Tried LMDE and bazzite nvidia, but I just could not for the life of me get Optimus gpu switching on my 7640u laptop from lenovo to play nice.
I am going all AMD for my next desktop, but I am frustrated and tired with 
Eh. It’s fine.
I’ll admit I’ve fed into the Linux elitism bullshit, but that’s really all it is. If Windows works for you use it. A computer is a tool for you to use, not to frustrate you for hours on end.
Give it a break, and maybe try booting from USB for a while… Kick the tires a bit, or whatever. Get comfy with small shit first. I’ve been dicking around with some form of Linux for over 20 years now but my first year or so was difficult AF. I installed Linux, then ran up against a wall, and installed Windows. Then I’d go back, install Linux, still hit a wall, and go back to Windows.
Try it again, if you’d like. A small Linux partition, and a larger windows partition. Boot into Linux and goof around w it on occasion. Try to make it manageable bites before the frustration sets in.
And don’t worry about using Windows. If it works for you, use it.
For 90% of use, the OS is just a bootloader for Firefox. I am however enough of a
that not being able to use the dGPU is a dealbreaker. I had a Tumbleweed desktop for just under three years, and troubleshooting that springboarded me into an IT infra career, so I am grateful.Yeah, that’d be enough to make me give it up too. I do not blame you.
Yeah. I’m a major linux enjoyer, but genuine dealbreaker-level frustrations and incompatible hardware are like, up there with the best most valid reasons to not use linux. I’ll go off on randos who just decide to stan windows based on flimsy reasons and shit on linux any time it’s brought up just because they don’t want to hear about it, but I totally empathize with people who run into the dumb roadblocks thrown up by hardware manufacturers, proprietary software vendors, etc.
And if I was an absolutist I’d have soooooooo much to complain about with ios and android. But I understand the alternatives aren’t viable for everyone, or in the case of smartphones, the vast majority of people. I just wish more people would try or care
Absolutely. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, shit just doesn’t work on Linux.
I have a small netbook that I use for some weather satellite shit that boots windows 7, because the software is the only one of its type that I have found (and is recommended heavily by the software defined radio community) that does what it does, regardless of OS. Unfortunately there are just some things that you can’t do on Linux whether you want to pay for it or not. I have a couple other programs that I use for decoding police radio where I live that run on windows. There are Linux alternatives available but I use the windows ones because they’re just easier to use, and honestly they work better.
I guess what I’m saying is make the tool fit the job not the job fit the tool.
Where did that bring you?
Back to me (at least it’s not ME)
Try Pop_OS! It works great on my lenovo laptop (which has an APU and GPU)
nvidia?
Yep
Try TuxedoOS if you want KDE. They have a guide on optimus: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en/PRIME-GPU-Render-Offloading/GPU-on-demand-Mode-Guide.tuxedo
Nobody talks about the interregnum inherent to dual-boot
I’m stuck in it right now. There are niche utility apps I need for performing various tasks and I really don’t have the brainpower to learn and remember the terminal commands, so I am stuck being a low-T beta GUI user (the T stands for Terminal). Often I switch back to Windows and immediately I go ewwwwww but then switch back to Linux and realise that idk wtf I’m doing or how to do it, and I need to invest a good amount of time and energy learning how to use different programs just to achieve simple outcomes (that I can mostly do intuitively on Windows which leads to a sort of sunk-cost fallacy).
I really wish there was a hour or two YouTube tutorial that just ran through the Linux replacements for Windows features in a 1:1 sorta way. For example I was having trouble with certain apps’ stability and not having a native shortcut for the Linux task manager equivalent, or even knowing what it was called, was infinitely frustrating. I get that Linux is its own set of OSes and that it shouldn’t be expected to be a 1:1 replacement that mirrors Windows in every way but also it takes a while and it requires a bit of effort just to figure out basic things that are sorta essential which you don’t realise you need until you don’t have access to them.
I mean who’s gonna proactively research the task manager equivalent in Linux and create a custom keyboard shortcut for it just in case an app is fullscreen and it bugs out and stops responding but doesn’t allow you to switch away from it? Not a new user or a newly dual-booting person.
Personally I’ll be fine; I know enough and I have the determination to muddle my way through but there has been a couple of points where I’m like “Yep, this is exactly where people drop out and revert back to Windows.”
All of this is tangential to your post but since we’re airing grievances about transitioning to Linux I just wanted to vent my own frustrations.
I get this. Linux is great but all the emphasis in software dev is on Windows and Mac. I put linux on my laptop and one issue I have is I use the program Scrivener for writing. I’d sync things with Google Drive so I could access things from anywhere, but there isn’t a nesting native Scrivener for Linux and there isn’t direct support for google drive on linux either.
So I can get Scrivener to work through WINE but it can’t find google drive folders properly, or I need to find another cloud storage solution, or a new program that works between devices.
Linux is great, there’s just been such a concerted effort to push the worst OS on us because capitalism
