retrogirl

I'm not trying to dismiss your experience because I have owned some hardware that just did not like playing nice with Linux. It was frustrating and stressful so I get it. And I have installed many Linux OS that was quirky on one machine, but not another. However, my experience with Pop!_OS is the exact opposite of yours. After hopping distros for years I was excited to find Pop!_OS. I've been using Pop for five or six years now and I have it on a number of machines without any major issues. I have mostly Intel for Linux compatibility, but I do have one Ryzen7 and one NVIDIA machine which happens to be a HP Pavilion laptop. The HP has performed without issue for five years. I'm genuinely pleased to hear you have found a good match for your Omen. I have some idea of why, but that's a can of worms I don't want to open.

Having said that I haven't experienced major problems with Pop!_OS I will acknowledge that the LTS 22.04 is beginning to exhibit signs of non-compatibility with some programs. Notice I said "beginning to" as I don't think there's actually any major issues yet. Ubuntu are supporting the Jammy LTS until 2027, so there's a long way to go with the base. No issues there. I'm afraid where things will fall apart is the GNOME version Pop is stuck on being a potential problem. If it did destabilize it would be no fault of System76 devs. They've kept Pop!_OS 22.04 functional and stable all these years. They've kept the system up to date. Pop always has the best-latest kernel for security and features. Pop's devs have continued to improve and optimize 22.04 despite working on the COSMIC desktop environment. They still need a stable modern base OS to put the new desktop on. They still need a stable OEM for their hardware sales, which is their priority. It is impossible to make an OS that works flawlessly on every make and model of computer hardware ever released. It's a reality. Not sure why you needed to write a break up letter though.

Even if someone were having issue with 22.04LTS they could always try the 24.04 COSMIC ISO found on the System76 Pop!_OS website. It's only a (figurative) minute away from becoming Beta. Beta is close to finished with a few bugs to kill. I've been using the latest 24.04 alpha for a while now and I'm impressed. I would encourage anyone experiencing problems with 22.04 to try 24.04. Back up your data! You should do that regardless of any circumstance when doing a release upgrade or new install. From my experience with it I believe when complete Pop!_OS 24.04 with COSMIC desktop will outperform most everything else by a long shot.

A lot of controversy has transpired between Gnome and System76. Years long conflicts which saw a working relationship shift to abusive and dismissive interactions. This is the first time I've said publicly, and likely to regret it, but I was appalled by the unprofessional immature behavior of a few of Gnome's developers. I won't portray System76 as innocent, but things could have gone very differently. Maybe it was inevitable. The result being we're now going to be blessed with a modern, super fast, memory safe, aesthetically pleasing, ultra modular, ultra theme-able desktop environment that is gaining attention from some heavy players. Anyway, the point of this paragraph is to express my disapproval in Gnome. If people that worked for me behaved like that I would have terminated their employment. I am actively trying to avoid Gnome, but having their fingers in so much of the Linux pie it will be difficult.

So, I've said many things to inspire trust and confidence in Pop and System76, but I realize there's always a chance my/your specific hardware might have issue with it. And that is my experience with Mint. Maybe things are better, but I refuse to use it. I will refrain from saying derogatory things or pointing out what I consider serious security issues. I acknowledge the hard work, dedication and experience of the Mint team and appreciate their contributions to the wider open source community. If Mint works for your Omen then power to you, but for me my money is on System76's Pop!_OS (with Fedora COSMIC a close second).

COSMIC is already available outside of Pop!_OS. There's already a good number of distributions (members of distributions) working on integrating COSMIC. There's Fedora and NixOS and I hear SerpentOS is interested too. Maybe Bazzite will do the work to integrate COSMIC.

I don't mind The Register, and overall I think the article was objective and informative. There's a couple things I think should be noted. Firstly, it mentioned Pop uses systemd-boot instead of GRUB and kind of inferred that was unusual. It might seem unusual when comparing it to the number of distributions still using GRUB, but if you consider things logically, using systemd-boot on a system that uses systemd it makes a lot more sense than using an old, bloated, unsecure chain-loader. Systemd-boot meets Freedesktop bootloader specifications for a bootloader with systemd. It's simple, fast and secure. You can use GRUB if you like, but it's probably only familiarity that keeps it around.

