7mo ago

Linux really has come a long way

I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.

Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…

WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.

Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?

Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.

Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.

205 comments

Yes, if you don't have a computer that literally came out this year, don't have 2 separate graphics cards and don't need HDR, or specific Windows-only software, Linux generally just works.
- And sometimes the Windows only software is more "Windows only" and works with Wine
  Windows 3D Builder though is firmly in the Windows Only category though. Which is a bummer because in my experience it's the best at repairing 3D models for 3D printing that have errors like holes, redundant geometry, inverted faces, etc.
  
  However, some older programs may actually behave better in Wine than say on Windows 11.
  Oh, it also supports ancient 16 bit programs which Windows doesn't anymore.
  
  Surely there are alternatives
- The dual GPU problem has actually for the most part also been solved; Optimus rarely poses a problem these days
  
  Yup. Fedora on my laptop defaults the internal GPU and you can run any program with the dedicated card with a right click. Pretty nice compared to last year where I had to throw my laptop across the room 😂
- Hopefully HDR can get crossed off that list soon
  
  Hdr in games is the last frontier from me totally dumping windows.
- You probably won't be able to run an LTS kernel on a brand new PC that just hit the market. But using the most recent kernel for arch or a derivative like endevorOS should work after like a week maximum.
  I did have an issue like this on Ubuntu and its what made me actually start distro hopping since it worked fine on fedora and Arch using the latest kernels.
  
  Huge shout out to the people working faster than some do at their jobs and for 100% less pay.
  
  I experienced this when installing my AMD Radeon RX 7600XT, it was released two weeks prior to me installing it, back then, and Linux Mint and games in it were clearly running off software rendering. Turns out LM uses a more tried and true LTS kernel by default, luckily ot easily allows you to switch or manage kernels through the GUI updater, so I got that fixed easily.
- There's plenty of laptops with 2 separate graphics cards (mine included) and I'd say it's the ideal experience if you need an NVIDIA card. Everything related to your system is done in the integrated Intel/AMD GPU (which works perfectly) and games and GPU intensive work (like CUDA) gets done in the NVIDIA one.
- My issue is family control. I haven't found a way to get Microsoft family type control yet on Linux, since my sibling uses my computer. The syncing time allowed across devices is the hard part.
  
  Create separate user?
- "Generally" is the key word. I'm a linux user since slackware on diskettes. My daily driver is Mint, because lazy. I have 2 VMs with kali and kinoite.
  A couple of days ago a kernel update borked my install. A problem with the Ryzen graphics driver.
  For me it was trivial. Boot into the previous kernel, timeshift roll back, and back in business, but I can see how a newbie woul go into panic.
  A satisfied "customer" will recommend you to a friend. A pissed off one will tell 10.
- What is the issue with laptops this year? I was planning to upgrade.
  
  If you follow general newbie advice and install Mint, the kernel is older than your laptop and may not support everything.
  Fedora, EndeavorOS or Manjaro would be a better choice then.
  
  They are fine with newer kernels
- I just did that with hdr on alderlake n95. Easy as hell with NixOS.
- Or a Mac ime. I tried to run mint OS on a 2016 intel MBPro and it was a disaster. I got it up and running but the Touch Bar didn’t work, the Wi-Fi didn’t work, all kinds of issues.
  
  I got it up and running but the Touch Bar didn’t work, the Wi-Fi didn’t work, all kinds of issues.
  That's because Apple doesn't release drivers for all those components.
  Running anything but a Mac OS on a Mac is a nice pet project, but you can't expect Linux to work.
  
  The 2016-2017 MBP are unusually bad. Devices on either side of that? You're fine. But the 2016-2017 devices? No wifi (except in some extremely unusual cases) is the big problem. Even then, it amazes me how much does work, with zero configuration, with a simple graphical install. The problem with this vintage MBP isn't that it's hard to get running--it's that it's (almost) impossible, but the parts that aren't impossible are as smooth as they can be.
  Yes, that's cold comfort. But I'm speaking from the POV of an owner of a 2017 MBP who desperately wanted to keep it going.
  The coda to the story is that my wife used it for a while with her business but it fell victim to an absolutely bizarre heat issue where the heat sink vents hot air directly across the controller cable for the display, leading to inevitable failure. Again: not an issue on either side of this model year. It's sad because it could've served for another 4-5 years, making the initial purchase price substantially more tolerable.
  
