I’ve tried switching to Linux from Windows 10 twice now. The first time went wonderfully (on Mint) until I found out that secure boot was stuck in the enabled mode and I had to completely reinstall my bios. This was absolutely necessary as everything was unbelievably slow, especially gaming (on a decent laptop). I understand this is totally my fault as almost every Linux guide says to make sure secure boot is disabled. After fighting with that for literal days, I finally reinstalled Linux mint. WiFi was suddenly completely nonfunctional, no networks were detected, and none of the proposed solutions I saw online worked. I have very little experience with Linux and other complicated tech nerd stuff besides that which comes with tinkering with computers occasionally. I do however have a great deal of patience and stubbornness. I spent maybe a week or 2 just working on this first attempt at making Mint work, until I ran out of patience. After coming back to it a month or 2 later, I decided to try Pop!_OS. Once again, it went incredibly at the start. Because I fixed the secure boot situation, I could now game better than I ever could when I had windows installed. Very few compatibility issues showed up that I couldn’t conquer. Suddenly, I try playing Enter the Gungeon after having already played it a couple of times. Nothing out of the ordinary, I had done this before. Suddenly the entire computer freezes and I can still hear just fine. I restart my computer and… no sound. Nothing from any possible source, not Discord, not Firefox, not even the media I have downloaded. I look up the problem, I see several people have had it before, and only a couple ever got a solution. I try EVERY proposed solution on any forum with even similar issues, and still nothing. I have been fighting with my computer for 3 or 4 hours now. I’ve heard Linux praised for feeling like it is your computer that is subject to your will. I’d disagree right now, because it feels like there are spirits in my laptop trying to intentionally fuck me over every time I start enjoying the Linux experience. Does it get better? Am I crazy? Am I haunted? How is this anyone’s ideal experience?
edit: I’m on an MSI Thin GF63. Nvidia GPU, Intel CPU. Compatibility seemed fine WHILE this latest attempt was working, up until my sound got fucked. I have a hard time imagining if that could be related to anything besides my sound card and drivers, but I’m nowhere near savvy when it comes to Linux. I’m now installing Bazzite as some of you guys recommended so I can ease myself into this whole Linux thing. I’ll give another update if this fixes it :3
edit edit: It’s still happening. I can see the “Alder Lake PCH-P high definition audio controller” in my audio config GUI apps and I can see the meter moving when audio is playing. Still, nothing is played. I am not dual-booting. Ive seen people have had issues with this card before, but seemingly the only solution (that I’ve yet to try) is to buy a whole new laptop. I don’t have the money to do that currently. If someone is particularly tech savvy I am willing to hear out proposed solutions, but know that I have tried nearly everything online even remotely related to broken audio on Linux. My computer is haunted and I’ll need a proper qualified exorcist it seems. note: it works with Bluetooth headphones. I haven’t had a chance to test it with wired headphones but I will continue to give (near)real-time updates.
Driver support will always potentially be an issue unless you buy laptops that are built for Linux, or are well vetted. This is because Microsoft has near total market control and Linux support is usually reverse engineered later if the drivers source is never shared.
Same thing for gaming – gaming support on Linux is mostly a bunch of ad hock hacks, because those games were never made to run on Linux in the first place.
So, if you want to commit to Linux, make it an informed choice. You will need to make some sacrifices. Or you could always just dip your toes and only use Linux for running a server or hosting a website.
Maybe your computer has hardware problems that manifest at random times as software problems. I personally got a Beelink mini PC for $160 (16 GB of ram), and it worked perfectly with Linux first time, no issues thereafter.
