We love to praise linux constantly and tell everyone to change to it (they should) but what are your biggest annoyances ?
Mine would be, installing software (made even more complex by flatpaks being added, among the 5 other ways there already were to install software) and probably wifi power management issues.
Ubuntu and GNOME
I’ll be nice in case the developers are reading.
I just think they’re both pretty misguided in their goals.
Ubuntu used to be Debian plus your laptop’s Wi-Fi works out of the box. The hardware support has improved and now Debian in 2025 is better than Ubuntu, plus Debian never shows you terminal ads or prompts you to
snap installsomething that obviously isn’t going to run well inside the default Snap sandbox.I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu to any new users now. I’d sit and install Debian stable with them, and if something is missing, I’d try Debian unstable or the proprietary repos.
No offense to on-the-ground Ubuntu devs, but Ubuntu really feels like Debian plus a billionaire’s desire to make money reselling Debian.
GNOME… Wants the desktop to look like a phone. Got rid of the system tray and then you have to do a little dance t re-install it. I don’t know why. I’ve had useful stuff in the system tray since Windows XP.
I think GNOME might have also spearheaded the trend of ruining SEO and documentation by naming apps what they do instead of with real names? Like “Movie player” or “Web Browser”. I don’t know if they did any studies or if it helps new users but it’s real weird for advanced users. Most people know that “Chrome” is a brand of web browser, so why would you name your web browser “Web Browser” and make things weird? I like KDE’s thinking. Pick a name and wedge a K into it. And then make an anime furry its mascot. Can’t beat that!
There was a conspiracy theory years ago, because someone from Microsoft was making decisions at GNOME, that GNOME was going to be eaten inside-out by MS, like Nokia was. They were rolling .NET Mono stuff and some kind of object model… I don’t think it got far but I don’t care. I switched to xfce on my desktop and KDE looks great on the Steam Deck and laptop. KDE used to be heavy, but hardware got bigger.
I actually love the package managers on Linux. Apt would be better if you could install multiple versions side-by-side, but I get why that’s hard. Whenever I use Windows it’s like, gross, I have to use MSIs again? I can’t just
apt install git curl wget screen lua? And on macOS I can install brew but a lot of apps use that funny pattern where you drag it into the Applications folder, and then you must remember to unmount the disk image, and also some apps aren’t in the Applications folder.I actually love systemd and everyone can fight me on this. Systemd is really nice.
Same. I also have a hard time recommending Mint as an alternative because of major hardware support problems the last time I tried to test drive it (which was a few weeks ago). I always come back to Fedora, but OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is also wonderful, and I’d happily recommend either to newcomers. I did try CachyOS recently and stuck with it for a couple weeks, but recently went back to Fedora because of the constant AUR security issues.
I refer most new users to Bazzite if they just want to game and do normal things. For more technical users, I recommend flipping a coin over Fedora or Tumbleweed. Flatpak is the great uniting force in Linux right now, and I wish more developers would directly support it since community versions make me uncomfortable unless I thoroughly review them first, and I really don’t enjoy that. The prevalence of Ubuntu-first packages is a major problem as Ubuntu rapidly enshittifies while Fedora and Arch communities are left to pick up the slack themselves. Pure Debian is fine, but release cycles are far too slow for my tastes.