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Wut popos is pretty good got it on all other family members computors
Popos was my first linux distro in like 10 years and i had absolutely no problem with it. I switched to catchy os but for no particular reason.
Hell yeah far vegan
Linus managed to uninstall his desktop environment by installing Steam because there was an issue with deps on the package and he didn’t really look at the list of packages that would be uninstalled either.
And now he’s doing another Linux challenge and he picked Pop again. Which is now using COSMIC which is in Alpha stage at the moment, so a recipe for more issues lol
Yeah I’m a pop fan but as exciting as COSMIC is, it’s still just not ready. The Gnome version with the cosmic gnome-shell extensions is much better.
This really shouldn’t be a hot take but I think the people here will disagree. “Linus unironically did nothing wrong in his linux challenge video” The linux community really shouldnt act like he was using it wrong because its a terrible look.
No reasonable person can pretend there are no issues with linux. Sure you can get good at using linux and not run into these issues but they still exist and people will still run into them and you shouldnt blame the person.
I don’t think LTT’s approach is bad exactly. I really just take issue with their argument that “there are thousands of ‘switching to Linux’ videos on YouTube, so we don’t need to cover that ground again.” It’s ignoring the fact that, for better or worse, they have the biggest audience and furthest reach in the space. There’s still room for “we’re approaching this like normies would,” but I really think they need to close it up with “if you want to do this, here’s how to do it right.”
The big problem is Linus decides to pretend to be some “average user” when he isn’t one, and therefore ends up making absolutely bonkers decisions. It was super obvious in the last video because Linus was the only one participating who had major issues, and the only one participating who pretended to know nothing.
If they actually wanted to give Linux an honest shot and see if they can replace windows on one or more of their computers, the format would be entirely different. I think the format would probably start with a Q&A session with a well known Linux YouTuber like Wendel (who they still appear to have a good working relationship with) where they get the initial “here’s what you need to know and what I recommend for the best experience right now” then a check in call after 24 hours, 72 hours, 1 week and 2 weeks where they touch base, discuss pain points and how to alleviate them. Such a format would give an easy transition as well as great advise for the audience, but still present plenty of opportunity to directly see real world pain points and rough edges but instead of those rough edges being “haha Linux bad” they can instead be “here’s how to overcome them” or “this is an area that needs some developer time, anyone want to dive into improving this?” And maybe if they were really feeling crazy they could offer up some bug bounties for the pain points they find! Because that’s the power of open source is if you have the knowhow you can go in and fix it!
I honestly suspect Linus just doesn’t want to change, and that’s why he keeps failing to actually give Linux a shot. This might be an unpopular opinion here but it’s okay if he doesn’t want to change, but he should not be trying to tear down the Linux community for content in the process
I don’t know if I agree that Linus’ decision making can be attributed to role playing as an “average user” so much as it being a case of too much experience hindering him. He’s someone who has been interacting with tech for his entire life and has become very proficient at it within his domain of knowledge. He is definitely someone who is used to tossing the user manual aside when he gets a new device and stumbling his way through until he groks it, and he is using that same approach with Linux. This ends up meaning that he just does stuff that should work the way that he’s used to (i.e. follows the Windows paradigm) and then runs into problems because of it. I think that a lot of his issues basically stem from his ego not permitting him to take a step back to re-learn some of the fundamentals, or least map them onto his Windows-focused mental model.
All that said, Linux distros have varying levels of issues and quirks that have to be learned/dealt with, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with pointing those pain points out. Linus just needs to take a step back and realise that he’s going to have to actually learn something if he wants to be successful.
What do you mean it’s possible for a multi millionaire ceo with a mansion and a private jet to lose touch and not want to change? Preposterous.
On the other hand though, Linus isn’t exactly an ‘average user’, having spent most of his life working in the IT industry. I’m not sure it’s completely fair judging him as if he was a random clueless person either.
Weren’t people giving him commands, and he was running them without understanding what they did? Or am I thinking of somebody else?
Aha you were probably thinking of every one that is learning Linux ever born?
That’s what the average Linux noob or casual user does.
My issue is the categorization which in turn paints a picture on a lot of OSes. Call it a Pop OS challenge, or debian challenge, etc. In people’s minds there is windows, ios, and everything else is “linux”. Just leaves a bad taste. Just like in your comment you’re broadly painting “linux” issues as if windows or such doesn’t also run into problems at times (especially with windows updates lately).
