It’s been a week. Ubuntu Studio, and every day it’s something. I swear Linux is the OS version of owning a boat, it’s constant maintenance. Am I dumb, or doing something wrong?

After many issues, today I thought I had shit figured out, then played a game for the first time. All good, but the intro had some artifacts. I got curious, I have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 and thought that was weird. Looked it up, turns out Linux was using lvmpipe. Found a fix. Now it’s using my card, no more clipping, great!. But now my screen flickers. Narrowed it down to Vivaldi browser. Had to uninstall, which sucks and took a long time to figure out. Now I’m on Librewolf which I liked on windows but it’s a cpu hungry bitch on Linux (eating 3.2g of memory as I type this). Every goddamned time I fix something, it breaks something else.

This is just one of many, every day, issues.

I’m tired. I want to love Linux. I really do, but what the hell? Windows just worked.

I’ve resigned myself to “the boat life” but is there a better way? Am I missing something and it doesn’t have to be this hard, or is this what Linux is? If that’s just like this I’m still sticking cause fuck Microsoft but you guys talk like Linux should be everyone’s first choice. I’d never recommend Linux to anyone I know, it doesn’t “just work”.

EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone who blew up my post, I didn’t expect this many responses, this much advice, or this much kindness. You’re all goddamned gems!

To paraphrase my username’s namesake, because of @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone and his apt gif (also, Mr. Flickerman, when I record I often shout about Clem Fandango)…

When some wild-eyed, eight-foot-tall GNU/LINUX OS grabs your neck, taps the back of your favorite head up against the barroom wall, and he looks you crooked in the eye and he asks you if ya paid your dues, you just stare that big sucker right back in the eye, and you remember what ol’ Jack Burton always says at a time like that: “Have ya paid your dues, Jack?” “Yessir, the check is in the mail.”

  • Jack_Burton@lemmy.caOP
    52·
    6 hours ago

    I get what your trying to say, and the analogy works between Windows and Mac, just a different GUI and keyboard commands. Linux is like wearing someone else’s shoes and learning to run in them. It’s similar, but not the same.

    Literally every day something breaks. I’m at a point I have things working enough that I’m scared of experimenting because it’s so fragile.

    • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
      5·
      4 hours ago

      I hear your frustration and understand what you’re concerned about.

      Ask yourself this.

      Is the thing that I’ve discovered is broken today something that I’ve fixed before?

      If you use the package manager that comes with your distribution and don’t install random software from the Internet, and don’t follow unverified procedures written by anyone with a keyboard, then the answer is almost certainly “no”.

      I say this with the benefit of knowing what’s good practice and what isn’t. I can tell you that if you come at this with a “Microsoft Windows” approach, you’re likely to spend weeks, if not months in purgatory. It’s no different from migrating between MacOS and Windows, or vice-versa. You need to remember that just because Linux looks similar, it’s a different beast and is so by design.

      I’d strongly recommend that you start using the machine with ONLY the packages available through the Ubuntu package manager. If you run into strife, you can ask for support. If you go outside that and you break something, you get to keep both parts – and truth be told – that’s true with any other operating system, just that the lines are not as blurred.

      In Linux world many of the distributions can cross pollenate applications and solutions, but that requires experience that new users don’t (yet) have.

      One way to deal with the “jump” is to keep your “old” Windows (or MacOS) machine around while you get comfortable with the lay of the land.

      The thing that most people switching to Linux have forgotten is that this requires experience. You cannot expect to just jump into a new Operating System and take all your old habits with you. Think for example about the differences between iOS and Android, a world of difference.

      So, keep at it. This frustration will pass.

      Make sure you backup your /home directory regularly. That way if you ever blow something up and are left on your own, you can blow away the drive and start again, restore from your /home backup.

      Meanwhile, keep asking questions.

      Good luck.

      • Jack_Burton@lemmy.caOP
        2·
        4 hours ago

        That’s great advice, thank you. If I just copy my home directory I can replace it if things go south? What about other distros?

        • Onno (VK6FLAB)@lemmy.radio
          4·
          2 hours ago

          Pretty much the same.

          Word of warning. Your /home directory contains your documents, but it also contains configuration files. If the packages you’re installing have different versions, you might discover that the config file for a different version doesn’t work on the version that’s installed. This isn’t universally the case, some applications are smart about this, others less so. You can find many of them as “hidden” “dot” files.

          You can find all of them like this: find /home -type f -name '.*'

          Explanation:

          • find - the find command
          • /home - the place to start looking
          • -type f - find files only
          • -name '.*' - find things only starting with a ‘.’