I recently installed Mint for my first Linux and honestly it took me a few days to get it set up fully. The initial install was really quick and super easy, 90% complete in an hour. But, for example, my speakers didn’t produce sound. Four hours of trying to force drivers and all sorts of bizarre fixes, finally post on the forum for help and find out there’s a hidden volume setting in alsamixer that was set to 0.
Yeah, Linux really suffers from the 90-10 principle. You’ll spend 10% of your time getting it 90% functional… And that remaining 90% of your time will go towards the final 10% of functions.
I know running Gentoo is labour intensive and for the most part unnecessary. Something still draws me back and every now and then there’s a fresh install.
Exactly. I’ve been up for 27 hours, but I finally have a booting Gentoo install now. 😃
Gentoo installs are not that bad these days. However, back in 2005, it would take, like, a day or so to compile the kernel on my old Pentium M Thinkpad. I would run through the install, start compiling the kernel, and go to sleep/work/whatever. I would check on it periodically to see if anything went wrong, and eventually it would get to the point where I could reboot and find out I messed something up and had to start over. That was like a week, and then I installed Ubuntu. 😂
It’s usually something unrelated to the OS that I am staying up all night trying to get working. One time I realized it was because I was trying to use an x86 program on ARM for a Raspberry Pi and I felt like an idiot spending so much time troubleshooting to find that out.
Installing the OS is simple. I’d go as far as saying it’s now easier & faster on most distros than installing Windows, considering you’re not hunting down the latest exploit to bypass signing into a Microsoft account or having to go through all the prompts you’re going to say no to anyway and not having to remove all the bloat and reverse the stupid Microsoft defaults and startup crap like McAfee…
Absolutely agree! It was amazing how much just worked.
I spent a lot of time tinkering and just having fun with all my settings etc.
Though I did have to battle a little as my setup, which gave Windows headaches, is a little unusual. (Three screens, one is connected to a receiver and then to a tv, so the sound and third screen are connected. I’ve got it functional etc but am really looking forward to diving in and getting everything to work well!)
I reinstall mine around 2 times a year, partly habit, partly some time I accidentally fuck up. Not counting the time to download the installation media, and though I become faster at setting things as I like each time, best I do is still some 2 hours. For someone not used to the environment or even just starting, I’d easily expect it to be much longer.
Everyone not familiar with Linux should note that this is probably partially a joke and a very uncommon thing.
These days your basic Linux installation requires very little time and knowledge.
Maybe he started the install at 02:30? And included a coffee break
I recently installed Mint for my first Linux and honestly it took me a few days to get it set up fully. The initial install was really quick and super easy, 90% complete in an hour. But, for example, my speakers didn’t produce sound. Four hours of trying to force drivers and all sorts of bizarre fixes, finally post on the forum for help and find out there’s a hidden volume setting in alsamixer that was set to 0.
Still better than windows.
Yeah, Linux really suffers from the 90-10 principle. You’ll spend 10% of your time getting it 90% functional… And that remaining 90% of your time will go towards the final 10% of functions.
Thats how I landed on Fedora, it just worked the most consistently
This is probably an old meme but still completely true with Gentoo. :)
I know running Gentoo is labour intensive and for the most part unnecessary. Something still draws me back and every now and then there’s a fresh install.
Exactly. I’ve been up for 27 hours, but I finally have a booting Gentoo install now. 😃
Gentoo installs are not that bad these days. However, back in 2005, it would take, like, a day or so to compile the kernel on my old Pentium M Thinkpad. I would run through the install, start compiling the kernel, and go to sleep/work/whatever. I would check on it periodically to see if anything went wrong, and eventually it would get to the point where I could reboot and find out I messed something up and had to start over. That was like a week, and then I installed Ubuntu. 😂
Oh the useless hours spent compiling Firefox…
I still remember compiling LibreOffice for 2 days. :)
It’s usually something unrelated to the OS that I am staying up all night trying to get working. One time I realized it was because I was trying to use an x86 program on ARM for a Raspberry Pi and I felt like an idiot spending so much time troubleshooting to find that out.
Installing the OS is simple. I’d go as far as saying it’s now easier & faster on most distros than installing Windows, considering you’re not hunting down the latest exploit to bypass signing into a Microsoft account or having to go through all the prompts you’re going to say no to anyway and not having to remove all the bloat and reverse the stupid Microsoft defaults and startup crap like McAfee…
Absolutely agree! It was amazing how much just worked.
I spent a lot of time tinkering and just having fun with all my settings etc. Though I did have to battle a little as my setup, which gave Windows headaches, is a little unusual. (Three screens, one is connected to a receiver and then to a tv, so the sound and third screen are connected. I’ve got it functional etc but am really looking forward to diving in and getting everything to work well!)
I reinstall mine around 2 times a year, partly habit, partly some time I accidentally fuck up. Not counting the time to download the installation media, and though I become faster at setting things as I like each time, best I do is still some 2 hours. For someone not used to the environment or even just starting, I’d easily expect it to be much longer.
Yeah I got my first distro working in like an hour (including installation time) with literally zero prior experience.