Most of them seemed to be giving it a fair go but Linus himself seemed to be treating it more like a Cheap Car Challenge from Top Gear. He was cracking (bad) jokes about “just Linux things” before he’d even started and he gave up pretty much straight away. The problems he was having with Discord seemed more like Discord issues than Linux issues.
I game on Linux without issue. Literally 95% of games just work without issue. Deathloop never ran well and Routine (a UE game) for some reason kept want to install and uninstall a package each time I ran it (but it played fine). I don’t think I’ve found another game that doesn’t play and I recently bought ARC Raiders.
Between this, his alleged mistreatment of employees, his problematic takes on unions and worker power, his incorrect reporting proven by other tech reporters, and all the staff I actually enjoyed watching leaving and starting their own channels…I dunno why anyone gives this fucking ass clown the time of day anymore.
Stay on Windows then, you corporate fuckboy! Enjoy XBox cloud gaming and never owning anything again.
Stay on Windows then, you corporate fuckboy! Enjoy XBox cloud gaming and never owning anything again.
Yep! Linus is basically rendering his own channel obsolete by doing this shit.
Yea I agree. I don’t like how Linus is doing this challenge at all. He is not being fair.
LTT is not sincere.
It’s the Pro Wrestling of tech. It’s Tech Entertainment. The focus is drama instead of technical accuracy or knowledge sharing. He “lost the match” because he never intended to win.
I think if he had somebody better to onboard him, he’d have a better experience.
In classic manchild fashion, you people always blame the user instead of the technology. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that switching to Linux is not going to be without issues for anyone, let alone the average computer user.
Instead of taking the opportunity to be a loser by gatekeeping, we should be saying “Yeah, the Linux ecosystem still has a long way to go. What makes it better is that it’s free software. You now get to be a part of the community making it better and get to see for yourself where we are.”
None of you will say that though because you’re too stuck in your ways. It makes me sick, but I’m glad I’m not one of you.
Deathloop doesn’t run well on Windows either.
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I use linux exclusively on desktop, it’s got a lot of problems, many seem unique to the user, I hate that the way to discuss the problems for a lot of people is pretending they don’t exist, makes first contact more problematic for newcomers. Even before touching linux I’ve been hating that attitude with a passion from windows users, at least it’s not a problem exclusive to linux.
If we are thinking in terms of roles in a production of a sketch, Linus is the one that accepts the role to emphasize and emote about the problems. Picking a distro with known quirks (being a beta in this case) is a signature setup for that role. Without the drama, it would be a pretty boring episode for the LTT demographic.
That being said, anyone who is ingrained into how Windows operates and has quirks in their workflows (as in - tuned their workflow to work relying on some edge cases), a month is too short a time to transition and embrace that necessary change.
Think of him what you want, but I think this nicely shows the problems that “gamers” will encounter when switching to linuxand gives a good view from outside the Linux community
I have no idea what was up with the multiple steam windows, it did feel like he was actually cursed when that happened.
But the “weird control” issue in l4d2 which was then solved by using a custom launch command found on protondb… thats super real.
Eventually you learn to check protondb as a habit the second you encounter any kind of game issue but for a newcomer thats another hurdle.
Normally when I encounter a game issue I just put the game at the bottom of my MAAAAAAAASSIVE backlog.
That is 100% COSMIC jank. He chose Pop!_OS again and System76 has been annoyingly shipping a beta desktop environment on their stable distro.
I like COSMIC and System76, but this is an annoying decision by them and Linus does shitty research so he doesn’t know he’s running beta software and he’ll associate this with Linux being janky again 🙄
I’m wondering if the HD2 mouse issue was bc he had a controller plugged in as well.
Oh no, not this clown again. Is he running out of content? For sure.
No one ever asked him about linux things, yet he still wishes to share his imbecile opnions with the world. What a joke!
The biggest issue for most casual users starting remains picking a distro, and to that end I think we as a Linux community need to stop recommending flavors of the month. Even Bazzite has come up against some recent drama and having to break down distro drama for a new users is an absolute deal breaker.
