I've used Pop for a couple years now and rarely have issues. What specifically are you dealing with?
this post was submitted on 21 May 2025
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well right now, pop os boots into a black screen with a blinking terminal entry underscore, except I can't actually type any inputs. going into recovery mode and running sudo fsck doesn't do anything to fix it, or even return any useful info about what might be wrong.
edit: or at least, I think it isnt. I don't really know how to use the tool
Do you gave an nvidia graphics card? The only problem I’ve had since I installed Pop OS is their shity driver installer crapped out somehow and I gad to recover my system by blacklisting amd graphics driver, uninstall nvidia driver and reinstall. It wad not for the feint of heart.
Yes, and as a matter of fact it is a drivers issue. Trying to update to nvidia 570 results in the display going dark and never coming back. Doing it through the terminal with system76's recommended drivers, it fails to install 570, seems like a file didn't download or unpack correctly or something. Not quite sure how to fix it
Try these steps:
$ sudo apt-get purge nvidia* # remove current installed nvidia software including drivers
$ sudo ubuntu-drivers devices # verify it sees your graphics card
$ sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall # install drivers automatically
$ sudo reboot
This is everything I ended up doing which eventually fixed it for me:
# Update repo
sudo apt update
# Remove amdgpu drivers
sudo apt purge xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu
sudo apt purge libdrm-amdgpu*
sudo apt purge libdrm-amdgpu1
# Blacklist the amdgpu driver since we are using nvidia only
echo "blacklist amdgpu" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
# Remove nvidia driver and install from system76 repo
sudo apt purge *nvidia*
sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:system76-dev/stable
sudo apt install -y system76-driver-nvidia
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo reboot
neither set of instructions seem to work. at this point I'm going to open a help thread on the pop os community
What's your hardware?
found out it's a Nvidia drivers issue. don't know how to fix it though, besides reinstalling an older one.
It might just be easier to backup your home folder and reinstall.
I don't think there's any distro that's perfect on every machine.
I have an ancient desktop I sometimes piddle around with. I'm talking twenty years old at least, and it could be more. Most distros work okay on it, but mint, even older versions of it, don't do as well as plain debian or manjaro. My mom's old box that I also screw around with (heh) is great on ubuntu, and mint, but not on others.
So it isn't just you, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's the distro being bad in general.
fair enough. I didn't like the layout very much, but I stuck with it because I heard it's better for gaming than mint. starting to regret that decision
Yeah, it is usually better at gaming. Same with bazzite. But older machines can be so damn finicky that it's rolling the dice if it isn't something known to work on the same or similar hardware.
Good thing is that it's relatively easy to switch back. A pain that it's necessary, but easy enough
System76 left a really bad taste in my mouth.
I can't speak to Cosmic, but their existing system updater tool/app store was a crash prone pile of garbage that never got fixed for years. That's right, the tool they shipped with was known broken open issue on github for YEARS. I know they were working on a replacement at a glacial pace that's probably out by now, but I gave up waiting.
Then one day I updated and the latest linux kernel just didn't work on my S76 branded laptop. Didn't for MONTHS.
Maybe they've improved since, but I'm never giving them money again or using their software.
I view them as incompetent.
I've used pop is for years now. No major complaints.
same here, in my mind it's the reliable distro
I had issues with Pop!OS as well, and after switching to Kubuntu, performance is much better.
It was likely due to the Gnome extensions I was using but without them, Pop!OS just felt really unfriendly to me. I like to be able to tweak everything, its one of the reasons why I switched to Linux in the first place and Pop!os just feels way too locked down compared to KDE. Like you mentioned, it kinda felt like I was fighting it at times, especially trying to change the file manager. What a fucking headache, never got that to work either.
Aside from that, Pop is a decent distro, and I think cosmic is going to make it a lot better because Gnome is really the biggest sore spot IMO.
To be fair, if being able to tweak everything makes you happy (and I get that), Gnome is probably a horrible choice of DE in the first place.
Very true. I thought Pop!OS would be easier for me to use and get things to work and in some ways it was, steam didn't give me grief like Fedora's KDE spin did.
I left pop a couple of years ago after they delayed further major updates while they worked on Cosmic. It left a bad taste in my mouth, and shortly after that Plasma 6 was released (which of course caused me to not even care about Cosmic).
For my purposes, Bazzite is perfect, but I've heard that CachyOS and PikaOS are decent as well.
I like Pika but it's mostly personal preference in my case, I've got a completely unsupportable and probably counterproductive addiction to apt. I agree with your assessment.
I had a lot of trouble trying to mount a second hdd, so I just jumped ship the the most SteamOS looking distro at the time, Bazzite.
I've not used it personally, but I would say it's the second most commonly recommended behind Mint for a first/easy-to-use distro, at least in what I've read. So I would say it's unlikely that it's just flat out bad. I have dabbled in Mint a little though and enjoyed it, so if that's working for you I would say just stick with it and avoid the headache with Pop unless you're really determined to figure out why it isn't working and fixing it.
It could be both you and your PC.
Depending on your specs, the OS could be poorly configured for your setup.
As for the Distro itself, I've tried it but the default UI didn't work for me. If I remember correctly, it was Gnome based at the time and I kept fighting its opinions on how I should be working.
Solved the problem by nuking the install and installing NixOS with the KDE6 desktop.
They are moving (moved?) to a new DE they're building, Cosmic. I've heard good things, seems like a Gnome-like desktop but maybe without the attitude of Gnome.
If your pc is that old try Linux Mint 22.1 XFCE edition, or Bodhi Linux 7.0 HWE
There are over a hundred distros, There is no reason to keep using one if you don't like it. Use a VM to avoid multiple re-installs and be picky. You've got that luxury. Nobody is going to tell you how best to use your computer, unless you install MacOS or Windows.
Not really asking a question. I would move to another distro, you do not need internet people confirming what you already think/want.
Pop is currently on a rather old branch of Ubuntu that's near its end of life. And their team seems to be years behind on updating it.
It's not a great choice for gaming if you're looking for modern hardware (and driver) support.
It's probably an issue with loading the newer module. You could troubleshoot this each time you update the driver. But I would suggest using a modern distro such as mint since you're familiar with it already.
Alternatively you could look at rolling back to a stable Nvidia driver.