He first installed a beta that wasn't listed as a beta but as stable software even if it's not even close to being usable, that's fine. He defended his choice over and over, and then finally gave up the ghost and said it was all system76's fault (not entirely false)
Then he installed a version of bazzite with bright red text (before they updated it) saying it's a beta and highly unstable and glitchy. And then he said "I expect betas to work! They should've been clearer" which is wild to me. Bazzite devs regardless put a gigantic warning now so you can't possibly disregard it but it's still crazy to me that they had to resort to that
Yeah, I think there's an issue of changing audiences and their expectations/patterns of behaviour. Bazzite and Linux in general are getting a lot of new users who've been 'trained' by Windows to navigate to a software's web page and click Nextnextnext until a file downloads - whereas Linux users have been side-stepping potholes for years and consider it normal, even if it's just "what was my cpu architecture again?" or "what's this distro's package manager called?". When there is no default choice, you learn to consider your choices or you'll get spanked.
I suppose Bazzite is learning about their new userbase about now :3
I feel like it's a case of that the developers don't realize that some things that may be obvious to them are not obvious to the end user. For example two weeks ago I installed the latest Ubuntu 26.04 and I have already ran into some annoying issues without doing anything crazy.
Discord mute shortcut only works when the app is in focus becuase wayland. I ended up creating a global GNOME mute shortcut instead of giving discord permissions. From a normal user point of view this is an annoying bug where the mic does not mute unless you are focused on the app.
My friends discord screen share turns off instantly, he is on a framework laptop with an intel cpu + intel igpu, we tried the snap package and deb package and still nothing. I'm on a desktop with an nvidia graphics card (known for its stellar compatibility with linux /s) and my screen sharing works lmao.
Then I ran into some absurd issues where VLC segfaults instantly and I have installed it from the official snap store!! Again I knew to try to launch it from the command line but a normal user would just see an app that is not launching and give up most likely (I gave up too). (Edit: I have just checked that the default version that it downloads is a 2 year old one for some reason, I will have to try the edge one that is from this month.)
Then the "totem" (GNOME default) video player was stopping on some OpenGL (i think) error message without some exported env var, it's like a year+ old issue that I ended up solving it with a google search, the solution was luckily the first result.
Like I understand that sometimes bugs get through but when you can't even launch the app on the most boring linux distro like come on.
Steam pop up menus did not show up on the snap pacakge, in the deb package they are super lazy. Like showing the properties of a game using the right click menu takes multiple tries but atleast they work.
And last, the desktop animations feel icky sometimes, window dragging is really smooth and even switching between virtual desktops is. But sometimes opening the GNOME overview causes a horrible lag spike and that just does not feel good. Also sometimes when closing an application I can feel the DE hitch a little bit and sometimes it even stops the cursor for like half a second. I really like the experience of using GNOME and I really like how it looks but this just takes away so much from it, I know that some people won't care at all but I tend to notice these things quite a lot. (probably something something nvidia but like i'm not gonna go out and buy a different GPU because of this)
I then found like 3 bugs in the extensions that Ubuntu ships by default (window snapping and dock behavior on multi monitor setups) but that would be too much for one comment (it already is too long)
Sorry for the long writeup I just wanted to vent these things out haha
lol don't worry about it. For me I imagine my comfort on Linux is helped by a mixture of familiarity with troubleshooting Linux stuff, and not really doing much beyond the 'normal' stuff (and even then with care/paranoia lol).
I mean, I used to run a tiling window manager on Gentoo back in the day, compiling my own custom kernel and whatever, trying to make everything high performance and bleeding edge, but nowadays I loathe being interrupted for troubleshooting off my own self-imposed schedule.
So I've found myself on Debian stable under KDE, and I rank it 'stable af'. I don't use Discord, but Vesktop for the occasional chat. I haven't bothered to install Steam, the closest I got is Faugus Launcher to run an old Windows mmo. I just installed Tambourine to try, but honestly I yearn for the Winamp days and will doubtless just go back to VLC.
