This is a forum where people seek help. Of course you’re going to see problems here. Nobody posts “hey it’s been several years and I’ve had no problems.”
Of course linux is stable. It runs like 80% of servers on the Internet.
Also can confirm. Been using Arch, which most people consider requires more fiddling than other distros, for almost 10 years now and have had few issues with it. I've had to fix my Windows install more than my Linux.
Personally, I don’t get the appeal of distro hopping. I think it’s nice to try different concepts, but there aren’t that many.
You basically have the “classic” distributions, like Debian, Suse, Fedora and their derivatives and if you want those split up into the stable and the rolling distributions (Arch, maybe Debian Sid). Then there’s the source-based distributions, most notably Gentoo and derivatives. Declarative distributions, NixOS and GUIX system. And then maybe the newer breed of immutable distributions like Fedora Silverblue.
To me, the difference between an Arch system and Debian are kind of minimal. Yet I’d always prefer Arch. But why would I hop to OpenSUSE?
Granted, I always install from the terminal anyways and build my system to my needs, so I usually don’t get the default experience.
I’m going to do my best to “wait” for PopOS 24.04 before I hop out again. It seemsbI finally got Endeavour right, with hybrid graphics and all. The only pain was actually how long it took to install Lubre Wolf. Ah, and that the first attempt at installing flatpaks, nothing was showing up after install until I rebooted. But now they work as expected.
If you pick a well known distribution such as Pop Os or Linux Mint you will have very little issues, and if you have any, you will be able to easily find help since they are very popular, and they are also using Ubuntu as a base, which is the most popular of the popular distros.
I’m old. Mint 15 XFCE, I burnt an installed copy onto a thumb drive, and ran into a weird grub glitch. Asked on a Mint forum, and Clem himself (maker of Mint) wrote me a detailed how-to-fix. Warm fuzzy feelings for Mint.
Vouching for PopOS, which has been my primary OS for years. The only thing I run a Win VM for is the old Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas & Campaign Cartographer. I suppose I could tinker with Wine, but it tends to be finicky with the latter.
Just like with Windows, the more advanced stuff you do, the more advanced problems you’ll have. If you just wanna set and forget, avoid arch based and you’re golden.
There was a time when I had to do that. I was a teenager. I had no idea what I was doing. And it was many many years later that I finally learned how to quit it. That pain keeps me away to this day.
That’s assuming that you’re able to google it. Before everyone had a phone in their pocket, and 17 computers lying around if you were stuck in command line with no GUI then you had no option.
I’m not sure of you are trying to be funny, but just in case you are not, if their only working environment was a terminal and they didn’t know how to get out of vim, they were fucked to begin with.
I’m guessing they entered vim because they copied it from somewhere, be it another window, having vim in a terminal emulator, a mobile phone where they searched whatever, or another PC. If we are talking about a non graphical PC with just a single tty or a user without the knowledge of changing ttys or without the knowledge of searching the web from the command line, who somehow entered vim without external input, that’s kinda on them, idk. There’s several fuckup steps in there, all nicely stacked.
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Thing is, when people say that windows doesn’t break, they mean that it doesn’t break for normal users. I’d be surprised if those know what a command like editor is, to begin with.
Exactly … If all you’re going to do is go online and maybe write a document once in a while … a simple distro like Mint or PopOS will just work without issue.
This is odd phrasing. It sounds like you’re saying mint and pop aren’t capable of more. Same when people call them "good for newbs"n implying that more advanced users flock elsewhere.
I second this advice. Arch is a rolling-release distribution, so most of its packages are updated to the latest releases as soon as they come out, regardless of whether they’re tested to be stable with other software and hardware configurations.
I have “ubuntu server” installed on an old computer I use for hosting game servers. That thing is incredibly stable and low-maintenance.
One of my favorite things about Linux is this: you can try it. Get a thumb drive, get Rufus or Etcher. Download Mint, Ubuntu, something with a “Live Linux”. Boot from the thumb drive, spend an hour or two surfing, clicking around, seeing if things work. 2018, you had like an 80% chance of a flawless experience. 2024, it’s way higher! Plus, the alternatives have gotten slower, more bloated, more interested in monetizing you than serving you, so even if it feels strange, and you have to relearn some stuff, more than ever, it might be worth it.
Even if it didn’t work quite right, keep the thumb drive around. The number of times I’ve rescued an important file off of a messed up system using a thumb drive with Mint on it? You’d be surprised.
Agreed! That’s a couple steps after you convert into a full-blown LiNerd, but I have a Ventoy nestled next to my portable Mint. I landed on Ventoy after I snagged an IODD-2541 and decided that someone had to have implemented the concept in software.