  Apple doesn't support Linux

In my experience the VAST majority of people that say things are hard on Linux have never actually tried it ...
Same with people that complain cats are not LoYAl lIkE DOgS... They have never had cats
- Cats are just as trainable as dogs, just takes longer and different incentives for them.
  
  Exactly right!.... It's like saying dogs are dumb because they don't learn words like a parrot would
  
  Let me know when you can train a cat to herd sheep or train one to hunt and retrieve game on command. I've got 3 cats and 4 dogs here. The cats make nice and often amusing lap warmers. But beyond catching the odd mouse, they can't do work.
- Things are also constantly improving over time as well, so its very possible that OP's setup was somewhat problematic a while ago but have since been resolved.
  Which would also make sense if the hardware itself was super new at the time, and didn't have proper kernel modules for it when it was originally released perhaps.
  
  This was the first time I tried to install on this laptop. I expected more issues because of the online comments about HP and this laptop series in particular (janky keyboard, the pen, touchscreen, folds over to a tablet, etc.) Over the years I’ve tinkered often with different distros, and on all the machines across all the attempts - there were a handful of annoyances or driver issues preventing me from having that smooth “it just works” experience. If I put in more effort or was smarter, I probably could have made that printer work, or get bluetooth working, whatever.
  The last time I built a new desktop, I specifically bought components I knew would behave in Linux so I had a good experience. But I didn’t realize things had progressed to the point they are today where “it just works” applies to a much broader range of devices such as my laptop.
  It’s nice! :)
- Feels like people tend to like dogs more because they find them more submissive and easier to control.
- Same with people who say solar panels can't ever work. They haven't tried them in the last few years.
- I guess a lot of it depends on the hardware you’re using.
  I now use a Surface Go 1 and it suits me really well.
  But getting it to boot on a usb drive was difficult and I would have given up if it was just to try Linux.
  Fortunately, I had already used Linux on many other devices and I knew that the reward was worth the struggle and that the difficulties were not related to Linux.
- I'm not having a great time with DisplayLink driver support, personally. Various applications I use with mixed levels of support too, along with missing out on Windows specific GPU features.
  This has been my most successful round of Linux adoption, but there are still niggling issues and confusion. The biggest difficulty is that my accumulated support knowledge of like 20 years is useless and I am relearning basic issue identification and resolution processes.
  The internet being a raging dumpster fire, support is kind of patchy on more niche topics. All the good, useful discussions are largely happening behind closed doors at this point on everyone's Discords and whatnot.
  
  I’m not having a great time with DisplayLink driver support, personally
  We used this for work and I had a bit of a hard time setting up 4 years ago when covid hit... I eventually was able to but later on moved on to a different set up.
  We still use it on Windows when I go to the office (once a week) and it still shit there
  If you post specifics I may be able to help you.
  Various applications I use with mixed levels of support too, along with missing out on Windows specific GPU features.
  well yes... Windows specific stuff is not usually available in Linux... unless we are talking about gaming which is catching up really quick
  The biggest difficulty is that my accumulated support knowledge of like 20 years is useless and I am relearning basic issue identification and resolution processes.
  Yes, it's a different OS... not sure if you were expecting any differently but this is the power of the walled gardens... you learn to live in them and then find it hard to do anything differently... IMO the transition was worth it for me... I hope it is for you
  The internet being a raging dumpster fire, support is kind of patchy on more niche topics. All the good, useful discussions are largely happening behind closed doors at this point on everyone’s Discords and whatnot.
  This is what I disagree with... that has not been my experience AT ALL. The worst I can say about online support for Linux is that, some communities, are a little caustic (looking at you Arch support, although you do have great online help posted).
  If anything, when I can't seem to find anything regarding something I am looking for, I have defaulted to realizing I may not be asking the right question... RARELY discussions for Linux support happen behind closed doors... it's just not even in the spirit of the Linux communities. Again, if you'd like to post specifics maybe we can help

I’ve used linux for twelve years and am still surprised at how easy some things are, not that things were really even that hard before. The improvements to gaming on Linux are pretty well known now, but even things like recording audio are dead simple now. Outside of the super expensive DAWs, I’d say linux is on par with Mac and windows now, especially with things like yabridge.

The moment that shocked me was when printers, network cards, and even motherboard integrated Ethernet didn't work on Windows without driver downloads but Linux was plug and play. Full reversal of the situation.

you shouldn't need to disable tpm
- On my surface I still need to :/ fuckin Microsoft
  
  Surface wasn't meant to run linux. Its a struggle to get it working on them.
  /owner of 3 defenestrated surface devices.