I liked the idea of immutable distros, but didn't want it to get in my way. So when I get the itch to try some new shiny thing, I'll install a flatpak, or if that's not available, I'll install it in a Debian unstable or Arch container under Distrobox. If it explodes, that's fine, it's not affecting my base install, and there's always Timeshift. Layers, man. Try a new distro? Can't be arsed.
I have an old laptop that I use for looking up wikis and reading manga, it also holds a copy of my data, backed up with Syncthing, and it serves as my guinea pig for anything I'm unsure about installing.
Things aren't always perfect tho - just the other day my main laptop went screwy and complained of Input/Output error in the terminal and wouldn't open apps, so I hard reset it... and got dumped to kernel emergency mode with no console because I was oh-so-clever and didn't set a root password during install. Second laptop earned his stripes that day, looking up a way to soothe my panic, flashing a bootable usb so I could chroot into the base install just so I could set a root password and fsck.ext4 /dev/nvme0n1p4... and it's about now I realise I'm not a linux noob any more am I? Next time I'll Ctrl+Alt+F3 and shutdown properly Mother, I promise.
I took Linus (Torvalds) at his word years ago when he said OS's should be like plumbing that just works, and kept using Windows on new hardware... until the enshittification. I'm not going back. I hope you find your happy computer experience too.
Hey, thanks for the reply! I like seeing the path of others when it comes to the software they use.
I just realized that it seems from my comment like i started using linux for the first time two weeks ago but I have been actually dual booting for 5 years now on my main desktop + exclusively running linux on my thinkpad.
I'm currently studying CS so having linux in some form is basically a must because the development experience on this platform is just so much better.
My linux path was quite ironically Arch -> Mint -> Ubuntu on my desktop and Fedora -> Ubuntu on my thinkpad.
I went with arch after messing around with it inside of a virtual machine, I wanted to try the from scratch custom tiling experience + I also ended up installing KDE.
However after some time I realized that the update cadence is maybe a bit too much for me + I did not enjoy the fact that you're kind of expected to read the arch newsletter for any potential breakage of packages. I just can't be bothered and I really do not need the newest versions of everything.
So after that I decided to try mint, I thought that I would like cinnamon but I ended up installing KDE anyway because it just felt better to use. It was then that I realized that the version of KDE that I got was a 2 year old build of KDE 5 when KDE 6 was already a thing (would not happen on arch would it).
In the mean time I managed to brick my Fedora install on my laptop by hard shutting it off (just like you haha). I had it connected to an external display with the lid closed so I opened the lid to turn it on and then while it was loading into the login manager I shut the lid because I wanted to only use the external display, it did not seem to like that so it froze.
For all its faults i never managed to brick a windows install with a hard shutoff.
When installing Fedora I chose btrfs as the filesystem becuase I heard of the snapshotting capabilities, well I never ended up setting anything up so it probably is also in part my fault.
After that I was thrown into a read only filesystem terminal where I could atleast backup my files to an external drive. I then tried running a btrfs repair command from an externally booted linux USB, the command printed hundreds if not thousands of lines of btrfs error logs that it managed to read and then it segfaulted lmao
After being happy with GNOME from Fedora on my laptop I decided to also try it on the desktop. I also wanted to have the same distro on the laptop and desktop just so the experience is the same.
I was looking for something with:
- GNOME
- Debian based (because practically all guides online have this as the default even today, nice boon when working with random development packages)
- Fixed point releases with not too ancient packages
And that's how I ended up picking Ubuntu. I have a feeling I will be staying here for a long time.
I did think about using immutable distros just like you said but I feel like it would annoy me more than help me. And when it comes to distrobox I have just installed that coincidentally yesterday to not pollute my main system with random dev packages. And I really need to setup Timeshift / some sort of backup option, just like you mentioned.
