Context: For the second time in a row, upgrading the Kernel resulted in a black screen at boot for me.
See also: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=455598
After a fiasco with my 72 year old father in law’s laptop, I no longer recommend Linux Mint to people. On a fairly new Asus, multiple attempts at installing were needed to get it running, and he had constant issues that pushed him away from it. Installed Ubuntu for him, no issues over the past year. Sure it has snaps. He doesn’t know the difference and everything seems to be working fine. The goal is no IT support calls from the old man and Ubuntu achieved it.
Ubuntu has fucked me and my sister over. Bazzite has been doing ok and I've been looking in to Cachyos
Ubuntu LTS? It can still have rough edges depending on your hardware, but solve them and you got five years of peace.
I run CachyOS with Hyprland, after using EndeavourOS for quite some time. I definitely recommend either one, if you’re willing to learn to do things via terminal.
Fedora would have achieved the same goal.
Fedora stability is chef's kiss
I’ve ran Fedora on and off for years, by my measure, it’s not old man proof.
I’d say it’s no more or less than Ubuntu. An immutable flavor like Silverblue or Bazzite would be more resistant to the technologically challenged, which is why I always recommend one of those to new Linux users first.
As a certified Old Man^tm^ running Fedora Kinonite 43, it's very Old Man^tm^ proof.
Now Grandma on the other hand.... I swear she can cause even an iPad to burst into flames at a mere glance.
I tried multiple distros over the last year to find a good one to recommend to someone I know. My experience with mint was a mediocre startup followed by mediocre use for a few days, followed by a boot failure. Very disappointing from a distro I frequently hear recommended as a newbie-friendly option.
yeah when I first switched to Linux everyone suggested Mint to me, like they always do, so I tried that. It was miserable, didn't work well with my Nvidia GPU, and almost made me go back to Windows. then someone suggested CachyOS to me and I'm glad they did.
CachyOS is the best Linux experience I've ever had. I used to use Mint too but it had problems with my new hardware. I was hesitant because people always say Arch distros are hard to learn but what I don't see mentioned is how much better they actually run. I've had zero problems so far, and that's more than I can say for Windows 11 lol.
I know it's an LTS version, but 5.15 is not exactly a new kernel release. It's EOL next year. I've been on the 6 series kernel since switching from Windows, and have yet to have anything break on update.
Edit: also, that kernel release is less than a year after the 6800 xt was released. I'd imagine that newer kernels would have a whole bunch of bug fixes.
Oh, it's about mint. Never mind.
That issue was also a problem with SuSE back then. That's why I left them.
After reading that I realised that I have some similar problems. If I turn on the computer with the monitor turned off or if I turn it on too late, it goes to sleep and it won't wake up, I have to restart the computer somehow, usually with reisub.
After reading your comment... me too...
I had a similar issue with a Windows laptop recently
this is most likely an acpi issue. acpi is vendor specific and it's hard to support every one. there are some work arounds, I'd see if there's anything in dmesg and go from there. definitely annoying tho.
My mint install doesn't even let me use that old of a kernel version, I can only choose from 6.8, 6.11 and 6.14.
I’m using the 21.3 LTS release. That may be why I have more kernel options.
Since in my experience something always breaks when upgrading any Linux OS, I’ve come to try to avoid that.
21.3? Why not upgrade to the latest?
Because whenever I’ve upgraded any Linux OS in the last 10 years, something broke. Always. That’s why I’m riding this LTS until it dies.
Can't say I had the same experience, but staying on an outdated version is going to make you run into problems as the one you just experienced.
Debian: If it’s not natively support and stable we’ll make it supported and stable, no matter the cost.
Exactly why I run LMDE and not LM.
It just takes an eon or two for them to get to the stable branch.
Fedora or *buntu for easy general stable use. Mint has never been well maintained.
I thought Mint was just Ubuntu without Snaps.
Mint forked for UI tweaks initially but never had a lot of funding or experienced devs. The snap thing was way later. I really should have included debian
I like Debian. I don't really use it anymore but it's solid. I only really use Arch these days.
Wow, and it's not even nvidia.
I get kernel panic when I try to use 6.14 in Mint. 6.11 is fine, though that seems to be deprecated.
22.2 fixed a lot of minor problems I had on 22.1, even on the same kernel. 6.14 would reliability freeze my desktop environment within an hour on 22.1 but it's been solid since is on-place upgraded to 22.2
I'm on 22.2. i guess I should just go back to 6.8.
Kernel panic.
minor problems
Hmmmm...
The mouse and keyboard still worked but I couldn't change window focus. I could ctl+alt+f2 and restart cinnamon. dmesg was empty. I think it was a panel applet but didn't put much effort into finding the real problem
Well that's something to keep an eye on.
That said, I'm on LMDE6 which is firmly stuck on the 6.1 LTS kernel branch, so I might not see any problems until I upgrade to LMDE7 and get 6.12 (or go nuts and install something else entirely).
I recently updated my LMDE 6 install to 7, no issues thus far for me.
I seem to remember having little to no trouble with the 5 to 6 transition on my old system, so I'm inclined to believe that.
I just need to get my head - and backups - in order for the day I decide go ahead with 6 to 7, just in case it doesn't go smoothly.
Same, upgrading to 6.8 for the exact same reason right now 😅
Use DKMS drivers. They rebuild for the latest kernel as its upgraded. Using precompiled libs is a problem as many vendors dont keep up with the kernel.
Also, consider an OS that isn't just a Ubuntu variant. Broken kernel upgrades are a thing of the past since our house dumped Ubuntu based distros.
I hope u get the stable experience as me.
So build your own. ;)
Hint: :q!
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