Is it me or is (desktop) Linux still a terrible experience?

I'm not going to say using a different distro will fix all your problems but yeah, your experience is not normal. A lot of this is because Ubuntu is not highly recommended. It's just popular, but there are a bunch of terrible decisions it makes that barely anybody recommends it.

Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn’t replace it yet. Wouldn’t want a user to just be able to easily install files!

Checks out. Ubuntu is also one of the only modern distros that doesn't come with Flatpak, which is a massive store of applications that's quite easy to use and has a huge store of applications.

May I recommend something like PopOS instead? It's based on Ubuntu so everything from there will work on it, including .deb files. It's basically Ubuntu but with way, WAY saner defaults and a better beginner experience. I think your experience will be a lot better on a nicer distro.

Downloaded the latest Ubuntu Desktop

Theres your problem.

Not really sure what to think when I see posts like this. Maybe there's some people it's just not for. I don't want to be negative, but I think some folks just might not be open to it.

I've been using exclusively Linux for all my computing for over 3 years now. My high-end gaming PC, my work laptop that I service multiple IT clients with, my Steam Deck, my entire home lab, even my phone runs GrapheneOS. And I love all of it.

I use a bunch of different distros, Manjaro, Nobara, Ubuntu, Alma, Fedora, Mint, Lubuntu, with different desktop environments, apps, services like SMB, NFS, DHCP, Apache, TrueNAS, Jellyfin, various gaming servers for Minecraft, Arma 3, Valhiem, etc.

I play scores of different games, online Mutiplayer, single player, indie, AAA, retro titles. I do all my email, ticketing, business accounting, invoicing, banking, Discord, matrix, social media, personal email, browsing, printing, scanning, streaming and editing on Linux. There's literally nothing I do in my personal or business computing that runs on Windows, not even in a VM.

I just don't really know what to tell folks that claim that Linux just doesn't work for desktop use. My systems are more stable than Windows, more customizable, easier to update, configure, and troubleshoot. They run faster, and are quicker to install.

I just switched my parents to Linux Mint this holiday season and they've had no problems, all their basic computing needs Linux handles perfectly and runs better on their super old hardware than Windows ever did.

My friends and I love our Steam Decks, use them all the time, both in gaming and in desktop mode, all Linux there too.

Idk, it has been amazing for me to be 100% free of Windows forever. I don't miss it an all, I just wish I had converted sooner. And I'm not some Linux god who lives in the terminal all the time either, but the documentation and help from the community is endless and has helped me solve any issues I've had.

Yes, it's just you.

To be honest it seems like it's a specific problem to you. I use Linux desktop for many years and for 3 years exclusively and it's a much better experience for me than Windows (in every aspect).

I think it's just a lack of experience on your side. You are comparing your years of experience on Windows with a OS you barely know.

Just because you are a "power user" on Windows doesn't mean you can handle Linux the same way.

This is a case of YMMV. I hate nearly everything about Windows, but there are people who swear by it. After nearly 15 years on it, there are many things I find natural on linux that are rendered difficult for no pissing reason on Windows.

To this day I don't understand what the difference is between the networks one can choose "Home network", "Public Network", etc. . Also, sporadically dying DHCP was so much fun to fix. There were some WiFi networks that worked fine on other computers, but mine just refused to get IP, subnet, and gateway, so I had to copy paste them from others.

Setting up a developer environment was incredibly annoying the last time I tried it on windows 7 because every flipping thing has to go through a GUI that you have to find first. The PATH variable is in some setting somewhere that took me ages to find and it didn't work. Ended up configuring the IDE's environment variable individually, but it didn't have a console in it (very early days), so opening cmd.exe meant trying to find the right env vars to set.

I remember installing a firewall and window deciding that "no, windows firewall has to be activated now", activating itself and conflicting with the installed firewall.

Dunno if it's still necessary, but reg cleaners and defragging were absolutely essential back then to have a fast system for more than a year. Recently had a friend with a slow system and her boyfriend just reinstalled windows for her because he didn't want to deal with whatever it was that was slowing down the system.

