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.
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.
most linux users now just use flathub and their distros flatpak manager
I can’t cross play on Ghost of Tsushima.
I can’t get my MT7927 wifi chip to work
I still have issues with Snap… But I switched to an Arch distro to fix that problem
I find it weird that fingerprint auth and password auth aren’t active at the same time. It’s either one or the other which is really frustrating
You can alter your PAM configuration to require both: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/572841
On my system, by default it lets you use either one to authenticate any time a password is needed, but this can be changed to require successful authentication using BOTH methods if desired.
I wasn’t sure if you were wanting to require both, or just allow either one to be used, but both scenarios are trivial to configure.
External web cams. Even those that are said to be fairly compatible have issues. And it’s not with the cams, its v4l and the kernel drivers.
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)
You might enjoy this video/series: https://youtu.be/yawlonjLp4c
I’ve been trying to get my audio working the way I want (instead of everything just going to the default sink), and it’s been helpful.
Thanks, I’ll take a look!
On bazzite
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Can’t change my Plymouth boot screen
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Can’t set animated icons in toolbar (KDE)
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The screen transition I chose is glitchy
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The translation tries VERY hard to be different from windows (idk what’s up with that as on other system it was normal(propably, I would need to make sure))
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I don’t know how to run containers from within containers, but that’s a skill issue. (I wanted to build piefed from distrobox)
For the longest time I had to disable manually a module so my graphics tablet would work. It was fixed a month ago!
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On Bazzite.
Programs often take a concerningly-long time to load. Like 30 seconds+. But it’s intermittent. Haven’t been able to put together any patterns as to when this does or doesn’t happen.
About 1/3 of the time when I try to open a PDF file (which open in Firefox), they just… don’t. Plasma will just spin with the Firefox icon on the mouse cursor for like 10 seconds and then silently do nothing. No errors of any kind reported. No idea where I might look for logs or whatever to help diagnose the issue.
Dolphin is definitely lacking in the UX department for frequent actions I’m used to in Windows, like mounting SMV shares with non-default credentials (basically impossible in Dolphin, only doable in CLI), creating new folders (I’ve been spoiled by having a dedicated toolbar button), and working with elevated permissions (Windows will just seamlessly prompt you when additional permissions are needed, Dolphin will just error, sometimes with useless error messages, and make you go elevate your session separately).
Windows (the UI concept, not the OS) do not remember and restore to their prior locations, which Windows (the OS) always handled pretty seamlessly. I know I can supposedly make this happen via the “window rules” settings, but I haven’t been able to find ANY good resources on how that system actually works, and when I tried to just do it intuitively, I fucked up things like where the Application Menu and Open File dialogs appear. No, I don’t want to have to configure it specially for every app I might use, I want there to just be sensible defaults that I don’t have to fight against.
Those are the ones that’re coming to mind. All very nitpicky, but I’m largely a UI/UX designer at work, so I’m pretty sensitive to nitpicky things. No regrets, though.
New Bazsite user too.
The Firefox thing is not specific to opening a PDF. I get the same behavior you describe just when I open Firefox. It’s probably just first launch after a new boot for me but I’m not sure.
It’s definitely not just first open, for me. Every two weeks, I scan and organize receipts as PDFs for my own accounting, so I end up with many files open at once, all while my existing Firefox wibdows are already open.
Do you have to use firefox for your pdfs? There are much better alternatives.
Not particularly, it’s just the default. And it’s not really about the PDFs, it happens when I’m trying to visit links, from outside of Firefox as well. Opening PDFs is just something I do far more often.
I wish amdgpu would get debugged so I didn’t have to save every thirty seconds whenever I do anything.
Gaming is the only thing stopping me from completely getting rid of windows forever, its slowly getting there. I feel powerful with my hands on a terminal, only the sky is the limit on what I can do, where as powershell makes me want to start chain smoking.
As a gamer who did switch, curious what games are preventing the switch. In my experience sometimes it struggles with indie games only released for Windows that have probably been downloaded maybe 100 times at best; and probably as you know anything with kernel-level anticheat
I havent tried any competitive games or games with anticheat. Everything else I’ve tried works without any hiccups, including anno which uses the ubisoft launcher.
At the end of the day, im willing to give up gaming to flip Microsoft the bird.
Its so easy nowadays on Steam, and other clients like Lutris for GoG and Heroic for Epic Games. They care care of all the extra software to install to run Windows games.
