I drove my friend’s RC car into a storm drain when I was a kid.

🌈⭐️ the more you know.

I always called it the number sign.

So if anything, it’s not that “Linux doesn’t support Logitech” it’s that Logitech doesn’t Support Linux.

While you are correct, you’re also missing the point. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. The end user doesn’t care whose “fault” it is. They only care that they have a tool in front of them that does not meet their needs. If the end user needs a mouse with a billion macro buttons, then an OS that does not support a mouse with a billion macro buttons will not work for them. If you want that user to be a happy Linux user, then you’d better make that mouse work.

Half the people in this thread can’t see that most people, no I don’t mean most people on Lemmy, just most people period, want their computer to be a tool, a means to an end. They want it to get out of the way and enable them to crunch spreadsheet numbers or play video games or paint digital art or process words. If you’re an able-bodied software developer, desktop Linux is an excellent tool. If you’re an able-bodied anything else and have found that Linux works for you, good on you, but you’re a minority. If you’re a disabled anything else and have found that Linux works for you, please tell me how because I would love nothing more than to leave Windows and go somewhere that lets my personal computer be my personal computer.

What makes you qualified to make that statement? I have to rely on assistive software to use a computer. I am the only judge of what meets my needs, and years of trying to use it have informed me that desktop Linux does not meet my needs. period. end of discussion. I have made the reasons why clear elsewhere in this thread.

I always disable the card in the BIOS before I do anything that requires it to be disconnected. In this case I had both an Ethernet adapter and WiFi radio. Both were disabled and I’m currently typing from my newly decrappified and locally managed system.

Here are my exact steps:

1. go to “reset this PC”
2. select the cloud install
3. select the option to erase everything
4. wait for the installer to download. The machine will restart. In my case my Windows bootloader is broken and it tries to boot using GRUB. I haven’t figured out how to fix it including “fix boot” or whatever the recovery option is, but that’s neither here nor there. I rebooted from GRUB, went into the BIOS, and disabled all networking hardware (Ethernet and WiFi).
5. Rebooted again (I have to manually go into the one time boot menu every time) and go into Windows. Once it gets to the “Let’s get you connected” screen, I pressed shift+F10, then entered oobe\bypassnro.
6. The computer immediately rebooted and started the install wizard again (asking about keyboard layouts and such).
7. On the “Let’s get you connected” screen, there was now a tiny unhighlighted option I don't have internet. I clicked it and it let me create a local account.

If you use Excel every day, switching is likely not pragmatic, as the OSS solutions simply don’t compare yet and will always fall short if you use tables (about 90% of the spreadsheets I’ve ever been sent).

thisthisthisthis. I use Excel tables constantly. It’s a common theme with LibreOffice. Got something simple, maybe a doc with a few headers? Great, no problem, you can interoperate just fine. But go off the beaten path and you inevitably run into trouble. If I were sharing documents with exactly nobody I could happily switch, but the reality is I have to work with other people. And Windows/Office is what other people use. This is what I mean when I say Linux only works if you’re a dev. There’s lots of excellent text editors and IDEs and compilers and the like, but outside of that verdant oasis it’s a desert of broken non-options.

Regarding Mint, Bluetooth is maddeningly inconsistent. I’ve had stuff that works perfectly… exactly once, then never ever again, no matter what unspeakable tortures I inflict on the Bluetooth settings or what arcane wizardry I attempt in the terminal.

Thanks, have an upvote :)

What distro of Linux did you use that was so difficult? Something like Mint is very entry level and intuitive. You don’t have to run any terminal commands if you don’t want to, and the out of box configuration is good enough that you don’t have to modify anything for a stable, up to date system.

I started with Ubuntu 8.10 in early 2009. From there I’ve tried mostly Ubuntu but have explored other distros. My usage pattern usually goes like this. I get sick of some Windows BS or just want to convince myself I’m a competent IT industry professional. I install some Linux distro on a separate SSD and only boot into that for as long as I can. The phase usually lasts from a week to about 2 or 3 months. My longest I think was between November 2023 and March of 2024 where I used Mint. I’ve tried all the various *buntus, Pop!_OS, CentOS (RIP). I’ve even used Arch ^btw, installed it myself and everything. In the end I either run into something that simply doesn’t exist on Linux or get sick of arcane kludges for things that just work on Windows and then come crawling back to Bill feeling defeated. This happens at least once a year but usually more.