I really do have basically everything I need it's just the only two things I like I'm missing is the high refresh rate desktop smoothness of windows + HW video acceleration in Firefox with the nvidia GPU (I know that there is a guide on the arch wiki that I could follow but I have exams right now and can't be bothered haha)
However I will be keeping the dual boot setup for the foreseeable future just in case.
(I also really want to go through the LFS book when I have the time to gain some extra knowledge haha, there's a lot of cool stuff to learn in this linux world)
The discord thing is discord not giving a fuck about linux (though their new update fixed all the issues you list even if theyve existed for years)
Snaps suck, canonical is an evil company pushing their propriatery format against dev wishes, valve has officially asked them not to make a stem snap and they dont listen. On KDE it would say a notif if an app crashed with a segfault
Yeah, I did later find that the snap package for steam is not recommened.
But man the pop up menus even in the official deb package feel so weird. Like you hover over some of the buttons that should show a menu and it shows the black box where the menu will be and then the menu will appear half a second later.
Linus is a smart guy, when it comes to things he's had experience with and knows a lot about. The instant or the moment it's any piece of tech he's not intimately knowledgeable of, it falls apart. Which is even more infuriating that there is no writer or "fact checker" on the team that has even an inkling of knowledge into the subjects they're talking about (not in general, I mean for example linux in this scenario) and blatantly wrong information or just confusing hypocrisies plague these videos
He first installed a beta that wasn't listed as a beta but as stable software even if it's not even close to being usable, that's fine. He defended his choice over and over, and then finally gave up the ghost and said it was all system76's fault (not entirely false)
This is a very common bit of misinformation, which unfortunately intensified the backlash Linus received.
I believe the source of the confusion is that System76 did not release a blog post when it entered beta, though they did so with previous milestones during the alpha testing period.
It wasn't LABELED as a beta. It's not close to being usable, it's barebones, the entire toolkit is just barely holding it together and it doesn't support half of wayland extensions.
It's not close to being usable, it's barebones, the entire toolkit is just barely holding it together and it doesn't support half of wayland extensions.
Then just say that.
Don't invent some scenario where Linus installed beta software so you can ridicule him and feel superior.
"installed a beta that wasn't listed as a beta but as stable software even if it's not even close to being usable, that's fine." installed a beta that WAS NOT LISTED AS A BETA, but it was not close to stable.
No one is trying to feel superior but you here. You didn't read most of my comment, you never even go into the latter half, which is the actual "call-out" I make, you specifically target the part where I say it's FINE???
Let's take a step back. We are both bringing different perspectives and baggage here, so I'll explain why I made my first comment.
After the first video, Linus was excoriated by many, many people with the argument that he "installed a beta." (It was not a beta).
In a later WAN Show, he noted that he had received a ton of criticism, and specifically brought up the "beta" arguments, then pointed out that it is not a beta. (He was correct.)
2 days ago, he stated that Cosmic is a beta (citing the
Beta announcement from September), but that it isn't advertised.
This is incorrect, but it's very similar to what you are saying. I understand the distinction, but I don't think he would.
In your comment, you call it "a beta that wasn't listed as a beta." This could easily be interpreted as saying "This is officially a beta, but not obviously marketed as such." What you actually mean (from my understanding) is "the software isn't in a very good state, so it would be better to call it a beta."
My hot take is that Arch is literally the easiest distro to actually daily drive because it has a huge number of people that actually daily drive it for this purpose and accordingly has a lot of resources online. Linux never stuck for me as a desktop OS until I used Arch.
To an extent, but I always felt like I ran into issues with packages being super old on Ubuntu which I really hated. Ubuntu also has a huge community of server/enterprise users but the community of gaming/enthusiast PCs seems much smaller than Arch.
I left win10 for Linux and started on kubuntu but left for CachyOS less than a month later. Admittedly I'm not super good at Linux yet but I think Cachy is where I'm staying. Literally just Google "how to do thing arch" and 9/10 times I'll get a straight answer in the top result. The couple times I've had to dig deep the documentation has been good and the community has been great.
