Hey y’all. Recently picked up a Cyberpower prebuilt. Looking to install a Linux distro on it for gaming. Currently have Ubuntu on my laptop, so I’m not a total noob, but my experience is still low. Not a big fan of having to use the terminal. Any distros y’all would recommend? Am leaning toward Pop_OS or SteamOS.

I currently have a Lenovo N42 Chromebook far past it's EoL, for which Google is no longer supporting it. I have put Chrome OS Flex on it by reflashing the bios, and it's pretty solid, but I have no internal audio. Bluetooth audio and HDMI works fine, but no headphones, and no speakers.

I found this solution for trying to hack in an Alsa configuration from an Ubuntu Live Disk (https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/swzxsy/comment/irk5kqk/) and I was able to follow the instructions and enable development mode, but when I try to run the alsaconfig script, I get this.

crosh> shell
chronos@localhost / $ sudo alsarestore
No state is present for card chtrt5650
/usr/sbin/alsactl: sysfs_init:48: sysfs path '/sys' is invalid

Found hardware: "chtrt5650" "" "" "" ""
Hardware is initialized using a generic method
No state is present for card chtrt5650

It may have something to do with those instructions being for a different build computer, but I am outside my sphere of knowledge, and anything else I could troubleshoot would be appreciated. Internal audio isn't mission critical for me, but it would be appreciated.

I still mainly use Windows, although I've dual-booted Linux a few times and I have Linux Mint on an old laptop right now. One thing I've never understood about Linux is all the different distributions - their different reputations and why they have them. What is the mechanical difference between using one distribution of Linux and another? Or are the differences usually not mechanical?

For example, Ubuntu and Debian seem to be large families, meaning that a lot of other distributions are based on them (using packages built for them in their package managers at least) as well as being popular distros on their own. But what's different between the two of them, and between each and the other distros based on them? (and what's similar? I gather they all use the Linux kernel at least!)

I also know that people are quite opinionated on their choice of distro, I wondered what reasons people had for their choice. What things are easier or harder for you in your distro of choice? Is it mainly day-to-day tasks that are important or more how the OS works underneath? How much difference does your preferred distro make?

For myself, I've only used Kubuntu (though not much) and Linux Mint, which was mainly for UI reasons, and particularly for the latter, ease of use for someone used to Windows (at least that was what I found years ago when I first looked into it).

Though I doubt I'll ever fully move away from Windows I would like / need to have access to a Linux OS, so maybe this will help me to know what is important to look for. But I also hope it'll be a useful and interesting discussion topic. Also, there are some previous discussions on the latter question so I'd be more interested in learning about the main topic.

also, please do add more tags

I currently use MX-Linux, which is a great distribution but does require me to reinstall it from time to time. It also comes with all the good/bad Debian legacy, and sometimes things can get really fucked up (okay, I admit it: MX IS NOT PERFECT. But nothing is, okay? Settle down.)

My new Linux Distribution doesn't need to have all the new bells and whistles, but it needs to be able to stay reasonably current with new packages and innovations. I don't mind some manual work, but I also don't wanna spend my days maintaining the system.

This distro is supposed to be a tool to work with, not a hobby to be pimped, riced or whatever. I will occasionally play and edit videos on it (don't worry, it's all AMD, thank you advice for the Tildes ;)

I use the i3wm window manager (not the gaps fork), so native support is a must and current versions are preferable (MX's version is from 2016. 2016!). If there's not a current version of Emacs, I'll compile my own. The same is true for Neovim, dmenu, rofi and the suckless terminal.

Configurations on text files do not scare me, but I don't wanna spend all my time scripting stuff. I don't mind compiling stuff either so Gentoo and other source-based distributions are valid options (as long as they allow me to work on stuff instead of working on the distribution...). That said, I have no preference whatsoever between binary and source-based.

Unstable distributions like Arch and even Manjaro are a no-no. I need my computer to work 99.99% of the time, like a fucking refrigerator. That said, I would like some newer packages and tools such as Gimp, Inkscape and a video editor like Kdenlive. Maybe flatpak is an option? I was never able to get it to work properly.

I'm also open to crazy things like Nix, but only if it'll make my life easier: I have no philosophies on the mater.

Any suggestions?

I saw back in January that a lot of you were on Linux, I guess I should've expected that considering it's ~comp but I'm curious how the trend is going. But to spice things up a little bit more, tell us about you favourite programs, any hidden gems?

I personally run a fairly standard Fedora 30 install running gnome and some flatpaks. I'd say my favourite programs are

Gnome Builder :

Well, I've been trying to fight the electron uprising while still using a modern and open source IDE and well, I think it works great and looks pretty good too.

Dino.im (Using the Flatpak PR) :

It's light, supports XMPP and looks relatively modern, what more could you ask?

Firefox gnome theme :

It's not really a program and just really a skin for Firefox but I really like it. It integrates pretty neatly with the rest of the desktop. Can't wait for the Gnome 3.32 changes to come in though since it kinda clashes with the new theme.

To clarify I'm not incompetent at computers, I'm sure people don't tend to install Linux if they aren't familiar with technology in a decent capacity. But for instance I can't code, can't operate the command line short of copying and pasting command, and don't really know what I'm doing with the technical aspect other than following online guides. I have used windows all my life. I'm Linux illiterate for lack of a better description.