Semi-related: hardware stiff was no fun either. Printers were always a nightmare. "Install this Epson driver that installs a bunch of bloatware for free!" and you find out that the installed version doesn't work for some reason, so you have to hunt down why it doesn't work on your particular laptop only to stumble upon drivers for that printer by the damn laptop manufacturer.
Or laptop and desktop manufacturers that packaged their own graphics drivers and were constantly a few months behind the official drivers - and the official drivers wouldn't work on your hardware because the manufacturer had to do something special and your were stuck waiting for updates from the manufacturer. Of course manufacturers had their own updaters that barely functioned, so all you could do was check periodically yourself or wait for a bug to appear, hunt down the reason, find out it's an outdated driver and download it from the manufacturer.

I could go on. The trauma is deep. And don't get me started on those goddamn rainboots (Mac). That system is even worse than windows.

Anyway, all I'm saying is you had a shitty experience with "absolutely basic stuff" on linux desktop, big deal, it's a computer. Computers and software are buggy. Nothing's perfect. No-one claims Linux is perfect, it's just better for whatever they are doing and they are willing to put up linux specific stuff (like the totally valid stuff you pointed out) instead of putting up with windows/mac specific stuff. Linux desktop doesn't rub you the right way, fine. Windows nor Mac rub me the right way. That's the way of the world. We all decide how much stuff we can put up with. Maybe this is the end of the road for you with linux desktop, but it sure ain't for many other people.

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and then added it to my fstab as a workaround

Use of /etc/fstab is not a workaround. It's the standard place where you add things to mount.

Your problem is that you use googling, watching pictures and clicking through stuff, just like in Windows, thinking that this skill makes you an advanced user.

Instead of googling you can just read the error message, it usually sufficiently explains what the problem is.

Installing software should not change settings like file type associations, I think that's normal. You may think differently. Somebody has made a choice which in this case is closer to my opinion, in other cases that may be different.

Of course Ubuntu just threw out the old installer for debian files, and didn’t replace it yet. Wouldn’t want a user to just be able to easily install files! what is this, windows?

This is incomprehensible.

Ubuntu does still have a GUI to install software from .deb packages, I think.

But you shouldn't try to install packages for another distribution using .deb packages (like Debian itself), or packages for another Ubuntu version.

Unlike some software installer in Windows, a package on most Linux distributions doesn't include dependencies, only information about them and the software itself. Say, in Windows you can have the same DLL in a 100 copies and versions if it's not a system one. In Linux you usually have the same library installed and even loaded once.

But goddamn this desktop experience is so ridiculous, there has to be better than this right? I’m missing something, or doing something completely wrong, or… right?

Yes, you are getting something completely wrong, and it's the culture and not some technical difference.

Though I agree that outside of repositories maybe software should be distributed not in the same packages, but like something to be put into /opt, like in olden Linux days and more similar to your Windows experience ; GOG games' installers do that, only use ~/GOG\ Games or whatever you choose.

EDIT: And also Ubuntu as a distribution has some downsides. Try Mageia, it's not widely used, but pleasant. Or Fedora, everyone and their dog is using it. Or OpenSUSE, it's kinda spiritually corporate and they have worrying plans for the following major versions, but as of now it's pleasant.

EDIT2: Also why did you google for software in the first place? You couldn't find what you wanted in the repositories or just wasn't aware how it's done here?

If you need VRR on a Wayland environment, you might want to try Kubuntu or the Fedora KDE spin (as examples). There's also Sway, but a tiling WM may not be what you're looking for.

VRR isn't currently implemented on GNOMEs mutter (though it is actively being worked on).

You can patch mutter with the VRR work yourself (using a copr on Fedora, and perhaps a PPA on Ubuntu), though I wouldn't recommend it.

I use Linux Mint on several NUC-style computers. I even use it for servers even though it is a Desktop. Based on Ubuntu but it does fewer stupid things. I run many docker containers. Run Plex in docker. Can't speak to the refresh rate in X. Wayland is coming, but it will be a while.

You need Fedora in your life. Problem solved.

I've been on Fedora for a few years now, and been using some kind of Linux as primary for over 15 years. Your experience sounds like something from a few years ago.

If you haven't tried Fedora yet, I'd highly recommend it over Ubuntu, which is likely one of the bigger cause of your issues.

