this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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I think revisiting Linux would be great idea, but the current state isn’t that far off from what he experienced few years ago. Wayland protocols aren’t fully there yet, NVIDIA still needs some work, portals, desktops, 3rd party software and hardware support, package formats bullshit… There’s shit load of pending changes still being discussed, progress is being made, and even then, adoption of new solutions will take a while. It only make sense to revisit when there’s huge technological leap. Realistically with how slow things are going sometimes, it may be the end of the decade or close before the landscape looks really different.
When he first started he used Pop!_OS and an issue with their packages uninstalled the DE when he tried to install steam which was a really terrible look. A bug which I believe wasn't present in any other debian/ubuntu based distro. He then moved to Manjaro, an Arch-based distro, and just had more problems with hardware.
I wish they'd try again and just use a user-friendly distro with more momentum behind it and stability, and realistically that means Ubuntu or Mint. Or take a tour through desktop environments, package managers, and what the differences between distros actually are.
If I recall the "Linus killed Pop!_OS in minutes just trying to install Steam" fiasco, the forensics shook out something like this:
Pop!_OS's onboarding experience doesn't (or didn't at the time) walk users through a software update. At least at the time, I haven't used Pop!_OS recently so this may have changed, but the way you would use their GUI to run the equivalent of an apt-get update was to open the Pop!_Shop to the Installed tab and...wait. So the apt cache (the local copy of the catalog of packages available in the repository) is whatever it was when the install media was created.
It just so happened that the exact version of the steam.deb package that apt cache pointed to had an error in its dependencies--it claimed that it was incompatible with Pop!_OS' desktop environment, and thus to install Steam, it would have to remove the GUI and all its dependencies right on down to Xorg. This issue was discovered and a patched version was pushed to the repository, but because of the way repositories work, you can still request an older version of software.
Linus picked Steam and clicked the install button in the Pop!_Shop. It attempted the install, saw the dependency error, and bombed out, kicking up an error message "Failed to install Steam" with a bit more text.
Linus Sebastian, then CEO of a technology media company, comprehensively failed to google the words in the error it gave him and find several independent forum posts, Reddit threads, and Steam community discussions saying "Run apt-get update and try it again." Instead, he got up on his high horse about Linux GUI's not working, started fussing about how you have to do everything in the terminal, and he instead looked up how to use the terminal to install Steam.
I don't think he recorded his screen thoroughly enough to be sure, but either the page he found was strange or he skimmed a bit too quickly. Almost all of the time, web pages containing instructions for how to install software in a Debian-based Linux system (with the apt package manager) will instruct you to run the command
sudo apt-get updateand probablysudo apt-get upgradefirst, then probably asudo apt-get install [packagename]None of that happened, he just found the install command and ran it.The terminal spat out it's usual litany of "doing stuff..." before spitting out a long list of things it was going to uninstall, followed by a warning in bold allcaps to the effect "WARNING! This operation is likely to permanently damage your operating system. You should not do this unless you know exactly what you are doing. To continue, type "Yes, do as I say." Most of the time, a Linux system requires a y or n, and might even default to y if you just hit enter. Sometimes, in order to wake people up and kind of ask "are you sure?" it will reject a simple y and tell you to type out the word yes. Asking you to type out a complete sentence is a severe warning.
Linus typed "Yes, do as I say."
APT uninstalled the entire GUI and dropped into a Bash shell.
In aviation, we talk about the accident chain. Few aviation accidents can be traced to a single brief action; instead a series of adverse events and mistakes lead up to an accident, and correcting any of them will avert disaster. Well, I count this accident chain as 8 links long. Contributing factors range from Linus's bad attitudes and poor troubleshooting skills to the Steam package's flawed dependencies to Pop!_OS' flawed package manager which doesn't refresh the apt cache on launch. The result was a crash and burn on international television.
Wow, that's a great analysis of this event! From that I would say that PopOS devs could fix more than just the "do as I say" part.
Btw, are you a pilot/atc or do you happen to be an investigator?
Pilot, flight instructor, and reader of many NTSB accident reports. NTSB accident reports often end with a list of recommendations, which in this case would look something like this:
To the maintainers of steam.deb: use safer dependency management practices to prevent issues with less mainstream desktop environments.
