8 ms·

Just recently moved onto Linux. Most likely not coming back when these kind of things just keep happening. I'm really surprised how well everything works. 120Hz

by 127 1y ago

Just recently moved onto Linux. Most likely not coming back when these kind of things just keep happening. I'm really surprised how well everything works. 120Hz HDR 4k Nvidia no issues on Wayland. Kubuntu 25.04/Plasma 6.3 is very nice. EasyEffects/PipeWire makes audio better compared to Windows. Steam/Proton/Wine works very well for games outside ones that have kernel level rootkits. Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth I can't think of anything that's worse than Windows while many things are better.

crinkly 1y ago
Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop. Nothing even remotely comparable. So it's Mac for me, but I get you.
- doublerabbit 1y ago
  Use moonlight and stream it locally. I use FreeBSD for my daily driver. I now stream games/Windows apps from a dedicated windows VM. It's impressive technology.
  - 4b11b4 1y ago
    That's a great use case for game streaming tech
  - crinkly 1y ago
    I have a colour cal 5k display. That’s not streamable in any sensible way. Nor do I want the latency or interface disparity.
  - bpye 1y ago
    Looking glass is another option, which uses shared memory [0]. I just have my two monitors hooked up to both my iGPU and dedicated GPU, and switch inputs if I want to use my Windows VM. It means things like colour profiles and VRR work as expected too. [0] - https://looking-glass.io/ https://looking-glass.io/
- phkahler 1y ago
  >> Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop. Try Darktable or Ansel instead of Lightroom. I'm not gonna tell you Gimp is a good photoshop replacement though ;-)
  - baq 1y ago
    With all due respect Darktable is not a Lightroom replacement, having used Lightroom years ago the recent Darktable releases are maybe sometimes reaching Lightroom UX from back then. I'm sure the technical image processing stuff is best in class, but it's too much for me wanting to make my raw photos look better than what the camera does with jpegs by default. The addition of built in presets is extremely welcome, it should be exposed to newbies way more than it is currently.
  - crinkly 1y ago
    I've tried those (and RawTherapee). They are nowhere even near half the way to Lightroom.
  - Beijinger 1y ago
    If you need CMYK for production, I would be scared of Gimp.
    - LeFantome 1y ago
      Not arguing. It is getting close though.
  - florisuga 1y ago
    Those applications may work for some, but they are no replacements for Lightroom in my opinion. My Lightroom 4 installation from 2012 (I never upgraded after Adobe went all in on subscriptions and cloud) still beats the latest Darktable/Ansel versions, hands down. The only things I'm missing are a CLI for automation and a few features that RawTherapee has, like switching to a view of one color channel with a single key. Other than that, Adobe somehow got it incredibly right in terms of workflow and features back then. Using the software feels like it was made for photographers, rather than software enthusiasts. Still, I'm in the same boat as many who wish they could migrate their decades' worth of photos with all their adjustments to a FOSS alternative. For me too, Lightroom is the last application that keeps me from dumping Windows for good. It already lives in a Windows VM on a Linux host these days.
- bpye 1y ago
  Running them in a Windows VM with an attached GPU works great, I suspect you could use something like Looking Glass [0] as well - though I’d be nervous about colour profiles. [0] - https://looking-glass.io/ https://looking-glass.io/
craftkiller 1y ago
> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth FWIW I use a DualSense controller connected to my Linux computers all the time without issue and without having to do anything special. In fact, Sony is the author of the DualSense driver on Linux[0]. Do you connect anything else over bluetooth? I'm wondering if your bluetooth setup might just be broken in general rather than specifically for DualSense controllers. [0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sony-HID-PlayStation-PS5 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sony-HID-PlayStation-PS5
- trelane 1y ago
  Their point was that the dongle's proprietary firmware was buggy. The controllers just triggered the problem.
  - craftkiller 1y ago
    Where are you getting that from? I see no mention of dongles or firmware in the comment I replied to.
    - trelane 1y ago
      Oh. I thought you were replying to a sibling comment, sorry. Sibling: > there is a nuanced situation with some Realtek (RTL8671B) bluetooth firmware on Linux that is 'solved' by downgrading firmware version
naruhodo 1y ago
And honestly, not supporting kernel level rootkits is a feature, not a bug.
anal_reactor 1y ago
