PopOS feels like an extremely pragmatic operating system as far as linux distributions go. Yes, I do want my broadcom wifi card to just work. I do want my dedicated Nvidia graphics card to actually be useful. Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work.
I also think that the enhancements they've made with their Cosmic Desktop are indeed that - enhancements over base Gnome desktop, and they, as with most of the things have done, gone with a pragmatic approach to them. The automatic tiling is built on top of gnome rather than requiring a separate window manager (this is a much bigger feature than I think it's been given credit for). Workspaces are more prominent and there are more ways to make working with them better than on default Gnome. The launcher is also much more robust and more closely mimics spotlight search or Alfred rather than Launchpad.
I'm glad that PopOS exists and I would probably recommend it to anyone who wants to get their feet wet with linux and anyone that is curious about automatic tiling window managers - this is a great starting point with low commitment requirements.
I’ve been running it with a Radeon GPU and a beefy Intel desktop professor. It’s a real joy. I can play so many nice computer games via Steam. Pop_OS is a joy to use. It’s not a lot different from Ubuntu, but it’s quite reliable and fits my work style these days quite well. Can’t complain at all. This is the longest I have been pure Linux in a long time. It’s hard to believe I have been using Linux for over 20 years.
Also note that you can install the automatic tiling extension in other GNOME-based distros, you necessarily don't need PopOS to use it (though I had some weird bugs with it in Manjaro, it's probably going to be more unstable than PopOS's integration)
Hopefully the GNOME folks will add some of this tiling support as part of their upstream release. Extensions can be problematic and introduce a lot of random breakage.
Funny, I tried to switch to PopOS a few months ago and my Ethernet card would just not work. I switched over to tether from my phone but after installing a few drivers and it not working I switched back to Ubuntu which just works with my Ethernet card (though I have to install a different driver to get gigabit speeds.) Really not sure what the issue was but I didn’t feel like doing a deep dive when every distro I’ve used in the past decade has had no problems with Ethernet cards on first boot.
Pop_OS is downstream of Ubuntu, so it would be especially odd for a regression to occur on something as low level as support for a specific Ethernet card. Which Ethernet card is it, specifically?
There are currently many "working out of the box" distros available. Mint, Solus, Manjaro, Ubuntu, KDE Neon, Fedora, MX, Elementary etc. to name a few.
As an occasional Linux user, I still get annoyed with situations like "GNOME people decided that you shouldn't want to put files on the desktop" which then spills over into supposedly user friendly distros. So it's not all sunshine and roses even when it's officially working-as-intended.
Lately I've been using Mint-XFCE in a VM for some of my Linux needs and that's been much better performing than trying to virtualize the fancier desktop environments. But Pop_OS looks promising for next time I need a native linux environment.
What's this about GNOME and files on the desktop? I have file on my GNOME desktop. Sometimes the ordering of them is a little weird, but I've never had an issue with it.
It might be trivial, but it's something that can annoy new Linux users.
And they also break on every GNOME release, often enough that I kinda' gave up on my favorite GNOME extension (Dash to Dock). Not that I blame the extension developers, but e.g. the review times on extensions.gnome.org are atrocious, and the build system is fiddly enough that I can't remember what I did to install it manually 6, 12 or 18 months earlier.
From the link pjmlp posted [0], to install extensions in Gnome 40 you need to install a 3rd party browser extension (not available through Firefox add-on store) and then from your package manager install the browser-shell-connector. These will let you enable and disable extensions, but you still can't configure them.
To configure your newly enabled extensions, you need to install the Gnome Extensions flatpack.
And to do that, you're off to the command line to add Flathub as a remote repo.
I don't know that the desktop icons extension requires any configuration, but based on the fact that you need an extension for it I'm guessing that there are similarly weird decisions being made elsewhere, and being able to change extension settings is going to be useful. And to get to that point you have a four stage install including a trip to the command line?
Why not ship Gnome Extensions by default with the OS? Is this like Steve Jobs with his "you're holding it wrong" remark, and people who want to put icons on the desktop are supposed to just stop wanting to do that?
GNOME Shell integration extension is available on the add-on stores of both Firefox[0] and Chrome[1]. Their preferences are available either from the installed page or the `gnome-extensions` CLI tool included with GNOME Shell or the Extensions app you're talking about.
I suppose so. On my distro (Arch, BTW) I need the browser extension, and I can use the non-Flatpak GNOME Extensions just fine (used to be Tweaks before).
I think the GNOME developers want to stop hearing about packaging issues for their apps, so they ask everyone to use the Flatpak versions. I have nothing against it, but there's no point as long as the distro-provided version still works.
