(This is my eighteenth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)
I don’t try to hide the fact that I use Linux as my OS of choice, but it’s not because I’m a rabid fan. It’s true what they say about it: “Linux would be the worst OS if it wasn’t for every other OS.”
So while I’m sitting back and relaxing using my ad-free, bloatware-free computing experience, I thought I’d list some things I dislike about the experience, limited to the traditional 5 but not necessarily placed in a particular order.
5: Hard-Coded Incompatibility
I figure I might as well start off with one of the major complaints about Linux: That so many things won’t work in it.
The truth is far less severe. Thanks to Wine and Valve’s work on Proton (which is Wine with more effort to get video games to run), if I can’t find a version of the software or a suitable replacement, I can usually still just run the Windows version on Linux.
Sure, Proton is meant for game compatibility, but I’ve gotten other software to run in it just fine. Even so, this usually isn’t much of an issue because there’s almost always something coded for Linux that is either a suitable replacement or, frequently, is the same software, made by the same programming team, but for Linux.
But this isn’t about what’s working. Some companies have hard-coded checks in place, and unless I have a full emulation setup (read: I open Windows in Linux so I’m running 2 operating systems for the price of … 2 operating systems) so that the software’s running in Windows anyway, it just won’t work.
This has only personally been a problem for me with one program: The software I use for my vinyl cutter. This isn’t enough to drag me back to Windows, but it’s annoying.
(Bonus complaint: Some web-based apps will do this as well, but for Chrome. Google Meet has no problems with audio or video in Firefox-based browsers, and yet some 3rd parties insist they can only access your camera and microphone if you’re using a Chrome-based browser. I fail to see how this is anything other than lazy programming when the stance is coming from a rather large company.)
4: Driver Compatibility
This is, again, a rare occurrence, but most of my troubleshooting on Linux, if measured in hours or frustration, has been spent solving this problem.
A lot of hardware just works when I plug it into a computer running Linux. I’ll have the occasional hiccup with Bluetooth, but no more than I did when I used Windows because the problem’s with Bluetooth, not the OS.
There’s two exceptions to this: The new and the niche.
I’ve rarely had the opportunity to install Linux on a freshly manufactured computer, but most of those times something failed to work. The drivers (bits of software that let the hardware talk to the rest of the software) might be out there, but not incorporated into the OS quite yet. Sometimes I’ll find a forum post where someone managed or discovered a workaround and I’ll install some hope-it’s-not-shady code with the terminal so *poof* now I have Wi-Fi on this new machine, but frequently, if I can afford to wait, the problem gets solved in a way where an update will come down the line without me having to do anything strenuous.
(I’m impatient, so waiting is not something I tend to do.)
And then there’s the niche products. Personally, I’ve encountered this with some older (before 2008) tablets and one specific portable USB monitor I picked up at a thrift store. Other devices in those categories will work just fine, but if there isn’t a programmer interested in getting it to run on Linux (or a company willing to pay a programmer to do this) then best case scenario I have something for someone else to use.
3: “Helpful” Instructions
While there’s a lot of incredible resources online for the novice Linux user, most are created/shared for free, by amateur enthusiasts.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and they’ve gotten me out of a jam multiple times (see #4 on this list), but a guide isn’t always written with the assumption that the target audience is a novice.
Or also possible: The author has a different bar for “novice,” and it’s higher than where the actual novice can reach.
On many occasions I’ve found a tutorial for solving an issue that listed step after step after step, with commands I could copy/paste into terminal, but then the whole thing didn’t work because there was something so obvious to the author they didn’t include it, but it was kind of necessary if you wanted a good result.
You know, the classic “Step 1, Step 2, ?????, Step 4” scenario, but the question marks weren’t even implied and Step 4 was labeled Step 3.
(And this is all from people who by all accounts legitimately want to be helpful. I’ve seen others complain about Linux gatekeepers but because I spend less time asking for help on forums than I spend looking for solved problems, I don’t tend to encounter as many of those. When I do see them, it’s because I scrolled past the response that included the solution.)
2: AI Slop
Here we go, the bane of my existence is coming for me even here, in my sanctuary.
One of the many aspects of artistic expression that is getting hit hard by prompt writers posing as creative geniuses is coding, and the advent of “vibe coders” legitimately thinking they’re being helpful by submitting code when they can’t explain how it works is putting a lot of extra strain on the people in charge of approving/denying proposed changes.
It’s not just that those approving the code have a lot more things to sift through, it’s also that the quality of what they have to examine is greatly reduced, with the people “writing” it unable to explain how it works.
If you don’t understand how it works, you’re not going to be able to maintain it. And no, “I’ll just ask an AI to maintain it” is not the solution. You don’t solve a slop problem by stirring the slop around a bit.
The whole thing is stressful enough to make some maintainers want to leave, and any time that happens the brain drain on a project can be intense.
Some projects are implementing “no AI code” policies, either as outright bans or at least limiting the AI assistance to changes that can be explained by the person submitting them to compensate for this.
You might think “Oh, well people will just lie about the AI stuff, then,” but unexplainable code is still unexplainable, and also the vibe coders seem to really like to brag about their lack of talent.
1: Less Than Progressive Personalities
I was very generous with the name for this section, but yeah, some of the heavy hitters in the Linux world are less than savory.
Let’s look at the GNU Licensed Image Manipulation Program, frequently touted as an excellent alternative to Adobe Photoshop for those who want to get out from that particular corporate entity’s subscription racket.
Thing is, almost no one calls it the “GNU Licensed Image Manipulation Program.” That’s what its acronym stands for, in theory, but it’s actually a “backronym,” where the person behind it really just wanted to name it after an abeleist slur they’d seen used in Pulp Fiction.
There’s alternatives to it (I really like Inkscape), but none of the actively maintained ones have the same feature parity. On a whole the FOSS community ignores that its name is a slur, isn’t aware, or begrudgingly uses it anyway because for what it does there isn’t a lot of good competition. Those who abandoned it for an alternative seem to be few and far between.
And then there’s Framework, which has made a name for itself as a computer company driven to make repairable laptops that you can build yourself. I really want to like Framework, and I want to see other companies trying to compete with them to bring the cost of repairable computers down.
There was some initial push-back about this, but outside of a few vocal pockets this seems to have completely died out. Those who care enough will likely not buy Framework again (if ever). Those who care but not as much as having a repairable laptop when there’s practically no competitors in that niche will silently keep buying Framework. Everyone else decided it was a non-issue or got very, very vocal in support of right-wing extremists.
Do I think this is typical of all Linux users? Of course not, but it bothers me that any percentage of them are like this and that good alternatives to what they provide aren’t readily available.