I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.
Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…
WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.
Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?
Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.
Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.
It really has come a long way since the old times.
Yeah, 2 hour kernel recompiles to get a sound card to half work were not fun.
They kinda were for me. But then, I was young with plenty of time to spend.
I agree, installing old linux was a great way of learning unix commands and how computers works, plus you got really good at administering linux computers. But of course, that only works out if you have a vested interest in computers already and quite a bit of free time, so I’m also glad all “normal” folks nowadays can get an awesome linux experience without having to put much effort at all.
Yeah I guess it was kinda fun. Especially for nerds like us. Getting x-forwarding to work over a 14.4 modem was pretty awesome, albeit painfully slow, at the time.
Funny enough, I also flashed my (probably much older) HP Spectre X360 to endevourOS last week, works good, feels more responsive then PopOS was on it.
I then tried Bazzite on my desktop and the experience went much worse, seemingly because of Nvidia driver support still being pretty bad on linux. Oh well.
Did you use the Bazzite image with the Nvidia driver? They have separate images for that.
NVIDIA will be great OOTB experience in a couple of years, but the official driver will get much better in just couple of months from now.
Why will it be better in just a couple months? Something on the horizon?
Long term NVIDIA might be going into either upstreaming their nvidia-gpu-open driver into Linux kernel, or they will help Nouveau+NVK development, which works relatively well with modern NVIDIA cards already (and NVIDIA just hired long time Nouveau maintainer)
Actually already usable solution, but the driver is in beta and you need bleeding edge compositor, like kwin_wayland from Plasma 6.1 that’s also in beta as of now, plus new Mesa, Xwayland, maybe something else. Everything that’s required is in AUR
Why will it be better in just a couple months?
Explicit sync. It’ll fix most of the issues with Wayland on Nvidia CPUs. Wayland landed support for it in April, and Nvidia recently released a beta driver that supports it. I suspect every graphics driver will implement explicit sync eventually, since it’s a lot better than implicit sync.
Some great information about why it’s important here: https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2024/04/05/explicit-sync.html
on nobara, nvidia drivers have never once been an issue for me.
What about in steam specifically, seemed like a bit of a steam issue as it was very buggy, flicking graphics and such in Steam client and big picture mode was godawful, even tried the render fix mentioned online and it didn’t help at all.
While Nobara was great at NVIDIA drivers, they seemed to have completely gotten rid of WACOM drivers, and that was a dealbreaker for me
Linux works for roughly 80% of what I do. The BIG missing piece is audio production. The software is mostly okay, it’s the actual audio system that’s the problem. Audio on Linux sucks big floppy donkey dicks. Yes, I know all about JACK (complicated and never works the way you think it should), RT kernels, Pipewire, etc. It’s all terrible.
Yes it literally has come a long way, all the way from 1991 to 2024, I think the only other OS that has managed that is Windows.
I know that’s not quite what you meant, it was just a thought I came to think of reading the headline.But apart from that, it’s also become quite good, but IMO it has been for more than a decade now.
1991 to 2024, I think the only other OS that has managed that is Windows.
Also the various BSD-based OSs. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD etc. are still around, and MacOS is based on BSD too. And since BSD (1978) is a Unix, you can trace these all the way back to 1969.
That’s kind of true, but MacOS and Mac OSX are 2 different things. What is based on BSD is the MAC OSX that came out in 2001 AFAIK.
And BSD was interrupted for 2 years because of copyright disputes with AT&T. If that hadn’t happened, BSD would be the longest continuous OS today, and probably way more significant than it is.
I don’t consider MAC OSX as part of BSD, just like Android isn’t part of Linux Desktop, but only uses the Linux kernel. OSX took parts of BSD and shielded it behind a proprietary wall, because the BSD license offer no protection from that. So they become separate projects the moment they enter the Apple domain.
Problem here is when people mix up the use of the word Linux as an OS with Linux the kernel. I am 100% sure OP meant Linux as a Desktop OS like GNU/Linux or something like Free desktop according to freedesktop.org. Using his experience with EndeavorOS as an example.