First I switched to Linux Mint. Turns out anno 2025 most distros are still made with legacy ThinkPads in mind. Then I installed Fedora KDE. It gives an impression of working. Make no mistake - I have weird display glitches, shit crashes all the time, stuff randomly refuses to work, some devices I have require ridiculous workarounds, basic tasks require cryptic terminal commands, software updates introduce awkward regressions, but I think we've truly reached the milestone where a dedicated person can run Linux as their main desktop system. I suppose in about 30 years we'll have a Linux distribution that can be used on desktop without any IT knowledge. Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem (how the fuck do I even start, even if I wanted to?), but still, the point stands.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  > we've truly reached the milestone where a dedicated person can run Linux as their main desktop system. You're 20 years too late for this. The reason why Linux doesn't run well on the latest greatest hardware (and never has) is because the vendors of that hardware range from indifferent to actively hostile to Linux, and to make the system work people have to fight. Buy a legacy thinkpad, or something you've researched, and you'll have fewer problems than with Windows or Macs (which are tied to even more specific hardware and obsoleted by company whim.) Of course, if you're on the bleeding edge of technology, everyone is using Linux (whether directly or in VMs and containers), so when I say the latest greatest, I mean the latest greatest consumer and business user stuff. I've never understood comments like this. It's like you're looking at a pool full of people who have been swimming for years and telling you the pool is nice, and saying: "I guess it's finally ready for the real experts now." Also, if you love vendors so much, you can have one. Buy your Linux computer from somebody who sells Linux computers, knows any problems you'll run into on that specially-selected hardware, and call them when you have a problem, just like you would do for the others. > Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem This is the worst point by far. You can complain about anything that is broken, you just can't expect anyone to care (because you haven't obligated anyone to.) The problem isn't complaining, it's complaining badly. Get a vendor, whine to them.
dizlexic 1y ago
Windows has been slipping for decades now. Welcome to the penguin!
aquova 1y ago
> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth I've had this issue as well on KDE Plasma. I'm convinced it's some sort of bug within Plasma itself. If I use bluetoothctl to pair the controller, it works fine, might be worth giving that a try if you haven't.
halz 1y ago
On a whim, there is a nuanced situation with some Realtek (RTL8671B) bluetooth firmware on Linux that is 'solved' by downgrading firmware version. This random gist has a nice thread https://gist.github.com/peteristhegreat/b48da772167f86f43decbd34edbd0849 https://gist.github.com/peteristhegreat/b48da772167f86f43dec... ..and this fellow Nix wizard has the downgrade expressed in a nix config: https://github.com/Arroquw/nixos-config/commit/9d90d7d659e742dd20b19f4f91c29c59f4ca758d https://github.com/Arroquw/nixos-config/commit/9d90d7d659e74... I too was experiencing odd/erratic pairing issues with DualSense controllers and this RTL8671B based dongle, and using the older firmware entirely fixed it. Now four controllers can be connected simultaneously without issue.
tombert 1y ago
I eventually did get it working, but man you are luckier than I getting Nvidia to have "no issues". I had to waste an entire weekend getting an Nvidia card working [1]. I love Linux and specifically NixOS but my experience with good audio and non-AMD drivers has been pretty so-so. [1] https://blog.tombert.com/posts/2025-03-09-egpu/ https://blog.tombert.com/posts/2025-03-09-egpu/ Not trying to self-plug, just documented my headache.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
  That situation is entirely of Nvidia's making.
  - tombert 1y ago
    No argument on that but regardless of whose fault it is, the end user has to deal with the consequences.
    - trelane 1y ago
      Only if you buy a Windows laptop and slap Linux on it. Or is OSX bad because you can't put it on some random laptop off Amazon?
      - tombert 1y ago
        I didn't really assign labels of "good" or "bad"; in this case that's a matter of philosophy that I am wholly uninterested in. I specifically said that I had so-so luck getting Linux working with non-AMD stuff, and regardless of who is ultimately to blame it's still something I had to deal with.
        trelane 1y ago
        > had so-so luck getting Linux working with non-AMD stuff, and regardless of who is ultimately to blame it's still something I had to deal with. Did you buy the laptop with the intention of running Linux on it? Did it ship with Linux preinstalled? Did the vendor support Linux running on that computer? Like, could you call them and get them to provide you help in the case of problems?
