Installing Linux Doesn't Need to Change. The Experience Does.

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It's always interesting to see how people react to being told to put in their own effort instead of demanding the effort of others.

You have access to the code bases. You have access to the contributing rules. You can submit your patches to the same repos everyone else puts their code in. What exactly is being denied to you?

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Probably re:Pop nvidia driver edition.

Monitor: HDMI cable straight into the #1 HDMI port on my GPU. Probably have a DP cable around here somewhere but haven't felt like fucking with it since it worked fine on an HDMI cable on Pop. It's a standard desktop setup, not a laptop with a docking station or anything.

Wayland/xorg: no clue, it never asked and I never saw even the first pixel of graphical anything.

Yeah I thought so too re:Pop/Ubuntu, part of the reason I tried Ubuntu is because it was similar but I hoped it would have more stable drivers or the like. shrug

Secure boot: I don't remember (and can't reboot to check bios) - I think I remember having to disable it when I installed Pop, but that was several months ago and my memory is shit.

Boot: Yes, the windows boot drive (an old 128GB SATA SSD), but I hit F11 on boot adn selected USB to boot to that to do the install just like with Pop. But again the install worked fine at least on the older LTS version of Ubuntu. And it booted on USB correctly with the later version too, just as soon as it went graphical it b0rked.

Spare laptop: nope. Closest I have is an old headless NAS box that's running an old version of RedHat I think?, but also it's been in my closet for ~5 years because I don't really have anywhere to set it up. So mostly no.

Distros; I mean a lot of years ago i messed a lot with RedHat and before that Slackware, but nothing on this hardware. I have not tried Mint, and I've heard good things about it, but I mostly wanted to go with a main-line distro like ubuntu because a lot of the forum posts and such I found talking about how to fix random things seemed to be for ubuntu so it seemed like it'd be easier to get help on.

And no problem, I'm happy to answer if it means I can make this work.

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Correct. There are actual efforts going on to resolve those issues. Which begs the question, why post vague exhortations for people to "do something" about this, rather than focusing the efforts in places where it will make a difference?

This isn't a post saying "hey, come to this project and pitch in." This post is just bitching into the ether and then some folks getting butthurt when the pointless performative nonsense is called out for what it is.

Posts like this one happen on a near-daily basis all across FOSS mailing lists. It's trivial to find numerous, often young, often inexperienced people who think their idea is the one that "fixes everything". These people reason that everyone should fall over one another to put effort into their magical idea once they see the obviousness and correctness of the idea. Clearly, it's simply incorrect to find fault in an obviously perfect idea such as this one.

It's just so weird that literally none of the people with these amazing ideas are the ones doing a "git init" and getting started on the work of actually implementing their amazing ideas. Bizarre how so many spectacular, world-changing ideas need to be worked on by literally anyone BUT their champion. What a horrible world we must live in filled with nasty, evil people who simply won't volunteer their personal time when we should feel so blessed with this holy relic of an idea.

This narrative is so childish that the only response it deserves is the one echoed by nearly the entire FOSS community, "Patches welcome!"

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"shit just works"
I'm sorry but you're fucking high if you think shit just works on linux. Every problem is a rabbit hole of 3 new problems with 3 more new problems.

I am by no means saying windows is any good, or any better necessarily. But this "Linux works great and is easy to use" is a load of shit and I'm sick of hearing it.

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Boot: Yes, the windows boot drive (an old 128GB SATA SSD), but I hit F11 on boot adn selected USB to boot to that to do the install just like with Pop. But again the install worked fine at least on the older LTS version of Ubuntu. And it booted on USB correctly with the later version too, just as soon as it went graphical it b0rked.

So do you get a grub menu at all? Is there the Plymouth (green, grey and white text only) loading screen? What does booting look like? I need more detail here because I've had driver issues and this is sounding more like a boot issue. Would it be possible to remove other hard drives during a test installation then add them back afterwards? Totally understand work and life comes first and all but if you get the opportunity, I've got a hunch.