In the talk show they do, he talked about how even with the issues he loves Pop OS and even mentioned that very argument–that he has problems with Windows too, and at least this way one of those problems isn’t copilot.
This is an extremely bad take.
99% of Linux distros behave the same for the most part. There are outliers, like immutables, or NixOS, but whether you’re using Ubuntu, PopOS, Kubuntu, or Mint, your experience with the “linuxness” of your OS will be mostly identical. I’m not talking about things like “the DE looks different”, or the overall “look and feel”, I’m talking about software compatibility, driver compatibility, etc.
You could, I guess, argue if they should say “we’re testing a Debian based distro” instead of “Linux”, but that’s about it.
As already mentioned, Ubuntu/PopOS/Kubuntu/Mint are maybe the four most identical distros in the entire ecosystem. But your point really does hold true even with less-identical distros.
Currently, I have an Ubuntu Server, an Arch PC, and an old laptop “test machine” running Fedora. These are totally different limbs of the Linux family tree, but things pretty much work the same in all of them. The main difference is the package manager: Apt vs Pacman vs DNF. But like, they’re all doing basically the same thing under the hood: checking your installed software against some repository to see if anything needs an update. The actual workflow is pretty much the same with any of them.
After that it’s pretty much just a question of downloading the desktop environment and software you like. Or finding a distro that comes pre-installed with what you want. To make a gaming analogy: linux distros are like Dark Souls classes: starting stats and equipment, but the starting point doesn’t lock you into your you build in the future.
NixOS is a different beast for sure.
They are similar overall, yes. Skills and knowledge also transfers between distros. The experience can vary significantly.
If your hardware is correctly detected gets the correct drivers including non free firmware installed, and is correctly configured varies wildly.
For some distros you might have to switch to the iwd instead of networkmanager for wifi to work correctly. You might have to disable powersaving on your wifi or Bluetooth to work correctly. If keyboard backlight works out of the box also varies. Bluetooth audio without cracks, distortion, artifacts might also need tweaking of bluetooth or wifi. Some drivers might only work well with certain kernel versions too.
Software compatibility has gotten a lot better thanks to flatpak and appimage. However having a current version in the package manager instead of having to search for it is nice. Even then you might have to try several options until you find one that works.
The quality of the documentation and the user community also matters a lot in practice. Do they yell at noobs to RTFM or answer welcoming and politely?
Ubuntu, PopOS, Kubuntu, or Mint
Did you just say Ubuntu four times?
For some distros you might have to switch to the iwd instead of networkmanager for wifi to work correctly. You might have to disable powersaving on your wifi or Bluetooth to work correctly (…)
And unless the people doing the “let’s use Linux for however many days” challenge have that specific issue, they won’t learn about it anyway.
On top of that - even if they said “OK, we’re using specifically Mint for 30 days”, and then you go out and try Mint, YOU might end up with massive issues, because your hardware is not supported properly.
They’d have to specify the OS and the hardware if you want a “reproducible experience”.
The quality of the documentation and the user community also matters a lot in practice. Do they yell at noobs to RTFM or answer welcoming and politely?
In my experience, after looking through r/Linux, r/Linux4noobs, or the various Linux communities on Lemmy - you’re going to get yelled at no matter the distro. It’s a matter of timing and luck (who’s currently online, and are they having a good day).
Did you just say Ubuntu four times?
That was kind of my point.
Kind of, but some distros are still much more stable than others.
It’d be like only ever trying windows ME or vista, rather than 2000 or 7.
You’re still getting ‘the windows experience’, but you happen to be using one of the least stable options available. Much like choosing pop vs debian.
Kind of, but some distros are still much more stable than others.
Depends on the hardware config mostly.
Much like choosing pop vs debian.
See? Here’s the problem - I installed PopOS on my old EliteBook to check it out and it’s been absolutely marvellous. Zero issues whatsoever.
At the same time, at work we have laptops that choke and panic under Debian.
The culture of different distros matters. Lots of people had issues with Manjaro because the devs let their certificates expire. Other distros weren’t affected by that.
It’s not a problem that’s going to pop-up during a “let’s use XYZ for ## days” challenge.
It literally did last time Linus tried due to a missing dependency for steam in the PoP!_OS repo.