But you are right, it can be said Unix/BSD has an even longer running time, but it has been somewhat problematic and interrupted because of AT&T and SCO and Novell.
It kind of was what I meant. My first Linux experience was in 93 - I wanted to run X on my 486 so I could use maple and other Unix programs from the mainframe in college. Thank god for my comp sci roommate-I don’t think I could have figured it out on my own back then.
Flash forward through the decades and here I am running all the games I want through steam and bottles. Win10 updates are crapping on themselves requiring a reload - I try linux on it expecting it to mostly work, but having a few annoying issues that will be a bear to solve. Nope, it just worked.
It’s impressive to me. A bunch of nerds on the internet mostly volunteered their way into a better OS than the big boys have made.
In my experience the VAST majority of people that say things are hard on Linux have never actually tried it …
Same with people that complain cats are not LoYAl lIkE DOgS… They have never had cats
Cats are just as trainable as dogs, just takes longer and different incentives for them.
Exactly right!.. It’s like saying dogs are dumb because they don’t learn words like a parrot would
Let me know when you can train a cat to herd sheep or train one to hunt and retrieve game on command. I’ve got 3 cats and 4 dogs here. The cats make nice and often amusing lap warmers. But beyond catching the odd mouse, they can’t do work.
I’ll say it. Cats have bad work ethic.
Most pet dogs don’t do work either… Show me a herder chihuahua or a fox hunting mastif
But again this is a dumb comparison… Why doesn’t your dog repeat words like my parrot? It it dumb? Is it inferior? Or perhaps it’s just another species?
Cats are naturally very effective as mousers, humans used them centuries in ships and they were so valuable because they preserved food stock and prevented disease… Show me a dog doing that specific job it was not bread for… No? There you go, dogs are inferior
Most pets don’t work because their owners don’t bother to train them to do any work. And interestingly enough, I have indeed seen a Chihuahua herd cattle. There was No Fear. It was amazing to see that little toothed monster chase a 2000lbs bull around a pen and into another and then into a barn on command from the farmer that owned him. And a Mastiff will gladly hunt fox, cougars, wolves, and even people if you want them to. They will also happily Netflix, popcorn, and chill on the couch with you after chewing up that human also.
Why don’t my dogs talk? Well, they just don’t have the physical voice box to form the sounds of human speech, (as you well know). But that doesn’t mean they don’t communicate with people. Actions, like tail wagging, barking in various tones and volumes, rolling on the ground all communicate emotions and situational reports. And us humans understand them just fine. My little Russian Spaniel does her best to “talk” to me with a near continuous stream of moans and groans, and erffs when she sits with me in my recliner. It’s almost annoying when she doesn’t shut up. And they understand my communications. My dogs understand verbal, whistle, and silent hand signals and respond correctly and instantly to them when I’m afield with them. Parrots, have a natural physical ability to mimic other sounds, (as do a lot of other birds). So they are doing what comes naturally to them - a human is not required.
There are lots of dogs out there that do jobs they were never bred for. Seeing eye dogs, dogs trained for deaf people or assistants to people confined to a wheel chair. Turns out Labrador Retrievers are really great at this kind of work. And I have trained retired Springer Spaniel hunting dogs to work in a hospital as therapy dogs. But that’s not why or what those breeds exists for. Ever see a trained animal act at a circus? They are often what most people would call “mutts”. Mixed breed dogs doing amusing things like ride bicycles and drive little cars around and jumping through burning hoops of fire. And you can often see little Chihuahuas preforming in those acts. All doing things none of them were bred for.
I like the cats that we have. One, a grey and white is an excellent mouser. But he comes from a very long line of barn cats and has a wild streak in him. The other two, are far more interested in cat toys and sleeping in laps and beds than in any mouse - and that’s fine. A warm kitty in the lap purring away is a calming and enjoyable thing to have on a cold winter’s day. But I’m under no illusion that cats or most other pets can be trained to do all the things my dogs can do.
