[hef19898]

Linux is great! And, thanks to Steam, a lot of games wirk as well. Not all, but most.

Ubuntu, I haven't tried anything else so far, is a charm on Lenovo hardware. Update wise, it is were Windows was a couple of years ago. Meaning there are random updates that just kill and break certain functions. Happened last week, everything was running fine, including steam, as it always did. Until an update managed to delete the GUI, reinstalling the GUI killed nVidia drivers, Steam couldn't be installed under 23.04 for some missing dataset, installing said data (some 32-bit stuff) killed WiFi...

No attack on Linux so, I rember that not too long ago I stopped all Eindows updates because for months the auto-updates had the same effect (save the WiFi bit).

So yes, my dqily, private driver is Linux. And will be, except for games, for the time being. All I uave to do now, well after vacation, is to get Steam running properly again. Feels like a throwback to the pre Win 10 days, when Windows randomly did the same thing with regards to drivers and certain games / programs.

[bee_rider]

It is unfortunate that people recommended Ubuntu as a starting distro for so long.

It does too much. It will update things for you, or give you a pop-up to tell you to update. Updates happen all at once, rather than a little at a time, so you get these big dramatic updates with combinatorial bug explosions. Maybe the repos will be gone if you don’t update in time. Maybe your favorite packages have moved from apt to snap. Good luck!

A rolling release distro like Arch would be a better first experience for most people I think.

Linux is not where Windows was years ago. Software gently rolls in at a nice steady rate. Some distros choose to take that nice steady flow, chop it up, and for some reason emulate the Windows catastrophic update experience. It is… an odd decision.

[BizarroLand]

I've not had a good experience with Ubuntu or Pop OS. They've always felt sluggish on any hardware I've put them on.

Debian may take a touch more wrenching to get running but it has been good for me, although I haven't tried 12 yet. Fedora was good but Red Hat shenanigans seems to have messed with it.

I may try Mint next time. I've heard good things about it.

I said all of that to say, isn't Linux great?

If you have a quibble with it, you can kick it to the curb and try something else in an hour and everything just works. There's so many options to choose from, and you don't have weirdo corporations tracking your every application launch or building a psychological profile off of you from how you tab through a spreadsheet or cloud mapping your speaking patterns based off of how you type.

[joshspankit]

Since you want responsive, try XFCE (xubuntu)

[footlose_3815]

>so you get these big dramatic updates with combinatorial bug explosions.

Yes. My Ubuntu installations always have bugs when I do big updates. A

And while I'm here, snapd can suck it. Me and my homies hate Snap.

[f1shy]

The worst is when they tried to call home, like Windows

[ASalazarMX]

Please use Ubuntu LTS, you can live with 2-year old versions at its worst, specially when snaps can deliver up-to-date applications.

I'm not happy with some of Canonical's decisions, but I can't deny that using LTS as a daily driver is boring because most things just work without fiddling. I don't have as much time to fiddle with the OS nowadays.

[bee_rider]

I’ve used LTS on a shared system, but I don’t love it. 2 years is shorter than you’d expect, and now if we want to update we’ll need to deal with 2 years worth of work, configuration, and cluges if we want to update.

[hef19898]

My first fall back was to downgrade from 22.04 to 20.04 again. Steam worked fine, wifi worked. I was happy. Until, that is, I tried reinstall Darktable, in version 4.x as that was the one that used for basically all my photo edits in the last year. Turned out Ubuntu 20.04 only supports darktable 3.x, and darktable 4.x edits are not backwards compatible (kind of logic, so the loss of around 100 edits is totally and absolutely on me and only me). For now, I use the Linux installation as my daily (as soon as I re-imported my passwords to Firefox, as of course I lost those as well during reinstall number 3...) and Windows as my gaming "console". Until, that is, the official Steam installer works under 22.04 again. The Steam client from Canonical sucks IMHO.

[hedora]

Ubuntu LTS breaks my stuff more often than Manjaro (~= Arch).

I don't understand why Canonical decides to backport breaking changes to LTS releases, but they do it on a regular basis, and I don't trust them for anything important. (I'm not suggesting using manjaro for stuff that needs to be stable over a long time period -- it's not meant for that, which is precisely my point!)

[boppo1]

I've been using xubuntu for about 6 years now and I barely understand how linux works. So far so good, I've had one major issue which was related to my storage getting too full.

Admittedly I'm reasonably comfortable in CLI, but I don't know a whole lot about bash, just cd, mv, cp, ls -a, etc.

Is xubuntu better than ubuntu just because it removes a lot of cruft?

[fuomag9]

Xubuntu or *buntu distros are mostly Ubuntu distros with a different default desktop environment (KDE, xfce, etc)

[red-iron-pine]

> A rolling release distro like Arch would be a better first experience for most people I think.

Nah. Most people can't grok partitions or do the command line installs by hand. "Most people" aren't very technical, and even white collar office types will struggle.

Likewise they don't grok rolling updates and snap, they just get their updates and they restart once a month, just like on their windows box. That's enough, and once they get comfortable with the rest of the Ubanto env they can start thinkin about their Gentoo build from scratch.

