This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The big thing to consider is what software do you really NEED, what can change, and what can you do without. Then the change is easier.
Then there's the learning curve of new software. Wheee
I mean, if whole EU countries can do it, so can you.
I got a cheap mini pc. It had W11 on it which I promptly broke (I think it was when it insisted on me putting in a PIN but I closed the window). It also ran at 100% for no reason trying to do updates, but then refused to do any updates.
So I put the latest Ubuntu Linux on it. Seems OK, but I can't get anything to recognise the video codex stuff in the N150 CPU. It seems to know it's there, but Firefox and MPV won't use it...
You need to install the codecs, there's a way to do it on ubuntu, just google search it (and there's an option during installation to do it too). The N150 cpu and its integrated gpu is not a problem for your codec problem, it's a matter of installing the right software.
Yeah, I thought I'd ticked something similar during setup, but maybe it wasn't for that. I installed them and it hasn't really changed anything in either mpv or Firefox.
The compositing in Firefox is webrender (software) and appears to be using llvmpipe as the GPU. There's a 2nd "GPU" listed, but doesn't seem to use it All the codecs say hardware is disabled...
Installed VLC and that seems to use the hardware renderer. MPV and Firefox are both installed with Snap. I'm seeing a pattern that might not be there, but I'm already hating Snap. This is day two of my rebooted Linux experience...
I know when you install Mint there is a 'install codecs' checkbox during the installer, not sure if the same exists for Ubuntu.
For Ubuntu, you could try this and see if it solves your problem.
Yeah, tried all that, and not having much luck in Firefox and MPV. VLC fine. Replied to the other post, and it might be Snap blocking it. I dunno though, because I know basically fuck all about snap other than a lot of Linux people don't like it.
O, yeah. Snaps basically live in their own little system. Anything you do to your wider system, like installing codecs, will not affect a snap. Easiest solution is to remove the snap VLC and install normal VLC. Same for Firefox and MPC.
I have heard nothing good about snaps and Canonical pushing them is a big reason you don't see people recommending Ubuntu, and instead recommending things like Mint (me included).
What?! I'm still working on my spreadsheet comparing 7 and 8!
I might be a little behind on Windows releases, because this is the first time I've heard of a version 40320
I've been a full time dev since 2012 and needed a Mac, I had barely used windows over that time but beforehand ran a PC service business.
Anyway, Ive been using Linux as a daily driver for the past 6 months for reasons.
... The other day I got a new cheap laptop I needed to setup for run a single application.
Holy fuck what a shitshow.
It took me 2 hours just to get to the desktop. Shit didn't work, bullshit login screens, ads everywhere.
It was a massive pile of dog shit.
After battling to get the system setup for the rest of the day I gave up, chucked Fedora Kinoite On it... Took 30 minutes from creating boot media to getting a desktop going, chucked the app I needed to run in a Flatpack, chucked it on a USB, and it was up and running.
No bullshit.
Just works.
Truly the year of the Linux desktop.
I'm guessing the cheap laptop was running Windows? You didn't mention, it sounds at first like you're saying you were using Linux on it.
What ads were everywhere? Why did it "take 2 hours to get to the desktop" - you mean, that's how long it took to install or something?
People here so full of shit. I just reimaged my lenovo t570 with windows 11 took less then 10mins to install. Another 5 to remove all the bs built in software like solitaire Cortana etc and then another 10-15 to apply all windows updates. Bam done.
Takes a lot more to fully deshittify it, though. I've been down that road. So much registry diving, so many third party apps, strongarming uninstallations of bloatware through brute force, and just all around weeks of work.
When the screenshot shit was announced the first time, I just got tired of looking for workarounds to disable or remove Microsoft's active attempts of policing, spying, and triple-dip profiting off it's paying customers.
Install the IoT version, that comes without any of the bloat and works just fine. Not even the Microsoft store is bundled in.
Where does one purchase a single license for windows 10 iot lts? Isn't that only for volume purchases by large enterprises?
