10 ms·

PopOS feels like an extremely pragmatic operating system as far as linux distributions go. Yes, I do want my broadcom wifi card to just work. I do want my dedic

by least 5y ago

PopOS feels like an extremely pragmatic operating system as far as linux distributions go. Yes, I do want my broadcom wifi card to just work. I do want my dedicated Nvidia graphics card to actually be useful. Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work. I also think that the enhancements they've made with their Cosmic Desktop are indeed that - enhancements over base Gnome desktop, and they, as with most of the things have done, gone with a pragmatic approach to them. The automatic tiling is built on top of gnome rather than requiring a separate window manager (this is a much bigger feature than I think it's been given credit for). Workspaces are more prominent and there are more ways to make working with them better than on default Gnome. The launcher is also much more robust and more closely mimics spotlight search or Alfred rather than Launchpad. I'm glad that PopOS exists and I would probably recommend it to anyone who wants to get their feet wet with linux and anyone that is curious about automatic tiling window managers - this is a great starting point with low commitment requirements.

lmm 5y ago
> PopOS feels like an extremely pragmatic operating system as far as linux distributions go. Yes, I do want my broadcom wifi card to just work. I do want my dedicated Nvidia graphics card to actually be useful. Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work. That seems like a kind of self-contradictory philosophy - if you care more about whether it "just works" than how much control you have, how does it make sense to want to run Linux at all?
- innocenat 5y ago
  I use Linux not because of control, but because I don't like both MacOS and Windows. PopOS is my preferred choice because it's just work.
- ReactiveJelly 5y ago
  You can make those compromises and still have much more control than you'd get from Windows or Mac.
- taeric 5y ago
  This feels in bad faith. There are plenty of us that have had a fine time using Linux as their only os for a long time.
  - headsoup 5y ago
    It also makes the assumption that Windows just works out of the box fine for everyone...
- TylerLives 5y ago
  You can still change/remove anything you dislike.
- thejosh 5y ago
  A user wanting things to work out of the box vs not actually having control is not the same. I think the OP meant in terms of if you don't want the same non OSS binaries nVidia ships you can install something else?
- d0lphin 5y ago
  I also want my software to "just work" - and in that sense I like Windows. But I don't like the telemetry and anti-user practices and that's enough for me to use Linux. I've never tried PopOS though, but after this post I might.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  Because absolutism ends up being masochism. Personally, I don't want to be part of Microsoft's ecosystem anymore, but I want some 'convenience' because I actually need to be productive rather than forever navigating the maze of compatible driver versions, so there are a number Linux flavours that fit this middle ground quite nicely. I use Pop_OS in preference to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu for the most convenience short of anything Microsoft.
- least 5y ago
  I've set up Arch before and it's not fun to me. I don't want to change and write dozens of config files to get up and running. Some people find that sort of thing fun. I don't. Does that mean I'm conceding some control over my operating system to the developers of the distribution I'm using? Of course. And it's something I willingly do because it's not an interesting problem for me to solve and I frankly don't care that much. If there were something nefarious going on, I might care, but it's simply not possible for me to live my life auditing every bit of software that's running on my system. I suspect most people, even those that are heavily invested in FOSS have some limit to that as well. I doubt that many people are auditing the code for every application or program they compile on their computer. They have a sphere of trust where they can just assume that what they're running is safe enough and that the software isn't going out of its way to be malicious. It's a matter of degrees. I happen to be okay with giving up some control for the convenience of not having to try to install wifi drivers on my computer without access to the internet. I don't think it's self-contradictory at all. People have different ideas of what an Operating System should be and that's reflected in the number of different linux distributions all with their own ideas and philosophies. I just happen to really like what System76 has done.
- xarope 5y ago
  When does linux not "just works"? I have been running linux on my thinkpads (x200, x220, w540, T470, T480s) etc and "it just works", with appreciably much less fiddling around than I would on a similar windows desktop with drivers etc. (My last install of linuxmint on my T480s I think I spent more time fiddling with vimrc than the actual OS). And I dare say that on servers, linux certainly "just works".
