The Linux Challenge 2026 edition was
supposed to be a three-part series.
>> The setup, a taskoff challenge episode
testing day-to-day usability, and a
conclusion.
>> But then the first week was full of so
many unexpected highs and lows. We knew
there had to be another video,
especially after the Linux community
exploded after I picked Pop OS again.
And while Luke and I seem to have
[music] been praised for our choices, I
can tell you guys firsthand that it has
not been a smooth ride for me.
>> Meanwhile, things were going so great
for me, I decided to dip my toes even
further, attempting some more complex
tasks that I didn't expect to [music] go
super well, just to see what would
happen.
>> And I ended up trying some other dros,
which addressed some of my issues with
Pop OS, but uh also ended up being
frustrating in their own ways. But what
is even more frustrating is that they
aren't letting me be the one.
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I feel like I've got to start this by
explaining my brain deadad choice of
Papo. It was amazing how many people got
angry at me for picking the same DRO
that screwed me over last time. But if
you guys remember, I actually used
Mangaro last time after I was assured
that the bug that I encountered when I
was setting up Pop OS was a one-time
fluke. And then I got piled on for being
so quick to abandon it. So this is me
putting aside my past experience after
seeing so many people listicles and chat
bots that still recommend it. That
willingness to try again is a good thing
for Linux. I mean if everybody bailed
after one bad experience, there would be
no distros left to try. Nothing is
perfect. And unfortunately that goes
especially for Pop OS. System 76 has
spent the last couple of years hard at
work on a new desktop environment,
Cosmic, and it's been a challenge.
>> Lionus, Cosmic is basically in beta.
Don't you know that it's not ready yet?
>> No, I didn't. For one thing, where does
it say that? The thing that I downloaded
was called LTS or long-term support.
That's like the opposite of beta. I
would have had to journey to a random
blog post from back in September of 2025
to discover that Cosmic is now in public
beta. Number two, maybe this is a hot
take, but maybe if System 76, a
commercial entity, not a random open
source contributor, knows that it's not
ready for prime time, instead of blaming
me, we should probably blame the company
that shipped it. And you know what?
Yeah, I could have come across some of
the Linux YouTube channels that have
highlighted these issues. But a key
element of the Linux challenge is
highlighting that unless you know to ask
the question, is this DRO's desktop
environment in beta, it can be hard for
new Penguin Curious users to find the
right answers. So, as we keep going,
it's important to think of the Linux
challenge not as an attack on Linux, but
as more of a pen test for how friendly
it is to newbies. My Basite adventure
started a bit better than Lionus at
first. But if you remember in part one,
I mounted my SMB share. I was shocked at
how easy it was to find cuz normally on
Windows I would have to type in the
address bar and find it versus on Basite
I just clicked on network and it found
it right away. But I didn't realize that
that wasn't mounting it. That was just
creating a shortcut. This means my read
and write permissions were all over the
place and I couldn't save some files to
my network drive if I clicked on that
shortcut. To solve this, I had to do
some Googling and I found out that I
needed to modify my FS tab file to point
the network location to the Mnt folder
on my drive. So, I did that. But then I
noticed that I had two, both of which
were still behaving like a shortcut. I
tried at least a dozen different options
in order to mount the share correctly.
None of which ultimately succeeded or
should have even been necessary if you
ask me. Opening context menus on icons,
shortcuts, or applications is a great
tool. And it seems like a big oversight
on the Bazite team to not include a
quick mount option that just works.
Instead, I want to fab myself in the
head.
>> Meanwhile, I was having a grand old time
on Cashy. And since I felt more
comfortable than the other two guys, I
decided to get a little bit daring. I
uninstalled my entire Cinnamon desktop
environment on purpose [music]
to see if I would run into any
challenges. It took about 20 minutes max
before I was up and running with KDE
Plasma. And my only issue was that I had
to clean up some small things [music]
left over from Cinnamon. Uh like a an
additional sound icon that was in the
bottom tray because I had two sound
icons and they could conflict and stuff.
And that was honestly also really easy
to do. So, no big deal. As for my gaming
adventures, my first real challenge in
this Linux challenge was probably my own
fault. I had read some stuff online
saying that I could do it, but I think I
was trying to be a little bit more
optimistic than realistic. I had a
Windows game drive [music]
previously that I just kind of left
alone and tried to use on Linux, which
means that it was formatted in NTFS. Um,
I just added it to my Steam library and
Linux and tried to go. All my games
showed up perfect and everything seemed
fine at first. Some games even ran okay,
but I started to notice some glitches
and even some games that I had freshly
installed on that drive just wouldn't
work. It would just you click play and
it [music] just wouldn't launch
sometimes. It turns out that while Linux
can still use NTFS and there's been some
ongoing development to make it even
smoother, even since we started this
challenge, I can say in my experience,
it was uh kind of rough, especially when
used with Proton. Proton doesn't seem to
like it. So, in my opinion, if you want
to play games off [music] of an NTFS
drive, just don't. At least not right
now. My gaming experiences were mostly
smooth with two major exceptions,
though. One of which I'm actually going
to save for the conclusion cuz it's kind
of a spicy one. So, make sure you get
subscribed for that. But the other was
actually the first game that I tried to
fully play on Linux. Poppy Playtime
Chapter 5. I wanted to stream it, but I
was getting no audio and no picture,
which is not ideal for a stream. Oh no.