tiahura 1y ago
All of that compute can’t compensate for the fact that starlibreopenoffice is atrocious. Big corps have been looking for ways to migrate for decades but fail because it’s so abysmal.
0xffff2 1y ago
Meanwhile, I just tried 3 different flavors of Fedora last week and could not even get to the point where I could log in reliably. Never mind getting the handful of Windows-only apps I still rely on to work. I'm despairing that I may have to let Windows update itself to Win11 while I wait for my next hardware upgrade cycle to roll around so I can try to pick more compatible hardware. If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick desktop components that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them.
- neobrain 1y ago
  > If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick hardware that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them. Some vendors sell hardware with Linux preinstalled or specifically tested (besides the obvious ones like System76/Framework/Tuxedo, Dell provides an XPS flavor that comes with Ubuntu). You don't need to actually use the preinstalled distro, but buying such models ensures baseline support is solid and it sends a signal to vendors to continue ensuring so. Then there's Apple's M1/M2 lineup, which provides the smoothest Linux experience you can have today (specific hardware features are not supported yet, the rest works extremely well!). Other than that, the Arch wiki is typically a good resource that lists quirks of individual devices with Linux.
  - trelane 1y ago
    At this point, I'm skeptical of any laptop that wasn't specifically designed for Linux. I have very real doubts that any laptop can support both Linux and Windows well. > specific hardware features are not supported yet, the rest works extremely well I would not describe this as "working well," let alone the "smoothest Linux experience you can have today" Especially compared to System76, which designs their laptops for Linux, customized the firmware for Linux, and ships with Linux already installed.
  - 0xffff2 1y ago
    I guess I should have clarified, my only personal (i.e. not work supplied) computer is a mid-tower desktop, which I'm absolutely not buying pre-built. More looking for how I can tell if e.g. a specific motherboard is going to play nice with Linux or not.
rossant 1y ago
Love Linux. Finally moved over it more than 10y ago and never looked back. Still a few minor issues though. Sleep doesn't work well with Ubuntu on a desktop PC with an Nvidia card. It frequently wakes up immediately, or the screen remains black upon wake up. And sometimes it just works. Same problem on different PCs. Just a minor annoyance though. I love Linux. On a recent computer everything is so fast and snappy compared to Windows or even macOS.
- yencabulator 1y ago
  Don't blame Nvidia's bad behavior on Linux. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/linus-torvalds-says-f-k-you-to-nvidia/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/linus...
  - bpye 1y ago
    That’s an ancient article - Nvidia have since open sourced their kernel mode drivers - https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules Yes the user mode side is still closed, but that was never really the issue.
    - yencabulator 1y ago
      That's not enough to make them be a nice member of the ecosystem. The bar is that the manufacturer submits changes to mainline kernel. Actually, look at those commits! That repository is ridiculous. It's code thrown over the wall. Nobody but NVidia will ever work on that code.
- laserDinosaur 1y ago
  Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard (perhaps a B550) by chance?
EasyMark 1y ago
Yeah I get tired of them trying to suck every bit of data and work that you do into the cloud so they can hoodwink you later with licensing fees and to train their AI. The last straw for me was their "we want to constantly snap shot your screen and index, oh and -wink- it's for your own good, so we'll enable it automatically for you!" I was done at that point and deleted it off my last PC with windows and put Ubuntu on it. I have Mac version of Office that's good enough for now.
akimbostrawman 1y ago
>well for games outside ones that have kernel level rootkits I wish people would stop bringing this up which has not been true for years. Around 40-50% of kernel level anti cheats work and are supported (in user space). https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/
bdhcuidbebe 1y ago
> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth This is a gotcha. The issue is probably that your user dont have the permissions to interact with udev devices. See https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev
gregoryl 1y ago
Ditto; ~20 years of dotnet dev, 1000+ games on steam. Couldn't be more baked into the ecosystem. Its just the work laptop left with windows now, and the team is working to support a non-windows dev env.
