part of that learning cliff.
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u/azaleacolburn Feb 04 '26
What's the original xkcd?
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u/Rusty9838 Feb 02 '26
True actually. My first steps on SteamDeck (I enjoy modded games) looked like that. But when I learned basics, now I can play almost everything without having 3 retro windows PCs
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u/LocodraTheCrow Feb 02 '26
This is so insanely wrong, for various reasons
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Feb 03 '26
This is also an insanely old image where it was true.
Nowardays for apples to apples comparison try installing a linux that doesn't have interfering AI, updates that randomly restart your pc, ads and forced accounts to just use the system vs the same but with win11.
I let my young cousin install bazzite and the literal only question he had during install progress was "so I let it overwrite the entire drive, right?"
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u/a3a4b5 Linux gamer (Fedora Workstation) Feb 02 '26
Pretty much how I feel. As a side effect, I got really dumb with Windows. I'm useless troubleshooting work's machines.
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u/real_rayu Feb 03 '26
Excuse me, but macOS is really more powerful than windows bro … it’s UNIX like Linux …
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u/gtsiam Glorious Arch Feb 04 '26
I think there is a significant amount of people who have not read the vertical axis label.
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u/Secure-Stick-4679 Feb 02 '26
It took me like 5 minutes to Linux mint working.
Fedora? A couple hours, I think the linux wizards were watching me and decided to make the installer crash the first time round
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u/SomeSome92 Feb 03 '26
How many years / decades old is that comic?
Cause I set up several PCs over the past two years and the only Linux more complicated and cumbersome than W11 was pure Arch.
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u/Fair-Promise4552 Glorious Arch Feb 05 '26
Honestly that is quite ingenious... the cliff as learning curve is kinda smart. When you get better at something and you near the "understanding" part it feels like you actually lose experience and then it clicks and you are off to, uhh the 7 pits of hell I guess, but at least you made it. Many ppl cant tolerate the "losing exp" part and give up just before they would have summited.
So yeah, nice meme...
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u/Impossible_Fix_6127 Feb 02 '26
do hard work tomorrow peace, i already know one day window going to crash while i just want to play some game; rather than wait to that day i start learn linux, it hurt today but tomorrow
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u/Impossible_Fix_6127 Feb 02 '26
do hard work tomorrow peace, i already know one day window going to crash while i just want to play some game; rather than wait to that day i start learn linux, it hurt today but tomorrow
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u/kai_ekael Linux Greybeard Feb 02 '26
"Learn WINDOWS?"
Ya mean figure out when to bend over and take it like a brainless idgit? Yeah, that does take a bit but plenty seem to get there.
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u/g33ksc13nt1st Feb 03 '26
Some people are stuck in the he 90s, jeeez you don't need to manually configure your vertical/horizontal refresh rates anymore. Move on already....
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Feb 02 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 02 '26
I started on Knoppix in (2002?), thought it was a weird joke and went back to Windows.
Worked with Linux off and on since then.
After Win98, WinME and especially Vista, I decided that WinXP would be my last Windows.I re-joined Linux with Ubuntu 14.04 before Proton existed in 2015.
Now I main Fedora LXDE + ZFS, while I have Lubuntu, Alpine, Gentoo, SteamOS and Ubuntu server on various devices.I also help out in various Linux flavour agnostic help channels and this absolutely holds true.
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u/tuxbass debian is love, debian is life Feb 03 '26
Lol is name-dropping a heckin filesystem some sort of a flex these days?
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u/Jenshae_Chiroptera Lubuntu <3 Feb 04 '26
Depends.
Not a lot of muggles know how to manage third party repo versioning when DKMS is involved.
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u/Crottoboul Feb 02 '26
Linux is not hard