Are we not going to be able to play? But
then it suddenly just popped in and
started working fine. I played it for a
little while and then the same thing
happened again. Look, all the friends
are here. Isn't this amazing? Oh, well,
it turns out that the pre-rendered
cutscenes weren't working. Proton, which
is the compatibility layer that allows
non-native Linux titles to work on
Linux, is missing proprietary licenses
for H.264 and H.265 video codecs. What
was the solution? A community fork
called Proton GE, which thankfully was
in the Basite store. That's a pretty
simple fix, but it's also one that
highlights how unrealistic some Linux
evangelists can be about the experience.
No, in many cases, it doesn't just work
out of the box. And users who don't
treat fixing their operating system as a
hobby will be looking for someone to
blame for this hassle. So, is it Linux,
Valve, Mob [music] Entertainment, the
user, maybe all, or hear me out, none?
It's easy to jump on the blame bandwagon
and hate on some developers for not
prioritizing Linux, but ask yourself
this. If 50% of your customers were on
Windows and the other 48% are on Xbox
and PlayStation, would you be stoked on
hiring a fourth group of employees whose
job it is to deal with the other 2%?
Especially knowing that those 2% are not
running one OS, but are probably running
different flavors of OS. I mean, maybe
you would, but it's more important to
remember that just like the users, many
companies don't treat fixing operating
systems like a hobby. Okay, so then we
blame Valve. No, obviously not. It's
super cool that they have put so much
support into Proton, but the fact that
they've paid so much already is not a
good argument that they should just
obviously pay even more for these
commercial video codecs. The point I'm
trying to make here is that enjoying the
Linux experience requires a no blame
mindset. Some stuff's going to work and
some stuff won't. It's not anybody's
fault. Everyone is doing their best. So
with that in mind, throw out what I said
earlier cuz I'm not mad at system 76. In
fact, I left Pop OS on my main desktop
just for the ls and it mostly worked for
most things. With that said, when it
came time to install Linux on my other
systems, I did opt for something
different. Starting with Basite on my
home theater PC. It's just too bad the
Linux curse followed me there as well.
Um, Basite has different versions of
their installer depending on the brand
of your GPU and whether or not you want
the Steam OS full screen experience.
Well, I've got an NVIDIA GPU and yeah, I
want that experience. That's kind of the
point of it on a home the PC. So, I
picked this one. And um, let's put it
this way. The Basite team feels that I
should have known the one that I
selected would result in a completely
unusable experience. But to me, that's
actually not that obvious. Coming from
the Windows Google normie world where a
stable service like Gmail was labeled
beta for 5 years, it's not that
unreasonable to think that you can daily
drive a beta and have a mostly
functioning experience. In Linux, that's
an expectation that needs to be
completely thrown out the window. Here,
beta seems to mean this is broken and if
you're not a developer, you should
probably just download the LTS, which
might also be beta.
Clearly, we've got to reach a middle
ground here. And Basite seems to agree
because they have updated the messaging
on their site. Anyway, that happened
later. So to get my system up and
running, I ended up doing what many
Linux people do and switching to a
Radeon card, which was completely
painless. Why run Bazite when I could
just run Steam OS on the Steam machine
that we built on this channel like a
couple months ago? I can't believe I
forgot about this thing. I've been
meaning to install it. I actually ended
up throwing Steam OS on my home theater
PC. Nice. Okay. Is it a bit of a hack to
just switch out your hardware? Yes, but
also no, because a lot of Linux gamers
would go out of their way to choose
compatible hardware in the first place.
So, I'm pretending I did that. First, I
want to see how well this integrates
with my system here. Let's hit power
toggle for the PC. No way.
Did Valve seriously bake in support for
this old Microsoft IR receiver, which
was child's play to get working, and
it's been kind of awesome from the
couch. Nothing further to report there.
As for my laptop, I decided it was
finally time to practice what I preach
and go for good oldfashioned trustworthy
Ubuntu. Sort of Kubuntu is actually
Ubuntu, but with the KDE desktop
environment, which I find quite
comfortable to navigate, sort of. I
mean, first I have to get to the desktop
and day one was kind of terrible. After
completing setup, it just black screened
and it sat there for hours and I was
like, come on, man. This is ridiculous.
Then [music] I came down in the morning
and it was like Santa had visited
because it was magically sitting at the
login screen and it's been downright
pretty solid ever since with a bit of a
learning curve. For example, I did run
into issues getting some applications to
work due to downloading the wrong
package. Debian packages, snap packages,
and flat packs will all work on Kubuntu.
But I figured, okay, well, Debian makes
the most sense since Kubuntu is based on
Debian. But then after I installed OBS,
I realized I had no option to select the
display that I wanted to screen capture.
