Coriza

I can’t comment on the regular package upgrades without more info, if it is like OS base packages or like end user apps. In any case there has being problems with major versions with changes and stuff but if it is not a rolling release distro that is very rare.

In any case I don’t agree thad service packs are the same as OS version upgrades, and if it was recently win10/11 had some very bad updates that broke people workflows and features.

I don’t know if there is any LTS distro with Wayland by default. I don’t use LTS distro nor Wayland (nothing against it, I just didn’t have a need for it so far so my lazy ass will not update). But Wayland rollout has being a disaster in any case. That is completely valid. The only thing I will say is that I don’t think that there was any distro that changed to Wayland as a normal update, was always during a version change and as such, of course, doing an upgrade with this major change probably broke a lot of people workflows. The Nvidia situation in the Wayland matter also didn’t help at all.

I only say that reinstalling is not solving a problem in the context of troubleshooting and finding a fix. But yes, is not a good solution because it is a pain. I did so much reinstalling in my windows years that one of the best things I did was to learn to create a separated partition to use for data because it make reinstalling so much easier (it was back in the days of winME and it was an event to do a reinstall, we would usually go to a friend’s house with the HD or the whole machine just to be able to backup everything).

About the software it is like I mentioned (maybe in other comment) with hardware compatibility. If it is a windows first software, usually Linux support is done in “best effort”, so always lags behind. This is specially true to closed source software as the community can’t even help. In any case, one sad reality is that programmers usually are terrible at building and packaging software for release, and that is not a Linux only problem. The famous dll hell on older windows were due to terrible packaging. That is why docker is so popular, so people don’t have to bother with packaging.

For FLOSS software what I usually see is in software not on the distro repos and it not being compatible with the distro because the devs don’t build for it. With closed source/binary-only what I see the most is broken dependencies because they build it wrong, targeting the OS libraries instead of bundling everything with the package.

I wouldn’t know if this is still a thing. You are right about the integration problem of snaps/flatpak, it is specifically bad on Ubuntu because Ubuntu goes out of their way to shove snaps on you and hide the fact. Case in point Firefox, if you want a non snap version you have to jump through a lot of hoops, or at least was like this when a last installed Ubuntu for my wife laptop, it was the 22.04 I think.

In any case that is Ubuntu specific, but a shame none of the least because like you said, Ubuntu and derivatives are the more popular beginner friendly distros. but if I recall correctly some derivatives do remove snap so you don’t have to deal with it and its problems.

I think part of that perception is a general confusion of OS releases and distros, specially if comparing with windows.

I think that is only the case of the 10+ years of a windows install because it is the same windows version. Windows until I think “recently” didn’t even have OS upgrade, I know that now people can upgrade from win10 to win11 (and maybe that was also the case for win8) but even that is because MS wants to force a new version on people and there is a lot of complaints of the upgrade breaking the OS .

On Linux a lot of distros do try to upgrade to a new version and it a very complicated problem. Some distros support this better than others.

But if you are saying that you have like a win7 install rock solid for 10 years, the equivalent is a Linux distro with LTS support centOS, and these distros are rock solid and different than windows it will not get slow over time.

Linux has problems but he is not wrong that a lot of it is not being used to the OS. Finding solutions on the Internet is like a popularity context, of course there is much more of it for windows but even on Linux there is much more for big distros line Ubuntu than other smaller ones.

Now reinstalling windows is not a solution or a good argument, it is saying the problem cannot be fixed. When I used windows that was also my go to solution and very feel things I solved by googling, but I guess in part because I was not as tech savvy as I am now. But I tell you, when I started with Linux I could find solution for all problems that I have that had solutions, now a lot have changed so you do get that some things are outdated but it is just a matter of paying attention if the solution is old or new (side not rant, sites that do not put date on the articles are the worst).

Oh yeah, I naver had to reinstall a Linux machine, maybe I lucked out and didn’t royally fucked anything, but I could always solve problems with the OS without a reinstall. I guess because more easily you can find and know where things changed, like what config files you changed and you can always make a copy. The works case is like booting a live USB and rolling back the changes if the OS does not boot anymore.

Your second example is a newish problem and Ubuntu specific. I had never had a problem with drag-and-drop and I migrated from Ubuntu before the snap thing.

You will always find an example of something that works “better” in one OS than other. Linux is not trying to be a windows drop-in replacement, some thing are gonna behave differently. Linux have some problems for an average user but a lot is just different UX design and others, especially hardware compatibility is because companies don’t care for it to work on Linux so the OS is always playing catch up.