The Glorious Misadventures of a Linux-illiterate
I switched to Linux the other day. It sounds quite casual saying it like that, but this move was about seven months and a dozen headaches in the making.
The short version is I experimented with a bunch of different distros and none of them quite worked, until I bought a new GPU and made a blood sacrifice. The blood sacrifice was rejected.
The long version is that I used to have a YouTube channel dedicated to indie games. Earlier this year, around March, I learned about Recall, Microsoftās AI-powered spyware. Iām not a big fan of people spying on my collection of hot asparagus pics, so I decided to switch. But with a YouTube channel about video games, I wasnāt sure if Iād be able to A. play games easily on Linux, and Y. record and edit video.
I knew nothing about the OS other than that a penguin was involved in some capacity. But I figured, at the very least, itād make a great video. āCan You Play Indie Games on Linux?ā After a couple of weeks of research, I learned about a bunch of different versions of Linux, the different programs, and the different ways you could run Windows software if you needed to. I thought it would be possible, but I wanted to be sure before committing.
I hopped on eBay and they asked me to get down. So instead I browsed it like a normal person and found a cheap old laptop. Linux, I read, is good at giving new life to old machines. I figured I could put a distro on there and test it. It wouldnāt be powerful enough to make 4K videos, which is what I was doing at the time, but I could at least play a few small indie games and make lower resolution videos with Kdenlive.
I got the laptop, installed Linux Mint because I heard it was good for beginners, and I was happy. Everything was perfect. It ran great, it played games well, and I could do everything on it I needed to without needing to use any Windows programs. LibreOffice Writer let me write, LibreWolf let me browse without issue, Steam worked just fine, GIMP worked, OBS worked, everything really was perfect.
I should have noticed the trap right away. I didnāt.
I would have been happy to just use the laptop, but I wanted to record 4K and play more graphically-intensive games. So I decided it was time for my desktop to get the Linux treatment. I have two SSDs, so I figured I could keep Windows on one, and put Linux on the other. But I wanted to try a different distro. They're so easy to swap between, why not? This was my first mistake. Having used Mint for a month, I figured I was basically the Stephen Hawking of Linux. After a few days of debate and research, I settled on Solus. Why? I have no idea, I canāt remember, this was about six months ago now.
It was the exact opposite experience I had with Mint. For some reason, it took two tries to get it to install. It crashed the first time. When it finally was installed, I couldnāt get half the applications I installed to run properly. They were always freezing, crashing, or having some weird issue. The other half? They wouldnāt install at all. Steam, Megasync, GIMP, and OBS had absolutely zero interest associating with any such riff raff as Solus. I tried to reinstall the distro again, but again it crashed.
Oh well, one for two, thatās not bad. I had my fun with other girls already, it was time to go back to the one I brought to the dance. I installed Mint on my desktopā¦ and it didnāt work. I could install all my apps just fine, but the visuals were, to use a technical term, fooked. I had an NVIDIA graphics card. I had heard Linux struggled with NVIDIA cards, but that those issues were a thing of the past. Well, oly if you define āthe pastā as ātoday.' Screen tearing, stuttering, flickering images, videos that refused to play outright, and did I mention screen tearing? All issues pointing to the graphics card, the GPU. There was also a separate issue where the system wouldnāt detect my WiFi sometimes and I'd have to restart to get it working.
After two months of various troubleshooting efforts, attempted fixes, and just trying to live with it, I gave up. I tried Ubuntu, but since Mint was a version of that, I ran into the exact same problems. I decided to try something entirely different.
Bazzite was next up, apparently good for gaming andāno, same problems. Okay, how about Arch Linux? Well, that solved most of the issues with the graphics, though there was still copious amounts of screen tearing and dropped frames. But like Solus, I had problems installing some of the programs I wanted, notably my VPN and Megasync, and weirdly LibreOffice didnāt want to work, either.
Okay, fine, letās try Debian this time. Despite having a reputation as a difficult distro, it actually worked better than anything else up to that point. I could install everything and run it all just fine, the WiFi problem was solved, and graphically it was the best of the lot. 'Best' is doing some heavy lifting there. I was still having issues with screen tearing, dropped frames, and low framerates. I enjoyed the way Debian felt, and this was the first time I used KDE Plasma and that was my favorite interface yet. But I wanted to switch over to Linux full time, and I still wanted to be able to make YouTube videos, and I just couldnāt do that the way it was running.
After a couple of weeks of debate, I decided the only way to solve it was to buy an AMD GPU. AMD has always supported Linux, to the point that most distros come with their drivers built-in. I knew doing so would solve most of my problems, and would also blow a hole in my bank account. GPUs cost the same as a house these days, so I decided to take a risk.