I decided I wanted some form of USB bootable computer, i'm familiar with chrome books, enjoy the light weight OS, and am bed bound to the google ecosystem so I when I saw how you could plug in a USB and have the computer boot into Chrome OS running off the USB I thought that sounded perfect. But during my research of discovery I found that Linux seemed like a very good alternative, I had always had it in my head that it was very technical and finicky system where to do a simple google search you had to code in half a dozen lines into the control terminal in some bizarre 2018 text adventure to use the web, I do exaggerate of course but the image I had conjured up over the years was of a very non-user friendly experience and a system made for those running technical aspects such as web servers and system management.

I decided you can't knock it to you try it and besides turns out you can't get chrome OS on a 32GB USB it has to be 8GB or 16GB apparently. So I installed Ubuntu on my USB, no clue if this is some snooty distro, or a version of Linux that's mocked in the community, or the perfect distro but after minimal research it seemed the most popular and well received version to put it on a USB and booted into it.

Instantly all my preconceived notions we're erased. It's clean, modern, simple, light weight, and easy to use with a very intuitive and familiar UI. It's pretty much a more open and degooglified (That's a nice word) version of Chrome OS. Since Firefox Quantum was released I emigrated over to try break some ties with google for privacy reasons like it's some pervy conjoined twin of mine, I know it's not good for me, I don't want it there but I can't get rid of it without harming me.

It's got a simple UI that's familiar to windows albeit without all the bloatware and ads spread everywhere, it doesn't track you like window does (that's as far as I'm aware it did ask to collect anonymised telemetry data which I opted out of). With windows I'm so used to having to go through 3 different pop up windows to change a setting that in Ubuntu it feels like I'm missing features although I'm yet to find one that's not there. The best bit about Linux, is if theirs a setting you want to change and can't find, than someone online has wrote a guide giving you a command line code to copy paste into the terminal to fix it.

Although to me it feels more on par with Chrome OS than Windows as a bare bones OS with simple apps and a web browser to use the internet with, in this regard Linux wins easy, way more open, no profit based motivation, and more accessible allowing itself to be used anywhere.

All though that comparison holds up for the normal user and if you are someone who just browses the web and uses apps like Spotify than Linux is amazing it's not complex or difficult, truly wonderful.

What makes Linux even better is the fact it's not a fair comparison, sure to me it's like Chrome OS due to the simple purposes I use it for but what's truly great is all that nerdy technical stuff I thought Linux was for you can do, if you are hosting a web server than linux gives you a free platform to do it, it feels like you are directly modding the PCB of the computer it's that open.

In retrospect to typing all that I feel I've just blurted out a generic description of Linux and for those that use it I'm sure they just think I was naive, but this is more aimed at the average user, Linux, or at least Ubuntu, is great, it's: simple, easy, fresh, clean, open, modern, intuitive, versatile, multi-purpose, and free. It's not some difficult to use system, it's alarmingly simple, but infinitely useful

It's easy to learn and difficult to master.

Previous threads:

What DE and distro do you use and why?

What's your OS and how does it look?

What does your desktop look like? What tools do you swear by?

I've recently switched to Arch and today, it's finally done! You have no idea how hard it was to even turn it off. So I wanted to make another OS/screenshot thread, especially since it's been quite a long time since the last one, and Tildes population increased inbetween, so we might find something interesting again :-)

What's your OS, what do you love about it and how does it look?

Just a bit curious. Currently, mine looks like this. It runs Elementary OS, however considering hijacking it to Bedrock Linux, mainly to get cutting edge software from the AUR (for stuff like Firefox and GIMP) without losing all my data. I think I'll wait for Bedrock to go stable first, though.

It uses the ePapirus icon theme, which is just Papirus with better support for Elementary's UI. GTK theme is (if I remember correctly) Qogir and the Plank theme is the GTK one. What do yours look like?

I'm curious as to what the Tildes Linux/BSD community (and I suppose other answers like Windows or MacOS would be acceptable, though they may feel a bit more dry) use for their desktop. I imagine that Ubuntu and Gnome will dominate the answers as you would expect, but maybe you'll surprise me. Personally, I'm on Arch Linux with i3-gaps. I use Arch because I enjoy the DIY aspect of Linux as well as the aur and slim nature of Arch. I'd also be lying if I didn't say I use it partially just because I like the "pacman" pun.

As for i3-gaps, I think that WMs are generally more customizable and good for 'ricing', plus they go with my workflow and are convenient in that they load faster and the likes, though I have to admit I have only ever used i3 (I've been considering trying out bspwm). So, what do you guys use? You can also of course share more information such as your shell or DM if you wanted, though I highly doubt anyone cares what display manager you us or anything.

There seems to be a trend lately of people switching over to BSD operating systems. Having read some blog posts on the matter and now given the recent system-d controversy, I'm genuinely curious to give FreeBSD or OpenBSD a go as my main OS.

For those who have switched over to BSD, what are some problems you've encountered and/or what are some things you miss?

I'd imagine that this website probably has an above average linux user percentage, considering that one of the main principles of tildes is to respect your privacy.

Personally I use fedora. I started with windows, than moved to ubuntu when windows 10 came out. I tried a few others and settled on fedora because I wanted an operating system with a quicker package update cycle than debian, but I wanted it to "just work".