I feel the same way on PoPOS. I have compiled my own kernel (it's actually not that difficult honestly) and done all matter of work at work. It's also how I know the system is super stable and I don't have to mess with things for my daily driver stuff.
We've been using the open-source driver with workstation-grade cards at my employer for a while. The open-source driver didn't get full support for consumer-grade cards until version 560 which was only released around 6 months ago.
I run my "work machine" (Windows 11 VM) in Proxmox, cause I aint running windows on bare metal 🤘 Also means it's always available wherever I happen to be, via Apache Guacamole. 👌
the thing I think a lot of "linux dorks" (and I use that term lovingly) forget about is that most people want to work on their computer, not work on their computer. The OS, for most people, should be the software equivalent of a motherboard -- an invisible plinth upon which the actual things you care about sit. With a motherboard, that's your GPU, CPU, RAM, etc. and with the OS, that's the applications you run.
there's nothing wrong with making fiddling with your computer a hobby, and I've been known to dabble myself over the years, but for me and most other normal people, that ends up being too much work for too little reward in the end. Mint getting to the point where you can daily drive it and not have to worry about it even if you're a complete brainlet when it comes to Linux is a massive W.
I've been tempted to try out other distros, but honestly, when it works as well as it does for me, it's too hard for me to give it up for something that might not be as stable of an experience.
As someone who used Linux Mint for a while and will always keep it in my heart as my stable transition from windows, Pop OS is just about as easy with a much nicer out-of-the-box UI (especially love the native dock). So for anyone like me, try it out.
Pop Os is nice. I went and bought the same hardware that system76 uses and then loaded their popOs on it. Going on 4 years of use now, zero issues. Battery life is challenging... Solid laptop otherwise.
Yeah, fuck Windows. I just had a focus stealing pop-up from HP that demanded a reboot.
I had put the pop-up to the side to finish some work before I'd let it reboot. Pressed enter to finish the message I was composing, only for the pop-up to once again steal focus, and given that "restart" was the only button on that pop-up, it immediately restarted the PC.
I do not understand why Windows lets windows steal focus like that. I have to use Windows for work, and I'll be typing in my password or token, and it'll steal the focus WHILE I'M TYPING. It's infuriating behavior and potentially a security issue.
Yep, in fact sadly I move away from Ubuntu after years of using because of the slow yet seemingly inexorable trend toward bloatware. Going back to the "basics" with Debian, and keeping KDE, made the transition very easy. As you also highlight, Steam works perfectly. Anyway, time to go back to Elden Ring ;)
Plasma kept crashing my system after waking it up from suspend. I tried fresh installs twice, with different revisions of graphics drivers. Plus, I had to install a bunch of crap from github just for my games to work properly. Lighting issues, texture issues. The mouse wouldn't stay captured to one monitor in Fallout 4. Mint with Cinnamon just worked out of the box for me.
I'm not OP, but I also prefer KDE over Cinnamon. The size/spacing of the buttons on the left side of the start menu/application launcher looks weird to me, and while I'm sure there's merits to Cinnamon that was enough to sour my tastes.
A windows like linux isn't really attractive to a windows user, they just want an intuitive but also customizable system. Chances are Windows users trying linux still have their old windows system, anyways. Why would they want a windows and also a fake windows?
Today the liquidctl integration of cooler control died, making all my fans go into a safe profile which makes a lot more noise than normal. Imagine having to listen to that for an hour trying to get it working again. I did get it working luckily, somehow the coolercontrol-liqctld python module didn't register properly. Once I got the module registered everything was working, for now....
yea this is probably the most annoying issue i've had on Arch. every time there's a new version of Python, you'll need to reinstall some python packages, usually the AUR stuff.
Not gonna lie, I'm glad I've moved from Arch to Tumbleweed. Media codecs are handled worse somehow, but I haven't had to deal with crap like this ever since…
No, but depending on what's wrong that might not be the best thing to do. If the new version is broken, rolling back to a previous working version might fix it. But when the update broke something, it might not fix it and could even make it worse. I'd rather figure out what went wrong and how to fix it, it's a good skill to have. And if the new version does turn out to be broken, it's good to have dug into it so you can make a proper bug report.
Dist upgrades when you've neglected a server for 3 years is a fun activity. Many versions of the upgrader don't work, need to take a specific upgrade path that lacks documentation. Mainly achieved by trial and error.
At one point I rebuilt a server by fully abandoning the package database and reinstalling everything as overwrites. Converted a slackware install into a Debian install in situ by cannibalizing it from the inside out. Pretty proud of that one, even 20 years later.
Edit: to clarify, yes you MUST keep your server up to date (and have backups) but what I'm questioning is... if the OS a server actually matters much when most of the actual "serving" is done by containers, which might themselves get updates, or not, but are isolated.
Oof. Looking at the WordPress it's almost a time capsule. They got viral with this one and thought they could make it a full business by depreciating the WordPress domain and going to a .com site. The site is now dead.
My shack pc is a tv box with a custom version of armbian, basically it's barely holding itself together, but it still works decently for digital modes, so i'm not complaining; i couldn't imagine the torture that would be daily driving that monstrosity
Oh god. I started with Slackware in 1998 and used it on the desktop until around 2008, then on the server until 2017 or so.
In later years, the last panel definitely felt like Slackware. I was afraid to upgrade for fear of breaking things. Installing new software was tough because it was like, well, I need this dependency for that package, but what about this one? Will I break package A if I install the dependencies for package B? Only one way to find out!
Slackware is probably much easier to handle now, with the proliferation of docker and the like, where the software includes the libraries it needs and doesn't rely on the system libraries. Just run everything in a container.
I use it on a webserver (that is actually just an LA, no M or P), it's not really updated much any more. Part of why i use it, more complexity = more vulnerability
I went through LFS' build process three times. By the third time, I felt like I might actually have a clue as to what's going on. Then I tried build X.org, and discovered what package managers are for. Tried a few "standard" distributions with their binary packages, none of which satisfied my newly discovered control freak tendencies. Ended up settling on Gentoo, been with it ever since.
I was a Gentoo user from 2004 up until last year, when I found my secondary driver in a soft-bricked state due to me not having done any updates on it for about half+ a year.
Switched to Arch Linux and haven't looked back since. Sure, it will also throw a soft brick at me if I ignore/forget to upgrade, but one of the reasons I refrained from doing it on Gentoo was the compilaton time...