Non-existent accessibility is the biggest hurdle, and I have zero faith that it will improve. Accessibility is an afterthought even for huge companies with the resources to devote to it, and you can forget about it for the comparatively smaller loose associations of developers contributing to the software stack that is a typical Linux distro. I was there for the transition from GNOME 2 to Unity and eventually to GNOME 3, as well as from X to Wayland, and it’s just been downhill each time. Orca simply doesn’t work, period. Magnification, if present at all, is glitchy and prone to freezing or crashing. The best I can do is a workaround using espeak and xclip to speak text copied to the clipboard, which, yes, involves the terminal. Is it cool that that’s possible? sure. But I have to put an alias into my .bashrc and constantly tab back and forth between whatever I’m reading and the terminal. Not a big deal if you’re only doing it once or twice, but I have to do it hundreds of times a day. If you encounter a little issue that often it’s no longer little. On windows it’s just ctrl+alt+LMB that’s it.

I find it’s really hard to impress upon sighted users why this is a problem. Imagine someone hands you a laptop, but the monitor either doesn’t work or shuts off at random. Then when you complain, you’re told “It works for me” or “That’s not my problem” or “I don’t know how to help you” or if you’re lucky, a half-dismissive “We’re working on it.” That’s Linux when you’re blind. Can you live with a non working display? Would you call an OS like that ready to ship? Yes this is a problem with commercial software as well, but it’s orders of magnitude worse with Linux.

Ah ok. whoosh I guess. I’m used to hearing “just write the drivers yourself” and the like.

You’re thinking like a developer. “I can just add or remove this or that.” I have to think like an IT guy. I’m working on dozens or hundreds of machines that are not mine and that I can’t change. So I need to get comfy with the tools that are most likely to be there by default.

Vi/Vim. Is it intuitive? No. Is it user friendly? Heck no! What it is is everywhere. $20 Chinese travel routers? Yup. Wireless access points? It’s there. If it has a shell you can log into, it almost certainly has it.

There’s a frog with the species name niputidea from Spanish Ni puta idea.

Also, obligatory mention of my conlang:

rCFqKqmg “Egg eater”, far more weighty when you’re oviparous. Calling someone this at work is a resume generating event.

slmqNLg “Cloaca butter”, BS or nonsense.

Cool. My conworld deeply reflects my interests and fears, and I don’t expect or intend it to be broadly appealing. I am both the author and the only audience member worth pleasing. One of the reasons I love amateur speculative fiction is that I’m seeing the author’s raw imagination unfiltered by editors or focus groups. The prose is rough at the best of times but rarely is the setting or concept uninteresting.

That being said, I love drawing but I’m not good at it, which is why I attempt writing. I’d love to make this into a web comic, since I always have little scenarios or character interactions in my head that would work best in that format.

I have attempted some fiction in my conworld but the stories serve to build the world further rather than the world existing as a backdrop for the stories. Also, I’ve migrated from Obsidian to DokuWiki. I want version history and an easy way to share what I write. I used Obsidian in my post because I figured people would know it better.

No. My bedroom is for sleeping and only for sleeping. No computer, no TV, etc. That’s not to say I don’t scroll on my phone in bed, but in general I try to make my brain associate it with sleep.

Also, it’s amazing how much easier it is to clean my room now that I’m an adult and don’t have to keep every possession I own in that room.

This is probably too late but, I just make up my own universe. Make yourself an Obsidian vault and start writing notes. What are the planet(s) like? What sapient races are there and what are they like? What animals and plants exist? Languages? Religions? Countries? History? etc etc. Worldbuilding doesn’t have to be attached to a piece of media, you can construct your own world.

I never stopped playing pretend, I just started documenting things as I got older.

Yes. I meant “big” as in influential. Lazy typing on phone.

Every country has problems. America is so big that its problems become everyone else’s problems too. If America sneezes the world catches a cold.

Well then having opposable big toes would make that even easier.