Showroom7561

About two weeks ago, I posted my frustrations with Linux, and how it seemed unstable and breaks too easily. At the time, that had been my experience every time I tried Linux over the last 20 years.

But I made an effort to persist, tried some other distros, and found my happy place!

Thank you to the people who sent me on the path of "atomic" distros, and mentioning the likes of Bazzite, Bluefin, and Aurora (All from the Universal Blue group).

The last two weeks have been pure Linux joy on my daily-driver (Framework laptop), with only a few problem-solving expeditions.

I was looking for stability, and got it!

As a Windows user since the 90s, it's such a breath of fresh air to use an OS that's clean and designed to serve me (and not the corporation in charge!).

And I've also replaced windows on the minipc hooked up to our family room TV, and will also replace Windows that I've got on a lesser used desktop.

It's exciting to see just how far Linux has come, and even though I'll likely need to learn some terminal commands, I don't feel it's necessary for most people to even get into that.

The GUI in both KDE and Gnome already offer more than Windows. And I'll never have to see those goddamn pop-ups and banners about Office 365, OneDrive, or Xbox, at least not outside a VM!)

Freeeeeedom!

Thanks again!

Hey folks. I've had an on-again, off-again relationship with Linux for over 20 years. Usually, my attempts to use it are either thwarted by issues installing, issues booting, or general problems while using it... leading to “catastrophic failure” that I can't fix without digging into hours of research and terminal commands.

Windows 11 (even 10) are rock solid for me, even as a very heavy multitasker. No crashes. No needing to reboot, unless I'm forced to with an update, and really no issues with any hardware or software I was running.

But with Linux, I just can't believe how unstable it is, even when I do the absolute basic things.

I'm trying to learn why this is, and how I can prevent these issues from coming up. As I said, I'm committed to using Linux now (I'm done with American software), so I'm open to suggestions.

For context, I'm using a Framework laptop, which is fully (and officially) supports Fedora and Ubuntu. Since Fedora has American ties, I've settled with Ubuntu.

All things work as they should: fingerprint scanner, wifi, bluetooth, screen dimming, wake up from suspend, external drives, NAS shared folders, etc. I've even got VirtualBox running Windows 11 for the few paid software that I need to load up from time to time.

But I'm noticing issues that seemingly pop out of nowhere on the software/os end of things.

For example, after having no issues updating software, I get this an error: "something went wrong, but we're not sure what it is."

Then sometimes I'll be using Firefox, I'll open a new tab to type in a search term or URL, and the typing will "lag", then the address bar will flicker like it's reloading, and it doesn't respond well to my mouse clicks. I have to close it out, then start over for it to resolve.

Then I'll open a different app, sometimes it might open, sometimes it won't.

Or an app will freeze for no obvious reason, and I'll get a popup asking to wait or quit.

Another time I left my computer while I went out for a walk, came back, and it was like I just rebooted... all my work was gone, and it was starting fresh from the login screen.

I'm trying not to overload things, and I'm doing maybe 1/5th of what I'd normally be doing when running windows. But I don't understand why it's so unstable.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

FWIW, I'm not keen to switch away from Ubuntu, because I do still want official support if there's ever a problem with getting hardware to work.

UPDATE: Wow, I did not expect to get so many responses! Amazing!

Per suggestions, I ran a memtest86 for over 3 hours and it was clean.

I installed Fedora 41 and am now setting it up. Seems good so far, and elevated permissions can be authorized with biometrics! This was not something I had to. Ubuntu, so awesome there!

Any specific tips for Fedora that I should know? Obviously, no more Snap packages now! 😂

UPDATE 2: Ok, Fedora seems waaaay more stable than Ubuntu (and Mint). No strangeness like before... but not everything works as easily. For example, getting a bridged network adapter to work in virtualbox was one-click easy on Ubuntu... not so much on Fedora (still trying to get it working). And Virtualbox didn't even run my VM without more terminal hackery.

But the OS seems usable, and I'm still setting things up.

