Pop!_OS (Linux)

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Pop!_OS is an operating system developed by System76 for STEM and creative professionals who use their computer as a tool to discover and create. Unleash your potential on secure, reliable open source software. Based on your exceptional curiosity, we sense you have a lot of it.

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Whether this is your first experience with Linux, or your latest adventure, all are welcome to discuss and ask questions about Pop!_OS and COSMIC. Keep the discussions friendly though, and remember to assume good intentions whenever you reply. We're all here because we have a shared love for Linux and open source software.

Support us by buying System76 hardware for you or your company! Or by donating on the Pop!_OS website through the "Support Pop" button. Pop!_OS and COSMIC are fully funded by System76 hardware sales. All systems are assembled in the USA. With your support, we'll work to push the Linux desktop forward with COSMIC.

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Follow the Code of Conduct

All posts on pop_os must adhere to the Pop!_OS community Code of Conduct. https://github.com/pop-os/code-of-conduct

Be helpful

Posts to pop_os must be helpful. When responding to a user asking for help, do not provide tongue-in-cheek responses like "RTM" or links to LMGTFY. Linking to direct sources that answer the asker's question is fine, but it's advised to provide some explanation as to how you got to that source.

Critique should be constructive

We within the Pop!_OS community welcome helpful criticism or ideas on ways to improve. However, basic "It's bad" or other simple negative comments don't help anyone fix anything. When voicing a complaint about something, try to point out ways the complaint could be improved or worked around, so that we can make a better product for it.

This rule applies to both Pop!_OS and its projects as well as other products available from third-parties.

Don't post malicious "advice"

It can be funny to joke about malicious commands, however this is not the venue for it. Do not advise users to run commands which will lock up their systems, steal their data, or erase their drive. Examples of this include (but are not limited to) fork bombs, rm, etc.

Posts violating this rule will be removed, even if the post is clearly in jest. Repeated offences may lead to a ban. You may understand that the command isn't serious, but a new user might not.

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Posts making a personal attack on any user will not be tolerated.

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Hate speech of any kind will not be tolerated. Any violations will be removed, and are grounds for a ban.

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It's been fun. A breakdown of my experience with Pop! OS (self.pop_os)

submitted 2 days ago by RickRussell_CA to c/pop_os

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hey folks.

Many moons ago when Lemmy was just getting started, I saw this community and started learning about Pop! OS. It seemed to offer a very strong set of positives:

Major vendor support (System 76)
Robust integration of Nvidia video drivers
Gaming-friendly

Somewhat neutrally, it's based on Ubuntu, which seems to be almost univerally the most popular distribution to customize. There's a lot of software available through the Pop! OS shop, and through Ubuntu and various .deb packages, so that's probably a net positive.

I installed on my HP Omen (10th gen i7 and Nvidia 2060), and struggled almost from moment one, and it was all about video support. Supposedly, I had the System 76-packaged Nvidia driver for Pop! OS, but the Nvidia video was often not detected, even by games/tools that claimed to support it (various Ubuntu & Debian utilities dedicated to reading video specifics kept telling me I had no Nvidia card).

I downgraded the Nvidia drivers, it seemed to fix a lot of problems, except now I was running the 400-series drivers instead of the 500-series.

With both drivers, any kind of power saving mode -- video off, sleep -- would COMPLETELY crash the Nvidia video card. I mean, it required a cold shut down to bring it back; it stayed dead through both logout and OS restart. I eventually turned off the power save modes.

Lots of Googling suggested that Pop and the Nvidia drivers had issues with various specific power saving modes, but I had no idea what those modes were or how to tell the OS to stop using them.

I struggled along for about a year. Games were hit or miss. Old games like Armagetron froze the system solid more often than I'd like to admit. Steam Linux games seemed to work mostly OK, when the Nvidia card was behaving.

I was making USB sticks of various Linux distributions for a friend recently (Ubuntu main, Mint, Pop! OS) and got to thinking how much I used to like Mint. So I backed up my home directory and decided to wipe my machine and start over.

And folks... that was all she wrote. Mint pops a beautiful little video menu in the task bar that lets me select Intel graphics, Nvidia graphics, or dynamic switching. The Nvidia settings app was pre-installed and it actually works, not just sometimes. And my machine can wink the screen off or go into sleep mode without completely wedging the Nvidia card, and killing the external video.

I can't really explain why Pop! OS had so many problems for me. I'm sure System 76 regressions tests against their own hardware, and I'm sure they have it working right. But, not for my HP OMEN.

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[–] Diplomjodler3 4 points 2 days ago

System76 is not a huge vendor but Pop OS used to be really popular a few years ago. They've kind of fallen behind recently. Maybe trying to make their own DE wasn't such a hot idea, after all.