Linux

Been running the same Arch installation for a bit over a year. Minor issues here and there, but nothing out of the ordinary for general computer use.

Learning was hard. I'd say it took me a good year before I was really genuinely comfortable with Linux overall, and even then, it was quite a while longer before I felt I could call myself experienced or proficient.

I will say this, switching to AMD was a massive step up in terms of reliability. Also, and this is just my experience, but as someone who also started on Ubuntu, I've had far fewer weird obscure issues on Arch than on that, or any other distro I've tried. It's daunting, but it's so well documented that it's almost impossible to have an issue with no known fix.

It took a lot of learning, for sure, a lot of frustrated googling, but worth it. I wouldn't choose Ubuntu Studio as my first experience. Ironically my first experience was with Ubuntu, and it was awesome, but that's back when Ubuntu was good which was like 2008-2012 (my experience evidently is contrary to some here, but it was kind of the breakthrough of strong Linux desktops imo).

I've always found that there's generally a new way to do things in Linux, but I rarely have issues. I have an Acer Nitro laptop with a Ryzen integrated AMD graphics and then an Nvidia 3060, and I had to look up how to install the drivers, which was rpmfusion, click, click, done. Instead of the usual launcher for games, it's either Steam or Lutris. The only real bitch of a thing was some school stuff. Like, gnomes boxes handles all my virtualization, but school demanded VMware Workstation, which was legitimately a pain on Fedora. Likewise, Microsoft Teams. But web Office was fine, Libre locally... I get hella better frame rates on MHW in Linux than Windows. I didn't pick the machine for its Linux compatibility, it just worked.

All of the long time Linux users have what you perceive as flawless experiences because they already did all the stumbling you did and more. Every operating system has steep learning curves and you will struggle with how it does things when first starting out. I recently had to start using Windows again after exclusively using Linux for years (and Windows 11 no less which I never used before) and there are plenty of times I've failed to do simple things I could do on Linux without even thinking.

OS choice and hardware are a lot of it. I built a desktop in 2019 and it was the best experience I've had yet with Linux. Everyone works.

Nvidia 2070s, and ryzen 3800x, 64GB RAM. Even wifi and Bluetooth on the motherboard worked fine out of the box.

I used to have so many quirks once in a while on my last system and it was always to do with an update and an Nvidia driver, I'd have to drop to shell and manually reinstall it, or download a new one with cli browsers and install it lol.

But I persist because I love the idea and the mission.

While I use Windows for work and a steam deck mostly for gaming these days, any time I boot my desktop I'm blown away at how incredibly snappy it is compared to the windows of today.

Like I knew things were getting bad when the windows calculator started showing me a splash screen and needed to "load", and when the start menu started showing similar quirks. Now we have AI shoved in everywhere and it's just a gross OS to use.

But, I digress...

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.

I like Linux, use(d) various flavors of it, and have had experience with / exposure to it for over 20 years. But no, I've never had a remotely flawless experience with it on a desktop or laptop environment. Wish I could offer more help or encouragement, but figured I'd at least chime in with some emotional support by affirming that you are not alone in that experience.

I would recommend Linux to technologically adept people (ex: tech professionals, computer science students) and only indirectly to less technically proficient people in the form of suggesting something like a Steam Deck for portable PC gaming to someone who might be interested.

But for an aging parent or my best friend's kids? No. Sometimes I already feel like I'm a free on-call 24/7 IT support tech for friends and family, and that's with mostly Windows and Android devices that pretty much just work the way folks expect (even if that way is broken/crumby/irritating/etc).

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.

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".

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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

Honestly depends on the hardware. I still had an Nvidia card for the first year I used Linux and 90% of my issues stemmed from that...

As for everything else I've had a much easier time with Linux than most people I know because I unintentionally bought peripherals that already worked great with Linux before I was even thinking about switching.

A few people I know have tried Linux but ran into issues with their mice or audio equipment that require proprietary drivers or dedicated software to fully function. Most of these are the big name "gamer" brands like Razer.

I had issues with Razers software all the way back on Windows 7 so I swore off buying anymore keyboards or mice that require 3rd party drivers so I never had an issue with them when switching over.

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.

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

It's different flaws.

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.

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.

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.

