this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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(long, super recent story/rant)
I just switched to Kubuntu for my ThinkPad (not my first choice but hardware incompatabilities) over the last few days, and it still very much is a terminal-based system. It took me ~4 days to set everything up, and nearly every step aside from "change things in the settings UI" was "in a terminal, type..."
I dipped my toes into Linux... 19 years ago? As someone who likes windows up until 10, and heard all of the 'it's so amazing' gospel from Linux users, two decades later I'm like: "it's still not ready"
Shit, I wanted to install Debian 12(.5) with KDE on this TP. It has a snapdragon X55, that I need working, and previous attempts at getting it working (year+ ago) failed. I read docs, did more research, I was ready. Made a live USB, install it in the live environment, restart, and... it hangs during boot. Research, 'use the option presented at the boot menu'. Okay. "no network" errors, that's fine, it's not a net installer. Done, restart. Hangs. Research. "use rufus, it solved my problem". Rinse, repeat, hang. Isn't Debian supposed to be super reliable? And Kubuntu booted fine, like what the hell?
Then cue the 4 days of setup. This machine is a very light use box, mostly to be a hotspot. Browser, email, password manager. Btrfs for snapshots (WHY IS THERE NO SNAPSHOT UI IN ANY DISTRO I TRIED?!). I'm far from a novice, been trying to switch for two decades. This will be easy.
deep breath
WHY IS GRUB NOT TAKING MY UPDATED SETTINGS (it's a known bug in Ubuntu since 20.04?!)? WHY CAN'T I GET HOWDY TO INSTALL? WHY AM I GETTING APT ERRORS ON A FRESH INSTALL? WHY IS BITWARDEN FAILING TO SYNC? WHAT IS THE NEW-NEW-NEW METHOD OF SETTING UP NEXTDNS? WHY CAN'T I RESIZE A PARTITION (/) LIVE? WHY DOESN'T MY HOTSPOT WORK WHEN I USE WPA3 (still broken, actually, and WPA2 isn't an acceptable solution imo)? WHY DON'T I GET ANY ERROR MESSAGES WHEN THIS HAPPENS (a recurring theme)? WHY DO I HAVE TO SIFT THROUGH 3 DIFFERENT LOGS? WHY IS SEVERAL HUGELY-POPULAR PROGRAMS NOT IN THE DEFAULT REPO (omfg - Librewolf, Telegram, Element, Signal, Discord, Bitwarden...)? WHY DO THESE ALL TAKE DIFFERENT STEPS TO INSTALL ON MY SYSTEM WHAT THE FUCK WE HAVE A SYSTEM FOR THIS SCREAMS
E: WHY DOES KDE CONNECT JUST DECIDE THAT IT'S NOT GOING TO CONNECT TODAY UNTIL I TROUBLESHOOT FOR 3 HOURS, CHANGE NOTHING, THEN WORK?
And then, the 5G modem. Why in the shit doesn't the fcc unlock tool just fucking detect, and unlock, automatically. Why. WHY. This is simple, the installer is already detecting hardware. It's right there. This could be easy. Instead I had to dig through pages of solutions that didn't work, until I landed on a page for my laptop (but seemingly a different architecture?) for Debian 13 (unstable) talking about needing to edit the installer with commands (omfg what) or the screen will just show nothing on boot, that you need to change wifi and bt stuff or they don't work, etc etc... But in this heap of "I should just revert", there was one line, the line I needed, to run this stupid fucking fcc unlock tool - and how to find the hardware address. Enter both, nothing (a 'success' message would be nice...). No further instructions in the doc. Luckily, I am persistent and went into the networkmanager anyway, tell it to connect to mobile broadband. Fill in my apn. Save. It works.
There's a ton of stuff I glossed over, but it should not take FOUR DAYS with the terminal essentially living on my screen, with my browser having a dozen tabs at any given time for troubleshooting, for someone who has done all this shit before (minus the modem) many times in the past. It's done, I'm setup, but there isn't a soul alive who would switch their generic Dell machine running windows, spend several hours a day for several days, just to get their base system running. And the second they see "open the terminal", which is still very much a necessity, they'll be running to the hills.
I have a friend asking me questions about Linux since I've been harping on this the last few days, and I'm like... it's not the easy path everyone says it is. I don't want to push them away, but fuck they use many of the same programs that aren't one-click installs, and I haven't even touched gaming, multiple sound cards, gpu drivers; they use their machine for gaming, and mine is on W10 for a reason. It would be a nightmare guiding them through the minefield I just emerged from. Not to mention games that aren't handled by steam/proton and don't have guides, old games like Midtown Madness/2, Midnight Club 2, Insane/2...
It's still not ready, not anywhere near close.
I always viewed the think pad line as more of a business line of products. I know it isn't owned by IBM anymore, but considering how much involvement they had with Redhat, you might have better luck trying a fedora based distro. I'm running fedora Fedora 40 beta plasma and it was basically install and start working.
At the time (a couple of years ago), I tried a Dell... Precision? laptop, but it had a different cell modem in it (I was just starting my interest in cellular computers) and my provider AT&T locked it to an utter shit plan where I could pay like $45 for 15gb of data with overage fees per month, fuuuuuck that. I was searching for one that would be bound to their 'tablet' plans, as they got unlimited data for $20 (this is a business account, not consumer). AT&T offered the TP X13 Gen 2 Intel from them, that was guaranteed tied to the unlimited plan, with 0% financing, so I jumped. It is my first TP, but an ex has an older TP and had mostly positive things to say about it. And the modem (and antenna?) gets blazing fast speeds, like 400-500Mb/s. But that's why I have the TP, it's a "business" line for my (families) business.
