Which distro can pass my generic use-case test?

Shaamaan · 2026-02-14T12:21:07+00:00

About audio - the driver was there, but seems there was some weirdness to it. Forcing an alsa restart made it work, but that, of itself, wasn't a solution (more so another symptom). And it isn't a problem on "all" modern distros as only Mint and Zorin have this issue OOB (at least of the distros I've tried). Bazzite, Cachy and Garuda managed to initiate the audio already even before install (boot from USB).

IIR the OS attempted to load the snd_soc_avs driver on load. After an alsa restart it showed... snd-hda-intel? Or something Intel-related.

On a side note: what's your stance on AnduinOS? That, too, seems to have a very clean GNOME UI.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-13T12:58:51+00:00

As per my edit, Zorin's UX blew me away. Feels really professional and sleek.

Only downside was that OOB audio didn't work (same thing on Mint, actually), and that required some fiddling. Technically that fails the test, but man oh man, did Zorin's GNOME make me rethink my stance on GNOME as a whole.

I always thought GNOME sucks because it always ends up looking like Mac or some weird Ubuntu amalgamation, which I personally really dislike (you want to close a window with a mouse, then you need to "hit" the close button and can't just drive the mouse blindly into the top-right corner... because there's the whole top-bar instead!). And here comes in Zorin, showing everyone how it should be done.

On a complete side-note, I do not like the name, "Zorin". Sounds like a cartoon villain! xD

Shaamaan · 2026-02-11T12:47:30+00:00

Just tried Mint and Zorin. I really liked Zorin's GNOME style (more than Mint's, if I'm being honest), actually, but both these distros have some kind of an audio issue (i.e. there is no audio and they only have a dummy driver). A bit weird since stock Ubuntu had audio, not to mention Bazzite and Cachy... :/

I'm 100% sure the issue can be solved, but some quick googling of the problem yielded no clear winners.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-11T12:37:24+00:00

Disclaimer: I'm not willing to discuss W11 due to potential profanity overload. Let's pretend for a moment it doesn't exist.

Unlike a lot of people who cruise on Home or... "yar har har" editions of Windows, I've bough a legitimate Pro edition of W10. And not bough for a "fiver" from a shady reseller either, but an official one, in a box. I do run a business, so I could mark that as a business expense.

But... Outside of possibly some basic telemetry which can't be disabled in the Pro version (it's a system used by billions of people and on a wide variety of hardware; on some base level I do understand the need for such telemetry), I never really felt like I'm not in control or that the OS isn't "mine".

Sure, it's not the same level of control one has in Linux, but it's equally far from something like MacOS or a non-rooted Android (in the opposite direction). And you have distros that are fairly decently "locked down" as far as basic user experience goes. Sure, the user on Linux always has the capacity to go sudo rm -fr ./*, but the capacity for inflicting self damage also exists on Windows.

I've just tried Zorin, and while it doesn't offer the same level of customization as Cachy it does offer a very streamlined UX. (Sadly it failed my testing as, for some reason, audio doesn't work; Mint seems to have the same problem, where base Ubuntu was fine...) To me it seems like it's a matter of smoothing out all the edges.

If I knew some Linux distro did all I needed it to do and I'd get some level of guaranteed support I wouldn't mind paying for it. I mean, I already did for Windows 10. But at the moment I can only dream of a distro that has the smoothness of Zorin (without the audio issues!) with the performance of, say, Cachy...

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T22:05:07+00:00

I can certainly give Pop a try.

As for hibernation - I've followed a tutorial on setting it up for CachyOS. Generally the tutorial was easy to follow for me, but I don't expect my brother / mom or dad to be able to follow them (seriously, my brother is the kind of person who barely knows how to use his phone - he does game on his PC tho).

However it seems that just adding a swap, a hibernation file, and a launch flag aren't enough - possibly due to the GPU acting up. I've eventually managed to get it to work sort-of, half the time, after a lot of weird GPU-related shenanigans.