Based on their skill level and needs just get them into a bucket: Mint, Fedora, or Arch. They’ve been around forever, they’re stable, there’s plentiful documentation and there are no weird opinionated decisions buried in them that’ll go off like a landmine or confound troubleshooting. Install the Nvidia proprietary drivers, I’ve had less issues with those (until recently I dunno, we can revisit this point) but overall just everything simple and smooth for a transition.
Once people are on Linux they can start to come up with their own informed opinions depending on how well they take to the environment but at the same time there’s nothing wrong with starting and ending with the above distros.
(I actually don’t know much about Fedora, there might be a slightly better variant recommendation but it’s gotta be something analogous to Mint. I’m pretty adamant on vanilla Arch though, if that’s the route you want to go. Anyone who starts with Arch will be able to better determine an Arch variant down the road for themselves and are also more likely to do multiple installs. Doing so much as even a single reinstall may be a deal breaker for casuals).
I like your thought so I wondered if there is a site to help people pick a distro and found this:
For a windows gamer type of person it came up with Linux Mint
https://distrochooser.de/en/d59f9b3e7b9b/
…at the top of a long list of other choices. Not bad!
I had different results. I work in IT and understand the comprehension levels of the average user. The top result was a distribution where the Wikipedia was in Portuguese. No update in 5 years. https://distrochooser.de/en/d5cf19cdf504/
Exactly I don’t know why Linux mint wasn’t even mentioned.
Did he really just go to a random reddit post?
Nobara is Fedora but pre-configured for gaming. They mention it briefly in the video.
Mmm, this is kind of what I’m talking about. I’m certainly not knocking Nobara as a distro or people who prefer it, but taken from their FAQ,
- Will there ever be other Desktop Environment versions? No. The ‘Official’ modified KDE release layout was designed for myself and my father out of personal preference.
- I heard Nobara breaks SELinux, is this true? No. We have completely swapped SELinux in favor of AppArmor (this is what Ubuntu and OpenSUSE use).
- Is Nobara compatible with SecureBoot? No. Nobara ships with a kernel that has been custom patched and is built and hosted on COPR.
- Can I upgrade from Fedora to Nobara using the Nobara repositories? NO. This is a big large huge NO. The Nobara install ISOs have a ton of packages that get installed which are specific to Nobara, and not installed on Fedora on fresh install.
- Just how modified is Nobara aside from what I can see? Heavily.
- This project is quite new, is it going anywhere? Is there anything to say it won’t just up stop development? Is it something that is recommendable to daily drive? (I am quite technical, and can troubleshoot my issues). As long as I am alive and using linux this project will continue. It started because I needed something both myself and my father could easily use from clean install without time consuming troubleshooting or extra package and repo installation.
It’s been around since ~2022 compared to Mint in ~2006
These are exactly the kind of points that a casual, new user would stumble across and in attempting to troubleshoot things from a Fedora perspective could trip them up severely.
My point is that casual users are already averse to making the switch and they are likely going to do ONE install and it needs to be as vanilla and stable as possible. If they turn into Linux nerds who want to distro hop later, they’ll find their way, but we need to keep things absolutely stock and simple.
I went from Nobara to Bazzite on my desktop, the latter seems way more polished
I tend to agree. When I built a PC from spare parts for my brother-in-law, I put Bazzite on it. Very clean and relatively foolproof
100% agree, and made pretty much the same point in the LTT forum a while back. Flavor of the month people annoy tf out of me, I’ve been a linux user for over a decade and have never even thought of recommending something outside of the big 3 (debian/ubuntu (or mint if that’s your thing), fedora, arch)
Tried and true distros are the only real option and IMO the difference between distros once everything is configured is mininal
Part of that problem is developers are drawn to Shiny too. So things people may want, start working in a random distro first. Then when you are comparing these features people want to Windows, it’s often a catch up game.
But I think the framing the whole thing even to just the comparing the lagging features of a stable and usable distro to well… Windows is still a pretty good light.
Well have to accept that “Linux can’t X” and keep all the (um actually) caveats hush until it just works. Then hopefully with enough traction and resources that time gap will shorten.
