I left 10 years ago and decided to come back to see if things have improved.
It’s 90% there, but there are still too many bugs and quirks that think I I’m going to go back to Windows.
I started my reintroduction to Linux using Mint. Mint is pretty good, but the UX design was terrible and the “start menu” would lose its relative aspect ratio and my 4k monitor would display a 400x200 pixel start menu. Also, when trying to install apps using flatpak, the results was convoluted. I am trying to install tailscale. Why are there so many results? Which one do I need? Maybe this one?.. Nope, not that. How do I uninstall it? Installing apps was a chore and I couldn’t get anything to run correctly.
Switched over to Pop OS which is what I’m using to post this. Oh man, its so much better than Mint. Apps install like I expect from a Windows machine and uninstall the same way. Just 2 options for Tailscale with descriptions on which one fits me better.
But there are so many quirks. The multitouch trackpad is great. The 4 finger workspace swap is amazing. 2 finger “back” button works great too. Except it doesn’t translate to anything else. Firefox/Chome/Edge doesn’t recognize the back gestures. So, I spent 30 minutes looking for a solution which led me to touchegg, which is available in the Pop Store. But after trying to install it, it freezes my computer. No worries, try again. Freeze again. Arg… that’s annoying. Whatever, my mouse back button works. I’ll live without the touchpad feature.
Install all my productivity programs (zoom, slack, office, etc) for some reason it takes forever to install these and there is a constant lag between installs that persists across all apps. Where is the progress on all the apps I selected to install? Why must I research the app to see if its done or frozen. Whatever, I only need to do this once.
I start working on my new system and I don’t really notice much of a difference between working on my Win11 machine vs Pop OS since most of my work is on a browser. After a few hours of working, I walk away for a few hours. I come back and the system is sleeping. I push the keyboard and mouse to wake it up and it’s not waking up. The power button doesn’t work either. I hard reset the system and lose some work that wasn’t on the browser. I’m super annoyed now. I spend the next hour trying to figure out how to fix my sleep issue and have yet to figure it out.
I’m running these OSs on a Dell Precision i7 with an NVIDIA dedicated card and 32gb of ram. Should I give up or is there another distro that is more turnkey?
This is not an airport Sir, no need to announce departures.
If it’s ok to announce you’re moving to Linux (and it is), then it’s ok to announce you’re moving away.
That’s arrivals
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
No, this isn’t an airport because this is a product, not a service. A product wants to claim market share from newcomers like me. Expect people like you make comments like this that makes people like me feel unwelcomed and regret the decision to even try the OS.
Is that a threat? Do whatever you want.
If you seek help, remove 95% of your post.
All distros work somehow, otherwise people wouldn’t use them.
I don’t know how to word this in a nice way but OP didn’t write anything that would make me assume they have bad intent.
People try things and can be frustrated when it doesn’t work for them. It can be specially frustrating in an ecochamber like this.
Why do you have to take critiques on Linux as a threat? Will Linux problems go away if they remove “95%” of their post?
If you talk shit about someone’s garden, don’t be surprised if they tell you to fuck off when you ask for gardening advice
OP didn’t talk shit though, they explained their experience in a pretty fair and neutral way. Don’t take criticisms against Linux so personally.
Did I though? I praised it for how far it has come from 10 years ago. Then I highlighted my frustration with quirks and bugs I was experiencing.
I wasn’t being threatened. I’m giving you perspective from a newcomer who is having issues with trying out Linux. I’m happy you are not bothered by your OS. Now you know that someone else out there is not having the same experience as you.
Should I give up or is there another distro that is more turnkey?
Give up. You want Windows not Linux. You’re unwilling to tinker and didn’t even want to read about the differences between tailscale clients.
Stick to the walled garden. There are monsters out there.
Stick to the walled garden. There are monsters out there.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
A couple of hours spent trying to tinker with an OS is far from unwilling. I know all OSes need work. I never asked for it to be completely turnkey. Just **more **turnkey so I don’t have to spend all day just to get basic things working.
