My experience with linux mint

[hjsam]

Hello, I recently started dual boot linux mint after 15 years of using windows. On windows, I'm not necessarily a real power user but I know programming quite a bit since I'm a CS student. Although not the first linux I tried, it is the one I decided to get stuck with mainly because it doesn't require many tweak to get the experience I wanted to have. Pretty much "It just works" as it was advertised. However, there are several things that I took significant amount of time to get it works. Honestly I don't necessarily expect any linux distro to be completely working out of the box either. Even on windows I occasionally need to get to registry editor or group policy editor that are kind of obscure to average user. Here is some of the stuff that give me significant problem on linux mint:

• I wanted windows style "show desktop" button, without the icon. Just want it to be a dozen pixel wide on the right hand corner of my panel. This took me like 6 hours to get it done but managed to get it done regardless, by hacking the original linux mint "show desktop" applet. One of the hardest to do since I need to see linux mint documentation and stuff to see how applet works.

• I can't manage to get nvidia driver and secure boot to work nicely along with each other. After futile hours trying to sign the kernel module, I decided to just turn off secure boot completely. Still haven't solved it though and I just give up on trying to have secure boot.

• Using nvidia driver, I got really bad screen tearing on most application that don't have vsync option. Got it solved after hours of googling and adding some stuff on /etc/xorg.conf or something like that. I already forgot the exact solution though.

• Forcing pulseaudio to use highest audio quality is also a headache. The first thing I note when I use linux the first time is the sound quality on most youtube video is really bad compared to windows.

• My SSD apparently don't support NCQ so whenever I boot there is this "failed to set xfermode" error that linux mint hide. I thought linux mint somehow solved the issue when I switched from both Ubuntu and Debian where I always get that error. I eventually managed to find that such error still hasn't solved yet through dmesg. This problem add my booting time by about 4 seconds since the kernel tried to do this NCQ thingy to the SSD until it times out. Eventually managed to solve it by forcing the kernel to not use NCQ via grub. This is the one problem that for the longest time I thought have no solution, I even tried to update my SSD firmware.

Pretty much that's it. Mint is a good distro regardless and I'm sure I will bump to the same problems on any other distro.

[winxpwasgreat]

Unfortunately the kind of issues you mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg of the many things which don't work prooperly on linux mint.
What puzzles me is that those basic issues were the same aspects people were complaining about linux 15 years ago, which means not enough focus or resources have been pointed there, perhaps due to the fact the overall underlying philosophy seems to be to make an OS for nerds who can figure out how to solve stuff, rather than the average winxp users who hates wasting his time when plug and play doesn't work.

Linux had a golden opportunity to become the king of OS between that buggy virus ridden spyware piece of shit modern windows 10 is, and the even worse apple OS (having to relearn everything including dealing with a different keyboard.. registering accounts.. rainbows that).
All the three of them now suck; you either lose your time and patience, or your privacy, or your security.
Linux: lose time and energy
Apple: lose time and privacy
Windows: lose security and privacy

This is how it is, one should chose their OS according to what he is able and not able to lose.

[ud6]

Linux: lose time and energy
Apple: lose time and privacy
Windows: lose security and privacy

Ah ah. Very true. I didn't have problems with mint, but I'm on a small laptop so not really looked at improving quality of video or sound as probably won't make much difference. It is unfortunate that most things are designed for windows. However, we gotta remember that linux is more stable i.e. once you've set it up right I've found it crashes much less and doesn't slow down. Going back to windows now is agony for me as too designed to sell things to you.