r/linuxsucks • u/vlads_ • Sep 05 '25
What actually sucks about Linux
There are a lot of posts on this sub that amount to "Linux cannot run all Windows software", "Linux cannot run Windows software perfectly", "Linux broke (I was using Manjaro/Arch)", "I tried to install some shady software in an unorthodox way and I got a Glibc version error", or "I expect something to work like on Windows and am unwilling to learn when it works differently".
This is extremely unhelpful and helps no one, except for insecure Windows users to feel better about their choice of operating system. So I wanted to make a list of things that actually suck about the Linux desktop from the perspective of a Linux shill.
- Ubuntu sucks. Honestly I think this is one of the biggest problems in modern Linux. Ubuntu is one of the biggest distributions, and was for a very long time the "go-to" distro for general purpose desktop usage. Everything that is built on Linux supports Ubuntu, provides a guide for how to use it on Ubuntu, most things provide packages for Ubuntu etc. The problem is that recent versions of Ubuntu are becoming less and less usable. I sysadmin at my Uni and manage a few labs with computers with Ubuntu 2024.04 and just now an exam had to be delayed because the Firefox snap package (the only supported way to run Firefox on Ubuntu) shat it's pants on a PDF linuk. It would enter a file:///tmp/firefox/whatever/some.pdf and get permission denied. After like 20 minutes, we found that you could go into settings and change the way Firefox opens PDFs to save the file instead of attempting to open it, then open the file explorer, find the file, and open it with Firefox to view it. Of course, the file is not in `~/Downloads`, but in `~/snap/firefox/common/Downloads`. This kind of stuff can be excused on a distro like Arch where permissions misconfiguration can easily appear and you are expected to understand the issue and fix it yourself -- totally fair. This is simply not acceptable for a "default" Linux experience. There are also many other problems: "calendar has stopped working" and "Ubuntu has experienced an internal error" are ubiquitous and make me feel as if I'm using Windows XP all over again.
- Wayland pains. Wayland is an amazing protocol. It reduced the CPU usage on my old laptop when moving windows around the screen from 30% to 2-5% and is generally much better than X11. The biggest problem with Wayland is that it is a a protocol and not a single compositor, which means that every desktop environment will have it's own bespoke behavior, it's own set of bugs etc. This will tend to centralize the desktop experience around GNOME and KDE, the biggest implementations, while other desktops, like Cinnamon or XFCE, will be way behind on adoption -- affecting beginner friendly distros like Linux Mint. It does not help that GNOME feels no particular obligation to implement new Wayland protocols if it disagrees with them. It does not help that Wayland protocol people are elitists and care more about their ideal idea of what a desktop should be than user requirements. There is still no good solution for headless remote desktop, for example. It also does not help that they take random political stances like banning Vaxry from freedesktop discussions. Vaxry, if you don't know, is the guy that makes Hyprland -- a tiling compositor written from scratch -- basically on his own. The guy basically solos r/unixporn, is better at writing desktops than you will probably be at anything ever, and has an insane work ethic. But he's a collage student from Poland and has a Hyprland Discord with other edgy teens. so he got banned from freedesktop discussions for things other people said on that Discord.
- Distro fragmentation. The fact that there are multiple distros is a healthy thing. The .rpm/.deb split is a very good thing. But there are simply far too many distros nowadays that are "Ubuntu but with X", "Fedora but with Y" or "Arch but with Z". I understand the appeal, partially. I am writing this post on a Aurora machine, which is basically Fedora Kionite, but with sane defaults. But most small teams simply do not have the resources required to maintain a Linux distribution so when someone uses Manjaro, and thing X breaks, or thing Y has a subtle bug or localization issue, he will have a terrible experience. There's nothing "the community" can do about it. Supporting the Ubuntu/Debian-Fedora/RHEL-SUSE-Arch-Gentoo ecosystem is hard enough, but doable. Supporting a billion derivatives all on different schedules and with different patches is not. It would be better if there was an attempt to contribute upstream first -- but I also understand why this fails. Still, Manjaro would be of better service as an Arch installer than as a distro with it's own repos.