- hkon 1y ago
  Same
- ActionHank 1y ago
  This was me a few years back. My wife switched this year after only ever using Windows and pure dotnet dev. The first thing she said was "how is it so fast"
  - beng-nl 1y ago
    Which distribution is she using, out of curiosity? I wonder if I could do this for (to) my wife..
    - gchamonlive 1y ago
      Not OP, but if I was installing Linux for the first time I'd either go with pop_os (not sure if it's as good anymore as last time I checked it, a couples years ago) or kubuntu, because KDE is a bit more familiar to windows users.
      - brewdad 1y ago
        Pop and Linux Mint are both solid options for newcomers. Personally, I think LM looks better out of the box but Pop is a little easier to grok coming from Windows. Not much of a difference either way though.
      - gregoryl 1y ago
        Totally agree for non-technical users. For anyone technical, and willing to suffer a little bit, go with Arch. The docs are incredible, and you end up with a much better understanding of how everything hangs together.
kylebenzle 1y ago
[dead]
fzeroracer 1y ago
I moved over to Linux about a year or so ago when Microsoft announced they were going to start pushing their AI shit on every Windows system. I created a small partition intending to just give it a shot but ended up never moving back since 99.9% of everything I tried just works. It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone and right now the only reason I keep Windows on my work machine is because there's still specific dev pipelines I can only do on Windows.
- jmclnx 1y ago
  And one has to wonder, will M/S used these cloud documents for their AI push ? Even if the Word Docs are encrypted, I fully believe Microsoft can read the text in those documents. People should realize everything you do in Excel and Word is being spied on by Microsoft, this cloud push is making that process easier and faster for M/S. At the very least, go to Libreoffice. But better yet, as you just did, people need to abandon Microsoft and Apple for Linux or a BSD.
  - autoexec 1y ago
    People should realize that everything they do in Windows is being spied on. There's no point in fighting against a user-hostile OS where every setting you use to try to protect yourself can be removed or toggled with the next forced update.
- input_sh 1y ago
  > It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone There's no meaningful difference in the desktop Linux ecosystem right now and a decade ago, you're just more open to it as the alternative got worse.
  - fzeroracer 1y ago
    No, this is definitely not true. I dabbled with Linux back when I was in college (hence, a decade ago) both because the computer labs had Linux installed and because it was interesting to me at the time. There were a bunch of issues with compatibility if you wanted to do any sort of gaming and driver support was pretty bad from what I remember. Flatpaks were barely starting to become a thing, desktop environments were very unrefined and applications like LibreOffice still had a way to go. If you look at what's happened in the Linux ecosystem in the past decade there are in fact significant improvements and refinements thanks to the hard work of thousands of contributors making it easier and easier to use.
reddalo 1y ago
I work on a mac, but I have Linux at home. I've started using LibreOffice at home and I'm surprised at how snappier it is compared to Word. Exported PDFs are even lighter that the ones Word do.
- underlipton 1y ago
  Backup important docs to rtf/txt. I've had Libre/OpenOffice docs blank/all text replaced with hashtags on me suddenly. AFAICT, it's an autosave bug that's never going to be fixed (though I'm not technical enough to know for sure). Personally, I would never use those programs for anything important.
  - Ghoelian 1y ago
    Do you have any kind of source for that? A bug report or a PR or something? Also how would backing up specifically to rtf or txt help? Just back up the original doc files.
    - underlipton 1y ago
      https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=85038&p=493247#p493247 https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=8... Googling would show that any number of users run into issues with OO/LO file corruption, often from power interruption during saves. The applications seem to handle that in a suboptimal way, and maintainers are unwilling to address it. My suspicion is that their unspoken contention is that the problem is with Windows, not OO/LO. I recommend backing up to a general file type simply because it's less likely to open in the offending application by default, if the user ever needs to access it.
      - graemep 1y ago
        One comment says LibreOffice may have fixed the issue. it looks like the cause is a shutdown without flushing buffers so a file is not properly saved. Backups of any file type should be OK.