Dogs are humans oldest and closest companions and co-workers for a reason.
I’m not having a great time with DisplayLink driver support, personally. Various applications I use with mixed levels of support too, along with missing out on Windows specific GPU features.
This has been my most successful round of Linux adoption, but there are still niggling issues and confusion. The biggest difficulty is that my accumulated support knowledge of like 20 years is useless and I am relearning basic issue identification and resolution processes.
The internet being a raging dumpster fire, support is kind of patchy on more niche topics. All the good, useful discussions are largely happening behind closed doors at this point on everyone’s Discords and whatnot.
I’m not having a great time with DisplayLink driver support, personally
We used this for work and I had a bit of a hard time setting up 4 years ago when covid hit… I eventually was able to but later on moved on to a different set up.
We still use it on Windows when I go to the office (once a week) and it still shit there
If you post specifics I may be able to help you.
Various applications I use with mixed levels of support too, along with missing out on Windows specific GPU features.
well yes… Windows specific stuff is not usually available in Linux… unless we are talking about gaming which is catching up really quick
The biggest difficulty is that my accumulated support knowledge of like 20 years is useless and I am relearning basic issue identification and resolution processes.
Yes, it’s a different OS… not sure if you were expecting any differently but this is the power of the walled gardens… you learn to live in them and then find it hard to do anything differently… IMO the transition was worth it for me… I hope it is for you
The internet being a raging dumpster fire, support is kind of patchy on more niche topics. All the good, useful discussions are largely happening behind closed doors at this point on everyone’s Discords and whatnot.
This is what I disagree with… that has not been my experience AT ALL. The worst I can say about online support for Linux is that, some communities, are a little caustic (looking at you Arch support, although you do have great online help posted).
If anything, when I can’t seem to find anything regarding something I am looking for, I have defaulted to realizing I may not be asking the right question… RARELY discussions for Linux support happen behind closed doors… it’s just not even in the spirit of the Linux communities. Again, if you’d like to post specifics maybe we can help
I’m going to try to take this in the spirit that it was provided, but you’re using a lot of "…"s, and a lot of implications that what I’m saying is obvious, for a person trying to provide earnest assistance. I wasn’t requesting technical support or expressing surprise at these things, I was merely expressing that these were the things I was generally encountering difficulty with my transition to Linux as a daily driver.
The DisplayLink driver for instance is running, and basically functional, but ends up running slowly, with distortions, and instability. It also isn’t signed, so my plan to still run Secure Boot with the distro I’m using alongside Windows is out (without a lot of faff), but that largely won’t matter excusing some specific work setups that I don’t currently have to worry about. Having useful AMD specific driver level tools on Windows that don’t exist in Linux isn’t a surprise, it is a discouragement.
Forum content and non-Reddit content are a pain to locate, especially when you don’t know how to frame your problem in Linux syntax, as you say. Communities are either open but in specific places that I will never find without already knowing about it, or happening in places that aren’t accessible without having already joined, like the Discord of the specific software I need guidance on. My experience has been that there is basic info and there is advanced info out there, but intermediate info that lets you bridge the gap is a challenge to locate, especially with subtle differences in certain steps that are distro/package manager specific. Yet I press on.
Feels like people tend to like dogs more because they find them more submissive and easier to control.
Sound check (although a little quiet).
I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 and this was an issue on every Linux install I’ve had (Endeavour, Arch, and now Debian). I know it isn’t a hardware issue because when I first installed Endeavour, I was dual booting with Win11 and it was, no joke, capable of easily twice the volume as Endeavour, and that was even after maxing everything out in Alsamixer. Really not sure what’s going on there. I’ve been incredibly lucky with audio on Linux the entire time I’ve used it, this is the one black spot on my record.
EndeavourOS has been a wonderful experience for me, can’t recommend it enough.
for me it was very unreliable, I have an i7 7th gen hp envy from I think 2018 and I dual booted Windows and linux for more than a year now jumping distros every now and again just to get to know them better.
