Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mft_ | Hacker News Reader

As a reasonably able amateur, anything involving Linux is pretty much the opposite of comfortable.

I have a recurring pattern: I undertake some sort of project involving installing Linux somewhere, run into problems, spend huge amounts of time googling stuff and trying random solutions from forums and Stackoverflow, before strengthening my confirmation bias that "Linux isn't ready for the desktop", then giving up and promising myself never to be so daft again. Sadly, time always dims the pain, and it only takes a few months before the cycle repeats.

It's depressingly reliable, whatever the project; e.g.:

* using a Raspberry Pi as a wireless access point (failed, despite multiple attempts and approaches)

* using a Raspberry Pi as a more clever USB drive for a Tesla's dashcam footage (never reliable, despite closely following instructions

* installing NVidia & CUDA drivers in Ubuntu (nah)

* installing NVidia & CUDA drivers in Fedora 35 (mostly nah)

* installing NVidia & CUDA drivers in Fedora 36 (almost worked... despite 36 not being officially supported!)

(To be fair, setting up a PiHole was pretty painless - props to them!)

I feel the same way about Linux these days and I’m not an amateur. Hardware support wise it’s the best it has even been, but it feels increasingly unstable software wise. The fragmentation is crazy, things are hard to rely on long term, and there’s no consistency.

I’d had enough and started using OpenBSD for everything and am much happier personally. It at least feels more stable and I can trust it not to break. If it does break the documentation is second to none and always accurate.

(These are just my personal feelings, nothing more)

Anything to do with nvidia is a pain and that's nvidias fault.

Why I use ChimeraOS now. It's now a PC gaming appliance.

For the Pi as an access point, it's easier to just install OpenWRT on it. As a USB drive, you're likely to have issues with the SD card in a vehicle. Probably better to run on something that has eMMC storage and a dedicated SATA port instead of relying on USB.

For installing Nvidia and CUDA drivers, i use Chimera OS for gaming. It's now an appliance that can be accessed from the TV for game streaming, or we can sit directly in front of my color correct display with keyboard and mouse. All updates are atomic so there's no cruft that requires a reinstall every few years.

Surprised to see cuda called out here, that one has been relatively painless over the years for me on Ubuntu.

Relative to OpenCL, you mean?

Anything can be painful. It would be painful for a person without legs to climb Mount Everest. There are some people that just get Linux and run Arch and file detailed bug reports and others that just use beginner level distros and complain when something doesn't work.

> anything involving Linux is pretty much the opposite of comfortable.

This is extremely subjective, both the the individual due to their expertise and the task at hand... e.g doing much software development on windows will drive many developers insane.

> This is extremely subjective As you would expect, in a discussion about things being comfortable.

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