  - chevill 5y ago
    >When does linux not "just works"? The answer to this is "For almost its entire history of being used as a desktop operating system by users without a significantly above average level of technical knowledge." I think Linux is in a pretty good state for at least the last few years but you have to be either unreasonably lucky or simply joking to be able to pretend you are unfamiliar with the concept of running into various hardware/driver/software issues attempting to run Linux as a desktop OS. Even if you stick to "Linux Certified" hardware like Thinkpads. Linux is my OS of choice these days, but over the years I've had 10x as many issues as I have with my Windows systems and I probably have 10x as much time in raw hours using Windows. I think perhaps something happens to those of us with experience and expertise is when we run into an issue we might know how to fix it in 30 seconds or a few minutes so it doesn't even seem like it was an issue to us, simply part of configuring the system. However, when it happens to someone that's not experienced that same "non-issue" might result in them spending 4 hours on forums and various websites trying to figure out how to do something that would only take a few seconds if they already knew how. That's assuming they don't just throw their hands up immediately and ask someone to fix it for them.
  - CodesInChaos 5y ago
    Running Mint on a T480: 1. Hibernation is broken in three different ways (1. it's disabled by default 2. it resumes instantly when certain hardware is plugged in 3. it only works if almost no programs run, probably because the default swap partition is too small) 2. Computer freezes when running out of memory. Still not sure how to improve this, perhaps a bigger swap partition, perhaps changing the OOM killer configuration or installing another OOM killer daemon. 3. Ran out of space on the boot partition so kernel updates won't work until I figure out how to manually fix that. Plus the last kernel it installed before complaining doesn't boot at all, so I have to manually pick an old one. And my earlier attempts on other distributions didn't go better either. Fedora managed to corrupt its package manager state and started complaining about incorrectly signed packages. And on Ubuntu I didn't manage to switch to nvidia's driver, it kept using nouveau with no indication of what's wrong.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  Personally I switched to Linux not because it was open source but because it is better. I also believe the open source philosophy is beneficial users and developers but it wasn't the primary reason.
princevegeta89 5y ago
There are currently many "working out of the box" distros available. Mint, Solus, Manjaro, Ubuntu, KDE Neon, Fedora, MX, Elementary etc. to name a few.
- headsoup 5y ago
  Linux as an ecosystem is a lot further along that many people seem to either realise or give credit for. It most certainly works out of the box for most general tasks. Of course there are still limitations like a lack of some software (Photoshop...) and peripherals support, but these are becoming far more uncommon. I even find with Steam's proton implementation I can install and run most Windows games without a second thought.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    > I even find with Steam's proton implementation I can install and run most Windows games without a second thought. Which begs the question why bother with Linux then.
    - teekert 5y ago
      You mean for devs to support Linux? That is indeed an issue of some concern, because most Linux users would prefer native Linux games. But, if you mean "bother installing Linux", then get ready for the whole privacy and control discussion :)
      - pjmlp 5y ago
        OS/2 proved what happens when that route is followed. As for privacy and control discussion, when most GNU/Linux users happen to mostly consume Electron and Web Apps, install applications via curl | sudo sh, there is hardly anything to discuss, other than cargo cult of a false sense of privacy and control.
        teekert 5y ago
lasagnaphil 5y ago
Also note that you can install the automatic tiling extension in other GNOME-based distros, you necessarily don't need PopOS to use it (though I had some weird bugs with it in Manjaro, it's probably going to be more unstable than PopOS's integration) https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell
- SkyMarshal 5y ago
  I love the concept too, but also couldn’t get it to work in the latest NixOS 21.05 with Gnome40, unfortunately.
  - square_usual 5y ago
    I had some trouble getting it to work on vanilla Ubuntu as well, but then I realised I could just install Pop instead so I did that.
    - SkyMarshal 5y ago
      I'm doing that too, just on my other machine that had Ubuntu on it :)
  - yipbub 5y ago
    Works perfectly for me on fedora 33!
    - dddw 5y ago
      Good to hear, gonna try in on silverblue
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Hopefully the GNOME folks will add some of this tiling support as part of their upstream release. Extensions can be problematic and introduce a lot of random breakage.
