Okay, I'm doing it. I'm giving #Linux a fair shot for the first time in about a decade. You fediverse people convinced me.
Well, that went poorly. Just a bunch of blank screens and unresponsive flashing cursors, even after updating graphics drivers.
Oh well. Maybe I'll try again in 2034.
So, I figure, maybe it was just not the best distro. So, I try downloading a whole other one. It has its own program to download an image and write it to a USB stick. Great. I wait and that finishes and I try to boot it and... it fails disk validation.
People, this is why #Linux will never overtake Apple & Microsoft. I want to believe and I'm super tech oriented and I can't even install the damn thing.
Continued misadventures with trying and failing to install #Linux:
I re-downloaded the Fedora image and it still failed to validate before installation.
I tried the latest bleeding edge version of LinuxMint and it only shows up on one monitor (even though the desktop covers the others). Once I update the graphics driver, it stops showing up at all, and all I get after login is a black screen with a frozen mouse.
PopOS installed easily enough, but whenever I tried to adjust the display settings, I'd lose all displays and have to reboot. Also, running apt-get upgrade caused the whole OS to crash.
Anyone got any other suggestions for distros that might actually work for a dev machine with a 3080?
@LouisIngenthron
Wow. Sorry to hear about your issues. I recently had a few issues myself with second screens and #OpenSuse.
Honestly, whenever I have issues with other distros on certain machines I turn to #Ubuntu and it never failes me, but of course #PopOS should be pretty much the same. Did you check if switching between the Wayland or X11 display manager on login makes your experience better?
Besides, there's still #Manjaro. They got some bad press recently, but I kind of enjoy it.
@LouisIngenthron
But generally, I'd say sticking with either #LinuxMint, #PopOS or #Ubuntu is the better choice than Manjaro or Fedora for starters.
@sustainrelease Didn't see any option for X11. Just tried Wayland but the whole install must be borked somehow now because any attempt to login just leads to a blank black screen with an endlessly flashing cursor.
@LouisIngenthron Sucks you've had so much trouble. I haven't ran into issues like that for years/decades (which is not to say your issues are bs or invalid). I wonder what the hiccups are from.
@idropyou Yeah, this was pretty much what I ran into the last time I made a serious foray into Linux (about ten years ago). Although, I am glad to say, I had to do a *lot* less console work this time around to get the basics done.
My guess about the hitch is that I've got a custom-built PC (which isn't too crazy; Intel/Nvidia) but I've also got 5 monitors (2 of which are 4K; 2 of which are portrait orientation). Windows handles that fine, but it's not exactly standard.
@LouisIngenthron
This may have been what you ran into with the fedora verification - https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/11r7gi8/fedora_media_check_fails_at_48_every_time_during/
@adamw Hmmm, thanks, I'll give it a shot. Strange that only that distro has the problem though.
@LouisIngenthron
I'm not sure whether other distros default to doing a media check on boot.
@LouisIngenthron I install Linux Mint time after time on different computers with no problems.
@tedherman It just gives me a black screen with a blinking cursor. 🤷♂️
@LouisIngenthron Before Linux Mint, I was a Slackware user (since 1995). Using an old-style distro like Slackware, you see the command shell in each step, which lets you diagnose. Unless the problem is the boot image, which is another kind of more mysterious debugging where you have to get into verbose messages.
@tedherman Yeah, I remember that! Somewhere around here I still have an old slackware distro spread across 7 CD-ROMs, lol.
In my case now, though, it installs just fine, but starts failing after I log into the installation.
@LouisIngenthron @tedherman "7 cd-roms" 🤪!!! So many memories. I remember loading Windows 95 with 20 something 3.5" disks. Disk 18 read error 😭
@LouisIngenthron
The state of hardware compatibility is a mess right now. Usually Nvidia is a no-go for using #Linux, the open source driver is way immature and the proprietary driver doesn't get much love.
That being said, I seem to recall that #Manjaro was a good choice for Nvidia back in the day, particularly with Gnome (though I'm talking 900 series cards). Here's hoping you can give that a shot!
@LouisIngenthron
Well im not using a 3080 but 3070 and had no problems with both garuda and arcolinux
Final log:
I tried downloading #Fedora straight from the website and even that failed validation during installation, so I guess Fedora is just screwed atm.
Then, I tried #Ubuntu finally, which I was trying to avoid. It installed okay, but as soon as I log in, it goes straight to an "Uh oh something went wrong" crash screen.
For all the shit it takes, I haven't had any such problem with #Windows on this same hardware (at least not since the 95/98 days).
I don't know how #Linux can ever truly take off while such fundamental issues persist. But I also don't know how I can remain with Windows as they push ads and spyware into their OS.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I guess I'll just procrastinate on this issue until I build out my next rig.