One thing I have noticed, however. When I search for how to fix or do something, nearly all websites and forums reference Debian/Ubuntu commands, so the fragmentation there is a little annoying

UPDATE: Thank you guys for all the suggestions! I got Navidrome installed on my NAS in a matter of minutes, got to test like a half dozen Subsonic compatible apps (both FOSS and Play Store), and it looks like Symfonium + Navidrome meets my needs. I'll keep testing before my free trial for Symfonium ends, but I really appreciate the nudge to try a new music server!

I'm self-hosting my music collection (synology NAS), and while I've liked Poweramp, it only reads local music files, which means I have to copy many GB of music to my phone, even if I'm not particularly listening to it.

The Synology DS Audio app actually does what I want: it caches music locally as you're streaming it, but it reads directly from the NAS.

The only problem with DS Audio is that it sucks as an actual music player.

Are there any Android music players, preferably FOSS or at least privacy-friendly, that will read from the NAS and cache in an intelligent way but also works well as an actual music player?

I did try Symfonium, but couldn't get it to work with Webdav or SMB, plus the dev comes off as a real asshole, so I'd rather not give them money.

EDIT: To clarify what I'm looking for:

• The app must be able to connect to my NAS music collection (through my local network is fine).
• Most importantly, the app must be able to cache my music either as I'm streaming it, or in advance when I'm running through a playlist... then future plays of the song should be from the cache.
• I do NOT want to have to manually download or sync files, which is how I've been doing, and I don't like this at all.

If you've used the Synology DS Audio app, then you'll know exactly the behaviour I'm looking for. It really is a shame that DS Audio sucks as a music player, or else it would be exactly what I'm looking for.

In my persistence to fit Linux in my life, I'm curious if some "must have" Windows software will work better if I just ran a Windows VM within Linux.

None of the software I need to work is needed to work continuously. They are basically programs that I fire up when needed, for a few minutes, then exited.

Wine will install them, but not run them, so I'm hoping a VM is the answer as I'm not interested in dual-booting to run a few Windows programs occasionally.

I'll start by saying that I really love Tube Archivist. It works flawlessly in doing what it does (archiving YouTube videos), and the UI and UX are great.

However, no matter what browser I use (Edge, FF, Opera, Samsung mobile, FF mobile, etc...), I run into issues where the video will play, but the interface freezes... I can't do anything on the screen until I refresh.

I don't have it set to any strange codecs, so videos are in vp9. But I also tried a few different codecs to see if the quality/size could be better optimized, and had the same issues with freezing UI then.

If I run the videos through Jellyfin, they work fine. It's only through the TA web interface where things lock up.

Is this normal? Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get this working better?

I've tried a few jellyfin plugins that are supposed to sync metadata and thumbnails from tube archivist, but it's just not working right.

I can see some thumbnails, but then the titles are just random gibberish. Or the titles somewhat work, but no thumbnails.

Any secret I'm missing?

Both are running in docker containers on a synology nas.

So, I've had a Raspberry Pi 4 sitting brand new in a box for a few years, and decided to install BirdNetPi on it yesterday.

It's working like a champ, but because BirdNetPi needed a legacy version of Raspian, it's got old software on it.

Is there any way to update the software (i.e. RealVNC) without updating the OS? There is no built-in software updater, and I seem to very easily break Linux every time I make an attempt to use it. LOL

Any time saved by ordering online and picking up the order has vanished chasing customer support people to fix something that would have taken a few seconds through their website.

Went to order some cat treats and saw that I could get a 25% discount when I sign up for Amazon's subscribe feature.

So I clicked on it and the total in my cart didn't reflect a 25% discount.

When I went back to see what was up, I noticed that the discount went down to 5%.

Unclicking the box will show a 25% discount again...

UPDATE: A commenter mentioned that the text reads "up to 25%", so I went to a different item, added it to my cart and got:

But clicking on that checkbox also brings it back down to 5%.

Is this new, or have online accounts never offered the ability to update your email address easily?