I didn’t watch the second video, but assume it’s just: “Hey, let’s see if it’s any better now, since this is what I used last time, and it’s sold preinstalled on commercial hardware.” I don’t like Pop!, but I also think the people arguing he should be using something else – regarding a semi-popular, commercially-backed distro commonly advertised as noob-friendly – are hitting the copium too hard.
“But he wants to do gaming!” And I never had to install a special version of Windows because I wanted to do digital art. That’s not intentionally making Linux look bad; it’s just not going out of his way to doll it up like a burger in a fast food ad. Plenty of people will want to game but don’t treat it as their entire identity and therefore won’t be looking into “best linux gaming distro 2026 reddit”.
I liked JayzTwoCents’ video because he has an expert walk him through it and chooses Bazzite since he’s doing it specifically to evaluate gaming, not how good he is at using it. For a video where somebody is trying to assess the state of Linux for a normal user new to Linux, I don’t want an expert hovering over them the entire time, and within reason, I want them to pick what appeals to them.
I’m over here having a great time on Endeavour, but I got turned off of Linux for years after trying Ubuntu as a daily driver for several months and running into issues constantly. My actual Linux experience was eerily similar to Linus’ first video (it nuked my entire config twice), and I probably would’ve gone back to Ubuntu as a test if I were doing it for an audience and not for myself.
What happened on Pop! this time, by the way? COSMIC issues?
Yes, encountered a bunch of cosmic related bugs.
at least mac has a functional filesystem and shell lol
I feel like Mac is the right option for “normies”. Windows is basically malware at this point.
agreed
Ray tracing on Linux doesn’t work well. Windows doesn’t have that issue
ew windows
Something is missing. Do you want a computer? No. Do you have money? Yes: Apple. No: Chrome OS
is there a poop os?
i want to send it on a disk to my sister.
the interessting thing with linus is that he 1. plays the non tech person and 2. has pretty bad luck with linux fetures that are broken or bugs because he stumbles over them to 120%.
I also like the contrast between Linus and Luke because Luke drives Mint on his Laptop and cachy os on something other and he has very few problems.
Arch is goat. My first distro was Fedora. Absolutely hated DNF so then I switched to Mint but didn’t like Cinnamon— felt like I was using Android (I love Android but not on desktop lol). Also I has to wait longer for features. Switched to Arch with KDE and never looked back.
What were your issues with dnf?
It was a 5-6 years back so I don’t know the current state but I am sure it must great (also I was a Linux noob). It was terribly slow. Like my connection is 250 Mbps but I was getting downloads of like 10 Mbps with the repos even with the mirrors near to me. Every time it updated it like got stuck over there for a minute. I searched on reddit and there were a lot of complaints and the solutions involved the terminal to change the mirrors using nano (and I was scared of the terminal back then) so I just ditched fedora after a year (rest of the system was pretty fast though) and switched back to Windows for a few months then again to Mint.
There I learnt Linux fundamentals step by step for a year & a half and thought I want the latest and greatest stuff. I learnt something like the AUR existed. Installed Arch with archinstall with btrfs, first with KDE Plasma and I got excited and installed Hyde’s Hyprland script (lol) and shit broke pretty quick like in 2 months and I didn’t know how to fix. Went back to Mint, but thought naah. Took me a few days to learn but installed Arch the manual way by actually RTFM and a few YT Tutorials. Stuck with KDE and never looked back.
Heh, that’s quite the ride. Although not that unusual for Linux people, I guess
Thanks for sharing!
Luke has had problems he mentions on the WAN show. But they two really arent comparable because Luke’s use case is completely different hes much closer to the average person. He only uses a web browser and some light gaming.
Average person?
In talking computer literacy, he is easily within the 1 percent of the 1 percent.
The difference is Linus is not an average person but for these Linux challenges tries to pretend to be (people who work in tech are generally very bad at pretending to be average users) meanwhile Luke wasn’t pretending to be someone he’s not
Oh does he do it like chess engines where it seems like playing at a low level is still playing with an almost prefect engine, only it adds random “inaccuracies” that are mistakes no human would ever make, like suddenly hanging their queen with no actual intent behind the move other then being a random mistake?