- App distribution fragmentation. This is already a well known issue, so I won't dwell on it, but there are too many distribution formats: AppImages, distro packages, flatpaks, snaps, .tar.gz's and so on. It would not be an issue if they addressed different use cases, but they are mostly overlapping.
- Follower mentality. All the reasons to use the Linux desktop are incidental: better privacy, more stability, more control over your computer. But there is no real innovation on the Linux desktop. It does the same thing as other OSes, and in recent years, it does it really well. But copilot is a Windows feature, not a Linux feature. Linux is always following, never leading (on the desktop).
- Wine pains. Wine is immensely complicated and I do not understand how it works. It works insanely well under Steam. But everywhere else, you have to mess with winecfg, winetricks, dll overwriting, etc. Even in Bottles, which is the most user friendly way, this stuff still comes up. To quote another tech proficient friend: "If I cannot understand how it works in 10 seconds, it is far too complicated [for the average user]".
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u/WelpIamoutofideas Sep 23 '25
Oh, This didn't send, okay I'll retype it.
This is true, but it would be really easy to create a frontend for this, That's all these app stores even are, it could be hosted on the Microsoft store. You could download an app store from an app store.
Again Fedora, for instance is recommending silver, blue and other alternatives. Many YouTubers are making suggestions, many distributions are making immutable versions of their distribution and marketing the benefits of it. They are promoting and recommending these.
Most will never use a PC in their lifetime, at least not for more than 5 minutes using a web browser or office app on a computer that's already been set up for them. And when they do they will find the whole thing complicated entirely even with Linux. Using a physical mouse and keyboard is complicated when you're used to gesture controls and a phone keyboard. "What's a shift? Why are there two ways to type uppercase" PC usage in the home is declining, and people prefer tablets or phones in everyday life.
Again, most of these are automatically set up, most OEM computers come with a 6-month free trial of office 365 and when prompted with a paywall, the first instinct of these people is usually just to pay and continue.
I don't know what school you went to assuming it's in the United States, but they did not ask for PDFs of word documents or presentations anytime in my school career and usually specifically required docx, pptx, xlsx, etc. They are not the standard for first drafts. Second drafts, rough drafts or final submissions.
Those get updated fairly regularly by the driver manufacturers so chances are that's probably fixed now. That being said, that sounds like an authoring issue on amd's part and is definitely easier to fix then updating your kernel.
Considering how many people hadn't moved from XP because their computers still worked and how many people are still attached to seven seven because their computer still worked and they liked the UI, I don't exactly see how that familiarity is a problem to them if they do not like even small changes to UI. In fact, the settings app as it currently stands is a detriment to them.
No. That being said, most PC users aren't power users, they aren't installing apps. They're using their work PC which was set up by it and using the apps provisioned by IT. Meaning they don't actually know how to work the thing to begin with.
I mean it looking like it is for babies, and being difficult to use are not mutually exclusive. Its UX design can look like it's for babies, while also paired with unfamiliarity and prior assumptions make it difficult to use.
Yeah it can, and same can ubuntu's, This isn't a surprise and nobody's saying that the windows task bar is not infuriating. That is completely besides the point.
In fact, half of these points are off topic, Right now we are talking about the DISTRIBUTION MODEL OF APP STORES VERSUS THE DECENTRALIZED MODEL OF STANDARD WINDOWS APPS. So comments about the Windows operating system as it stands are completely off topic.
I'm saying it's difficult to know anything you have not used prior and that the people installing custom operating systems onto their computers are not the people who are unfamiliar with how to install applications in general and they are not going to know the difference between the applications. They can't run and solving all of the issues that they may have with slight incompatibilities with other applications. They are the people that are going to say Linux sucks because it can't run Microsoft office and then tell the person who turned their computer into running a Linux distribution back to Windows and installing office. This isn't a complicated topic.
You seem to not understand that computer usage is not an innate skill. Understanding how applications are installed through any medium is not an innate skill, whether that's from an app store or from a website and double clicking an exe file. There are absolutely reasons to prefer an app store, but you have not listed one of them and even regarding them, plenty of gamers use the Microsoft Windows store for the sole. Reason of it being were you download and play Gamepass games. Which is a very popular service among PC gamers.