Linus and Linux challenge

[plox321]

Does anyone else find it frustrating that he didn't go with Ubuntu or PopOS, but instead went with Manjaro + KDE.

As if new user would go for Manjaro and some random XFCE distro instead of Ubuntu or PopOS.
Also isn't it frustrating that Luke is using XFCE and Linus KDE and not Gnome?

Gnome is basically default desktop environment with Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian and PopOS having using it by default, KDE has (no offense to fans) awkward fonts, icons. As if there is no designer on that project or clear vision how everything should look like.

[whispous]

Well, no - the variability and wide variety of not just choices, but MATURE choices is one of the most important aspects of using a Linux distro.

[ascendings]

Well Linus did start with Pop!_OS but he ran into issues early on, and probably went to Manjaro + KDE by recommendation of Anthony. It's honestly not a bad choice, even if it wouldn't be one I would've made - Manjaro is solid and KDE has been pretty good when I've used it. It was a little frustrating seeing Linus not read what the error was and just kinda glimpse at the window and try to force install Steam, since that's what messed up his system. But that's kinda the point of the challenge though, no? Act like a normal user and try to daily drive Linux? Luke I'm not sure about, last I saw was he was on Linux Mint but he was thinking about changing.

 

Gnome may be the "default" for a lot of distros, but it's not the only desktop environment out there and is kind of a big paradigm shift compared to what Linus and Luke were used to in Windows, whereas KDE and Cinnamon (from Mint) are pretty similar to that.

[igormp]

21 minutes ago, plox321 said:

Does anyone else find it frustrating that he didn't go with Ubuntu or PopOS, but instead went with Manjaro + KDE.

No, why should I care? I'm not following this "challenge", but if he found KDE pretty and decided to go for manjaro after doing some googling, what's the problem?

[maplepants]

I'm interested in seeing how the actual video goes, but I think the whole point of the challenge was that they might make a mistake in picking the wrong distro or something like that. The idea was to see how two really techy Windows guys could handle switching to Linux and still being able to game.

 

If the end result turns out to be that it's hard for people who aren't already deep in the know with desktop Linux to pick the right distro, that seems a pretty valid outcome for this challenge.

 

There are a lot of complaints here that seem to start off assuming that the point of the Linux challenge is exclusively to show how easy/amazing gaming on desktop Linux is. But the vibe that I get from the WAN Show segments so far is very different from that. To me, it seems like the point of the challenge is basically just to see what it's like to actually switch your main gaming PC over to Linux as a new user. I think there's a reason that Anthony isn't doing the challenge, it just wouldn't be the same type of video.

[Normand_Nadon]

I use Linux since 2013 and when I tried Manjaro lately, I found it was a painful experience, but one that made me learn... But it should not be marketed as a newcomer distro, that is way off with reality...
What I find frustrating, is that HE KNOWS THAT... he is a tech guy... Arch meme are all over the internet... I could bet that this was to generate more views and floatplane subscriptions. (Buying a game on the Microsoft store and wanting it to work on Linux... really? Who buys anything from that store anyways!)

I have mixed feelings about his series... It clearly dragged a lot of new users to Linux, but it might also discourage many.

 

 

[A literal rat]

49 minutes ago, Normand_Nadon said:

Buying a game on the Microsoft store and wanting it to work on Linux... really? Who buys anything from that store anyways!)

people who want to pay games on the Microsoft store, this isn't his fault and blaming him for using a store is really not a good way to make it seem like you guys want change. that sounds way closer to just. "play what works on linux dont attempt to fix the bistro"

[HumbleProblems]

2 hours ago, A literal rat said:

people who want to pay games on the Microsoft store, this isn't his fault and blaming him for using a store is really not a good way to make it seem like you guys want change. that sounds way closer to just. "play what works on linux dont attempt to fix the bistro"

 

Do you get upset when an app your purchased on the Mac App Store doesn't work on your windows machine?  When someone random on the internet gets the source and makes a sketchy port, would you lay the blame of the unreliability of that port on the Windows OS?