For the average non-technical user going through the trouble of installing an extension to put files on the desktop is a non-starter. If I switched my parents to Linux with GNOME they would be completely lost being unable to put files on the desktop. If people want Linux to be the next great desktop OS then things like this are a huge barrier to usability.
Linux as an ecosystem is a lot further along that many people seem to either realise or give credit for.
It most certainly works out of the box for most general tasks.
Of course there are still limitations like a lack of some software (Photoshop...) and peripherals support, but these are becoming far more uncommon. I even find with Steam's proton implementation I can install and run most Windows games without a second thought.
You mean for devs to support Linux? That is indeed an issue of some concern, because most Linux users would prefer native Linux games. But, if you mean "bother installing Linux", then get ready for the whole privacy and control discussion :)
OS/2 proved what happens when that route is followed.
As for privacy and control discussion, when most GNU/Linux users happen to mostly consume Electron and Web Apps, install applications via curl | sudo sh, there is hardly anything to discuss, other than cargo cult of a false sense of privacy and control.
There are many supported and distinct Linux distributions, not so for Windows versions. I wouldn't want to run Windows 2000 in 2021 because it's the last one without telemetry.
Same applies to certain Linux distributions, like Android and ChromeOS, or are they Linux for promoting desktop and non-Linux for when it isn't convenient?
Because it's free for one. Second because I have so many more options and control of what my OS is.
But really, reality is that Linux support for games is still caught in the cycle of too few customers to bother -> customers want better Linux support before moving over -> too few customers to bother...
So I can now have all the (my) benefits of Linux and enjoy gaming that otherwise I wouldn't.
How does that even follow? You'd say the same if Linux couldn't run Windows games.
Also, you used "begs the question" incorrectly. You mean "raises the question".
Also, because Windows is a steaming pile of donkey turd that shoves ads in your OS, reboots when you're trying to get work done, resets privacy and power management settings after many of its coerced updates, and has a spazzy and inconsistent UI that offers limited customization. Also closed source.
Manjaro is currently what I'm settled on. It manages different kernel versions and graphics drivers really well, much better than Ubuntu. And the package manager is much easier to use (It's easy to create your own packages from PKGBUILDs) The XFCE version is incredibly solid, and with a few tweaks you can even get i3 to work alongside it!
My recent experience with Manjaro has been extremely good as well, so that although I'm still using Debian for tinkering, I now put Manjaro on all other new Linux users PCs.
That sounds funny to me, using arch for daily driving and Debian for tinkering xD
Not saying you’re wrong, I just found it amusing and slightly ironic.
I get your point:)
Many among the users I introduced to Linux are elderly with no or little computer experience, and others just need it for the usual web+office+media applications, so having a very consistent desktop where everything works out of the box as in Manjaro beats the incredible number of packages available on Debian.
This is about XFCE of course, which is what I install: close enough to Windows to be useable by all, simple enough not to balk at the first inconsistence, fast enough to run pretty much everywhere. Gnome, Mate and KDE would probably be fantastic on all Distros, but XFCE on Debian defaults to ugly and unnecessary settings (a DM ideal for small screen laptops which defaults to two panels?).
I don't have experience with plain Arch, but having read only good things about it will probably try it soon.
Debian has been really good for just about everything since I moved to it many moons ago, and as of today is still my daily driver on all machines, but sometimes requires constant fiddling here and there, and I'm getting old; I stopped recompiling my kernels on PCs over 10 years ago, and a system that works just out of the box is too temping:) Not to criticize Debian, which has been great almost everywhere, but it gave some problems with some niche applications, for example music: a working LinVST installation is not easy to obtain, and it is tightly tied with the running kernel, which if has _rt extensions will help with low latency but sometimes doesn't let one compile with standard Wine libraries, and when one finds a good compromise, bang! VirtualBox stops working because now its kernel module doesn't build anymore. Grrrr!:) So I may take the chance to test some other options, and Arch might be a good candidate.
There are lots which allow you to install proprietary drivers and or codecs at install time. Or give you the choice to enable non-free repos. Not everyone cares about free vs libre. Some people want ‘obvious’ things to just work out of the box as they would on other OSes.
But of the ones above you mention that I’ve used in anger you’re absolutely right and that’s the very idea of them. To ‘just work’.
I prefer Tumbleweed though. Well tested rolling release (https://openbuildservice.org/), snapshots on update.
With the opi package you can install: chrome, codecs, dotnet, msedge, msteams, plex, skype, signal, slack, teamviewer, vivaldi, vscode, vscodium, zoom and more.
Brave is app i am missing so far, but having the newest version KDE and other software that required a PPA on Ubuntu is pretty nice.
And it feels much snappier installed on a SATA SSD than Mint from a NVME SSD on the same machine!