To System76, maintainers of Pop!_OS: Improve the new user onboarding experience to include a software update. Improve the Pop!_Shop such that checking for updates and thus updating the apt cache is a positive action whose function is obvious to the user. In the case the Pop!_Shop fails to install a package due to a dependency management error, have the error message suggest running the update process.
To the maintainers of the APT package manager: No notes. This body finds that the warning offered by the terminal is human readable, clear and concise, and carries the appropriate gravity to the risk involved, and by requiring such a non-standard prompt, prevents users who aren't paying attention and used to APT's normal operations from confirming the action accidentally.
To teachers and creators of Linux tutorials: Include in your Transitioning From Windows To Linux curricula a lesson on Linux warnings. The Microsoft Windows ecosystem presents warning messages to the effect of 'this action may harm your PC" on a frequent basis, such as when installing or removing software, changing certain settings, performing updates, or using certain external hardware. Windows users become accustomed to ignoring these warnings as nothing bad ever happens. The GNU/Linux ecosystem is not in the habit of over-using warning messages, so when one is encountered, it genuinely signposts a potential problem.
To Linus Sebastian: When a computer gives you an error message, the first step in troubleshooting is to google the exact text of the error. Especially when doing something routine, such as installing popular software on a popular distribution of Linux, you probably are not the first person to have this problem. It has likely already been reported, discussed and solved.
Damn, that was a good read. I have no doubt your students are trained very well
The whole point imo was supposed to be to test linux from a point of view of a regular user, and that while surely a bit extreme, isn't too far from what might happen when a newbie stumbles on an issue (which may or may not happen depending on luck).
Then again he did test it on uhh, quite interesting hardware that's almost guaranteed to have issues. Maybe it would have been more fair for him to switch to a more conventional desktop for the duration of the experiment.
I didn't really see that affecting the market share of Linux much either way. Luke who has a normal desktop also had his fair share of more minor issues and so did I when I ran fedora for a bit over half a year on my desktop last year ago, as a similar experiment. What has and will affect the market share, positively too, is the steam deck, which Linus is also a big fan of.
I still use linux a lot in my daily life even if not on my desktop, my home server runs on TrueNAS scale and I have a couple projects running on raspberry pi's (more probably coming). But for desktop use, I'll let it cook for a couple more years before giving it another try. Running Linux on my desktop is absolutely my dream and end goal, but unfortunately it still has too many issues specifically for my (actually very broad) use case of video editing, Photo editing, 3D modeling, graphics design, gaming and more. If it was only one of those uses, I'd be able to fairly easily come by with solutions, but when it's all of them combined, it adds up and becomes a real chore, unfortunately.
A regular linux user is expected to be familiar with the OS
I meant as a regular computer user who's new to Linux. Like most of them would be.
I think an Arch/Void/Gentoo challenge just for him (no oponent, just to get it working with everything he needs) is what he should do now... make the fucker sweat a little 😂.
"Compile from source 🤨? WTF is that?... oh, you make the thingies that work in the OS from that thingie no one understands except the developers 😬... OK, let's give it a try"... dependency errors all around... "OK, that's it, I'm out!"
Actually, I think the opposite would be warranted. That Linux challenge was structured as "We're going home, pulling the SSDs out of our computers, and with only Windows skills and knowledge we're charging in unassisted and chin-first into using only Linux!"
What if they did a series of videos where Anthony teaches Linus or one of their other personalities how to use Linux as a gaming/productivity/creativity machine?
Anthony is now Emily
I would still like the idea of them trying Linux again but maybe with optimized hardware to go with it. Not everyone has special sound software/lighting setup etc Give them an AMD setup a keyboard mouse and headphones and let them game. Make them work around common issues for real people and not pseudo linuxish streamers. Give them tech support, be it internally or maybe some Linux content creators and see how that goes. That way we see more than "digitally sign a document, copy files and print" and make it 3 months not just one. Have them run into problems during use not just install once
Oh really? Must have announced that since I stopped watching LMG. She (they?) are still on the show?