bitexploder 5y ago
I’ve been running it with a Radeon GPU and a beefy Intel desktop professor. It’s a real joy. I can play so many nice computer games via Steam. Pop_OS is a joy to use. It’s not a lot different from Ubuntu, but it’s quite reliable and fits my work style these days quite well. Can’t complain at all. This is the longest I have been pure Linux in a long time. It’s hard to believe I have been using Linux for over 20 years.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Koiwai 5y ago
  Desktop professor sounds interesting :D
Zababa 5y ago
I've been using it for the last year and most of everything just works, it's a real pleasure.
salawat 5y ago
>Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work. This is really quite disingenuous, especially coupled with the jab at Nvidia cards. In case you weren't aware, there is no option to actually make an Nvidia card useful because of their locking up of P-state modifications and re-clocking behind cryptographically signed firmware they refuse to distribute. I think you actually know this though, otherwise why would you bring up the crippled nature of Nvidia cards of post-Maxwell and later? PopOS definitely deserves accolades, but let's not pass off Nvidia's giving the middle finger proctological exam to the FOSS community as a point that makes PopOS better. Nothing is made better by that but Nvidia's bottom line, and vendor lock-in agenda.
- sbrother 5y ago
  I have heard this criticism of Nvidia w.r.t. Linux before, so I feel like I must be missing something. Working with Nvidia cards has been easy for the last ~5 years -- literally just install their drivers, `apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit` and CuDNN and everything just works. In comparison, I've never been able to figure out how to get Tensorflow or PyTorch to run on Windows. What are your use cases that the Nvidia drivers fail for? EDIT: I think I misunderstood, and your complaint wasn't about the quality of their proprietary drivers, rather their refusal to work with open source developers. I was reacting mainly to "no option to actually make an Nvidia card useful"
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    I can’t get cuda to work for me on my nvidia 1660x. I’ve followed their steps straight from nvidia, am using the Ubuntu LTS, etc. I’m sure I must be doing something wrong but I always get a dependency issue (cuda depends on X which isn’t going to be installed) or when I try to import tensorflow it claims it can’t find the .so files. I’ve added the cuda path in opt to the LD path with no luck. I bought nvidia specifically to be able to use tensorflow (had an amd prior) and I’m just kinda upset about it.
aero-glide2 5y ago
I don't understand your comment regarding Nvidia. I have Ubuntu with Nvidia propriety drivers. How is Pop OS any different?
- beermonster 5y ago
  I know Ubuntu works with the nvidia-* drivers but does it detect and select them for use by default or does it use nouveau until a (knowledgable) user reconfigures which driver is in use? And with legacy nvidia such as 340 there isn’t Wayland support and so enabling by default could lead to a broken system. Same with a kernel greater >= 5.10 and that particular driver series. So would be nice to hear what Pop OS is doing here that Ubuntu isn’t. If the rumours of nvidia open sourcing their drivers are true (sorry no link - just something I heard) they’ll all work out of the box one day (hopefully !).
  - opheliate 5y ago
    If, during the Ubuntu install process, you check the box to install proprietary drivers, it will automatically detect & install the nvidia-* drivers. You can also do this from the settings post-install. No Linux knowledge required really, it’s easier than the state of things on Windows.
    - beermonster 5y ago
      Nice :)
- thom 5y ago
  None of the solutions for switching between discrete and integrated graphics cards on Linux are particularly great (compared to Windows where it just works automagically). Pop OS at the very least has some nice UI to switch modes, and doesn’t default to Nouveau etc. Nothing you can’t achieve elsewhere but nice that they’re thought about it.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
edgyquant 5y ago
Funny, I tried to switch to PopOS a few months ago and my Ethernet card would just not work. I switched over to tether from my phone but after installing a few drivers and it not working I switched back to Ubuntu which just works with my Ethernet card (though I have to install a different driver to get gigabit speeds.) Really not sure what the issue was but I didn’t feel like doing a deep dive when every distro I’ve used in the past decade has had no problems with Ethernet cards on first boot.
- simondotau 5y ago
  Pop_OS is downstream of Ubuntu, so it would be especially odd for a regression to occur on something as low level as support for a specific Ethernet card. Which Ethernet card is it, specifically?
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c) It may be odd, but it definitely happened

