I’m a life-long Windows user who nowdays has a MacBook as a daily driver and a gaming PC running Linux. I consider myself somewhat tech savvy but holy fuck Linux just makes me want to tear my head off. I just spent 45 minutes trying to install Standard Notes “the right way” and in the end I just gave up and downloaded it from the Ubuntu store instead. Error, you need to add this repository. Error, you need to enable this feature. Error, you need to install this tool first which you can use to install another tool and that tool helps you fix the issue preventing you to solve the first issue etc. I honestly can’t even imagine how you could make this any more difficult.
I guess Linux is like welding; it’s great when someone sets the welder up for you and you just press the trigger and start welding but you’re up for some absolute misery trying to figure that out on your own.
Also, a huge credit to chatGPT. I can just take picture of my terminal window and it gives me step-by-step instructions on how to troubleshoot most issues I’ve had. I’d be at complete loss without it.
Remember when only one application at a time could play sound? And then Ubuntu shipped an early build of pulseaudio, and all of a suden no application could play a sound? :P
Makes me appreciate PipeWire so much more.
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Finding driver’s and IRQ settings for my Creative Labs Soundblaster. I fought with OSS, ALSA, and Jack to enable real-time audio. I heard my audio get garbled, unfixable without a reboot. All those moments will be lost in time, like using Subversion for source control. Time to reinstall.