5 ms·

I think Linux Desktop has to go a long way before some BIOS settings become "scary".

by oaiey 4y ago

AshamedCaptain 4y ago
If you think so, it's been way too much since you used a Linux desktop.
- kllrnohj 4y ago
  A regular Ubuntu update on my XPS 13, an officially supported combination, broke my wifi. Since then it has also somehow broke itself in some other fun way such that there are now package conflicts and it's unable to update itself anymore as a result. And that's ignoring all the general usability issues like the subpar battery life, the dreadfully terrible state of video playback, the touch screen constantly causing gnome to glitch internal state and get confused, etc... On my Debian desktop I had a webcam completely take out the USB stack. Like all ports just dead, had to yank the power to reboot. I also had a btrfs array just go read-only for seemingly no reason after restoring from standby, and it wouldn't tell me why. After a reboot all was suddenly fine. Also it took an awfully long time to get that machine working after having been powered off for 3 months. If you go too long without updating, it seems all the package migrations just bitrot and break. But yeah, year of Linux on the desktop. Any day now.
  - spookie 4y ago
    Debian is woefully antiquated at this point, and Ubuntu never was reliable. Ubuntu's default GNOME itself is a Frankenstein.
    - eadmund 4y ago
      It's really not true that Debian is 'woefully antiquated'; Debian 11 was released less than a year ago, in August 2021. Debian is stable; I use it for my desktop and all my servers. It is true that 'Ubuntu never was reliable,' at least in my experience; I honestly do not comprehend why so many folks base things on it.
      - kllrnohj 4y ago
        > I honestly do not comprehend why so many folks base things on it. In this case it's literally the OS offered by Dell for the XPS 13. It's as official an option as you will ever see, so the fact that such a pairing is still a broken disaster is pretty significant. I could switch to a different distro, and I might. But distro hunting is exhausting. And it itself represents a never ending treadmill of churn. Like right now it seems like Fedora is a good option, and so are things like PopOS or Manjaro. But rewind the clock 5 to 10 years and some of those didn't even exist, or were not nearly as good of choices for "regular consumer usage." Whose to say I'm not just going to be stuck with yet another "oh, that distro used to be good but now it sucks, switch to foobar instead" in another few years? I'm more likely going to just switch it back to Windows if I'm going to get over the "back everything up & reinstall from scratch" hurdle. I at least know with Windows that I won't have to do a reinstall dance on this machine pretty much ever again. Having Linux for the better development options is nice, but with how good VMs are (and with things like WSL), running it bare metal kinda isn't all that necessary.
      - ac29 4y ago
        > Debian 11 was released less than a year ago, in August 2021. Keep in mind though that it was branched and package versions frozen ~6 months before that. I like debian and use it on some things, but for a personal computer I always found it frustrating that the software was already half a year out of date on release day. Software getting released today wont be in Debian stable until 2023.
      - spookie 4y ago
        I have no problems with Debian, but I think their release deltas should be cut in half. Firefox is deprecated on Debian, and that is their officially supported browser. I know that the whole point is stability, I just think that for home desktop users it's not a great experience.
  - legalcorrection 4y ago
    - BarbaPeru 4y ago
      My family is happily using only Linux since 10 years, I since 15 years ago. But there are a lot of "but", without my support (I'm a sysadmin) they could not, but half of the issues are not Linux only, so they needed support even if they were using Windows. The real question should be "why even non technical users should use Linux?" You should not give a supercar to drive to a novice driver, it could be dangerous for him and for others. Every OS has its use, maybe I'm snob, but if you're not able to manage Linux rough edges use MacOS or Windows, Linux natural environment was and should be datacenter. I won't trade server features, robustness for having a Linux desktop at all cost.
  - dismalpedigree 4y ago
    I saw some of those problems with Ubuntu 20.04 on my recent XPS13. I shifted to 20.10 which resolved almost all of them, and once 22.04 came out there are no more issues. Admittedly, I did a fresh install vs an upgrade. I run dual monitors on docking station with lots of peripherals. Its my daily driver. Very happy with it.
  - zeagle 4y ago
    Fully agree and I had similar experiences with framework. I think the majority of folks posting here are not typical users and find it natural to jump in the terminal, edit some setting, restart a service and tinker without realizing the effort involved and that that normal users don't -- can't -- do this.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  If you think Linux Desktop is in decent shape, your hardware choices must line up with those of your platform maintainers. Good for you -- but your experience will be very far from universal. Some Ubuntu LTS highlights: Ubuntu 14: By default, Dell display backlights toggle on/off 30 times a second Ubuntu 16: By default, BIOS boots broken due to boot files landing in too high of a sector Ubuntu 18: By default, Solid State boot drives break because /dev/sda was hardcoded Ubuntu 20: By default, Bluetooth and fans broken. Never fixed. Sleep broken but fixed. Ubuntu 22: By default, NVidia graphics get 100% screen saturation after install. "Then don't use Ubuntu" Ubuntu isn't my daily driver. It isn't even a majority of my installs. I'm using it as a benchmark for conservative linux choices because smaller distros tend to be worse, not better. I know this because I daily drive a less popular distro, and I also distro hop for fun, and these all tend to be worse, not better. Besides, many hardware and software vendors target Ubuntu, and "works on Ubuntu but nowhere else" is a very common problem. Across the board, the Linus Tech Tips linux experience is the rule, not the exception. Many desktop linux users just have selective community-enforced amnesia. Look, I am super thankful for the maintainers. I have gotten so much more value from them then they have asked in payment, but Linux is nowhere near Windows in the "just works" department. That is to be expected, given the price, but the rhetoric has gotten out of line with reality. Desktop linux still has a lot of rough edges and new rough edges appear at a rate that is not converging to 0. "It works if you buy dedicated Linux hardware." Yes. This is how you make it work.
  - eikenberry 4y ago
    "It works if you buy dedicated Linux hardware." Yes. This is how you make it work. You buried the lede.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      Nope. I can understand how you might prefer that I had been writing about workarounds, but I was not writing about workarounds. I was writing about the incorrect and alienating rhetoric coming from the Linux community. Also, literally my first sentence: > your hardware choices
  - 4y ago

