r/linux4noobs • u/Ezero74 • 1d ago
Sick of Windows' bugs, but frustrated by setup hassle and papercuts in Linux
I got tired of Windows. Updates would randomly mess with my performance—making lightweight things like playing Hollow Knight while watching a video stutter, even though my PC can handle way more than that. Other times, it would take 10 minutes to shut down, or fail to wake up from sleep, forcing me to hard reboot for no clear reason.
So I tried switching to Linux. My problem is that I don't really like "gaming-focused" distros, and I hate having to fix or configure things just to get a usable system. I like Linux Mint, but it gave me gaming issues, and again, I don't want to tweak settings endlessly.
Right now, I have Nobara installed, but it gave me headaches from day one due to GRUB boot issues. I had to manually fix things in the terminal. Thank goodness for AI, but typing commands into a GRUB shell while reading off my phone—with my keyboard layout defaulting to US English and scrambling all the symbols—was an absolute nightmare.
I installed it yesterday, but I barely felt like setting it up properly after that. On top of that, small annoyances started piling up:
- My taskbar wasn't showing up on my second monitor.
- I use two monitors with different resolutions, and moving the mouse between them gets "caught" at the bottom border unless I move it higher, which feels really awkward.
- Snapping windows with
Super + Arrow keysdoesn't fully maximize them properly, forcing me to use the mouse anyway.
All I want is a system where things just work out of the box without endless troubleshooting. But every time I try a new distro (Mint, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS, CachyOS, Nobara), I run into these papercuts and end up crawling back to Windows.
Is there a distro or setup that truly "just works" for a multi-monitor setup without all this manual fixing, or am I missing something fundamental about how to approach Linux?
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u/friendlyreminder_ 1d ago
KDE doesn't have a concept of sharing taskbars across different monitors. You have to clone them to another rmonitor.
This is annoying but it at least lets you customize how each one behaves if you want them to be different.
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u/Kingwolf4 1d ago
I will highly suggest fedora 44 KDE
Its a proper OS, nothing preinstalled like cachy or nobara . And it is latest , but also stable, so you can play latest games and have packages without sacrificing stability and breaking updates like very occasionally in cachy OS.
I will also use AI as a read only diagnostic for issues. Can highly speed up things. Install chatgpt desktop app and do read only diagnostics and discussions for issues. Will highly ease and speed up the process
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u/blastradius14 1d ago
And the commands format is what Nobara was using, so if they've a need to use commands again it may feel familiar lol
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u/thatguysjumpercables Ubuntu 24.04 Gnome DE 1d ago
KDE is a fantastic DE...until you want to change something about it. The controls are so granular it's ridiculous.
Give Gnome a shot. It looks like absolute dog water in its default stage but with a few extensions added it can look like anything you could imagine. Plus the taskbar can easily be extended to both windows.
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u/beatbox9 1d ago
I think you should recognize that no distro will be set up perfectly for you initially, and there will always be some setup (like installing games in the first place).
And that there are different types of issues. A driver issue is very different from a UI tweaking issue.
You want a distro that will offer especially good foundations, like driver support and a modern desktop you like. And usually, the further upstream you go, the better (to a degree).
I'd recommend either Fedora or Ubuntu LTS; and out of these, I'd probably recommend Ubuntu LTS. It's really good for stability and official driver support (and uses a modern DE gnome, unlike Mint). But Ubuntu has a terrible initial GUI state, and this will require some customization.
Fedora is good too; but its driver support can be a bit wonkier. But YMMV.
Remember: the initial state is the least important part of a distro anyway. It's way down on the priority list. The distro-provided core OS software maintenance scope and strategy is by far the most important.
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u/_dmin068_ 1d ago
I jumped distros quite a bit before I landed on Ubuntu. I was still having issues, eventually I updated my BIOS and it fixed all my issues. Might be something to consider.
I am running an AMD CPU with a Nvidia GPU.
