I cannot blame Linus for Linux' issues

[s_k]

My goodness, so I feel Linus with his Linux challenges.
I have been messing with Linux on and off since the early 2000's, good old Redhat and SuSe days.
Though hardware support got a lot better, I just keep finding that Linux is a buggy mess that needs too much tinkering and fixing to keep going.
I run Ubuntu on my "HTPC" as it's a 4th gen i5. Works pretty reliably, although updating has not been done in months as it just won't. I can fix it, but it'll break itself in no time.
And then there's a corner of my bedroom I use for digitising 8mm film and video tapes. Another 4th gen, i7, 16gb of ram. 
It also ran Ubuntu, and then well...

That happened. I fixed it succesfully with some help from Google. It ran fine for a day and then...

Same issue as the HTPC. I fixed that (knowing full well it wouldn't stay fixed) and the next time I booted it, the file system shat itself again.
Gave up, installed Mint after Luke's raving reviews (and my pretty good experiences too).
Easy peasy install, all working, OBS on it, Telegram on it to chat with friends, end of. Nothing else. Very bare install.

Ran fine for a few days, then today...

Killall, Killall -p, killall x, any of the commands I could find on google (on my phone, of course...), no way of killing firefox. It just keeps doing... This.

 

I started and closed Terminal quite a few times, and I promise you all I clicked 'yes' every time I did

Does it even WANT to be my default terminal?

All right then, I don't need Firefox that much right now anyway.
Let me at least empty my trash...

Nope. Another nope.

So that's three perfectly normal actions:

- Starting Firefox
- Closing Firefox
- Emptying the Trash

I promise you this PC ran fine with Windows 10, despite all of its flaws.
Can anyone explain me what I could possibly be doing wrong?
I installed Mint from a thumb drive, clean install, no dualboot, just Mint.
I installed OBS from the app store, as well as Telegram, and it's already a buggy mess.

HALP!
Luke, send me some of your good fortune.
Linux, keep those bad Linux omens away from me!

[WereCat]

IDK, these seem like something went seriously wrong. I'd run a RAM test to make sure it's not the memory corrupting the system. Check drive maybe as well while at it.

[jaslion]

11 minutes ago, s_k said:

Can anyone explain me what I could possibly be doing wrong?

Honestly this feels like file corruption and Id look for a memtest/drive test.

 

Hell maybe the usb used to install had gone bad as well this is errors youd get when your install had inaccesible files or corruption going on. Since its so random I lean to hardware failiure as these machines are around 15 years old now and if its a olldddddd ssd in there or even ram it can happen. I repurpose a lot of old junkers for free to give to people in less fortunate situations and well it is a pattern I notice sometimes. Hp ddr3 ram especially the hynix rebrands from that era have a higher failiure rate from personal experience oddly neough.

[xAcid9]

IMHO, either your storage or your memory stick is failing. I had similar experienced with the former.

[SaperPL]

There's a good explanation of THE Linus himself on the mess with Linux distros. It's both about ease of use, but also about the dependency chain mess that can be easily broken because of all the different distros and their different / separate approaches to app packaging:

 

 

[Timme]

run this in terminal: "gnome-disks"
It should open Ubuntu's utility where you can run SMART check on your disk. Is it SSD or HDD?

[s_k]

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

IDK, these seem like something went seriously wrong. I'd run a RAM test to make sure it's not the memory corrupting the system. Check drive maybe as well while at it.

I mean, it ran fine with Windows. Would be very coincidental, especially since I also got the update errors on a totally different system

 

 

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Honestly this feels like file corruption and Id look for a memtest/drive test.

 

Hell maybe the usb used to install had gone bad as well this is errors youd get when your install had inaccesible files or corruption going on. Since its so random I lean to hardware failiure as these machines are around 15 years old now and if its a olldddddd ssd in there or even ram it can happen. I repurpose a lot of old junkers for free to give to people in less fortunate situations and well it is a pattern I notice sometimes. Hp ddr3 ram especially the hynix rebrands from that era have a higher failiure rate from personal experience oddly neough.

two different USB sticks, but in all honesty, I have been having these kinds of issues with any Linux distro since 2002.
I'm happy to reinstall with another ssd and usb stick but... I don't hold high hopes. If this is the general consensus though, happy to give it a shot!

 

30 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

IMHO, either your storage or your memory stick is failing. I had similar experienced with the former.

I'll soon reinstall with another ssd and usb stick. It's unlikely, because I have had similar issues every time I tried linux since 2002. I feel that i'm cursed much like Linus :D. 
It also runs 2x8gb of memory so I can always take one module out to see if that helps. 

[s_k]

4 minutes ago, Timme said:

run this in terminal: "gnome-disks"
It should open Ubuntu's utility where you can run SMART check on your disk. Is it SSD or HDD?

SSD. Running mint now. But yes, there’s definitely something wrong as this one also just shat itself: 

 

Let me install another ssd, unplug the hdd and report back. TBC!