I'm thinking we need a matrix chat or something to send images and details on lol

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It doesn't though. It's just different and takes time to learn. Like if a PlayStation only user switched to Xbox or a Mac user switching to windows. It's different. In my experience Mac isn't "user friendly" because it does shit different. I took some time to learn it. Now it is

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I have to hit F11 to choose to boot the linux partition, at which point I get a grub menu. I don't recall anything that says Plymouth on it, and I normally don't get a text screen at all unless I boot into recovery mode, at which point I get the usual linux text-spam on boot.

Booting looks like:
POST, F11
Select Linux to boot from (it's listed as the 128GB SSD because that's where the MBR/etc is, but linux is on a 1TB NVMe SSD)
Get grub menu.
Select Ubuntu.
Wait a lot on a black screen.
Get a brief Ubuntu logo that lasts a couple seconds.
Black screen again for a few more seconds.
No signal.

Remove other drives: no, that would be a significant pain in the ass. But also Pop worked installed on the same NVMe SSD with the same other drives in the system, so I'm pretty sure it's not a drive/BIOS-related boot issue.

I'd be happy to chat, though I have no idea what matrix even is. Feel free to DM (does lemmy even do DMs? I'm still kinda new) if you want to try to get something like that set up tho. I'm on discord if that helps?

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If I report bug it's testing

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Of course people can have different opinions on this, but the point for me is that I am of the firm belief that immutable is a must for people that just want their OS to work indefinitely without having to take care of that aspect. And once you got that covered, I feel that you need some sort of "App Store" app out of the box where you can get whatever people may need. Ubuntu has Snaps, which to my understanding is just a different take on what Flatpaks are accomplishing.

Currently the Top 5 of the past 6 months on Distrowatch are all mutable, 2 of them are Arch-based, one comes with Xfce. I have been a Mint user myself and again, of course this is a matter of opinion, but for me the ship of using Debian derivatives has sailed, which might also subconsciously be the reason why no Ubuntu-based immutable distro has made it into my experiments. (No disrespect to Canonical and what they have done for the community since 2004, my first ever hands-on with Linux was on their 04.10 release.)

Either way I just can't see myself recommending any of those Top 5 to people who just want to use a PC reliably. And if I'm going to be the one they turn to with their problems I don't want those to potentially be about system-level breakages. When filtering by the "Immutable" tag on Distrowatch it seems that they just bunch those spins into their main distros like Ubuntu, Fedora and SUSE. I guess you can say VanillaOS is niche in comparison, but Fedora Silverblue is basically an immutable version of a well established distribution with Red Hat backing no less. And once it is set up like my pilot is now it works just fine. I guess the plan now is to keep that installation running and see how it behaves across updates/upgrades and such.

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In my experience a stable distribution is a “set and forget”, unless you start tinkering with it.

I have countless of users where I’ve installed something like Linux Mint and it’s been literally running for years without any issues. These users have no idea how to use a computer, except for logging in and opening the browser.

Obviously the more complex a setup, the more shit can go wrong.

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Honestly kid. I'm done with this. You know the answer to that. I'm done with this. You're all just too exhausting.

And again that is a Linux issue. Because no one wants to be thought of as insufferable as it appears Linux contributes are.

If one doesn't want valid critique, one should take their software private and leave everyone alone.

Otherwise anyone can make all the critiques they want. Don't like it? Don't do things in public. Make the software privately and alone

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Don't sit there being obtuse. One of the benefits of foss is that actual users help test the software and bring feedback to make it better

You just want to be thought of as special

Developers of software are a dime a dozen and becoming an outdated profession. Keep the smugness out of this otherwise.
Good day

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Yes I would disagree regarding immutable. Such a distribution cannot be secure for any lenght of time. Security updates are required. As soon as it customize in any way it is not immutable including adding flatpacks. So I do not see the attraction.

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By the way, in my view, Ubuntu using Snaps rather then native packages is a negative.

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Thanks for admitting that you don't actually care about the software. This was never about the software. This was only about your desire to control the actions of other people. Your previous comment already showed that when you chose to highlight my lack of interest in your opinion and not anything that actually matters.

You might want to consider spending less time on social media.

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And now you're lying.
Man. You really are going to tell me that's what I said?

You're being silly .. that's what I'm Saying. You can have an opinion all you want, you can stand by it, and you can defend it, but none of that makes you any less incorrect or insufferable.
.good day.