Edited November 6, 2021 by HumbleProblems
that -> the

[A literal rat]

2 minutes ago, HumbleProblems said:

 

Do you get upset when an app your purchased on the Mac App Store doesn't work on your windows machine?  When someone random on the internet gets the source and makes a sketchy port, would you lay the blame of that unreliability of that port on the Windows OS?

you have a point there

 

[Normand_Nadon]

9 hours ago, A literal rat said:

people who want to pay games on the Microsoft store, this isn't his fault and blaming him for using a store is really not a good way to make it seem like you guys want change. that sounds way closer to just. "play what works on linux dont attempt to fix the bistro"

Oh, you got me wrong there... If there is a bug in a distro, I don't like when people pretend it doesn't exist and play "fanboy".

But this is different. The Microsoft store is the worst in terms of "crossplay" and multi-devices... It is worst than some closed console stores...

Minecraft is a good example: If you bought the game on the Microsoft store, your account is tied in there and you can't use the game anywhere else. If you bought the game from Mojang directly, you can play the game on everything that can run it, with the same account, even the old WiiU (been there, done that!)

[Arika]

22 hours ago, plox321 said:

Does anyone else find it frustrating that he didn't go with Ubuntu or PopOS, but instead went with Manjaro + KDE.

As if new user would go for Manjaro and some random XFCE distro instead of Ubuntu or PopOS.

You can blame the community (both LTT and the Linux community) for that. Manjaro was at the top of the poll as for which distro to use.

And even when I was searching around myself for which distro to put on my laptop  Manjaro was always suggested right alongside pop os 

 

22 hours ago, plox321 said:

As if new user would go for Manjaro

How exactly would a new user know anything about manjaro and whether OT not it's a user friendly distro?

 

 

I think it's fantastic that he used Manjaro, part of the Linux challenge is how easy is it for someone without Linux experience to replace windows, so something that would need to be mentioned is that recommendations from the Linux community might not be in the interests of a brand new user with no experience 

[HumbleProblems]

30 minutes ago, Arika S said:

You can blame the community (both LTT and the Linux community) for that. Manjaro was at the top of the poll as for which distro to use.

And even when I was searching around myself for which distro to put on my laptop  Manjaro was always suggested right alongside pop os 

 

How exactly would a new user know anything about manjaro and whether OT not it's a user friendly distro?

If you google "best linux distros for beginners", almost every list that is given has Manjaro on the list, but more than half-way down, and always with a disclaimer about the learning curve involved.  pop_OS! and elementary OS are usually at the top of the list (or just behind Ubuntu), and for good reason, as they are more intuitive, include better GUI package managers, and are more stable.

 

30 minutes ago, Arika S said:

I think it's fantastic that he used Manjaro, part of the Linux challenge is how easy is it for someone without Linux experience to replace windows, so something that would need to be mentioned is that recommendations from the Linux community might not be in the interests of a brand new user with no experience 

 

Unlike other viewers, I don't begrudge the choice of Manjaro, but I think the LTT community did a disservice to Linus on the poll. Manjaro has it's own host of issues, like it doesn't use the Archlinux repos, instead maintaining their own, and that can put you behind the rolling release.  This isn't always a problem, but with apps like Discord that refuse to load unless you have the latest version, this can make them unusable for a few days while the Manjaro team catches up.  Issues like this can be a pretty heavy turn-off for inexperienced users who don't know how to work around them.

[HumbleProblems]

Ignore me: Accidentally posted a second time.

[Normand_Nadon]

I think it is part of the issue, the community is dishonnest (not necessarily on purpouse) about the learning curve involved in certain distros... 

There is a learning curve when switching OS, anyways... But some distros are steeper than others. Manjaro is one such distro!

 

Also, one thing that people fail to suggest when suggesting switching to Linux, is trying alternative Linux compatible softwares instead of trying to run Windows executable through WINE as the first solution!

[DrSparklegasm]

I think Linus should give Pop!_OS another shot now that they fixed the issue with apt. I've been running Majaro KDE myself for a few months now (and I've used Kubuntu/etc. for a good long while now) and even for me it's had some odd challenges or quirks.

