Linux

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.

Do you guys just have flawless experiences or what?

When I was new to linux I had many issues but the longer I used it the less problems I had. I think its a combination of new users not understanding the different parts of linux and not understanding the linux way of doing things. That leads to a lot of tweaking which can cause more issues than it solves.

Now that i've been on linux for 4 years everything works as expected and this is after changing distros a few times. my systems are pretty much untouched in terms of root folder tweaks or anything. I would say to keep trying linux since its not 'boat life' constant maintenance over the long term.

I had a lot of problems when I've used Ubuntu in the past. To be fair that was 2009 - 2012 and it was a much less mature product. But whether it's snaps, unity, or Ubuntu One integrations, they always seem to be doing their own thing in a way that's not particularly helpful.

I've had a much more "just works" experience with Fedora and Mint.

Surface Go 1: Had problems with my bluetooth mouse being slow to be detected. Also sometime it’s slow until I connect and disconnect the screen it’s hooked up to. Otherwise works flawlessly.

MacBook Pro 2012: Sometimes I have to reinstall some drivers for the wifi. Otherwise works flawlessly.

Both run Fedora 42. So I’d advise you to not give up and maybe just switch distro👍

I get what you're saying..if that were my experience I'd be jack of it too. I've got similar spec and am running Nobara which is pretty much Steam OS for people with Nvidia cards. The only thing. The only thing I got really into the weeds on was setting up Plex. Which wasn't my first preference but I couldn't work out how to get Jellyfin to cast to my old Chromecast. Other than that though I've had a great experience that 'just works'.

Your using Ubuntu. Which honestly just loves to randomly shit the bed unless it's on a server. This has been true for basically it's entire existence.

Just use Debian or mint if your inlove with apt/Deb. Otherwise seriously switch to literally anything else. Anything is better then God damn Ubuntu.

My experience has indeed been flawless but that's simply because I don't have many use cases where flaws could appear. I use the Vivaldi and gimp on my t490 and play indie games on my steam deck.

I've tried a few different distributions and yeah, it varies.

It seems logical to get Ubuntu Studio for audio, but in my personal opinion it's kinda bloated. I've tried most of the included software at some point and decided that I'm not going to use it.

I'd rather have a clean simple distro and then just install Reaper for all my audio needs.

That has worked out great on both Mint and Puppy. I don't know about Ubuntu, because it's been several years since I tried that.

I did also install a few games on Mint, but nothing like AAA games, because the PC doesn't have a graphics card. I just play Minecraft and Sauerbraten. No issues with those.

Maybe I'm lucky, or maybe it's because it's old hardware or pretty standard laptops, but I'm also not trying much, so I also expect it to work.

Keep it simple. I think that might be the key, because I have seriously not had a single issue with anything, nor have I typed a single line in the terminal.

If I needed a multipurpose PC, I'd probably go with Mint as of now. I'd install one app at a time and figure out what I actual need instead of trying to make everything work at once.

That's what I'm doing with my DAW right now. One plugin at a time. If something doesn't behave, then I don't need it. When I turn on the PC to make music, I don't want to waste time fixing stuff. I'm totally over trying to fit a square block into a round hole. I've already tried that for too many years using Windows.

Honestly, after tens of years of personal computing, there should be easier/more robust ways to run software and move windows around.

Bootstrapping and initcpio are workarounds for inadequate hardware imo.

I began writing this comment with the intention of answering your question, but it actually ended up mainly being me venting myself.

Obviously no, it's never been a flawless experience, but a few months back I decided I wanted to try gaming so I put an nvidia card in my pc and reinstalled linux to start fresh. All of the examples you've given sound like the sort of problems I've had since then, but never in the ten years before when I was using intel integrated graphics. I was aware going in that nvidia is massively more problematic than AMD, but this card was a spare from someone I know.

Obviously there are games I can run well now that were unrealistic before, but there are also a couple 2D games with SNES-quality graphics that I've tried which spike my CPU to 100% and lag like crap in spite of working perfectly before I installed the card. I've had two experiences where a game suddenly has issues immediately after an update to the nvidia-utils package. I'm not new to linux, but I am new to gaming on it and I've kind of given up on troubleshooting this stuff in favor of "maybe there will be an update tomorrow that fixes this".

There's reason for optimism, everyone is saying the situation is steadily improving because nvidia has been much more cooperative in the past couple years. It's not realistic to say you won't find annoyances regardless, but it wouldn't surprise me if over half of your struggles are a direct result of decades of one company's deliberate decision to ignore pleas to stop making life as hard as they possibly can on software developers trying to support their hardware.

I have been using Linux for a long time and it's only been in the post chrome os era that I've really seen updates and maintenance begin to turn the corner.