I’ve been distro hopping a little bit and honestly in my experience, anything based on Ubuntu has been inconsistent at best. Stock Ubuntu (or specifically Kubuntu since I prefer KDE) was the worst but Mint gave me issues too. Meanwhile, Fedora- and Arch-based distros have been perfect. Literally more consistent than MacOS or Windows for me, every single time. Personally I wouldn’t try another Ubuntu-based distro unless it was highly recommended.

Long time Windows user tried switching over to various Linux distros recently but 12 of them couldn't find drivers for my wireless card, ethernet, bluwtooth radio, or GPU. After 80 hours finally got to the point where I could sign in (mint Cinnamon) but it thinks my ethernet is wifi, wifi and bluwtooth don't work, the GPU usage is buggy, only uses 4gb of my 128gb of ram, uses way more CPU then it should and randomly freezes. Oh and it won't recognize my USB 3.0+ ports, only the 2.0 I've spent over 200 hours since trying to debug why to no avail. And none of my games run properly, even with Proton or Wine. They stutter, freeze crash, or spaz out.

There's a lot of people here saying that you just need to learn Linux, but I don't want to have to learn how to write my own hardware drivers thank you very much.

I can get fresh Windows installed, fully functioning with all the software I want in about an hour with full performance. Meanwhile after 300 hours with Linux I've turned a $5000 desktop into the functionality of a $200 chromebook.

If you want to install any apps go with Flatpaks for reliability. Since Ubuntu has snaps, install the snap variant of available. Imo Flatpaks have greatly reduced the number of issues like dependency problems for me.

Have you tried any other distro ? I'd recommend any of the universal blue projects or fedora silverblue as it is relatively maintainance free and just like using windows/macos. If you game just go with Bazzite, otherwise try Aurora/Bluefin. In most cases you won't even have to use the terminal that much, but if you do they have really nice cli tools too.

If you still want to go the traditional approach - Arch based distros can also be very good, ateast you will be able to find answers on the archwiki and try those solutions. It's not like Ubuntu is bad, it's kind of janky sometimes and I kind of liked the conveince of finding all that I need within the archwiki. Arch has fast updates, so things will break once in a while.. however my experience has been really good with arch for many years now. if you want to try it then go with either EmdavourOS or CachyOS - both are setup quite well out of the box.

TL;DR - try Flatpaks, try low maintenance distros like Bazzite and use it like you normally do.

My linux workflow: Try installing with apt. Try installing with snap. Try installing with npm. Try installing with flatpak. Try installing with cargo. Try building with git. Try installing with the shady curl script from stackexchange. If it breaks or refuses to work in the first place try a similar application from a completely different dev.

Flawless? Fuck no. When have you ever come to expect a flawless experience from any software? I had to deal with so much shit on Windows though, over a very long period of time. I mostly learned to tune it out, but after switching to Linux full time it became obvious what I had just grown to ignore.

Linux isn't flawless, and never will or should try to be. It's just better than the alternatives. You have to spend some time with it and figure out it's quirks, just as you did with Windows but forgot. You need to also not expect it to be Windows. It's a new thing and you have to learn it knowing it's not trying to copy Windows.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

You didn't mention which version of Ubuntu Studio you're running. Is it 24.04 LTS by any chance?

My initial thought is that you are probably running Wayland, and that your version of Ubuntu has KDE Plasma 5 instead of 6 and/or outdated Nvidia drivers that don't work super well with Wayland.

A quick search shows that this is all default on Ubuntu Studio 24.04 LTS, which is the first version you'll find at ubuntustudio.org. :(

Ubuntu 25.04 (non-LTS) has Plasma 6, which is a very important upgrade if you are using Wayland, especially with Nvidia GPUs.

Just a guess. If I'm right, you have a few choices:

1. Upgrade to Ubuntu Studio 25.04 (non-LTS). It has newer stuff like Plasma 6 that fixes a LOT of problems like this.

2. Switch to X11 instead of Wayland. This will likely introduce a new set of problems though. X11 has no future.

3. Switch to a different DE than KDE. I am not sure what is best in this situation.

4. Install the latest Nvidia drivers manually instead of getting them from the Ubuntu repo.

Option 1 is by far the simplest choice.

The Linux desktop is in a big transitional phase these past few years, as more distros default to Wayland even before a lot of their packages are updated to fully support it. It's a terrible time to be stuck with outdated "LTS" distros. This is why I hopped away from Debian 12 (13 is out now so yay, but it was a year too late for me).