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Comment by theodric | Hacker News Reader

That's a HUGE assumption. I'm not some idiot neophyte who just migrated from a dumb phone yesterday; I've been running Linux since 1995. Debian 12 does not function on my Ryzen 7 5700G + Biostar B550M + RTX A2000 system-- it's nothing exotic! Neither does the stock Arch kernel, nor linux-rt, but linux-amd and my custom kernels do. I got it going, and I got VFIO passthrough working as well, but it took effort as well as knowledge normal users can't reasonably be expected to possess. Expecting people to buy based on an HCL is not reasonable, and that's half of why it will never be the year of Linux on the desktop. (The other half is the desktop being a dying breed, sadly.)

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Okay but insert Linux USB drive; boot; install; system works. That's literally been my experience and for many others.

A Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) is completely reasonable in my opinion for building your own machine and it's well known that Nvidia and Linux don't play nice. Recently built a new system and went with AMD for that reason. Considered Intel but they're a little new to GPUs and were a little too mid range for what I wanted.

Frankly it sounds more like you had issue with the Nvidia card than the rest of your components.

Also have to consider are you trying to use completely free open source software or are you okay with proprietary blobs and drivers.

For example Ubtuntu makes it easy for end user to activate those proprietary software blobs on installation.

> Frankly it sounds more like you had issue with the Nvidia card than the rest of your components.

Incorrect assumption. The Nvidia card went in last, after the OS was working, and is only used in passthrough.

So the onboard video worked from the get go and then things got messy after you installed the Nvidia card?

You're not being very clear here what happened and if you're only using free software sources (the default for Debian I believe).

Also looks like you replied further down. You're not even describing an average home user case but saying it's a massive assumption that average users will have an easy time installing Linux. Lol.

Remember I was comparing the ease of installing a Linux system and having it functional is a hell of a lot smoother than Windows. That's just true in general. No assumption needed.

There's other distros that have rolling releases that tend to have more updated software in exchange for stability and thorough testing.

As somebody who never even had a windows machine back in late 90s (my father was also a massive linux enthusiast) I can totally see your point. Ah, compiling the kernel...

Anyways, there are some decent oem options these days. Even if you dislike preinstalled distros, hardware compatibility is guaranteed to be there.

It just can't work any other way. Either vendors solve those compatibility problems for you, or you do it. I don't have much time so I went with the easier option of just getting dells or lenovos or simething from the numerous smaller sellers.

Both my wife and my daughter are fine with my older hardware, btw.

> RTX A2000

If you know that much about Linux, you should expect issues with Nvidia. AMD just works.

Thanks for the snipe. The A2000 is passed through to various VMs, and not used within the base OS: I'm running a 5700G APU and using its integrated GPU on the console. Unfortunately AMD doesn't offer anything comparable that fits inside the power envelope of an A2000 12GB, which is important because I'm passively cooling it and trying to keep my power bill low. I also need a decent platform for ML applications, and CUDA is far and away the leader there.

It's not a snipe. You're bragging about Linux knowledge and your A2000. Just saying that definitely doesn't work on Linux without some effort and you would buy it knowing there was some effort involved. If you want a no hassle easy install for gaming you get a consumer AMD GPU, not a professional Nvidia GPU. The context of this thread was gaming on Proton, not whatever you are doing.

> Expecting people to buy based on an HCL is not reasonable

It's totally reasonable for an OS with ~1% market share.

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