Im on a Dell G5 15 laptop with a 1660ti. I set my built in monitor to 125%, and that looks fine, but for some reason my second monitor seems to be zoomed in a bunch, even though that is still at 100% I kinda need my laptop screen zoomed in since its so small, any advice? Pop!_OS LTS, dont remember version, but says “most recent”
yes i do. and everything breaks it. even without fractional scaling
Is there any reason for you to use the LTS version of Pop?
I mean, recommending someone to jump from one to another distro because one thing doesn’t work is bad advice, but if you don’t have any compelling reasons to use the very
outdatedstale version, I’d recommend switching to either the normal non-LTS version, or to another distro all together.If you decide for the latter, maybe consider Bazzite (for gaming) or uBlue. They both have a Nvidia -variant with the drivers already baked in.
Those drivers are known to break or be unreliable, so you always have the certainty that everything will work on this immutable system.
They both are very modern, offering the newest desktop versions, and should provide you a great monitor setup due to the new display protocol.
im using lts as its the only version available. im using pop because its the distro that gave me the least issues
With “gave me the fewest issues” you probably mean stuff like screen tearing, flickering, etc.?
That’s because Pop ships with Nvidia drivers, which many other distros, like Ubuntu, often don’t do due to licensing.
As I said, it is pretty old and didn’t receive any bigger updates in the last 2 years.
The devs of Pop are currently very busy creating the new DE and don’t have much time left for their current distro.
Maybe check out something that’s more maintained. If you just installed it freshly, switching shouldn’t be a big issue. You can recreate everything Pop has on Fedora (uBlue
silverblue-nvidia) or other Gnome based distros too and get the newest stuff, which will hugely increase the chances of everything working good with your setup.What specific things do you like on Pop the most? Only the “just works”?
yeah the biggest issue has been screen tearing. might switch. how much will I lose if I have a separate boot, root, and home partition?
all I have are some programs I stalled, nothing crazy
I don’t think you will loose anything.
You can reinstall another distro onto the current configuration, and it will use that.
But I personally would recommend just doing a clean install in the way the distro recommends it, or you might run into some problems.
You have to backup first anyway.
If you remake a new partition for a new install you shouldn’t lose anything if the partitioning goes correctly.
so like keep the pop parts, and then make more for other distros? id like to keep pop while experimenting with others
Imagine you have a 500Gb SSD.
If you allocate 100GB to Windows, 200GB to Pop and 200 GB to Fedora (or another distro) you will still be able to boot on pop and retain those documents while having an entirely different OS (fedora) from which you can boot with its own files and config which won’t impact your Pop.
If you’re more tech savvy you can even create a share partition on which you can store files that are easily transferrable between these 3 OS.
Until Windows makes an update and breaks every one of those two others. No.
Windows is very territorial and often breaks the bootloader. The best way would be to install one distro at one drive, but if that’s impossible right now, dual booting should be alright. Just be aware of the warning.
yeah i was thinking to make just a new boot and root part for fedora, and somehow tell it to use pop’s home as its own
also, could you give me a rundown of the differences between fedora, ublue, silverblue, and bazzite? i see theyre all based on fedora, but some must do somethings better
Original replier here 😁
They are all very similar.
I recommend Fedora Atomic because, especially uBlue, “just works”. If something should ever break, you can easily roll back. And the small tweaks provided by uBlue provide you a very sane system out of the box.
It’s way easier to learn imo than traditional systems. Yes, you might have to learn how to use distrobox, but that’s one single tool. Learning how to troubleshoot a whole OS is way harder, and you don’t have to worry about managing your OS.
What I wouldn’t recommend is Nobara. It’s a one-man-project and very very insecure. Either go with the official Fedora, or go with uBlue.
so idk why but apparently silverblue and bazzite are very difficult to dual boot. I feel like I’ve tried everything the internet has to offer. so, do you have any other distros you recommend? unless the last thing I’m about to try just nukes windows, then I’ll go for a full bazzite install lol. wouldn’t be all that upset lol
I’m not the original replier. I’m not sure these differences since I’m using another distro. This is my best take : take it with a grain of salt.
Silverblue is container based : each program is independent for security and stability. They are containes as flatpaks.
Ublue and bazzite are docker based, meaning they are immutable, meaning they should work as expected and are very stable.
Fedora is the base distro. It’s like Pop!_OS
So, I don’t reccomend jumping to an immutable distro if you are a beginner. Nobara is a gaming distro more in line with what I wouod reccomend
Read my reply from above. I personally would definitely recommend an image based distro.
They only seem complicated for advanced Linux users because they’re different, but for noobs, they’re similar to Android. Getting your system managed automatically and not having to care about anything is great!
Also, for Nvidia users, there’s always the chance of the install breaking, and then they have to troubleshoot.
On Fedora Atomic for example, your now bricked OS is just one image rollback (takes 10 seconds btw) away from working again like nothing happened.
They also provide a great ootb experience, especially the uBlue images, where small tweaks were applied and Nvidia drivers are already baked in.
Another recommendation might be Vanilla OS. It will soon receive a huge update and be completely different. But that will take a few months until released.
Nobara? No way! It’s very insecure.
If you want a “proper” gaming distro, check out Bazzite.
It’s very similar to Nobara, but managed automatically due to the uBlue base, and way more secure and reliable.