[bee_rider]

I think most people barely are able to administrate their Windows laptops either, usually they just use them until they break and then buy a new one, and never really configure or fix anything.

Phones, with their app stores, are sort of like rolling release with automatic updates, right?

[hef19898]

The issue described above was the only update problem I had with Ubunutu so far. The reason I picked it was the basically guaranteed compatability with my Lenovo laptop, I guessed better not take any risks. popOS was on the list as well so!

Positive side effect of above tepuble shooting, I got pretty fast installing Linux now.

[caeril]

Agreed, Arch is likely the best introductory option, especially now that archinstall comes with the iso. Dead simple to install, and the documentation is fantastic for setting up the rest of your environment.

[bee_rider]

Arch is a good into to Linux, for people that want Linux.

It might not be the best for people who want a web browser/computing appliance, but I’m not sure what is, there just might not be a good one yet.

[erwincoumans]

It would be great if Linux had some automatic checkpoints so you can revert to a working system after an update. So many times updates leave a broken system and re-install Ubuntu from scratch is quicker than fixing the problem.

[usr1106]

OpenSUSE had this 7 years ago when I last used it. I think they still have it, it's called snapper.

Not that I would really have turned any Linux significantly non-functional by updating during the last 15 years. But it's all software, so everything can happen one day...

[boomboomsubban]

Bootable snapshots are a thing, also known as boot environments. You need to use ZFS or btrfs, or possibly bcachefs or LVM offer them. And they never have seemed to have a great implementation on Linux compared FreeBSD, but they do exist.

[tredre3]

> but they do exist.

And here's the crux of it, isn't it? Unless it's accessible and enabled by default, it might as well not exist from the PoV of the end user.

Windows' restore points happen automatically before updates or driver updates. Then you're prompted automatically to restore if Windows fails to boot after an update.

As usual Linux has all the pieces but no desire to create UX to go with it. Which is a shame because ZFS with automatic snapshotting daily or before major events combined with a simple UI that can run in the preboot environment would be a game changer and make Windows look like a toy.

[dizhn]

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed has this. The installer defaults to btrfs and snapshots using snapper. Snapshots are automatic before and after every package manager operation. Save for something that breaks grub, you can always recover.

[bravetraveler]

In that spirit, if you have an EFI system, you don't need GRUB

[boomboomsubban]

You sort of do if you want to boot kernels on btrfs. Refind is an option, but not most of the other EFI bootloaders.

[vladvasiliu]

> And here's the crux of it, isn't it? Unless it's accessible and enabled by default, it might as well not exist from the PoV of the end user.

For what it's worth, at one point Ubuntu supported installing on ZFS through its regular installer and installed the boot environment thingy, with a snapshot before every update. I have one such machine which is now running 23.04 and that still works. I've never had to use in practice, though.

[hef19898]

Oh, so this! Having had the option last Friday to just reboot into whatever it was before said update, and just skip the next couple of updates, man, that would have been great!

[michaelmrose]

To be pedantic It's impossible for "Linux" to have this as this exists way higher than the kernel or even the filesystem layer.

Linux mint has timeshift.

The now defunct Project Trident installer set up a zfs root with zfsbootmenu and an update script that automatically sets up a boot environment you can revert and boot from with the built in feature of zfsbootmenu.

Both let you achieve your goal. You can set up either system even if they aren't built in.

[rkagerer]

A lot of comments here say Timeshift is crap - do you find it helpful yourself and can you elaborate on what works / doesn't?

https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/timeshift

[michaelmrose]

I have not personally used timeshift. I have used zfsbootmenu and syncoid found it useful and fit for purpose. Personally I think its more reasonable to separate boot environments from backing up as they are two separate if related concerns. EG boot environments are for when something went wrong with an update and backups are for when your drive failed. If both went wrong you just do both operations in sequence restore from backup and THEN pick the prior boot environment and make it the default.

Insofar as timeshift consider the review source, circumstances, and nature of complaints. Users who don't have difficulties rarely post anything and yet many reviews are positive. Those that aren't seem to focus on people who didn't realize they could provide a secondary drive and just kept storing data until their OS drive filled up.

Mint leans heavily towards technically incompetent users and yet many people were able to use it successfully. Meeting every users needs no matter how incapable is probably a poor benchmark to define if somethings is "crap" or not even if those users problems are are a great guideline to a path forward to helping all users better.

For instance it might be better if timeshift only supported a fs with snapshots instead of rsync and required a secondary disk and warned of space issues long before the disk fills up but it seems quite possible to competently use it right now.

[justinclift]

Some Linux distros actually do this. :)

[joshspankit]

Once NixOS is desktop-ready you’ll have a way more powerful checkpoint system

[tracker1]

I haven't had that happen for a few years now... I will say the RX 5700 XT had a really rough few months after launch on Linux. Other than that, it's been relatively smooth.

Mostly been using PopOS and Ubuntu-Budgie.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

NixOS has this by default, on any filesystem. You can also do it with ZFS or BTRFS filesystem snapshots.

[aednichols]

Check out immutable distros like Fedora Silverblue & Kinoite.