 

I can't speak to the experience on Pop because I haven't messed with it a lot, but gaming on Ubuntu is much simpler. I have it set as a living room PC game runner, and (sadly) running a 1080 Ti to boot. There are some quirks, but most things have run fine out there with little issues, even when run from Steam Big Picture with controller. Linus would probably have had a better experience in general if he went that route.

[18358414]

I've had nothing but issues with Gnome.  Randomly locking up due to its dependence on communicating with dbus (having your whole DE lock up until the gnome-settings-daemon times out is annoying, also annoying is the fact that my journalctl gets stuffed with 'gsd-binary timed out' even on a fresh install), sometimes it randomly breaks every GTK GUI because of a 'tracker-miner' process that goes commando (requiring you to run a tracker reset), as well as the whole desktop restarting every time you save a file because your /home/user/.config/user-dirs.dirs broke during an update (this will play tricks with other desktop environments, but Gnome handled it the worst that I've seen).

 

I think they dodged a bullet not using Gnome.  It may be the default for many distros, but that doesn't mean they've implemented it correctly.  In terms of being able to efficiently use your machine, I'll say Gnome is pretty good (it gets the job done)... but if you don't know how to fix these under-the-hood things, it can be a very bad experience. 

[beace]

Not at all. Luke is the big brain here for going with Linux Mint, which is a time-tested good ol' Ubuntu, thus Debian, derivative that Todd Howard would sell you thirteen times a year because it just works.

 

I started with LInux Mint XFCE, and man did it give a great transition into Linux world - I could do everything I couldn't do on Windows (terminal magic and package management glory), while being able to do everything I could on Windows, including plug-and-play gaming.

 

While Pop!_OS is based on Ubuntu as well, I kinda expected something unexpected to happen (not to that degree, though) because it just seems like a new player in the arena, and that's bound to attract at least some sort of issues. I don't blame them or say they're a terrible choice - no, props to them for trying to make Linux more accessible and all, but that's the thing a lot of other distros have been and are trying to achieve, and it's not even about installing Nvidia drivers. It's all about the very basics of the user interaction and what is expected from the end user of a Linux distribution.

 

And Manjaro is by no means a bad choice for a beginner - you get Arch Wiki, you get a massive community as well, you get everything else than a regular Arch user would in terms of package availability, and those things actually do make for an easier time on Arch-based distributions, especially when you want to install something and have to find and manually install a ton of dependencies and then enable some PPAs, and then something else entirely, all while on Arch-based distro you just install what you need from the AUR or even the official repositories and call it a day. Proton-GE is a great example.

[xAcid9]

Going Pop!_OS or Ubuntu won't change the fact that he still need to use the Github script for his GoXLR because the developer didn't bother to create a package for Linux user. 

 

I think Linus himself chose that font style, no way that was out of the box font. 

[Scotsman10]

I have been a PC user for 25 years +, my first PC had a 540mb Hard drive and 8mb Ram and ran OS/2 and windows 3.1, and the first PC game I bought was Magic Carpet. I bought a copy of DOS for dummies to allow me to understand what I was doing when installing and running games.

 

I dont consider myself a Power User, but I have owned/bought/built a number of pc's over the years. 3 months ago my graphics card gave up the ghost (AMD R9 290), which prompted me to dive into the market and buy an RTX 3060 which cost double the MSRP but was favorable with other retailers at the time (and most importantly was available).

 

Having decided to get the new graphics card, I decided it was time to update the whole system and procured all the items necessary for the build. Having installed Linux Mint on an ancient system which had been running Windows Vista on an AMD Athlon 64 (which still runs great and is ideal for light web browsing, e-mail  and document handling), and having watched Anthonys Install Linux instead of Windows 11 - Here's how! decided that with a new PC, this was the ideal time to to escape the ever more intrusive microsoft eco system.

 

Following Anthonys recommendation and some added research, I decided on Pop!_OS.

Download and install of the operating system was straight forward and I was delighted with everything, the look and feel of Pop!_OS was great, and for 95% of my usage I was more than happy to have moved from Windows to Linux.