A lot of Linux users will tell you their system is perfect but it kinda reminds me of that documentary where all these inventors came to show off their sex robots at a sex robot convention. Its obvious how absurd it is when you're on the outside looking in at a bunch of people who are like "I know she's rough lookin' but just check out this feature".

ChromeOS was really a first class experience on third rate garbage hardware. It did however really spark the potential for a new paradigm that projects like ChimeraOS, universalBlue, vanillaOS, blendOS, and even steamOS are tackling.

Ubuntu is a bit "dated" in its design. (For lack of a better description even though they keep trying to re-invent the wheel). There is a reason why everyone is rushing to make Linux usable now and that's namely because it's become valves chosen desktop platform moving forward. Immutable/atomic distributions are set to fix the problems the average user deals with when it comes to Linux.

I'm actually using bazzite-dx with Nvidia and gnome right now. Its been an overall success with some kinks due to the average jank you get with Nvidia drivers. For instance, Bambu studio flatpak was busted for a week but I just checked tonight and it looks like it's been fixed.

Its ok to be frustrated about this. You're not alone.There are dozens of us! Dozens!

you just need to learn linux, same as you did windows. things work differently, and it can be frustrating until you figure out how things work.

and just like windows, once you figure out your drivers and software and stuff, you will fly past it whenever you are setting up your linux box.

Lol no. I've been using Linux for 10 years and it's been a continuous dumpster fire. Constant issues l, especially with Nvidia, across many different machines. Issues with wine, no X11 (or Wayland) after updates, games not starting, etc, etc. Across Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch (and derivatives).

Yet I almost exclusively use Linux nowadays. Why? Because it's a dumpster fire I can influence. Windows is going to shit, they were taking my PC hostage, installing spyware, ads, forcing updated without my consent. On Linux I have to invest hours to fix shit, on Windows I can get fucked whenever something happens that I don't want.

With proton advancing, Wayland working somewhat usable even with Nvidia,my threshold was passed. I'd rather fix the fixable Linux issues that cost me time than deal with Windows any longer. But for the layman I'm not sure I'd recommend it. I'm a computer scientist. I can fixodt issues, it's just a question of time and energy. But that doesn't go for everyone.

Flawless? Is anything really. I guess you could say Linux is an aquired taste. You get used to the maintenance aspect of it. I use Arch because I'm used to it and because it has great documentation. I have a NVIDIA GPU because I was told they work fine under Wayland now. Apparently people saying that only use their computer for games because I have graphical glitches in several apps and certain video codecs won't play now. So, you will make mistakes along the way. Although I think I'm having a better time with Linux + NVIDIA than my sister is with Windows + NVIDIA rn lol. Arch really is a better experience but it's not the best to start with. For that, I'd recommend Debian. Feel free to reach out if you have any specific questions, I'll see if I can be of any help. I've been doing this for a while because I'm a stubborn bastard who got tired of Windows reverting changes I made after every update.

The problem with Linux is that most distributions suck for beginners. People recommend Debian/Ubuntu because they're stable but that just means they don't get updated, not that they won't break. The obvious solution is to use Arch, which has the latest version of software and therefore does not break on new hardware. But that sucks too because Arch's goal is not that your setup works either, it's that you have the latest versions of software installed no matter the cost. OK, so I guess Fedora will be good because it's somewhere in the middle. Fedora is better but their non-free codec stuff is not great for noobs either.

I think the best recommendation is Pop! OS because it has none of the above issues. You will still have outdated software but at least not outdated drivers. Just use the defaults, don't change the desktop environment etc. If you install third party software in the .deb format, expect breakage when you eventually upgrade to a new release. Try to use flathub for that. Be aware that software on Flathub is user-submitted and may contain a virus. Check that it's verified by a trusted source, not just some random person's github website.

Then there is OpenSUSE Tumbleweed which I guess is pretty good too but it's hard to recommend to noobs because it's sort of esoteric and because you cannot install .deb packages from the internet on it. Finally there are the atomic distros which have the same issues but at least they should break less likely. If you only need software from flathub and what's available in the app store, they're fine.

idk why I wrote this but yes most distros don't "just work"

I also hate fixing issues but once you set your system up, with all correct nvidia drivers and couple other miscellaneous items (gnome extensions, config variables) it will be "smooth" sailing up until you reinstall.

You compare a machine that a vendor has prepared for windows to you preparing the pc for linux. It sounds like you did the setup. Alternatively, you could've paid someone to do that job for you. You could've bought a framework laptop with linux. It would work out of the box without any issues. And if there is one, you can blame framework.