I spent two days trying to figure out why Windows wouldn’t let me disable hyper-v so that I could run VirtualBox - and gave up because apparently I can’t. Your 2 hours of tinkering is nothing and isn’t specific to Linux.
OP, you need to understand that you are leaving your confort zone and things might not work and that’s okay. You can have plenty of issues with Windows as well but I think we’re just trained to ignore them or assume it not the OS’s fault.
I’ve had this sleep issue once with Arch Limux and I think that’s related with a lack of swap memory. Did you configure it?
Regarding issues with programs that you use like Slack etc, If it takes too long, there might have something wrong. I never used Mint so I have no idea on what Pop Store is but I would go away to search for the packages on their official websites.
If you don’t have the patience to learn a new OS just don’t do it. You’re not obligated to do so, you’re not inferior because of it and you are free to choose what is better for you. I do feel better using Linux these days because I am honestly very tired on MS making decisions on what’s best and I enjoy fixing issues by myself.
I think you wording might offend a lot of people here because Linux and open source is almost a lifestyle for a lot of people, so if you need help staying it might be more productive to calm down and elaborate on your isssues in the future.
This is what I was about to write hahaha
If the OP is looking to do things like he does in Windows, just use Windows. I’ve been daily driving MacOS, Linux and Windows (which I fully dropped a few weeks ago) and I have a different workflow in each one. You can’t expect the same behavior/approach in a different OS (in Linux, even in different distros).
In the end, just use what works for you. If you wanna try something else, the “easier” path is to just adjust to that OS, unless you are into customizing it to whatever you are used to, what does not seem to be the interest of the OP.
But I have to say, it is a pain in the ass whenever to be judged because you like/dislike and operating system. Just live your life hahaha
Wow, I never considered swap. I’ve had this problem with my laptop for the last year. I’ll fix this, thank you.
I went into this project understanding that I need to spend some time to make it work for my workflow.
For the sleep issue, I tried this command sudo kernelstub -a mem_sleep_default=deep
It didn’t seem to work. I ran out of ideas to try and got frustrated. How do I configure the swap memory?
Thank you, but I’m very calm. I just didn’t realize how sensitive the Linux community is with their lifestyle.
Swap is only required if you want to hibernate your system, it’s the linux equivalent of
hiberfil.syson windows. When hibernating, the kernel freezes all processes and writes the contents of the RAM to swap (usually a separate partition on the disk), where it can be restored from on the next boot. Since you have issues with sleep/suspend, adding swap won’t help you here, and I also assume PopOS configures swap automatically during the install process anyway. (Also, swap is used as additional memoty in case the RAM is full, so it also functions as thepagefile.sysequivalent.)Anyway, suspend/sleep may fail due to various reasons. It doesn’t work on my desktop (same symptoms you also have), but works fine on my laptop. The command you executed (
sudo kernelstub …) adds a kernel parameter to your bootloader, that advises your kernel to use S3 sleep instead of modern standby (S2Idle), see this wiki article for the differences: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernateSince the kernel is only loaded when you start the PC, my question is: Did you restart your PC after running the command? Check via
cat /proc/cmdline, whether the parameter is present. You can also configure this while the system is running viaecho deep > /sys/power/mem_sleep(needs to be run as root, i.e. login as root viasudo -ibefore running it). See also: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management/Suspend_and_hibernate#Changing_suspend_methodIf you use a desktop PC I would honestly just disable automatic suspend via the PopOS system settings. If you use a laptop on the other hand, I can understand why you would want sleep to work. You can try reading the Arch Wiki article I linked, it contains a lot of information regarding sleep, but keep in mind that the instructions there are for Arch Linux, not for PopOS, so if the Arch Wiki advises you to change something, you’d have to look up the PopOS way of doing that. Unfortunately I don’t have any further hints I could give you, but I hope this information at least helped you to understand some of the terminology. Best of luck!
This was very informative. I am not very knowledgeable so I just assumed it might be related to swap (since I had this issue before configuring it and never again afterwards).
I assumed sleep/suspend would work kind of the same as hibernate. Thank you for your knowledge!
Edit: I just read the other person comment about swap not being the case plus appsre a your distro already configue it on install, so it might not help at all. Sorry!