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But we know why Snaps and Flatpaks started existing. I also think they are architecturally ugly.

And I think you have a point in terms of patches potentially coming too slowly onto an immutable system. But that problem isn't an inherent one, it's just a problem if distribution updates are slow because community support is lacking. At which point you're just trying to compare Open Source to Proprietary solutions where support is explicitly paid for. I'll trust a year old Linux kernel over the latest and greatest Windows release any day.

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Well, lucky for them their fields aren't under constant attack by droves of idiots constantly being catered to. There is no watering down of those fields in the name of "user friendliness".

Also, they don't expect people to understand their field, but people don't interact and touch legal stuff or doctor stuff on a daily basis like people do with computers. If they did, then they would no doubt feel the same way about idiots who can't grasp the basics and refuse to learn the slightly more advanced shit.

It's 2025. There's no reason for anybody - but especially the older group - to not know what the start button is, or keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste, for example.

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What does 'watering down' even mean? Why is 'user friendliness' bad? Do you want computers that are harder to use for some reason? If that was the case why don't you also give up your favorite OS or interface or language and go back to carting around stacks of punch-cards or flipping physical switches to set memory registers? Or are you just trying to make yourself feel superior as a technically-minded person?

Also, I dunno if you know this, but people interact with health and legal shit all the time, that's why there are people who only do that job. Reading some email and punching some numbers into an excel sheet are about the equivalent of signing a lease or getting a flu shot. It's not their job to know how things work behind the scenes, just like it's not your job to know how to make vaccines or write legally binding contracts.

And finally, you're forgetting two important facts.

Older people tend to have been in their jobs longer, and at higher levels where their computer expertise matters less and less
Companies, especially in certain industries, don't update their hardware/software as often as IT would like them to

So that old guy you think ought to be able to know what a start button is might have never seen one because the only computers they use at work are old SPARCstations from the early 2000s, or might've worked in a bank for the last 50 years that is still using AS/400s from the late 80s or whatever; those machines can't even run windows. You tell me, what are the keyboard shortcuts for copy and paste on a DEC Alpha? Where's the power button on an SGI Onyx? I worked IT in a hospital in the late 90s that was still using computers from the early 70s and shit, it happens way more often than you think.

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Man, where to even start on this...

"Watering down" is the MS approach to design - take all the power user features, and make them less useful and less efficient to use (or just get rid of them altogether). It's a slow burn to "Take that to the nearest certified Microsoft Store so they can repair it for you".

The entire design is focused around making things HARDER to use. Less reliance on a terminal, dynamic menus whose contents are clusterfucked into little panels instead of proper menus. Hell, look at the Printers dialogue in Windows 7 and prior, then compare that to the trash they've thrown in Win 10 and 11. Everything is designed to look flashy, and be as impossibly inefficient to use. But it looks less intimidating, so stupid users love it!

Reading some email and punching some numbers into an excel sheet are about the equivalent of signing a lease or getting a flu shot.

Not sure where you're from, but when I get a flu shot, I sit in a chair and somebody who knows how to administer the shot gives it to me. I also don't get a flu shot for several hours a day several days a week. Same with leases, I may sign one every few years at most, and if it's for something serious then I would get a lawyer involved. That said, I am at least competent enough to sit in the chair and get the shot without asking "what's a chair? How do I sit? Where is my arm?" Likewise, I can read a lease and not have to ask "What is a lease? What is a signature? How do I sign this page?" I can't say the same about people in 2025 who say "What's the start button?" or have no idea that decades-old shortcuts like ctrl+c and ctrl+v are things.

Also, if you consider the amount of marketing and exposure to computers that people have had by now, yes, I would expect just about everybody to know what the fuck a Start button is. Shit, if you hold your mouse over it, I'm almost certain it even pops a tooltip that says "Start". Some of these people have worked at this same company for decades, and have no doubt touched generations of Windows software.

As for how to copy/paste on those older computers - I guess it depends on how you're accessing them as to whether or not you even can copy/paste. But at the same time, I wouldn't be nearly as frustrated if somebody wasn't quite sure how to navigate through something that isn't as commonplace as a Windows computer - you might as well say you're "not very competent with pencils and paper".

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Installing Linux Doesn't Need to Change. The Experience Does.