Matt

Isn’t this literally what Waistline is for Android? You create your own local food database (which you can automatically fetch info from Open Food Facts or USDA if desired, but not required) which lets you put in as many nutriments to track as you wish, all with graphs and information with different timelines.

No clue if there’s anything like this for desktop.

Debian doesn’t push the responsibility to the user to finish setting things up though, it is designed to be complete out of the box, especially since Debian 12.

For what it’s worth on my computer with a GTX 1650 and Debian 12, I am unable to use Wayland at all as the drivers simply do not work (yes, this is the nvidia-driver package, not nouveau). On Plasma, everything seems to move at a snail’s pace, and on GNOME the desktop is constantly flickering and showing old portions of the screen. X11 is perfectly fine though.

On my cheap laptop with integrated AMD graphics though? Debian 12 with Wayland works like a charm and has no issues.

So, I’m going with nvidia being the problem here.

Hmm? I’m sorry, I’m not following because all distributions follow the same format here, which is that you flash an ISO to a USB stick (or other removable media).

This is, in fact, how it also works for Windows.

I definitely agree their website needs work, it is very confusing to browse if you need anything other than the net installer! I find everything else by using search engines instead.

Your issue seems less the command line and that things aren’t “working”, or the tools you want aren’t pre-packaged.

Using Arch Linux was not the best idea if you want something that “just works”, as it works on a philosophy where you install the minimum amount required and then add things, such as drivers or packages, as you need them. In other words, it’s a distribution where you know what you need for your system. It is also a command-line centric distribution, so it’s strange that “GUI” is your bug bear when you picked one that deliberately forces command line.

Regarding overclocking and GPU configuration, you just get CoreCtrl, which even has a GUI.

Now don’t get me wrong, I absolutely agree that everything should have a user interface as much as possible, but the whole “Linux means you have to use command line all the time!!” is simply just not true anymore, and I feel this issue comes from people recalling memories from 10 years ago or using distributions where command line is necessary, rather than something like Ubuntu or Linux Mint where it mostly isn’t.

Have people installed Debian since Debian 12? The installer is very straight forward, and Debian 12 also comes with all the firmware modules to make things “just work” for people.

I would like to know exactly what Debian does wrong other than a blanket statement of “it’s hard”.

I would suspect at some point it will come into contact with other matter but yea… That could take a very, very long time.

For what it’s worth if you want to stay inside the Ubuntu ecosystem (so to speak), I would personally recommend installing KDE Neon, which is based on Ubuntu and maintained by the KDE developers. Otherwise, Debian - most Ubuntu specific things work in Debian, although not everything (PPAs and stuff).

So I didn’t read it either (sue me), however people are paid to work on Linux. The examples you give about RedHat and SUSE are completely incorrect - they’re not there to tell people how to use Linux, they literally develop for it and are paid to make it a better product.

The “issue”, of course, is that they focus their paid efforts on Enterprise and server usage, and not as a user-facing product for the most part, although it could be argued that widespread adoption by companies is how you get it into peoples’ hands, since they get used to it at work or education.

Also, you’re using Ubuntu LTS 20.04 which is technically out of date, as 22.04 LTS also exists, and LTS is primarily meant to be for server/company use, rather than trying to keep up with the latest software and features.

I took a look at your bullet point list too, and literally every single one of your bullet points (other than accessibility, unfortunately) is covered by my laptop running Debian 12 with KDE Plasma - seriously, try out a KDE Plasma distro, it most likely fixes all your problems.

You don’t - you just open your distros software manager (which is like an app store) and get all your apps that way.

Been like this for several years.

While this is true, if someone goes to a shop and buys a “PC”, it will have Windows 100% of the time.

You have to look to get Linux preinstalled on stuff, or pick the choice yourself. People buying PCs aren’t picking Windows, it’s just what comes with them.

1. Isn’t pre-installed on well known machines by well known brands.
2. Popular applications (whether productivity, creativity, or games) do not work out of the box that people want. It doesn’t matter that alternatives exist, or that you can use things like Wine. If it’s more than just click the icon, it’s too much.
3. If things cannot be done purely through touch / the mouse, it is too hard for most people.

Linux Mint Cinnamon.

It tries to make things similar to Windows (which most people are accustomed to due to school), and also has its own set of apps that try to make things as simple as possible by having simple names so people know what to expect.

In my opinion, the only “root distro” which ticks all your boxes is Debian, especially with the advent of Debian 12.

All the other distros are too opinionated to be “user friendly”, except maybe Solus which I’ve never tried.

Literally any of them.

All you do is install your drivers if using Nvidia, then just install your games, whether native packages, flatpak, Steam, Lutris, or whatever.

I just run Debian 12 and everything through Lutris or native. Used to run Steam through Flatpak which also worked perfectly, but don’t play any games on Steam anymore.

Sports is definitely hard to have take off in these sorts of spaces, since sports are generally talked about much more amongst regular/casual users, than the more tech-savvy crowd who are willing to try these things out.

It’s the same on the biggest ActivityPub platform (Mastodon) - the really popular regular subjects such as sports and cars just don’t have a presence there.