I think Linux Desktop has to go a long way before some BIOS settings become "scary".

by oaiey 4y ago

I think Linux Desktop has to go a long way before some BIOS settings become "scary".

AshamedCaptain 4y ago

If you think so, it's been way too much since you used a Linux desktop.

kllrnohj 4y ago
A regular Ubuntu update on my XPS 13, an officially supported combination, broke my wifi. Since then it has also somehow broke itself in some other fun way such that there are now package conflicts and it's unable to update itself anymore as a result. And that's ignoring all the general usability issues like the subpar battery life, the dreadfully terrible state of video playback, the touch screen constantly causing gnome to glitch internal state and get confused, etc... On my Debian desktop I had a webcam completely take out the USB stack. Like all ports just dead, had to yank the power to reboot. I also had a btrfs array just go read-only for seemingly no reason after restoring from standby, and it wouldn't tell me why. After a reboot all was suddenly fine. Also it took an awfully long time to get that machine working after having been powered off for 3 months. If you go too long without updating, it seems all the package migrations just bitrot and break. But yeah, year of Linux on the desktop. Any day now.
- spookie 4y ago
  Debian is woefully antiquated at this point, and Ubuntu never was reliable. Ubuntu's default GNOME itself is a Frankenstein.
  - eadmund 4y ago
    It's really not true that Debian is 'woefully antiquated'; Debian 11 was released less than a year ago, in August 2021. Debian is stable; I use it for my desktop and all my servers. It is true that 'Ubuntu never was reliable,' at least in my experience; I honestly do not comprehend why so many folks base things on it.
    - kllrnohj 4y ago
      > I honestly do not comprehend why so many folks base things on it. In this case it's literally the OS offered by Dell for the XPS 13. It's as official an option as you will ever see, so the fact that such a pairing is still a broken disaster is pretty significant. I could switch to a different distro, and I might. But distro hunting is exhausting. And it itself represents a never ending treadmill of churn. Like right now it seems like Fedora is a good option, and so are things like PopOS or Manjaro. But rewind the clock 5 to 10 years and some of those didn't even exist, or were not nearly as good of choices for "regular consumer usage." Whose to say I'm not just going to be stuck with yet another "oh, that distro used to be good but now it sucks, switch to foobar instead" in another few years? I'm more likely going to just switch it back to Windows if I'm going to get over the "back everything up & reinstall from scratch" hurdle. I at least know with Windows that I won't have to do a reinstall dance on this machine pretty much ever again. Having Linux for the better development options is nice, but with how good VMs are (and with things like WSL), running it bare metal kinda isn't all that necessary.
    - ac29 4y ago
      > Debian 11 was released less than a year ago, in August 2021. Keep in mind though that it was branched and package versions frozen ~6 months before that. I like debian and use it on some things, but for a personal computer I always found it frustrating that the software was already half a year out of date on release day. Software getting released today wont be in Debian stable until 2023.
    - spookie 4y ago
      I have no problems with Debian, but I think their release deltas should be cut in half. Firefox is deprecated on Debian, and that is their officially supported browser. I know that the whole point is stability, I just think that for home desktop users it's not a great experience.