My rule of thumb has always been, get something from a major manufacturer that is not bleeding edge, so I can be sure driver support is there. That has served me well, and I also usually buy devices that area certified for Linux. That being said, Ubuntu has really jumped the shark and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the result of someone messing up some snaps in some way.

I made the same jump about 4 months ago. I had a long history of running servers and trying Linux desktop here and there and finding it lacking. I installed Ubuntu because that was the popular distro for the past 15-20 years. I gave it a month. It blew. Bugs and general broken shit that I had to constantly repair. I finally gave up and figured if I was going to spend time tinkering with every goddamn thing, I may as well be using Arch. Installed Arch and I'm having a much better time. I still have to troubleshoot and fix the odd broken thing, especially after package updates, but it's less tinkering than I've had to do with either Windows or Ubuntu. I'm not saying Arch is your answer, but I bet it's "not Ubuntu".

It's not you.

Out of innocent ignorance and bad suggestions you just chose one of the worst distributions (anything from Canonical) with the worst UI (Gnome).

Learn and just try again, that's totally okay.

If you want to stay in the deb ecosystem I'd suggest Debian with KDE Plasma. Don't let people tell you Debian is outdated or old or something, they are just uninformed. Plasma is also very advanced with VRR and HDR in the process of being finalized or already done.

Most distributions offer a live image so you can try them out in a virtual machine without going through installing every one on your hardware.

(yeah, i ended up finding how to mount things manually, and then added it to my fstab as a workaround, but wtf)

I think you're expecting Ubuntu to behave exactly like Windows. There are tasks which any Linux machine is going to be better-equipped for than Windows, and it'd be silly to say that Windows "is a terrible development experience" because it doesn't run valgrind or strace or whatever. Contrawise, there are things which will definitely be easier or more intuitive to set up on Windows as opposed to any Linux distro you find, but that doesn't mean it's a bad desktop; just that it has a different set of strengths and weaknesses. For me, adding to fstab would be more of a normal thing to do than to use the Ubuntu GUI by quite a lot.

It kind of sounds like you're not interested in a lot of the benefits of having a Linux installation, just interested in something that works exactly like Windows and is good at exactly the same things. In which case, and I'm not trying to sound sarcastic, Windows might be more what you're interested in.

(Or, actually, a Mac may be more specifically what you're looking for -- similar "it just works" ness like Windows but works better for most things, outside a handful of specific tasks Windows still does better)

(Also - if Ubuntu really is refusing to talk to an SMB v2 machine I'd be very surprised by that. Which tool were you using? The built in Ubuntu desktop SMB browser I assume? What did you do to verify that it was the lack of XMB v1 that was the problem (e.g. enabling SMB1 temporarily and seeing if the tool started working)? As you noted, SMB v1 is terrible and if it's forcing the use of it, that's a for-real problem.)

Noticed that even though i enabled that setting on Kodi, it’s not switching to the refreshrate of the video i’m playing.

I have literally never in my life had my monitor's refresh rate switch to match the framerate of the video I'm watching. What refresh rate was it, and what's the framerate that you wanted it to match? I'm trying to wrap my head around what it is that you're watching that just letting the screen refresh at 60Hz or whatever speed it was going at won't cut it.

The HDR is a fair point. That's a legit example of something where I could easily see Windows working better than Linux, which is why I wouldn't try to use one as a drop-in replacement for the other. This exact type of thing -- some niche feature which genuinely is pretty useful but requires a bunch of different softwares to play nice with each other when Windows just sort of works out-of-the-box -- is something where Linux tends to lag behind.

Downloaded the .deb file (since ubuntu is a debian variant it seems), double clicked the file and … “no app installed for this file”…

This just isn't the way to do it -- installing Debian .debs on Ubuntu definitely won't work reliably, and downloading and installing random .debs from the internet is rarely the way to do it even if the distros do match (flavor and exact version). Does Rancher fit your needs? Looking over this it looks like that's the first thing I would try if I wanted "something like Dockstation that works well on Ubuntu."