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I don’t understand how these tech people can be so bad with researching things and then installing a distro.
It’s all for the show
Yea. I guess I always assume people are genuine, but it is a group who care about entertaining more than teaching.
I think it’s business savvy on his part, he had all the tech viewers he could get, so he expanded to tech entertainment.
I don’t like it but it’s profitable.
He picked PopOS again???
Look, I have nothing against people who prefer Pop. But the issue with Steam last time around gave me a very negative impression of it. A few months ago I organized a local Linux install party and tried giving it a chance. I could not get the damn thing to install, even after trying multiple ISOs. You can say “skill issue” but if you want a headache-free distro, which Linus very clearly does, my recommendation is to try something else. If Pop works for you, again, more power to you.
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they did mention, that were shying away from debian because old software, but still choose pop os (follows the 2 year lts cycle of ubuntu, though the kernel is more up to date)
in the end, elijah (one of the 3 are partaking on the challenge, it isn’t just linus) happened to choose a fedora based distro and had like 0 issues, it is almost like they should have had choosen fedora
Hey, can you say more about the Linux install party? I’d be interested in hosting something like that! Did you find or make any resources to help?
I hosted it at a local maker space. It wasn’t like super structured. My wife and I took care of most people who came in and occasionally delegating help to the knowledgeable volunteers with the space. I brought some personal laptops with a few distros installed for test driving. Linux Mint was by far the most popular choice. https://endof10.org/ has some useful resources.
Give me a break from that clown
It seems when you have a terrible attitude of entitlement and no willingness to learn, you’ll never be happy with anything. Huh.
In that case, I’d rather have him stay unhappy on Windows and not make those videos anymore.
We need to agree on a better way to get new users to easily chose a new Distro without having horrible choice paralysis. Asking AI doesn’t work, asking reddit or lemmy just starts a massive debate and gets the person asking nowhere.
Perhaps just refer everyone to nicks latest tier list although that is really for his use case, I mean he doesn’t even have bazzite on the list when it’s a good choice for a lot of people. Maybe there is a website that asks questions and recommends a distro based on that, or maybe I saw a cool flow chart photo that seamed good, but it’s an image so it won’t update itself when people come back to it later and the recomendations change.
This gives me an idea.
Sort of a questionnaire that kinda walks you through the kind of things you’ll use your machine for, what kinda hardware you have,… and then eventually gives you say 3 to four choices at the end. (So the average user can look at a few screenshots and make a choice based on that. Because let’s be honest we all choose our Linux partially with our eyes just like we listen to music).
Well fuck, another project my adhd wants to tackle but probably can’t.
Something like this? https://distrochooser.de/
That’s awesome. Now to find some opportunities to share this with people.
I feel like Ubuntu used to be the sort of default “new user” distro, but they keep going off on these weird tangents so that doesn’t really work anymore. Then it felt like PopOS might have been the new one, but now they’re mid-way between transitioning to COSMIC so that’s not really a good fit either. I think maybe Mint is the default one now, but also Cinnamon is kind of it’s own thing so it doesn’t set a new user up well for becoming familiar with the more universally used DE’s like Gnome or Plasma.
I think Fedora and Debian are also a decent fit for new users, but that’s also not a very exciting answer so that’s probably why it doesn’t come up as much lol.
I dont think we can agree on one distro, there are too many compromises. But we should agree on one resource. Not sure what though.
Unfortunately there isn’t a silver-bullet for picking a distro. It’s a hurdle to get over for sure, and one that is likely to hinder general purpose adoption of Linux for a long time to come, but it is also part of what is awesome about Linux if people are willing to understand it.
Trying a bunch of different distros is really the only way to find out what is going to work for “you”. Scrounge up 4 or 10 flash drives at least 4GB each. Flash them with the ISOs for every distro that remotely tickles your fancy, and boot them up and see how it goes. Figure out your top couple of choices, and install one. If things go well, great, enjoy your new OS. If something is broken or breaks right away, then go install choice number 2 and see if it is still broken. Reasonable chance it isn’t and then you can enjoy your new OS.