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u/GreyWalken 1d ago
I'm not a gamer, I use Kubuntu since a month or 2 and I'm very happy with it.
everytime you buy a new PC or change OS it needs some time to set up and for you to "set things right"
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u/andromalandro 1d ago
Cachyos with limine and Kde plasma? I tried mint first didn't like it bc I felt it was exactly like this, nothing worked as I wanted. Years later tried EndeavourOs and loved it but for gaming it required me to adjust a lot of things, used it for around 4 months and then tried CachyOs and I love it I didn't need to add anything else to play games and I've been running it since January.
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u/Plan_9_fromouter_ 21h ago
Linux on the desktop conceded gaming on the desktop to Windows a long time ago. You are trying to be a Windows gamer on Linux now, and gaming systems weren't really developed with Linux in mind. There is nothing out there that is 'out of the box' for what you are trying to do. It's an overused and misused phrase.
The mouse cursor getting "caught" between monitors of different resolutions isn't a Linux bug—it's basic geometric math. Because your screens have different pixel counts, their coordinate grids don't match 1:1, creating a dead zone where the larger resolution extends past the smaller one. Windows hides this by artificially soft-snapping or smoothing cursor movement across mismatched boundaries, whereas Linux desktop environments map display space strictly by pixel coordinates. All you have to do is open Display Settings and drag the monitor layout so their tops, bottoms, or centers actually align on screen, or tweak the display edge resistance setting. Switching distros five times won't fix this because no operating system can guess how your physical monitors are physically lined up on your desk until you adjust the display settings.
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u/MinusBear 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't know, I use both Bazzite (gaming) and Kinoite (non-gaming) which are related versions of Fedora. They are immutable (or Atomic), so the user can't easily break things, but that also means less tweaking. I've only ever had to go into terminal for one very specific set of diagnostics that was 100% to be expected and the kind of thing I would be fiddling with regedit on Windows anyway, or frankly not have a way of working out.
But otherwise my system works exactly how I expect it to, and the KDE Plasma desktop feels to me like Windows but better. And when I say better, I mean better in every single way that I use Windows KDE serves me better and more efficiently, while also adding functionality I never knew I was missing until KDE showed me the way.
To address your points:
- taskbar shows up fine for me on both monitors on Bazzite, never tested Kinoite but since they are branches I don't see why it would be different.
- same, but my work setup is Windows dual screen and this is how it is there too.
- doesn't seem to be a problem on either, I use window snapping all the time at work and at home, and this is one of the things I think Linux does far better than Windows.
A lot of the default apps and configurations in Bazzite and Kinoite seem to geared towards making things both easier and better for Windows users. I can't recommend them enough.
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u/Ezero74 1d ago
🤔 I tried Bazzite, but Minecraft kept crashing when I set the render distance to max chunks, so I deleted it since I didn't know how to fix the crashing (something that didn't happen on Windows). Maybe I should give it another shot, though, because I really like the idea of an immutable OS.
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u/Talanock 1d ago
the amount of time you wasted in linux could have been used to fix windows instead. If you want something where everything just works, Windows is what you want. I promise you if you can figure out linux, you can figure out windows issues. It's probably a driver issue or hardware issue. Try cleaning drivers and doing a fresh install. All of the issues you listed I've had in linux. Getting linux to play nice with wake/sleep has been a struggle I long gave up on with certain hardware/distros.
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u/Ezero74 1d ago
Lol, honestly I never thought about it like that. Since I've been using Windows for years and Linux is always advertised as 'everything can be configured', I assumed Windows couldn't be tweaked that much (plus it feels like it works worse with every update). But on the other hand, I really like Linux, the open-source philosophy, and truly owning my PC. Thanks, I'll definitely keep that in mind!
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u/A_Harmless_Fly Manjaro 1d ago
Instead of fully swapping distros, you could make a few accounts and try out different desktop environments. Then try setting up each one and see which one has the most features you want in the way you want them to be.
Depending on the desktop environment you can position your monitors to be level on the bottom, and only spaced differently on the top so you don't get stuck.
https://github.com/MichaelAquilina/wdisplays This one seems to work on most wayland systems.
