It’s been a week. Ubuntu Studio, and every day it’s something. I swear Linux is the OS version of owning a boat, it’s constant maintenance. Am I dumb, or doing something wrong?
After many issues, today I thought I had shit figured out, then played a game for the first time. All good, but the intro had some artifacts. I got curious, I have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 and thought that was weird. Looked it up, turns out Linux was using lvmpipe. Found a fix. Now it’s using my card, no more clipping, great!. But now my screen flickers. Narrowed it down to Vivaldi browser. Had to uninstall, which sucks and took a long time to figure out. Now I’m on Librewolf which I liked on windows but it’s a cpu hungry bitch on Linux (eating 3.2g of memory as I type this). Every goddamned time I fix something, it breaks something else.
This is just one of many, every day, issues.
I’m tired. I want to love Linux. I really do, but what the hell? Windows just worked.
I’ve resigned myself to “the boat life” but is there a better way? Am I missing something and it doesn’t have to be this hard, or is this what Linux is? If that’s just like this I’m still sticking cause fuck Microsoft but you guys talk like Linux should be everyone’s first choice. I’d never recommend Linux to anyone I know, it doesn’t “just work”.
EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone who blew up my post, I didn’t expect this many responses, this much advice, or this much kindness. You’re all goddamned gems!
To paraphrase my username’s namesake, because of @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone and his apt gif (also, Mr. Flickerman, when I record I often shout about Clem Fandango)…
When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall GNU/LINUX OS grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yessir, the check is in the mail.”
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I know I’m very late to the party and any comment in a thread with 200+ posts is like yelling at the void.
BUT
My experience with Windows has hardly been “it just works”. In fact it has been a history of decades of tinkering and messing around with it to try and get it to do what I want.
The only difference is that Windows obscures everything, so when something breaks it does so quietly. Meaning you might not notice… Or. More likely. It’ll just crash out and you don’t even have an error code to google.
This isn’t to say that Linux isn’t a balancing act of constant maintenance. It is. Just… The Windows experience was never “better” for me from that angle. And… On some level, I enjoy all the tinkering. I think all Linux folks do.
Still new with Linux as my regular desktop at home, after ditching Windows (kind of), I’m amazed by the level of things I can try to go into a try to make stuff work, that does not do as I want to. But also, annoyed about the level of things that sometimes needs to get tweaked and thinking “why the hell do I need to make these changes” like super fast scrolling in Firefox for whatever reason.
Windows have more or less “just worked” for me for the last 30 years (not remembering anything too critical, always better than every Linux attempt until recently). But I also didn’t treat Windows in a way that I had to reinstall it every 6 months (whatever that causes that). What have gotten me over the tipping point with Windows is all the push for me to subscribe to extra things (OneDrive), use Microsoft things (like Bing, even though I used to use it over Google), Edge trying to trick you into using Edge and copy your stuff from Chrome, and changing defaults to Microsoft apps.
At work I changed to a Mac. I was actually surprise at how many graphics issues I have noticed and other weird minor bugs. The biggest issue here is the keyboard layout when you remote into Windows servers and some modifier keys are mapped differently combined with non-English keyboard layout.
I had to tweak things often in Windows too. Windows pushed a broken update around December 2023 (or 2022, don’t remember) and when I restored from a system image Windows itself made it broke everything worse. Windows isn’t perfectly stable. There’s currently a bug corrupting people’s disks.
I think a huge part of it is that you’re more used to the types of issues you ran into on Windows and knew how to solve them easily enough that they didn’t cause headaches.
Could be. I’m getting the hang of it but the first bit was literally “this doesn’t work”, found a fix, which made something else not work, etc. Drive permissions were a big hassle, I’ve got things going but it’s been a huge learning curve.
windows just worked
This is not how I remember windows
Do you guys just have flawless experiences or what? … NVIDIA
Never had a flawless experience with NVIDIA. Hopefully their grift dies and gets replaced with RISC-V or similar open source…
Otherwise my linux machines have been awesome.
Am I missing something and it doesn’t have to be this hard
Nothing was missed. You said in your post that you’re using NVIDIA. No, it doesn’t need to be that hard.
is this what Linux is?
That’s what proprietary tech is. I definitely wouldn’t blame open source projects for the widespread abuse/failure of technology under capitalism.
In short, no. Linux can be adversarial, finicky, and sometimes just plain bullshit. That’s the price of device freedom though. Can’t speak for anyone else, but it does get easier the longer you stick with it though.
Bought a Tuxedo laptop with Linux preinstalled. Literally flawless experience. Zero glitches. Sounds like an exaggeration but my work issued macbook pro has issues here and there.
Flawless? No. But the bar is very low.
I’m on AMD, but I do still run into frequent issues. Normally with Ubuntu variations most things just work but not everything.
Linux is created mostly by unpaid volunteers, so it’s gonna have it’s faults. For so many reasons I’m inclined not to use Windows so finding that a feature doesn’t work isn’t a big deal for me.
Not at all, but the benefits are worth it.
Not flawless but on windows I couldn’t find solutions so I gave up and forgot about whateer it was I was trying to do or fix, on linux I fix it and rememeber next time a similar issue occures, I have a flawless experience because I make that flawless day to day experience through the ocasional day each month I fix something. Windows is always just mid, like I’ve had apps refuse to open or work no matter what solution I tried, always had weird issues and crashing, linux I find the source fast or the app crashes/freezes not my whole system, it’s better at preventing that.
But I am all Amd which may be why its been mostly smooth
cpu hungry and eating memory? ram? 3gb is lowish for a browser, you must use very few active tabs
I’ve always had issues with it too. You’re not alone. Thanks to Windows 11,I plan to convert my laptop to Linux and I’m hoping since I only use it lightly for a few simple tasks it will be ok. But my desktop daily driver will have to be Windows. Rock and a hard place.