The solution, use the flatp pack
installer apparently. Okay, but where?
The top result, as far as I can tell,
doesn't convey that it's a flatp pack.
Oh, right. I need to enable flatp pack
search. Except that wasn't the solution
either because Whand, which Kubuntu
[music] uses as part of its desktop
environment, has a privacy thing built
in that no likey [music] screen capture.
Now, it can be worked around, but
threads like this one are a great
example of how troubleshooting can often
be a guess and check experience because
there are like five different solutions
in here, and I actually can no longer
remember which one worked. Of course,
though, it's important to point out that
every problem that we're having with
Linux can also be a problem with
Windows. But the fact that Microsoft is
also bad doesn't mean that we shouldn't
be honest about issues or like level of
tinkering required with Linux. My
laptop, for example, running Mint and a
very simple use case of basically just
loading a browser hasn't required any
tinkering this whole time and hasn't
really had any problems. my desktop
running Cache OS. I've intentionally
tried to like put myself in harm's way
and ran into [music] some really complex
scenarios that have been fun to diagnose
and work through, but there are things
that are quite simple on Windows and
very easy to do that are more
complicated on Linux, and that's okay.
But trying to hide that fact in order to
recruit more Windows users to join the
community, I think does more harm than
good, especially when they are
unfortunately fairly often met with
hostility from the community when they
then run into these problems and are
unequipped to deal with. I think there
are some obviously extremely bright
lights in the Linux community that bring
a lot of hope and joy and fun to the
whole experience of learning Linux. But
there is a lot of negative
communication on forums, on Reddit,
elsewhere. It's very off-putting for new
Linux community members, which we're
going to be seeing a lot more of soon,
uh to receive that type of energy. The
the biggest thing that didn't work for
me was just software compatibility. But
with some time and effort, I did manage
to find either an alternative way uh to
get the Windows native version working
for my admittedly somewhat basic
software suite. I didn't I use Adobe
Premiere for editing. And one of the
many fun ways that Adobe is kind of ass
is that it just doesn't work on Linux.
Now, I tried messing around with bottles
a bit, which allows you to run Windows
software on Linux, but that was
obviously still a no-go, which then sent
me looking for alternatives. Da Vinci
Resolve has a Linux build, though it's
only officially supported on Rocky Linux
of all things. Still, Rocky Linux is a
lot closer to Basite than Windows is. So
maybe, and yeah, after 2 hours of
trying, I got her up and running, but
not the way I thought. See, I just tried
installing it like a Windows
application. Download and run.
>> But Basite, as I learned, is an
immutable operating system similar to
Steam OS. This means core operating
system files and permissions are locked
down in such a way that the user either
can't screw them up or they can but then
they'll reset themselves after a reboot.
Unfortunately, this same lockdown
applies to some software installers,
which then means that they can't alter
the files that they need to. The
solution was for me to beat my head
against a wall until I found this
6-inute video about a simple command to
run. Hey, software installed. But then I
ran into the same problem as Poppy
Playtime. Depending on the file that I
was trying to play or export, it
wouldn't work. Freaking curse you video
codecs.
So I then tried Kaden Live, which is
fine for basic editing, but if I want to
be a power user, it's just not quite
there yet. And for stills, neither is
You know what? I'm going to be the
one to say it. sucks. With that
said, I still want to emphasize the
gratitude that I feel and you, Elijah, I
know you feel it too, toward the open
source community, whether it's
applications or drivers or Linux in
general. The fact that people are
stepping up against the corporate
overlords who are limiting our choices,
feasting on our wallets, and then spying
on us for good measure is amazing and
[music] it's admirable. However, context
matters. And when we're evaluating the
experience of switching to Linux, we're
doing so from a user perspective. And so
we do have to point out things that
might not be ideal. Just try to
understand that it comes from a place of
love and appreciation, not from a place
of hate. Everybody involved in the Linux
challenge today is rooting for Linux to
succeed. And it's actually been really
exciting to see so many social media
posts of people who have joined the
challenge alongside us, even though we
didn't ask anybody to. But as exciting
as all of that is, part of succeeding in
this is taking off the blinders and
being honest about the areas where
things need to improve. And it's
actually been pretty cool to see that
some of our observations are already
resulting in clearer documentation
that's going to help pave the path for
future users. Now, I know we're
releasing part two like way past the one
month point already, huh? Elijah was
busy fixing our environmental chamber
among other things. But we do still have
more videos lined up for the series. And
as you guys can see, even though we're
past the month, uh there will be some
surprises in the future parts. Part
three is going to have us do some fun
challenges. And then part four is going
to be the conclusion where we sit down
on the couch together and talk about our
final thoughts. Oh, and we'll probably
also talk about our segue to our
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If you guys enjoyed this video, go check
out part one. [music] We talked through
the choices that we made and the
installation process. It's over a month
old at this point, which I know we said
we were only going to do a one-mon
challenge, but maybe that gives you a
little hint [music] as to what our
conclusion might