I think overall -- just realize that Linux was created for very different reasons than "I want exactly the same thing as Windows, just to do all the work to create Windows over again and give it away for free." It was created for people who wanted a very specific type of development-friendly and Unix-friendly environment, and since the majority of it is still being made by those people for those people, it's gonna be constructed according to those parameters.

I think that the linux desktop has improved dramatically every year, but there are issues as well. This really isn't unique to linux though, no OS out there fulfills every user's needs (and in the case of linux, there are so many different people/groups with different philosophies making distros, that it can be super hit or miss). I've had my fair share of normal updates breaking the system, or installing ubuntu and getting booted straight to the tty since it didn't ship with nvidia drivers at the time. Even now, when I run an update, I have to manually delete the updated nvidia driver and manually downgrade to the old one because I simply get a black screen with the new one.
The issues are always managable, fixable, but I think that they do make linux very difficult for people without the time or understanding to troubleshoot the problem.
But, when I was on windows I had plenty of things break there too, ads in the start menu, that sluggishness that windows always seems to get if you don't do a fresh install every year or two. I had a game that would crash on boot if I had my USB headset plugged in. And of course, updates breaking the system randomly.

The issues you seem to be having aren't normal, and while I'm tempted to blame Ubuntu, I'm not sure. Ubuntu makes some really strange choices, I feel, and did cause me more issues than other distro's I've tried.
But really the core of what I'm saying is that depending on your use case, linux might suck, but it can also be far better than other OS's.

so to summary your first steps were:

• accessing a inhouse NAS
• setting up kodi and trying to switch refresh-rates & HDR
• running some docker UI

i have 2 question - if you want to run rather advanced stuff

• why not invest some time to check how its done in linux?
• why did you chose a beginner distro focusing on the 80% needs of a home user

all of your described usecases are possible - no exceptions, but after you obviously spent decades of time in other desktops, you might move out of your comfort zone to make the next step. ubuntu is pretty easy for the easy stuff, linux as it is makes a fantastic system if you want to do some advanced stuff, but it lets you do the decisions (which means you(!) have to gain the skill to do the decisions)

we're here - the community is here to help ... but not here to do pre-sales for someone .... my tipp:

1. check what you want to do
2. check how its done
3. do it
4. you face a problem - provide a description and ask for a solution, but do your part

long story short - i think 90% of users would be happy with windows, mac os and linux just the way all of them come out of the box. most of the time they spend in a browser, checking photos or consume some media .... all of before mentioned OSs can do that pretty much without any hickups

if you go into the advanced stuff its a different story. macOS will do lots of decisions for you (but they might not be in your interest). windows has such a big user base that you have a great chance to get some ready to use description because somebody faced the exact same problem years ago. linux - advanced stuff - but no willingnes to learn - yeah man, that won't be a good match

As others have said, I think this is an Ubuntu problem, not a Linux problem. I've used Linux Mint Cinnamon and Manjaro KDE on the desktop with literally zero problems. However, I installed Ubuntu on a server because I figured that Ubuntu's (former) popularity would mean there would be a much larger online knowledge pool to help with problems. Also, an IT friend recommended it. Unfortunately, I'm regretting installing Ubunbtu. Canonical's use of snaps at a deep level has caused me a bunch of random problems. Sure, problems can be fixed or worked around, but it is definitely the least friendly distro I've used. I should have heeded the warnings and stayed away from Ubuntu.

Having tried everything here, Mint

Yes, linux is terrible on the desktop.

I've worked in a Linux shop for the last 20 years, we provide a desktop-linux environment (latest debian) for thousands of users, and even with dedicated professionals managing it, the UX is just hilariously terrible by modern standards, right across the board.

My god that's the perfect metaphor: it's the desktop-experience version of PHP. No one thing is particularly broken in and of itself, but the set of all of them together... SMH.

I refuse to deal with it on a daily basis for file-print-web-email stuff; I use a Windows box as my desktop machine, and just SSH or VNC into the backend for the actual sysadmin part of my job. OSX is usable too, but I just don't like it.

To be absolutely clear: Linux is the only sane choice for backend services or development; no normal person would willingly subject themselves to Windows for either of those purposes. But for the box you physically plug your mouse into, using linux is sheer masochism.