If you wanted a distro where everything is set up for you OOTB, not requiring tinkering, you should not have installed Arch mate.
OK, I'm gonna make this simple, since it seems like no one has tried to do that for you. There's only 3 points
- Do not expect to buy hardware and THEN use linux
- When choosing a linux distro, do not choose one that requires you to compile anything
- Your killer problem - battery life - is 100% a hardware support problem
Breaking it down...
- Do not expect to buy hardware and THEN use linux Technically no operating system actually works this way. The problem is that every single hardware vendor works with Microsoft to ensure it works on Windows before they release it. You cannot just buy hardware and then later decide to use Linux. You must always check for linux compatibility, and often distro compatability, before buying your hardware.
The reason for this is that every single piece of hardware needs a driver and not every single piece of hardware has a driver in Linux, and not every driver properly works with the hardware it was built for.
So step 1 is always review your preferred distro for support for your target hardware and don't just wing it. There's a lot of shitty broken hardware that Linux devs haven't built workarounds for and only work in Windows because there's money to create driver workarounds.
This isn't that strange in the world of hardware, it's just something MS managed to prevent everyone from dealing with through it's monopoly power and Apple prevented everyone from dealing with it by only allowing OSX on it's hardware and controlling all the updates. In any other world, you don't just buy random components for your car, or buy electronics without worrying about EU vs US outlets or buy power supplies for electronics without researching voltage, amperage, and polarity. It's just a thing you have to do.
- When choosing a linux distro, do not choose one that requires you to compile anything
If you want a "just works" experience, then you do not want to be doing it. The forum link you posted is bonkers. There is no way someone with your level of experience should be bisecting anything. You fell into a hole, asked for a way out, and that forum gave you a shovel.
You want to stick with distros that are ready to go: Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, openSuse, Fedora. My personal opinion is every beginner should start with Mint, but everyone's got opinions.
- Your killer problem - battery life - is 100% a hardware support problem.
Whatever components you're running don't have whatever driver maturity is needed for power management. That could be a lot of things, and there's no fix unless you want to become a volunteer device driver developer, which is like asking if you want you to become a volunteer suspension bridge repairperson. It's not a real option for you. That means you're stuck waiting for someone else to write support for whatever hardware you have. Bringing me back to point #1, do not just attempt to put linux on any old hardware - you must research compatibility as part of your purchasing process.
I've been running linux for decades. In the beginning, it was a nightmare. I had to debug it every week, sometimes multiple times each week. Nearly every problem was something I caused trying to fix some other problem. Nearly every problem I was trying to fix was ultimately just a lack of out-of-the-box hardware support and hardware auto-configuration. Fast-forward to 2007, I bought my first thinkpad. I researched linux support and bought one that I knew worked with Debian. Worked first time, no tweaking. Fucking beautiful.
Except some features of the laptop didn't work. I needed to manually configure the pointer device.
But then, I bought my second thinkpad in 2010. Everything worked, and all the config was through graphical settings tools. Amazing.
Well guess what. I bought a new thinkpad a few years ago. I really wanted a Ryzen. But Lenovo only had the first gen available for sale, the second gen was sold out. I saw the support was perfect for the second gen, but not perfect for the first gen. I bought it anyway.
Wouldn't you know it. The motherboard has hardware bugs that the drivers just don't handle gracefully. There's a fight between Lenovo and the driver developers over it. It never gets fully resolved. However, the battery life problem gets resolved. Now I have 2 bugs:
- sometimes I have to plug and unplug my external camera into the USB multiple times because the mobo can't negotiate the connection properly.
- Sometimes the laptop fails to return from suspend and I have to reboot it.
Both of these suck, and there's nothing I can do to fix it. I could post on a forum and spend literal weeks trying literally everything everyone tells me, but I know what the problem is - hardware/driver support. I could volunteer to become a driver developer, or to work with a driver developer and give them absolutely everything in detail so they can maybe find the time to fix it, but the reality is, I bought unsupported hardware and this is the consequence. Had I bought the second gen ryzen thinkpad, I would not have these issues.
So don't try to force your way through this sorta shit and then assume everyone else is going through the same thing. Only buy hardware with components you know are going to work, only use distros that are simple to install and operate. And don't try to solve problems that are caused by failing to adhere to rules 1 and 2.