If you need information on why have Swap space you can read more about it here and here .
In the past, when installing Linux you would create a small partition in your HD for swap memory but nowadays you can just create a swap file. I think this guide might help you.
I don’t know if English is your first language but by the way you wrote your post it was a bit negative which made me understand you were frustrated, that’s why I said to calm down.
It is a tool, use it when it fits. Use both where they fit.
If I’m not wrong, PopOS uses x11 which needs touchegg for touchpad gestures. Try some wayland first distro like Fedora (which uses Gnome like Pop but a newer version of it). Maybe will fix the suspend issue too.
About the issue with flatpaks, maybe it was because the first download needs to pull the runtime (a big bundle with all the dependencies needed).Too bad a bunch of people here just rant without even trying to help you.
People get offended really easily, it is really weird.
He has a Nvidia card, I had a really bad UX with my rtx 4080 with Wayland a few weeks ago. There’s a protocol that just got merged supporting explicitly sync last week that may get Nvidia better with Wayland in the upcoming months though.
Doesn’t it helps having it as a headless dedicated? Can’t be vulkan and xwindows used for games on the headless dedicated nvidia and running the WM on the integrated?
So Arch? I see so many negative comments for Arch that I fear using it.
I’ll give it a try.
Thank you.
Arch for a newcomer? Are you a masochist?
Go for EndeavourOS if you want to use Arch with a lot of legwork done.
I’d really recommend something like Fedora before trying to touch Arch. Arch is pretty much only one step removed from Gentoo, the difference being you don’t compile everything from source, but installing it is still a process of building the entire OS from the ground up. There is no GUI installer, you’re going to be in a terminal window punching in dozens of commands while the installation guide is up on your phone or a nearby computer. There is no real standard pathway to “a setup that works fine for most people”. The wiki is very noncommittal in many areas to the point of inflicting decision paralysis and wasting a lot of your time if you try to approach it as a Linux newbie, as well as throwing so many links at you that it can be hard to tell which links mean “you need to click this and follow the instructions” or “here’s background information on this thing we just told you to do that you only need to know if you’re curious”.
When I tried to install Arch, following the directions as precisely as I could understand them, I couldn’t get networking to function when booted into the OS, it only worked when I was running the USB installation environment. The default pacstrap you’re given doesn’t include the same networking packages as the installation environment, so any newbie just trying to follow the guide is expected to chase down nests of links and hyper-detailed wiki pages to figure out which networking packages they need, try to get them installed, figure out how they’re supposed to be configured, and in my case, still fail to connect to the internet. Also not included by default are the packages that download manuals for all the commands you’ll be learning to use, or a text editor which you need to edit config files, and editing config files is the only way to configure most of the system when you’re in a terminal. I hit so many stumbling blocks and started over so many times it felt like a hazing. Gave up after a full day of trying to figure out the networking problem and having no new ideas the next day.
Fedora (KDE Plasma/Wayland) worked really well out of the box with a proper GUI installer, I just had to do little configuration stuff like adding additional flatpak sources or learning how the console package manager works (
dnf), and also to ignore any instruction that ever tells you to rundnf autoremove. Simple stuff like installing a web browser and basic apps was about as quick to set up as on Windows. The most trouble I actually had was with Discord - it would be freshly installed, briefly work, then on the next launch say that an update is available and demand I manually update it, with options to download an Ubuntu/Debian installer or a tar.gz (aka “figure it out yourself”) which never seemed to take. I ended up looking for alternatives that weren’t just using it in my regular web browser and discovering WebCord, which I’ve been very pleased with from a privacy perspective.Don’t do it. If you’re having issues figuring out stuff by yourself don’t install Arch Linux. If you are already frustrated using an OS like Pop it will be much worse on Arch.
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I care about privacy and have a spare computer willing to see if it can completely switch over. I don’t think it’s a compromise having my computer freeze each time it needs to sleep. I think that is more of a bug.
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I agree with the people who say you should go back to Windows.
Apps install like I expect from a Windows machine and uninstall the same way.
