Today I talk about the most overrated Linux distros. Be prepared for some circular reasoning. 👇 PULL IT DOWN FOR THE GOOD STUFF 👇Ko-fi - https://ko-fi.com/...
I realized Arch was overrated when I got a brand new 7900 XT and it didn’t work on Arch at all because their LLVM was a version behind. It was up-to-date on Fedora and even Ubuntu, but not Arch. Then there was the whole broken grub thing. Bleeding edge and unstable I get, but you can’t be unstable and also behind. You can run Arch in any distro with distrobox, I don’t see why you wouldn’t just do that.
Ubuntu has ads in the terminal when you update. Runs a highly modified GNOME that doesn’t play well with some extensions. Snaps by default (although maybe not that bad now that they seem to launch a bit quicker). Unfortunately so many things only have Ubuntu support if they have Linux support at all, it’s such a shame.
LLVM was held back for a good reason, it was breaking things left and right. Even so, if you really needed it there were always AUR packages for it, or lcarlier’s mesa-git repo if you prefer prebuilt packages, so it’s not as if you were just SOL. I got my 7900XT in december, and instructions on how to get it running were already all over the forums and subreddit at the time and it was working on the same day that I got it.
I don’t know when you got your 7900XT, but it was broken on Ubuntu too for a good while, I’m not even sure that it currently works on 22.04 without using external PPAs. In the mean time, it now works with Arch out of the box.
As for the grub thing, I’m not sure how that could have been handled differently. Upstream introduced a change that created a compatibility issue, so Arch could either not update to a newer version of grub ever, or update anyway and tell its users how to handle the compatibility issue. The latter is what they did.
I got it the day it came out so it was the wild west. I think to get it to work on Arch I figured out you needed to compile the new llvm or something, and I just gave up at that point. Fedora Silverblue on the rawhide branch had everything for it, and as soon as 37 was caught up I just re-based on that branch and have been good ever since. Ubuntu did have some other issue I don’t remember, not a new enough kernel maybe.
Yeah but I think you’re unfairly blaming Arch for not being ready for a new GPU on release day, especially when there are still known issues with the upstream packages that are required for it.
I think you may also misunderstand what Arch is. It isn’t meant to be absolute bleeding edge. It’s meant to be a distro that’s as up-to-date as possible yet stable enough for everyday use. So the Arch team does curate upgrades and does QA before they release it to the stable repos.
Ditto, really respect what System76 has done but I need a long break from Ubuntu and GNOME. Looking forward to Cosmic DE but until it’s mature it is difficult to see how far they’d get.
Eh, when I bought a brand new Lenova Legion 5 a few years ago the trackpad wouldn’t work in Ubuntu, Fedora, or PopOS. It worked on the 4th distro I tried, Manjaro. So your mileage may vary.
Yeah, that is most likely an Arch thing which is why I made this comment in direct response to a person saying that Arch was behind Ubuntu when that is not always the case. I’m sure most people know that Manjaro is based on Arch.
If you want a Manjaro specific thing, then I could point to his “broken grub thing” which did not effect Manjaro because the updates are held back for longer and for further testing.
I realized Arch was overrated when I got a brand new 7900 XT and it didn’t work on Arch at all because their LLVM was a version behind. It was up-to-date on Fedora and even Ubuntu, but not Arch. Then there was the whole broken grub thing. Bleeding edge and unstable I get, but you can’t be unstable and also behind. You can run Arch in any distro with distrobox, I don’t see why you wouldn’t just do that.
Ubuntu has ads in the terminal when you update. Runs a highly modified GNOME that doesn’t play well with some extensions. Snaps by default (although maybe not that bad now that they seem to launch a bit quicker). Unfortunately so many things only have Ubuntu support if they have Linux support at all, it’s such a shame.
LLVM was held back for a good reason, it was breaking things left and right. Even so, if you really needed it there were always AUR packages for it, or lcarlier’s mesa-git repo if you prefer prebuilt packages, so it’s not as if you were just SOL. I got my 7900XT in december, and instructions on how to get it running were already all over the forums and subreddit at the time and it was working on the same day that I got it.
I don’t know when you got your 7900XT, but it was broken on Ubuntu too for a good while, I’m not even sure that it currently works on 22.04 without using external PPAs. In the mean time, it now works with Arch out of the box.
As for the grub thing, I’m not sure how that could have been handled differently. Upstream introduced a change that created a compatibility issue, so Arch could either not update to a newer version of grub ever, or update anyway and tell its users how to handle the compatibility issue. The latter is what they did.
I got it the day it came out so it was the wild west. I think to get it to work on Arch I figured out you needed to compile the new llvm or something, and I just gave up at that point. Fedora Silverblue on the rawhide branch had everything for it, and as soon as 37 was caught up I just re-based on that branch and have been good ever since. Ubuntu did have some other issue I don’t remember, not a new enough kernel maybe.
Yeah but I think you’re unfairly blaming Arch for not being ready for a new GPU on release day, especially when there are still known issues with the upstream packages that are required for it.
I think you may also misunderstand what Arch is. It isn’t meant to be absolute bleeding edge. It’s meant to be a distro that’s as up-to-date as possible yet stable enough for everyday use. So the Arch team does curate upgrades and does QA before they release it to the stable repos.
If you want something similar, without ads, no snaps, LTS, but with periodic kernel updates, then Pop!_OS might be up your alley.
I love System 76 but I hate modified GNOME anything. That’s why I always use Fedora. When Cosmic DE comes out I’ll give it a shot.
Ditto, really respect what System76 has done but I need a long break from Ubuntu and GNOME. Looking forward to Cosmic DE but until it’s mature it is difficult to see how far they’d get.
Eh, when I bought a brand new Lenova Legion 5 a few years ago the trackpad wouldn’t work in Ubuntu, Fedora, or PopOS. It worked on the 4th distro I tried, Manjaro. So your mileage may vary.
That is most likely an Arch-thing rather than a Manjaro-thing.
Yeah, that is most likely an Arch thing which is why I made this comment in direct response to a person saying that Arch was behind Ubuntu when that is not always the case. I’m sure most people know that Manjaro is based on Arch.
If you want a Manjaro specific thing, then I could point to his “broken grub thing” which did not effect Manjaro because the updates are held back for longer and for further testing.