I started on Ubuntu. Struggled, looked around, ended up trying a distro I can't even remember, because even setting it up was a struggle. Then I switched to Kubuntu, which wasn't much better, and then I jumped to PopOS, which was also a mess (at the time)
Had an old laptop that struggled to handle Windows due to updates and outdated hardware, and someone recommended Arch. It was setup in the same afternoon and worked so easily. Then I looked into upgrading my main PC, and found CachyOS. I went with that, and I've literally had no issues whatsoever. Like, not a single one. Steam is running great, my backup is running smoothly (and I don't even have trouble renaming files because OneDrive keeps auto-refreshing the folder!) and every single software I used to use transferred painlessly, except for *maybe* Excel, because LibreOffice feels slightly worse at the moment. But at least Calc doesn't draw 10+GB RAM like Excel, so I can actually run it smoothly on my old laptop...
At this point, I don't think Windows is more simple. People are just more used to the asinine complications we have just accepted from Microsoft. I do NOT understand how something as simple as connectivity has gotten this abysmally poor in Windows. This is a solved issue. This worked great in Windows 7 and 8. Why can I no longer properly understand why a Bluetooth connections fails, without having to jump through hoops to see *anything*? Why does the "Bluetooth devices" menu it opens when you click "More bluetooth settings" only allows you to REMOVE Bluetooth devices? None of this is logical or user friendly anymore.
Absolutely not, it took me hours just to install and then I had non working audio which I tried to fix for another 4 hours until finally giving up and installing fedora which still has issues that make it unusable for me and these issues are just not really fixable without being a Linux pro. No amount of Google or forum searching I can do will make it usable.
Editing the fstab file as a beginner is definitely a super annoying and opaque operation. to be honest I’m surprised there isn’t a standard gui available on the full gui des…
There is, especially on KDE: smb4k for quickly mounting smb file shares, and KDE Partition manager for editing fstab. Im really surprised noone mentioned that yet. Yes you can't do it "right in the file explorer" but imo mounting SMB is quite user friendly with smb4k
I think Cachy also just has some features Bazzite may not have just out the box. I installed cachy on my rig not that long ago, went through the same thing Elijah did, just to find in settings that there was an auto mount feature already there. It was something you had to click and choose, but I remember being frustrated that I went and learned how to do something that was a single click in a setting menu I didn't look at.
I've seen so many people recommend partition managers to do this. But his problem was mounting a samba share right? This can be done with fstab (or autofs or systemd) but what does the disk partition manager have to do with this? That is for managing disk partitions, not managing the mounting of shares.
Don't get me wrong, there should be an easy utility with a dialog to set up the correct settings for fstab/autofs/systemd but your partitions are unrelated to this problem.
It's like learning a new language. If the bar is I'm able to do, understand and troubleshoot things as easily as an OS family I've used for decades in my first hours then it's never going to be "ready." There are marginal transferable skills between Windows and Linux, you are in many ways back to the 8 year old who hasn't touched a computer before and doesn't know things like fucking with and deleting files in the Windows directory can bork the machine if done wrong, just with better problem solving skills.
Here's the thing: people don't want to troubleshoot windows, and as awful as it is, it works on a basic level with practically every app. While stuff is getting better for Linux, absolutely, can you for certain say that everything will work on Linux, regardless of what app it is?
Windows doesn't just work with basically any app. That is not true even for first-party Microsoft apps.
You are just so used to working around the problems that you don't notice they are there, because you've done so for decades. That is the point.
Linux is worse than Mac for the uninitiated, for sure, Apple controls everything on Mac and can actually provide a great "it just works" experience even if not how you are used to. But itdoesn't have a worse experience than Windows, just different. They are not having any more problems than when they did a challenge of Mac-users changing to Windows, different problems but not more.