- legalcorrection 4y ago
  - BarbaPeru 4y ago
    My family is happily using only Linux since 10 years, I since 15 years ago. But there are a lot of "but", without my support (I'm a sysadmin) they could not, but half of the issues are not Linux only, so they needed support even if they were using Windows. The real question should be "why even non technical users should use Linux?" You should not give a supercar to drive to a novice driver, it could be dangerous for him and for others. Every OS has its use, maybe I'm snob, but if you're not able to manage Linux rough edges use MacOS or Windows, Linux natural environment was and should be datacenter. I won't trade server features, robustness for having a Linux desktop at all cost.
- dismalpedigree 4y ago
  I saw some of those problems with Ubuntu 20.04 on my recent XPS13. I shifted to 20.10 which resolved almost all of them, and once 22.04 came out there are no more issues. Admittedly, I did a fresh install vs an upgrade. I run dual monitors on docking station with lots of peripherals. Its my daily driver. Very happy with it.
- zeagle 4y ago
  Fully agree and I had similar experiences with framework. I think the majority of folks posting here are not typical users and find it natural to jump in the terminal, edit some setting, restart a service and tinker without realizing the effort involved and that that normal users don't -- can't -- do this.
jjoonathan 4y ago
If you think Linux Desktop is in decent shape, your hardware choices must line up with those of your platform maintainers. Good for you -- but your experience will be very far from universal. Some Ubuntu LTS highlights: Ubuntu 14: By default, Dell display backlights toggle on/off 30 times a second Ubuntu 16: By default, BIOS boots broken due to boot files landing in too high of a sector Ubuntu 18: By default, Solid State boot drives break because /dev/sda was hardcoded Ubuntu 20: By default, Bluetooth and fans broken. Never fixed. Sleep broken but fixed. Ubuntu 22: By default, NVidia graphics get 100% screen saturation after install. "Then don't use Ubuntu" Ubuntu isn't my daily driver. It isn't even a majority of my installs. I'm using it as a benchmark for conservative linux choices because smaller distros tend to be worse, not better. I know this because I daily drive a less popular distro, and I also distro hop for fun, and these all tend to be worse, not better. Besides, many hardware and software vendors target Ubuntu, and "works on Ubuntu but nowhere else" is a very common problem. Across the board, the Linus Tech Tips linux experience is the rule, not the exception. Many desktop linux users just have selective community-enforced amnesia. Look, I am super thankful for the maintainers. I have gotten so much more value from them then they have asked in payment, but Linux is nowhere near Windows in the "just works" department. That is to be expected, given the price, but the rhetoric has gotten out of line with reality. Desktop linux still has a lot of rough edges and new rough edges appear at a rate that is not converging to 0. "It works if you buy dedicated Linux hardware." Yes. This is how you make it work.
- eikenberry 4y ago
  "It works if you buy dedicated Linux hardware." Yes. This is how you make it work. You buried the lede.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    Nope. I can understand how you might prefer that I had been writing about workarounds, but I was not writing about workarounds. I was writing about the incorrect and alienating rhetoric coming from the Linux community. Also, literally my first sentence: > your hardware choices
- 4y ago