We may need a new forum: when Google is RIGHT about a search.
You've given me some interest in Endeavor. My current installation won't hibernate & restore.
- HA! True. Remember when Google was always right and always exactly what you were looking for?
  Pepperidge Farms remembers.
  
  I 'member
  
  Long ago. Check this one out if you want something that actually works and I think it's open source
- Endeavour is great, I daily it and as a Linux noob it's been very forgiving. My only annoyance is that I've been having some issues with the display where sometimes I'll wake it up and will only get a black screen and no means of doing anything to fix it. My laptop also really doesn't like me using any other DEs besides Budgie.
- my experience with hibernate issues is that its either a swap partition issue or there's not a cmos battery, but also idk my current system is like 7 years old so it could be something else broken
  
  My system is even older. Still, everything was fine until I transitioned from 20.04 to 22.04.

Yeah I had an MSI gaming laptop that had a lot of proprietary stuff that was a pain to setup. Everything from display brightness to volume to internet to keyboard lights to headphone jack took special workarounds to setup. This was in 2018 and Ubuntu 18.04. Then 19.04 rolled out, and I didn't have to do the speaker workaround anymore. 19.10 rolled out, and i didn't have to do the keyboard lights workaround. This way, little by little, every Linux kernel upgrade added one or another of the components, and after a couple of years, everything on that laptop worked out of the box. That's when I was truly impressed by Linux.

I've used Linux since the mid 00's and, well, I've seen some shit. But nowadays? It's the best desktop OS I've used. I recently had to start using a Mac for work and realized just how far DE's like Gnome and KDE have gotten. It feels like I have to fight MacOS every single day to get it to do the absolute basics, the things that Gnome and KDE does out of the box. And the most ridiculous thing is that the app ecosystem for MacOS is so heavily focused on monetization that if you purchase enough apps to customize the MacOS DE to an acceptable level, you'd likely have spent enough money to buy another laptop. Madness.
TL;DR: Turns out that this year is actually the year of Linux on the desktop!

No surprise it feels a lot snappier. You only run the shit you have purposefully installed, and not endless layers of telemetry, candy crush silent installs, game bars that somehow make the performance worse, and mandatory online service accounts
- They're possibly running KDE, but other than that you're right

Linux is boring. In a good way. It is so boring that each of my computers use different distros. I have Debian, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Endeavour OS installed across 4 or 5 computers right now. Some of them still dual-booting Windows 10/11. Now each time I boot into Windows is fun. In a bad way.

Yes it literally has come a long way, all the way from 1991 to 2024, I think the only other OS that has managed that is Windows.
I know that's not quite what you meant, it was just a thought I came to think of reading the headline.
But apart from that, it's also become quite good, but IMO it has been for more than a decade now.
- It kind of was what I meant. My first Linux experience was in 93 - I wanted to run X on my 486 so I could use maple and other Unix programs from the mainframe in college. Thank god for my comp sci roommate-I don’t think I could have figured it out on my own back then.
  Flash forward through the decades and here I am running all the games I want through steam and bottles. Win10 updates are crapping on themselves requiring a reload - I try linux on it expecting it to mostly work, but having a few annoying issues that will be a bear to solve. Nope, it just worked.
  It’s impressive to me. A bunch of nerds on the internet mostly volunteered their way into a better OS than the big boys have made.
  
  Yes it is absolutely cool. 😎
  I tried Linux earlier, but didn't find it really useful until 2005 when I switched to Linux as my main OS, but games were a huge problem, so I had to dual boot for a couple of years, before I dropped Windows completely.
- 1991 to 2024, I think the only other OS that has managed that is Windows.
  Also the various BSD-based OSs. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD etc. are still around, and MacOS is based on BSD too. And since BSD (1978) is a Unix, you can trace these all the way back to 1969.
  