I first started with zorin OS and it was good, snappy, long battery life, stable I then tried popOS! and it was even better, I loved it until a few months in I started getting sudden crashes for some reason so I installed endeavourOS as it seems to be very popular and everyone was recommending it, but I immediately after installation started getting crashes every 30 or so minutes which was weird as no other OS linux or windows did that so it didn’t seem hardware related I’m now using linux mint and it’s wonderful so far
TLDR I daily drove half a dozen OSs and the only one that gave me trouble from the beginning was endeavourOS, which is weird because it feels like I’m the only one…
I probably have the same Envy as you. It is just an unreliable piece of shit. Open it up and see if it is full of little metal chips, which is how HP “deburrs” the holes on the bottom metal plate.
You’re not alone.
Yeah I had an MSI gaming laptop that had a lot of proprietary stuff that was a pain to setup. Everything from display brightness to volume to internet to keyboard lights to headphone jack took special workarounds to setup. This was in 2018 and Ubuntu 18.04. Then 19.04 rolled out, and I didn’t have to do the speaker workaround anymore. 19.10 rolled out, and i didn’t have to do the keyboard lights workaround. This way, little by little, every Linux kernel upgrade added one or another of the components, and after a couple of years, everything on that laptop worked out of the box. That’s when I was truly impressed by Linux.
The moment that shocked me was when printers, network cards, and even motherboard integrated Ethernet didn’t work on Windows without driver downloads but Linux was plug and play. Full reversal of the situation.
I’ve used linux for twelve years and am still surprised at how easy some things are, not that things were really even that hard before. The improvements to gaming on Linux are pretty well known now, but even things like recording audio are dead simple now. Outside of the super expensive DAWs, I’d say linux is on par with Mac and windows now, especially with things like yabridge.
Linux is boring. In a good way. It is so boring that each of my computers use different distros. I have Debian, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and Endeavour OS installed across 4 or 5 computers right now. Some of them still dual-booting Windows 10/11. Now each time I boot into Windows is fun. In a bad way.
you shouldn’t need to disable tpm
On my surface I still need to :/ fuckin Microsoft
Surface wasn’t meant to run linux. Its a struggle to get it working on them.
/owner of 3 defenestrated surface devices.
So far the surface pro 3 been working great for me. Still no secure boot or tpm but I think I just did something wrong when I followed the guide
That’s good to hear. I assume the normal- and IR-cameras aren’t working? The latter is nice to have, the former is a bit of must-have in today’s remote work environment.
Defenestrated is the best way to say removed Windows and I’m using that forever, thanks
No surprise it feels a lot snappier. You only run the shit you have purposefully installed, and not endless layers of telemetry, candy crush silent installs, game bars that somehow make the performance worse, and mandatory online service accounts
They’re possibly running KDE, but other than that you’re right
I’ve used Linux since the mid 00’s and, well, I’ve seen some shit. But nowadays? It’s the best desktop OS I’ve used. I recently had to start using a Mac for work and realized just how far DE’s like Gnome and KDE have gotten. It feels like I have to fight MacOS every single day to get it to do the absolute basics, the things that Gnome and KDE does out of the box. And the most ridiculous thing is that the app ecosystem for MacOS is so heavily focused on monetization that if you purchase enough apps to customize the MacOS DE to an acceptable level, you’d likely have spent enough money to buy another laptop. Madness.
TL;DR: Turns out that this year is actually the year of Linux on the desktop!
This has been my experience since 2009 :) I’ve been using Linux for 15 years now, across four laptops and two desktop PCs, and I’ve only had a few rare hardware issues. (Sleep not working properly, BIOS update overwriting GRUB, and Wacom tablet mapping needing to be fixed. That’s it.)
The hardest part is almost always the installation, and that’s almost always attributable to Microsoft Bullshit.
I’m happy you’re having a good time :)
