Dedoimedo: Slimbook Titan report 4 - The good mojo is gone

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Conclusion

What can I say? The emotional yo-yo never stops. And that's a huge problem. The lack of consistency makes the Linux desktop look simply inadequate and amateurish. What can I tell people if they ask me, can I use Linux as my daily driver? The answer will be: yes, but. Only that's not how technology should work. You're not supposed to CHANGE your life and habits to serve technology. It's like the electric cars thing - start worrying about your driving routes, plans for multiple stops to recharge, worship the machine. Nope. Technology should serve the user. Period.

My Slimbook Executive, my other Linux-only laptop, works just fine with its Kubuntu 22.04. But that one is a classic, mainstream browsing-and-office machine, with an integrated GPU, no gaming stuff. And that's not good enough. Gaming is the bread 'n' butter of Windows usage. There are few things I desire more than to say bye to Windows and its low-IQ games. But I'm a realist, not a fanboy. And with a month-to-month psychological turmoil I must endure with these random-bug-after-update things, it's very hard to sound positive.

The fact Microsoft is now doing the same thing with their toy-like Windows 11 is no consolation, either. Two pointless don't cancel out. If you read my articles one after another, I come across as some bi-polar dinosaur. But it's not me. It's the disdain for the end user, the lack of true deep desire by Linux people to make Linux great. Oh they work hard, they are dedicated, they want to succeed, they are simply unaware that, at the subconscious level, they never want to stop being the underdog. Because being the big dog is a terrible, terrible responsibility. I can't blame them. Here and there, back in the day, I had my opportunity of being the big company guy, CTO stuff, whatever, and I decided it's not worth the hassle. Then again, I'm not offering any Dedoimedo software out there.

Well, there we are. In a month, or even sooner, I'll do something cool in Linux, and I'll be happy or cheerful again. Whatever. At the end of the day, it doesn't make any difference. Perhaps one day, we shall have maturity and stability in the Linux desktop space. For now, my Titan is back to being finicky. But I will work around this pointless kernel bug very shortly, so stay tuned. There's gonna be a tutorial for that in a couple of days. See you out there.

Slimbook Titan report 4 - The good mojo is gone

Long-term usage review and report 4 of the Slimbook Titan laptop, with Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics and Kubuntu 22.04 LTS as the operating system, including latest round of updates that led to occasional system freezes due to a kernel bug, inconsistent and confusing firmware update process...

www.dedoimedo.com

Previous reports:

Slimbook Titan, long-term usage report 1

Long-term usage review and report 1 of the Slimbook Titan laptop, with Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics and Kubuntu 22.04 LTS as the operating system, covering hardware, ergonomics, keyboard functionality, false positive regarding NVME storage failure, some software errors, day-to-day usage, gaming...

www.dedoimedo.com

Slimbook Titan report 2 - Shaping up nicely

Long-term usage review and report 2 of the Slimbook Titan laptop, with Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics and Kubuntu 22.04 LTS as the operating system, covering hardware, resolved problem with suspend & resume, performance, noise, battery life, one-time crash, software compatibility including Windows...

www.dedoimedo.com

Slimbook Titan report 3 - I am happy with the machine, finally

Long-term usage review and report 3 of the Slimbook Titan laptop, with Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics and Kubuntu 22.04 LTS as the operating system, covering hardware, stability, temperatures, battery life, Steam gaming, harmless disk decryption error bug, some problems related to system updates due...

www.dedoimedo.com

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Slimbook Executive, long-term report 5

Conclusion

I don't have too much else to share here, but hey, it's been an eventful three months period! Various hardware-related bugs, Samba and Android annoyances, side by side with excellent feel, great looks, solid speed, and overall, good productivity. I mean, you may think I'm being grumpy or unhappy, but no. I love the Slimbook Executive, it's proper fun, and every time I pick it up, physically, or open the lid, I'm pleased with the sharpness and clarity and vibrancy of colors of its screen. Hasn't gotten old yet, and that's a good sign.

The issue of randomness and erraticity of the Linux distro world remains, and it's the biggest future threat to the adoption and viability of Linux at home, so to speak. Not among nerds. Among normies, if they ever end up using Linux. The thing is, people expect their systems to behave one way, good or bad. They do not want changes, and they need any surprises. And if their operating system suddenly does something untoward, they will get angry and resentful.

By and large, the severe lack of any production-grade QA in the Linux world makes long-term commitment to the operating system (and all its various distros) difficult. So, a person decides to use it now. Great. A year later? The Super key stops functioning. Those kind of things are killers, and must not be allowed. Sure, most modern operating systems are quite fragile, badly tested, and of low quality. But that's no excuse, and certainly not the norm we ought to strive for. Looking at my Slimbook Executive, the machine has fared quite well in the past year. It's a thoroughly enjoyable laptop. I hope things stay that way, especially on the software front.