Just go ahead and try. You don’t really need our permission to do that. Most distros support “live install” direct from the installation media, without making changes to your system. If you don’t like it, reboot and you’re back to whatever you had before
Have fun!
And to answer your double negation questions, yes and yes.
There’s a common joke that it’s not linux, it’s gnu linux and this is followed by a long copy pasta about how linux is only the kernel which is the code that handles managing how your machine is used
In this case this is important, linux can be a stable os (notible examples include android os, linux mint, debian stable, as well as the server distributions) these generally update slower in order to make sure bugs get squashed. On the other hand there are linux operating systems that are difficult to use for a beginner such as arch, void, and gentoo. There are also distrobutions that have a bad habit of breaking manjaro, gentoo, come to mind. If you want a linux experience that is set it up once and have no more problems than anyone might expect to have on windows you can do that (sometimes you’ll run into a situation where you have a device that doesn’t play well with linux like an algato streamdeck or a device that doesn’t have a driver yet like my sister’s laptop webcam (thanks acer much appreciated) but in general you can have a stable easy experience as long as you aren’t trying to do anything crazy
Here’s my recommendation, make a linux mint thumbdrive boot off it, play around with it, and test varius hardware you have (ie bluetooth, webcam, that one usb dingle doop that no one else has but you use every day). Maybe don’t install it (or do chances are it’ll be just fine) but boot off it often, and once you’ve learnt the os pretty well, back up everything you care about and install linux mint
Most problems I run into with Linux are caused by me doing weird things. Linux doesn’t prevent you from messing with things you don’t understand but if you just want to use it as a standard desktop then you shouldn’t have many issues aside from finding replacement applications for things you are used to using.
If you decide to start tinkering, just keep a backup of your home directory since it contains all your settings and files.
It’s as stable as you want it to be. I break my system a lot more than expected because I’m deleted directories and files I’m not supposed to. Experimenting with a bunch of stuff. My laptop is using the same distro (Arch) and I don’t do weird stuff with it so it runs perfectly fine.
The thing is that people use Linux and than find it so good that they try to find problems in order to spend time playing with it. It’s like a hobby, or a game… But you can also use it without making it a hobby. Ubuntu was born for this, but for that I would honestly suggest something like Manjaro
I never tried PopOS, but I would never suggest Ubuntu. Manjaro is easy, updated, there are many people using it, offers large number of software, works well with Nvidia and other propietary drivers (the thing that generates issues for new users, usually). I know people think they had “security” problems, but they always explained what happened, and they just had a bad contract with the CDN service and a misleading error message in pamac, that didn’t impact the security of the user.
First time I tried switching to linux I went with mint and I had a lot of problems, everything I hated about windows seems to be even worse there. I switched back to windows for a year but last month I gave linux another shot with Manjaro. And I managed to fully switch to linux without any big problems so far. There is a lot to like about it, especially for a linux begginer like myself.
I am not really qualified to recommend it, but my experience as a noob has been great (gaming with linux native games and windows games, watching movies, customizing things, modding games…)
As everyone is saying, Linux can be perfectly stable, depending on your distribution.
The only thing I’d think about is that you could have to tweak a few things to get everything working at the beginning.
For instance, I had nothing to change to make everything work in Fedora on my Surface Go, but I gad to enable rom fusion in the terminal to get the wifi working on my wife’s MacBook Pro.
Otherwise, you can just enjoy your Linux distribution as long as you don’t want to do crazy stuff out of the beaten paths.
Linux Mint (I'd recomment Debian edition, LMDE) is basically what you want to try out. I've set up a PC with it for my stepfather that hasn't used Linux at all and he's happy with it. It's designed to be as newbie-friendly as possible. You won't have more issues with it than you'll already have using Windows.
Then if you feel unsatisfied with anything about it, you can go looking for other linux distributions (distros) because you have a general idea what's happening.
You won't have more issues with it than you'll already have using Windows.
You absolutely will, and the ones you get will be harder to solve. It's far more useable than it used to be, but the overall experience with Windows is still easier.
BUT it probably is quite usable for you overall. Just don't go into it expecting nothing but smooth sailing.
Depends on what you want to do. For most general uses, Linux is stable af.
Unlike Windows, Linux doesn’t really try to stop you from doing much when it comes to customization, scripting and tinkering, the only limitations are your abilities and how well you can find proper information on the internet. The more exotic sort of thing you try to do the more likely you may inadvertently break something. That said, have fun with it, try the live distro, then dual booting first, and if you do break something you can easily reinstall, until you’re ready to move fully.
Look, programs always have issues, always have bugs. The best model on linux dostro is “rolling release”, which is explicit about constantly fixing the issues.
Yes. Install Linux Mint and be done. Just works. A lot of “problems” people have are because they enjoy tinkering and that will sometimes break stuff. Leave it alone and it’ll be very stable.
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