The Linux Political Spectrum

"Now there's 2 main distro families, Arch and Debian." Red Hat Linux: "Am I a joke to you?"

Your "test" of Linux using a rolling releasse distro for your daily driver was a little like trying out an F1 car for your daily commute and concluding that automobiles aren't ready for prime time. I'm a relatively new Linux user and have found the transition to a mainstream (Ubuntu-based) distro pretty painless, and I've been able to work productively from the start. I'm older and certainly less technology savvy than you, and sure, I've had to learn some new stuff, but I can use a search engine and follow written instructions. Bonus: I no longer dread the second Tuesday of the month..

I'm a casual computer user. I was hesitant about Linux at first, but when I saw that distros like Pop OS, Ubuntu and Linux Mint were as easy-to-use as Windows (at least for my use case,) safer and more private, I ended up making those my choices for a Daily Driver! It looks like you went right for a distro for much more advanced users when these days you don't even need to touch the terminal on some of the more family-friendly ones -- and it's getting better!

Most Linux users I know love using Linux. I don’t see how spending your time having fun is “not valuing” your time 😁

"you basically just can't play games on linux" Steam Deck : Am I a joke to you?

2:46 Most distros will come with a graphical software store out of the box. 2:55 No, you don't need any customization at all. You can go for it, though. 4:50 I nuked my Windows install right after installing Linux. 4:55 Really? I spent the entire last night gaming with friends (most games even run smoother than they did on Windows, at least for me). 5:03 Virtualization is a thing and there probably isn't too much of a usability loss when using a GPU pass through. However, since this does involve "running" another OS, you're technically right. 5:22 Imagine not pirating Windows 8:05 There's the benefit of being able to do more things than a GUI ever could. If you don't like that, don't install Arch. 8:22 Were you using AwesomeWM? Because otherwise, that statement is wrong. 8:35 How something looks has nothing to do with the window manager. 9:05 Maybe you shouldn't have used a closed issue on Windows for the background. 9:28 Finally something interesting. 9:50 Linux can be used by anyone, you simply chose to use it in a way that is considered hard. 10:43 What is this sentence even supposed to mean? 10:50 Which kinds of configs are you dealing with?

Fedora and i3 user here. I've had my setup working for 18 months, not a single problem. Yes, learning how to set it up takes some time, but once it's done, I'm more productive, and everything just works. I repeat, not a single problem

You were after a productivity boost but didn't seek advice on getting more productive, just on getting the system riced. Get the bindings right, get used to them, become more productive. My story: I started using arch around feb/2022 (switched from windows) and used Luke Smith's larbs to install dwm + useful packages. It took me 6 months to get really efficient with the setup. Switched from vs code to nvim and then suddenly I started coding super fast (I'd say 3~4 times faster than when I used windows). It takes time, but is definitely worth it. "Windows is not just 80 usd if you value your time".

I think you just went too far down the Linux rabbit hole, I recently switched to Manjaro (from Windows) and it was surprisingly straightforward. Because I code in c/c++ it was much more convenient for me to use Linux than Windows: Clang was already installed, and installing a code editor was just one command (so now I know how to install any other package I might need in the future). I didn't have to customize anything to get it to work well. It even starts up faster than Windows. I believe a simple Linux distribution would actually be better for a lot of people: if you just use a browser, why not use a browser that starts up faster on a faster operating system? (Also, not being able to play games is actually an advantage for me) At the same time, Windows tries to force you to make a Microsoft account, and if you don't, it will continue asking you update after update...

If you're not a tinkerer you're best off just installing Ubuntu and call it a day. I spent a lot of time distro hopping in my early Linux days, and I had faced a lot of issues, and I even went back to using Windows for a couple of years. Getting back to Linux was honestly a time and convenience consideration for me, as I had a lot of roadblocks in my development workflow on Windows. Ubuntu is pretty stable, comes with sensible defaults, prebuilt packages for almost everything, and you can customize it where you need to. I sincerely think it's a case of diminishing returns when you go as far as to be the Arch/Emacs/i3 boy, the amount of effort you have to put in doesn't necessarily equate to the sheer amount of time and effort you have to put in to get comfortable with them. I would say there is a lot of productivity to be gained from switching to Linux if you know what's a good idea to adopt and what is overly excessive.

Some ppl said it better but I'll say it again anyways. You tried going for a rolling release hardcore distro and expected softcore stable distro behavior. I think the problem comes down to the accessibility of linux for new users and how it's kinda tough to get how it really works in the beginning. If you wanted your install to just work without bugs but with more configuration you could've gone with a more stable distro like fedora or debian since you already knew how that worked, but you decided to go the hardcore path and got disappointed with the hard part (pun intended). But you judging the whole linux experience by a really niche part of it really bothered me, because from what you said you knew it'd be hard and buggy but gave up the moment it got hard, knowing that there are other paths to take that'd be more stable and most likely wouldn't have those really annoying bugs. Or you wanted to look cool by using arch and learned the hard way that's not how it works

You were missing a 3rd major family in use which is Fedora. Both Fedora's and Debian-based systems' package managers (i.e. DNF and APT respectively) are much more stable than Arch based systems. I use Parrot OS and it is very stable.

Using Linux Mint for several years now as a daily driver, stable and almost zero issues there. As for Gaming, due to the Linus Tech Tips Challenge I decided to erase my gaming rig and go Vanilla Arch, just to feel the full pain. I dont care for fancy Desktop, but as for Performance. After some tweaking I even get the same performance. And currently all the games I play work. And actually for system options I find that often much easier to set them on linux, than on windows nowadays were they rework what used to be their control panel seemingly on every single update.

Interesting experience, but all the issues you mentioned where not Linux issues, but the application issues. Most of these problems can be resolved with finding the right application. If you worry a confit will change in an update download something that won’t ever get updated. I use dwm and it’s fantastic in that regard. I’ll never need to update it after the initial few setups and I have to manually update it myself

Honestly, it would help if you had gone with a more stable distro like Fedora. As someone who has been using only Fedora for coding for two years now, it is pretty good, and I did not have any major issues with it. In fact, I find it to be far more stable than windows 10.

I think when a lot of people compare linux they treat it like a commercial product, which it's not (at least for most of it). The whole linux package isn't made by some big company that you're paying, it's just a community of enthusiasts sharing their cool screenshots. Anyway, nice video. Typing this from arch btw :P

8:02 you don't need to do it all manually, just use the archinstall command when you boot up the live image, and just select what you want, and you'll have arch set up in like 10-20 minutes

Traditionally it's more debian-based vs red hat based but things are changing

I run Manjaro KDE on my Lenovo Thinkpad T480,and it has pretty great customization options,not too resource intensive too,I don't us terminal too often, sometimes it's just convenient.I don't intend to go back to Windows anytime soon.

You got an Intel Integrated GPU in you're Lenovo Screen flickering Panel Self Refresh (PSR), a power saving feature used by Intel iGPUs, causes flickering in some instances. A temporary solution is to disable this feature using the kernel parameter i915.enable_psr=0