Technology

I'm really unsure if why or how is my bigger question.

A colleague at work uses Edge as primary browser on MacOS 💀

I used Edge on macOS for a spell when it first came out, but mostly for outdated websites that wouldn’t pass Safari’s security restrictions (mainly loading an iframe of a PDF without the Content-Type). Chrome on macOS at the time was a memory hog and went against my anti-Google stance.

These days I’m no longer working in an industry 20+ years behind the times, but the application I developed does this work via containerized Selenoid anyway so users don’t have to bother with unmaintained shady web applications anymore.

i broke mine a few times, but i just did dumb stuff. using it normally should not break anything. if for example some update breaks something, you can roll back with timeshift and skip all the updates available. had to do that once when some mint update disabled all sound devices, was ok with the next updates. definitely set up timeshift!

Does it break with normal use or are you a tinkerer?

It's only normal if you're regularly doing iffy things like messing with drives or changing OS shit via terminal without thinking about what you're doing, Ubuntu is a pretty stable system

You should definitely be using TimeShift, it comes pre installed on Mint (which is a derivative of Ubuntu) so it should work or already be on your system

What specifically is breaking and what are you doing with the system?

Installing it and using it like normal shouldn't break anything, but it is very easy to break things if you start tinkering. There are very few guardrails.

It's the downside of open source: You're at the mercy of companies that don't care and developers who are primarily interested in the hardware they're using rather than the hardware you're using.

The best experience is going to be hardware that's built and certified for Linux. System76, Tuxedo, a bunch of other smaller names and the rare Dell or Lenovo. But that's definitely not practical for everyone, or a good idea to convince people to buy new hardware for Linux.

It'll be a slow transition. The more enthusiasts hop on the bandwagon, the more manufacturers and hardware vendors will care about support. The more Microsoft keeps irritating their customers, the more companies will move away. The support will come, it's been improving for a long time.

All that said. I'd recommend CachyOS or PopOS if you get the urge to try again. I've tried a bunch of distributions and those seem to have the best focus on "just make consumer hardware work right out of the box." That's no guarantee of course, but it's a start.

I've got working Nvidia drivers without any tinkering. Gaming on my 3060 without issues. Never had microphone issues either. This isn't supposed to be "You're wrong", more a "I wonder what I'm doing differently".

ASUS TUF GAMING B550 MoBo, AMD Ryzen 5600x, some Gigabyte version of the RTX 3060, running the Nvidia version of Nobara (Fedora-based gaming oriented distro).

What distro did you try?