Manjaro was the go-to distro for laymen, but manchildren got upset it wasn’t “their” distro being recommended by parties like Valve so they berated anyone who suggested it.
People berate Manjaro because it’s objectively bad. If you use it and like it, more power to you, but please stop recommending it to people new to Linux as it is likely to push people away from Linux when it inevitably breaks. Everyone that recommends Manjaro does so as an “easy to use” and “beginner friendly” distro, but it isn’t. So when it breaks for some arcane and obtuse reason, new users tend to just resign themselves as “not smart enough” for Linux and they go back to Windows. Meanwhile, there are people daily driving Mint, Ubuntu, and Fedora that barely know which way around to hold a mouse.
I don’t have the patience to argue with you, but you are wrong.
That literally is arguing…
There is no requirement for you to reply if you don’t want to take part in the discussion on this social platform, but I feel I took great care in my original reply to not attack or berate anyone, you included. Sorry that your favorite distro isn’t the “go-to” recommendation anymore, I guess.
Linus is not a tech guy and it shows
He’s more of a salesman for shit people don’t need.
He really can’t find pop os on a good day huh?
It’s hilarious how he wants it to work. I think it’s the pre-installed Nvidia drivers he wants to take advantage of (even though installing drivers on most distros is simply using the package manager) which I don’t understand why he fears driver installation, even windows doesn’t come with Nvidia drivers pre-installed. I don’t get why everyone is hating so much, it’s not like he simply made a video about only his experience.
Elijah and Luke are actually good view of what the average user might encounter (minus multi screen configuration).
Also wtf is chimera os? The only 2 times I’ve heard of it are in their videos.
ChimeraOS is a ghetto reimplementation of SteamOS but for regular PCs.
ChimeraOS predates the current Arch based iteration of SteamOS by several years. The first release on GitHub is dated 2019 (then called GamerOS).
Windows laptops absolutelly come pre-installed with the drivers compatible with that system.
Also while hit or miss windows update will install graphics drivers (on a slower cadence than direct from.nvidia/amd) even in a fresh windows install. It’s a common pain point for windows update to mistakenly downgrade your drivers.
There’s a hidden upside to him being a dumb fuck: it keeps the equally-dumb parts of his audience from clogging up the support forums and git issues with stupid shit.
In case you can’t tell, I really hate this particular Linus.
I did the switch to full time linux gaming a few weeks ago.
Initially I was on PoP OS but I wasn’t happy with it. I reinstalled everything on Cachyos and it has been very good so far.
Here are the main “hurdles” that I think I should not have encountered in my “liberation” :
- I activated FDE in cachyos but the LUKS decryption prompt was never on my keyboard layout so I could never decrypt with the original key. I should not have to handle keyboard layout issues when decrypting FDE. This would be fatal to any beginner.
- I still think the tinkering with proton is too involved. Some command line arguments should be activated automatically depending on your setup. Players should be able to anonymously opt-in to sharing settings for all the game they start.
- Mouse sensitivity is wonky on many linux distros for gaming. Mouse acceleration should not be a default if you target gamers. I dont care if original Arch has this default. 99% of FPS players avoid it.
That being said, leaving Windows makes me incredibly happy and I’m very thankful for the great opportunity the open source community has given me through great free software.
Mouse acceleration sucks in general. My work computer is a Mac an until Sonoma came out I needed a dedicated app to disable mouse acceleration. I agree with your other points as well.
Fuck LTT. Won’t click the video for this twat.
I desperately didn’t watch his video on his own channel, and waited for someone I trust to react to it. I just watched Gardiner Bryant’s reaction to it: On Invidious https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=W680f2iPu5o or YouTube directly https://youtu.be/W680f2iPu5o . (Edit: just a typo)
I actually super appreciate these videos. I’m absolutely convinced at this point that, regardless of compatibility issues, my next system will be Linux, but I have absolutely bounced off of it the last couple times I tried. Being able to see different people’s initial experiences with different distros feels pretty invaluable to me at this point.
At the moment, I only have a laptop and can’t afford either a new system or for my current system to go down, though, so I’ve been hesitant about making any actual changes. That said, my laptop’s about six years old at this point and starting to really struggle, so I know it’s coming in the next year or so.
