this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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Linux

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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 so frustrated rn. (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by Kawi@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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I have been distro hopping for about 2 weeks now, there's always something that doesn't work. I thought I would stick with Debian and now I haven't been able to make my printer work in it, I think I tried in another distro and it just worked out of the box, but there's always something that's broken in every distro.

I'm sorry I'm just venting, do you people think Ubuntu will work for me? I think I will try it next.

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[–] throwawayish@lemmy.ml 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

OP, my request/suggestion would be the following:

In order for us to better help you consider the following:

  • Inform us on your hardware specs. You could even rely on the software found on linux-hardware.org for a (so-called) probe.
  • Inform us on which distros you've tried. If possible, for each one of them list the following:
    • What exactly didn't work?
    • Did you try any troubleshooting?

On a more general note, you shouldn't feel the need to switch distros even if other distros might offer more convenient solutions.

Story timeWhen I was new to Linux, I wanted to rely on the Chromium browser for cloud gaming through Nvidia GeForce NOW's web platform. For some reason, I just wasn't able to get this to work on Fedora. Somehow, while still being mostly a newbie, I stumbled upon Distrobox and decided to give it a go in hopes of allowing me to overcome the earlier challenge by benefiting of the ArchWiki and the AUR through an Arch distrobox. And voila; -without too much effort- it just worked. More recently, after I've become slightly more knowledgeable on Linux, I just rely on a flatpak to get the same work done.

Moral of the story would be that there are a lot of different ways that enable one to overcome challenges like these. And unless you feel the need to go with a system that's (mostly) managed for you (à la uBlue)^[1]^, you will face issues every now and then. And the only way to deal with them would be to either setup^[2]^ (GRUB-)Btrfs+Timeshift/Snapper (or similar solutions) such that it automatically snapshots a working state that you might rollback to whenever something unfortunate befalls your system or to simply become ever so better equipped in troubleshooting them yourself.

  1. But therefore demands from you to engage with the system in a specific (mostly unique) way.
  2. Or rely on a distro that sets it up for you.