Comment on Fuck Microsoft

<- View Parent
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

I’m disabled (one usable hand, among other things). I need my mouse software to be able to map buttons to keys on my keyboard (and it must have individual profiles per application, and it must auto switch based on the active window) for me to be able to play shooters and similar.

I have tried many times in the past 20 years to switch, but I always had to come back. I installed bazzite to help a friend transition from w10, and to be able to talk them through any issues they might come across. I used this opportunity to again see how doable it would be, temporary dual booting.

In addition to the mouse, I don’t use my mobos onboard audio, instead using two creative sound blaster cards - one for my surround sound (main output), and the other for voice chat or if I have to be quiet (late night gaming). The drivers for both cards fail - L/R channels work as expected, but RL/RR/FC/Sub are wrong. I tried for two days to fix it, overriding settings, trying different settings in the UI, different overrides, switch cards around to see if they work correctly when outputting to the other hardware… And searching online, this has been a problem for years, maybe a decade+ across many distros. Okay, so, it’s not a ‘fix’ but what if we get new sound cards… Asus has some… Aaaaand survey says they are shit in Linux too. What about looking for some Linux specific hardware? The only company I found had cards for $1k+, and geared more towards audio creation. Hell no, you’d have to be insane.

That’s a hard stop, as I’m not about to give up my audio system because of botched drivers thst are seemingly never getting a fix. But similarly, I have a ThinkPad with a 5G modem in it. I tried a dozen distros before begrudgingly settling on Kubuntu, as it was the only system that would actually work (see the modem, interact with it, fcc unlock after terminal commands, and actually transfer data).

Linux has this bubble of users who are the typical norm - they need the basics, and nothing more. Which is fine, I’m happy for them, but damn does the experience suck shit if you aren’t in thst bubble. I remember the days when I’d have to wrap windows wifi drivers to get online, or sleep wouldn’t work, or an update would brick the system (or grub, oh fuck me I’m having ptsd flashbacks) lll, or even stuff like stereo in and out would be broken out of the box. And there often wasn’t a guide to fix this shit, it was just ‘have fun’. It has come a good way, but there is so much that still needs work.

And, as my friend found out, while all his games were native or compatable via proton or lutris, some needed to be built from source… Even though the fucking dev offers executables for windows, and could easily do the same for Debian-based systems, ready to go for those users… But no, here are some half-assed instructions that are out of date, glhf. Ugh…

There’s a ton of other things, but those are recent - like, within the last 3-6 months recent, and are real world examples of why some have to stay chained to windows.

Now if anyone wants to patch the shitty drivers for my sound blasters, I could actually try to maintain and actually use the install. But until then, I’ve got to use what actually works.

source
Sort:hotnewtop