by least 5y ago

lmm 5y ago

> PopOS feels like an extremely pragmatic operating system as far as linux distributions go. Yes, I do want my broadcom wifi card to just work. I do want my dedicated Nvidia graphics card to actually be useful. Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work. That seems like a kind of self-contradictory philosophy - if you care more about whether it "just works" than how much control you have, how does it make sense to want to run Linux at all?

innocenat 5y ago
I use Linux not because of control, but because I don't like both MacOS and Windows. PopOS is my preferred choice because it's just work.
ReactiveJelly 5y ago
You can make those compromises and still have much more control than you'd get from Windows or Mac.
taeric 5y ago
This feels in bad faith. There are plenty of us that have had a fine time using Linux as their only os for a long time.
- headsoup 5y ago
  It also makes the assumption that Windows just works out of the box fine for everyone...
TylerLives 5y ago
You can still change/remove anything you dislike.
thejosh 5y ago
A user wanting things to work out of the box vs not actually having control is not the same. I think the OP meant in terms of if you don't want the same non OSS binaries nVidia ships you can install something else?
d0lphin 5y ago
I also want my software to "just work" - and in that sense I like Windows. But I don't like the telemetry and anti-user practices and that's enough for me to use Linux. I've never tried PopOS though, but after this post I might.
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Because absolutism ends up being masochism. Personally, I don't want to be part of Microsoft's ecosystem anymore, but I want some 'convenience' because I actually need to be productive rather than forever navigating the maze of compatible driver versions, so there are a number Linux flavours that fit this middle ground quite nicely. I use Pop_OS in preference to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu for the most convenience short of anything Microsoft.
least 5y ago
I've set up Arch before and it's not fun to me. I don't want to change and write dozens of config files to get up and running. Some people find that sort of thing fun. I don't. Does that mean I'm conceding some control over my operating system to the developers of the distribution I'm using? Of course. And it's something I willingly do because it's not an interesting problem for me to solve and I frankly don't care that much. If there were something nefarious going on, I might care, but it's simply not possible for me to live my life auditing every bit of software that's running on my system. I suspect most people, even those that are heavily invested in FOSS have some limit to that as well. I doubt that many people are auditing the code for every application or program they compile on their computer. They have a sphere of trust where they can just assume that what they're running is safe enough and that the software isn't going out of its way to be malicious. It's a matter of degrees. I happen to be okay with giving up some control for the convenience of not having to try to install wifi drivers on my computer without access to the internet. I don't think it's self-contradictory at all. People have different ideas of what an Operating System should be and that's reflected in the number of different linux distributions all with their own ideas and philosophies. I just happen to really like what System76 has done.
xarope 5y ago
When does linux not "just works"? I have been running linux on my thinkpads (x200, x220, w540, T470, T480s) etc and "it just works", with appreciably much less fiddling around than I would on a similar windows desktop with drivers etc. (My last install of linuxmint on my T480s I think I spent more time fiddling with vimrc than the actual OS). And I dare say that on servers, linux certainly "just works".
- chevill 5y ago
  >When does linux not "just works"? The answer to this is "For almost its entire history of being used as a desktop operating system by users without a significantly above average level of technical knowledge." I think Linux is in a pretty good state for at least the last few years but you have to be either unreasonably lucky or simply joking to be able to pretend you are unfamiliar with the concept of running into various hardware/driver/software issues attempting to run Linux as a desktop OS. Even if you stick to "Linux Certified" hardware like Thinkpads. Linux is my OS of choice these days, but over the years I've had 10x as many issues as I have with my Windows systems and I probably have 10x as much time in raw hours using Windows. I think perhaps something happens to those of us with experience and expertise is when we run into an issue we might know how to fix it in 30 seconds or a few minutes so it doesn't even seem like it was an issue to us, simply part of configuring the system. However, when it happens to someone that's not experienced that same "non-issue" might result in them spending 4 hours on forums and various websites trying to figure out how to do something that would only take a few seconds if they already knew how. That's assuming they don't just throw their hands up immediately and ask someone to fix it for them.
- CodesInChaos 5y ago
  Running Mint on a T480: 1. Hibernation is broken in three different ways (1. it's disabled by default 2. it resumes instantly when certain hardware is plugged in 3. it only works if almost no programs run, probably because the default swap partition is too small) 2. Computer freezes when running out of memory. Still not sure how to improve this, perhaps a bigger swap partition, perhaps changing the OOM killer configuration or installing another OOM killer daemon. 3. Ran out of space on the boot partition so kernel updates won't work until I figure out how to manually fix that. Plus the last kernel it installed before complaining doesn't boot at all, so I have to manually pick an old one. And my earlier attempts on other distributions didn't go better either. Fedora managed to corrupt its package manager state and started complaining about incorrectly signed packages. And on Ubuntu I didn't manage to switch to nvidia's driver, it kept using nouveau with no indication of what's wrong.
michaelmrose 5y ago
Personally I switched to Linux not because it was open source but because it is better. I also believe the open source philosophy is beneficial users and developers but it wasn't the primary reason.