There was something that happened a while ago that made all the tech influencers look kinda silly in regards to Linux. I’ll never forget this comment on one of the videos around the kerfuffle. ‘All these computer experts have just been downgraded to Windows influencers.’ It’s so true how they can tell you all the inner workings of a Windows machine and the moment they try Linux their expertise just falls apart.
I have a working hypothesis, the short of which goes something like this:
windows makes one memorise orders of infinite submenus, while linux makes you understand the way it works.
Linus: Now, I want to give Linux the fairest chance possible - That’s why I’m going to fresh install it blind during a 10,000 person LAN party, in the worst networking nightmare scenario possible
To defend Linus here, he’s always doing something
“Hmmm… testing branch. Sounds like the branch for me.”
Fair enough
That should have been a layup for linux ngl.
Pop_OS! is fine, even if COSMIC is unrefined. It will get there eventually. Comparing it to Windows is libel.
Yes but LTT will define his Linux desktop experience through PopOS which is shipping a very alphaish-betaish DE. A normie will think this how Linux actually is and will never switch. He should have gone with the parent distros or at least a well respected derivative like Bazzite, Cachy, Mint.
LTT will define his Linux desktop experience
I’ll just say LTT is a channel not a person, and the latest “Linux challenge” has three participants each with their own approaches and opinions.
Including one who was super stoked to switch to Linux and actually properly prepared.
And there is nothing on the pop os page ahead of the downloads that indicates the DE is any sort of alpha or beta.
Anything close is way at the bottom where it says Cosmic is new and being developed.
I loaded pop os years back for the nvidia support and since i bought hardware from the same manufacturer that supplies system76. Its been fine, no complaints other than the battwry life…to be expected.
I found out that sys76 keeps most its software and drivers only for machines it sells. When i try to install things, i get unknown system. Fyi
I made the mistake of going with Pop_OS for one of my stores workstations. Its been an almost endless amount of frustration with all the stupid shit Pop has done. Is it better then windows? sure, but its down there with arch as a usable OS in anything outside of an LTT video.
Seems a bit of a self report that you’ve never used Arch IMO. I use it on a daily basis on 2 PCs and never have any issues. Arch is as good as the person using it.
I use Arch, btw.
When did I say I never used it? Its just not a good choice unless you really like to configure your Linux. For workstations that my staff (who are not interested in Linux or PCs at all) have to use, I go with things that are stable and easy like mint.
Its just not a good choice unless you really like to configure your Linux.
Yep, you have no clue.
For workstations that my staff (who are not interested in Linux or PCs at all) have to use
Nice Motte & Bailey fallacy retreating from the ridiculous statement that “…its down there with arch as a usable OS…” to try and seem more reasonable now.
Yep, you have no clue.
If I don’t want to fuck with the OS and if setting it up takes more then 15 min then its not a good choice, but please tell me to “get gud” about what I value in an OS. I am sure that is why so many people use arch over other distros, the kind support.
Nice Motte & Bailey fallacy retreating from the ridiculous statement that “…its down there with arch as a usable OS…” to try and seem more reasonable now.
That is why it is not a useable OS, 100% the fact that laypeople have to daily drive it. There was no retreating from me, not at all, I stand by my statement that arch is not a usable OS for workstations. And before you try and say that “for workstations” is some sort of moving the goalposts, I made the statement on arch not being usable in a comment about putting distros on my stores workstations.
The problem is that you didn’t state your premises very well, making your argument harder to follow. (You also argue very broadly.)
You first argued that Arch is not a usable operating system, which is a bold claim given that it’s one of the most popular Linux distros. While you did mention a workstation before, the claim regarding Arch wasn’t obviously connected to that, implying that Arch is not useful for any purpose.
When asked to back up that claim you talked about workstations for nontechnical users (which hadn’t been mentioned before). That didn’t match your earlier claims; you made a broad statement and then defended a narrower one. That’s indeed a motte and bailey argument even if you simply forgot to mention some details.
Also, if the users are nontechnical they’re probably not the ones who administer the workstations so they don’t need to care about technical details as long as you can provide a desktop and the applications they need.
After that you declared that any OS that needs more than 15 minutes to set up is useless, which amounts to pretty much all of them unless you don’t engage in any configuration at all. And, well, it’s another bold claim. It’s basically on par with “Mint is completely pointless because unlike Alpine I can’t use it to ship 5 MB Docker images”; you’re basically declaring that your specific use case is equivalent to any use case any Linux user will ever have.
