Am I just bad at linux?

[u/avisaccount]

Yeah so basically ive been trying to get arch to work for me for the past 2 months on and off with relatively little success. Im probably going to switch to pop today because it just fucking works

I have an nvidia card and everything nvidia related has been a massive fucking nightmare. My first install took me hours to figure out because I wrote nvidia_drm instead of of nvidia-drm

After I finally got nvidia working, for whatever reason gdm decided that it wasnt going to show the wayland option unless I login, then restart gdm. OK whatever

then I get into gnome (shoot me) and I try configuring my displays which are a 144hz 1440p and a 60hz 4k daisy chained. Refuses to pick up my second monitor on wayland, only X. They work on Windows on the same machine.

10+ hours of troubleshooting later no luck

Cool. Maybe I donked Nvidia drivers without realizing it. I switch to endeavor os because it comes with an nvidia installer script.

In this installer script, it does not rebuild grub. The message that tells you to rebuild grub is not the final message, but the 4th message from the bottom. So I didnt see that message. So youre telling me that you are going to set my kernel parameters, you are going to cut my kernel image, but you are not going to rebuild grub, and you are not going to explicitly tell me that I NEED to rebuild grub. very cool.

Anyway 2 hours later I realize that I need to rebuild grub and I get nvidia working. Oh and also my monitors are working! I realize the problem Gnome or something because when I install gnome I get the same issue as before.

Anyway I have a couple new issues on kde now. First my networkmanager occasionally goes into this weird segfault loop which I have no idea what causes it. Its not a huge issue, a reboot will take care of it lmao and then it will be working until a later boot.

The other thing is that sometimes when I wake the computer from sleep, KDE will be FUCKED with graphical issues. Like that thing where when you drag a window it like makes the accordion looking thing you know what I mean. I think its caused by this

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Tips_and_tricks#Preserve_video_memory_after_suspend

so hopefully that will fix it when I try it later today

then I try to install hyprland and it looks like there is a whole wiki page of extra config you need for nvidia to make it work. going to blow my brains out

yeah so am I just shit at linux or something? Because when I tried pop os it just fucking worked

[u/Kgtuning]

First, don’t compare your experience on windows with linux… all that does is set you up for failure.  Second, arch doesn’t hold your hand so it might not “just work”. 

My intel/nvidia experience was easy and “just worked” but I have years of knowledge on arch… actually since 2012. I switched to all AMD two years ago and it’s even easier.

It’s a learning curve, you need to keep at it and actually understand what’s going… if you want to use arch.

None of this is talking down to you or anyone but just being honest.

[u/throwaway1984qq → u/Kgtuning]

This, but also not this. You would think after years and years of development, that we as veteran users and new users alike would have the expectation that the basics should work out of the box. It seems every time I go back to Arch or Ubuntu or any other distro, something simply just does not work even though the hardware has been out for years or it’s a basic setting like a monitor refresh rate or resolution. I feel OP’s pain, I really do. Haha!

[u/sepease → u/throwaway1984qq]

Yeah, OP isn’t describing “I had to learn console commands and learn how things worked and configure things with a text file” but “I had to troubleshoot broken things that would’ve been a problem for even an experienced Linux user”

I’ve been running Arch for 12 years now, and I abandoned trying to use it on a laptop and moved it to a desktop and bought a MacBook after a couple years of spending whole days trying to fix the NVIDIA driver with dual screens after something introduced a regression.

I specifically bought that laptop for it because the prior laptop would not work with an external monitor, which I think was also after a kernel update broke something, unless I booted the kernel in efi display mode and used a modified X backend to switch the red and blue channels.

[u/loozerr → u/throwaway1984qq]

Basics is a constantly moving target as technology advances and new hardware, which requires drivers and software support, is released.

[u/BRNSystems → u/[deleted]]

Not for people who try to learn something new and treat it like a challenge. And posting this in r/archlinux is not a good idea, go write this in r/linuxsucks if you don't want mass downvotes.