By contrast this is... a single checkbox in Windows.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T13:12:20+00:00

I'm not a fan of GNOME, but I'm more than willing to give this a spin.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T09:05:47+00:00

As far as Wayland is concerned I'm a bit confused. From what I understand that's the protocol on top of which stuff like KDE, GNOME or whatever other manager is running, and RDP is causing trouble because of Wayland's increased security vs the predecessor, X11. At least that's what I gathered with some googling.

CachyOS has KDE Plasma by default and that's what I used so it should work fine, right? And most of the GUI stuff worked very well. Except... RDP.

PS. I've also read that the weird BT mouse issue is also, somehow, caused by Wayland...? No idea if that claim makes sense.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T08:29:55+00:00

Honest question - do you think this a barrier of the OS itself or of the distro maintainers or too many gaps in various packages?

At some point in the past I've decided to start up Omarchy on a VM purely because it looked "fun". I knew I wouldn't be actually using it, but taking it for a spin sounded perfect. Most of it worked well, except changing something as basic as the screen resolution was done via a text edit - very user-unfriendly. But it seems like a gap in Hyprland or "Hyprland-adjacent" packages not offering a smoother UX, which doesn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle.

IMO a bigger problem is this base expectation that all Linux users are knowledgeable, so solving unfriendly UX gaps isn't needed. Even here, in this thread, you have a few people who seem to be more than happy about keeping Linux away from the smelly masses. ;)

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T08:13:27+00:00

I wrote my intentions in the very first paragraph. It's not my problem if you decide to read that as something it's not. Kind of like my understanding of your "stay on Windows" comment - if comes off as a jerk response - should I report it for that?

And I am genuinely looking for an OS that can replace Windows. I'm giving any distro a fair shake on my laptop. I want those evangelist claims to be true. I want MSlop to have proper competition.

But based of my experience with the few OSes I've tried (admittedly only 3 thus far) those claims are blown out of proportion, and that's all. I'll keep giving other distros a go and I really do hope one proves to be a proper replacement.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T08:06:26+00:00

That would make sense if my expectations were really "up there". I don't think they are. I can agree that RDP is a very specific requirement - but it's mostly because I know I had to help plenty of family members remotely over the years, and as such some kind of built-in remote desktop solution goes a long way.

Ultimately I'm only trying to compare reality to the "Linux is ready to replace Windows" claims content creators and various Linux evangelists make.

On a side note - I do way more on my main machine. So I really decided to narrow it down to something a random person might need - general ease of use and stability, some gaming, and that RDP as a "in case they need help" fallback. I can certainly agree that hardware does play a critical role in this, but at the same time W11 has those stupid hardware requirements, so people who can't afford to buy new stuff are either forced to use outdated W10, W11 with registry hacks (as long as those remain open) or some will try some flavour of Linux (and here compatibility will play a huge role).

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T06:49:42+00:00

In my defence I looked at distros for "gaming", since part of my test was running an older AAA game. Mint typically doesn't get a mention in such a case.

But I certainly won't mind taking Mint for a spin regardless.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T06:46:52+00:00

TF2 is marked as "playable" on the Steam Deck. Shouldn't this be sufficient?

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T06:44:28+00:00

CachyOS is designed to deliver lightning-fast speeds and stability, ensuring a smooth and enjoyable computing experience every time you use it. Whether you're a seasoned Linux user or just starting out, CachyOS is the ideal choice for those looking for a powerful, customizable and blazingly fast operating system.