Like “oh, a average user would have made a mistake by now, so let’s remove an important directory to simulate that”?
This really shouldn’t be a hot take but I think the people here will disagree. “Linus unironically did nothing wrong in his linux challenge video” The linux community really shouldnt act like he was using it wrong because its a terrible look.
No reasonable person can pretend there are no issues with linux. Sure you can get good at using linux and not run into these issues but they still exist and people will still run into them and you shouldnt blame the person.
The big problem is Linus decides to pretend to be some “average user” when he isn’t one, and therefore ends up making absolutely bonkers decisions. It was super obvious in the last video because Linus was the only one participating who had major issues, and the only one participating who pretended to know nothing.
If they actually wanted to give Linux an honest shot and see if they can replace windows on one or more of their computers, the format would be entirely different. I think the format would probably start with a Q&A session with a well known Linux YouTuber like Wendel (who they still appear to have a good working relationship with) where they get the initial “here’s what you need to know and what I recommend for the best experience right now” then a check in call after 24 hours, 72 hours, 1 week and 2 weeks where they touch base, discuss pain points and how to alleviate them. Such a format would give an easy transition as well as great advise for the audience, but still present plenty of opportunity to directly see real world pain points and rough edges but instead of those rough edges being “haha Linux bad” they can instead be “here’s how to overcome them” or “this is an area that needs some developer time, anyone want to dive into improving this?” And maybe if they were really feeling crazy they could offer up some bug bounties for the pain points they find! Because that’s the power of open source is if you have the knowhow you can go in and fix it!
I honestly suspect Linus just doesn’t want to change, and that’s why he keeps failing to actually give Linux a shot. This might be an unpopular opinion here but it’s okay if he doesn’t want to change, but he should not be trying to tear down the Linux community for content in the process
What do you mean it’s possible for a multi millionaire ceo with a mansion and a private jet to lose touch and not want to change? Preposterous.
I don’t know if I agree that Linus’ decision making can be attributed to role playing as an “average user” so much as it being a case of too much experience hindering him. He’s someone who has been interacting with tech for his entire life and has become very proficient at it within his domain of knowledge. He is definitely someone who is used to tossing the user manual aside when he gets a new device and stumbling his way through until he groks it, and he is using that same approach with Linux. This ends up meaning that he just does stuff that should work the way that he’s used to (i.e. follows the Windows paradigm) and then runs into problems because of it. I think that a lot of his issues basically stem from his ego not permitting him to take a step back to re-learn some of the fundamentals, or least map them onto his Windows-focused mental model.
All that said, Linux distros have varying levels of issues and quirks that have to be learned/dealt with, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with pointing those pain points out. Linus just needs to take a step back and realise that he’s going to have to actually learn something if he wants to be successful.
I think this perspective is insane. They should absolutely not approached switching to linux by leveraging expert linux advice through their youtube contacts. Its fine for Linus to have issues switching to linux, most people do and the video wasnt just Linus having issues it was also Luke and Elijah having a good experience. When it comes to switching to linux Linus is an average user, he doesnt know about the system and is going in with little experience. LTT has gotten these pain points fixed and their video did not come off as “haha linux bad” did you watch it?
As a linux user I want linux to be an approachable thing, I would be pissed if it was presented as a thing that required expert consultation from wendel.
On the other hand though, Linus isn’t exactly an ‘average user’, having spent most of his life working in the IT industry. I’m not sure it’s completely fair judging him as if he was a random clueless person either.
Weren’t people giving him commands, and he was running them without understanding what they did? Or am I thinking of somebody else?
Aha you were probably thinking of every one that is learning Linux ever born?
That’s what the average Linux noob or casual user does.
Linus installed popOS at a friggin LAN, under pressure, and was rushing to get stuff working then got bent out of shape by comments on protondb about how to get his game to work. His colleagues sat at home, with all the time in the world to figure stuff out and were pleasantly surprised by their experience.
