this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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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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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 days ago

No more or less flawless than windows, Android, or the iOS stuff.

It's different flaws.

[–] RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It stopped happening to me when I bought hardware supported by Linux. Intel or AMD GPU, a Thinkpad laptop, Atheros wifi, all the stuff that people recommend.

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[–] Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 5 days ago

My experience has been very different. While I'm competent on Linux from the server world, I haven't run a desktop Linux in decades, and never seriously. Until I switched a few months ago, choosing CachyOS. Honestly, almost everything just worked. Games, music, video, browsing, office. Even Ms teams for work. The only fiddly bit was getting the VPN for work to connect, and remote desktop works but isn't equal in quality/feel. But that's just a slight inconvenience that isn't even bad enough for me to start looking into it.

One game (a demo) I couldn't get to run, and I know it should work and just doesn't on my system. Haven't bothered digging into this either, I have plenty of other unplayed games. Another game I play frequently (online/multiplayer) gave me some lag issues early on, I tried a few settings and it's fine now.

Absolutely nothing of my experience would I describe as a struggle. Frankly most of the time I forget I'm not on Windows. I just use my PC. Sometimes I want to check some windows specific setting, open the "not start menu" and then realize "right, this isn't Windows".

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

OP's experience with Linux:


For real though, sorry it's stressful at times, Jack. I have issues all the time, but the thing is, I've been doing it for so long now I know where most relevant system files are and how to drop to CLI and edit them to fix whatever I broke. It's still tedious at times, but I feel much more in control than I used to when Windows would go tits up.

[–] ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

And yet you can't stop siri from dinging on your podcast? C'mon Scott! Say hey to Andrew Lord Weber for me.

[–] Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago

Just remember what ol' Jack Burton does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, Jack Burton just looks that big ol' LINUX OS right square in the eye and he says, "Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it."

[–] lengau@midwest.social 1 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] SpookyMulder@twun.io 5 points 5 days ago

I've installed Debian Linux on over 50 devices by now. A vanilla configuration with GNOME works pretty much out of the box for me on a high-end desktop with a modern NVIDIA graphics card.

I'd say the biggest part of the learning curve is figuring out which apps are good and suitable for what you're trying to do. Just like with Windows and macOS and Android and iOS, there's only a handful of viable options among an overwhelming sea of poor ones.

There are many wrong ways to install NVIDIA on any given Linux distro and architecture, and only one functional way. As others here are saying, that's on NVIDIA, not you or Linux.

General advice: whenever possible, strongly prefer your distro's standard package manager to install things over any other method. With Ubuntu, I believe that's either apt or snap.

Also: if you find yourself poking around in some obscure system internals while troubleshooting an issue, you probably took a wrong turn somewhere.

[–] Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Hello again, I remember you from another post I commented on lol.

So a few things:

  1. Linux didn't "just work" for me when I switched over. I actually started my Linux journey with Arch like an idiot lol. Imagine the problems I had, pretty much nothing worked out of the box. I eventually got everything working after about 2 weeks of constant troubleshooting in the arch wiki, Linux forums, Reddit, and YouTube videos.

Then a few months later I accidentally blew up my whole system with some command I ran without understanding what I did, broke everything, couldn't even boot into my OS anymore. I decided to distro hop a few times to see what worked best for me. Arch is great if you are a power user, but at the time I wasn't, so it was a terrible choice for me.

I bounced between a few different distros and settled on Nobara, which is based on Fedora but with a ton of kernel-level patches for better gaming performance. And it came with lots of gaming related software already installed.

  1. I actually had as many or more issues with Windows leading up to trying Linux. Windows has always been pretty buggy for me, just bad luck I guess. On average I have way more issues with Windows than Linux, and the Linux issues I can usually solve, but the Windows issues generally I just had to end up dealing with because there was no good solution.

  2. I remember when I posted to you the other week that the most important thing for Linux distros was if it worked for you, and if you liked using it. Seems like so far you've answered that question with Ubuntu Studio in the negative. It's not been working well for you, and you're getting frustrated using it. That's fine, the beauty of Linux is there are a ton of other options, and you aren't stuck with just having to deal with a specific distro.

Some people will swear by a specific distro. They've used it for 10+ years on 15 different computers and never had a single major problem. Great for them, that doesn't mean you will or won't, try several, find your home distro and stick with it.

For me, there is one distro I would recommend for new Linux users more than any other, Linux Mint. It is based on Ubuntu, so you've already got a bit of experience with that under the hood. It comes with a easy GUI utility for installing NVidia drivers, so you don't have to manually install additional repos and drivers via the terminal. Their Cinnamon desktop isn't the prettiest or most modern looking desktop, it doesn't have a ton of customizability either, but it's rock stable. I've never had a single major crash or lock up with the Cinnamon desktop environment, it's simple, intuitive, and stable.

Part of starting the Linux journey is trying different options. Some users get lucky their first time and land on the perfect distro that they use for years, but most don't. Most try a handful of distros before settling on their favorite. You probably wouldn't go to a shoe store, try on the first pair you see and then buy them right? You browse the selection, find a few that look nice and seem comfy, try them on, walk around in them, pose a bit, then pick your favorite.

And like I said before, as you build up your Linux skills, the issues will become easier and easier to solve. Problems that took me hours to troubleshoot and solve when I was new take 5 minutes to fix now. Things that I had to watch hours of videos and read dozens of forum posts to understand are just "common sense" to me now. You'll get there, just keep an open mind and hold on, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

If you need/want additional help, DM me and I will do my best to help out. For Linux Mint if you decide to try it, don't worry about the various alternative versions they have. Just go with their standard download, Linux Mint, Ubuntu edition, with the Cinnamon desktop.

