r/OS_Debate_Club

I've used linux since the early 00s so I'm not new to the process. Although the irony is 25 years ago installing linux (i think it was ubuntu with gnome) was far easier then its been.

I installed mint onto my sons new (my old win10 machine) due to the whole tpm bs.

I had tried SteamOS previously (albeit on a iMac but that was disaster). And a few other distros over rhe years. But even now in 2026 linux sucks.

Quality of life features when it comes to mounting and file permissions is still a bewildering mix of sudo this and that (i do powershell and a heap of other scripting so command lines aren't scary) however from syntax/plain English point of view nothing flows. And its always a bunch of several year old posts that your working from.

There is no PIN login without having to fuck around editing a bunch of security files.

And although driver support is a lot better it's still leaving a sizeable amount of performance on the table when it comes to gaming. If you can get the games to work. Not to mention the random crashes and problems.

If the game will work. And applications you hold a licence to...almost none of them will work (glares at wallpaper engine).

But above all what absolutely tires me out about linux is the never ending problem solving you'll do. Nothing works out the box. Weird audio problems, weird graphical issues, weird applications issues. And everything is just installed from weird ass depositories that you have no idea where its coming from..... Sudo install random crap you need to get something to work. Talk about a leap of faith.

After two weeks i gave up. I went out, got win11, a new CPU and mboard and for the last month everything works. Out of the box. I've not had to read through pages of snarky assholes shitting on new users asking for help.

I've got me firewalls, I've locked down win11, i turned off and disabled stuff i didn't need (msconfig and powershell, all of 10 mins). Mounting drives took literally 10s. Not a single commnd.

I've set my sons user account according. File sharing was a doddle and everything from games made in 2000 through to 2026 work seamlessly.

Linux is no where near ready for the year of the desktop.

Edit: apologies the cat basically started nuzzling my phone causing this to post before it was ready, hence the edits

On today’s Windows or Linux — what are the daily issues you still can’t fix?

What’s stopping you from switching:

• Windows → Linux

• Linux → Windows

Both OSes win and lose in 2026.

Example: Linux still can’t run all programs or games, and some don’t run at all.

Example: Windows is the global OS, but far from perfect for everyone.

Some people only need gaming or gaming + streaming.

Others need work tools or gaming + work.

Some users want to remove annoying Windows features but can’t do it through the official settings.

So what’s the one thing in your OS that annoys you every day or stops you from switching?

I’ll answer your comment when I can.

It’s not catastrophic, but it's absolutely worse than Windows and macOS in terms of default protections.

On Linux, browser password storage depends entirely on the system keyring, and the system keyring situation is a mess:

• Some distros use GNOME Keyring
• Some use KWallet
• Some don't configure either
• Some don't auto‑unlock the keyring
• Some unlock it with your login password
• Some don't unlock it at all unless you set a keyring password manually

There is no unified, mandatory, OS‑level credential vault like Windows Credential Manager or macOS Keychain.

So, the security of your browser passwords depends on whether your distro bothered to set up the keyring correctly.

Firefox, Chromium, Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi; all of them try to store passwords in:

• GNOME Keyring (via libsecret)
• KWallet (via KDE’s API)

If neither is available nor configured, they fall back to plaintext storage with a hardcoded "dummy" encryption key.

This is the part Linux users hate hearing, but it’s true:

• Chromium-based browsers store passwords in ~/.config/chromium/Default/Login Data
• Firefox stores them in logins.json + key4.db
• Without a system keyring, the "encryption" is reversible because the key is static and stored locally

Anyone with access to your home directory can dump your passwords in seconds.

This is not a browser bug; it's a Linux desktop architecture problem!

Linux

• “Maybe you have a keyring, maybe you don’t”
• “Maybe it unlocks automatically, maybe it doesn’t”
• “Maybe your distro configured it, maybe they forgot”
• No hardware-backed mandatory vault
• No OS-wide standard

This is why Linux password storage is weaker by default.

If someone gets access to your home directory (malware, physical access, misconfigured permissions), they can extract browser passwords with trivial tools.

Many users unknowingly run without a keyring

Especially:

• i3 / sway / tiling WM users
• Minimal distros
• Arch users who didn’t install gnome-keyring or kwallet-pam
• Users who disabled PAM integration

If you SSH into a machine with your user account, your browser passwords are sitting there in your home directory.

