Samba has always been a pain in the ass to get to behave well, I understand its almost always some permissions thing where you have to map a Linux user to a samba user… But it’s a pain in the ass, and most of the older GUI tools that just worked ™ are now incompatible due to python versions or systemd vs init.
Alsa and pulse I appreciate, only because I started using linux in 2004-ish and for a few years only had OSS support for my sound hardware.
Getting full duplex (recording and playing at the same time) should not be an achievement, but I recall it being one at a time. Not having to use xmodmap to get the extra buttons on my mouse to work is nice. I sure as fuck don’t miss ndiswrapper, and b43-fwcutter bullshit.
I remember it seemed like lilo used to be the standard, then came the new and fancy grub…which was cool because you could fiddle with it easier because it wasn’t all basically just a binary blob a config tool shat out on the mbr. It also could loopback mount and boot isos and stuff.
I used to be skeptical of efi vs bios because it’s higher level code, much bigger, lots more room for security fuckups… Plus there’s more stuff the os can diddle around with and change in efi than the old bioses. But efi booting is way easier to fix than the older mbr boot stuff was. Being able to have mouse/keyboard/massive drives/onboard hw diag utilities are all nice.
I can say, linux is significantly less janky than when I started using it, but it is by far less than perfect.
If you’re annoyed with grub or whatever, try something else. freedom of choice is awesome, the only cost is the time investment in finding something that works for you.
Tech and software changes all the time, they’re just tools… If they do the job, use them until you find something that does it better. You just gotta weigh out the time investment cost of the stuff. Sort of like the saying if you keep having to do it over and over automate it. I’d something keeps breaking or is inadequate, it may be worth shopping around for an alternative.
Occasionally distro hopping in a VM isn’t a bad idea either.