

the other night a friend of mine wanted to switch to Linux and was dead set on using Pop!_OS after reading about COSMIC and seeing some images of it on unixporn. He even asked an LLM about the best distros for his rig and what he liked to do and the answer was Pop!_OS. So he asked me to help him install it. I suggested other distros but no, dead set on using pop.
Live boot USB and the entire time during the install it’s complaining about not being able to connect to the internet while being connected to the internet. After the install, it locks up immediately on logging into the OS. try again, ok not locking up now. start doing some apt installs/updates - it crashes. Finally get it to a stable state and try installing steam and a game to test out the nvidia stuff that the LLM claimed Pop was fantastic for. Game crashes. system locks up again.
I eventually say “dude, I got cachyos on this usb too…wanna try that instead?” fine, install CachyOS (which gives you the option to install COSMIC during the install) everything just works. no more crashes, everything is smooth, his games work flawlessly. COSMIC crashes. just the DE. switch him to KDE and that was that. no more issues.
I’m honestly a bit worried about System76. They put all their focus on COSMIC and it feels like with each alpha release it progressively gets worse. I mean during the early Alphas I was seriously considering daily driving it but with each alpha release it just “felt off” and a bit slower/worse with more features added (and there aren’t many). the OS has noticeably gotten worse because it hasn’t been worked on. Even the distrowatch reviews for it have gotten worse.
But hey if you want GNOME with a tiling toggle then have at it. It’s just weird that its taken them this long for something that doesn’t have much to it and it’s not very good.
can’t speak for OP but for me, surprisingly, youtube shorts. Once that damn thing gets your algo figured out for you suddenly you can start finding bands that are in your wheelhouse. Start by looking for shorts on your current favourite bands and eventually new stuff will start popping up that should be similar to your taste.
Honestly for all the crap that’s on youtube, shorts has been one of if not the best tool for me to find new music/bands. Once I find something I like then it’s off to SoulSeek/Nicotine+ to add it to my server.