A coherent version of your argument would be “I don’t like Arch because when I set up workstations for Linux-averse users it was much more work than Mint and I prefer something that’s quick and easy to set up”. And fair enough, that’s a perfectly valid reason for you to prefer Mint over Arch. But it’s not an indication that Arch is worse in general or even unusable. It’s just a bad fit for this specific use case.
You first argued that Arch is not a usable operating system, which is a bold claim given that it’s one of the most popular Linux distros. While you did mention a workstation before, the claim regarding Arch wasn’t obviously connected to that, implying that Arch is not useful for any purpose.
The statement was made in a comment that was in its entirety:
“I made the mistake of going with Pop_OS for one of my stores workstations. Its been an almost endless amount of frustration with all the stupid shit Pop has done. Is it better then windows? sure, but its down there with arch as a usable OS in anything outside of an LTT video.”
There are 3 or 4 total sentences in the whole thing and the very first one is laying out that this whole thing is about workstations. I don’t know how much more I could do other then literally plan for this argument that you started.
As far as not mentioning nontechnical users, fuck right off with that, all users are nontechnical unless otherwise stated. Anyone who has had to set a computer up for anyone other then themselves knows this. I did not make the comment assuming that someone would get bent out of shape and look for any “win”.
Also, if the users are nontechnical they’re probably not the ones who administer the workstations so they don’t need to care about technical details as long as you can provide a desktop and the applications they need.
They have a stick with mint on it and I can and have walked them though reinstalling mint from a stick and then have them connect to the back up system to retrieve the files used for work. The stores are 250 kms apart, you can not in good faith tell me arch is appropriate unless you have an administrator on site (and if I was that administrator I would likely strike you). I used to make rollup disks to do this, but hey guess what has more or less gone away? I can have the workstations up and running in 15 min with a mint stick, with default install options. That is important to me and frankly a lot of places. There are quite a few distros that can do this as well, this is not a feather in mints cap. Configuration is not a thing that needs to be done unless it needs to be done, to think otherwise is just admitting the unconfigured distro is not any good.
A coherent version of your argument would be “I don’t like Arch because when I set up workstations for Linux-averse users it was much more work than Mint and I prefer something that’s quick and easy to set up”. And fair enough, that’s a perfectly valid reason for you to prefer Mint over Arch. But it’s not an indication that Arch is worse in general or even unusable. It’s just a bad fit for this specific use case.
There is no situation where you are setting up workstations for users that are not Linux-averse outside of a Linux development environment, in which case those users will not like that you set up arch for them, as if they are arch fans they will also want to do their own configurations.
That all being said, if I had the time and desire I could see making a arch rollup sort of thing custom made for an organization. I just don’t need to as a distro like mint has everything the store needs already there by default.
I’m borderline Linux illiterate and have been using Pop as my daily driver for years without problems.
I think I’ve had to troubleshoot a major issue exactly one time and that was easy.
Do you run cosmic?
Yes.
Btw, Pop OS has said they will comply and add age attestation in case you weren’t aware.
If its legally required what are their options? I currently use Pop! OS, what are my options in that scenario? Like legally speaking how does age verification work?
There are many distros that have said they will not implement the age attestation/verification feature into the distro. Many distros are not developed/located in the US, therefore they do not have to comply. The link below is kept updated to show which OSes will or will not comply
Linking to a conservative fuckwit’s GitHub is an interesting choice tho
I dont know about what other “distros” are doing, but systemd is adding an optional field to the optional userdb module to store the user’s age, and then with xdg a program can query it and it will just return if the user is over 18 or not, then all the distro has to do is add a way to set the age if they want to comply.
Like legally speaking how does age verification work?
Basically no government who require has ever give plan on how to do. Or what to do. Or what to actually verify (select ok? estimate via face ok? estimate via big data ok? id ok? birth certificate ok? nobody know). Or how make sure root not change birthday after verify… which impossible.
Right because its not actually about age verification or protecting kids. Its about mass surveillance and dominance.
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the interessting thing with linus is that he 1. plays the non tech person and 2. has pretty bad luck with linux fetures that are broken or bugs because he stumbles over them to 120%.
I also like the contrast between Linus and Luke because Luke drives Mint on his Laptop and cachy os on something other and he has very few problems.
Luke has had problems he mentions on the WAN show. But they two really arent comparable because Luke’s use case is completely different hes much closer to the average person. He only uses a web browser and some light gaming.
