I am still a relatively new Linux user, had tried Garuda and Bazzite on my Acer Gaming laptop 2021 (Intel integrated + Nvidia 3070 dgpu- muxless) back in July but neither worked, i kept getting weird freezes and nothing would open. Had no clue what the issue was and had zero Linux knowledge. So after a frustrating few days and many, many, many reboots I gave up. Reinstalled shitty Windows 10 again and that was that. Felt defeated lol.
Fast forward to November, the itch to go back to Linux was growing something fierce. Decided to follow some good advice from a friend, installed Pop OS and fuck, it worked like a charm. Fell in love and haven’t looked back at Windows since.
Kept learning new things and picking up more knowledge about the terminal and was beginning to use quite a few commands without any fear. The terminal is class, feel like hackerman meme lol. I soon realised though that I was actually only using my Nvida gpu for everything, rendering and games etc. So decided to try hybrid. However i soon realised Steam wouldn’t open, anything that i asked to run the discrete card would not actually run the Nvidia card. Tried removing the open drivers and replacing with the closed. Some things worked temporarily but I simply couldnt figure it out and decided to settle for manually switching between integrated and nvidia for different tasks. Handy feature on Pop OS 22.04.
Anyway, got the stupid distro hopping itch and started jumping about lol. Tried Cachy. Same issue with Nvidia card so bounced. Tried Nobara. Same again but stayed longer and tried few kernel PCI tricks using grubby (advice from somebody much more knowledgeable). That worked for a day or so but always kept going back to crashing the nvidia card (and was only able to use my Intel integrated card). So went back to Pop OS (my Linux safe space lol). Was almost ready to settle for my lot in life (in regards to this stupid Acer Nvidia laptop lol).
Throughout all this, I had been reading the Arch wiki off and on, and at first it may as well be gobbledegook. But after couple months of using Linux you just start picking things up a lot more, words that had no meaning before, soon made sense and you begin to have the basics down. I had been reading about this GSP firmware thing really late one night and then forgot next day and only remembered few days later. Apparently this GSP firmware that comes with the Nvidua driver can screw some of the older Nvidia cards and so disabling it, while using the closed driver can help some older machines. So earlier tonight, tried it on Pop just messing about and it worked. So I thought, fuck it, Nobara was brilliant, lets try that again and try and find out how this is done on Nobara.
Switched to Nobara, followed some stuff from the wiki and forums, did the commands, then rebuilt the akmods and regenerated the Drakut program. And hybrid graphics works fucking perfectly now!!! Fuck me, it feels amazing to have finally sorted a solution to an issue I was ready to give up on after trying to sort it for a couple weeks! And I also have to say, if I had simply gotten that answer the first night I went searching, I would be absolutely none the wiser about all the things I learnt through trial and error, through learning on the wiki and on forums etc.
Sorry for the long rant lol, just wanted to share a minor but personal triumph. After all that, I can really see how awesome Linux is. I honestly feel that I’ve learnt more about computers within the last few months on Linux, than I did in the last 15 years using Windows!
If anybody out there is thinking of trying Linux, you should absolutely give it a go! Jump in and have some fun! Make sure you back up any important data. But don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Honestly that can be fun, figuring that out! There really are some great distros out there!
Linux4life motherfuckers!
Peace!
Better watch out, my first taste of the kernel was a dual boot Ubuntu installation in 2006, 20 years later and I administer hundreds of servers now. It escalates quicker than you think.
Haha yeah I have noticed that slightly too. Bought a Raspberry Pi at start of December to try and set up a personal music server, so been learning ssh and docker etc on that side of things lol. I am very lucky with the server side stuff because a good friend of mine set up his own emby server during lockdown, so he is very knowledgeable about server stuff and is able to break things down for me to help explain.
I was also lucky to also get the RP4 for £60ish and then with the recent price hike caused by ram shortages its now up to £95 in my neck of the woods!
I see homelabbing in your future, prepare your wallet.
Mmm, cheap compute, one of the best parts of the hobby is always having something to do with any computers lying around.
different goals and different way of tackling problems is maybe why people struggle with Linux? like someone only knowing Western languages taking up Chinese , where they approached the communication issue a bit differently. apple and Microsoft wanted a user friendly experience that everyone in the family can use a computer.
how Linux works is a good book if you want to learn more indepth. also something like Linux from scratch. not only will you learn a lot about Linux, but operating system design, networking, storage, etc. doing this will legit give you a better foundation than quite a few IT technicians.
Hell yeah, one of us!
My favorite part is that once you fix something the nuggets of knowledge are permanent. It wasn’t a “I just restart when it does that”
In the future if you accidentally delete your initframs for example you know what a “dracut” is.
Heck yeah man! I’ve been using Linux a good while now and I still do a little shoulder jiggle dance of joy when I discover some new trick or solution I didn’t know before
One thing I’d like to clarify too, it may have sounded like I was throwing shade on Garuda and Bazzite but didn’t mean that at all. I assume the issue was related to the same hardware fault I have been experiencing with all these distros. Definitely would like to try Garuda and/or Cachy at some point in the future when I’m more comfortable.
With Bazzite being immutable, not sure I’d be able to do the needed fix for my hardware to work okay.
The first time I purposefully created a sysctl service and it worked it was indeed a really awesome feeling.
Try ctrl+r in the terminal
This sounds awesome actually. I was looking through them by pressing up and going through one by one but can be a slog when there is a lot lol. I’ve been trying to make Joplin notes to myself for particularly useful commands but I’ve forgotten to do it quite a few times
I’ve been using Linux for a long time. I started with SLS Linux.
It’s a lot easier now than it was then, but it’s still a lot of fun.
I remember installing Linux for the first time from a CD of the Red Hat Halloween release (1996?). It was like being dropped off in an alien planet. Good times.
It sounds like you were doing some fairly advanced troubleshooting if you’re customising your kernel, so congrats on both persevering and succeeding!
(Also, I think your post was the opposite of a rant, since it was positive)
oh shit maybe I should try not using GSP for debugging, that’s a really good idea. thanks
Georges Saint Pierre? Sorry, I had to…
Lol i kept thinking of him too when typing GSP, he was one of the GOATs!