by 127 1y ago

crinkly 1y ago

Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop. Nothing even remotely comparable. So it's Mac for me, but I get you.

doublerabbit 1y ago
Use moonlight and stream it locally. I use FreeBSD for my daily driver. I now stream games/Windows apps from a dedicated windows VM. It's impressive technology.
- 4b11b4 1y ago
  That's a great use case for game streaming tech
- crinkly 1y ago
  I have a colour cal 5k display. That’s not streamable in any sensible way. Nor do I want the latency or interface disparity.
- bpye 1y ago
  Looking glass is another option, which uses shared memory [0]. I just have my two monitors hooked up to both my iGPU and dedicated GPU, and switch inputs if I want to use my Windows VM. It means things like colour profiles and VRR work as expected too. [0] - https://looking-glass.io/ https://looking-glass.io/
phkahler 1y ago
>> Only thing that keeps me off Linux is Lightroom and Photoshop. Try Darktable or Ansel instead of Lightroom. I'm not gonna tell you Gimp is a good photoshop replacement though ;-)
- baq 1y ago
  With all due respect Darktable is not a Lightroom replacement, having used Lightroom years ago the recent Darktable releases are maybe sometimes reaching Lightroom UX from back then. I'm sure the technical image processing stuff is best in class, but it's too much for me wanting to make my raw photos look better than what the camera does with jpegs by default. The addition of built in presets is extremely welcome, it should be exposed to newbies way more than it is currently.
- crinkly 1y ago
  I've tried those (and RawTherapee). They are nowhere even near half the way to Lightroom.
- Beijinger 1y ago
  If you need CMYK for production, I would be scared of Gimp.
  - LeFantome 1y ago
    Not arguing. It is getting close though.
- florisuga 1y ago
  Those applications may work for some, but they are no replacements for Lightroom in my opinion. My Lightroom 4 installation from 2012 (I never upgraded after Adobe went all in on subscriptions and cloud) still beats the latest Darktable/Ansel versions, hands down. The only things I'm missing are a CLI for automation and a few features that RawTherapee has, like switching to a view of one color channel with a single key. Other than that, Adobe somehow got it incredibly right in terms of workflow and features back then. Using the software feels like it was made for photographers, rather than software enthusiasts. Still, I'm in the same boat as many who wish they could migrate their decades' worth of photos with all their adjustments to a FOSS alternative. For me too, Lightroom is the last application that keeps me from dumping Windows for good. It already lives in a Windows VM on a Linux host these days.
bpye 1y ago
Running them in a Windows VM with an attached GPU works great, I suspect you could use something like Looking Glass [0] as well - though I’d be nervous about colour profiles. [0] - https://looking-glass.io/ https://looking-glass.io/

craftkiller 1y ago

> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth FWIW I use a DualSense controller connected to my Linux computers all the time without issue and without having to do anything special. In fact, Sony is the author of the DualSense driver on Linux[0]. Do you connect anything else over bluetooth? I'm wondering if your bluetooth setup might just be broken in general rather than specifically for DualSense controllers. [0] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sony-HID-PlayStation-PS5 https://www.phoronix.com/news/Sony-HID-PlayStation-PS5

trelane 1y ago
Their point was that the dongle's proprietary firmware was buggy. The controllers just triggered the problem.
- craftkiller 1y ago
  Where are you getting that from? I see no mention of dongles or firmware in the comment I replied to.
  - trelane 1y ago
    Oh. I thought you were replying to a sibling comment, sorry. Sibling: > there is a nuanced situation with some Realtek (RTL8671B) bluetooth firmware on Linux that is 'solved' by downgrading firmware version

naruhodo 1y ago

And honestly, not supporting kernel level rootkits is a feature, not a bug.

