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?
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.
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.
Then we agree.