Average person?
In talking computer literacy, he is easily within the 1 percent of the 1 percent.
The difference is Linus is not an average person but for these Linux challenges tries to pretend to be (people who work in tech are generally very bad at pretending to be average users) meanwhile Luke wasn’t pretending to be someone he’s not
Oh does he do it like chess engines where it seems like playing at a low level is still playing with an almost prefect engine, only it adds random “inaccuracies” that are mistakes no human would ever make, like suddenly hanging their queen with no actual intent behind the move other then being a random mistake?
Like “oh, a average user would have made a mistake by now, so let’s remove an important directory to simulate that”?
You’re right. Linus isn’t an ordinary user, and still he experiences trouble.
Arch is goat. My first distro was Fedora. Absolutely hated DNF so then I switched to Mint but didn’t like Cinnamon— felt like I was using Android (I love Android but not on desktop lol). Also I has to wait longer for features. Switched to Arch with KDE and never looked back.
What were your issues with dnf?
It was a 5-6 years back so I don’t know the current state but I am sure it must great (also I was a Linux noob). It was terribly slow. Like my connection is 250 Mbps but I was getting downloads of like 10 Mbps with the repos even with the mirrors near to me. Every time it updated it like got stuck over there for a minute. I searched on reddit and there were a lot of complaints and the solutions involved the terminal to change the mirrors using nano (and I was scared of the terminal back then) so I just ditched fedora after a year (rest of the system was pretty fast though) and switched back to Windows for a few months then again to Mint.
There I learnt Linux fundamentals step by step for a year & a half and thought I want the latest and greatest stuff. I learnt something like the AUR existed. Installed Arch with archinstall with btrfs, first with KDE Plasma and I got excited and installed Hyde’s Hyprland script (lol) and shit broke pretty quick like in 2 months and I didn’t know how to fix. Went back to Mint, but thought naah. Took me a few days to learn but installed Arch the manual way by actually RTFM and a few YT Tutorials. Stuck with KDE and never looked back.
Heh, that’s quite the ride. Although not that unusual for Linux people, I guess
Thanks for sharing!
Linus has a skill for messing things up with Linux
It’s a little crazy to me how the most popular tech youtuber struggles so much with Linux, meanwhile fucking PewDiePie, who’s not known for being particularly bright, has been making videos about Linux and selfhosting and how fun it is to configure his system lol.
no pewdiepie 1000% messed things up on linux. the difference is he didnt show it in his videos
If you mess up and then fix it/start over and get it right the second time around, did you mess up?
The hardest person to convert is a Windows “poweruser”. They have an unfounded confidence in their ability to do things. They think because they know Windows well they should be immediate pros at other OSes as well.
cOnTeNt
You are giving him to much credit of you think he’s just pretending to break things.
It’s on purpose.
Probably dropped it
Naw he’s just the ElectroBOOM of computers. Intentionally does shit wrong to show people how not to do things.
He wishes he were electroboom
What is supposedly wrong with my operating system?
A YouTuber entered a command, it warned him it would delete system files. He said yes and concluded Linux was flawed.
The joke is that if you’re that guy then even Pop won’t work for you.
He actually did a video after that where they do s “Linux challenge” and he, again, chooses PopOS, and again is the only one of the three participants to run into issues.
Stupid take - the warning came when he ran sudo apt install steam, not even a joke. He said yes but there is literally no reason that command should break his entire OS. If it wasn’t flawed then why was it fixed later on?
he installed pop and it shipped cosmic by default with no warning that it was unstable. He had a bad experience for 2 days then switched to another distro.
You are cranking your hog too much. Or not enough.
Nothing, just the national sport of complaining
I have a test desktop that I put Pop OS on (when I was testing distros) and it seems fine. I’m not a huge fan of Cosmic so far but its alright.
People love gnome unironically? #kdeftw
I don’t really get it either. I used gnome once and needed multiple extensions to get functionality that is the default of KDE
I tried gnome when I first tried Linux, because everyone said how much like macOS it is.
It is not, in fact, anything like macOS. I very quickly got pissed off with having to install extensions to match what I was used to, so gave up and left Linux alone for a few years. Now I use KDE on everything and I couldn’t be happier.
Same. However, if you don’t need that functionality it’s solid. Just definitely not for me.