Linux does not tie password encryption to:

• TPM
• Secure Enclave
• Login credentials
• Hardware keys

So, password vaults are only as strong as the keyring setup.

Loonixtards rarely talk about this because it breaks the narrative that:

• "Linux is more secure by default"
• "Linux doesn't need centralized services"
• "Linux gives you control"

Most users don’t realize their passwords are effectively stored in reversible form.

How to fix it (for actual users):

1. Install a real keyring
   • GNOME: gnome-keyring
   • KDE: kwalletmanager + kwallet-pam
2. Enable PAM integration This ensures the keyring unlocks with your login password.
3. Use a login password that isn't blank Blank passwords = keyring won't auto-unlock.
4. Optionally bind the keyring to TPM This is distro-specific and not as smooth as Windows/macOS.
5. Use a dedicated password manager Bitwarden, KeePassXC, 1Password — all more secure than browser storage on Linux.

One common security measure linux users tend to use is to require sudo to edit system files. That is indeed something good but there is a small problem.

Often the actual things of importance for people is things in the home folder but that has the no added protection opening up the door for ransomware to encrypt peoples important document/pictures without needing root access.

Of course if you know what you are doing you will back up all important files and not allow them to be edited without root access.

But recently another privilege escalation exploit was discovered and this time it was disclosed too early so it's currently not fixed which is very bad.

A big reason why linux was safer in practice (in the past at least) was that people got their packages from vetted official repositories instead of just downloading sketchy stuff online (like windows users often did in the past). Recently however gaming on linux has become more popular but that typically involved running closed sourced software from a platform where people has gotten malware in the past.

Canonical has very much pushed people towards their snap store only to have said store be full of malware. The geniuses at canonical didn't implement any proper security measure so when developers had their domains expire hackers simply renewed those domains to hijack developer accounts on the snap store (which allowed them to push their malware on people).

Often the repositories for various distributions are maintained by volunteer labor which ends up severely limiting the software that is available in those official repositories. In the case of Arch Linux far too many packages ends up being in the AUR but there has also been cases of people uploading malware to the AUR (you are supposed to read the PKGBUILD and understand it but i have a feeling most people don't bother actually doing that).

Starting on some distribution not based on arch probably isn't even going to help you that much anyway since a lot of what you learn then wouldn't be transferable anyway, especially not if you start on something like linux mint and don't even learn basic terminal commands.

Yes there can be problem that emerges if you use an arch-based distro but that is the case with any linux distribution and also the case even if you use windows.

https://preview.redd.it/ig3d1gca86zg1.png?width=1503&format=png&auto=webp&s=481272739f196e8fb0d20fed846ca9d161dea8d6

While other distributions can offer better stability that comes at the price of having to wait longer for new software.

Opensuse tumbleweed and fedora are still decently up to date and while those distros (and distros based on it) does seem to make sense for a lot of people that is not about them being beginners, it's simply about what you prefer using.

I don't think debian stable makes sense on desktop though, it's simply too far behind.

Eu não entendo esse ódio pelo linux, assim como pelo o ódio com o windows e mac os. Na maioria das vezes, em vez de uma critica bem fundamentada, é só um meme onde seu lado é o chad e o outro lado soyjak, eu não aguento mais isso

Good distributions:

Arch Linux
CachyOS
EndeavourOS
Garuda Linux

Fedora
Nobara

opensuse tumbleweed

bad:

debian (far too behind to be a good option for desktop).

Manjaro (good idea but awful execution and management, sinking ship)

Trash:

Ubuntu (worse than windows).

Linux mint (shit-lite version of ubuntu) unless you go for the debian edition that belongs in the bad category.

pop! OS.

Any linux that still has not been updated to fix CVE-2026-31431.

I am doing mint 21.3 for 2 years now. With xfce.

I always wanted to try debian because i already familiar with apt. But for dinner reasons i want fedora with KDE

In 2y i found one package that act werid because of old version that is stuck in mint

So

Beside kde looks modern compare to xfce,

What should i expect

Oh and to add something

I have tried live usb version i noticed dolphin works much faster than thunar

And I noticed i could not set up 100 Hz on my monitor (maybe duo not installed Nvidia drivers?) max was 72.93 Hz

So can you give me some reason why fedora or why mint