  That's kind of true, but MacOS and Mac OSX are 2 different things. What is based on BSD is the MAC OSX that came out in 2001 AFAIK.
  And BSD was interrupted for 2 years because of copyright disputes with AT&T. If that hadn't happened, BSD would be the longest continuous OS today, and probably way more significant than it is.
  I don't consider MAC OSX as part of BSD, just like Android isn't part of Linux Desktop, but only uses the Linux kernel. OSX took parts of BSD and shielded it behind a proprietary wall, because the BSD license offer no protection from that. So they become separate projects the moment they enter the Apple domain.
  Problem here is when people mix up the use of the word Linux as an OS with Linux the kernel. I am 100% sure OP meant Linux as a Desktop OS like GNU/Linux or something like Free desktop according to freedesktop.org. Using his experience with EndeavorOS as an example.
  But you are right, it can be said Unix/BSD has an even longer running time, but it has been somewhat problematic and interrupted because of AT&T and SCO and Novell.
- all the way from 1991 to 2024, I think the only other OS that has managed that is Windows
  It's easy to forget about MacOS when it only has 15% desktop market share.
  Operating systems that started before 1991 that are still in active development (had a release in the last 12 months):
  Multics (1969-)
  MVS (1974-) via OS/390 (1995-) -> z/OS (2001-)
  VMS (1977) via OpenVMS (1992-)
  BSD (1978-) via 386BSD -> FreeBSD, NetBSD -> OpenBSD
  HP-UX (1982-)
  SunOS (1982-1994) via Solaris (1992-)
  MacOS (1984-)
  AIX (1986-)
  RISC OS (1987-)
  Almost made it:
  Minix (1987-2017)
  Genera (1982-2021)
  AmigaOS (1985-2021)
  NeXTSTEP (1987-1997) via GNUStep (1993-2021)
  IBM i (1988-2022)
  SpartaDOS (1988-2022)
  
  That's an impressive list, 👍
  I admit I forgot AIX, but the others there are reasons I didn't consider, I have explained in other posts why on BSD and MAC OS. Same arguments are true for most of your list.
  But it's still an impressive and interesting list. And yes AIX absolutely qualifies.
- Windows only has more support because it is 10 years older but of course the shareholders will destroy its market dominance.
  
  Windows became popular with Windows 3.0 that came out 1990, And the Linux kernel came in 1991, but the first distro which is a better comparison came in 1993.
  So Windows had a 3 year advantage.
  But that wasn't the more crucial thing, the real advantage was DOS compatibility, which everything legacy ran on. So with Windows people and companies could still run their old DOS programs, they could even run them better than in an old fashioned DOS system, because Windows was brilliant for multitasking DOS programs.

When you say that the keyboard works: do the brightnesss, mute and volume controls do what they're supposed to do?
HP laptops--at least business-grade ones--are notorious for sending nonstandard scan codes and requiring custom drivers.
- They do! I checked all of them. I couldn’t believe it!

Hibernate works
Yah, I'm not buying that.
- I left I alone, it went off. I came back and wiggled the mouse, nothing happened. I pressed the enter key snd it came back to life -same behavior as my desktop.
  Did it again, this time I tried closing the lid and opening it - it sprung to life when the lid opened.
  You’re right - not the most thorough tests, but that’s what I did/saw.
  
  Sounds like sleep. Hibernate is when it turns completely off, such that you can leave it unplugged for a weekend and still have battery when it pops you back into your session. It takes longer to save and restore the session than sleep does.
  
  That sounds like sleep. Not hibernate. Hibernate is the process of moving your working ram onto disk. It's similar to a full power off except your current state is saved. Hibernate doesn't usually work oob. Sleep does.
- Hibernate never works. On every work laptop and distro I've used I've always found the laptop spinning and overheating in my bag when I get home. Eventually I just made sure to turn it off completely when I quit work.
  
  I have no idea what you have to do to make that. Hibernation on hardware level is regular shutdown.
- It's Linux kernel feature. It's done purely in software.
  
  Which is why I'm saying I don't buy it. Hibernate is notoriously terrible in every distro because it's not working right for most cases because the kernel doesn't do it well. And I know that's really not the kernels fault, because every manufacturer has some stupid implementation of S4 (and S3, frankly) that makes it fail.
- I don't know about others here but I manually hibernate with
  sh
  
  systemctl hibernate
  And it works pretty well. I set up 16gb swap for my 16gb ram (Which I know is overkill) but it works. I am on Fedora 40

It really has come a long way since the old times.
- Yeah, 2 hour kernel recompiles to get a sound card to half work were not fun.
  
  They kinda were for me. But then, I was young with plenty of time to spend.