Linux has issues for sure, I run into them daily, but there’s a big difference in giving it a fair shot and saying “could’ve happened on Windows” and making a video as it only happens on Linux. If Linux came on hardware by default, and people had no idea it was Linux, they’d be complaining about their computer, just like people complain about Windows. Linus acts like everything is a Linux issue whenany things are just computer issues you get used to.
There is nothing wrong with installing linux at a LAN. Its quick to install and configure, its actually a layup situation for linux. If Linus had installed it at home he would have had an equally poor experience since the issues were completely out of his control. PopOS shouldnt have labeled Cosmic as production ready and shipped it. Valve should have fixed left4dead2 as its been a known issue for 5 years.
I don’t think LTT’s approach is bad exactly. I really just take issue with their argument that “there are thousands of ‘switching to Linux’ videos on YouTube, so we don’t need to cover that ground again.” It’s ignoring the fact that, for better or worse, they have the biggest audience and furthest reach in the space. There’s still room for “we’re approaching this like normies would,” but I really think they need to close it up with “if you want to do this, here’s how to do it right.”
Why would we want a “heres how to switch to linux right” from ltt? Even the big linux youtubers get roasted for making those videos incorrectly.
That video wouldn’t be for us. Also, the videos as they are are getting roasted heavily already, so it’s not like that’s gonna stop them.
Its pretty well received. I think only the fringe parts of the linux community who love linux but dont understand it are getting upset.
Maybe we have different expectations on roasting levels then. I’m particularly thinking of all the comments making fun of Linus doing a fresh install at a LAN event, picking PopOS again, setting himself up to fail changing all his devices at once to one distro constrained by handheld support, etc. For an honest followup advice video, I’d expect them to consult with someone like Wendell first, so I wouldn’t actually expect it to be a bad video.
My issue is the categorization which in turn paints a picture on a lot of OSes. Call it a Pop OS challenge, or debian challenge, etc. In people’s minds there is windows, ios, and everything else is “linux”. Just leaves a bad taste. Just like in your comment you’re broadly painting “linux” issues as if windows or such doesn’t also run into problems at times (especially with windows updates lately).
In the talk show they do, he talked about how even with the issues he loves Pop OS and even mentioned that very argument–that he has problems with Windows too, and at least this way one of those problems isn’t copilot.
This is an extremely bad take.
99% of Linux distros behave the same for the most part. There are outliers, like immutables, or NixOS, but whether you’re using Ubuntu, PopOS, Kubuntu, or Mint, your experience with the “linuxness” of your OS will be mostly identical. I’m not talking about things like “the DE looks different”, or the overall “look and feel”, I’m talking about software compatibility, driver compatibility, etc.
You could, I guess, argue if they should say “we’re testing a Debian based distro” instead of “Linux”, but that’s about it.
They are similar overall, yes. Skills and knowledge also transfers between distros. The experience can vary significantly.
If your hardware is correctly detected gets the correct drivers including non free firmware installed, and is correctly configured varies wildly.
For some distros you might have to switch to the iwd instead of networkmanager for wifi to work correctly. You might have to disable powersaving on your wifi or Bluetooth to work correctly. If keyboard backlight works out of the box also varies. Bluetooth audio without cracks, distortion, artifacts might also need tweaking of bluetooth or wifi. Some drivers might only work well with certain kernel versions too.
Software compatibility has gotten a lot better thanks to flatpak and appimage. However having a current version in the package manager instead of having to search for it is nice. Even then you might have to try several options until you find one that works.
The quality of the documentation and the user community also matters a lot in practice. Do they yell at noobs to RTFM or answer welcoming and politely?
Ubuntu, PopOS, Kubuntu, or Mint
Did you just say Ubuntu four times?
For some distros you might have to switch to the iwd instead of networkmanager for wifi to work correctly. You might have to disable powersaving on your wifi or Bluetooth to work correctly (…)
And unless the people doing the “let’s use Linux for however many days” challenge have that specific issue, they won’t learn about it anyway.
