I had one of those kits myself, came with 1Gbit NIC attached to the back and HDD. Was great fun for tinkering, but compiling GIMP took >1day 
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Or Ubuntu on the Xbox 360 
If I hadn’t updated the Xbox 360 dashboard I could have run modded Skyrim and never had to build a custom PC
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Switched over 20 years ago to Linux (and a bit of BSD). I had a Winmodem (aka softmodem), luckly it was also a linmodem which meant I could compile a kernel module and then I could get on the Internet.
Winmodems were shit tier hardware, because they moved some of the modem implementation out of hardware and into software on the host computer (at least that’s my understanding).
The solution to Linux PITA was to buy a serial US Robotics modem and toss the winmodem in the trash.
I’ve stuck to the same strategy ever since, intentionally picking hardware that will work well with my OS of choice.
That’s my tip for saving frustration.
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This. Be mindful of your purchases in the future, let Linux compatibility and availability of open drivers be one of the tickboxes that guide your purchase decisions. If you have two options then the one with open drivers should be given more weight. Only pick non-free if you need to use it.
This, of course, create problems every time you start out with Linux, as you probably have a few incompatible hardware products in your current rig. However, the problem is less of a problem today than it were 10 years ago, and it is mainly Nvidia and Qualcomm that are the major holdouts. 
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Maybe it’s time to give Linux Mint 22.1 a try. I found it amazingly user-friendly, stable, versatile and again much better than version 21.3. I also tried Ubuntu about a year ago and I had my little problems and it didn’t really appeal to me. The different Linux distributions are perhaps a bit like human relationships. You can’t become close friends with everyone, but with some it’s worth investing time and interest.
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I know why you’re saying this and it’s nicely documented in this thread.
However, the situation here is quite different from the winmodems of the past. Back then there were no drivers for Linux - you couldn’t get one if you wanted.
Nvidia actually maintains very mature drivers for Linux which work as well or better than on Windows. Yes, it is not open-source and it is required to find the magic handshake to get them working in your distro, but after that they’re set-it-and-forget-it.
(I have no Qualcomm hw).
The moral here is: make sure Linux driver exist for any device/hw that you’re purchasing. This has been and will educate manufacturers in the future to treat Linux as a first-class citizen for their products.
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Yes, and no.
The problem with Nvidia drivers is that they ignore what happens in the rest of the Linux ecosystem, most prominently Mesa. Since Nvidia has their own big stack for everything, not just drivers, they are also missing out on important developments in the stack. This is fine as long as the Nvidia driver stack is better - but sooner or later they need to start a major rewrite and that will make the entire concrete bunker crumble.
They have been slipping for a while now, but most people haven’t noticed because most people actually don’t buy AMD GPUs. Main problem is that they are now massively behind in the Wayland department.
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Not disagreeing. Even Nvidia has noticed that and is actively working on/supporting a new open source driver as well as now contributing to the existing Nouveau driver.
I would consider “what happens in the rest of the Linux ecosystem” an upstream challenge that distros have the headache to solve. And all have - Nvidia is the big 800 pound gorilla that sell the most GPUs.
Different points of view are valid. But I don’t think these are issues for a first-time Linux user nor should they be.
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True. It’s just not subtleties though - Wayland not working proper on Nvidia means there is currently no stable way to get HDR working, it is experimental on Nvidia at best. So that’s one of the current pain points. But in general, I agree, it should not really matter.
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???
That’s default config on Fedora. It’s been for years. With their latest version (42) they even removed xorg alltogether.
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Yeah, I know. It’s been real bad until recently. I think it’s finally starting to shape up, but Nvidia had serious issues as late as of November last year:
It’s possible Nvidia has finally managed to resolve issues,but…
[edit]Here is the article referenced in the video:
[/edit]
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Cue a comment from a suse developer:
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Don’t believe everything you see on Youtube
I have been a happy Nvidia customer on linux since the debacle with ATI some 20 years ago.
And - yes, feature parity between Wayland and xorg may be lacking, but is this of consequence for anyone “Trying Linux for the first time”? First time Linux users don’t even know what that means.
In my experience (again, long time user) NVidia offered more or at least comparable features on Linux than competitors. CUDA, anyone? GPU accelerated video codecs?
Your interests/needs in a GPU and their drivers may vary. Share your experiences!
I want to push back against the fearmongering notion that NVidia GPUs are bad on Linux. They’re not.
If you disagree with the business terms of NVidia - I join you. The technology has a proven track record.
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Actually, no. If you look at that image you have posted, there are only two implementations within the Linux ecosystem, plus AMDGPU PRO for the customers of AMD that require a full proprietary solution. That third pie is shrinking every month and there are fewer and fewer reasons to use the pro drivers in Linux. They still exist but they are more and more considered legacy.
As for “three competing solutions” - no, the pro drivers compete with mesa, this is correct, but the other ones are mesa modules and can be swapped in and out interchangeably. That’s not duplication of work, but healthy competition. (Ideally, you want one protocol, many implementations, not many implementations each coming with their own proprietary protocol)
Note that Nvidia provides no paths whatsoever that are Mesa, except for Nouveau which… Well… Is a god-awful piece of trash thanks to Nvidia locking GPU clocking behind a firmware lock for the last 15 years or so.
AMD now use mesa for everything, and are actually pretty happy about it, apart from the whole HDMI 2.1 thing. That situation is literally the HDMI consortium being major cunts, saying “Your implementation must not be Open Source if you want to carry the 2.1 HDMI label.” No, this is not hyperbole. This is what is actually said by the consortium. There is no technical reason whatsoever that is stopping AMD from it, only stupid lawyers being scared of ghosts. Sad.
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Unfortunately I use bluetooth keyboard and mouse which doesn’t work in tty, so I’m currently sticking to lightdm. However, it has been working quite smoothly so far.
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Got some spare time today, tried another fresh install of 22.04 with new USB made from a different computer. Same problems all the way so I decided to try Ubuntu 24.04.
It worked straight away no issues with install or drivers, only issue as I knew was that the vastai client didn’t support this version, so I decided to try 20.04 just to see and it’s even better than 24.04.
I don’t know why but 22.04 just seems broken.
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Just keep a recent version as your main os. If you need an obscure package that only supports some older version, install an older distro in distrobox (use podman instead of docker) and fire it up from there
You’re running into security update only territory with 20.04
Im betting if you run VastAI in docker on 24.04 you’d be in good shape
*edited for spelling as usual …
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