Hibby

If you can manage a Linux server, you likely have no use for Unraid. If you want to put together a Synology type appliance out of PC hardware to run Docker containers and uses ZFS for backups, Unraid is a fairly user friendly option.

I’m a guy who prefers community based distros. They don’t have business decisions get in the way of the needs of the community. It ain’t perfect, but it’s worth the tradeoffs for me. Debian for stuff I don’t want to constantly mess with. Arch for the express purpose of constantly messing with (and sometimes messing up).

I’ve only barely gone beyond the more “backup + Docker appliance” style front end of Unraid, so I’m not sure. They make it extremely difficult for the untrained to get where you can break stuff. I am mostly an Arch/Debian guy.

Slackware may not be huge, but it is the base distro for Unraid.

Weird to put the Self Hosted podcast on the FOSS-only Gentoo user seeing that Jupiter Broadcasting has been on the contrarian “Red Hat is actually good” train.

While Arch does allow a user to do a lot, including breaking their system, I would note that it’s not a herculean task to build and run a stable machine. I broke my Arch system a few times by going against best-practices and it did teach me about some risks, but I knew exactly what I did and why it broke every time. It taught me how to quickly recover, which is good to know for any OS.

I’d call myself an intermediate enthusiast and I don’t have a career that uses Linux, but I have never found Arch “hard”. It just takes some reading and a little patience. The Arch Wiki has a majority of the answers, but if you have tried and failed to find the answer you need, the community is extremely savvy and are there to help you. They just prefer you to dig into the wiki and try for yourself before asking for help.

For desktop Linux, I use Arch. It’s a community driven base distribution, so the needs of the community are what drives development and there are no financial decisions of a company that get priority, which is refreshing. It also has access to the latest and greatest that Linux has to offer.

They have a philosophy of expecting basic effort from users and to have a tinkering mindset. Historically, Arch devs and users have a reputation of being grumpy greybeards, but many of the rough edges have been rounded off in the last few years. If you are willing to do a bit of reading or watching some YouTube videos, it’s not really that hard.

You can really build a lean and powerful machine that has just the software you want on the system with Arch. All it takes is a little effort and willingness to ask for help from the community after you have tried and failed to solve problems yourself. It’s really not the badge of elitism to use Arch in 2023. It’s never been easier to use and doesn’t blow up on you nearly as often as the reputation implies. Just use good hygiene and make snapshots so if you blow it up, it’s only a 5 minute recovery.

Okay buddy. You obviously didn’t come here to do anything but grind your axe. 3% of desktop use is pretty cool, even if it’s likely just a ton of Steam Decks. Anyway, have a nice time developing.

I don’t know what to tell you. If you want to blame Ubuntu for your issues, but you aren’t willing to go through the standard process of troubleshooting or filing a big report, maybe Linux isn’t for you.

I can’t speak for Ubuntu or your situation as I don’t have your issues and I don’t use Ubuntu, but I would advise you reach out to the Ubuntu community with your issues and if you can’t find a solution, file a bug report. They are a large community with a lot of engagement, so I would think that you might have luck either solving your problem or pointing their devs toward fixing the issue on their end. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Older hardware and software that are made by companies who have hostile or ignorant stances towards FOSS are major contributors to at least some of the issues you mentioned. I can tell you that there is active development around solving some GPU/Wayland issues, but the limitations on what Linux can or can’t do isn’t fully the fault of Linux.

There is definitely room for improvement in Linux. The improvements in just the last three years shows that it has improved at a pretty brisk pace. Free and open community driven operating systems work toward the active needs of the community, so hopefully any issues or bugs you had got reported and you’ve actively checked up on them. I am making an assumption here, but if all of these issues you have had were extremely common, there would be every incentive for development of solutions to them.

There is some level of compromise that is needed when using proprietary software or hardware from hostile vendors or using some older hardware with Linux. This also goes for company supplied or required hardware/software. Linux might not be for everyone on every piece of hardware right now. The tradeoffs for having control over your hardware and software can sometimes be frustrating.

As for “blaming the users”, I don’t think I did that at all. I just feel like some folks prefer appliances over heavy machinery. That’s personal preference. Sure, Linux should make onboarding as easy as possible, but in my opinion, the active pursuit of being #1 or #2 in desktop OS use is going down the wrong path. There is a certain type of person who chooses to go down the desktop Linux path and catering to their needs seems much more important for the long-term health of the OS.

One of the first things I asked ChatGPT early on as a test was how to edit the pacman config to make little pacmans eat pellets as the progress bar. It was having none of it and just explained the difference between the package manager and the Namco character in a mocking fashion. While it wasn’t the correct response, I was pretty entertained.

I feel like we can cherry pick situations on other operating systems where you might have to open a terminal window to solve an issue, but I agree that there are roadblocks that many won’t even try to get past. There has been a load of progress around usability and informational resources for less advanced users over just the last few years. I feel the main barrier to entry is the willingness to learn something new.

Have you used Linux lately? You can do this in any distro with a modern desktop manager. Discover in KDE Plasma, Gnome Software, and similar in other desktop environments are installed by default in the DE and have been for like a decade.

You are overstating how much you need the terminal a bit. You can most certainly install and update software without the terminal. I get your point, but it’s not 2006 anymore.

If all else fails with others’ comments, try your public library. Seriously.

We are all here whenever you need a Linux enabler.

Exactly. You are bound to learn something along the way, even if it’s not for you in the long run. All it costs is your time. As you said, fuck it. Give it a whirl.

If you want to know the story of Slackware, this is a really well researched and condensed history. There are daily users that can chime in better than I can, but Slackware was my first exposure to Linux and it’s definitely not “dead” like you might see posted around the internet. Like any distro, what you get out of it depends on how how much effort you put in. It’s doable, but it will take some work on your part and some patience.

It’s not black and white. It’s different tools for different jobs. You can get by with either, depending on what you are trying to do.