princevegeta89 5y ago

There are currently many "working out of the box" distros available. Mint, Solus, Manjaro, Ubuntu, KDE Neon, Fedora, MX, Elementary etc. to name a few.

headsoup 5y ago
Linux as an ecosystem is a lot further along that many people seem to either realise or give credit for. It most certainly works out of the box for most general tasks. Of course there are still limitations like a lack of some software (Photoshop...) and peripherals support, but these are becoming far more uncommon. I even find with Steam's proton implementation I can install and run most Windows games without a second thought.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  > I even find with Steam's proton implementation I can install and run most Windows games without a second thought. Which begs the question why bother with Linux then.
  - teekert 5y ago
    You mean for devs to support Linux? That is indeed an issue of some concern, because most Linux users would prefer native Linux games. But, if you mean "bother installing Linux", then get ready for the whole privacy and control discussion :)
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      OS/2 proved what happens when that route is followed. As for privacy and control discussion, when most GNU/Linux users happen to mostly consume Electron and Web Apps, install applications via curl | sudo sh, there is hardly anything to discuss, other than cargo cult of a false sense of privacy and control.
      - teekert 5y ago

lasagnaphil 5y ago

Also note that you can install the automatic tiling extension in other GNOME-based distros, you necessarily don't need PopOS to use it (though I had some weird bugs with it in Manjaro, it's probably going to be more unstable than PopOS's integration) https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell

SkyMarshal 5y ago
I love the concept too, but also couldn’t get it to work in the latest NixOS 21.05 with Gnome40, unfortunately.
- square_usual 5y ago
  I had some trouble getting it to work on vanilla Ubuntu as well, but then I realised I could just install Pop instead so I did that.
  - SkyMarshal 5y ago
    I'm doing that too, just on my other machine that had Ubuntu on it :)
- yipbub 5y ago
  Works perfectly for me on fedora 33!
  - dddw 5y ago
    Good to hear, gonna try in on silverblue
zozbot234 5y ago
Hopefully the GNOME folks will add some of this tiling support as part of their upstream release. Extensions can be problematic and introduce a lot of random breakage.

bitexploder 5y ago

I’ve been running it with a Radeon GPU and a beefy Intel desktop professor. It’s a real joy. I can play so many nice computer games via Steam. Pop_OS is a joy to use. It’s not a lot different from Ubuntu, but it’s quite reliable and fits my work style these days quite well. Can’t complain at all. This is the longest I have been pure Linux in a long time. It’s hard to believe I have been using Linux for over 20 years.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Koiwai 5y ago
Desktop professor sounds interesting :D