On top of that - even if they said “OK, we’re using specifically Mint for 30 days”, and then you go out and try Mint, YOU might end up with massive issues, because your hardware is not supported properly.
They’d have to specify the OS and the hardware if you want a “reproducible experience”.
The quality of the documentation and the user community also matters a lot in practice. Do they yell at noobs to RTFM or answer welcoming and politely?
In my experience, after looking through r/Linux, r/Linux4noobs, or the various Linux communities on Lemmy - you’re going to get yelled at no matter the distro. It’s a matter of timing and luck (who’s currently online, and are they having a good day).
Did you just say Ubuntu four times?
That was kind of my point.
The culture of different distros matters. Lots of people had issues with Manjaro because the devs let their certificates expire. Other distros weren’t affected by that.
It’s not a problem that’s going to pop-up during a “let’s use XYZ for ## days” challenge.
Kind of, but some distros are still much more stable than others.
It’d be like only ever trying windows ME or vista, rather than 2000 or 7.
You’re still getting ‘the windows experience’, but you happen to be using one of the least stable options available. Much like choosing pop vs debian.
As already mentioned, Ubuntu/PopOS/Kubuntu/Mint are maybe the four most identical distros in the entire ecosystem. But your point really does hold true even with less-identical distros.
Currently, I have an Ubuntu Server, an Arch PC, and an old laptop “test machine” running Fedora. These are totally different limbs of the Linux family tree, but things pretty much work the same in all of them. The main difference is the package manager: Apt vs Pacman vs DNF. But like, they’re all doing basically the same thing under the hood: checking your installed software against some repository to see if anything needs an update. The actual workflow is pretty much the same with any of them.
After that it’s pretty much just a question of downloading the desktop environment and software you like. Or finding a distro that comes pre-installed with what you want. To make a gaming analogy: linux distros are like Dark Souls classes: starting stats and equipment, but the starting point doesn’t lock you into your you build in the future.
NixOS is a different beast for sure.
There was something that happened a while ago that made all the tech influencers look kinda silly in regards to Linux. I’ll never forget this comment on one of the videos around the kerfuffle. ‘All these computer experts have just been downgraded to Windows influencers.’ It’s so true how they can tell you all the inner workings of a Windows machine and the moment they try Linux their expertise just falls apart.
I have a working hypothesis, the short of which goes something like this:
windows makes one memorise orders of infinite submenus, while linux makes you understand the way it works.
What is supposedly wrong with my operating system?
Nothing, just the national sport of complaining
he installed pop and it shipped cosmic by default with no warning that it was unstable. He had a bad experience for 2 days then switched to another distro.
A YouTuber entered a command, it warned him it would delete system files. He said yes and concluded Linux was flawed.
The joke is that if you’re that guy then even Pop won’t work for you.
Stupid take - the warning came when he ran sudo apt install steam, not even a joke. He said yes but there is literally no reason that command should break his entire OS. If it wasn’t flawed then why was it fixed later on?
He actually did a video after that where they do s “Linux challenge” and he, again, chooses PopOS, and again is the only one of the three participants to run into issues.
I just put my dad on kubuntu like two weeks ago he loves it
I doubt people with private jets use computers. Especially privately. Linux even less so.
He hardly even had to pay for it!!!1!!
Ummm if anything he’s actually making money lol. Seriously though its crazy that Jake quit because LMG didn’t want to give him a raise, then Linus buys a 5-million dollar jet.
HE HAS A FUCKING JET NOW? WHAT THE FUCK? Tell me that it’s an inside joke please. 😭
It"s real and full of gold plated everything.
He’s always been a clown. I never understood why anyone took him seriously. He’s an entertainer (which is fine, it’s just not the kind of entertainment that’s useful to me personally).
Linus: Now, I want to give Linux the fairest chance possible - That’s why I’m going to fresh install it blind during a 10,000 person LAN party, in the worst networking nightmare scenario possible
To defend Linus here, he’s always doing something
“Hmmm… testing branch. Sounds like the branch for me.”
