cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34255100
Thought I’d create a distinct thread from the previous one asking about daily use, because I really do want to hear more on people’s pain points. Great to know people are generally sounding pretty positive in those posts who recently switched, but want to know your difficulties as well! This way old and new users can share their thoughts, hopefully to inspire a respectful discussion.
For several years I daily drove PopOS and it was good. I liked their window management. It was unstable, especially with waking from sleep, which led to filesystem corruption sometimes, but timeshift always bailed me out.
Then I tried the Comic beta and loved the paradigm but it was even less stable.
Then I found Bread on Penguins on YouTube and got interested in how Steam was putting all this work into gaming on Linux, and how Wayland was supposed to be so much better for gaming.
So I tried Arch, but it was A LOT. The games did not run well. I feared I was missing a lot of crucial components.
I found the Asus RoG Linux site and switched to Cosmic+CachyOS. The games ran better if on the laptop screen only but Cosmic was still unstable.
I tried Niri but that created a ton of flickering when two monitors were plugged on, which is my typical setup.
I played around with nvidia drivers more as I had been doing the entire time but this time fucked my system up and my new setup of time shift didn’t save me.
So I clean installed CachyOS on Gnome. The games still run well enough on the laptop only. Two monitors works and is stable but the framerate is low in general and my mouse is choppy. I had to spend hours rewriting scripts because Gnome isn’t wlroots based and so doesn’t support fuzzel/rofi/et al. When waking from sleep it will fall back asleep like 4 times before staying up, so I’ve turned sleep off.
I feel pretty exhausted and defeated in all honesty.
Nothing but there were some gpu issues with sleep signals on the newest Debian release. As it’s an always on server I turned those flags off and it’s running normally.
I wish I had Paintdotnet but my daily usage sees Krita work.
80% of tools and tasks take about 20% more effort to get set up how I’d like them, which is fine - and even usually better because I can customize it more. However 20% of tools and tasks take 8,000% more effort to even work correctly, and I give up on half of them.
Audio. As much as windows has issues, it is not hard to get good latency. The same process is it less accessible to most users. A reliable gui is needed.
VST’s and their associated DRM is a blocker but not the fault of Linux. The same is true for hardware that can only be properly configured with a windows or Mac only tool. These problems need a critical mass of users, and a legal requirement to support Linux for mainstream products. (EU, I’m talking to you)
Are you using the realtime kernel?
No. This is a multi purpose pc. Gaming, audio, work, VM. On windows this is fine but not on Linux. Not sure an RT kernel is good for my use case.
Can’t say I’ve had any latency or artifacting on modern Linux… are you running Pipewire? JACK?
Using pipewire. It depends on which settings I use for the sample and bit rate. On windows I can use almost any combination, and baring a few older games, there is no stuttering or breakup. In Linux I find only specific sample and bit rates work well. The others cause stuttering and audio drops.
Also changing sample and bit rates is not straightforward. I’ve found utils that help but the only reliable way I’ve found is to edit the configs then restart the service.
VS, that’s it. Other than that, office once a few months when my school requests an assignment in .docx / .pptx /.xlsx format. Edit: forgot about windows install USB-s (I know ventoy exists).
Handful of Windows desktop apps that don’t work well on Wine - WeChat desktop, LINE app desktop. I do tons of copy pasting of mocked up screenshots and stuff. It just doest work as well as in windows.
For me the thing that actually matters is Respondus not working on Linux. There’s no solution other than have a dedicated Windows laptop if I want to take tests for my college. Everything else has a workaround.
I’ve been a linux user since 2010s more or less. For some reason on my new tuxedo laptop with mint installed + qtile it sometimes freezes or logs me out. Super frustrating, and don’t know how to debug it. But mostly I’m happy with my setup.
When that happens, use
sudo journalctl -eto see the system logs starting from the most recent. There should be some red lines
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A udev rule that won’t work in my new distro (cachyos) for no apparent reason when it worked fine everywhere else
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Obs using way too much cpu for no reason even in a clean setup at idle
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Having to select what window will be captured to the obs canvas every time
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Having to swap active audio outputs until volume stops being too low at every restart.
