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 🙌
Unless you've absolutely made the kernel or package manager unusable, there should be no need to reinstall an entire Linux OS. It's not like Windows where the registry changes over time, and the OS will become unstable or quirky. It sounds like you just need to be more diligent about doing things in userspace.
Not OP, but speaking as a Linux newb, what is a "userspace" exactly?
Anything done locally that only affects your user is userspace. Doing configuration changes in userspace versus globally will reduce the likelihood of you breaking something. So making changes in ~/.local, for example, instead of /usr/local.
So is this a matter of personal profiles? Userspace would be anything within a particular user's space, if you will?
Affected your user and not the system as a whole, yes.
If you want to be a hyper technical dick like the other person responded, the old way to refer to the term "userspace" is basically anything that doesn't affect the kernel, HOWEVER, it is now more commonly used to refer to specific local user settings, yes. The old reference was way before people starting writing things to be hyper-local to individual users, as things are arranged now.
Thank you for explaining!
That seems to be a common usage of the term, but strictly speaking, "userspace" is anything that's not the kernel. This includes system-level programs, libraries and settings configured as "root" that can affect all users.
For me it’s easier a lot of the time to just reformat and reinstall the OS than to troubleshoot every little problem as they arise. It’s great for learning and I’ve certainly learned a lot along the way but for my use case I just want this computer to work with my stuff right off the bat.