My previous graphics card, an RTX 2060, I had bought used on eBay and it served me well for years. You never know what these dirty GPUs get up to before theyāre put on eBay, the biggest concern is that they were used for bitcoin mining, a process where they run nonstop, pushed to their limits 24/7. This, to put it scientifically, aināt good, and makes them die sooner rather than later. But I didnāt want to spend a fortune on a brand new, cutting edge card, and you canāt buy a new old card, so I felt it was my only option.
I saved up for a couple of months, and kept an eye online for a good one. I was looking for a reputable seller, one that explicitly stated their card wasnāt used for mining, and something that would be less than $200. I wasnāt looking to upgrade, I just wanted to switch brands (as absurd as the sounds). After much research and second guessing, I settled on the RX 6600. It seemed like a slight upgrade, and more importantly it was two years newer than the RTX 2060.
Eventually I found one I liked and bought it for $180. I was so happy that this whole saga was finally coming to an end. So happy that when the seller contacted me two days later saying they were canceling the order because they āran out of stockā I didnāt throw myself out a window. That was my entire budget for the card, so I had to wait five business days for the refund to process before I could get another one. During this time, I found an RX 6700 XT (a better card) go for just $200. Great times!
When the refund came through, I was able to find another 6600 complete-in-box for $188 and snatched it up. It shipped and arrived just fine. But hereās the funny thing. By that point, I had decided to give up on YouTube. I formally announced the end of my channel, and I havenāt played a video game in months (thatās a whole other can of worms). So I could have justā¦ used the laptopā¦ but I kept going ahead with the new GPU plan anyway in the off chance that Iād change my mind and go backā¦ but Iām more sure than ever I made the right decision and I have no interest whatsoever in going backā¦
I installed the GPU and tested it on Windows, and it worked fine. As I suspected, I noticed no difference whatsoever in terms of performance. Which was fine, thatās not why I bought the card. So, finally ready, I installed Debian with KDE Plasma, and oh look thereās a new version of Plasma that day too, lovely. I spent the whole next day installing programs, transferring files, and briefly testing a couple of games to make sure everything worked. I noticed text on LibreWolf was a little weird, but whatever, thatād be a simple fix. One for the next day.
Huh, I noticed the following morning, the login stuff is on my second monitor, which is plugged into the motherboard, and not my main monitor plugged into the GPU. Thatās weird. Ah well. Ohā¦ I canāt open Steam the normal way, thatās annoying. Iāll just open it through the terminal, I guess. Oh, the game isnāt running all of a suddenā¦ I wondered if I started running Iād get lucky and be hit by a truck.
I did some research, something I could not escape these last few months, and it turns out there is some kind of issue with the drivers. For the new GPU I just bought. Specifically for this. Because they work so well with Linux. After a couple of days of troubleshooting, I thought the best thing to do would be to uninstall the drivers that came with Debian and reinstall them. I got them through AMD's website, because surely that's the best place to go.
This was a mistake. Doing so completely ruined that build. After restarting, Debian thought my monitorās resolution was 742x438 or something ridiculous like that and I couldnāt change it. The screen tearing was worse than ever, there were artifacts all over the screen, and the whole system was running unbearably slow.
Frustrated, I considered my options. With a new GPU that I knew worked but suspect drivers, I thought about trying one of the other OSs I gave up on. But I also liked KDE Plasma, which Mint technically supports, but not natively. Oh, hey, look, another Ubuntu-based distro with KDE built in called Kubuntu. Perfect! Iāll try that and be living that Linux utopia in no timeāno, it didnāt work. I installed Kubuntu, enjoyed it at first just like Debian, but I was ready this time. I didnāt spend all day installing and transferring stuff. Instead, I downloaded a couple of programs to see if they worked, including Steam, tried running a game, turned the system off, and turned it on and tried it all again. Sure enough, Steam wouldnāt open the normal way and text was looking weird on every browser I tried.
This apparently has something to do with hardware acceleration. That, in turn, means thereās something up with my GPU or the drivers. I tested the GPU again on Windows for hours and it was just fine. Drivers too. I was close to throwing in the towel at this point. I was broken, beaten, scarred, but at least I inspired a Metallica song. As one last try, I figured Iād install Mint since thatās the OS I had the most success with. I was still using it on my laptop and liking it, though I was sour about not having KDE Plasma on it.
Finally, after all of these months of pain, I had successfully installed a Linux distro on my desktop. Mint installed just fine, opened Steam just fine, displays text just fine, and runs all my programs just fine. I didnāt have to download drivers or use my body fluids for any rituals! I just installed it, and it worked perfectly. Itās the most boring distro of the lot, and Iād rather have used Debian, Kubuntu, or Bazzite, but seeing as how its literally the only one I can get to work, I absolutely love it!
So after all that, would I recommend you switching to Linux? Well, to that I say