But Lenovo only had the first gen available for sale,
can you share which model that is?
It's very strange that you've made a post about bugs but chose not to list any of the bugs.
Like, how can we make a recommendation if we don't know what types of issues you're running into? What type of hardware you have? What expectations you have?
It just kind of screams of disgruntled user syndrome. These are community lead projects so, yes, they'll have bugs. But if people never say what they are or what issues they had with what they used, the best the rest of us can do is just guess!
Mint it pretty easy. I use it on an MSI Creator (I got it for free). 22 just dropped and its better than ever.
My experience has been quite the opposite: Windows is the one that's constant problems for me, with no obvious way to fix and if I were to follow the common advice on the Internet I'd be reinstalling it more than I use it.
Linux has been very reliable for me. Sometimes I look at my uptime and I'm like, maybe I should reboot soon.
They're always some initial problems just like Windows but usually once it's all fixed up it stays that way. My install is 13 years old and still going strong.
Same for me, all the support I had for Windows was "reinstall" or "have you checked the latest version of 'x' driver?". Now I can actually solve my problems or maybe someone knows how to, there's a big community with real access to debugging tools that may be able to help.
I won't deny that some people are annoying and don't help at all, but you can always move to the next community or just change distros. I distrohopped using VMs because I couldn't risk losing work in my laptop and then chose one (openSUSE Tumbleweed) which has its own problems, but I now can understand why something happens (or not).
Also, some problems that I've encountered are only problems for me, some people would not even care about them, but I do and that gave me the tools to help other people when they need it (mostly friends from my career trying Linux).
For most people, using Linux is not a buggy experience. So no, people aren't gaslighting you. Normally, you grab a modern release like the latest Fedora or Ubuntu and you can get a live desktop up in seconds booting from a USB stick.
Esoteric hardware can be a problem if particular driver haven't been developed yet. That tends to hit laptops harder than desktops, but it's much less of an issue than it used to be.
People are asking for specifics because they don't share your experience and so can't fill in the blanks.
Maybe Linux just isn't for you, and that's okay. Go use Windows or Mac and enjoy your "just works" setup and lack of involuntary learning.
TL:DR Buy a pre-installed laptop of your liking, be it windows, Mac or even Linux-based.
I guess non tech users would go into a store and buy a laptop with Windows or MacOS pre-installed. You boot it up, go through some questions and boom you are ready to go.
It appears that you are expecting that same experience with a DIY installation of an unsupported OS on some random hardware. You cannot expect it to be so smooth.
So what I really suggest is that you get a laptop that is designed with Linux in mind from scratch.
Go to tuxedocomputers.com or system76.com and just buy a preconfigured Linux based Laptop. It will work out of the box. Problems solved. Easy peasy.
I have been using Linux for nearly a decade and I'm too scared to try Arch. It's not for beginners.
Depends on what you're beginning.
The risk of forgetting some critical part of the install is mostly mitigated by arch-install. Arch is one of the easiest to "learn the ecosystem" since all packages are delivered to you as the author wrote them, so your first time through is a chore, but afterwards you can pretty easily replicate what you land on.
There's a lot more decisions made for you in other distros, ultimately I found it frustrating to work backwards trying to understand what those were the more polished they came.
It is however; the absolute last place I'd point someone who didn't want to or did not have the time, no matter how good the arch wiki is: it doesn't read itself.
For me, the bugs that I usually encounter in linux are way less annoying than the ones I had on Windows
Laptops are a crapshoot, so I'd recommend sticking with distros that are known to support your specific model.
Desktops should, in general, just work.
That said, I've never personally had a seamless experience. There's always something I need to struggle to configure. Usually it's because I'm very picky and I like things to work MY way. The alternative on Widows would not be that it works my way; it would be that there'd be no way to do that so I'd just have to deal with it. If you're willing to just roll with the defaults, then yeah, most basic things should just work.
The biggest gotcha is GPU drivers. Not all distros ship with recent kernel versions with modern drivers. You should be pretty safe with Fedora and derivatives.
Could you be more specific? What bugs have you found? What distros have you tried?