Because I had issues with the distros I was using, I distro jumped. If the distro is perfect, there is little reason to jump. Ever since jumping onto fedora silverblue I don't do anything with the OS anymore. It just works. I mainly install flatpaks. Did you try a live usb with some distros before deciding upon ubuntu studio? You chose one niche distro and to me it sounds like you judge about all distros.

A distro is just a package manager and a set of settings and apps pre selected by someone. If those settings don't work out for you, it might be the wrong distro.

Nah, my Linux journey has been far from flawless. I troubleshoot stuff on Linux as much or more than I did on Windows.

I've never had a flawless experience with any computer, regardless of manufacturer, architecture, or OS. They all have different quirks. Over time, you get used to the quirks of the OS you're using, and so switching to a different OS feels weird.

We've all been there. It's super frustrating but once you've attained enough experience with a Linux OS you come to appreciate it and the problems either become less impactful or disappear as you learn to anticipate your actions causing said issues and adjust your behavior accordingly.

I've been a Windows user for multitudes longer than I've been a Linux user. It took me a few years to become a fairly advanced user of Linux. When I occasionally have to use Windows for work I still struggle to troubleshoot anything and am constantly frustrated knowing a task I'm doing could be many times simpler if I was on Linux.

I got Ubuntu. It gives me weird warning messages on boot. Sometimes they're red. I just ignore them.

Some distros are more fragile than others. Stuff like not having the Nvidia drivers installed by default (I'm assuming for the llvmpipe issue) are sometimes discussed in installation guides. IDK if Ubuntu has one since I don't use it.

Blink-based browsers (like Vivaldi, Chromium, etc.) IMO kind of suck on Linux (or at least Wayland). It's probably worse with Nvidia cards since Nvidia is still sometimes flaky on Wayland.

The LibreWolf issue is maybe not an issue at all. I'm assuming you mean RAM, and if so, browsers just like to eat as much memory as they're allowed to eat. If you open up something else and it needs the memory, LibreWolf will likely let go of some of it. There are probably some knobs you can dial in LibreWolf (or Linux kernel settings) if it's really an issue for some reason.

I only really have issues when I'm trying to set something up that's not already configured by the distro (or if I'm doing something particularly weird).

The issue is you installed Ubuntu with an RTX 3060 and you intend to game, heh.

You need a distro optimized for gaming on Nvidia out of the box, and Ubuntu Studio is not it. Not unless you want to DIY overhaul the whole system and maintain it forever.

You need Bazzite, probably. Or CachyOS.

You could fix Ubuntu temporarily, eventually, but it will always be like a boat once you start configuring stuff yourself. But use a gaming distro, and gaming fixes and setups come down the pipe for you.

TBH I have made this mistake more than once. Now I run don’t a distro that focuses on this and have never looked back.

If it makes you feel any better, I say the same thing about windows when I'm forced to use it.

It isn't just a different operating system, it's also a different workflow and set of habits.

Stick with it, it will reward you.

I like your boat analogy. It does take more work to keep it running in top condition, and when it's firing on all cylinders it will run circles around windows. Also, people that don't have one and talk shit are just jelly.

It takes a while to get settled.

You have traded a perception of convenience for security, privacy and freedom.

Many people bounce back and forth for a bit, dont feel bad if you get fatigued and go back for a few. However, once you start using Linux, you'll start to see the truth about windows. You'll be back, even if you leave for a few.

Be patient, you'll learn the ropes and soon it will be second nature.

Also, your logs will tell you much. Uploading a log to an ai makes troubleshooting much easier.

Honestly the modern Linux experience is largely easy to start these days, but there are pitfalls and traps.

A little more than a year ago I was a complete Linux nooby, but I researched and asked questions before jumping in. Then I jumped in (my first distro was endeavour). I asked questions, read forums, tinkered, then broke my shit.

Then I distro hopped between the popular ones (mint, buntu, etc.) before finally settling on Cachy. There were pains along the way but for my use cases the main learning hurdles were learning the compatibility layers and FOSS software alternatives.

I implore you to tread the beaten path, on a tried and tested distro with an active community. Think about your use case, and which flavor of Linux distro better supports your intentions.

I think machine compatibility plays a huge role, some machines do mostly 'just work' while others are a pain. It also definitely requires some tinkering, though mostly on setup or on the first week or two in my experience.

Also, ymmv and a lot of people swear by them but I've never had good luck with Ubuntu based distro, they've always been super buggy with hard to track fixes for me. I like fedora a lot better and it similarly has decent (though not nearly as extensive) community support for weird bugs, but I know people swear by many things.

I felt exactly the same thing before actually trying mint. It’s the only distro that just works for me. A true daily driver.