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?
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.
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.
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.
Arch for a newcomer? Are you a masochist?
Go for EndeavourOS if you want to use Arch with a lot of legwork done.
Arch is for advanced users that they know what they’re doing in order to shape as much as they want their installation.
I would recommend some beginner friendly distro but still with wayland preconfigured.
And avoid the lesser-known, niche and old distros because of support and bugs. I’ve suggested Fedora because is what I use and I find it good enough for a newbie, but maybe even Debian could be good (I’m not sure if Debian has wayland as default).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.I agree with this, for anyone at even a beginner level fredora is pretty great! I’ve used it many times for hosting servers, it’s pretty reliable and isn’t going away any time soon
People get offended really easily, it is really weird.
Unfortunately unless you buy hardware with the intention of running Linux on it you’re rolling dice.
It is very likely your laptop can work well with it but unless you buy a Linux certified laptop you’re going to have a few quirks. Generally, if it comes down to it, the Kernel code can be adjusted to accommodate the quirks of incompatible hardware but that requires reporting the bugs.
This is why people say Linux works great on older devices. It’s because Linux users got the laptops brand new and put in the time to report the bugs the needed parties so they get resolved and included in newer Linux (kernel) versions.
Actually a lot of these issues stem from a long history of Microsoft breaking standards and manufacturers catering to Windows. This is especially apparent with ACPI which ties into power consumption and sleep reliability among other things.
If you buy supported hardware, manufacturers specifically test and align better with standards (often offering a Linux mode in the bios). Linux actually “just works” better than MacBooks do. Some laptops Ive owned and loved are:
- Thinkpad t480
- Dell XPS 13 (Developer Edition)
- Framework Laptop
The last two of these go the extra step to publish their bios updates through “LVFS” which means I can get bios updates, OS updates, AND app updates all from the “app store”. This is so underrated and a far cry from the windows experience.
If you want to use Linux without quirks and you have the capability to, consider getting a Laptop that ships with Linux. Key things that play into this are wifi and sleep compatibility.
Please don’t judge Linux unless you try it on hardware that is all supported by Linux. (The great thing is you can take action, even without coding experience, to make your hardware work if it does not today).
As for the software experience, Nvidia is notorious for difficulty with Linux but have been taking strides to change that. I feel that in a years time things will be better.
This specifically affects the Wayland compatibility (modern display stack), which also influences the touchpad experience especially around multi touch (Wayland is paired with libinput a modern input stack).
Great answer.
Running linux on a machine thats not specifically supported by a vendor will always require tinkering. if you want the OOB experience you’re describing pls purchase a laptop made by any of the linux specific vendors. if you like popos that would be system76. there others, check the reviews of these devices and see which one you like.
People switching to Linux forces a Rethink of how you do things. There is loss and change, and the mistake people make so often is thinking “I this in windows, why not Linux?”. I think this is an understandable expectation because they look so similar. The trick is reaching this understanding and resetting your expectations.
I run EndeavourOS (Basically Arch), and I love it, but it doesn’t do everything. I have to use windows for my music creation stuff because the instruments and effects I want can’t be installed on Linux. I’m prepared to switch between the 2 OSes and I’ve slowly managed to move almost everything I do on to Linux by finding alternatives and accepting the different ways it does things.
Doesn’t mean it will work for everyone but that’s the way I think about it.
I get that. I think my line of work doesn’t require much. I just want the basics like slack and zoom. I just need the basics working “Back Gestures and a non freezing computer”
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.
Bye!
The fact you have chosen to submit this comment instead of just ignoring the post is very sad.
Based move
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 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 you there might have something wrong too. 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 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!
Sounds like you prefer windows. If you do not have any moral conundrum around using it, go back. Makes no sense to use an OS on your computer that you do not prefer.
I love Linux, sometimes I have issues, but for the work I do it is much easier to do on Linux than on windows. Also I have some moral qualms with Windows and Microsoft and I would rather have a broken machine than one with Windows.
If that is not you, then I would just use what you like.
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.
NVIDIA dedicated card
This may be related, because a while ago, when I installed Nvidia proprietary drivers, exactly the same issue happened. PC was waking up, but GPU wasn’t.
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. 🤦♀️
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. 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?”.
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.
maintaining a distro should be trivial.
It is, actually. You use a CI 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 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 system, test it and vender it out to the user. They already have all the infrastructure required up and running.
Cosmic is not gnome based
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.
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.
Google is filled with blogspam nowadays. You should try any distro that has been released recently or rolling. I would recommend OpenSuse Tumbleweed, it’s quite easy to use. Try KDE while you’re at it.
So basically
- bad experience with XOrg, use Wayland
- bad experience with Flatpak installs: they download all the libraries at the beginning, just wait
- bad experience with swipebactions that every app does independently? No idea, Firefox has this
- broken sleep? Known one, switch to between s2idle and suspend-to-ram maybe
Just use macOS and get a Unix-like experience under the hood, with a pixel perfect UI on top.
I agree with the sentiment, but if Mint and Pop needed too much tinkering for OP, a hackintosh out of his Nvidia laptop would be out of the question, I assume.
I don’t think they would be able to stay on that hardware.
You’ve moved over to another operating system and you’re expecting it to work like your previous one. That’s stupid.
Windows, Mac, BSD, VMS, Unix etc. all work their own way. Expecting them to work how you want them to is arrogant.
Before you moved you might have read up on the differences and how things work. That would be sensible.
Nobody here has any time for this nonsense. Which is why you are being down voted.
Your arguments aren’t really addressing the points that OP made, though. They aren’t saying they expected everything to work just like Windows, they are saying they expected everything to just work. Any system that requires tinkering for basic stable functionality should be considered experimental and not ready for production.
If you disagree you are falling prey to dogmatic OS fundamentalism. Acknowledging insufficiencies helps improve Linux, while rejecting such criticism prolongs the amount of time the majority of people write it off as unusable as a desktop operating system.
Your comment, like the OP’s post fails to recognise the arrogance of jumping from one OS to another and expecting to put no work in and that it will work just as he expects.
dogmatic OS fundamentalism
I recognise OS’s are not the same as it’s the basis for my comment. Stop your bullshit.
When you move to an OS, have the common sense to not expect it to work the same way as the one you came from.
My disagreement doesn’t meaning I’m falling prey to anything. I am free to disagree with anybody I like for any reason I deem important enough for me. Just as you are. It’s called having a different opinion. Look it up.
The common sense is to expect you can wake up your device from sleep without having to troubleshoot why it is not waking up suddenly for no apparent reason. I don’t feel like OP is complaining about how stuff works or does not work differently on PopOS rather than his frustration at the system suddenly not waking up which was the breaking point as he also lost his work done in the web browser.
In my opinion, it’s common sense to research an operating system, how it works and what’s expected, before you move to it. And to also research if there are any issues with your hardware on your new operating system you chose.
The OP complained about many things. You singled out one. Most of them would have been mitigated had they researched what I mentioned above.
Its my opinion, and I stand by what I said before.
Yes, I only listed the issue that broke the camels back. Yes, you should look into what you’re getting into but who in their right mind is going to search for any obscure issues they may run into before they actually run into them? That’s just unreasonable and you woudn’t even think of them even if you tried.
Yes, you should look into what you’re getting into
Then we agree.
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.