Different operating systems work differently. There are several projects to get (GNU/)Linux to work more like Windows, but if your goal is to be like Windows, you won’t get any better than, well, Windows. I, like most Linux users, think the way Windows does things is terrible, and I’m on Linux precisely because of the differences with proprietary OSes like Windows. But if the differences are a negative for you, I suggest you use the OS that works the way you like it.
Your problems likely can be diagnosed and troubleshooted if you have the patience—some bugs I was experiencing took me like 6 years to diagnose what the problem was—but fixing your bugs will not change the fact that (GNU/)Linux is intended to work differently from Windows, i.e. it’s not a bug. So it sounds like it won’t solve the underlying problem.
I’ll echo what someone else said in another comment and ask why you chose to switch to Linux in the first place. Out of curiosity? In which case, it sounds like your curiosity has been satisfied and you’ve discovered that Linux does not meet your personal requirements. But I think the reasons why most people switch, ie privacy and customisability, and more generally what comes with free software ie the freedom to do whatever you like with your system, are reasons which motivate people to either overcome learning curves (to learn the better way to use your computer, the way you are supposed to use GNU/Linux distros) or to dedicate the time and effort to troubleshooting problems with their system. If you don’t have those motivations, you probably want to just go back to Windows.
I like Flatpaks, but Mint really needs to do a better job of communicating when you should use it over debs. And also deduplicate things so the deb and flatpak don’t both appear in the list. When I was looking at the software centre thingie, my first thought was “wow this would be very confusing for a new user”.
Hidpi and waking from suspend have pretty much (as I understand it) always been problematic on Linux, especially on Nvidia. It’s getting better, but Nvidia isn’t really keen on working with open source stuff.
If you do go back to Windows, I would ask that you be open to the idea of trying it again in the future. A lot of the issues you are facing are being actively worked on, and a lot can change in a year or two.
I do appreciate your comment. I think next time I will purchase a computer new with Linux built in so I can get some support.
Yeah, laptops with dedi nvidia cards were always pain with Linux, at least my experience was always terrible (there is no feature parity to windows, especially energy saving stuff), though for me I am in the position where I would rather have Linux with my configs (which translates into: I’ve spent a lot of time on tweaking and fixing stuff over the time) then windows, so a nvidia gpu in a laptop is no-go in the first place.
Linux requires time investment, not everyone is comfortable to dig in. The fragmented nature of Linux (multiple Desktop Environments, graphical libraries, heck even low-level stuff: va-api/vdpau, …) lends itself into it so there is no sugar-coating it.
If you can’t or don’t want to fix it then win is the way but I would hope one day you will give Linux another chance - the community is there, so there is a high chance it will be better the next year and the one after that, and so on.
My nvidia card is probably my main issue. I will likely try again in a few years and maybe next time purchase a Linux box from the manufacture to get some support.
Did you really judge the current state of linux by using a 2 year old distro?
Why shouldn’t he? It’s a popular distro and one of the easier ones to get into especially with a NVIDIA card.
Because Pop_OS! Devs explicitly said they’re putting it on pause to focus on developing their new rust based cosmic DE. 🤦♀️
While this is true, several core elements of pop os 22.04 continue to receive updates. The kernel, pipewire, Firefox, etc. all continue to receive updates to modernish versions. It is not an ignored distro by any means
The Pop_OS! Devs do not develop the Kernel, pipewire, Firefox, etc. so no shit they’d still receive updates.
No they but they still need to test the kernel and pipewire with the packages they ship to ensure that there are no bugs or dependency issues.
No/few distro maintainers develop packages. By your logic, maintaining a distro should be trivial.
Actually, I’ve made my own distro before. It’s not hard, just extremely time consuming especially when you’re just one person and have no infostructure to automate the process.
maintaining a distro should be trivial.
It is, actually. You use a CI/CD system to do the vast majority of the work then do the most basic form of testing. It’s nothing like developing and maintaining actual source code.
The Gnome-based Cosmic DE was something they actually developed and wrote lines of code for, they do no such thing for the Kernel. They just compile it and package it into a deb using a CI/CD system, test it and vender it out to the user. They already have all the infrastructure required up and running.