[–] Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I really appreciate you taking the time…again haha. I get that it’s a learning curve, my biggest issue is pretty user specific. I’m a freelance voice actor, which is why I chose Ubuntu Studio.

My concern for distro hopping is audio issues, more than I’ve already experienced. Ubuntu Studio was “built for creatives” so it seemed like the best option and based on my experience, it probably is haha. I can’t imagine trying to make this work from scratch.

The obvious answer is to go back to Windows, it really is WAY better for precise audio recording the easy way. Though I’ve matched (and even bettered) my audio output with Linux, it takes a lot more time and effort which won’t get better. Linux takes more steps for NY work flow and there’s no way around that.

That said, I made the switch for personal reasons, and I’ve fully committed even though it’s created many hurdles. I needed to vent, and really appreciate you and everyone else taking the time. Thank you.

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[–] ulterno@programming.dev 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

On Windows, it was Superfetch.
Whenever I was unable to load something, whenever copying took too long, whenever the system was being too hot, it was Superfetch.
Then I tried multiple ways to first stop it then disable it and realise it came back up later on.
Then it was always Windows Update.

Now, at least I am not fighting my OS.

I have had a flicker or 2, a few times. Need to change my monitor.
But the AMD GPU (and its driver) seems fine for now.

I don't have a flawless experience.
I just got to choose which flaws I am willing to keep.


Oh btw, I chose my motherboard based on Linux reviews.

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

Not flawless, but that's on me for insisting on a very particular look and workflow that involves lots of manual config editing.

[–] thatradomguy@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] root@aussie.zone 2 points 4 days ago

As others have mentioned, an alternative distro ypu can try is Bazzite. It's an immutable distro, so most of the OS is read-only. The OS gets installed on 2 partitions (so you'll need roughly double the storage space) but you'll boot into one while updates get pushed into the dormant one. When the OS reboots, you'll get the recently patched partition while the older one waits for updates and also serves as a backup, just in case.

There's also Nobara, which is based on Fedora but with gaming specific addons. I think you'll be able to easily install nVidia drivers as well. It is also a rolling release distro so you'll get faster updates which I think is better if you want to game in linux.

[–] lemmysir@lemmy.zip 3 points 5 days ago

Most stuff worked great out of the box for me. I had some quirks with power management, specifically for my wifi card, resulting in bad wifi, but there are so many resources and so many people willing to help out that it was not even a big problem to solve. I haven't used Ubuntu, I am on arch, but the great thing is, most problems and solutions don't really care what distro you're on, so I am no stranger to ubuntu forums when researching something. And as cliché as it is to recommended, the arch wiki is an amazing source of information, so definitely give it a look.

[–] Kongar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 days ago

For me, yes, everything just works. Fedora 42 gnome. Arch just worked as well. Nvidia 4090. Heavy flatpak user. I’ve had issues with mint and Debian distros being too far behind. My son runs Ubuntu today though - again no issues. And with a video card.

My vote is something is up with your install. Try another distro - maybe one of the gaming focused ones. Or just plain fedora workstation.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl 2 points 5 days ago

Every OS sucks. Linux sucks wayyy less tho

[–] luciole@beehaw.org 4 points 5 days ago

You're not dumb and we don't have a flawless experience... but me and my son aren't nearly having as much trouble as you. Maybe you're unlucky with hardware support. For some it does "pretty much" works. I'm genuinely glad you're sticking to it some more and I hope you continue learning and that your experience gets smoother.

[–] Eyedust@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago (5 children)

I had some weird artifacting issues in an older version of Nvidia proprietary. While viewing certain windows or colors, my screen would flicker, or else I would get weird diagonal lines across my whole screen.

I went nuts trying to figure it out. In the end since I started on Pop!_OS, I just easily rolled back to a previous version of the proprietary drivers and called it good. Well, later I wanted to try EndeavourOS. I was too noob to figure how to roll back the drivers there.

So a friend asked me, "Are you using display port or HDMI? Try the other one." I highly doubted that would fix anything, but for the sake of trying everything, I switched to HDMI. And well... fuck me if it didn't work. I've just been running HDMI ever since.

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[–] tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.garden 3 points 5 days ago

Don't worry, it's not boat life. I barely ever touch the system and am just using my programs. Settling might take a while, especially if everything is new I guess

[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I am waiting for SteamOS 3 Desktop to be released, so that I don't have to worry about this sort of thing, and have support from an 800lb gorilla. When I tried Mint back in January, my games weren't working right - Lutris, Hero Launcher, ect. Considering the amount of retro and Japanese games I play, having broken GOG installations wasn't a good start.

For now I am just sticking to Windows 11 IoT, but sooner or latter Microsoft's issues will be too much. Hopefully, SteamOS will be out by then.

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[–] untorquer@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (3 children)

More or less,

Arch gave me some issues on install getting steam games to run on my main graphics card but since fixing then it's been maintenance free. There were some other issues that resolved with system updates, e.g. HDR on Wayland/KDE but Plasma update fixed it almost a year ago.

I'm running AMD/AMD/ASUS RoG.

My windows dual bout however takes 5min for all the bootup apps to launch and explorer is unstable. Probably because of local account and some policies I've been locking AI and metrics down with. Also Office clock to run burns my cpu when at idle and it ignores the manual start setting in services as well as startup-apps menu. It's just there for work.

Edit given below comments: I am NOT suggesting Arch for a beginner who wants simple and easy. Plenty of more beginner friendly distros will need even less maintenance.

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