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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

> 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?

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Because absolutism ends up being masochism.

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".

>When does linux not "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.

Running Mint on a T480:

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.

This feels in bad faith. There are plenty of us that have had a fine time using Linux as their only os for a long time.

It also makes the assumption that Windows just works out of the box fine for everyone...

A user wanting things to work out of the box vs not actually having control is not the same.

I think the OP meant in terms of if you don't want the same non OSS binaries nVidia ships you can install something else?

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.

You can still change/remove anything you dislike.

I use Linux not because of control, but because I don't like both MacOS and Windows. PopOS is my preferred choice because it's just work.

You can make those compromises and still have much more control than you'd get from Windows or Mac.

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