I am a more generic casual user and mostly use my desktop for free time fun. Media and video games with some research and some light work.
Generally I have been trying to avoid both the onslaught of stuff I don’t need or want with Windows, and the same with generally loud communities who provoke people into fear based prisons mentally.
I was using Windows 11 LTSC which gives the user more control over their operating system than other versions and is less filled with stuff not wanted.
But my usage became hampered in other ways, Radeon drivers being uninstalled and installed by Microsoft versions which are almost 2 years out of date. Immediate effect: (Black screen and system shutdown whilst doing anything) and just the absolute general mistrust of the user, it wants to tell me what to do, how to use it when I am more than competent in general Windows troubleshooting. So for me I am in a battle with what is no longer a system or OS issue, but control and who makes the decisions.
I have tried many other distros, from Linux Mint, Arch and it’s derivatives, pure Debian and Fedora.
Windows whilst you can destroy your system tinkering too much or trying to fix something, is easily recoverable, for me the process to proficiency in this regard is still needed and I wanted something I could stick to and not have to manage after all is said and done.
Now the issue is once you are accustomed to the weird tribalism of the louder Linux community in general you find out that most of the loud offenders are making decisions for others as suggestions based on personal experience, but they are not explicit with this and off putting concenus can be made (Reddit is terrible for this).
I am not interested in maximal control for its own sake.
Instead, I value appropriate control.
- If you choose a setting, it should stay chosen.
- If hardware works today, an update shouldn’t silently break it.
- Advice should explain trade-offs rather than prescribe one “correct” answer.
- The operating system should be a tool rather than something that continually asserts its own preferences.
So a pragmatic approach.
Ubuntu 26.04
I have been up and running for 3 days and have had an absolutely smooth sailing time here.
I have had to read up in detail and find the correct ways to do things, such as Wine install but it turned out completely followable anbd works right.
It also helped that when I combine this usage with chatGPT to give a sort of 3rd opinion & suggestion, I can flow between me and what Iknow, a community that has already laid out steps and a chatbot which can inreal time pull suggestions.
So far I have managed to update MESA to latest with no problems, and Got Wine to interact at the user interface level with properly working Wine Server and is configured correctly.
After this I can’t see me needing anything else tinkering with in the terminal.
So my feedback is, well done, a somewhat intermediate user has an OS they can use and it feels good to use, I can shutr my mind off and focus on the task at hand.
One last thing I want to say is the news headlines in some articles point out that 26.0 LTS uses 6GB RAM as a requirement, but in my usage with Steam downloading a game and 7 tabs open in Firefox with privacy extensions, I was using 7GB of my 32GB DDR, the OS does not use 6GB in and of it’s self, mine sits typically under 2GB, so I am assuming the recommended is based upon general RAM expendature doing casual tasks?
My system.
Ryzen 7 7800X3D
32GB DDR5
MSI X870 chipset Tomahawk WiFi
RX 7900 XTX 24GB.
Not a single issue with detection or use.
Thank you for all the work you put into this, you rock!
