I don’t know what it is, but the moment I get comfortable, I manage to click on something and then everything breaks.

There seemed to be a brief period in 2022/23 where everything was working just fine. Hell, I even finished two songs under Fedora, and the experience was smooth pretty much all around. I was happy in the thought that Linux had finally achieved something near mainstream workability. Then I ran an upgrade (a jump from 36 to 38 I think?) and it completely wiped out my audio. Nothing I tired would get it back. So I reinstalled the earlier version and turned updates off. Didn’t matter though. A couple of months later, I did something else that hosed nearly everything on my system. Then I went back to Windows and then missed Linux, then Linux really got janky and …

… Fuck it, back to Windows. I just didn’t have any more patience left at that time to deal with Linux’s little fits. Windows 11 is a lot of things but one of the things it hardly does anymore is crash. Next to Windows 2000, it’s one of my favorite versions based on stability and general ease of use. The marks against it are the increasing levels of shit MS is stuffing in there. I don’t wants ads or tracking or AI and I’m speaking as someone who has a home built computer with enough horsepower to run most things well and who doesn’t have to put up with Windows S mode.

Then last week I decided to say fuck it, and put my money where my mouth is and try Linux again. I downloaded and installed Fedora Jam (I was used to it) and it was ok but a little weird due to some minor changes in the latest version of KDE Plasma. I also had a few hiccups, one of which caused me to do a full reinstall … and things were just off. Sound, especially sound kept dropping in and out. Among other things, devices would drop off the list if I chose a different  profile for another device. Fedora Jam just didn’t feel as “welcoming” as it did a couple of years ago. Finally I gave up and spent Sunday evening back in Windows just to finish a few writing things up.

Yesterday I said fuck it. There are sooooo mannnnyyyy distros out there why try and force something that’s just not working? Throw a dart. Let’s try Ubuntu Studio.

And here I in Ubuntu studio. Even though it’s taking a little bit of getting used to, Ubuntu is holding its own at the moment (I’m knocking on all the wood I can find). The only issue I’ve run into is, again, Reaper just does not want to play nice with the Scarlett 2i2. Mixbus loves it so, ok. Fine for now.

Ubuntu Notes

• • • Installing Steam was a bit of a pain until I realized that the Flatpack repository wasn’t enabled. Once I was pointed to Flatpack, everything was smooth sailing. The Wither 3 took an inordinately long time to start on first launch, but it runs just as well as it did under Fedora which is to say it runs just as well as it does under Windows (again, knocking on that wood).
    • Got Scrivener running with zero issues this time around.
    • Configuring the desktop look and feel was easy as Ubuntu Studio is still using KDE Plasma 5.x. I think I’ll hold off upgrading Plasma for a good while.
    • Wayland is a much better graphics option than X11 if you have a large monitor.
    • Sure there are no ads and trackers to disable, but christ in a sidecar, the amount of apps installed by default on these distros is insane.