Slimbook Executive, long-term report 5

Long-term usage review and report 5 of the Slimbook Executive laptop, with Kubuntu 22.04 LTS as the operating system, covering ergonomics, everyday usage, and various problems and annoyances like Super key that suddenly and randomly stops working, inconsistent screen dimming on long media...

www.dedoimedo.com

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Slimbook Executive, long-term report 6

Conclusion

It is critical that one's experience with a computer is mostly positive, and that it starts on a positive note. You sort of build "credit" with it, in that you're more likely to tolerate an odd problem here and there than if the early results were mixed, or negative. For example, when my Titan exhibited the freezes, I was way more annoyed, and I remain less confident in its long-term prospects. I simply cannot get past the initial hurdles.

With the Executive, the keyboard issues and the new crop of errors are extremely annoying. They aggravate me so. This is mostly because a pristine record has been ruined, and for no good reason. Just random nonsense, because Linux is essentially 10,000 different things, cobbled together with no regard to one another. Your kernel runs in the data center, and it runs on your laptop, and the two use cases have nothing in common. It's amazing that such technological flexibility exists, and that it's even possible, but that also means any problem that may be, whatsoever, can manifest on your hardware, just because a patch for use case #3,444 will also affect use case #6,777, with zero correlation among them, and of course, zero testing whatsoever.

But then, once I got past the nonsense, my sense of stability and tranquility returned. I've not lost confidence in the Executive. Not yet, and hopefully, there never will be so many errors that I'm forced to completely abandon my serious Linux productivity endeavor (and go Mac, not back to Windows). Well there you go, my sixth report for this machine. The beautiful, spotless streak of good fortune has been cut short. This is still a superb system, Kubuntu 22.04 is a nice distro, but the exercise today shows that random nonsense can attack at any moment, unexpected. The wonders of modern software.

Slimbook Executive, long-term report 6

Long-term usage review and report 6 of the Slimbook Executive laptop, with Kubuntu 22.04 LTS as the operating system, covering new keyboard-related problems due to kernel and firmware issues after an update, resolution via kernel module blacklisting, everyday stuff, ergonomics, general user...

www.dedoimedo.com

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

Slimbook Executive, long-term report 7

Conclusion

For about a year and a bit, my Slimbook Executive has worked beautifully, smoothly. It was probably the most elegant experience I've had with any one Linux laptop. Clean, stable, fun. Then, in a span of about two months, my experience has been thoroughly ruined. My confidence in this system is gone. Yup, gone. And I'm not sure it will ever come back. All it took was a bunch of nerdy system updates, done with little to no testing, which rendered my perfectly functioning box into a pile of broken code like it's 2005.

The worst part, I hate myself. I am trying to move away from Windows, I invest my energy, time and hope into Linux, hoping against logic that THIS TIME, things will be great, and of course, I get disappointed. What was I thinking? Why did I believe that, in 2024, we'd see Nirvana, when it hasn't happened in the last 20-odd years or so. If the Linux world hasn't nailed the desktop formula and swayed the Windows masses back in 2014 (the peak of the desktop), why should we expect that to happen now?

Technically, it could. But what stops Linux from succeeding is - Linux. Any time the desktop shows a glimmer of success, the nerds get scared, afraid they will lose their hallowed underdog status, and subconsciously make everything worse again, perpetuating the dependency and the cool-nerd club status. But I'm the only one to blame. I'm the idiot. I tried, for the 100th time, to make the unworkable work. My fault, entirely.

Yes, the Executive is back to being sturdy, nice, elegant, pretty, all of that. If you "ignore" the last two months or so, everything is cushty. But even if I calmly accept that bugs can happen, I cannot truly forget the results. This means, from now on, I must dread every single system update. The same is true for Windows, of course. But there, I do updates sparingly, apps are separate from the kernel (well like Kinoite I tried just this week), and the breakages have never been as severe. I've not had (production) Windows machines bork my mouse, my power management or similar. It's a simple fact. I'm not a college student, I do serious stuff, I need serious productivity, and I need systems that I can rely on, for my fun and work. I don't want to be a collateral casualty of programming whimsicality.

And so, I'm starting to ponder the idea of using the Mac. Not sure if that's the right solution. Perhaps it will be an expensive mistake, or something. I may hate it or love it, maybe I need to become a true believer, who knows. Right now, I'm deeply disappointed with my Linux desktop experience, more so than ever before. The Executive was my bedrock of confidence and sanity, and it's no more. It's become just another machine afflicted by the randomness of the Linux desktop tragedy. Until my next sad long-term report.

Slimbook Executive, long-term report 7

Long-term usage review and report 7 of the Slimbook Executive laptop, with Kubuntu 22.04 LTS as the operating system, covering severe power management problems due to broken kernel and firmware updates - no screen dimming, no wallpaper rotation, and mouse pointer reset, log spamming due to...

www.dedoimedo.com

 

[Victor M]

Dedoimedo, lot of hot air. This summary talks as if the hardware and software distro are one. Guy talks a lot and cant think straight.