Does it get better? Not particularly, no. It doesn’t get any easier to bear, you’ll never get used to it, you just stop caring so much. it won’t hurt as hard because you just don’t let it, not anymore. And its horrible, it sounds selfish. But there’s never going to be a time where you won’t wake up with their face fresh in your thoughts, you just won’t care, you can’t keep caring. you got work in two hours and you have to keep moving, you can’t let it slow you down, you can’t stop going. the world didn’t stop going, nobody did, everything’s as usual, you can’t stop.
oh fuck this is the linux comm
That sounds rough
If you don’t mind sharing, what is your hardware setup? Maybe someone can recommend a distro that’s more likely to work out of the box with your computer. While I haven’t tried it myself, Bazzite might be better for you if it can get you gaming without having to do too much additional work:
I’m on an MSI Thin GF63. I don’t hear MSI laptops get mentioned often when it comes to Linux compatibility so I have no idea if this means I’m simply fucked or if all of my problems will purely be software issues. I’m installing Bazzite right now because I’ve heard it mentioned several times here.
@otter @Cattypat , I don’t use Bazzite on any workstation, I have a desktop in my livingroom I use for gaming and watching movies. I use Bazzite on my Steamdeck as well. I see the potential for workstation function, but last I checked there is an exploit to bypass the PIN login rendering it a major security issue:
https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/issues/1945
If you’re only gaming, not really a big deal. I would definitely stick to a standard distro. I use Fedora.
When I first moved to linux I used Mint for a week and then moved to something else. As always by EVERYONE it was suggested to me as a “starter” distro and I really wish people would stop doing that.
I, like you, had issues with it. Sound issues, Wifi issues, GPU issues, and doing personal research and digging the consensus was always “it’s an issue with Mint.” I was about to go back to Windows 11 cause I was like “none of this linux shit works”
THEN I decided to try a different distro, CachyOS, and suddenly the sound was fixed, the wifi didn’t randomly drop out, and my GPU worked flawlessly. I’ve distro hopped since then and those Mint/Ubuntu issues never came back.
Try something other than Mint. if you still have the issues go back to Windows.
Are you dual booting?
Sounds like a hardware problem.
see edit :)
Try a LiveCD or installing Windows to an external drive (or if you are able to dualboot, although I don’t recommend dualbooting in general).
As for your original question, all PC/component manufacturers invest time in making their stuff work on Windows. Few do the same for Linux. Linux has a ton of people working to make hardware work, but it’s always going to be an uphill struggle if you don’t choose hardware explicitly for Linux support. Although I think your most recent issue is hardware (but I can’t know for sure).
Are you plugging in a headset through jack or USB? Or are you letting the speakers of your laptop do the work?
I know you’ve hopped from Mint to PopOS to Bazzite since, but I had a hard time getting built in speaker audio working on my laptop as well with Mint. I’d probably go with arch or something other bleeding edge.
Have you tried anything from System76 troubleshooting?
I followed every instruction on that page once it happened and still nothing. Even after a full reinstall. I’m worried it might be some bigger, harder-to-fix problem like something with my sound card. See my edit for a better update
That sounds like a pretty cursed occurrence. As you get more familiar with the structure of your operating system, I’ve found diagnosing and fixing weird issues gets a lot easier. You also get a better sense of what component is responsible for what and what commands let you investigate.
I think it’s reasonable to say that weird issues don’t stop though. At least for me. I always had tons of weird occurrences on windows too. What feels different about Linux is that I try and figure them out because it’s possible I can. Where on windows I would just accept that x was broken.
For a random question in case it’s the same no audio bug I encountered recently: Do you happen to play audio via HDMI? And does any audio sink (speakers, etc…) show up in sound settings?
Also do you happen to be using an nvidia gpu (and if so, is it a laptop with an Intel CPU as well?). That freezing issue used to happen to me all the time with some games and it was entirely due to nvidia’s Linux driver bugs.
see edit :)
On an entirely different note, as far as I’m aware secure boot should have zero noticeable performance impact, and if it does, that means that something is going horribly wrong. Guides tell you yo disable secure boot because it’s annoying/semis complicated to administer and makes installing out of kernel modules harder (like the nvidia drivers), not because it has a performance or stability impact on the system.
Hmm. If it’s persistent across installs then something is definitely borked. My next step would be to download the livecd images of a couple distributions and see if the audio works while booting into any of those live environments (ventoy makes this really painless)
When you reinstall, you’re not keeping any configuration, right?
