I never experienced it 
But yea, I get why you described it as brittle.
Do people read Terms and Conditions?
Nope
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As an former heavy windows/mac user, I can identify with almost every gripe and expressed criticism put forth in LTT’s video. The only one he was missing was, “Where is the C:\ drive?!?”
I hope he sticks with it, and is flooded with encouragement, help, and appreciation. As a pretty competent tech-guy, I’m sure he’ll figure most of this stuff out sooner, rather than later. I know people in IT departments that are intimidated by linux. He gets kudos from me for trying a challenge like this. (regardless of the motives)
I lost count on how many installations I rendered useless from just ‘playing around’ with installing and uninstalling… and mindlessly entering in commands I found online… and the whole gambit of goofy things you try when you’re brand new to linux. I loved that it was just so easy to try another distro, or reinstall and be right back to where I was.
His comment on ‘windows settings’ scattered around the OS made me laugh. Sorry, but when WINDOWS starts to make KDE look organized, Microsoft needs to just stop, and just begin re-releasing Windows 7, then XP, then 2000… etc. etc. and work their way back to sanity.
These are fun episodes to catch, and I’ve enjoyed what I’ve seen so far.
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In regards to the removing of X by LTT, I don’t fully blame him. I have been confused by the terminal APT output. It’s not as well organized as Zypper or DNF. I appreciate the summary much better there… especially Zypper. It’s nice and clear. I do think that he should have tried Fedora instead. As much as I love openSUSE, it does have it’s hurdles to overcome for new users. Personally, I much prefer it but I do think it is an acquired taste.
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I thought this was worth sharing here. A different take on the LTT Challenge… “Linux Guy Tries Windows 11 for a Month”:
"I am reversing the Linux Tech Tips Linux Challenge to try Windows 11 for a month running on hardware. Using the same criteria (almost) that Linus and Luke are using to evaluate Linux (only in reverse). "
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Linus sucessfully took down the darlings of the Linux Gaming community in one weekend with Garuda and Pop!_OS. To me, this could all have been avoided had he gone with one of the “main” distros of Linux. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch . To me, this is Linux. Large communities, stable, cutting or bleeding edge, popular distros.
The overall problem with niche distros is just that, They Are Niche! They have the underpinnings of one of the aforementioned distros with tweaks and scripts running to make things a certain way. There are less eye on packages and their effect on the experience and even less people to work out what to do in a pinch.
If I was Linus, I would have modified the rules of the competition:
- Ask someone what distro to go with
- Had a help call to someone just in case
Why do these things? I find his approach, unreasonable even to the most basic of users. Very rarely would anyone venture into a full install on their own without mentioning it to someone they know who might have experience with the software.
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With today’s size and experience of the Linux community this would be a reasonable approach. Years ago I entered the Linux ranks with no outside help – relying only on my experience of a few decades of tech support of both hardware and windows, about a decade of full stack LAMP programming and that based on about a half-dozen years of pearl and HP-UX administration in the mini-environment. And with all of that under my belt, I still blew up about the first 3 installs. At one point I left the whole hot mess set for about a year. I didn’t know about different distros, I didn’t know about different desktop environments, I didn’t know about LTS release cycles, etc…
What made the difference for me was persistence and community. I learned from the kind and generous support of people who simply wanted to help a fellow human being find their way. I can’t understand why Linus would attempt this experiment and deny himself the benefit of the real jewel of the Linux experience – and that is: a community that wants to see him succeed.
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He seems to want to replicate the average user transitioning experience. Maybe he is using the community anonymously. Maybe he is engaged with the community without us knowing it’s him. Or maybe not, we’ll never know.
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Very well stated. Thanks for the comment.
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The first experience with Pop!_OS was at his home before going to bed. Just google Linux distros and dice roll… No community help until the Steam install when the machine blew up. The Garuda one was even worse. As he basically called Garuda Linux “Just a bunch of scripts on Arch” . . . which well… He wasn’t wrong !
You forgot OpenSUSE, I would still have have like him to go with Leap- although his hardware might need Tumbleweed
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Did I ? 
Yep, you did. 
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It is. Currently watching it now. 
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Oh boy… I’ll put it in my queue. I’ll do my best not to forcefully ‘rest’ my head against the table. 
I’d like to share something that really stood out about this so far.
- User has issues
- User expresses frustration
- Community & Developers hear frustration
- Patches and fixes are now in the next update
Maybe this is why I love Linux so much. You don’t get heard, let alone action from other major players in the operating system space.
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Someone posted this on the MeWe page, and I still cannot stop laughing! No idea what it is from, but I can totally identify with the feeling of helplessly watching someone nuke their system. LOL!