Comment by znpy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by znpy | Hacker News Reader

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Indeed.

Years ago maintaining a linux installation was a part time job.

Did you update the kernel? Have fun recompiling the nvidia driver.

Usb modem? Roll 19 or higher for some random package off sourceforge to support your device and roll a 20 for some kind soul to have written an howto.

Bluetooth audio? Who knows!

Printing? Sure, let’s dive into lpd’s legacy on this earth.

Attaching an external display? You’ll love reading xrandr’s manoage EVERY TIME.

A package outside the official repository? Well if you’re okay trading your version upgrade in the future, why not…

Nowadays most things work.

Now if only gnome could stop the war against its own users…

    > Bluetooth audio? Who knows!

    > Attaching an external display? You’ll love reading xrandr’s manoage EVERY TIME.

It's funny you mention this, I've had both of these problems since 2020 and in fact haven't found a way to resolve them to this day. I have to boot into Windows just to connect to an HDMI display or use Bluetooth headphones.

    > Did you update the kernel? Have fun recompiling the nvidia driver.

My kernel updated from 5.15 to 5.18 and almost all my programs that use Nvidia hardware acceleration stopped working. I had to learn how to downgrade my kernel just to be able to hardware encode videos again.

    > A package outside the official repository?

Software distribution on Linux is still a massive dumpster fire, you'd think Flatpaks/AppImages would solve that but they introduce their own problems. I often just bite the bullet and compile everything from source since there's literally no other option.

KDE plasma is really what we should be steering people towards, its excellent

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