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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Basic features wouldn’t work properly if not at all.
I just installed Debian 12 on my Surface Go 2. The camera isn’t working, touch is broken, casting screen not working, on screen keyboard isn’t working.
Mind you I’m a full stack developer and i have a linux server at home so I have decent technical knowledge and a little bit of time.
Afaik Debian doesn't support proprietary drivers out of the box.
Maybe you have a better experience with other distros as Fedora (or its daughter Nobara) or Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu but imo better).
EDIT: What are your spec? I'm sure the problems you're experiencing are related to your hardware and their drivers being closed source.
I hope that snaps, flatpaks, AppImages, etc., will make a big difference in terms of adoption and ease of use. As @[email protected] said, if complications arise while trying to install or use software, then you're basically screwed unless you have a really good tutorial or deep knowledge. I've been using various Linux distros as daily drivers for the past ~10 years, and in that time, I still haven't figured out why there's such a big emphasis on compiling software. Your average Windows user has probably never even heard of compilation let alone been required to compile software in order to use it. For better or worse, the emphasis in Windows is on shipping binaries that the user can simply double-click to run. And if we want to reduce frustration for new Linux users, we can't expect them to know how to compile software. Snaps, flatpaks, and AppImages definitely move us in the right direction even if there's a lot of internal debate about which of those is best.
It's also nice to see big flagship projects like Gnome finally really taking off in terms of quality. Of course, the Gnome desktop environment won't appeal to everyone aesthetically, and it's generally much more resource-intensive than Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE, LXQt, etc.; but distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, Pop!_OS, etc., look really great and work really well out of the box for most people. Same with Linux Mint. And I personally don't care for KDE, but it's another DE that's pretty solid.
I've been daily driving Pop on my laptop and my biggest frustrations currently are lack of working drivers for the fingerprint reader and speakers, and the Proton VPN client is crap compared to Windows.
Does proton support wireguard? That has first-class support on Linux.
When I was still a Linux noob I used to want to do all of the cool customizations and would often end up rendering the operating system unusable. Eventually I just switched to KDE whoch has a lot of customization built in. Some distros make it harder to shoot yourself in the foot, but I think being able to customize and run the latest software out of the box makes a huge difference.
I think this is a clash on workflows. I'm a windows user turned to linux. All I knew about was Windows and there was frustration during the transition. Now I'm at home in linux. Recently I had to use Windows for work. I wanted the gnome edge scrolling feature for my touchpad on windows. Couldn't figure it out even after hours and days of effort. The package management options was okay but sub par when you compare with linux. I hated the windows terminal. It always felt slow on my laptop. But was okay on workstation. I tried to mimick many other linux behaviour, like krunner and the windows alternatives ended up slowing down the system further and I was left unsatisfied. I've now returned to linux and run a windows vm in gnome boxes whenever I need something in windows world. We need to accept that linux and windows are like apples and oranges. We can't make them taste and feel the same. We could hope for software releases for both platforms from developers and vendors. But the experience would always remain different. In the end we the end user has to compromise.
Edit: Op I think I went a bit off topic keeping other comments in mind. All I can offer you is the frustration is inevitable if you want to do edge cases. Stick to gui options. Try to understand commands before jumping to cli. Use a container or vm to do the inevitable trial and error learning. Try to pick up on how best to phrase your problem so that your search engine can give you the relevant articles and not spam.
As a mostly windows user, I've tried a few times, using various distributions. When buying my last pc and installing a popular linux distribution, it did not recognise my network card at all. Researching online told me I had to compile the drivers myself, since my distri did not have any shipped with it yet. ...which is pretty hard, having no internet access because of the network card not working.
For non-tech users, I feel like some parts are still pretty hard to diagnose. If an issue arises you mostly have to touch the command line and I can understand people being scared of it, having to edit plain text files, or type and enter commands that aren't descriptive, much less finding the right command by guessing. It certainly improved, with GUIs being available for most stuff, but if you want something specific, is still feels pretty rough on the edges sometimes, from the eyes of a normal user.
If you mostly need your basic apps, like browser, some office apps or a music player it works great, though.