Linus BREAKS Linux! - Daily Driver Challenge Reaction

Linus and Luke switch to Linux! At least on their home gaming rigs. Let's see how smooth their start is.

00:00 - Linux Stuff
03:08 - Pop!_OS and Mint!
04:08 - Installation
05:45 - Lets uninstall the GUI!
08:46 - Arch, btw...

My Workstation (PAID LINKS)

[orencummings]

Extremely unfortunate for pop, but that's something a new user to linux would have definitely done. A completely new user definetly wouldn't know that confirmation prompt wasn't the norm.

[andrepessoa]

As a Linux user for almost 15 y, I totally agree with Linus. "User friendly" is a very slippery term in Linux community.

[AllenGuarnes]

Tbf, if I was completely new to Linux, and I had the same prompt to uninstall my DE, there's no way I would've understood the packages being removed. Imagine you're new to Linux and you're greeted with a huge block of text that names multiple package names that you've never heard of? I don't get why some people don't get that. "Xorg" or some other weird package names may make sense to you, but to a new user it's 100% not. Even the huge amount of lib packages is going to confuse the hell out of you.

Plus, you were just installing Steam, how on earth would anyone even associate that with nuking your system? It's like in Windows, you're installing a new program and you get an admin prompt to allow it, which an average user would just say yes to, because they assume they're just installing a program..

[theredstonehive]

Was funny to see Pop!_OS recommended in one of his earlier videos, and the first thing Linus does is brick it.

[DarkTrepie]

We can poke fun at Linus, but honestly, at no point should your system suggest that installing something as popular and trusted as Steam will eat your DE. Let alone allow you to actually do it.

[AndrewSatellite]

You have to acknowledge that, it doesn’t matter if it’s user error or not. first impressions are VITAL. This reality, as shown in Linus’s first time experience, is why people flock to MacOS and Windows. Both Apple and Microsoft know all too well that minimising potential for user error and maximising plug and play experience is key to uptake in their OS. Until Linux moves away from it’s “RTFM” approach, I think it will forever struggle to adopt new and basic users

[vags]

At the beginning of the video, they have a little visual gag of moving the system 32 folder into the recycling bin. It's funny that Linus essentially ended up doing that.

[judgmenthammer]

I never comment, but I wanted to leave one here. First, I don't see this as some cheap reactionary video. This was actually educational, and I hope you do more on this subject. I started watching this series from Linus because I am someone who is considering Linux in the future. I also game a lot on PC. I didn't even truly use a PC until I started PC gaming 19 years ago.

I have been interested in watching a first time Linux user experience. I also appreciate a veteran Linux user showing where a simple wrong turn was made and how to avoid it. So please consider doing more of these to help incoming Linux noobs like myself. Thanks for the great content and take care.

[trottingfoxinc]

Linus breaking things is such a meme, but honestly you couldn't have *planned* that pop os debacle if you tried. It's really unfortunate, but it's also still a fair take. It's user error insofar as Linus is probably smart enough to have realized something was wrong if he read more carefully, but in the end RTFM only works if someone is really in it to learn. If someone just wants to use their computer, it's surely unfair to expect them to spend time googling what their terminal is telling them just to install Steam. If Linux is truly going to be an attractive alternative for the average user, being able to accidentally uninstall your DE because you didn't read or understand what was happening is just not gonna work.

[backspacer]

So according to some System 76 engineers, the problem was that there was a faulty package in the Pop repositories that was reported a few weeks ago, so around the same time Linus installed Pop the issue was still unpatched. Bottom line, Linus just had bad luck that day.

[kazu]

lol that intro. This video wasn't cringe, really nice hearing your thoughts on it. This LTT experiment should kick start a lot of discussion regarding the Linux ecosystem and how the experience looks like from a beginners perspective. Everyone in this sphere is an expert and deeply passionate, which naturally makes their perspectives misaligned with newcomers and those that 'just need it to work'.

[kjkardum]

People say well it's just bad luck that pop had this exact problem in this exact time which _should_ never happen.
But from many, many and way to many linux installations on all sorts of hardware, I can say that this wasn't something that uncommon, while also being very uncommon.

What I mean by that is that almost all starting issues I had with new devices on linux were some very uncommon issues, but every time there was (different) one. He just had bad luck that this was the one for his situation.

[LuisCaneSec]

It's really easy to take experience for granted. Whenever I install an OS, be it Linux or Windows, one of the first things I do is update. An "end user" switching to Linux might not even think to do that. (The Mint project had an article about many users having systems years out of date.)

[elitehacker]

I think we should all notice how the series (even with the setbacks ) serves well in drawing attention to Linux ...Such debates are what keeps FOSS projects like Linux in active developmemt .✌

[AveryChow]

they need to make you type in something like, “I am breaking my system!” to confirm these kinds of things so you won’t go right past it lol

[krank]

A lot of comments in this comments section demonstrate clearly why Linux is so very, very far from being mainstream. Why it'll continue being the domain of ultra-geeks and server managers. And I say this as someone who runs a Linux home server and knows his way around the terminal.

It's not primarily about the user experience, though as Linus clearly demonstrates there's a lot to be done there. No, the main thing holding Linux back is the goddamn "git gud" elitist Linux users who don't WANT Linux to be accessible or widely used. They want Linux to continue being only for those who are willing to spend the time and really get to know the system. Only for THEM. So they can feel superior to the lowly GUI-using "idiots" of windows-world.

They, and their attitude, is why Linux will probably never be mainstream.

(And yes, of course there are a lot of reasonable Linux fans and Linux users. The ones who don't blame the user for "being an idiot" but rather try to find constructive solutions. But the assholes are VOCAL and there are lots of them.)

[sACE]

Liked your reaction video. Mic sounds good. I've been looking forward to this LInux gaming series on LTT. It might depend on how the LTT Linux challenge progresses, but consider reacting to the other parts as they come out.

[keyboard_g]

Agreed on Mint, its so solid. When playing with linux to learn I found it kind of boring. There was no drama. Everything just worked as expected. I'm now running Fedora 35 with Cinnamon because of that experience.

[amnnet]

As a typical Windows user:
Install, recommended, I agree, next, next, yes, yes, ok restart windows

I know Linus feels

[LordPhan]

The thing is, I have found that the more novice the user the easier the transition. What I mean is, a power-user needs to learn the new file system, bash or other scripting language and generally how things work. It took me a month in my spare time to learn how I could do things I'd done easily in Windows but on Linux. On the other hand, point and click users, still point and click and for my wife and children, they find Linux easier.