All software has bugs. Modern "vanilla" distros aren't especially buggy though. Install Mint or Ubuntu, if you need a network adapter make sure it supports Linux, then just use it like you would any other system.
I use Linux since 1998 or 99 (can't remember precisely). I've tried everything. From Arch to Gentoo and RH to Debian. If you want stability, you go with either Debian, or Linux Mint. I personally use Debian-Testing (Trixie) on my main PC (it's very stable, unlike Sid or Arch or other rolling releases), and Mint on my laptops. I've found peace that way.
Honestly, YES. Almost every linux user I have come across has been like "Linux has been the best and most stable experience I have ever had" and then turn around and debug some obscure issue without batting an eye.
I do believe that most people are just so desensitized to "generic issues" that they don't even bat an eye anymore and straight up don't see them as issues.
I do believe linux is an extremely buggy experience regardless of what DE or distro you use. It just so happens that said bugs are often really easy to deal with if you have experience.
☝️But this is also true on Windows. There's no AIO plug&play OS ! That's what arcade and consoles are made for.
You want to customize your windows? Tweak some graphical knobs? Install some plugins? New driver? New hardware? Do some more advanced stuff with powershell?
This all implies some user interaction ! Debugging a Windows issue is not that uncommon but most people just format or restore from a backup image (because it's easier... Less time consuming...).
It's just that people got used to how consoles/Windows/MacOS work and are hand held like they are babies not capable of maintaining their own system.
Don't get me wrong, Linux IS harder to maintain than any other OS, but it also gives you back the opportunity to take control over your system/hardware/personal life !
I disagree that this is the same on windows, I think for the vast majority of users, windows is less buggy. At the very least, it's a lot more streamlined and when you do find an issue, the info you find is far more likely to be 1:1 on how to apply said info.
I would argue that most people don't want to tweak graphics or install plugins. Drivers are easy, you download a thing from a website, double click it, reboot and it's there. On linux you need to hope there is a dkms and hope the driver hasn't been removed from kernel. Windows is a far more streamlined and easier experience for the vast majority of issue. The problem with windows is it's increasingly fragile nature where some users simply can't get a working install. My mother does not like using linux, I constantly need to fix bugs for her, or install some weird app she needs for crocheting in wine.
I have had her try so many distros, Nobara, Ubuntu, Fedora, preinstalled arch, mint zorin etc. Not a single one of them after months of her using them have been remotely comparable in user experience then windows has for her. The only reason she doesn't use windows is because whenever we install the driver for her CNC cutter (which is absolutely required for her) it bricks her system.
I have supported companies, libraries, and individuals and this is a consistent experience regardless of linux distro (barring chromeOS, they do some good work there) across literally hundreds of users that eventually get funneled down to me.
It's not that linux is getting so much better that is causing people to swap, its that linux is getting so much worse.
This is why I have high hopes for cosmic/popOS, They do seem to be trying to focus on making sure issues like these do get solved. I am not ready to move my mom to it yet, but soon...
I personally have a few annoying bugs on my machine but I rather deal with them than dealing with windows
Okay, your post is a bit weird, so I'll just tell you about my setup:
I have a custom built PC for like 4 or 5 years and have Linux on there permanently for at least 2.
It has an AMD Ryzen 7 (AM4) CPU and a Nvidia 2060 Super.
I often tried new distros before the final switch. In the end I chose PopOS. For me it mostly just works.
All the core features are effectively bugless.
Games sometimes don't work or need a little tweak in steam, but that is like one game out of 20.
BUT:
I don't play AAA games. Like ever. I played Darktide for a month maybe and "Witcher 3" butthis is the closest I got to "real" AAA games in the last 5 years.
Indie Games nearly always "just work".Few examples from the last months:
- Deep Rock Galactic
- Satisfactory
- Witch It
- Factorio Space Age
- Cogmind
- Dwarf Fortress
- Ultimate Chicken Horse
- Disco Elysium
- The Last Journey
- Core Keeper
- Celeste
- Stardew Valley
They all ran fine. The one Issue I had was that steam didn't show this DirectX-Popup and I thought the games didn't start. But after that it all just worked.
Also sometimes mods are hard. This is mostly for games I didn't buy on steam and that have weird community-built mod managers.