anal_reactor 1y ago

First I switched to Linux Mint. Turns out anno 2025 most distros are still made with legacy ThinkPads in mind. Then I installed Fedora KDE. It gives an impression of working. Make no mistake - I have weird display glitches, shit crashes all the time, stuff randomly refuses to work, some devices I have require ridiculous workarounds, basic tasks require cryptic terminal commands, software updates introduce awkward regressions, but I think we've truly reached the milestone where a dedicated person can run Linux as their main desktop system. I suppose in about 30 years we'll have a Linux distribution that can be used on desktop without any IT knowledge. Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem (how the fuck do I even start, even if I wanted to?), but still, the point stands.

pessimizer 1y ago
> we've truly reached the milestone where a dedicated person can run Linux as their main desktop system. You're 20 years too late for this. The reason why Linux doesn't run well on the latest greatest hardware (and never has) is because the vendors of that hardware range from indifferent to actively hostile to Linux, and to make the system work people have to fight. Buy a legacy thinkpad, or something you've researched, and you'll have fewer problems than with Windows or Macs (which are tied to even more specific hardware and obsoleted by company whim.) Of course, if you're on the bleeding edge of technology, everyone is using Linux (whether directly or in VMs and containers), so when I say the latest greatest, I mean the latest greatest consumer and business user stuff. I've never understood comments like this. It's like you're looking at a pool full of people who have been swimming for years and telling you the pool is nice, and saying: "I guess it's finally ready for the real experts now." Also, if you love vendors so much, you can have one. Buy your Linux computer from somebody who sells Linux computers, knows any problems you'll run into on that specially-selected hardware, and call them when you have a problem, just like you would do for the others. > Of course technically speaking I shouldn't complain because I have provided nothing of value to the Linux ecosystem This is the worst point by far. You can complain about anything that is broken, you just can't expect anyone to care (because you haven't obligated anyone to.) The problem isn't complaining, it's complaining badly. Get a vendor, whine to them.

dizlexic 1y ago

Windows has been slipping for decades now. Welcome to the penguin!

aquova 1y ago

> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth I've had this issue as well on KDE Plasma. I'm convinced it's some sort of bug within Plasma itself. If I use bluetoothctl to pair the controller, it works fine, might be worth giving that a try if you haven't.

halz 1y ago

On a whim, there is a nuanced situation with some Realtek (RTL8671B) bluetooth firmware on Linux that is 'solved' by downgrading firmware version. This random gist has a nice thread https://gist.github.com/peteristhegreat/b48da772167f86f43decbd34edbd0849 https://gist.github.com/peteristhegreat/b48da772167f86f43dec... ..and this fellow Nix wizard has the downgrade expressed in a nix config: https://github.com/Arroquw/nixos-config/commit/9d90d7d659e742dd20b19f4f91c29c59f4ca758d https://github.com/Arroquw/nixos-config/commit/9d90d7d659e74... I too was experiencing odd/erratic pairing issues with DualSense controllers and this RTL8671B based dongle, and using the older firmware entirely fixed it. Now four controllers can be connected simultaneously without issue.

tombert 1y ago

I eventually did get it working, but man you are luckier than I getting Nvidia to have "no issues". I had to waste an entire weekend getting an Nvidia card working [1]. I love Linux and specifically NixOS but my experience with good audio and non-AMD drivers has been pretty so-so. [1] https://blog.tombert.com/posts/2025-03-09-egpu/ https://blog.tombert.com/posts/2025-03-09-egpu/ Not trying to self-plug, just documented my headache.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
That situation is entirely of Nvidia's making.
- tombert 1y ago
  No argument on that but regardless of whose fault it is, the end user has to deal with the consequences.
  - trelane 1y ago
    Only if you buy a Windows laptop and slap Linux on it. Or is OSX bad because you can't put it on some random laptop off Amazon?
    - tombert 1y ago
      I didn't really assign labels of "good" or "bad"; in this case that's a matter of philosophy that I am wholly uninterested in. I specifically said that I had so-so luck getting Linux working with non-AMD stuff, and regardless of who is ultimately to blame it's still something I had to deal with.
      - trelane 1y ago
        > had so-so luck getting Linux working with non-AMD stuff, and regardless of who is ultimately to blame it's still something I had to deal with. Did you buy the laptop with the intention of running Linux on it? Did it ship with Linux preinstalled? Did the vendor support Linux running on that computer? Like, could you call them and get them to provide you help in the case of problems?

tiahura 1y ago

All of that compute can’t compensate for the fact that starlibreopenoffice is atrocious. Big corps have been looking for ways to migrate for decades but fail because it’s so abysmal.