That’s about all of it, I think.
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I’ve been struggling to get Linux installed again. I had to reinstall Windows to even use the thing. I’m at a loss and really don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m deep in that Dunning-Kruger valley where I know enough to really mess things up and not how to fix them.
I have an Asus ROG gaming laptop from 2023. I had Ubuntu installed no problem, but when. I wiped my Windows drive, it wouldn’t boot anymore. Pretty sure I wiped the bootloader too, I’m not sure. I can install Bazzite or Ubuntu on my Asus ROG Ally no problem, but had an issue later on and reverted that back to Windows too.
I also run local servers for Phantasy Star Online and Minecraft, and the best way to run those has been through Windows. I never use that computer except for running the two servers, so I don’t really care what operating system is on it, but if I could install my servers, that would be ideal.
Intel Arc card. Though, to be fair, it’s only in a small few cases.
On a surface level, it works fine for me, i installed pop os a few months ago and i’m happy. There is a lot i haven’t really figured out yet, and i don’t know if i ever will or have to. There is an UEFI update that has been pending ever since i installed it. It says i may have to hit the power button multiple times to install it, no idea what that even means, and i don’t really want to read 2 pages of documentation to make it work. Most peripherals i have are straight up not supported on linux. They work, but i have to use windows to configure them. I tried to install a razer software for linux, but the hurdles i had to go through and the amount of: now go to this website to install this flatpak is kinda nuts, just for it not to work at the end. I still don’t really know what a flatpak is, so that doesn’t help. On one of my mice, the muddle mouse button just straight up doesn’t work on linux. Every other works, it works on windows, this just doesn’t.
The weirdest thing that sometimes happens is that i play a game and i think when i plug in my headset or mouse, something freaks out and i can still use M1 to shoot for example, but i can’t use M1 in the game menu. Or any menu at all. I can use M2 to put the PC to sleep and then it works again.
I tried to use Wine to try some windows programs to see if they work, but i don’t even know where to start, i installed them, and everything looks like it should just work (or not) but it just does nothing.
Your power button is the chunky button that powers the pc on and off. Typically you’d push and hold it for several seconds until your computer shuts off, ditto for starting again.
It probably looks like one of these and is on the front or top of your computer case near the front, odds aren’t has an LED.
It’s usually advised not to press it unless you have to, since apps like to close and save and stuff before they get shut down so the button doesn’t give your pc time or notice to do that.
Luckily in the “start menu” or whatever UI element where there are buttons for navigating the list of apps there is usually a built in button for shutting down the pc, saving the currently opened stuff to RAM and putting the pc into “sleep”, possibly a similar function called “hibernate” too. On Pop if you are using GNOME or (I think) Cosmic as your desktop, those elements aren’t the top bar in the upper right. Otherwise you should be able to simply search “shut down” in whatever search menu/launcher pops up if you hit the Alt key.
Your firmware update might ask you specifically to use the power button on the outside of your pc case, but it should prompt you on screen if that’s necessary.
I hope this helps! You probably wanna get any updates you’ve been putting off done, it could even help without mouse issue.
I’ve had frustation with the lack of support for some HP laptops. I have a HP Dragonfly 13.5-inch G4 Notebook and I haven’t been able to get my sound to work despite finding others who have gotten it to work. None of the people who got it to work were using simple installation or sources to get the sound to work.
I had issues yesterday getting an aur package of scratchjr as a desktop electron app from 2021 running on my daughter’s laptop. Worked fine when I tested it on mine, so not sure what the issue is there. Means she can only use it on the website with an internet connection for now, which is not the ideal flow from my perspective.
Other than that, pretty great, no notes.
Edit: I was missing the libxss dependency. A fact that was immediately obvious from journalctl. Working now.
My only pain, since last year, is the horrible amount of tweaking needed to have flameshot work in Gnome. I have not found a single screen shot app that even comes close in terms of features and UI.