Even with several random extensions, gnome runs for 6 months for me before having the instability problems I had on KDE in 6 minutes
Last time KDE gave me issue was when they switched to Wayland by default I think. And even then that was mostly on me. 🤷♀️
KDE for me was death by 1000 cuts. I’d get a notification that I need to reboot my system but clicking the X doesn’t close it. The settings GUI pretty abysmal, but ig when you compare it to Windows it still looks golden. Randomly can’t wake up from sleep sometimes until i restart my display manager from a TTY. The “task manager” didn’t let me see all running tasks… It’s somehow so polished while also being janky.
Gnome alternatively is all polish, but you have to fight tooth and nail to go beyond defaults. I’m sure it’s more bloated too.
Now im on Niri with plenty of other problems but at least they’re my fault!
I used to get that as well but that was largely due to NVIDIA drivers. Either have to get a tty on the local machine or SSH into it and do a reset. But I haven’t had so much as a peep out of that machine since the Nvsync or Ntsync or whatever it was got merged. I had it happen outside of KDE as well.
I remember when KDE first rolled out plasma and the shit show it started out as. That’s when GNOME really blew up. But since the late 5.X and especially 6.5-6 its been solid. They broke off with a lot of those old abandoned themes etc with the 6.X series as well. That would often fail to function and shit the desktop. I haven’t encountered anything like that in the 6.X repos. My biggest gripe with any of them currently is the deskbar macos style that’s poorly exposed and configured. But comes by default from a few distro like garuda. And predictably isn’t consistent. When it works it’s nice. When it doesn’t it’s confusing.
I tried to customize the UI and had the DE crash like 5 times in 5 minutes. Took it as a sign. It’s ugly as can be but I was willing to put in some time to fix it but it seems luck was not on my side.
GNOME is not meant to be customized. Don’t even try. If your concept of customization goes beyond adding a panel in a different spot. It’s truly asking for grief. Their add-ons/plugins are fairly neat with all the different languages they can be written in etc. But with all the breaking changes that are constantly being done to the API you never know if they’ll be functioning in the next week. It’s part of why pop started Cosmic in the first place. The GNOME team would regularly roll breaking changes with minor point releases.
I use gnome on my laptop and KDE on my desktop. I think gnome really shines when it comes to basic “business” productivity: using the internet, office suite, etc. And KDE is better for my normal use of a computer: gaming, media management, software development, etc. Obviously ymmv, but that’s how it’s been for me
My first distro was Debian and I loved Gnome so much that I’ve never gotten around to trying anything else despite being on my 3rd distro hop.
I’m an old head and a firm believer in keyboard first computing. And I think an OS’s job is to be invisible until I need it. Gnome get’s out of my way until I summon whatever I need from it with the keyboard. For someone who’s labored under Windows for so long, Gnome is like escaping Plato’s cave.
Try KDE sometime if you are keyboard first. I’ve found it has more keybinding opportunities than gnome had (~5 years ago, so things might be better. Knowing gnome though, I wouldn’t hold my breath 😅)
There are dozens of us
They are the same kind of people that use tablets for work
KDE has a really beauty of a big screen. The tablet mode on my 2 in 1 works well enough but I can’t compare with gnome for obv reasons (I don’t use gnome)
I like Gnome because it’s very tablet-y by default. Sure, I could make KDE look like that, but who has the time for that?! Plus, not having a desktop is the most effective way to stop me from filling the desktop with unsorted garbage
That’s my biggest gripe with GNOME. They constantly compromise or even remove features to be more touch friendly.
That’s what the people who use it want. They love shit like that because they think it looks cool (fine with me, none of my business what DE people use)
For a media PC GNOME is goated, specifically their overview! One button on the “magic remote” mouse to easily switch between desktops, windows, control basic settings, and launch other applications is awesome. Generally prefer KDE and did choose it this time when reinstalling the media/coach-gaming machine, but really wish there was anything like GNOMEs overview on KDE.
(Yes, the Plasma overview is awesome, but you can’t launch new apps from it without typing).
The Plasma overview thing or whatever isn’t for launching, the launcher in that workflow is kRunner. Almost certain you can pin apps to that but not sitting in front of the PC currently
I do. But, I recognize that preference is personal so I try not to shame people for the desktop environment they prefer.
I’ve tried KDE, and others, multiple times in the last 20 years or so and it’s just never felt as polished to me as Gnome does. When Gnome 3 came out I spent quite a bit of time with Mate because I didn’t like the new Gnome. But eventually I got used to it and it got better.