None of the solutions for switching between discrete and integrated graphics cards on Linux are particularly great (compared to Windows where it just works automagically). Pop OS at the very least has some nice UI to switch modes, and doesn’t default to Nouveau etc. Nothing you can’t achieve elsewhere but nice that they’re thought about it.
I know Ubuntu works with the nvidia-* drivers but does it detect and select them for use by default or does it use nouveau until a (knowledgable) user reconfigures which driver is in use? And with legacy nvidia such as 340 there isn’t Wayland support and so enabling by default could lead to a broken system.
Same with a kernel greater >= 5.10 and that particular driver series. So would be nice to hear what Pop OS is doing here that Ubuntu isn’t.
If the rumours of nvidia open sourcing their drivers are true (sorry no link - just something I heard) they’ll all work out of the box one day (hopefully !).
If, during the Ubuntu install process, you check the box to install proprietary drivers, it will automatically detect & install the nvidia-* drivers. You can also do this from the settings post-install. No Linux knowledge required really, it’s easier than the state of things on Windows.
>Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work.
This is really quite disingenuous, especially coupled with the jab at Nvidia cards. In case you weren't aware, there is no option to actually make an Nvidia card useful because of their locking up of P-state modifications and re-clocking behind cryptographically signed firmware they refuse to distribute. I think you actually know this though, otherwise why would you bring up the crippled nature of Nvidia cards of post-Maxwell and later?
PopOS definitely deserves accolades, but let's not pass off Nvidia's giving the middle finger proctological exam to the FOSS community as a point that makes PopOS better. Nothing is made better by that but Nvidia's bottom line, and vendor lock-in agenda.
I have heard this criticism of Nvidia w.r.t. Linux before, so I feel like I must be missing something. Working with Nvidia cards has been easy for the last ~5 years -- literally just install their drivers, `apt install nvidia-cuda-toolkit` and CuDNN and everything just works. In comparison, I've never been able to figure out how to get Tensorflow or PyTorch to run on Windows. What are your use cases that the Nvidia drivers fail for?
EDIT: I think I misunderstood, and your complaint wasn't about the quality of their proprietary drivers, rather their refusal to work with open source developers. I was reacting mainly to "no option to actually make an Nvidia card useful"
I can’t get cuda to work for me on my nvidia 1660x. I’ve followed their steps straight from nvidia, am using the Ubuntu LTS, etc. I’m sure I must be doing something wrong but I always get a dependency issue (cuda depends on X which isn’t going to be installed) or when I try to import tensorflow it claims it can’t find the .so files. I’ve added the cuda path in opt to the LD path with no luck. I bought nvidia specifically to be able to use tensorflow (had an amd prior) and I’m just kinda upset about it.
Installing CUDA (with kernel driver, CuDNN, Tensorflow/PyTorch) has not been easy for me either. Usually you want to have the latest version of all of them. But sometimes the very latest version of these packages is not yet supported by the other. This is where it get difficult. Also the fact that the CUDA instruction from TensorFlow [1] still are at Ubuntu 18.04 does not help.
In my experience installing PyTorch with CUDA is easier than TensorFlow (and much better documented).
The best experience, in my opinion, is however with CUDA and Flux.jl or Knet.jl on Julia. All you need there is the kernel driver (and julia). CUDA and CuDNN will be installed per default if necessary. I am wondering why CUDA is not simply a pip-installable package (like it is in Julia or in Conda).
I also had to resort to looking at guides on Medium.com for installing CUDA, as the install is not as straightforward as it looks. Alternatively, you can search on DuckDuckGo (for privacy reasons) with this as the query: "NVIDIA" AND "CUDA" AND "install" site:medium.com
It’s not a jab against FOSS and I apologize if it comes off that way. Nvidia is absolutely the problematic party here.
In the end though I’m not going to use nouveau and am one hundred percent going to install the proprietary blobs Nvidia provides because I bought a dedicated GPU for a reason. Making it so I don’t have to jump through hoops to do that is appreciated and PopOS is one of the few that will just let me skip several steps to get there.
I've been using Linux with NVidia since ... wow, what time the 9600 was around again? I've been with many new generations and I am currently using a 3090 and I can't remember ever having a problem. The performance is almost the same (depends on the use-case, sometimes better, sometimes worse) as on Windows, at least when using things like Tensorflow and the like. The only problems I ever had were when I tried to get a few ATI/AMD cards to run on someone else's computer. But hey, at least people praise them for being cool with the FOSS community I guess?
> PopOS feels like an extremely pragmatic operating system as far as linux distributions go. Yes, I do want my broadcom wifi card to just work. I do want my dedicated Nvidia graphics card to actually be useful. Anyone that disagrees with those sorts of principles can of course simply install a different distribution that aligns more closely with their own personal philosophy and gives them the absolute control that they need, but for me, I just want it to work.