So I am not a software developer. My point was born out of the fact that people talk about maintainers(package and otherwise) getting burnt out.
Cosmic is not gnome based
And that means PopOS shouldn’t be used anymore?
No. It means take it’s current DE state with a gran of salt because it’s about to be completely replaced in a few weeks.
Ok so if I run into issues on Fedora 39 then I should take it with a grain of salt because Fedora is more cutting edge? What distro do you suggest then?
False equivalence. Fedora isn’t about to replace the entire DE with a completely new thing that’s been in development for the past 3 years. The problem isn’t that their critiquing, it’s what they’re critiquing that’s the problem. There’s no point critiquing a fork of Gnome that hasn’t had any development for the past two years and is going to be replaced with an entirely new & made from scratch DE in a few weeks from now. The Gnome fork isn’t anywhere near the current state of actual Gnome that’d you find on Fedora and is effectively discontinued.
If you want to criticize Linux Mint cinnamon DE, go for it. If you want to criticize Gnome, go for it. But criticizing Pop_OS!'s Gnome based cosmic DE is udderly pointless and irrelevant to the actual state of Linux DE’s has a whole.I get what you’re saying but I don’t agree that it matters. PopOS is quite popular and recommended distro and it’s fair to critique it if you run into issues. For average user it does not matter that they are working on Cosmic and that they are not updating the current version much if at all. They picked it because it’s popular or was recommended.
If someone will have bad bug fiesta experience on KDE Plasma 6 it’s easy to shrug it away as “it’s new, they still need to iron out issues” the same way as “that’s 2y old, what did you expect?”.
I literally typed in a search “Easiest linux distro for a windows user” and downloaded the top results which was Mint and PopOS. What do you suggest? I’m open for suggestions.
Linux Mint works perfectly as far as I’m concerned. I’ve never seen or heard of the issue you mention where the menu resizes all by itself. Or do you mean that after you switch to 4k it’s too small to see? (btw, do you know that you can resize its window using the mouse?)
If you want something larger for a 4k display, simply install the Cinnamenu instead (you can find it from the Applets window, and then download it from there). I have it setup to show large icons instead of a list. It looks absolutely great on my 28" 4k screen. And it’s also resizable.
Then, there’s the issue of tailscale. Why download it as a flatpak? Why download 1+ GB of data for something that is just 26 MB even when statically linked, directly from the OFFICIAL website? https://tailscale.com/download/linux/static Why use third party uploads for something as critical as a server, where security could be an issue? Just get it directly from the official website.
Perhaps I didn’t give Mint a good enough chance. I felt the UX wasn’t very good. Like, why are there so many apps just preinstalled and thrown in an “All Application” section.
I see its categorized as well, but it’s just daunting the first time using it.
Ok bye.
Insightful. You must be a professor.
If you don’t have a specific need that only Linux can fulfill, or are not an advocate of open source software or don’t really care, then why make yourself go through this and not just stick with Windows if it works so much better for you?
I can use it fine, because A., I don’t have to work with anybody else, and B. I use it mostly for programming and electronics engineering, which it excels at. You have other use cases, so it’s probably not a good fit. I’m not the kind of person that will blindly push Linux on everybody and their grandmother while lying through their teeth about the “easy” user experience. I ain’t gonna sugarcoat it, it’s an OS developed by tinkerers for tinkerers, and if you’re not a tinkerer, you’re going to get frustrated.
I do care about privacy. This was the primary reason to try Linux again.
I just didn’t realize how much work for a newcomer would need to do to get basic functionality working.
I think you’ve already received plenty of feedback here, for better or worse, so I’ll just add that you’re going find quirks in any operating system if you use it long enough; Windows is no exception.
Windows and macOS also introduce privacy and security complexities due to their proprietary nature. If that doesn’t bother you more than the annoyances you’ve encountered under Linux, do whatever works for you.
The main reason I was even attempting Linux was my concern for privacy.
Then you are on the right way. Just don’t try to replicate your Windows workflow, find or create yourself a new one. It will take time but hopefully you’ll get used to it. However there are distros somewhat look like Windows. Linux Mint is a good start point.