Typically, for new Linux users, I recommend Gnome for Mac people and KDE for Windows people.
Gnome being more polished was definitely true a while ago. I was mostly put off gnome because it felt that they are against DE being customisable (need to install gnome tweaks for stuff that should be built in)
I used to like Gnome before 1.1. It was a while ago though.
Until you check your ram usage
Cosmic is everything. It’s the way, the truth, and the life.
I… I really like it.
I really like cosmic actually.
as far as desktops go its pretty bad, barebones feature wise and really buggy. There is no way id ever ship that to users without a warning (which is what pop did)
Pop!_os has been fine for me. I’m not a tinkerer. It’s a machine for a web browser and video games.
I am a tinkerer but I couldn’t for the life of me get nvidia drivers to work on Arch, so I replaced it with pop for the time being so I could just play some games already on my newly built PC
Been trying cosmic for a few weeks now, cant say its my jam. Got some hardware upgrades to do sooner or later and want to try something new and will install a new OS around then, open to recomendations.
I’ve been hearing about this TempleOS a lot lately. You might try that maybe?
I’m a big fan of Fedora Kinoite, though it does make messing around with things outside of the few system directories they’ve marked RW pretty annoying. Trying to change things in /usr, for instance, is convoluted but not impossible, but I’ve had to go in there less and less over the years to the point that I don’t think I’ve touched it directly in probably 3 or 4 years. That makes the upside of having atomic updates worth it for me.
Now if only they could figure out how to apply updates without rebooting, that would really be something, but even then I’ve had a lot of bizarre issues happen from applying updates without a reboot on Fedora, so it’s kinda worth it IMO.
/rant
If I might ask, why isn’t it your jam? Is it the layout, missing a specific feature, or something else?
The more recent issues have been fiddly display problems along with multiple instances Proton_GE running at the same time not being reliable as they were in the last version and more broadly it has been issues attempting to get Davinci Resolve to run correctly, but thats going to hopefully be fixed by the hardware upgrades (GPU, switching from an old rx 6700 to a lightly used 3090, there are known compatibility issues with AMD GPUs). Was thinking something Fedora or arch flavored, just for a change of scenery.
Shitting on macOS like that is completely unjustified.
Nah, worst os I’ve ever used
Skill issue
A Mac user CANNOT use the retort “skill issue” 😂😂 it’s the OS that requires the LEAST amount of skill of all the options available and that’s saying something when chromeOS exists
No skill issue involved when your team arrives to work and every single employee’s screen sharing functionality stops working…and there’s no warning or notification why it’s not working.
No skill involved when your sound drivers stop working during a presentation and you need to reboot to get them working again because there’s no way to restart the devices.
No skill issue when the file explorer has no way to access the root directory - you have to run finder from the command bar and that somehow works.
No skill issue involved when an update breaks all local domains and you have no way to override, so you have to change all dev domains for everyone across the whole org…TWICE.
No skill issue when wifi and bluetooth randomly stop working and the only solution is to reboot.
No skill issue when pressing the play button and it open iTunes when Spotify is already open.
Not a skill issue when desktop transitions don’t accept input until the transition completes. Reducing the transition time does not help, the transition must fully complete before you can provide input.
I could go on, but I can only recall so much anecdotal experience from the few years I suffered through that shit. Maybe some of these things have been fixed, but release after release the experience would worsen and usability would degrade. I’ll never use a mac again, my productivity is too important to me.
Anyone who stans for MacOS are just lying to themselves.
None of these happen on a regular occasion, I can’t even remember the last time ANY of them happened in my office where macOS is the default. 90% of what you experienced is probably user created errors**. But then again I realize I’m in a Linux sub and it’s what we Linux users do, tweak shit.
** except for the play button. Apple does like to force Apple Music over my already open player.
macOS is perfect for every day use for most people and for those that know how to use it outside the normal, powerful.
This shit happened all the time, it was a non-stop nuisance, and it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Retina display would disconnect daily, peripherals would disconnect when connected through a retina display, the entire OS one time would not boot and there was no real error message but was fixed by clearing some battery cache after we already ordered a new macbook.
These issues plagued our entire office, but you just lived with it because you didn’t have a choice. One ycombinator commentor described these issues as “papercuts”, and they’re so abundant that they moved away from MacOS entirely. Another commentor describes that the most recent release is the most “breaking” version yet. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47440759
It’s pretty ignorant to say “it’s perfect for every day use” in the face of literal users struggling to use it for “every day use”.