[s_k]

Hah, no surprise this would be iffy. I'll install a Sandisk one. 
Would make sense why the system shat itself.
That being said, that update error I got on multiple Ubuntu installs now. Let's see if Mint is a little more reliable with that...

[Timme]

Just now, s_k said:

Hah, no surprise this would be iffy. I'll install a Sandisk one. 
Would make sense why the system shat itself.
That being said, that update error I got on multiple Ubuntu installs now. Let's see if Mint is a little more reliable with that...

It might be just it aging... These are 250GB, right?
Also, the SMART for Mint/Ubuntu
Run "lsblk -d -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,TYPE" to see the list of disks,
then 
sudo apt install -y smartmontools && sudo smartctl -a /dev/*** , where *** is the tag of the drive(sda,sdb, or w/e)

[Eigenvektor]

25 minutes ago, s_k said:

I mean, it ran fine with Windows. Would be very coincidental, especially since I also got the update errors on a totally different system

If the disk was already close to failing a fresh install might've simply pushed it over the edge.

 

All of your screenshots point towards some kind of hardware issue, not a software bug, especially because it affects so many things at once.

[s_k]

33 minutes ago, Timme said:

It might be just it aging... These are 250GB, right?
Also, the SMART for Mint/Ubuntu
Run "lsblk -d -o NAME,SIZE,MODEL,TYPE" to see the list of disks,
then 
sudo apt install -y smartmontools && sudo smartctl -a /dev/*** , where *** is the tag of the drive(sda,sdb, or w/e)

Not going to lie; I am annoyed that this is the way to go about things in 2026. I try to avoid Terminal where possible because, come on now... 
Still, I'll give this a shot. I did let balena etcher check the usb stick and it reported no errors, that should be fine. 
And yes, that drive suited me very well for an AliExpress special that was already dirt cheap 10+ years ago. It can rest now. 
I opened it up and was happy to see actual cache. It's not too bad! That being said, it's my first SSD that died ever apart from ones that were DOA. 
Even my 2012 120gb Intel one still worked fine. 

[s_k]

19 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

If the disk was already close to failing a fresh install might've simply pushed it over the edge.

 

All of your screenshots point towards some kind of hardware issue, not a software bug, especially because it affects so many things at once.

Knowing which disk was in it now (I completely forgot), I can only imagine it had to go wrong some day!
That being said, the update issue appears to not be a hardware issue. Any ideas on that?

[s_k]

Welp. I guess that usb stick wasn’t happy . This is going so well haha

[Timme]

2 minutes ago, s_k said:

Not going to lie; I am annoyed that this is the way to go about things in 2026. I try to avoid Terminal where possible because, come on now... 
Still, I'll give this a shot. I did let balena etcher check the usb stick and it reported no errors, that should be fine. 
And yes, that drive suited me very well for an AliExpress special that was already dirt cheap 10+ years ago. It can rest now. 
I opened it up and was happy to see actual cache. It's not too bad! That being said, it's my first SSD that died ever apart from ones that were DOA. 
Even my 2012 120gb Intel one still worked fine. 

10 years is godlike. My petty 250 Kingston got uner 50% health in 2 years(daily OS drive, though)
And, yes, Linux, no matter what skin you attach to it, is still Linux - DIY your host and destiny, and pray the right gods to troubleshoot.

[xAcid9]

7 minutes ago, s_k said:

Welp. I guess that usb stick wasn’t happy . This is going so well haha

Did you check if your memory is error free before installing? 

 

10 minutes ago, s_k said:

Even my 2012 120gb Intel one still worked fine. 

Those are MLC SSD, of course they're much more reliable compare to todays TLC/QLC. I have a few and all still running fine, the capacity is shite though. 

[Timme]

5 minutes ago, s_k said:

Welp. I guess that usb stick wasn’t happy . This is going so well haha

Run this from the console and tell whether it is UEFI or Legacy
[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo UEFI || echo Legacy

[Eigenvektor]

13 minutes ago, s_k said:

Knowing which disk was in it now (I completely forgot), I can only imagine it had to go wrong some day!
That being said, the update issue appears to not be a hardware issue. Any ideas on that?

You mean the "could not create temporary file" "read-only file system" error or the "grub-install /dev/sda" one? Both of these point towards a failing disk. (dev = device, sda = SCSI Disk A)

[s_k]

22 minutes ago, Timme said:

10 years is godlike. My petty 250 Kingston got uner 50% health in 2 years(daily OS drive, though)
And, yes, Linux, no matter what skin you attach to it, is still Linux - DIY your host and destiny, and pray the right gods to troubleshoot.

Most of them aged better, but this one saw quite a bit of abuse. 
As for Linux; but why... With so many distro's, how is none of them able to do things graphically?
I can do DOS, I can do Windows, I can do MacOS but heck... I don't feel like going back to learning a non-graphical interface for daily use. 
This is not criticism on Linux, it's a genuine question; Why is this still the way?

 

23 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Did you check if your memory is error free before installing? 

 

Those are MLC SSD, of course they're much more reliable compare to todays TLC/QLC. I have a few and all still running fine, the capacity is shite though. 