Yeah, I'm not sure why anybody is mentioning Windows IoT. When you lookup where to buy this, Microsoft themselves tell you to call or email a salesman; it's an enterprise-only thing. Recommending this for individuals is misguided.
I have heard about the IoT version. I'd have to look more into it, but I doubt I'm going back now that I've learned so much about Linux. I can troubleshoot most of Arch without touching the docs or asking online now, so it really defeats the purpose of switching back.
I also enjoy putting in a little effort to get things working. That's the thing about Linux. Most people that daily drive it get a dopamine release from tinkering with it and fixing things, and I'm one of those people.
I know there has been a big "its for everyone" push these days, but its really not. So I'm glad the IoT version exists for those that want or need it.
Yeah Linux is great, no doubt. I've been using Xubuntu since forever, never really touched Arch, but fundamentally if you know your way around one system, you'll manage another.
Still, there are a bunch of applications that I must run under Windows, so it's good to have the no frills version available for that.
You can even skip step 2 by using one of the IoT editions (either Win10 or Win11) which come minus the prepackaged bloatware.
Microsoft is mostly interested in making everything bullshit for home users. If you convince them you're an enterprise customer, preferably by running up the old Jolly Roger, suddenly your life is a lot easier.
It's not all quite as rosy.
Yes, Linux is much more capable now than it was 10 years ago and it's much more capable of being used as a main system. I myself have been using Linux as my main system for a few years now.
But it's also a fact that a lot of stuff might not work (even if it works for someone else) and that some things are still more difficult than they should be.
For example, on my laptop cannot wake from sleep since kernel 6.11. I have manually sourced a 6.10 from an older version of my distro and keep holding it back, so that I can use my laptop as a laptop. For someone without technical skill, this would mean that their laptop just can't sleep any more. Hibernate also doesn't work.
Another example is that LibreOffice still makes a lot of formatting mistakes when it has to open word documents. And sure, everyone could just switch to odf, but it's not quite as easy to make everyone else switch to odf. It makes it really hard to use LibreOffice in any kind of professional environment. Wouldn't want to make a powerpoint presentation that then looks like shit when it's played on a different PC.
Lastly, Nvidia sucks, but it's also close to the only option for laptops with dGPUs. When I look for laptops with dGPUs available in my area on a price comparison platform, I find 760 laptops with Nvidia GPUs and only 3 with AMD, all of which are priced at least €500 more than comparable Nvidia devices. So if you want to go for a gaming laptop, Nvidia is pretty much the only option, and under Linux it really sucks. Steam games generally work ok for me, but trying to use Heroic Launcher to play anything from my gigantic library of free Epic/Amazon/GoG games, about 10% of the games I tried actually work. And even with those that work, my laptop sometimes just decides that a slide show with 3 FPS is good enough. That stays even after reboots and resets, and after a few days it returns to normal. Only to go back to slideshow mode a few days later.
If you just use your laptop to run a browser, I can recommend Linux 100%.
If you want to do anything else and don't have any technical skills and/or don't want to spend hours fixing things that should just work, I can't fully recommend it.
I read posts just like yours ten years ago.
I guess you aren't wrong. There are a lot of advances but stability and small but really annoying bugs remain a huge pain point.
I am a developer and Linux is my native environment in production systems. I wanted to use Linux on my laptop but sleeping / waking up never worked well enough. It could not switch from integrated video card to a discrete one ending up always using the discrete one which drained the battery in 30 minutes. All in all, it was usable but the details didn't work so I gave up. That was years ago and eversince no customer really allows Linux...
Sleep/hibernate has been a pretty big problem for a while. As for the gpu, have you checked out NixOS? There's ways to enforce your integrated card to handle everything and change states for certain apps to the discreet card.
It takes a bit to learn, but nixlang is pretty simple. I've heard it referred to as "JSON with functions". It also has the largest package repository of any OS and is atomic, so its hard as hell to break. You can even make separate, containerized dev environments with flakes.