This has been my experience since 2009 :) I've been using Linux for 15 years now, across four laptops and two desktop PCs, and I've only had a few rare hardware issues. (Sleep not working properly, BIOS update overwriting GRUB, and Wacom tablet mapping needing to be fixed. That's it.)
The hardest part is almost always the installation, and that's almost always attributable to Microsoft Bullshit.
I'm happy you're having a good time :)

EndeavourOS has been a wonderful experience for me, can't recommend it enough.
- for me it was very unreliable, I have an i7 7th gen hp envy from I think 2018 and I dual booted Windows and linux for more than a year now jumping distros every now and again just to get to know them better.
  I first started with zorin OS and it was good, snappy, long battery life, stable I then tried popOS! and it was even better, I loved it until a few months in I started getting sudden crashes for some reason so I installed endeavourOS as it seems to be very popular and everyone was recommending it, but I immediately after installation started getting crashes every 30 or so minutes which was weird as no other OS linux or windows did that so it didn't seem hardware related I'm now using linux mint and it's wonderful so far
  TLDR I daily drove half a dozen OSs and the only one that gave me trouble from the beginning was endeavourOS, which is weird because it feels like I'm the only one...
  
  You're not alone.
  
  I had the opposite experience. I have been using EndeavourOS on my desktop since November, zero issues. This weekend I've been distro hopping on my old MacBook pro and almost every distro had a problem. Some didn't boot, other had wifi issues, trackpad issues, keyboard volume keys not working, high CPU usage... EndeavourOS was the only one I tried that just worked out of the box with no issues
  
  I probably have the same Envy as you. It is just an unreliable piece of shit. Open it up and see if it is full of little metal chips, which is how HP "deburrs" the holes on the bottom metal plate.

Secure boot is still problematic, but it has also become much easier thanks to sbctl; in the best case you only have to delete the keys in the bios and run 3 or 4 generic commands.
- And there are distros where it works out of the box with no extra steps needed: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora and openSUSE IIRC
  
  Worth noting that on Fedora this is true, UNLESS you use the proprietary nvidia drivers. Then no secure boot
- Since the day secure boot became the standard on motherboards, about once every quarter a new research paper popped up, describing a new way to hack or bypass it ...
- Interesting. Do you know if it works with an existing LUKS-encrypted installation?
  
  It does, I used to set it up during the time I used Arch, it takes a bit of reading to understand how it works, but works flawlessly once you set it up.

Installing Linux is really easy these days.

Did you get your audio volume fixed? My ThinkPad is so quiet on Linux (Silverblue) that it's hard to use it for anything with media.
- I recall that at least on KDE, in the audio settings you can enable the ability to go WAY past 100% volume.
  
  Does this then also work for the media buttons? Then maybe I should try to rebase...
- Not with the volume buttons on the keyboard. Alsamixer helped a little - it was set to ~70% (whatever the line between white and red is). But it’s still quiet. But you can drive it way beyond 100% through software. The problem is pushing the volume button stops at 100%.
  The lazy way is to open pulseaudio, grab the slider bar and put it to say, 150%. You can also do it with a terminal command. Somewhere close to the top of a Google search somebody mentioned they bound their volume keys to that terminal command/script where each press resulted in a 5% increase or decrease in volume - allowing the button presses to go beyond 100%. I may or may not do this.
  I wouldn’t go so far as to say it doesn’t work - merely one of the annoyances I was expecting. Except I expected many of these and this is the only one I encountered.
  
  I know about those "workarounds", but it's ridiculous that the regular UI (including media buttons!) is more or less useless 🙂

Funny enough, I also flashed my (probably much older) HP Spectre X360 to endevourOS last week, works good, feels more responsive then PopOS was on it.
I then tried Bazzite on my desktop and the experience went much worse, seemingly because of Nvidia driver support still being pretty bad on linux. Oh well.
- NVIDIA will be great OOTB experience in a couple of years, but the official driver will get much better in just couple of months from now.
  
  Why will it be better in just a couple months? Something on the horizon?
  Edit: Appreciate the responses!
- on nobara, nvidia drivers have never once been an issue for me.
  
  What about in steam specifically, seemed like a bit of a steam issue as it was very buggy, flicking graphics and such in Steam client and big picture mode was godawful, even tried the render fix mentioned online and it didn't help at all.
- Did you use the Bazzite image with the Nvidia driver? They have separate images for that.
  
  I did yes lol

EndeavourOS is easy to install but unclear how to maintain.
Don’t use GUI package managers, but here, have some GUI package managers.
pacman, pacdiff, yay, eos, AUR??? The Complete Idiots Guide did not clear things up for me, either. AFAICT they made something more confusing than Arch, not less.
- Don’t use GUI package managers, but here, have some GUI package managers.
  What GUI package managers are you referring to? EOS doesn't supply any.
  AFAICT they made something more confusing than Arch, not less.
  If I'm not mistaken, this is all stuff you should also be doing on Arch. The single difference is that EOS provides a button in their "Welcome" app that will helpfully run a command for you in a terminal for some of these tasks.
  