Fair enough
That should have been a layup for linux ngl.
Yeah, that was fucking dumb.
Jesus it’s like Linux kids have a constant hate boner towards LTT
It’s almost like LTT fucking sucks.
They keep doing stupid shit with unrealistic scenarios, blaming the os and then claiming it’s fair. I enjoy the occasional LTT, but I get the hate too
Tbf they did address the pop os shenanigans on wan show, like, a week ago. I suspect the next video could be summarized as: “pop os should be considered beta, mint is your solid bet for something that just works, but cachy/Bazzite are neat and worth a look. Kernel anti-cheat and professional software are still show-stoppers for some people”
Meh I’ve realized I’ve entirely outgrown LTT. I watched them back when it was just 4 dudes filming in that house, I learned a ton from them, then went on to learn stuff on my own, went to college and started an IT career, meanwhile they only just hired an actual admin after their organization already had over 250 employees or however many? It took longer for them to hire an admin than it took for me to grow up, go to college start my career and become a system administrator myself.
At this point it’s clear that the education level of LTT’s videos is CompTIA A+ at best and that’s just where they want to stay, which is fine, but they really need to stay in their lane if that’s where they plan on staying
I have a test desktop that I put Pop OS on (when I was testing distros) and it seems fine. I’m not a huge fan of Cosmic so far but its alright.
as far as desktops go its pretty bad, barebones feature wise and really buggy. There is no way id ever ship that to users without a warning (which is what pop did)
I really like cosmic actually.
People live gnome unironically? #kdeftw
I do. But, I recognize that preference is personal so I try not to shame people for the desktop environment they prefer.
I’ve tried KDE, and others, multiple times in the last 20 years or so and it’s just never felt as polished to me as Gnome does. When Gnome 3 came out I spent quite a bit of time with Mate because I didn’t like the new Gnome. But eventually I got used to it and it got better.
Typically, for new Linux users, I recommend Gnome for Mac people and KDE for Windows people.
Gnome being more polished was definitely true a while ago. I was mostly put off gnome because it felt that they are against DE being customisable (need to install gnome tweaks for stuff that should be built in)
For a media PC GNOME is goated, specifically their overview! One button on the “magic remote” mouse to easily switch between desktops, windows, control basic settings, and launch other applications is awesome. Generally prefer KDE and did choose it this time when reinstalling the media/coach-gaming machine, but really wish there was anything like GNOMEs overview on KDE.
(Yes, the Plasma overview is awesome, but you can’t launch new apps from it without typing).
There are dozens of us
I don’t really get it either. I used gnome once and needed multiple extensions to get functionality that is the default of KDE
I use gnome on my laptop and KDE on my desktop. I think gnome really shines when it comes to basic “business” productivity: using the internet, office suite, etc. And KDE is better for my normal use of a computer: gaming, media management, software development, etc. Obviously ymmv, but that’s how it’s been for me
Same. However, if you don’t need that functionality it’s solid. Just definitely not for me.
Even with several random extensions, gnome runs for 6 months for me before having the instability problems I had on KDE in 6 minutes
Last time KDE gave me issue was when they switched to Wayland by default I think. And even then that was mostly on me. 🤷♀️
KDE for me was death by 1000 cuts. I’d get a notification that I need to reboot my system but clicking the X doesn’t close it. The settings GUI pretty abysmal, but ig when you compare it to Windows it still looks golden. Randomly can’t wake up from sleep sometimes until i restart my display manager from a TTY. The “task manager” didn’t let me see all running tasks… It’s somehow so polished while also being janky.
Gnome alternatively is all polish, but you have to fight tooth and nail to go beyond defaults. I’m sure it’s more bloated too.
Now im on Niri with plenty of other problems but at least they’re my fault!
I used to get that as well but that was largely due to NVIDIA drivers. Either have to get a tty on the local machine or SSH into it and do a reset. But I haven’t had so much as a peep out of that machine since the Nvsync or Ntsync or whatever it was got merged. I had it happen outside of KDE as well.