Thank you for providing examples. Some are fair enough.
file explorer has no way to access the root directory
It has several ways. From the menu bar: > Go to… > Folder > /
By default Finder no longer shows your main drive in the sidebar. You can easily enable that in Finder settings though.
You can also navigate the folder hierarchy up until you are at root.
cmd+upis the keyboard shortcut for that. You can also command + click the icon in the window title bar and then select the folder upwards in the hierarchy you want to navigate to.There are several other ways to do this as well.
reboot
A very common way to resolve problems on all operating systems.
update breaks all local domains
Weird.
release after release the experience would worsen and usability would degrade
I agree that macOS experience has worsened over the last couple of years. It’s still better than Linux and windows overall.
Don’t forget forced AI bullshit
I haven’t used a mac in a few years - there’s AI stuff now? The OS was pretty bloated considering what it was - it used more memory than a Windows machine which is impressive.
macOS uses more aggressive caching of the filesystem and other things. Using available memory isn’t bad.
Swap is also bette4 because Apple chooses actually fast SSDs.
Using a Mac with only 8 GB of RAM is a lot more fun and performant than a windows machine.
There are very few and limited AI features now. For example Mail has a button to summarize text. There’s also a mediocre local AI to generate images. Apple focuses on locally run small AI models that add small features. It’s not in your face and demands you use it. You can easily ignore the AI features.
Same for Windows. It’s an opinionated meme.
Ubuntu on a desktop, mint on an older laptop, and Pop_OS on my daily driver laptop…
What am I doing wrong here?
What am I doing wrong here?
Ubuntu on a desktop
See, that’s what I don’t get, it works fine. Plays games and browses the Internet. Why is that wrong?
Do you have any snaps installed? Each one slows down your boot time because every snap is virtually mounted on boot.
You think you don’t have any snaps? Ubuntu hijacks apt commands to install snaps.
You removed snaps completely from your system to avoid that? Ubuntu reinstalls it after an update.
And that’s besides the fact you’re trusting a closed source app store that’s managed by scum who sold user data to Amazon. They can literally add whatever spyware they want to FOSS and you won’t know it. And considering how many people accused them of illegally harvesting data through Azure Ubuntu images…
I doubt people with private jets use computers. Especially privately. Linux even less so.
He hardly even had to pay for it!!!1!!
Ummm if anything he’s actually making money lol. Seriously though its crazy that Jake quit because LMG didn’t want to give him a raise, then Linus buys a 5-million dollar jet.
HE HAS A FUCKING JET NOW? WHAT THE FUCK? Tell me that it’s an inside joke please. 😭
It"s real and full of gold plated everything.
He’s always been a clown. I never understood why anyone took him seriously. He’s an entertainer (which is fine, it’s just not the kind of entertainment that’s useful to me personally).
I didn’t watch the second video, but assume it’s just: “Hey, let’s see if it’s any better now, since this is what I used last time, and it’s sold preinstalled on commercial hardware.” I don’t like Pop!, but I also think the people arguing he should be using something else – regarding a semi-popular, commercially-backed distro commonly advertised as noob-friendly – are hitting the copium too hard.
“But he wants to do gaming!” And I never had to install a special version of Windows because I wanted to do digital art. That’s not intentionally making Linux look bad; it’s just not going out of his way to doll it up like a burger in a fast food ad. Plenty of people will want to game but don’t treat it as their entire identity and therefore won’t be looking into “best linux gaming distro 2026 reddit”.
I liked JayzTwoCents’ video because he has an expert walk him through it and chooses Bazzite since he’s doing it specifically to evaluate gaming, not how good he is at using it. For a video where somebody is trying to assess the state of Linux for a normal user new to Linux, I don’t want an expert hovering over them the entire time, and within reason, I want them to pick what appeals to them.
I’m over here having a great time on Endeavour, but I got turned off of Linux for years after trying Ubuntu as a daily driver for several months and running into issues constantly. My actual Linux experience was eerily similar to Linus’ first video (it nuked my entire config twice), and I probably would’ve gone back to Ubuntu as a test if I were doing it for an audience and not for myself.
What happened on Pop! this time, by the way? COSMIC issues?
Yes, encountered a bunch of cosmic related bugs.