  The welcome app shows several package management buttons, but no clear explanation of what they really do or if & how they relate to each other. What’s a beginner to do, click each one multiple times and hope for the best?
  By introducing more package management commands than came with Arch, they’ve made it seem more complicated, not less. Am I supposed to use eos-update as well as the other commands, or is it supposed to replace one or more of the other commands? Admittedly I’ve only spent half a day with EndeavourOS—the first Arch-based distro I’ve ever used—but I have no idea.
  I don’t think it compares well to a beginner’s experience of package management on Debian or Red Hat or Alpine-based distros.
- Since when does EndeavourOS supply a GUI package manager? They don't even have Discover installed out of the box.
  I don't think it's more confusing than Arch, if you know how to maintain Arch then you're not gonna have any trouble at all.
  I agree that their eos popup is a bit meh but you can just press the "Don't show me again" button and be done with it
  EndeavourOS is basically Arch with an easy installer and reasonable defaults. Don't expect it to be more than it is!

I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went.
I don't get your surprise. With a decent laptop like the one you have everything will work properly. You can even load something more stable like Debian into that and it will work just fine on the first attempt. No changes required.
The issue with stuff "not working out of the box" is usually related to people using unbranded potatoes or very old hardware with modern distros.
- On the contrary, it's often new hardware that causes the problems because the drivers won't have been reverse-engineered yet
  
  A lot of hardware has first party support

I'm glad it's going easy for you. Unfortunately after 3 hours of trying I still haven't gotten mint cinnamon installed yet. Bitlocker has been a pain to disable. I'm determined to get it working though, I'm really tired of microsoft

Maybe I upped the game too much when I decided to run Kinoite on Pi...

Yep, at this point Linux just does what I need it to.

which DE?
- Gnome

Sound check (although a little quiet).
I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 and this was an issue on every Linux install I've had (Endeavour, Arch, and now Debian). I know it isn't a hardware issue because when I first installed Endeavour, I was dual booting with Win11 and it was, no joke, capable of easily twice the volume as Endeavour, and that was even after maxing everything out in Alsamixer. Really not sure what's going on there. I've been incredibly lucky with audio on Linux the entire time I've used it, this is the one black spot on my record.

As long as your pc is a little bit behind its gonna be ok (unless you have a certain wifi chip)

Linux works for roughly 80% of what I do. The BIG missing piece is audio production. The software is mostly okay, it's the actual audio system that's the problem. Audio on Linux sucks big floppy donkey dicks. Yes, I know all about JACK (complicated and never works the way you think it should), RT kernels, Pipewire, etc. It's all terrible.

Maaan, you turned off secureboot and tpm though. Does EndeavorOS not support that?

My experience has been pretty similar. With Windows turning the invasive crap up to 11, I decided to try and jump to Linux. The catch has always been gaming. But, I have a Steam Deck and so have seen first hand how well Proton has been bridging that gap and finally decided to dip my toes back in. I installed Arch on a USB 3 thumbdrive and have been running my primary system that way for about a month now. Most everything has worked well. Though, with the selection of Arch, I accepted some level of slamming my head against a wall to get things how I want them. That's more on me than Linux. Games have been running well (except for the input bug in Enshrouded with recent major update, that's fixed now). I've had no issues with software, I was already using mostly FOSS anyway. It's really been a lot of "it just works" all around.

I agree, and I love it. Sure there are some iffy aspects of it that may give trouble, but for the most part a lot of those problems I've experienced can easily be solved by a quick search or are "would be nice but i'm sure it will work soon" features, and I can't even think of any recent examples with the latter. So I'm left with a great learning experience to how my computer works, another win.
Linux has also taught me to make good references. You get a very different experience to your computer than with a regular windows machine that 'works'.
I like to point out how I can update installed apps with a simple command (e.g., sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade).
No bloat, no ads, open source and the communities are just amazing and helpful.
What's there not to like?
I don't think I could ever use windows again, and it makes me proud.

iirc with OpenSuse or Fedora, Secureboot works quite easily too

Just came back to linux myself, installed and configured nixos on a brand new low power n95 processor with quick sync ect.
Walk in the park for declarative config with very easy rollback. Its done 24hrs later, its working well, i dont have anything else to tweak and I am new to nixos as well as having been away from linux for a long time..

I mean if you dont have secureboot or TPM support some people would say crucial security features are broken.
TPM is only used for "prevent local tampering with device" but could be used for way more.

205 comments