EDIT: I found an external HDD to work with! I’m setting it up with Cinnamon now and I’ll spend the next couple weeks trying to treat it like my main driver to see if I can handle any quirks that comes with it.
Putting linux on that thing will give it several more years. The performance gap between windows and linux just keeps growing.
I’ve heard that as well, but at this point I can’t really risk something going wrong and not working at the moment. I am tempted to give it a shot, but I need to at least make sure I have a fallback if something goes wrong.
Yeah if it is a work laptop then your caution is warranted. The thing about linux is, eventually something will go wrong. However, with the slightest inclination and some internet searching skills you can always fix the issue. Windows and Mac like to fight you when you want to tinker with something, but Linux facilitates it.
Try out some live boot disks then. Several flavors of linux will just boot up, and give you the option to install from within the booted OS. I forget which ones lwt you change things and basically treat them like normal, but some will even carry over any made changes right through the install (if you tell it to, anyways).
Then, you’ll just have to identify any critical applications you need and see if they run on linux, or have any viable alternatives that do, or worst case try to run the windows flavor through Wine or proton or so.
If you need stability above all, I’d recommend avoiding the bleeding edge distros or the young ones that are changing a lot. It sounds odd, but I’ve been digging MX Linux a lot, and I’ve tried a good few flavors over the years. It’s based on Debian Stable, so it’s repos won’t be the bleeding edge, but it has that classic Debian “Just Works” going for it. The only bugs I’ve had have been issues from Wayland that also affect other distros.
I actually just spent the better part of this afternoon doing just that! I messed around with Mint and it basically ran perfectly fine. Literally no issues at all (besides some of me not understanding how things worked). All my critical stuff works perfectly well, with the sole exception being a game I run where mods are pretty heavily windows-based. I did find a decent Linux community around that, though, and they seem to be running things pretty well, too.
I know I shouldn’t dual boot with a partition, but that’s what I’m gonna do to see if I can make it a couple weeks without anything major going wrong. I tried the live boot disk, but at the moment all I have is an external HDD and it makes some things insanely slow, so partitioning is the move for now. I’ll drop Windows in a couple weeks, though.
Edit: I’ll probably also try out some other distros once I’ve got Mint set up as well, just to be sure I’m not missing out on something else that will work. For now, I just want easy to use and easy to learn.
Nice! Sound like you’re on the right track, though might want to keep a live cd image on hand in case Windows decides to take over your boot options until you can finally squash it. xP
By what you just told I can’t tell if you have ever tried a live distro with it. I hope you did, or if not, that you pick a distro of your liking and try it with your laptop.
(My PC is about 7 years old and it’s still going as new, so I was shocked reading your comment - I completely forgot Windows/Mac really tax you for “old” hardware)
A live distro? I’m not actually sure what that is. I’ll do a bit of looking around about it, though!
Think about a linux installation on a removable usb drive or a CD or DVD.
You won’t install Linux directly in your hard drive or whatever but in a removable device.
With it you can boot your laptop in it and use it almost as if it was actually installed on your laptop. It will let you check for hardware compatibility and that sort of thing. Also it won’t be as smooth as if it was actually installed on your laptop but for the looks of it even that way you would notice a huge difference with whatever you have installed on your laptop right now.
There are many linux flavors to test, and maybe people around here can give you better examples, but at the tip of my tongue right now there’s ubuntu or fedora, which have great hardware support by default.
I appreciate the advice! All my looking around so far has me thinking Mint or Bazzite, but I think Mint will end up being what I go with so I actually learn how to troubleshoot in case I need to move to something else in the future.
I’ll look for a free drive and try and test this afternoon!
I’ve got a laptop from 2012 that still works like new lmao. Not a chance that would be the case under Windows
Just install Linux today. Don’t wait.
I would if I could handle significant downtime on my computer. I absolutely cannot have my only device not working for some elements of my life at the moment, so I’m hesitant to just swap and hope. Someone else recommended testing live distros, though, so I may try that for a couple weeks just to see if anything goes wrong.