I tried Fedora last year but again couldn't get the X55 modem to work, which was frustrating. Information about it in the X13 is scarce since it wasn't offered with Linux officially afaik, and you either got it early and Ubu or something 'just worked' with it out of the box, or you had to compile the driver from source for some reason (I don't remember but they yanked the driver from newer releases I think). I guess at some point it was re-added but again nobody talks about this machine and it's WWAN card so I got super lucky to find that one Debian 13 info page.
While I've played with Fedora briefly when I was distros hopping to see what worked last year (and before that), and the ex had it on his TP, I don't actually know what the difference is vs Debian-based systems, since I try to stick with that as it's what I started on and know/am comfortable with. All I know is its based (?) on RHEL. Care to give me a tl;dr major differences?
Haha I just spent this weekend getting my ThinkPad set up with Arch and KDE Plasma. Two weeks ago was my final straw with W11, and I used this weekend for the plunge.
Now, I know I have an unusual setup; ThinkPad X1 laptop, eGPU w/ Nvidia 4070 (BIG mistake, I bought it to play games and do 3D rendering since the onboard graphics on my laptop are non-existent, didn't do my homework and should've bought an AMD), and two external monitors. It's has been an adventure to say the least, and my wife popped in every now and again asking if I'm having fun playing with my computer (she has Mac everything and not an absolute clue lol) while pulling my hair troubleshooting shit I haven't even thought about in a long time.
It's been probably 4-5 years since I've worked with a Linux desktop, and I forgot what it takes to get a system set up from more or less scratch. Of course I could have gone with a more complete, out-of-the-box distro, but where's the fun in that? My home server runs Debian and I almost never have to touch it outside biweekly logins to make sure everything is kosher and up to date, otherwise it just chugs along and it's been going strong for probably 5-6 years at this point. But I still had fun doing it, and I also have more confidence that my current setup isn't doing nefarious shit while I'm not paying attention. My W11 install liked to wake up from sleep and I'd walk in to hear the fans on my eGPU case cranking, so I'm a bit suspect. I'm near positive I don't have an malware or viruses on my machine, but I dunno what the deal is, and I may have let my paranoia get the best of me.
But to your point, it will probably be a while before Linux is ready for the mainstream. Especially until we get a native port of the MS Office suite. Like it or not, MS Office is the gold standard in business, and while different FOSS suites are pretty good, they still lack full compatibility which won't fly in the business world. That, and you can't expect your average Joe to spend and hour or two scraping forums to fix a printer issue.
Second big paragraph: I usually have ethernet ports that just decide to wake the system up, almost all my machines in the last 15 years do this. Disabling the ability to wake from sleep (from the ethernet port) has always resolved this. Just something to look at.
Third: yeah, and it's fine to not be ready - I'd rather it not be and everyone accept that. Problem is (and what I was alluding to) is that many don't. I've got attacked here, reddit, and elsewhere because "er mah gerd I found the perfect build guide and didn't care about the distros so I followed everything to a T and you too should have no creativity or desire for exploration so that you can be as much of a sheep as I am" and it's like... I like the hardware I selected, I like the distro and want to see it improve because of [feature], etc but god damn some people if you step out of their mental line, they lose their shit. Tell them that X doesn't work because of Y and they want to rip you to shreds for breaking their perfect bubble they've built. Spend any time in a Linux-heavy gaming community and their holy penguin can do no harm.
I dunno if my venting above comes off as it, but I want this project to succeed. It's just, every time it's been a wall of issues, every time "oh it's better now" but 'better' is 'we fixed the old issues' and doesn't touch on 'and we added some new ones, too'. That's the catch. Two steps forward, one step back - but it's progress.
I have gotten flamed a few times for telling the Linux fanboys the hard truth.
If I have to hit Terminal even once with an average setup the OS is not ready for mainstream use. No exceptions. It has to work out of the box on the newest systems.
I use Linux the same way that you have: for a few applications that need a rock solid stable system. Once you get the damn thing setup, it truly is wonderful. Stable, reliable, easy to use. But getting there... Fuck that.
I think I had one clean distro install where everything worked. The PC was 7 years old when I installed it.
It was happening on wifi. I'll admit I didn't really do much troubleshooting on it outside of basic poking around. Ethernet is only available through the dock, but I didn't have it plugged in until I started my Linux install.
Dude I feel ya. I think what everyone forgets is that anyone that has any form of Linux knowledge is already somewhat tech savvy. Hell, anyone on Lemmy is usually pretty tech savvy, if not to have the basics just to wrap their heads around the concept of federation. Most people would have no clue where to start to even install a fresh copy of windows, because they see the hardware and OS as a singular monolithic unit.
I think the only way Linux would get into the mainstream is to have a dedicated hardware company built desktops and laptops that ship with a barney-basic distro preinstalled, and have a dedicated support staff. I don't think most see computers as a separation of hardware, OS, and software, but as a screenbox that runs their favorite apps.
If love to see popular adoption of Linux as well, especially since it will further accelerate improvements in its development. But I think it's a pipedream that the majority of people will jump ship. I do think that many just want to see MS's demise, but that isn't going to happen, anytime soon anyway.