I built my gaming rig with Linux in mind, and I went with an extremely average PC, Ryzen 3600/GTX-1080, and everything is working pretty well. It's not hard to build a computer that works well with Linux, just aim for "very normal."
As for the "digitally sign a document" chapter of the saga...1. I seem to recall that the challenge was badly designed in several ways. Like, "digitally sign a document" could mean copy-paste a .png of your handwriting, or do PGP encryption stuff, which is a topic society desperately needs to have a conversation about because we're 30 years into the internet and we're still faxing medical records but that's beside the point. That "challenge" also "required" something like uploading a 3GB video file to Slack, and "Watch HDR video" which just outright wasn't supported and was basically put there as a bad faith fuck you.
I think a series where someone prominent in the gaming/pc enthusiast space who learns Linux with the help of someone from the FOSS enthusiast space would be a worthwhile exercise. I'd love to see more PC gamers trying and successfully adopting Linux, and I'd like to see more Linux veterans excited to offer a friendly and helpful hand. I'd like to see those two communities come together in perhaps a friendlier and more constructive way.
Not the OCer, but the last time I saw Emily was in a video posted to their personal channel. I stopped watching LTT a while ago so no idea if there's been any presence in videos since then.
Kind of miss the linux videos and more in-depth tech content. And some of the other interesting personalities like Luke, Riley, Jake etc.
The thing with LTT is, on top of the well known controversies, LTT's current production themes aren't of much interest to me personally, not helped by the PC hardware market being so stagnant. Instead of upgrading my ancient 1060, I opted to purchase a Steam Deck instead - mainly because it runs Linux, supports Steam Input, supports charge limiting on the internal BMS, and given Valve's track record with obsolete devices (my two Steam Link boxes still recieve updates, and they were discontinued years ago) I was pretty firmly sold.
The games that won't work on my Deck are games that I wouldn't purchase anyway (Not a fan of DRM), and every single "unsupported" game that I've been interested in so far has worked just fine under Proton-GE. One demo game didn't support the Deck's 1280x800 resolution, so I just changed the Gamescope virtual resolution to 1080p in Steam's game settings, and that solved it.
He will just do the same thing as last time. He is too lazy to look something up online so he will just give up and say it's not ready yet.
Exactly. He doesn't even bother, this thing doesn't work out of the box = it's broken.
While this would be funny to watch, it wouldn't help Linux at all, quite the opposite actually because many have the impression of Linux in exactly that way.
So something like this would have to have a huge asterisk and constant clarification that this is "not the general state of Linux"
And that these are all poweruser distros, not something your average user deals with.
Do you think using a steam deck counts? On one hand it is Linux, but on the other hand the default experience is more of a console than a PC.
If you ever go into the desktop to do anything at all I'd say you're getting the Arch Linux experience.
If you stick to Steam games and skip everything else then no, it doesn’t.
This kind of gatekeeping is what scares people off.
Its not gatekeeping when if you don't use the underlying Arch system you're not getting the same experience as "using linux".
Scares off from what exactly? They’re using some gaming system and don’t care about what’s running under the hood. They may be perfectly unaware that it’s Linux or what exactly it is and why should they even care.
And windows is anything better?
Seriously, installed both Linux and windows and the Linux experience was 15 minutes eezie breezie, done. Windows 11 was an 6-7 hour hell hole of trying and retrying and having to make bios adjustments to requiring another windows machine (running in VirtualBox on my Linux install)
There is always something not ready with everything but Linux works pretty effin awesome and more importantly, reliable. It had been for at least the past 10 years (I've been using Linux exclusively for 20+ years now as my desktop even) and it's improving every day.
I'm at the point where I'm seriously wondering why anyone would be dumb enough to pay actualoneu for horrendous crap like windows that will spy on you and serve you ads.
Just switch already.
The difference is, Windows no matter how shitty, is the supported OS and you can demand from your hw vendor or distributor that all features are accessible on it. I use Linux full time for 17 years and it works for me much better and I get everything done way easier than on Windows, sometimes it is as you say and I see other people using Windows computers to struggle with problems that I never had. But the reality is, Windows is what’s common for normies. If they have problem with it, they can just ask their family member/neighbor for help, or the shop where they bought their PC from.