Yeah, it's usually quality of life misses. An example: if I mount a network drive (mine auto-mounts upon login) and then that NAS goes down for whatever reason, if I open Dolphin it'll hang trying to connect to the offline network drive and never timeout. I can restart my NAS and then as soon as it's online again, my file manager will open 😅.

I'd have to manually unmount in terminal if that NAS became non-functional. Windows just times out and marks it as offline so File Explorer still works.

Constantly, I'm pretty sure that part of the experience.

However, anytime I have to use windows or mac I very quickly get over whatever my issue with linux is.

Been using linux for more than 10 years as a less technical user, and yeah pretty regularly.

Its still my OS of choice, but theres a fair bit of jank around the corners you interact with less and places where the GUI methods for things just kinda fall short.

But I like having an OS that shows me tech treating me with dignity and respect is possible. So many problems in this world are hard to know how we might solve, but technology that treats me justly is a thing I can have today, and given its actually able to meet my needs, thats pretty cool ☺️❤️

Inconsistent behavior with the Elan touchpad on the ThinkPad E16 Gen 1 (AMD). Works in a live image but not when I install. Adding kernel parameters and loading specific modules gets it working, but it stops again after a few minutes. Sometimes unloading/reloading the module gets it working again, sometimes it doesn’t. 4 different distros, 4 different kernel versions, still have to use Trackpoint.

Other than that, I daily-drive Debian on my home and office workstations. Those ones just work.

my disappointment in Linux has lessened over the last few years as issues are being resolved.

Currently my only real disappointment is driver support, but that's less of a flaw on anything linux, and more of a flaw on the providers.

That being said, I also am disappointed with sound management. Trying to do anything in that hellscape on most distros leaves you with a pounding headache. It's a monkey-patch of multiple handlers that gets confusing really fast.

One thing I've been annoyed by for over a decade now is having to unmount USB drives before removing them or they'll brick. That shit worked fine on windows unless you were writing/reading iirc.

Once I was looking forward to the challenge of connecting a linux PC to a Windows domain, only to find out the current version of the distro had that functionality by default. 😐

So that was cool, I guess...

Every time I have tried to mainline Linux for my gaming rig. Although I haven't tried anything recently, IE since the Steam Deck has made large improvements. I am now waiting for SteamOS to be available for non-AMD GPUs and can be dual-booted so I can try it without also getting rid of Windows right away if it still gives me headaches. I know there are other options I could try now, but I'm fine waiting.

I have not been disappointed in Linux when used for servers, tho. Far, far more reliable than Windows when you want stability and long up times.

Lots of little extremely niche things people do on their computer on Windows are harder on Linux, I think the best example in general is video game modding. We can't say it's essential or barring anyone from making a switch and yet people like me wrankle. I'm disappointed no one ever put the honest time into cloning Mod Organizer and its amazing USVFS. Yes I know you can do it on Fuse, I know there are a couple other mod applications for Bethsoft games. The problem is ALL of these tools need a seamless way to talk between Proton instances, which would be a security risk I guess. And Mod Organizer was such a nice tool. The clone attempts I've seen have had shoddy UI, lacked core features you wouldn't even bother calling it an MO clone without (Amethyst was not storing -downloads-, just running whatever FOMOD it found immediately and deleting the archive), or were done heavily with LLM AI which I don't trust around proton instances.

It's the absolute lowest priority right now and if you're willing to accept a lot of potential suck you can eek by. I don't use EMACs or I'd probably be the kind of person using that as mod manager, but hearing it described I'd liken my agony over lacking good mod tools to trying to use EMACs on a broken cellphone screen, or a keyboard missing half its letters. I miss the tools MO set the industry standard for.

It doesn't run on old 2010 year Intel/AMD laptop, while FreeBSD does. Maybe because of the philosophy of destroying the old to build something completely new (pipewire, ip, firewalls etc.). Maybe I should spend more time finding working distro.

Also, It's sad to realize that politics has actually always been a part of FOSS (when they removed Russian maintainers). Still I really like Linux.

No.

I've only even been disappointed at myself.

And Nvidia.

Having to actually manually mount network shares to my filesystem in KDE in order to do simple stuff like drag-and-drop files from them to a browser window, which just works in ol' Windows.

But really, I'm generally very happy with my experience with Linux in 2026. Most problematic things are because of the behavior of shitty OEMs or publishers, not Linux developers. Things have improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years.

My Thinkpad X260 TrackPoint and mouse buttons under the spacebar still don't work. I have lost my mind trying to figure it out and gave up. I don't use the laptop that often.

A little I guess. When I had finally convinced my dad to try out a dual boot, and was trying to install it for him on his new Threadripper system, it failed. The platform support Threadripper wasn't ready even though it had been out for at least a little while.

But I don't remember the details it has been around 8 years. Nowadays I know to confirm these things first, so in a sense it was my own mistaken assumption. But still it fits the question because at the time I was disappointed.

Recently I’ve been disappointed that my speakers keep switching which one is left and which is right, and I’ve been too lazy to figure out why. I don’t regret dropping windows at all, though.

The amount of issues I've had with sound on Linux, I'm currently running Cachy and I'm still not getting it through my laptop speakers. Bluetooth on Arch is tempermental at the best of times too...

Not being able to use middle click as a scroll tool. For an OS that's supposed to be about user choice, this option is stupidly baked into the depths of the kernel.

I find Linux to be very bad at recovering from freezing. If something freezes on linux I almost always need to shut the entire PC down or go into TTY to kill the app. I expected it to be way more sturdy.

I’m disappointed by Linux on almost a daily basis. And MacOS. And iOS. And Android.

