Don’t let Lemmy mislead you into thinking Linux is a drop-in replacement or easy to switch to. It’s a difficult process that takes learning, but hopefully you’ll find it worthwhile. Good luck with your troubleshooting.

You’re in the picture. You are seen.

It’s a strength check. It takes the might of Thor to squeeze the plug enough, in a tight space, at an odd angle, behind the computer.

Is that why I can’t seem to find it on my laptop? Skill issue?

I wonder what passport people like you hold? This sounds like passport privilege. Those with “good” passports get to travel where they want without a thought.

There are many countries where they scrutinise where you’re going to be staying and how you’re going to pay. You can’t apply for any visa without giving proof of accommodation bookings and showing bank statements.

I’ve been to America before Trump and there were plenty of questions at the border about where I was going and to see my confirmed hotel bookings, and I went with a “good” passport (UK) at the Canadian border.

I agree with your comment…except for the part about a small learning curve. The learning curve is steep and difficult. You’ve got to be willing to jump in as an enthusiast and not a casual user. This is not the choice for the vast majority of normies (as you rightly conclude). The saving grace for Linux will be pre-installed systems with extremely polished UI’s (like the Steam Deck).

I’m highly motivated to stay on Linux, but there’s still a list of open issues for me (this is a year and a half after adoption…I’m just living with these limitations now, and there are a couple more I’ve added to my list of unsolvable problems since).

And this is why Linux is still far from mass adoption. Normie’s will not be able to troubleshoot this stuff right out of the box. If there’s going to be widespread adoption then Linux needs to come pre-installed and set up, and preferably unbreakable (like Steam OS).

You’re going to get a hundred different answers about distros. There are a lot of knowledgeable people who forget what the beginner experience is like.

Mint is universally recommended and well loved. It works well and you can’t go wrong. It uses Cinammon desktop environment and I wanted KDE so I didn’t go for it.

Fredora is also top tier and again you can’t go wrong. This comes in many flavours (including Bazzite which is an immutable Fedora distro pre-set towards gaming, or Nobara).

When you’re wiping your drive anyway and setting up new and fresh, then this is the best time to install different distros and test drive them for a few hours/days. Ultimately this is not a life changing decision; and your choice can always be changed later.

I personally did all this a year ago and settled on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It has been great and this distro doesn’t get recommended enough. The desktop environment will be your daily use experience. The underlying distro will be your mechanics under the hood. I would suggest you pick something “beginner friendly” unless you really want to take on a steeper learning curve.

I’m getting better at finding new ways to break my installation. Now I don’t mess with things and just use it as is. Might start messing with stuff on my laptop rather than PC so I can mess up there instead.

I’ve got a G502 and couldn’t get Piper to work. Are there particular permissions I need to give it in Flatseal?

I sold my laptop last year and it took me 2 months for me to find the PC parts I wanted. I’ve got nothing exciting to report. I used the Steam Deck as my full time PC for 2 months and it worked perfectly for home use and as a virtual workstation for remote logon for work. This basically gave me the confidence to move to Linux fulltime and I put OpenSUSE on my PC by the time I got it built.

I still have to use my wife’s windows laptop for some hardware peripheral settings (my GP2040-CE custom controller, Logitech mouse macro button settings, gamesir controller), but overall using the Steam Deck fulltime was a good experience.

Ever had to pull the trigger?

Wife approval factor

My wife won’t use it if she can’t see an app for it to click on to start using immediately. Going through browsers is not an option. Not having a dedicated app on the LG TV is not an option. Not being able to find something instantly means instant rejection. She refused Plex, but now sometimes uses it and has learnt to find subtitles, etc by herself.

I don’t touch my self hosted apps. If something doesn’t behave properly on the first attempt then it gets rejected from our household. It’s only for us enthusiast nerds to put up with kanky UI and setup issues for the sake of superior functionality. Normie’s won’t tolerate it.

Thank you satan

I read these conversations. I have no idea what’s going on. I’m glad there are people who understand who are working on things. I tell myself I can still use Linux as a commoner and this back-end doesn’t really matter for me. I still don’t understand what the hell is going on with Wayland or X11 or systemd or Snap or BTRFS/ext4 or any of this stuff that people feel strongly about. I’ll just keep my head down. My OpenSUSE PC and Steam Deck seem to be working (without doing the undergraduate degree amount of wiki reading that people say I need).

Maybe then it will be the year of Linux.

Fellow OpenSUSE Chad 🤙

Tumbleweed brotherhood ✊

It doesn’t get used or recommended enough.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/btw-i-use-arch

You may think you’re new…but clearly you have the spirit of a Linux veteran.

Arch btw

😆