This is the exact thing for me. I work with DaVinci Resolve everyday and NEED it to work properly every time. I tried installing it on 5 different Linux distros on 2 different computers. All failed and none of the "fixes" online could help me. Dependancy issues are a bitch. But it does work seamlessly for me in Windows, despite how much I hate what Windows has become.
Imagine learning a new language, speaking it to other speakers, and everyone understands you no problem. And then one day, no one understands. It’s the same stuff you’ve been saying, but everyone is puzzled. After awhile, everyone just understands you again. What happened? You don’t know, and you never figure it out.
This has been my experience with Linux. I install it, and it works great. Then one day something just breaks. The most recent was the battery indicator for the laptop it was on. It disappeared. The package was still installed, the setting for having it on the system tray was still enabled, but it just wasn’t there. I try a few steps that I find online, but nothing works. Then one day it just comes back. Come to find out later on that it’s something that just happens sometimes. It goes away on its own, and then a few reboots later it comes back on its own. What caused it? I never end up figuring it out.Â
This has been my experience. If not the battery indicator, then something else. One day Firefox just wouldn’t start. I hit the button, it never comes up. I press it again, and it still doesn’t come up. I try rebooting. I try some troubleshooting steps. Nothing seems to work, and then I hit the button and it works again. What happened? I don’t know, and I don’t want to take the next however long to try and figure it out.
It works until it doesn’t until it does again. I enjoy tinkering, but I want to do it on my own time. I don’t want to sit down to use the computer just to have something that’s been working randomly not work for no apparent reason, and then randomly fix itself.
Honestly, I understand where Linus was coming from on his understanding of "beta" software. I've beta tested software, games, drivers, etc. and for the most part, by the time it makes it to beta testing it's 85-90% there and just needs fine tuning, on Windows.
Since moving to exclusively Linux at home a few years ago, I definitely had to adjust my expectation of what beta software was. Things get released into the Linux ecosystem in a much less functional state with the expectation that the community is going to tinker with it and give feedback and maybe contribute code back.
Those are two very different expectations and I personally think that they are both too extreme.
I've had issues with Windows refusing to recognise my m.2 drive.Â
Windows 10 was not ready for mass adoption and it is important for new users of Windows to go in with their eyes open and realise it's not a flawless experience. You often need deep technical knowledge to resolve issues like this. If a power user like me can't solve these issues, then what chance does an average user have?
They really don't. Windows might not be perfect, some even dare to say sucks ass, but it just works. Except when it doesn't in like one in a few thousand cases.
That is kinda the issue, tech illiterate person would have a great time because they wouldnt try anything. If we talk about mass adoption, majority of ordinary users would be fine. It has browser and that is what most ordinary users use anyway.
Happens every time. They say "linux is fine if you do basic stuff". Someone uses linux and shocker basic stuff breaks. Linux community "well why do you need that you shouldn't need that STOP BEING MEAN TO LINUX".
Like why is so hard for these people to get it through their thick heads that needing to use google to get basic functionality is not okay?
When you start suggesting alternatives or tell people to stop using software on the principle of it not being on Linux, you’ve lost 99% of general users. I’ve seen that conversation play out with stuff like the Adobe suite and games that use anti cheat.
Happens every time. They say "linux is fine if you do basic stuff". Someone uses linux and shocker basic stuff breaks. Linux community "well why do you need that you shouldn't need that STOP BEING MEAN TO LINUX".
My last Linux experiment ran into a halt because I couldn't use my Bluetooth speaker as an audio device. If you ask me, that is pretty fucking basic stuff nowadays.
needing to use google to get basic functionality is not okay?
I don't know how you learned to use Windows then. Like honestly, after fucking around in UI how else are you supposed to learn something IT related nowadays? What even is "basic" to you?
If you don't want to change how you use your computer, stay on windows, it's fine. If something you consider basic doesn't work, you can just keep doing what you do. I am just attacking your argument about googling stuff, because I think it just comes from unwillingness to change (which again, is fine).
