Two desktops and three laptops, they all work great. My biggest ongoing issue, and it is fair to say it is a problem, is VR. I have not tried recently, but that is one area that was smooth to set up in windows and I havent had luck in Linux.

when introducing new people to Linux it’s best to acknowledge there may be some tinkering and adaptation needed to get things working as they should.

Depends on what "should" means. My printer for example will not work with windows. It works fine with linux. So.... that really is a printer driver issue. No matter which one it works with.

As for the OS out of the box, everything works on a fresh install of either - although linux is far more loaded with ready to go software, and windows requires you to add it. And any of the software you add to either can cause breakages, that is computing.

I noticed over the years that Linux works fairly well for people who did not start with windows first. Both have learning curves, but habits are habits.

I am going to take my linux laptop for an example: 2 years. No tinkering. There is nothing to do, it just works.

My other laptop (windows): damn thing need tinkering all the time: turn off this, regedit that, just to get the nagware and crap out. Won't allow remote desktop with the license, needs drivers to be updated, software that came with it is bloatware garbage.

Okular can be set to do that, but it doesnt have a scroll bar, which you might not like. Firefox can do that as well, but I concede that browser PDF viewers are not ideal.

Yes mounting is different, but that is not a Linux issue. Same as when you boot into windows, but an EXT formatted drive will not appear AND it will never mount. Windows helpful choice is "unknown" and offer to format. These are just OS differences, not breakages.

Cinnamon might be part of your problem with shortcuts.....

Yeah SMB shares can be tricky. I have issues with them in Windows as well, not linux specifically.

I am not saying linux is perfect. All computers rely on a person being able to deal with them. I just find it much more stable then windows ever was. You add bottles and Lutris into the mix, and now it is a third party software issue: just like plenty of software in windows as well.

I agree that computers can have issues. But none of these are linux only. Windows does all this stupid shit too. My printer wont work with windows, only linux (how the hell this can be true is beyond me). Bluetooth drops in windows, works fine in linux. The latest nvidia update on windows broke all games making it black screen until I used some regedit fixes. A windows update broke my firmware on a video card for a while, almost got RMA'd. I could go on, talk about Jankiness. I don't use windows as my main computer due to it being so all over the place. I say this as a MSDN dev and windows server and azure dev and support person. I remote entirely from Linux, I need to have an OS that works.

My point is windows does this shit too.

But: That is your issues are a long list that seems to have a repeating theme: OpenSuse.

You don't need to edit FSTAB to add a drive, there is a gui for that, for whatever that's worth.

I have not had any of these issues on the 5 or so linux computers I use daily. I have had a few upgrades in Arch cause me to update grub or roll back, but that is about it.

Over the last two years I have found Fedora KDE has been amazingly easy to use and update.

I still can’t find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.

That one has me curious: what is that? (I mean by definition - scroll - that can't be a thing, lol) But I am sure it is, got examples?

There might be a reason they are unpopular.

Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don't have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.

AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn't Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt. You shouldn't really need to do much if you can get through the install anyways.

I am really curious what "system breaking problems" you have? My latest laptop over the last 2+ years has been so uneventful and boring. Never used a command line on it, but don't forget when you see people share command line fixes, it is because it is the easiest way to directly share information. Not the only way to do something. My desktop has had a few hiccups over the last 5, but that is what I get for running Arch on it.

Did you get everyone to settle on the same thing, like Signal? We are spread out over about 8 countries, and with all the different phone numbers and plans, we use various methods, with several of us on Signal. Some on whatsapp, some on messenger. So we are not coordinated enough for a group chat. Which is fine, I dont really need to know everything all the time, we catch up when can, or get into small video chats occasionally. Luckily we do tend to physically see each other somewhat frequently.

This seems silly. Lots of kids never learned about computers even when they were available. A chromebook was just an electronic school aid. If the interest was in computers they would learn about computers.

I think this is a fairly dumb take. In the schools that I saw that had chromebooks a kid might be taking English, Math, AND computing. It really was up to the school (and parents) to introduce computing, not the machine that was the general replacement for books.

Anecdotally: a high school near us requires every student to have a computer. They do not hand out chromebooks and the requirement specs are a higher end Mac or PC laptop that the kids are required to bring to classes. These kids use blender, maya 3d, office suite, video and music editing software for example. They absolutely do not know any more about computers then chromebook kids (with a few exceptions). Having access to a computer doesnt magically make them know about how computers work.

I would rather SMS than use WhatsApp. But even then if my family is far away, why am texting them at all very often? With the time zone differences I'll call or email, or nothing. It's weird how people got along just fine with letters that took weeks and suddenly we now need instant communication for some reason?

Why? Internet rules from the days gone by - everyone is a liar. So it shouldn't matter.

If I am on vacation I miss about 95% of all breakfasts in Hotels. They are too early.

And if it is a free breakfast it usually is garbage anyways.

There are exceptions but they are very rare.

The House Republican Caucus issued a statement saying, “This is a proud day for the Volunteer State and for all who believe in protecting the innocence and well-being of America’s children.”

Fuck you.

Science, the american medical association and the association of pediatrics ALL agree that no treatment is what is going to HARM children.

The republican caucus does not care about children, but we know that.

Once again, science and data is thrown away in favor of political points and fear mongering. They are truly evil people.