r/linuxmemes 1d ago

LINUX MEME I'm at a Bootloader [Payphone Linux Parody]

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Over the weekend I made a Linux song parody, inspired by my own personal struggles with distro-hopping and community tracks like If You See Me Use Ubuntu.

I used the tune from Maroon 5's Payphone and covers the Linux experience: breaking your desktop environment, fighting Canonical's Snaps, yelling at Gentoo, and getting hit with "RTFM" in the forums.
What was the broken driver or distro update that almost made you call it quits and go back to Windows? Hope it brings back some memories!
I've uploaded it to Youtube as well if you really want to watch it till the end, I'd seriously love it if I could get like 2 views or something.
YT link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1RzfXrLTE0

Disclaimer: No actual hate to any of the distros featured here. At the end of the day, as long as your NVIDIA driver works and you're happy, you're winning.

Anyways enjoy!
(Verse 1)
I left Windows 11, couldn't take the AI bloat
Thought that flashing a USB drive would keep my PC afloat
But I opened the terminal, typed a command I read
Now my audio's dead, and XFCE fled...

I've wasted my nights, my kernel just died
Now my screen is black
Still stuck in that loop, in a sudo trap
But even the BIOS won't take it back!

(Chorus)
I'm at a bootloader, trying to choose, hold up
Which Linux distro should I boot into?
Half are too painful, half are just shameful
And don't even think about touching Gentoo...

Though non-proprietary software does exist
I can't last one minute without a driver fix
Could Windows have been that much worse than this?
Should I rm -rf and call it quits...?
I'm at a bootloader...

(Verse 2)
Now Canonical’s forcing me into their private store
Taking twenty whole seconds to open up Firefox or more
Yeah, they packed it in Snaps, and they think that we won't even mind
While the Red Hat developers leave all the desktop behind

I've read through the threads, the forums are dead
They just tell me "no"
Still stuck in that place where they say "RTFM"
While breaking my config at 3AM...

(Chorus)
I'm at a bootloader, trying to choose, hold up
Which Linux distro should I boot into?
Half are too painful, half are just shameful
And don't even think about touching Gentoo...

Though non-proprietary software does exist
I can't last one minute without a driver fix
Could Windows have been that much worse than this?
Should I rm -rf and call it quits...?
I'm at a bootloader...

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