this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I'm all for Linux but IMO it's not quite ready for general public yet. Even distros like Mint are buggy and requires multiple restart every day. I would install it on my dad's computer, but it's not stable enough yet. But I think it's a question of a few years, maybe months before it's there.
EDIT: since people are asking, here are a few bugs that I encounterd over the last week or so. I'm a audio/multimedia worker so obviously I push my computers farther then average user. Still, I'm happy to know many people have manage to get it stable
2 days ago, Ssomething went wrong with cinnamon. At first all the dektop would not appears when waking up from sleep. Had to restart every time or disable sleep. At some point, even restart would bring me a window saying Cinnamon session could not be loaded. I had to reinstall it from Grub. I dont see average users being able to do that. *It's actually not fixed, sleep will mess up Cinnamon.
yesterday, I tried to get my DAW (Reaper) to work with one of my audio interfaces. Drivers would not work correctly, sound was glitching. I messed up with pulse audio for 2 hours but never got it to work.
this morning, te infamous NVIDIA driver wouldn't let me turn off the mirror mode (I have a projector connected to the computer), I had to reboot.
This morning also, I discoverd that Timeshift now only launch from the terminal.
Over the past week, I had to completly reinstall mint, because I installed and uninstalled some audio extension and it messed up the OS. Since then many apps that use to ne there dont show up in the software manager, updating the repo doesn't work, so I had to manually install using terminal.
I've been fighting to get Da vinci resolve to work, tho it's supposed to work natively. Took me around 4-5 hours overall.
I ACTUALLY LOVE LINUX. Indual boot it on my main PC an even installed it on my old 2015 MacBook. I think windows is garbage and full of bloatware, I hate apple but consider macOS a pretty good OS, but I think both are more stable for your average user.
I sincerely wish I could install Mint on my dad's computer but I'm pretty sure he would me need my help at least twice a week . I dont see him or your average user playing with the terminal to install a basic app. I know it's getting closer, but IMO it's not there yet.
There is something wrong with your installation. Other people just restart to update the kernel often once a week/month. So you might as well tell us what's making you restart Mint so often.
See my edit !
It seems to me that installing external audio drivers and changing Pulseaudio configurations is messing with the OS. Mint uses fairly old, stable packages. Newer distros have Pipewire for audio now. It's a Pulseaudio replacement and might be useful in your case. Have you tried a newer distro? You can try Ubuntu 22.04 or Fedora from a USB stick to see if your audio equipment works out of the box. Then you won't have to fiddle so much with the OS. Fedora Silverblue in particular is immutable and you can reset the OS to any current or previous state with one command, even without Timeshift. Another thing for testing software like DaVinci Resolve is Distrobox containers. You can change whatever you want inside a container and try different distros but you won't break the underlying OS. Hacker's dream.