Zababa 5y ago

I've been using it for the last year and most of everything just works, it's a real pleasure.

salawat 5y ago

>Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work. This is really quite disingenuous, especially coupled with the jab at Nvidia cards. In case you weren't aware, there is no option to actually make an Nvidia card useful because of their locking up of P-state modifications and re-clocking behind cryptographically signed firmware they refuse to distribute. I think you actually know this though, otherwise why would you bring up the crippled nature of Nvidia cards of post-Maxwell and later? PopOS definitely deserves accolades, but let's not pass off Nvidia's giving the middle finger proctological exam to the FOSS community as a point that makes PopOS better. Nothing is made better by that but Nvidia's bottom line, and vendor lock-in agenda.

sbrother 5y ago
I have heard this criticism of Nvidia w.r.t. Linux before, so I feel like I must be missing something. Working with Nvidia cards has been easy for the last ~5 years -- literally just install their drivers, `apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit` and CuDNN and everything just works. In comparison, I've never been able to figure out how to get Tensorflow or PyTorch to run on Windows. What are your use cases that the Nvidia drivers fail for? EDIT: I think I misunderstood, and your complaint wasn't about the quality of their proprietary drivers, rather their refusal to work with open source developers. I was reacting mainly to "no option to actually make an Nvidia card useful"
- edgyquant 5y ago
  I can’t get cuda to work for me on my nvidia 1660x. I’ve followed their steps straight from nvidia, am using the Ubuntu LTS, etc. I’m sure I must be doing something wrong but I always get a dependency issue (cuda depends on X which isn’t going to be installed) or when I try to import tensorflow it claims it can’t find the .so files. I’ve added the cuda path in opt to the LD path with no luck. I bought nvidia specifically to be able to use tensorflow (had an amd prior) and I’m just kinda upset about it.

aero-glide2 5y ago

I don't understand your comment regarding Nvidia. I have Ubuntu with Nvidia propriety drivers. How is Pop OS any different?

beermonster 5y ago
I know Ubuntu works with the nvidia-* drivers but does it detect and select them for use by default or does it use nouveau until a (knowledgable) user reconfigures which driver is in use? And with legacy nvidia such as 340 there isn’t Wayland support and so enabling by default could lead to a broken system. Same with a kernel greater >= 5.10 and that particular driver series. So would be nice to hear what Pop OS is doing here that Ubuntu isn’t. If the rumours of nvidia open sourcing their drivers are true (sorry no link - just something I heard) they’ll all work out of the box one day (hopefully !).
- opheliate 5y ago
  If, during the Ubuntu install process, you check the box to install proprietary drivers, it will automatically detect & install the nvidia-* drivers. You can also do this from the settings post-install. No Linux knowledge required really, it’s easier than the state of things on Windows.
  - beermonster 5y ago
    Nice :)
thom 5y ago
None of the solutions for switching between discrete and integrated graphics cards on Linux are particularly great (compared to Windows where it just works automagically). Pop OS at the very least has some nice UI to switch modes, and doesn’t default to Nouveau etc. Nothing you can’t achieve elsewhere but nice that they’re thought about it.
- michaelmrose 5y ago

edgyquant 5y ago

Funny, I tried to switch to PopOS a few months ago and my Ethernet card would just not work. I switched over to tether from my phone but after installing a few drivers and it not working I switched back to Ubuntu which just works with my Ethernet card (though I have to install a different driver to get gigabit speeds.) Really not sure what the issue was but I didn’t feel like doing a deep dive when every distro I’ve used in the past decade has had no problems with Ethernet cards on first boot.

simondotau 5y ago
Pop_OS is downstream of Ubuntu, so it would be especially odd for a regression to occur on something as low level as support for a specific Ethernet card. Which Ethernet card is it, specifically?
- edgyquant 5y ago
  03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c) It may be odd, but it definitely happened