I don't think Pop's partition layout, use of encryption is "overly paranoid". It's timely and necessary!

And finally, I don't think the author completely comprehends what is possible with COSMIC desktop. I could understand their POV if COSMIC was actually like GNOME in that it is difficult to modify heavily without causing instability. Gnome modification also relies on third party software which GNOME often don't support. So saying "If you don't like GNOME, you won't like this" could be true if stock COSMIC wasn't able to be modified easily. However, COSMIC is supremely easy to modify and people who like KDE, Cinnamon or any other desktop will be surprised to learn that they will likely be able to use Pop!_OS with COSMIC and make it look like KDE, Cinnamon, Gnome or even Windows. It's only a matter of desktop configurations, most of which will be native in Settings, and with the difference being COSMIC will remain stable. I will also mention that Gnome have never had a native tiling solution.

COSMIC is not Gnome. It's not even a fork of Gnome. It doesn't even use GTK3. It's completely new, and when alpha2 is complete I'm sure many people will suddenly "get it". COSMIC is integrating many features that Gnome have been removing for years.

Register, I like you, but I think you missed some important considerations.

You CAN opt out of using anything Meta offers. Just don't use that abusive corporate crap!

The fact that they really want to disrespect your privacy, scrape every last morsel of anything they can get there grubby mits on for serving you ads, and feed you altered propaganda and shit that they think you should see says volumes about you if you allow them to do that to you. It says a lot about the Australian government too then. Here's EU taking these greedy corporate monsters to task while Australia is talking about giving them EVEN MORE personal information by trying to enforce ineffective faulty age verification with biometric government issued ID on social media. Just walk away.

Bluetooth can be managed with systemctl and bluetoothctl.

https://www.makeuseof.com/manage-bluetooth-linux-with-bluetoothctl/

In my experience I find just running bluetoothctl to enter the interactive mode easiest. You can enter commands without prepending bluetoothctl. You can use help at any stage. So you want to use systemctl to make sure Bluetooth is running, then enter bluetoothctl. Make sure the device is discoverable and pairing is set to on. Start your [headphones/whatever] in pairing mode and run devices. When you see the device run pair <numbers/address>. Only use the numbers. You may have to go into settings and select the device in the sound applet.

My situation doesn't require a logout timer, but if I'm walking away from the PC I just use the shortcut Super + ESC. Alternatively, there's many ways you can create a basic Bash script that when invoked times down to a systemctl suspend command. Or possibly the hybrid-sleep option could do what you want. See systemctl -h for possibilities.

Blanking the login screen is something that will be implemented shortly. Maybe I'll work on a script for that because it annoys me too. Fortunately I rarely use it. I'll repost if I do this.

I really don't think the two years people are saying in this thread is realistic. The hard work and core is written. What is there is stable. I think they will get this completed much sooner. They do have a hardware business to support after all.

I'm using it every day now. I have one machine installed with the 24.04 ISO and it's working fine. There's some TODO items to come which I understand will be added by Alpha2. With a little command line knowledge COSMIC is perfectly usable now and is stable.

For secure private transfer use the Warp flatpak in Linux and Worrmhole William in Android.

I've been using COSMIC for a while now without problems, and the store is great. Easy to theme and the apps are pretty good. I haven't checked it lately, but I hope the greeter improves soon.

The amount of times I've seen people request help because Pi-hole was not blocking/functioning properly, well a hosts file just ensures nothing leaves that you want blocked. Besides, you may have different machines set up to be strict or permissive depending on their use case.

Absolutely. These lists are created by server admins who collect what the firewall rejects, much like you see with the Pi-hole. They'll automatically block some ads and many threats too. Another tip if you're using Librewolf, Mullvad browser or Firefox with uBlock, enable more of the filter lists.

Use both.

That's a lot of progress! Worth the read.