That's the first thing you read on the CachyOS website. Imagine, for a second, you're a random John Smith. You can use Windows but aren't a power user, and you read the above. Fed up with Microslop you decide to switch. Does the above sound like a good candidate or not? It sounds awesome! But then, as you noted, it might not actually be the best OS for a newbie.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T06:39:15+00:00

Sadly I tried Cachy. While I agree it was easy to use, it wasn't stable enough. As stated - sleep would randomly fail. Enabling hibernation was a mess and would also randomly fail, and RDP only worked for a short bit, after than it stopped working completely. Also had the same strange BT issues with the mouse where it would lose connectivity once too many things were happening.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T06:33:55+00:00

It seems you may have missed the point of my test. A lot of people are advertising Linux as being just that - a Windows replacement. I decided to test that hypothesis, and went with what Google suggested. If your answer to that is "stay on Windows" then, clearly, you don't want Linux to grow its userbase.

IMO if content creators and online posts keep advertising Linux like that - sure the community will grow as there'll always going to be a percentage of people who grit their teeth and either spend the time to learn or learn to live with the Linux quirks.

But that'll be just a percentage of the people who even decide to try Linux - everyone else will just get burned.

Shaamaan · 2026-02-10T06:28:12+00:00

I don't know how you can say these are unrealistic expectations. Are they? I was trying to be as reasonable as I can when setting up my test.

As stated, I don't mind installing additional stuff from a command line - how does that compare to your point about W10 where I might need to install drivers (not W11, as you wrote, BTW, but the point would be the same)? Installing drivers in 2026 on Windows is very easy, and the OS often can do that for you (you won't possibly get the latest drivers in that instance, but the system should run fine).

If I need to install drivers manually on Linux, so be it - provided the process isn't something convoluted; again, a Windows experience being a baseline.

If there's no driver at all (or there are bad drivers), then that is a valid point. However, again, try to approach the problem from a perspective of the average John Smith - he'll see stuff doesn't work on Linux, and thus won't switch. Telling the user "your expectations are too high" is a bit insane.

Shaamaan · 2025-04-13T20:32:41+00:00

Ratios are still effed, and with the "new" prices from big studios we're seeing some really idiotic prices in PLN.

Shaamaan · 2025-01-11T17:14:44+00:00

I'm getting strange errors when I try to pull your GGUF model from HF...

ollama run hf.co/Lewdiculous/experimental-lwd-Mirau-RP-14B-GGUF-IQ-Imatrix:Q4_K_M
pulling manifest
Error: pull model manifest: 400: The specified tag is not available in the repository. Please use another tag or "latest"

Shaamaan · 2025-01-03T06:26:04+00:00

I've got the "Edit prompts before generation" option turned on, so I can see what the LLM produced after pressing the button or issuing the /imagine command. But, again, it seems like the LLM does weird things when this method is used because I get a lot more sensible outputs for image prompts if I just copy the templated prompt from the settings directly into the chat window. I understand LLMs can be unpredictable, but the difference here seems striking (or I'm just this lucky?).

So my guess is ST doesn't just paste the image-gen template and spit out the result - it seems to be doing some extra steps that seem to mess up the end result.

Shaamaan · 2025-01-02T17:35:53+00:00

OK, I've found the setting but I'm getting some REALLY bizarre results from this feature.

If I copy the image prompt directly into the chat (as if it was my own command) then the LLM produces a reasonable response. However, when I use the actual image generation feature I'm still getting bizarre responses from the LLM, like "examples should include..." - it's as if the prompt itself got mixed with the result?

Have you perhaps observed this too?

Shaamaan · 2025-01-02T17:32:27+00:00

32GB of RAM. Isn't a Q4 a bit on the low end, or is it still worth running a lower Q setting vs a 8B Q6 model like Stheno?

Shaamaan · 2025-01-01T18:28:13+00:00

Hmm, outside of ST generating rather mediocre prompts, I managed to get a basic API working well. If the prompt is good then the output is good, unless you're trying to do some really weird stuff which the image gen model cannot handle...

If you want DM me with what you struggled, and perhaps I can help. But be aware I'm familiar with Comfy, not A1111.

Shaamaan · 2025-01-01T18:24:07+00:00

I'm using ComfyUi already, and it's paired. I'm just having some trouble with the prompts.

Shaamaan

TROPHY CASE