You simply install the client, run the game. As simple as Windows. Plus the epic power of Linux. Its the best for new and older hardware.
No fingerprint login. Its frustrating that in all cases I can use my fingerprint instead of a password except when booting up my laptop.
Also, QOL and stability features would be nice. Buttons that dont work shouldn’t be visible, for example, and getting a useful error message from many apps can be a headache.
Recently, I had a problem where amy app using electron suddenly stopped working at all. When ran with the terminal, it showed 2 errors, neither of which told you how to fix the issue. Eventually I figured out that using flatseal to force all apps to use wayland fixed the issue and made things smoother as well.
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.I’m on openSUSE Tumbleweed using KDE Wayland
Sometimes my session will freeze up and I have to switch to tty and back to the GUI session to fix it.
I run a windows VM through winboat and it works well enough but it is particularly jank in regards to having multiple or even just 1 program open at times.
Every time I mount a veracrypt drive, baloorunner starts eating up my memory until I run out and I might have to hard reboot
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 Rustdesk and remote into my work PC. The lag is horrible and my windows key and alt keys don’t translate into the remote desktop.
Same PC running win 11 is buttery smooth.
I have the sane problem with the Super (Windows) and alt button running locally instead of just the remote machine.
You might find better success with Moonshine & Sunshine together. It works with Android as well. And provides 4K HD streaming which is great for gaming.
I will try this right now.
Let me know how it goes. I don’t gave much experience with them. But if they’re made well for gaming, should for good for a full experience.
Ok, I was not successful in setting this up. It’s not as seamless as rustdesk or anydesk. After installing sunshine, it sorta drops you off on a browser without any instructions. After asking AI, I think I have that setup.
Then moving on into Fedora, I found the flatpak and installed the moonlight installer. Then launched the app and clicked the download, it finishes downloading and does nothing. No new app. No next steps. Just nothing.
So I gave up. I’m trying Remmina and trying RDP. Maybe it will be better, but I don’t have high hopes.
SOLUTION
Using my ArchLinux as a Sunshine server, and Ubuntu as a Moonlight client:
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Sunshine devs advise using your Distros package manager (“apt” if on Ubuntu/Debian. AURs “yay” or “paru” if on ArchLinux, or “dns” if on Fedora/CentOS/RHEL), instead of using your Distros AppStore, or either AppImage or Flatpak – although they may still work.
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Run the following on the terminal command line of your Sunshine server:
sudo setcap cap_sys_admin+p $(readlink -f $(which sunshine))- Restart Sunshine server.
Then either restart Sunshine by opening on your browser
https://localhost:47990/troubleshootingor reboot the whole machine if that doesn’t work.- Set username and password for Sunshine here if prompted:
https://localhost:47990/ - In Moonlight client, click the gear on the top right (settings), then Enable
Capture system keyboard shortcuts - Connect to Sunshine using Moonlight client using the 192.168.xxx.xxx IP of your Sunshine server. Running the following on the terminal of your Sunshine server should show your IP:
ip addr - Input pin shown from Moonlight into
https://localhost:47990/pinwebpage of the Sunshine server. - Use
CTL + Shift + Alt + Qto escape.
Extra info / rant, may not be useful
I just tried Sunshine (remote host) and Moonlight (client). There was a bit more setting up. They mention on their docs somewhere to use your distro’s package manager instead of app stores if you can.
On ArchLinux, I needed to run this in the command line first, and then restart.
sudo setcap cap_sys_admin+p $(readlink -f $(which sunshine))And then after running Sunshine, and accessing its web console
https://localhost:47990/, setting a username and password, to access it via Moonshine on my client by putting my 192.168.xxx.xxx IP, then placing the pin on the Sunshine remote host athttps://localhost:47990/pin. And then had 2 “Desktop” icons, 1 to connect with high res and another low res; and then a third icon to connect to “Steam” for Steam Big Picture mode connection.Also Moonlight and Sunshine starts with very low brightness. I’ve fixed this before, by going into the Moonlight or Sunshine settings – I don’t remember which one.
Although Moonlight and Sunshine does not ask for connection verification after I’ve connected once. Rustdesk would ask me everytime, and I did not figure out how to remove Rustdesk prompting the remote host to ask the connection.
And both Moonlight and Rustdesk run the super key on the client host.###
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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.








