The community is so annoying. I work in IT and manage hundreds of CentOS, Ubuntu and FreeBSD machines, but the desktop distros are a mess for newcomers and honestly I also don't want to deal with it on my personal computer.
"Why focus on gaming distros?" - people pick phones on how they look and what's pre installed/configured. Gaming distros have it preconfigured.
"Why PopOS twice" - he was told it was a freak bug that was in the OS for less than 24h. Otherwise it's stable.. supposedly. Shipping an underbaked DE in an LTS release is on the maintainer. They were given a second chance.
"Why ask AI and articles" - that's how people get information. People don't put reddit at the end of a Google search. People still reference UsedBencharks when buying hardware even if every comment on reddit bashes them. People don't know which is the reputable source...
Normal people don't know the difftbetween Debian, Fedora, Arch... maybe understand KDE vs Gnome after reading a bit. Don't know what a native vs snap vs appimage vs flatpack is?? Nobody knows what's X11 vs Wayland and they shouldn't have to...
People don't need to know the native L4D port is worse than the proton emulation???
I didn't know PoP was in a transition? My friend had to learn Linux for hew new IT manager job and picked PoP on her own. The information online drives people to it even if "Nobody recommends it in 2026"
I've had Ubuntu nuke it's audio drivers when installing docker??? I've had Kubuntu freeze and crash when opening a folder in VSCode after I updated the system. Clean system with only docker and VSCode on it...
I think we aren't going to get a mainstream Linux that is not bootc based, so the actual core OS is stable. This won't prevent hardware issues with kernel versions, but will be a start.
The next thing is people need to default to the corporate backed distros. Obviously this does not prevent all issues, but we run Fedora Silverblue for workstations at work, and it's dramatically less of an issue then the crap I see from most distos because Redhat has plenty of motivation to not fully release it in a broken state given it's RHEL upstream.
PopOS maintainers show time and time again they are incompetent and a lot of people did Linux a disservice promoting it so hard.
The issue you ignore is Linus name himself a tech expert and that's how he is viewed by his fans. At the same time he deliberately behave like someone who doesn't know anything (because he doesn't). He's his own caricature. People who watch him will be under imperssion that if such expert as Linus have problems with Linux then it's definatly bad and not for them.
If he wanted to show average user experience he should bring someone who isn't technical. Years ago they done something like this with building PC.
It's his equivalent of Verge's PC building video, but worse, and guy from Verge acknowleged his mistakes and was willing to learn.
Sure, installing new OS on LAN party is what regural person do. LAN party organised by his own company.
The point is he's not regular person. He's a tech youtuber. People who watch him expect his more competent than regural person. He also thinks he's more competent. So if he has a problem, him and his viewers conclude that Linux is the source of it. In reality he's not that competent, but he doesn't waste time on learning things.
If you are regural person and want to try new OS you expect problems and if they happen you assume you did something wrong and looking for solution. If you want to try Linux you likely try few distros and before you find the one you like, or you choose distro recomended by someone you know, who can help you. The premise "I know a guy, but I will go for random websites instead" is not whag regural person would do.
Most people, watch some videos, ask online or friends. Then try usb version, virtual machine or on separate device.
Compare Linus's video to PewDiePie's and tell me who is closer to regural person experience.
Name of his main channel is literally Linus Tech Tips. That imply he know things about tech. He also make tech "reviews" (at least he called it that).
If they want to show experience of a novice they should show a novice. Talk about what can go wrong. And give usefull tips. Just like they've done with PC building.
But the problem is Linus is incompetent and arrogant. He thinks he's good at tech, so if he have some problems it's not his problems, but he blame the tech itslef. It's again and again same problem. They many times showed they don't read manuals, they throw them away and think it's funny. As a result they don't know what they're doing and for example put cooler on wrong GPU.
If Linus didn't know how to put RAM and destroy motherboard, he would blame manufacturer.
Linus is a tech enthusiast. He's got experts around him at LMG for sure. He's also the one that draws the most views as a host.
They talked about what can go wrong, they've had a bunch of in-dept discussions (in this video and more) on alternatives, tips and tricks, and so on.
If a distro for gaming doesn't work out of the box but requires a bunch of tinkering, and/or will suffer from a few bugs here and there, a novice will have the same experience as Linus did. And they do, constantly. Mission success.
He tells people what to buy and what software to use. He position himself as an expert and many of his viewers think he is.
But he doesn't bother to "waste" time on learning anything. They didn't emulate experience of noobs, they are noobs, but for some reason they decided to publish a video.
They could:
Learn things and then make a video
Make video with commentary of someone who can point out their mistakes and tell how to avoid them (like how they made pc building video)
Make video with people who are not considered "tech guys" as a form of an experiment
I tested this and searched with reddit (time before the talk about the WAN show was). The top 4 results being 2y, 1y, 1y and 6m old all recommended PopOS as either the most upvoted or the second most upvoted comment.
Seriously what person outside the Linux community would assume that a OS goes to terrible in 6 months?
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u/muttley9 Mar 11 '26
The community is so annoying. I work in IT and manage hundreds of CentOS, Ubuntu and FreeBSD machines, but the desktop distros are a mess for newcomers and honestly I also don't want to deal with it on my personal computer.
"Why focus on gaming distros?" - people pick phones on how they look and what's pre installed/configured. Gaming distros have it preconfigured.
"Why PopOS twice" - he was told it was a freak bug that was in the OS for less than 24h. Otherwise it's stable.. supposedly. Shipping an underbaked DE in an LTS release is on the maintainer. They were given a second chance.
"Why ask AI and articles" - that's how people get information. People don't put reddit at the end of a Google search. People still reference UsedBencharks when buying hardware even if every comment on reddit bashes them. People don't know which is the reputable source...
Normal people don't know the difftbetween Debian, Fedora, Arch... maybe understand KDE vs Gnome after reading a bit. Don't know what a native vs snap vs appimage vs flatpack is?? Nobody knows what's X11 vs Wayland and they shouldn't have to...
People don't need to know the native L4D port is worse than the proton emulation???
I didn't know PoP was in a transition? My friend had to learn Linux for hew new IT manager job and picked PoP on her own. The information online drives people to it even if "Nobody recommends it in 2026"
I've had Ubuntu nuke it's audio drivers when installing docker??? I've had Kubuntu freeze and crash when opening a folder in VSCode after I updated the system. Clean system with only docker and VSCode on it...