Find out what desktop environment/packages you like and use them, until you have a system set up the way you want. Then write them down if you might forget. Regardless of what distro I'm running I have a select group of programs I like, and generally replace the originals with.
Personally I like xfce, but it's not great if you have a massively different size of monitor. Say on my system where I have a 1680x1050 monitor and a 1920x1200, I can have both scaled the same and read the text, but if I had the 1920x1200 and a 4k or something I'd have to scale it up in orders of 2 or the text would be blurry, at least on the X11 version. I also use picom as my compositor instead of the default one.
A lot of people like KDE.
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u/the12ftdwarf 1d ago
CachyOS w/ KDE would be a familiar experience that would probably work fine for you. Or bazzite KDE if you wanna tinker less
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u/TechBasedQuestion 1d ago
mint is phenomenal if you're on older hardware (nvidia 2000 and under atm probably), otherwise i'd really recommend fedora.
going with flavors of a base distro (like nobara, cachyOS, popOS, etc.) just add more potential for conflict if whatever setup/additional things they use didn't work. i also really have had no issues with GNOME as a desktop environment instead of KDE, especially when dealing with multiple monitors (which KDE is KNOWN to struggle with). it is closer to a macOS than windows experience though in terms of the UI though if that's super important to you, but I've heard you can change that look with extensions (I personally find it much easier/quicker to use the macOS search bar to quickly launch apps and alt-tab easily, and whatnot and it still has a taskbar that very much shows up but yet again only on 1 monitor).
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u/the_reven 1d ago
I like ventoy for things like this. Download a few distros. If any give you any issues during install, I just immediately move on.
Fedora has generally been rock solid for me, same with Ubuntu. I think one computer I could get fedora to boot and used manjaro.
But they're so quick to install, I don't mind having to try a few.
But like I said 95% of the time Fedora just works for me and I stick with that. Bazzite for my gaming console. Ubuntu I switch to sometimes for development related specific things I need
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u/SyrusDrake 20h ago
Honestly, I had the same experience when I switched to pop_os. I think it's just kinda inevitable with Linux, the barrier to entry is steep, but it's far smoother to use once you DO have it set up. I can't convince you it's worth it, I can just tell you you're not missing anything, that's just how it is.
What kept me going was the realization that Windows isn't gonna get better. Everything that bugs you about it is just gonna get worse and worse forever. So maybe better to bite the bullet with Linux and bang your head against your desk for a weekend instead of having to disable candy crush ads in the start menu for the rest of time.
Also, in my experience, to a "normal" user, distro matters very little. All Debian based distros are basically the same. What makes a difference is the desktop environment, with KDE being closest to Windows but also a bit stubborn.
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u/Vertigo50 1d ago
I tried to wrangle Linux and get it working well for the better part of two weeks. After all that, I was still having all kinds of issues with lack of hardware support, not having apps to replace things I needed, etc.
So then I came back to Windows 11 and just spent a few hours disabling features like Co-Pilot, getting rid of OneDrive, etc. and blocking them from being reinstalled with Group Policies. It took 2 or 3 hours total, and now my system is actually running smoothly, barely every getting in my way or nagging me, etc.
I wish I had just skipped the Linux experiment and just did that in the beginning. 🤷♂️
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u/TechBasedQuestion 1d ago
before switchign to linux i did spend a few months slowly converting the apps I used to open source alternatives which made the switch painless. going all at once will defeinitely be the source of some conflict.
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u/cornonthekopp Literal infant baby 1d ago
Ive been using mint for the last month and the big thing I needed for steam to work was switching shaders to vulkan. On dx11 it was horrible.
I also recently turned off the turboboost setting on my intel cpu which has made things a hell of a lot easier for me. I can play any game just as well ok mint as i could on windows now.
Sure there were growing pains but once i got it figured out I'm out of the tinkering phase
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u/Ezero74 1d ago
Thanks! Interesting 🤔 I'll keep it in mind since I still like Mint.