I didn't because I had no reason to distrust it but I will next time I install it. 
With how stupidly cheap that SSD was back in the day, I did not expect it to last so long. 

 

20 minutes ago, Timme said:

Run this from the console and tell whether it is UEFI or Legacy
[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo UEFI || echo Legacy

Bios is set to UEFI, if that's what you mean?

 

 

14 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

You mean the "could not create temporary file" "read-only file system" error or the "grub-install /dev/sda" one? Both of these point towards a failing disk. (dev = device, sda = SCSI Disk A)

The last screenshot of unable to install grub, is done on a different SSD. I expect the issue was the USB stick in this case. 

[Timme]

2 minutes ago, s_k said:

Bios is set to UEFI, if that's what you mean?

It should show in what mode your USB operates. If it is also UEFI, you should reformat the SSD as GPT, and not MBR
run these
lsblk -f
sudo parted -l

[s_k]

33 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Did you check if your memory is error free before installing? 

 

Those are MLC SSD, of course they're much more reliable compare to today’s TLC/QLC. I have a few and all still running fine, the capacity is shite though. 

that’s all I get. Anything I can derive from that?

[s_k]

Interesting. 2x8gb, right?
Both in the black slots. Took one out, put it in a white slot, same.
Took that one out, grabbed the other one, put it in the other white slot, same.
Put them both in, both in white slots... And presto:

I am expecting visitors any minute now, so I'm just going to let it run. 

[s_k]

12 minutes ago, Timme said:

It should show in what mode your USB operates. If it is also UEFI, you should reformat the SSD as GPT, and not MBR
run these
lsblk -f
sudo parted -l

Wait, explain to me so I actually know what I'm doing; Why would the way the USB port runs dictate how my harddisk should be formatted? The two seem very unrelated as, once the installer is done, the USB ports has nothing to do with the hard disk controller. Or am I missing something? Not saying you are wrong, but I'd like to know WHY I do things. 
Also, if I tell the installer to 'just wipe the damn thing and install Mint', what does it format it as?

[Timme]

9 minutes ago, s_k said:

Wait, explain to me so I actually know what I'm doing; Why would the way the USB port runs dictate how my harddisk should be formatted? The two seem very unrelated as, once the installer is done, the USB ports has nothing to do with the hard disk controller. Or am I missing something? Not saying you are wrong, but I'd like to know WHY I do things. 
Also, if I tell the installer to 'just wipe the damn thing and install Mint', what does it format it as?

UEFI - format the disk as GPT
Legacy - format the drive as MBR

 

15 minutes ago, s_k said:

lsblk -f

lists all the drives/partitions currently detected on your PC

 

17 minutes ago, s_k said:

sudo parted -l

list what partition table is used an where

Let's say you have set UEFI in BIOS, and your USB drive operates in UEFI. To format the new drive, and the drive you want to format is marked "sda", this is the formatting cmd

sudo wipefs -a /dev/sda && sudo parted -s /dev/sda mklabel gpt

This is what Linux is, and it has a steep learning curve; and why it is canonically associated with... well, you know the stereotype. I really don't understand all the hype about Linux as a casual home daily driver, when Windows can be easily modified and customized to whatever.
 

[s_k]

3 minutes ago, Timme said:

UEFI - format the disk as GPT
Legacy - format the drive as MBR

 

lists all the drives/partitions currently detected on your PC

 

list what partition table is used an where

Let's say you have set UEFI in BIOS, and your USB drive operates in UEFI. To format the new drive, and the drive you want to format is marked "sda", this is the formatting cmd

sudo wipefs -a /dev/sda && sudo parted -s /dev/sda mklabel gpt

This is what Linux is, and it has a steep learning curve; and why it is canonically associated with... well, you know the stereotype. I really don't understand all the hype about Linux as a casual home daily driver, when Windows can be easily modified and customized to whatever.
 

I love how you know all this and then go 'I don't get the hype'. Very realistic!
So, the reason I use Linux; I was always a Windows user. It was actually Linus' enthusiasm about Apple M1 that got me to try a Macbook Air M1/16/256, thinking I'd sell it quickly. After some time I found that I was doing everything on the Mac, not enjoying my (rather good) windows computer. Fast forward 5 years and I've go two mac mini's, the same m1/16/256 still going strong (bit sorry about the 256 now), an iphone and an apple watch. I guess they got me. 
I still run Windows on my ROG Ally Z1 and I have an 8th gen Asus laptop that runs Windows 11 so I can easily help people out with Windows related stuff.
Windows 11 is the reason I run Linux. I have a few rather good office PC's (HP, Lenovo, Dell) that are coincidentally all 4th gen i5 and i7. They are way too good to not use at all as they only have very light tasks. The only reason I'd replace them is them not being Windows 11 compatible. Hence me messing about with Linux.
Now, the PC we are talking about here was a 15 euro thrift shop find so chances are stuff is wrong with it. We are slowly getting to the bottom of it though... 
If only there was someone in the Linux space who made a distro that's ACTUALLY usable for day to day use.