That seems like a kind of self-contradictory philosophy - if you care more about whether it "just works" than how much control you have, how does it make sense to want to run Linux at all?
Personally, I don't want to be part of Microsoft's ecosystem anymore, but I want some 'convenience' because I actually need to be productive rather than forever navigating the maze of compatible driver versions, so there are a number Linux flavours that fit this middle ground quite nicely.
I use Pop_OS in preference to Ubuntu, but Ubuntu for the most convenience short of anything Microsoft.
I also want my software to "just work" - and in that sense I like Windows. But I don't like the telemetry and anti-user practices and that's enough for me to use Linux. I've never tried PopOS though, but after this post I might.
When does linux not "just works"? I have been running linux on my thinkpads (x200, x220, w540, T470, T480s) etc and "it just works", with appreciably much less fiddling around than I would on a similar windows desktop with drivers etc. (My last install of linuxmint on my T480s I think I spent more time fiddling with vimrc than the actual OS).
And I dare say that on servers, linux certainly "just works".
The answer to this is "For almost its entire history of being used as a desktop operating system by users without a significantly above average level of technical knowledge."
I think Linux is in a pretty good state for at least the last few years but you have to be either unreasonably lucky or simply joking to be able to pretend you are unfamiliar with the concept of running into various hardware/driver/software issues attempting to run Linux as a desktop OS. Even if you stick to "Linux Certified" hardware like Thinkpads.
Linux is my OS of choice these days, but over the years I've had 10x as many issues as I have with my Windows systems and I probably have 10x as much time in raw hours using Windows.
I think perhaps something happens to those of us with experience and expertise is when we run into an issue we might know how to fix it in 30 seconds or a few minutes so it doesn't even seem like it was an issue to us, simply part of configuring the system. However, when it happens to someone that's not experienced that same "non-issue" might result in them spending 4 hours on forums and various websites trying to figure out how to do something that would only take a few seconds if they already knew how.
That's assuming they don't just throw their hands up immediately and ask someone to fix it for them.
1. Hibernation is broken in three different ways (1. it's disabled by default 2. it resumes instantly when certain hardware is plugged in 3. it only works if almost no programs run, probably because the default swap partition is too small)
2. Computer freezes when running out of memory. Still not sure how to improve this, perhaps a bigger swap partition, perhaps changing the OOM killer configuration or installing another OOM killer daemon.
3. Ran out of space on the boot partition so kernel updates won't work until I figure out how to manually fix that. Plus the last kernel it installed before complaining doesn't boot at all, so I have to manually pick an old one.
And my earlier attempts on other distributions didn't go better either. Fedora managed to corrupt its package manager state and started complaining about incorrectly signed packages. And on Ubuntu I didn't manage to switch to nvidia's driver, it kept using nouveau with no indication of what's wrong.
I've set up Arch before and it's not fun to me. I don't want to change and write dozens of config files to get up and running. Some people find that sort of thing fun. I don't. Does that mean I'm conceding some control over my operating system to the developers of the distribution I'm using? Of course. And it's something I willingly do because it's not an interesting problem for me to solve and I frankly don't care that much. If there were something nefarious going on, I might care, but it's simply not possible for me to live my life auditing every bit of software that's running on my system.
I suspect most people, even those that are heavily invested in FOSS have some limit to that as well. I doubt that many people are auditing the code for every application or program they compile on their computer. They have a sphere of trust where they can just assume that what they're running is safe enough and that the software isn't going out of its way to be malicious. It's a matter of degrees. I happen to be okay with giving up some control for the convenience of not having to try to install wifi drivers on my computer without access to the internet.
I don't think it's self-contradictory at all. People have different ideas of what an Operating System should be and that's reflected in the number of different linux distributions all with their own ideas and philosophies. I just happen to really like what System76 has done.
Personally I switched to Linux not because it was open source but because it is better. I also believe the open source philosophy is beneficial users and developers but it wasn't the primary reason.
I also think that the enhancements they've made with their Cosmic Desktop are indeed that - enhancements over base Gnome desktop, and they, as with most of the things have done, gone with a pragmatic approach to them. The automatic tiling is built on top of gnome rather than requiring a separate window manager (this is a much bigger feature than I think it's been given credit for). Workspaces are more prominent and there are more ways to make working with them better than on default Gnome. The launcher is also much more robust and more closely mimics spotlight search or Alfred rather than Launchpad.
I'm glad that PopOS exists and I would probably recommend it to anyone who wants to get their feet wet with linux and anyone that is curious about automatic tiling window managers - this is a great starting point with low commitment requirements.