 

I dont have a lot of games in my steam library (Age Of Wonders III, Rise Of The Tomb Raider,  The Bard's Tale, The Witcher 3, Thief, and Cities Skylines are among the titles I am currently playing) and having what i thought was all the requisites for gaming installed  including Lutris, Wine, and Steam, decided to run up Cities Skylines and build a new city.

 

This was when things started to go wrong, as with a lot of Cities Skylines players on PC I use a fair amount of Mods for the added ease of play and look of the game. When I started up the game it popped up the message that the Trafic Manager mod (probably the main mod I wouldn't do without) needed something else installed to function.

It was difficult to find out what exactly needed to be  installed and how to install it, different versions for different Linux distros, conflicting and outdated info available online.

After being frustrated by hours of searching and lack of clarity on what exactly to download and how to install (easily). I did a clean install of Windows 10 pro, downloaded and installed steam and installed cities skylines (including all my mods) and was playing the game with no problems in a short period of time.

 

Although I haven't totally given up on Linux, I think that getting some ease of use isuues ironed out would go a long way to enticing more users over.

I am currently considering doing a separate install of Pop!_OS on a second ssd for a dual boot system which I can tinker with at leisure.

If it hadn't been for the fact I just wanted to pass some time playing a game I may have persevered and got my system working fine, but the plethora of misinformation just led me to give up and revert to what I knew would just work.

 

BTW. I managed to fix the graphics card and my old PC (Intel® Core™ i5-4690K | ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB | AMD R9 290 | 16GB DDR3) was gifted to a 12 year old For Youtube and The Sims and she's delighted as its better than the 8 year old family PC (a Dell of some description with internal graphics).

[Xiee]

As someone who daily drives Pop!_OS, I kind of cringed a bit. I have no idea why Linus thought installing stuff on Pop!_OS had to be only in the terminal but Pop!_OS has it's on "app store" called the "Pop Shop". If he installed Steam through the Pop! Shop, he wouldn't have borked the desktop environment. I've installed Steam several times on a fresh install using the Pop Shop and I've yet to bork my system the way Linus did. Ugh...

[Sho2048]

The only thing he literally had to do to fix his issue was to refresh the shop and the correct package dependencies would’ve shown up. Instead he brute forced it and did not read anything in the terminal, and yea, it was telling him he was trying to do something dangerous right in the same line where it asked him to override it if he was sure. While now it’s better for sure, it still is pretty maddening that people do not even read plain english 

[xAcid9]

4 hours ago, Xiee said:

I have no idea why Linus thought installing stuff on Pop!_OS had to be only in the terminal but Pop!_OS has it's on "app store" called the "Pop Shop". If he installed Steam through the Pop! Shop, he wouldn't have borked the desktop environment. I've installed Steam several times on a fresh install using the Pop Shop and I've yet to bork my system the way Linus did. Ugh..

IIRC he did use the store but unfortunately at that time they(Pop!_OS) released Steam package with a broken dependencies. 

[Mihle]

7 hours ago, Xiee said:

As someone who daily drives Pop!_OS, I kind of cringed a bit. I have no idea why Linus thought installing stuff on Pop!_OS had to be only in the terminal but Pop!_OS has it's on "app store" called the "Pop Shop". If he installed Steam through the Pop! Shop, he wouldn't have borked the desktop environment. I've installed Steam several times on a fresh install using the Pop Shop and I've yet to bork my system the way Linus did. Ugh...

He did try to use the POP shop but it threw out a warning and didn't let him install it.

[Xiee]

15 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

IIRC he did use the store but unfortunately at that time they(Pop!_OS) released Steam package with a broken dependencies. 

 

13 hours ago, Mihle said:

He did try to use the POP shop but it threw out a warning and didn't let him install it.

Oh I missed that part. I stand corrected then. What a bad time for Pop's repo to go down during Linus' testing.

[System Coding]

I think manjaro is not a right option coz i arch based systems are confusing and PopOS is just better for gaming and also if he took garuda that will be good as well