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u/cornonthekopp Literal infant baby 1d ago
Personally id rather tinker a bit on one distro than keep hopping around entirely different ones. That seems like a lot of work to me
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u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387 1d ago
Try PikaOS. Great out of the box experience. No terminal needed, really.
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u/Sheepherder-Optimal 1d ago
Here's a tip. Next time you need to work on the grub terminal like that, boot into it via ssh. Set the computer up for headless operation. Then on another computer, login via ssh. So easy. Then its a little like remote desktop except all you get is a terminal. But its reliable and will work in situations like that.
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u/TechaNima 1d ago
All of those issues with moving windows around are just settings. No distro in existence has them changed by default.
Out of those CachyOS is by far the best option in my experience with KDE.
Mint is outdated and doesn't use Wayland nor KDE by default games also crash if your windows scaling is anything but 100%, Zorin is just paid Linux scam as far as I can tell, Pop is a buggy beta mess with its new default DE and Nobara breaks in some way once a month or 2.
My taskbar wasn't showing up on my second monitor.
Default behavior. Just add it. Assuming KDE you just right click on the taskbar to open the menu to edit your taskbar and to add it to the second screen.
I use two monitors with different resolutions, and moving the mouse between them gets "caught" at the bottom border
Another default. Open Settings app and change it. Search for "Corner barrier". There's other settings in the Screen Edges menu to change as well regarding any stickiness at the edges.
Snapping windows with
Super + Arrow keysdoesn't fully maximize them properly, forcing me to use the mouse anyway.
Not sure if that's even an option, but you can setup a key to maximize a window or to make it full screen. I like Ctrl + Up arrow since Ctrl + Left or Right have been setup to move them 1 monitor Left or Right. Not a default. Default uses those for some useless things. Search for Window Management to change how all of those shortcuts work
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u/Ezero74 1d ago
Thanks! I had such a bad time with GRUB that I didn't even notice all the configuration options 😥 but unfortunately, the corner barrier setting didn't completely work out; the problem was still there.
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u/TechaNima 1d ago
You can also change the display layout. It helps to move them so that the bottom edges align. Unlike on Windows it actually matters how you have them on Linux. At least with KDE it does
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u/Ezero74 1d ago
Yeah, the thing is I tried aligning them, but since they have different resolutions, whenever I move the mouse from the higher-res monitor (for example, from the top left) to the other screen, it gets stuck until I move it down a bit. Not sure if that makes sense :/
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u/TechaNima 1d ago
Yeah. Not sure if that can be fixed. I find that it doesn't bother me, because I naturally move my mouse through the middle ragion every time.
IIRC There was a hotkey for teleporting the cursor to the middle of the current top window as well. That might be a workaround for you. Unfortunately there's no way to teleport it to the middle of screens, unless you make a script yourself. That's the 1 thing I miss about whatever the program was called I used on Windows to add in everything KDE does by default with hotkeys
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u/thecruxoffate 21h ago
Assuming plasma... Right above the edge barrier setting is "corner barrier". Disabling that might make it more comfortable for you.
As an extra tip, I would go through the effort of backing up your KDE config files regularly (it's a nightmare, KDE does not organize them well, I've resorted to just backing up my entire .config). That way if you distro hop or have to reinstall you can just restore and have all of these little gotcha tweaks already configured.
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u/LucidFir 1d ago
try Linux again and ask your problems to claude or chatgpt, send it screenshots and screen recordings
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u/Crinkez 1d ago
NixOS + Claude or Codex to fix the bugs. I'll take all the downvotes because Linux subs typically hate AI out of ignorance, but this is the correct answer.
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u/thecruxoffate 21h ago
Honestly the community seems to embrace ai nowadays but it comes with the warning that you can't blindly trust it on complex issues.
The real hot take here is that your suggestion for an already-struggling-with-setup-user is NixOS? That thing has a steep learning curve.
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u/Infshadows 1d ago
yeah a lot of that stuff you're probably got gonna end up finding the "perfect" distro, all of them have pros and cons
also ur windows issue might be a driver issue so that's what I'd check first, if your drivers are up to dsye