(I haven’t used Windows in a long time, so I guess it’s the only major OS I’m not routinely disappointed by? Whoa, that’s a realization…)

But this is just what happens when you’re constantly messing with stuff.

My disappointments are few, and are outweighed by the fact that if I update the computer doesn't suddenly grow new advertisements or try to force new subscriptions onto me, or even break that many things? The skill floor is slightly higher sure, but the skill ceiling is so much higher, it doesn't feel like a thinly veiled Eldritch monster.

My printer has a regular paper tray and a photo paper tray. I find it very difficult to print things properly to the photo tray. And I had to get drivers for one of my PC's Wi-Fi adapter off github. Other than that, I have been quite happy over the last few years of daily-ing Linux

Yes. Bluetooth has never worked correctly for me, NEVER.

Across multiple distros and multiple adapters, I've gotten various problems. Right now on NixOS, reconnecting a peripheral never works, I get an error that br-create-socket failed, and the only solutions are to restart the computer or forget and re-pair the device. I've gotten this error on two completely different Bluetooth adapters.

My Bluetooth works perfectly on Windows. I don't know why Linux is so finnicky about it.

No, despite many problems, because it always teaches me something about computers

I have been extremely disappointed with the broader Linux ""community"" at times, but never Linux.

Yes.

i would like to see more cutting edge attempts. this is more of a linux ecosystem thing but try new things even if they dont work out. until very recently, parental controls have been non existing or barely functioning.

for the linux ecosystem to be mainstream it needs to cover more people.

I love Linux but for ease and convenience a iOS / Mac based home has been a lot easier to coordinate and orchestrate and tie together.

There is no equivalent tv box to the Apple TV on the Linux ecosystem without tinkering which makes it tough now that tinkering isn’t as fun cuz my time is so restricted.

Without a Linux phone and Integrated set top box I can’t mainline it, but it still is my go to for running all my services (saving for the odd bsd here and there)

I'm a bit disappointed with packaging/updates. Specifically Arch, I have slow-ish shared internet and didn't update frequently enough now my system is too outdated (1050Ti, them moving legacy nVidia drivers to AUR is another reason I haven't updated in a while).

Looking at alternatives.

• Void (I still might want something more user-friendly) musl? (but optional and interesting for creating static binaries)

• Tumbleweed/Slowroll might be perfect if it weren't for patterns (and I wish update structure were smarter* than just scheduling).

• NixOS is a fun idea but not with declarative desktop settings (I have my own XFWM window theme not uploaded anywhere) and extra mess when it comes to compiling/exporting also running non-packaged executables (especially if I decide to stop using Steam, running what library I can w/o client)

User packaging is also generally questionable, too. I know not to rely on it too much, but I'm also not going to be inspecting package scripts especially not every update.

Other package distribution is a neat idea, but needing to download another graphics driver for Flatpack sort of ruins the point for me (redundant data too). That, and less integration+more manual updates.

* it probably doesn't exist, but I'd like something that has some sort of awareness of compatibility (be it simple/explicit versioning, build bot troubles, user reports etc). If I haven't updated in a while, give me a safer update (hold more Major.Minor.newest packages to known-good). If I'm updating regularly, tell me if an update on tuesday might not be great and remind me on friday if it seems better. Let me mark software with some general issues (stability, rendering, features) and alert based on potential fixes.

Been in a bunch of situations where the best available software is 0.x and hella buggy. (Which I discovered after building the software and its dozen dependencies from source because of course no one had packaged it.) But I'm not mad, I'm just "oh well, the situation will improve in the future, I hope".

I’ve had some sound issues here and there, but those are largely resolved. My only issue at the moment (which I suspect is mostly a skill issue) is figuring out an easy way to install games to the drive I want. With Epic for example on Windows it was easy to pick which drive I wanted to install the game on, but since Epic runs in WINE on Linux I haven’t figured out an easy way to do that. It works fine on Steam since the Steam client is Linux native.

Never. Sometimes it's a pain, but I can live with that.

I ran Arch on my rig in 2023 and didn't use it for a few months. The next update broke a ton of shit including KDE.

Next time I might go with Bazzite. Or Manjaro and just take better care of it.

Just gaming on Linux Mint. Most big modern games work, but support for older and smaller games just isn't there. I tried to play Doom 3. It wouldn't start. Shadowrun Hong Kong was so slow it was unplayable.

I mean i'm currently in a learning process with Linux, i would like to be a power user like in windows, but i'm just not yet. I don't know if i would say disappointed, but i tried to use KDE first and would say my experience was rather bad, it was a bit buggy here and there and i didn't found out how to fix my problems. I'm surprised by it because i though i would like KDE for sure more, but i'm happy i switched to Gnome. So as the op said, part of the experience is choosing the right distro or in my case desktop enviroment is part of the experience.

Sure had few driver issues, or installing japanese was a bit of a struggle, but i have fun solving problems.

The one recurring unsolveable problem I run into is not being able to kill a process that's stuck in D state. If something has broken in the layers between that process and hardware (not uncommon when working with old cheap "box of scraps" hardware, as I like to do), it can get stuck forever and you have to kill the whole system, sometimes forcibly. Not the end of the world, but it sucks when it happens.

Hardware acceleration sometimes makes videos play at low frame rates.

But overall much better than every other OS I've tried

Power management on a laptop.

Use a 10 year old Logitech mouse out of the box.

Mint's stupid annoying print monitor.

Dealing with cached samba creds though the box to save creds wasn't checked.

The lack of real competitors to office. And no, Open Office doesn't come close to replacing MS office.

There's lots that's annoying.

But Linux is excellent as my servers, as my VM host, as my dedicated systems. Still has it's issues, but works great for always-on systems with very specific tasks.

Linux and Windows serve different purposes.