Tux Nightmares

September 21, 2024

Beginnigs

Ubuntu is an amazing start for newcomers and still is today, I've seen it when I was already having troubles with Windows 10 at the time, which I bet is a reason that anyone with a PC would care about Desktop Linux.

A week goes by with Ubuntu and I could say that some things were not like the promise, and it wasn't Ubuntu that I liked, it was GNOME. On Reddit, I've seen the Linux distribution Fedora that had "stock GNOME" and other neat things, like no Snap Store and 'less spying'.

Fast forward way into 2024, I have found a few issues with Fedora.

The Mess

Before the section starts, here are the stuff I want
these may not align with yours and that is okay, don't get too nerdy

I pirate Windows and console games, Wine and all console emulators must play normally
I pirate TV shows and movies, Jellyfin and Samba must not have any issues
It is either full consistency or Windows, if I didn't care about how the UI looked, I wouldn't have installed Ubuntu and just went with tweaking Windows
GNOME or go home, just kidding, but I'm probably too sick to care about anything else and my hardware is good enough
Nothing important should crash, yes, GNOME Shell and Software, this means you
There can only be one, I will not dual boot because I know I just only use Windows, I also (personally) need the Jellyfin server to stay up whenever possible

Packages

There are two ways to get packages, GNOME Software or the terminal. If you are a GNOME user, you are probably aware of how wack Software can be so you can guess that I ran into troubles with it as well.

Such as the dreaded Loading application details that appears every chance it gets, and I don't know if you are aware of how much I use this computer but you can get that I cared about always having everything function in a consistent way. That brings me into another issue

Reliability

So use case #1 and #4? On Fedora, if I looked at my computer the wrong way, GNOME Shell would crash, and I'm jokingly saying that but it just might be true. Jokes aside, I wonder if there was some issues with graphics as crashes would often happen with GNOME Boxes, Wine, and even sometimes on Firefox.

Something else?

Linux Mint is also wonderful choice for newcomers, if you just want to escape Windows I can definitely recommend this one.

So #3 and #4?

If I'm going through all this hassle of using a new operating system family, it better be at least appealing. Cinnamon has been going well, enough. Also, if you've used any GTK program or just heard around in the Linux space you would know that GTK apps are turning into GNOME apps.

The Linux Mint team has said they purposely used old packages so that they wouldn't get Libadwaita, making a portion of packages wacky.

Something else??

Some extra choices

Stable OS with GNOME: VanillaOS is a distribution I've seen around on Reddit but it is likely not going to fix my problems, and not going to fix my time with Linux overall.

Another DE: KDE Plasma looks nice from an outsider's point of view, but I hear it crashes and so eh.

These by themselves remind me of a comment I've seen on a OSNews article:

"And this is why Linux will never be a mainstream OS. So much fragmentation."

There could totally be something out there for me but there are still some limitations I have:

I pirate content, and when I move operating systems, I don't have a big hard drive anymore so I just do some wack ass partition resizing.
Even my favorite desktop environment has terrible downsides, become an end user of some GNOME apps (specifically, Web, Music, Videos, Cartridges) and you'll see what I mean
This computer's special software for displaying controls is only available on Windows, meaning that I can't adjust either the monitor or the HDMI IN cable
This computer is from 2018 and has an HDD, I hope those wack ass partitions I did all those times won't be harmful long term

In the end, this was me realizing that this computer might stay on Windows forever:

What I use now

MassGrave hosts an amazing website with Windows LTSC and Office files and activations scripts. I currently have Windows 10 2023 IoT LTSC.