If none of the livecd images work I’d liveboot windows and see if audio works there. If it doesn’t, definitely a hardware issue. If it does, then see if it starts working under Linux again. If it doesn’t, then something is incredibly cursed and I’m out of ideas since it used to work there.
Edit: a stupid question: do you have the right output profile selected for the card. Something like stereo duplex?
Hmmm. My experience has been different. I don’t get regressions very often - once I get it working, it stays working unless I do someþing to break it. Except CUPS. CUPS is cursed and will fail by itself for no obvious reason.
Þat’s not to say everything new works flawlessly. And my wife’s Linux laptop has several regressions, but I blame most of þat on The Fucking Dell Dock, since (a) most issues are resolved by power cycling þe dock, and (b) Windows also had issues wiþ þe dock.
As a side bitch: fuck Dell. At one point my wife had a company provided Dell laptop, running Windows, connected to a company provided Dell dock, connected to two company provided Dell monitors, and she would regularly lose monitors between disconnects/connects. I have never encountered an ecosystem of devices from one company which worked so poorly together. Þat said, þe dock and monitors work far more reliably wiþ a different Dell laptop running Linux, but þere are still occasional issues.
I’ve had a lot of regressions, almost entirely around graphics drivers. I have like the worst case scenario. A 4K laptop (also dell) with an nvidia GPU in a prime configuration with the Intel graphics. Until very recently everything was laggy or unstable or unsupported. With recent drivers things have been more fine.
I also have weird audio issues like the card sometimes selecting a non available profile when disconnected from HDMI (hence why I asked about that)
CUPS has been really stable for me. Idk
Also yeah, docks seem to expose all of the bugs, even on windows. For the longest time I couldn’t get my keyboard to work if booting with a dock, and I still have weird resolution issues with booting while connected sometimes.
Oof, yeah, I’ve been þere. I suspect I’m must much more cautious about hardware purchases - I do take time to read reviews and especially search around for compatability complaints before I buy. If I see a product has a lot of Linux users searching for troubleshooting, I move on to a different product. For þis reason, I’ve never owned an NVidia card, and wiþ þeir AI push, it looks as if I may never do.
Þe þing wiþ docks, I realized, is þat þey’re computers. Like, no joke embedded systems, wiþ BIOSes and firmware upgrades, and boot times. And þey can be a flakey as any computer, and Dell employs crappy developers, or doesn’t employ QA, so I avoid Dell docks.
Aaaaa use more paragraphs, PLEASE
Aight, almost every time It seems like audio is working but you actually hear nothing, getting alsamixer out and selecting each output channel and making sure it’s unmuted and full volume, on every sound device that shows up ( hit f6 I think to switch device to ) makes a difference. I’ve never figured out why it gets f’d up but I think it has to do with the service that saves and restores alsamixer state during shutdown and startup
Your wifi issues with mint were probably driver related. Ive found especially for newer devices Linux mints kernel is too old and doesn’t always fully support hardware. If you have access to Ethernet or USB hotspot you can likely download and install the newest kernel and fix that issue.
Mint is recommended for a reason, it’s a traditional Linux experience, it’s stable, and it looks familiar to newbies. Plus, lots of us Linux nerds use Debian/Ubuntu (what mint is based on) so it’s easier for us to help you.
What if you boot a windows installation, from an external drive or something? Does the sound come back?
I stopped reading at “secure boot was enabled so I had to reinstall my BIOS.” There’s nothing about that statement that makes any sense.
It was enabled and for some reason grayed out so I couldn’t disable it. Looked up several solutions and nothing worked so I just updated my bios. That ended up working.
I had tons of problems with Mint, that one included since I have to secure boot on for work reasons. (Absolutely abysmal let me tell you.) I use Kubuntu, and just run it in insecure mode, haven’t had any problems at all outside the potential security risk I suppose. It’s Ubuntu of course, that could turn you off I understand people aren’t fond of it, but everything works great with very little tinkering needed.
I tried bazzite, but found it lacking since I like to tinker and mess with things, and that just isn’t happening on an immutable distro.
I have a gigabyte motherboard, amd cpu and Nvidia card if that matters.
