r/linuxsucks

CISA has added CVE-2026-43456, a Linux kernel local privilege escalation vulnerability, to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog following confirmed in-the-wild exploitation. Here's everything covering the affected kernel versions, the vulnerability itself, which distributions have shipped fixes, and the available mitigations. If you're maintaining Linux systems, it may be worth checking whether your kernel has already been updated by your distro. Patch Now.

This is an older story, but I'll share it anyways.

I used to use Windows 10. It was pretty slow, but all things considered it was still usable, with patience. I work as a programmer, and thus, I have programmer friends, and I did then, too. By then, all of them had switched to Linux, in some form or another, and they were peer pressuring me to do the same. I wanted to leave Windows 10 by this time, so I was like "why not" and popped a Linux Mint XFCE Live USB. At first, things actually went really smoothly. Asides from the occasional jitter or lag, I could use it fine. Now, I installed 1 app. A singular app, Discord. And it worked fine. But the moment I tried to do anything else, I was out of storage. Mind you, this usb drive was 32gb big, and the Linux Mint install only took about 8gb. And I know damn well that Discord isn't 24gb big. So, what could it have possibly been doing?? Well, I guess I won't ever know, because I couldn't even shut down to look at the logs it made in Windows, because it was out of storage. Everything was out of storage, so I could do nothing. At some point, it threw me into a full screen terminal spewing more storage related gunk and bash failures. Thankfully, since this was a laptop, I could just yank the battery, and so I did. Booted back to Windows, and like half the USB drive was just corrupt. Cool. It may have been Mint's aggressive logging, or maybe the app package truly was that huge, which is a whole failure in of itself. Anyways, shortly after this, I switched to Windows 7 because Windows 10 corrupted my password, but thats for another time.

Thanks for listening.

I’ve been hearing for years how amazing Linux is, how it can easily replace Windows, and so on. Eventually, I finally decided: I’m done with Windows, I want something new.

I’m a big macOS fan, but I don’t currently have a MacBook (I’ve had one before), mainly due to software compatibility with certain tools I rely on. So I went with Zorin OS because I liked the design and the fact that it resembles macOS quite a bit (like most GNOME-based distros do).

And… that’s where the problems started.

NVIDIA drivers issues. Audio driver problems (my laptop uses Dolby Atmos, which isn’t supported on Linux, so the sound ended up being weak and honestly pretty bad). My mouse, a Razer Atheris, was basically crippled in terms of functionality.

Despite trying all the recommended alternatives and fixes for these issues, everything required tons of tweaking, troubleshooting, and terminal work. The end result was still not satisfying at all. At some point I realized I had spent an entire week just trying to get basic drivers working - something that on Windows literally takes a few minutes.

Another issue: my webcam login setup. I used Howdy as an alternative, but it didn’t work with the infrared camera only the regular webcam. That caused more issues, especially with GNOME Keyring constantly asking for my password even after login.

It became problem after problem until today, when everything finally broke again. And now, whether I like it or not, I’m going back to Windows.

Yes, Windows is bloated, full of outdated and unnecessary stuff, and full of telemetry and tracking. But at this point, I honestly believe there is no real alternative that fully replaces it without major compromises. MacOS comes close (except for gaming), but Linux definitely involves a lot of trade-offs.

That’s my experience, and I know many people will disagree. I also know there are people who absolutely love Linux, and I respect that. But I will never agree that Linux is ready for the “average user.” I’m someone who isn’t afraid of the terminal and can use it at a decent level, and even then I don’t see how I could recommend it to an everyday user who just wants to open their laptop and use it without thinking about drivers, configs, and troubleshooting.

I literally tried both Pinta and KolourPaint. Took me 5 minutes to find bugs and give up on them.

In the case of Pinta: Cannot copy paste images into the program. Everytime I do I get a pop-up that "no image was found in clipboard". Gave it all flatpak permissions - didn't work. Such a basic fucking thing man. I also tried to use the layering to insert stuff in and I just got an error code and app crashed lmao.

In the case of KolourPaint: Copy paste images worked! But... resizing is just alien tech for developers of this program. Every time I tried to resize the image it worsened the quality of the image. Guess it used some sort of "algorithm" to do it instead of just... I don't know... SCALE THE FUCKING IMAGE?

>Bbbbut just use GIMP!

Bro, to crop a FUCKING MEME? Are we insane right now? I just want to do some basic stuff and linux apps are just not delivering the right experience.

As someone once said: my disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

I was genuinely excited to give my old PC a 2nd life and banish my old Win10 from my 4790k GTX1080 and 16GB DDR3 ram.

The PC has 2x Sata SSD's and 3x WD Sata HDD's

I memtested the ram and it passed.