0xffff2 1y ago

Meanwhile, I just tried 3 different flavors of Fedora last week and could not even get to the point where I could log in reliably. Never mind getting the handful of Windows-only apps I still rely on to work. I'm despairing that I may have to let Windows update itself to Win11 while I wait for my next hardware upgrade cycle to roll around so I can try to pick more compatible hardware. If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick desktop components that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them.

neobrain 1y ago
> If anyone has any recommendations for how to pick hardware that will "just work" with Linux I'd love to hear them. Some vendors sell hardware with Linux preinstalled or specifically tested (besides the obvious ones like System76/Framework/Tuxedo, Dell provides an XPS flavor that comes with Ubuntu). You don't need to actually use the preinstalled distro, but buying such models ensures baseline support is solid and it sends a signal to vendors to continue ensuring so. Then there's Apple's M1/M2 lineup, which provides the smoothest Linux experience you can have today (specific hardware features are not supported yet, the rest works extremely well!). Other than that, the Arch wiki is typically a good resource that lists quirks of individual devices with Linux.
- trelane 1y ago
  At this point, I'm skeptical of any laptop that wasn't specifically designed for Linux. I have very real doubts that any laptop can support both Linux and Windows well. > specific hardware features are not supported yet, the rest works extremely well I would not describe this as "working well," let alone the "smoothest Linux experience you can have today" Especially compared to System76, which designs their laptops for Linux, customized the firmware for Linux, and ships with Linux already installed.
- 0xffff2 1y ago
  I guess I should have clarified, my only personal (i.e. not work supplied) computer is a mid-tower desktop, which I'm absolutely not buying pre-built. More looking for how I can tell if e.g. a specific motherboard is going to play nice with Linux or not.

rossant 1y ago

Love Linux. Finally moved over it more than 10y ago and never looked back. Still a few minor issues though. Sleep doesn't work well with Ubuntu on a desktop PC with an Nvidia card. It frequently wakes up immediately, or the screen remains black upon wake up. And sometimes it just works. Same problem on different PCs. Just a minor annoyance though. I love Linux. On a recent computer everything is so fast and snappy compared to Windows or even macOS.

yencabulator 1y ago
Don't blame Nvidia's bad behavior on Linux. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/linus-torvalds-says-f-k-you-to-nvidia/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/linus...
- bpye 1y ago
  That’s an ancient article - Nvidia have since open sourced their kernel mode drivers - https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules Yes the user mode side is still closed, but that was never really the issue.
  - yencabulator 1y ago
    That's not enough to make them be a nice member of the ecosystem. The bar is that the manufacturer submits changes to mainline kernel. Actually, look at those commits! That repository is ridiculous. It's code thrown over the wall. Nobody but NVidia will ever work on that code.
laserDinosaur 1y ago
Do you have a Gigabyte motherboard (perhaps a B550) by chance?

EasyMark 1y ago

Yeah I get tired of them trying to suck every bit of data and work that you do into the cloud so they can hoodwink you later with licensing fees and to train their AI. The last straw for me was their "we want to constantly snap shot your screen and index, oh and -wink- it's for your own good, so we'll enable it automatically for you!" I was done at that point and deleted it off my last PC with windows and put Ubuntu on it. I have Mac version of Office that's good enough for now.

akimbostrawman 1y ago

>well for games outside ones that have kernel level rootkits I wish people would stop bringing this up which has not been true for years. Around 40-50% of kernel level anti cheats work and are supported (in user space). https://areweanticheatyet.com/ https://areweanticheatyet.com/

bdhcuidbebe 1y ago

> Outside DualSense controller having issues connecting to bluetooth This is a gotcha. The issue is probably that your user dont have the permissions to interact with udev devices. See https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev https://codeberg.org/fabiscafe/game-devices-udev

gregoryl 1y ago

Ditto; ~20 years of dotnet dev, 1000+ games on steam. Couldn't be more baked into the ecosystem. Its just the work laptop left with windows now, and the team is working to support a non-windows dev env.