It does not “just work” for me and I love it that way. I got bored of using Kubuntu LTS because nothing interesting happened. Now I’m running prerelease versions of everything and get to file (and fix!) bug reports on the reg.
I don’t dare do hardcore gaming on Linux 'cause I’m lazy. I went and bought a Raspberry Pi at some point and only tried out some distros on it. I had troubles from day 1 where like OP, I could figure out. Right now, I can’t even get Redshift to work on basically a RaspberryPi OS fork and I have no clue why.
Think of your workstation running Ubuntu Studio as new shoes that need running in.
I’ve been using Debian Linux as my primary desktop for over 25 years. The amount of downtime I experience is negligible. When I look at the sheer volume of MacOS updates requiring a reboot, or the absurd number of “fixes” pushed by Microsoft, I’m very content.
^ This, Debian just works and gets out of your way. But no one seems to recommend it.
Yeah because if you have new hardware you’re shit out of luck
I’m on AM5 with a 6800 and would have a newer card if the cost wasn’t so high. I run Sid for fun but I can run stable with backports and flatpaks
Misinformation. Debian 13 is brand new. Backports supports new hardware as needed.
You’re trying to tell us Debian will always have the latest kernel and packages needed to support new hardware, and there’s no disadvantage in this domain by using Debian? (Sid aside)
Yeah, kernel gets patches even on stable Debian, plus at most it will be a year or so old
https://nerdburglars.net/question/getting-rx-9060-9070-gpus-working-on-debian-bookworm/
The internet is littered with posts of people trying to get new stuff working on Debian. Bookworm was the latest Debian release at time of posting. It does not support this six month old GPU
I usually start a desktop on Mint since it’s got at least some new drivers and a few more tools with Cinnamon desktop.
If the hardware is finicky or there’s odd devices a distro doesn’t handle, I often just try a different distro instead of driver hacking. It’s a very big hammer, but I’d rather have things work with the distro configs instead of maintaining it myself.
Servers? Debian.
Desktops? Mint (prettier Debian out of the box)
Otherwise? Use what works with the least effort.
Not really a friendly distro for non tech-savy people, so it’s complicated to recommend it online to strangers.
I get it that’s the impression and maybe i have used it for so long so i might have a blind spot but what makes it complicated? Its got a gui installer, a live cd. Other than the not having cutting edge software what makes it complicated?
This.
In my experience, once you have the potential hardware compatibility issue fixed, it’s smooth sailing and simply a matter of getting used to the different tools on Linux!
Yeah. I also appreciate the ability to actually fix most problems. I probably ran into fewer problems on windows, but when I did, the problems were beyond repair.
I get what your trying to say, and the analogy works between Windows and Mac, just a different GUI and keyboard commands. Linux is like wearing someone else’s shoes and learning to run in them. It’s similar, but not the same.
Literally every day something breaks. I’m at a point I have things working enough that I’m scared of experimenting because it’s so fragile.
I hear your frustration and understand what you’re concerned about.
Ask yourself this.
Is the thing that I’ve discovered is broken today something that I’ve fixed before?
If you use the package manager that comes with your distribution and don’t install random software from the Internet, and don’t follow unverified procedures written by anyone with a keyboard, then the answer is almost certainly “no”.
I say this with the benefit of knowing what’s good practice and what isn’t. I can tell you that if you come at this with a “Microsoft Windows” approach, you’re likely to spend weeks, if not months in purgatory. It’s no different from migrating between MacOS and Windows, or vice-versa. You need to remember that just because Linux looks similar, it’s a different beast and is so by design.
I’d strongly recommend that you start using the machine with ONLY the packages available through the Ubuntu package manager. If you run into strife, you can ask for support. If you go outside that and you break something, you get to keep both parts – and truth be told – that’s true with any other operating system, just that the lines are not as blurred.
In Linux world many of the distributions can cross pollenate applications and solutions, but that requires experience that new users don’t (yet) have.
One way to deal with the “jump” is to keep your “old” Windows (or MacOS) machine around while you get comfortable with the lay of the land.
The thing that most people switching to Linux have forgotten is that this requires experience. You cannot expect to just jump into a new Operating System and take all your old habits with you. Think for example about the differences between iOS and Android, a world of difference.
So, keep at it. This frustration will pass.
Make sure you backup your /home directory regularly. That way if you ever blow something up and are left on your own, you can blow away the drive and start again, restore from your /home backup.
Meanwhile, keep asking questions.
Good luck.
That’s great advice, thank you. If I just copy my home directory I can replace it if things go south? What about other distros?
What I do most of the time is have the /home directory on a different partition. If you really do need to reinstall, it is just a matter of selecting the existing home partition when reinstalling it (do not forget to uncheck the “format partition” checkbox 😅).
Reinstalls or running other distro’s is a piece of cake this way.
My experience with amd / radeon has not been that great over the years. The open source amdgpu driver is basic at best. If you have a modern intel gfx chipset that is way easier…
Pretty much the same.
Word of warning. Your /home directory contains your documents, but it also contains configuration files. If the packages you’re installing have different versions, you might discover that the config file for a different version doesn’t work on the version that’s installed. This isn’t universally the case, some applications are smart about this, others less so. You can find many of them as “hidden” “dot” files.
You can find all of them like this:
find /home -type f -name '.*'Explanation:
find- the find command/home- the place to start looking-type f- find files only-name '.*'- find things only starting with a ‘.’
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian
if you wanna read up a bit more on that