I tried to install Linux on my small SSD 256GB

I got the distro and checked Integrity and Authenticity. All checked out.

I created a bootable USB with Etcher, all seemingly worked.

I booted Linux Live.

Thats when the trouble started.

I got an endless Mint Logo loading screen.

Quick google search later I found the "quiet splash" and replaced it with "nomodeset"

Then it finally booted the USB Mint. I installed it by following the instructions first on my small older Crucial Blue SSD from 2014, nuked windows from it and replaced it with Linux.

After installing and booting into Mint I was greeted with a big White Empty Box and the Black Mint Background + Taskbar at the bottom.

Right clicking opened another epty glitchy white box which I assume was supposed to be a context menu.

Another quick google search I did the same with the "quiet splash" and replaced it with "nomodeset"

The Welcome screen worked albeit in low res.

I installed Nvidia Driver with the integrated manager, restarted, everything worked with resolution, boxes and all.

Then I Downloaded the "Automatic Updates"... and this is where it got worse...

After the update Linux wanted to restart, I said ok and so it happened. After the boot I was in the low res Desktop again...

Unknown Device, checked the update Manager to check Nividia install, according to mint it was there I switched to performance mode Nvidia.

Tried some reebooting and I ended up in easybox v1.36.1... turns out the bootloader or something got corrupted after a long painful search.

So I did everything over again! Nuked the whole mint and reinstalled it all again.

And ended up with the same problem as before only that this time after the Auto Update I wanted to update Nvidia, but it failed spectacularly with an error.

Afterwards I wanted to search from within Linux Mint with Internet and Firefox, but Firefox Profile did not exist, Firefox did not work...

Again I ended up with easybox v1.36.1 or similar menu.

With the Live Boot I smartchecked the SSD's with no noticeable errors and"repaired" the faulty bootsektor apparently, but after booting it immediately broke system again.

This time I used my younger not as old SSD and did EVERYTHING AGAIN!!!

Nuked the old broken Linux Mint and tried installing it again on the other Samsung Evo 800 SSD since I suspected the Crucial SSD maybe just being faulty despite my old Windows 10 running on it without issues on the same day for Years.

But the same happened again, the system collapsed in on itself after doing the Update, I didn't even get to install Nvidia this time and got a completely different failed error.

I tested if Firefox opened, it did, I accidentally closed it, tried to open it again, but Firefox is already running, Log out or reboot if this issue persists. So I did and the last things that happened was...

"despite vacuuming read only" with a bunch of numbers over and over

At this point over 10 Hours have passed trying to get Linux to run on my old PC.

If this is the onboarding experience of the "easiest" Linux Distro... I am not surprised that Linux is only is still on 5% Globally...

I really tried, but I reached my breaking point I built 4 PC's and never had so much issues with Hard or Software like this in a single day...

As a Linux user I genuinely appreciate this subreddit. It genuinely is a place that calls out major issues with Linux and the Linux Community which as a Linux user I have complaints about myself... many of which are discussed and posted in meme format. Such of these complaints is how unpolished Linux is in certain areas, how the Linux community can be extremely toxic, and how Linux can just be downright annoying at times. The discussions in this subreddit are very civil and are not an echo chamber like r/linuxsucks101 where it is just toxic and that's all there is to say about it because it's literally a toxic echo chamber. The moderators do a very good job here of keeping it civil and I have seen time and time again where Linux users and those who dislike Linux peacefully interact with each other and have civil discussion. The internet needs more places like this that are not echo chambers and is a place for civil discussion to take place. I also appreciate that the members of this community respect the preferences of people who use different operating systems other than Windows or MacOS. I respect that a lot about this community as a person who likes MacOS and Windows as well as Linux. I use all three and I prefer Linux over Windows 11 and MacOS I rarely use so Linux is what I use the most which is why I use it and it's nice to see that there is a community who really doesn't care what I use as long as I am not toxic about it.

I do not. It may entertain some of existing Linux fans, but it will not bring normal users to Linux.

Do not get me wrong: Linux is great where it shines — supercomputers, servers, embedded systems, and even WSL2. In those areas, Linux is extremely strong.

But if we are talking about the mass desktop market — the famous “year of the Linux desktop” idea — then the situation is very different.

Most people choose an operating system because it is convenient, familiar, supported, and runs the software they need. Calling Windows or macOS users names only confirms the stereotype that Linux desktop communities are hostile to ordinary users.

Calling Microsoft or Apple names also does not help in the mass market. Most ordinary users do not care about your personal attitude toward a particular company. They care whether the product works for them.

You cannot insult mass customers and at the same time demand mass-market adoption.

If Linux wants a larger desktop market share, the message should be: “Here is why Linux may work better for you,” not “You are stupid for using Windows or macOS.”

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