hkon 1y ago
Same
ActionHank 1y ago
This was me a few years back. My wife switched this year after only ever using Windows and pure dotnet dev. The first thing she said was "how is it so fast"
- beng-nl 1y ago
  Which distribution is she using, out of curiosity? I wonder if I could do this for (to) my wife..
  - gchamonlive 1y ago
    Not OP, but if I was installing Linux for the first time I'd either go with pop_os (not sure if it's as good anymore as last time I checked it, a couples years ago) or kubuntu, because KDE is a bit more familiar to windows users.
    - brewdad 1y ago
      Pop and Linux Mint are both solid options for newcomers. Personally, I think LM looks better out of the box but Pop is a little easier to grok coming from Windows. Not much of a difference either way though.
    - gregoryl 1y ago
      Totally agree for non-technical users. For anyone technical, and willing to suffer a little bit, go with Arch. The docs are incredible, and you end up with a much better understanding of how everything hangs together.

kylebenzle 1y ago

[dead]

fzeroracer 1y ago

I moved over to Linux about a year or so ago when Microsoft announced they were going to start pushing their AI shit on every Windows system. I created a small partition intending to just give it a shot but ended up never moving back since 99.9% of everything I tried just works. It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone and right now the only reason I keep Windows on my work machine is because there's still specific dev pipelines I can only do on Windows.

jmclnx 1y ago
And one has to wonder, will M/S used these cloud documents for their AI push ? Even if the Word Docs are encrypted, I fully believe Microsoft can read the text in those documents. People should realize everything you do in Excel and Word is being spied on by Microsoft, this cloud push is making that process easier and faster for M/S. At the very least, go to Libreoffice. But better yet, as you just did, people need to abandon Microsoft and Apple for Linux or a BSD.
- autoexec 1y ago
  People should realize that everything they do in Windows is being spied on. There's no point in fighting against a user-hostile OS where every setting you use to try to protect yourself can be removed or toggled with the next forced update.
input_sh 1y ago
> It's really quite amazing how far Linux has come in the past decade alone There's no meaningful difference in the desktop Linux ecosystem right now and a decade ago, you're just more open to it as the alternative got worse.
- fzeroracer 1y ago
  No, this is definitely not true. I dabbled with Linux back when I was in college (hence, a decade ago) both because the computer labs had Linux installed and because it was interesting to me at the time. There were a bunch of issues with compatibility if you wanted to do any sort of gaming and driver support was pretty bad from what I remember. Flatpaks were barely starting to become a thing, desktop environments were very unrefined and applications like LibreOffice still had a way to go. If you look at what's happened in the Linux ecosystem in the past decade there are in fact significant improvements and refinements thanks to the hard work of thousands of contributors making it easier and easier to use.

reddalo 1y ago

I work on a mac, but I have Linux at home. I've started using LibreOffice at home and I'm surprised at how snappier it is compared to Word. Exported PDFs are even lighter that the ones Word do.

underlipton 1y ago
Backup important docs to rtf/txt. I've had Libre/OpenOffice docs blank/all text replaced with hashtags on me suddenly. AFAICT, it's an autosave bug that's never going to be fixed (though I'm not technical enough to know for sure). Personally, I would never use those programs for anything important.
- Ghoelian 1y ago
  Do you have any kind of source for that? A bug report or a PR or something? Also how would backing up specifically to rtf or txt help? Just back up the original doc files.
  - underlipton 1y ago
    https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=85038&p=493247#p493247 https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=8... Googling would show that any number of users run into issues with OO/LO file corruption, often from power interruption during saves. The applications seem to handle that in a suboptimal way, and maintainers are unwilling to address it. My suspicion is that their unspoken contention is that the problem is with Windows, not OO/LO. I recommend backing up to a general file type simply because it's less likely to open in the offending application by default, if the user ever needs to access it.
    - graemep 1y ago
      One comment says LibreOffice may have fixed the issue. it looks like the cause is a shutdown without flushing buffers so a file is not properly saved. Backups of any file type should be OK.