Sup penguin people.
I’ve been running various flavours and variations of Ubuntu for a while. I find I have to nuke and reset my laptop every 6ish months because things eventually stop working or I get weird bugs.
Recently I’ve been having this on and off problem where the computer just shows a black screen after turning it on. The only way to fix this is to tap keys repeatedly until a console shows up and it seems to kick the computer into gear and log in. Other times I have to restart 2-3 times before it logs me in.
I’ve had a lot of small issues like that (like having to jiggle the volume knob in the sound mixer to get sound working) and I’m wondering if switching to an immutable distro (like bazzite) would solve this apparent config creep.
I have a Steamdeck and it’s been solid and stable ever since I got it. I know it’s running an immutable distro and after researching a little bit it sounds like they can be more stable.
I’m no power user but I play some steam games and run a local 7b LLM and like to have a virtual machine or two for Windows XP emulation for some retro gaming.
Anyone have any opinions? What are your thoughts on immutable distros (like Bazzite)? Pros? Cons? Success/doom stories?
Edit: I’m back baby. 4 months later and still kicking it with Bazzite. Go immutable if you’re a former windows person and needs a computer to just work the way you’d expect without any configuration. I’m running all my steam games and plugging into my usb c dock for mouse keyboard webcam and 2 1080p monitor. I could never get that working on other distros. The future is immutable 🙌
IMHO you should first figure out what exactly happens/goes wrong with your Ubuntu installations.
Immutable distros might or might not be a solution, but if the core of the problem is really the quality of the Ubuntu updates for example, you could try to run Debian (stable).
But again, the suggestion to use Debian is throwing a solution in the room which might not fit your problem.
Just as a reference point: I am running Debian stable on Laptops, Netbooks, Raspberry Pis and in virtual machines (AMD64/AArch64) and have no weird bugs, everything works for years now and runs smooth.
Concerning the Steamdeck... I love them, they run perfectly fine, but unless you are tweaking them/do more than run games, you cannot really compare them to what happens on your desktop.
I basically treat this laptop as I would a bigger steamdeck. I video edit, play games, and browse the internet. That’s basically 99% of my use case
It sounds really strange, that you end up with the problems you described given your usage.
My systems are heavily modified/tweaked, so one would expect I would experience the problems you describe.
Given your usage, using an immutable distro sounds like a no-brainer to me, immutable Linux was created with your usage scenarios in mind.
In your shoes I would still try to pin point the root cause of the error, because in theory(TM) your usage should not be a problem for any of the mainstream Linux distros and we don't know if an immutable distro solves your trouble.
Given your 6 montish circle it sounds like some kind of accumulation? If the computer runs stable for several month, IMHO you can rule out hardware problems, unless you have a kernel update every 6 months... :-P
Can you be more specific about your hardware, laptop model and Ubuntu version you are using?
If you ever figure out what happened, or if you try out an immutable distro and it runs for a year for you, give us an update! :-)
Right? I’ve had these issues with a Framework 13 AMD and have experienced these problems on Kubuntu 23.10, Ubuntu 22.04, and Kubuntu 24.04.
Otherwise the computer runs stably albeit certain flatpaks and snaps just stop working for some reason over time (like BambuStudio and Webcord and a Notion web wrapper and Kdenlive).
Your immutable distro will not be tailored to your hardware by a team of qualified and paid engineers. I'm not entirely sure why the heck do you think immutability is the differentiating factor here.
When the laptop is from Framework (like OP's laptop is) and is one of the 'supported' distros, and if said distro has a more robust update scheme (related to its immutability), then, quite frankly, its as close to "tailored to your hardware by a team of qualified and paid engineers" as it gets.
It actually is officially supported by the hardware team who builds my laptop. I’m not sure why you had to be so hostile with your wording.