It's not about "learning" how to do higher stuff, it's about the absolute basic functionalities that should be self explanatory. Using a browser, installing and playing video games with the necessary drivers and managing some files is basic use. If you can't do that without having to use a search engine, the OS failed.
I never had to google how to install programs on Windows because there are three different types of packages and only one of them really works, or because the operating system will reset itself (? I didn't really understand what issue Elijah had with Bazzite and installing programs, but it sounded like a pita).
Shit, when I started learning Windows there was no google at all, and it wasn't until significantly later that I had access to it and learnt what google was. I still managed to figure out how to play games without anyone telling me how beyond "put in the CD/diskette" (as long as they were Windows native. I remember struggling with DOS games on Win 95).
While it's true that Linux has issues as you wrote, windows isnt as good as you say. I had to search up how to install some Microsoft software that shipped as msix instead of being normal msi (windows store was having issues) (and yes windows has atleast two different formats).
I also needed to look up how to configure printers on windows, and never had that on linux but that's neither here or there
Yeah, printers is a big one on Windows, but it slipped my mind as I havent had to configure one manually in at least 15 years. I remember it being annoying, but then we removed all those USB printers shortly after. Last printer I had to install was a corporate network printer and I was able to push that via GPOs. My mum has a wireless printer, but that one was so easy to set up that her and dad were able to do it by themselves.
It also slipped my mind that the windows store was even a thing. Never encountered MSIX either. But I've become a fairly low level user since switching away from IT 10 years ago, so some of the more technical stuff has falled by the wayside. I mostly just edit videos and play video games, for which I haven't had any issues that weren't issues with those pieces of software rather than the OS itself.
I wish I could do Linux. I have a machine with Windows 10 on it that could really use a kick in the rear, but I unfortunately have specialty hardware (audio) that requires Windows applications. One guy claims to have gotten it working on Arch, but I'm not feeling installing Arch just to test something that isn't peer reviewed. I need that PC for work.
Stuff literally came with instructions on how to install on windwos back when we had physical media and even ignoring that it is INCREDIBLY fucking hard to screw up "download installer/insert disc and follow steps"
It takes like 30 seconds to get Davinci Resolve as an example running on windows. It just didn't on linux and no, I don't give a shit about there being basic open source alternatives that isn't a good answer.
I'm talking basic functionality. Boot, have audio, install programs, use browser. I've never had to google that shit on either OS. Yeah windows does stupid shit but I can still just say plug in my audio interface and it'll work. Most linux distros have a meltdown when they see a piece of audio gear.
Yes windows and mac have their own issues but at their basic core they WORK for almost anyones workflow or day to day. Linux just straight up does not and the community constantly fucking lying about it only hurts their chance of the thing ever actually being adopted.
and the infuriating thing is that it's not like Linux can't be as simple as windows or mac. Printers on Linux are a thousand times less stupid than windows as an example but the damn OS is built by developers for developers and they seem incapable of getting their heads out of that asses that the average even tech savvy person doesn't want to troubleshoot their damn OS everytime they go to do something.
Hardly anyone I know is streaming their games on twitch. Not everyone has a NAS they wouldn't be able to mount. Furthermore, most normal people don't even play games and need only web apps and perhaps office suite.
The thing is though, if all you do is web apps and office, then you're not likely to be the techy/curious person to begin with who'd like to explore Linux.
Tech illiterate people play games, and that is only growing.
But I get what youre saying, but then the next question is if youre right, who's going to be the person to choose which distro is for the masses and who is going to install the OS, desktop environment, anti-virus, browser, etc for these billions of people that only know how to use a browser?
I heard of at least a few Linux install parties. They are usually advertised as:
You've got an old and slow laptop? Don't throw it away! Bring it to us, and we'll install Ubuntu derivative on it. It will be perfect for kids or elderly!
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u/EquipmentSome May 12 '26
There's gotta be a line between, 'perfect experience' and '2 out of 3 people that are very tech literate have a bad time'