I remember when KDE first rolled out plasma and the shit show it started out as. That’s when GNOME really blew up. But since the late 5.X and especially 6.5-6 its been solid. They broke off with a lot of those old abandoned themes etc with the 6.X series as well. That would often fail to function and shit the desktop. I haven’t encountered anything like that in the 6.X repos. My biggest gripe with any of them currently is the deskbar macos style that’s poorly exposed and configured. But comes by default from a few distro like garuda. And predictably isn’t consistent. When it works it’s nice. When it doesn’t it’s confusing.
I tried to customize the UI and had the DE crash like 5 times in 5 minutes. Took it as a sign. It’s ugly as can be but I was willing to put in some time to fix it but it seems luck was not on my side.
GNOME is not meant to be customized. Don’t even try. If your concept of customization goes beyond adding a panel in a different spot. It’s truly asking for grief. Their add-ons/plugins are fairly neat with all the different languages they can be written in etc. But with all the breaking changes that are constantly being done to the API you never know if they’ll be functioning in the next week. It’s part of why pop started Cosmic in the first place. The GNOME team would regularly roll breaking changes with minor point releases.
I used to like Gnome before 1.1. It was a while ago though.
My first distro was Debian and I loved Gnome so much that I’ve never gotten around to trying anything else despite being on my 3rd distro hop.
I’m an old head and a firm believer in keyboard first computing. And I think an OS’s job is to be invisible until I need it. Gnome get’s out of my way until I summon whatever I need from it with the keyboard. For someone who’s labored under Windows for so long, Gnome is like escaping Plato’s cave.
Try KDE sometime if you are keyboard first. I’ve found it has more keybinding opportunities than gnome had (~5 years ago, so things might be better. Knowing gnome though, I wouldn’t hold my breath 😅)
They are the same kind of people that use tablets for work
KDE has a really beauty of a big screen. The tablet mode on my 2 in 1 works well enough but I can’t compare with gnome for obv reasons (I don’t use gnome)
I like Gnome because it’s very tablet-y by default. Sure, I could make KDE look like that, but who has the time for that?! Plus, not having a desktop is the most effective way to stop me from filling the desktop with unsorted garbage
That’s my biggest gripe with GNOME. They constantly compromise or even remove features to be more touch friendly.
That’s what the people who use it want. They love shit like that because they think it looks cool (fine with me, none of my business what DE people use)
Until you check your ram usage
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Been trying cosmic for a few weeks now, cant say its my jam. Got some hardware upgrades to do sooner or later and want to try something new and will install a new OS around then, open to recomendations.
I’ve been hearing about this TempleOS a lot lately. You might try that maybe?
If I might ask, why isn’t it your jam? Is it the layout, missing a specific feature, or something else?
The more recent issues have been fiddly display problems along with multiple instances Proton_GE running at the same time not being reliable as they were in the last version and more broadly it has been issues attempting to get Davinci Resolve to run correctly, but thats going to hopefully be fixed by the hardware upgrades (GPU, switching from an old rx 6700 to a lightly used 3090, there are known compatibility issues with AMD GPUs). Was thinking something Fedora or arch flavored, just for a change of scenery.
I’m a big fan of Fedora Kinoite, though it does make messing around with things outside of the few system directories they’ve marked RW pretty annoying. Trying to change things in /usr, for instance, is convoluted but not impossible, but I’ve had to go in there less and less over the years to the point that I don’t think I’ve touched it directly in probably 3 or 4 years. That makes the upside of having atomic updates worth it for me.
Now if only they could figure out how to apply updates without rebooting, that would really be something, but even then I’ve had a lot of bizarre issues happen from applying updates without a reboot on Fedora, so it’s kinda worth it IMO.
/rant
Pop!_os has been fine for me. I’m not a tinkerer. It’s a machine for a web browser and video games.
I am a tinkerer but I couldn’t for the life of me get nvidia drivers to work on Arch, so I replaced it with pop for the time being so I could just play some games already on my newly built PC
