this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I'm all for Linux but IMO it's not quite ready for general public yet. Even distros like Mint are buggy and requires multiple restart every day. I would install it on my dad's computer, but it's not stable enough yet. But I think it's a question of a few years, maybe months before it's there.
EDIT: since people are asking, here are a few bugs that I encounterd over the last week or so. I'm a audio/multimedia worker so obviously I push my computers farther then average user. Still, I'm happy to know many people have manage to get it stable
2 days ago, Ssomething went wrong with cinnamon. At first all the dektop would not appears when waking up from sleep. Had to restart every time or disable sleep. At some point, even restart would bring me a window saying Cinnamon session could not be loaded. I had to reinstall it from Grub. I dont see average users being able to do that. *It's actually not fixed, sleep will mess up Cinnamon.
yesterday, I tried to get my DAW (Reaper) to work with one of my audio interfaces. Drivers would not work correctly, sound was glitching. I messed up with pulse audio for 2 hours but never got it to work.
this morning, te infamous NVIDIA driver wouldn't let me turn off the mirror mode (I have a projector connected to the computer), I had to reboot.
This morning also, I discoverd that Timeshift now only launch from the terminal.
Over the past week, I had to completly reinstall mint, because I installed and uninstalled some audio extension and it messed up the OS. Since then many apps that use to ne there dont show up in the software manager, updating the repo doesn't work, so I had to manually install using terminal.
I've been fighting to get Da vinci resolve to work, tho it's supposed to work natively. Took me around 4-5 hours overall.
I ACTUALLY LOVE LINUX. Indual boot it on my main PC an even installed it on my old 2015 MacBook. I think windows is garbage and full of bloatware, I hate apple but consider macOS a pretty good OS, but I think both are more stable for your average user.
I sincerely wish I could install Mint on my dad's computer but I'm pretty sure he would me need my help at least twice a week . I dont see him or your average user playing with the terminal to install a basic app. I know it's getting closer, but IMO it's not there yet.
You need multiple restarts a day?
What are you doing?
I have to restart popos too, on my laptop, sometimes it doesnt start after opening it, idk doesnt really matter
See my edit!
I think you might have something wrong with your install. I do some heavy simulations (mostly Thermo and structural stress tests) with old hardware and haven't had to restart ever.
I'm baffled as to how you can have so many problems.
There is something wrong with your installation. Other people just restart to update the kernel often once a week/month. So you might as well tell us what's making you restart Mint so often.
See my edit !
It seems to me that installing external audio drivers and changing Pulseaudio configurations is messing with the OS. Mint uses fairly old, stable packages. Newer distros have Pipewire for audio now. It's a Pulseaudio replacement and might be useful in your case. Have you tried a newer distro? You can try Ubuntu 22.04 or Fedora from a USB stick to see if your audio equipment works out of the box. Then you won't have to fiddle so much with the OS. Fedora Silverblue in particular is immutable and you can reset the OS to any current or previous state with one command, even without Timeshift. Another thing for testing software like DaVinci Resolve is Distrobox containers. You can change whatever you want inside a container and try different distros but you won't break the underlying OS. Hacker's dream.
I update my system once every half of year. Not Mint tho.
What do those distros have that Mint doesn't have? I'm not being rude, it's just that I recently switched from Windows to Linux Mint on my laptop, and I can't imagine what features I'm missing. It's easy to use and does everything I need it to do so far. I haven't experienced any weird bugs yet, and compared to Windows 10 it's a much less frustrating experience overall.
Latest kernel (hence driver), mostly. For most people Linux Mint is great distro that mostly works out of the box. However, for gaming, Linux Mint is one of the weakest since they tend to ship old kernel.
We have to understand that gaming in Linux is in very active development right now. Having out of date kernel can make you unable to use some device, or having less performace than those with latest kernel.
Hovewe, if you are happy with Linux Mint and see no problem, it's okay to stay. It has great community and the developers are awesome.
Ah, that makes sense. Honestly, I haven't gotten around to trying any games yet (which is what this thread is about, so I'll just excuse myself :P)
I'm running Linux Mint 21.2 using the 6.2 kernel without issue. Granted it's not a gaming PC as I use it for media.
Considering I've had far fewer problems and frustrations with Mint so far than I had with Windows, this bodes well. I'll save your comment and plan on giving OpenSUSE a try!
I've only used Fedora and Mint so far. I might give a try to Opensuse soon. See my edit for more info on bugs encountered.
OpenSUSE Thumbleweed or whatever they call their rolling-release
Tumbleweed
I suck at tech and have never had to do this. What the hell are you doing to Mint?
See my edit!
what on earth are you doing that requires multiple restarts a day??
Look at my edit ! Many people asking the same question.
I recommend Fedora instead of Mint. It's a much more daily ready distro oriented for Workstations.
I always had problems with Mint especially with the older kernels it uses.
Fedora uses gnome which is very stable.
In regards to audio. It uses pipewire and works well in my experience. Less latency and relatively plug and play. I use Bitwig however.
DaVinci is known to be difficult, however there are some automations for setting it up in Fedora.
Following this advice that came quite often, I've decided to give Fedora a try on my home system. I've read that Nobora is optimised for production and gaming so I've installed it this morning ,triple booting Mint, Win10 and Nobora. It's really well done and comes with Gnome and preinstalled video and steam tools. But I'm still facing one significant issue: the multimedia codes wont install properly. I've just spent 2 hours on this with no luck so far. That means many games that worked out of the box on mint are not curently working...on a gaming oriented distro.... plus video editing doesn't work in Reaper due to Ffmpeg not working.. So yeah, it look quite nice but a lot of troubleshooting required. I'll see how it goes once problems are fixes.
Which multimedia codecs do you need? I understand that some were moved to rpmfusion because of licensing, maybe you can find what you need there?
Indeed I manage to manually install most of the codecs from rpmfusion and got Da vinci studio to work ! No video yet in Reaper but I have a few idea to get it working. After a few tweaks, all 5 games I've tried are now working flawless. So far I got one audio interface to work but not another, gonna neee to look into this also. Fedora definitely feels more stable, snappy and workstation oriented than Mint, so I'm probably gonna stick with it in the end. Thanks for recommanding it! Now if I could only get unreal to work with an Oculus Quest 2, I would deleted my windows install and never look back. To might come soon enough. Linux is still a bit challenging, but man, it does rock.