PopOS is SPECIAL, and I'm moving to it, here's why!
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#linux #popos #review
00:00 Intro
00:53 Secure your internet connection with Safing
01:47 Installation: smoother, and simpler
04:16 Cosmic: more than just a GNOME reskin
06:19 Apps grid: a better implementation than GNOME's
07:12 Launcher: good, but could be easier
08:39 Workspaces: I prefer them on GNOME
08:59 Gestures: it's not there yet
11:37 Auto-tiling: made me love tiling my windows
13:18 Software: it has EVERYTHING
16:22 PopOS is awesome, and I'm keeping it
17:58 Grab a laptop or desktop with Linux out of the box
18:58 Support the channel
What sets PopOS apart is the desktop experience. What they've done with the desktop is bring most features that GNOME packs into the Activities overview, into their own modules. By default, you have a dock, that can extend to the screen edges or not, you get a big applications launcher that opens as a window, not in full screen, and a dedicated WOrkspaces view, plus a launcher.
That's the good thing: YOU decide. All these tools definitely fill parts of the same function, and so you can pick which ones you want to keep, and which ones you don't.
Same goes with the applications grid: you can open it with the Applications button in the top left, or the dock icon, or set the super key to open it. It opens in a window, so it doesn't block out your whole screen, and it's got a very nice folder implementation: instead of having folders inline with the rest of the apps, each folder you create has its own tab in the bottom, so it's way easier to navigate to one, although you do lose the drag and drop reorganization of apps, or folder creation. You need to click the create folder icon to create one.
You also get a launcher, which is probably the less accomplished tool implemented here .It can also search through files, recent documents, browse the filesystem, run a terminal command, perform calculations, do a web search, or even run an sh command.
Gestures on PopOS are a mixed bag. First, apart from the virtual desktop switching, they're not 1:1 gestures. Second, the gestures can't be configured.
There's also a very handy restore partition being created automatically, and you can update it straight from the settings.
PopOS has a great system wide feature: it lets you switch from a regular window manager, with floating windows, to a tiling window manager that can be operated from the keyboard entirely. It's right there, up top in the panel.
Just press SUper + Y, and all your windows automatically tile themselves in a sensible way. There, you can either the mouse to resize them, stack them on top of another to create tabs, or move them to a different position. Or use the keyboard to do the same, all shortcuts are explained right in the indicator panel.
PopOS uses the PopSHOP, a graphical app based on the elementary OS appCenter, instead of GNOME Software.PopOS adds their own repos with a bunch of applications that aren't in ubuntu's repos, or are available as snap packages on Ubuntu, and they ship with flathub out of the box.
PopOS also generally has more up to date internals, with more recent kernels than Ubuntu, more up to date mesa drivers, they don't limit themselves to just security updates, they do pull in the latest stable versions of a lot of the software stack.
It's also the only distro I used that has a good way of switching between integrated graphics and dedicated GPus on hybrid laptops.
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Try Nobara OS!
Isn't fedora better?
I just installed Pop OS! on my Tuxedo laptop as well. We're so bad. Haha, but yeah the experience is pretty good so far. It's like what Ubuntu should be. I found the .deb packages for all of the Tuxedo controls so I don't have to do their weird Webfai set up with their limited choice of distros. I installed this on your recommendation. Merci beaucoup Nick!
Hey did you know you can add Pop! OS's tiling window manager to any Gnome environment? Just look for the Pop-shell Gnome extension. I'm getting ready to set up a tastefully riced Fedora install, and that's the tiling window manager I've chosen, for precisely the reasons you listed in the video.
@Schmedly lol he's a Greek guy
I switched from Windows to Linux a few weeks ago. I tested many different distros and desktop environment. As soon as I tested pop os I had a good feeling and stayed with it!!
Yeah, there's really something good about it
welcome to the gang!
Welcome
@@udittlamba thanks :)
@@adnanalam6201 thanks :)
The main reason why I decided to move was the amazing hardware support, which means a lot when you have an NVIDIA laptop GPU. PopOS even lets you choose with a single click whether you want the system to only use the NVIDIA GPU, only the integrated GPU or alternate between the two.
So does Linux mint, and many other distros
Heck, you could even make it work under more advanced distros like Arch, Gentoo, Void and Slackware in a matter of minutes. It's just a matter of how ready you are for fiddling with the terminal.
@@DiamonC pop os has better support due to up to date kernels and firmware and mesa drivers Linux mint 20 still rocking kernel 5.4 which doesn't even work on my laptop properly 💀
@@commentarysheep I want that badly for my fedora install. Any guides?
Pop os and Ubuntu wouldn't boot on my old nvidia laptop with rare drivers, other distros couldn't change brightness but worked fine, I was able to fix it on Ubuntu with a long terminal command and even fixed brightness but wasn't worth it
I've been using PopOS at work as a software engineer for over a year, and it has been incredible for that workflow. It has all the IDEs I use in the Pop Shop, and has a workflow design that never gets in my way.
Pop feels like computers back in 1998 but with updated software and hardware. And not running windows. The best of both worlds. So much childhood nostalgia ...
I'm actually strongly considering going back to the distro that started my Linux journey, Linux Mint. After years with rolling releases like Manjaro, Arch, openSUSE..., I just want something stable. I'm really fed up with troubleshooting something every 2 months.
Fedora is the new cool guy distro
I've never heard anyone say anything bad about Mint. It's not for me personally, but even then it's just because I prefer another distro. Mint is pretty much just universally unhated.
I find that Linux Mint is one of the distros that’s easiest to use in practicality (and not as a super-customizing-every-pixel nerd).
Yeah , i m using mint since 2013
I still continue to use Linux Mint as my go to distribution because of this very reason. With every other distribution, i've had to spend time (sometimes a lot of time) chasing down small or big issues/annoyances. With Mint, everything just works out of the box, no problem every time.
I changed from pop os to Fedora 2 months ago. For work, debian is easier but for personal work I prefer Fedora. Gnome 42 is sooo clean, and the gestures are amazing, it's my all time favorite update in linux in general
Dou you use Fedora 36? If you use, do you use cuda? I'm having a lot of trouble getting it to work there.
@Fashinqu A. I've tried that, but it does not work. The packages are installed just fine, but all the cuda tools do not work. My main problem is with nvenc. It worked fine on ubuntu, but I can't use it on fedora.
I can't even use my gpu with vaapi, only the intel gpu.
BTW gnome and fedora core team are in the same mother company RedHat =)) Good luck when you found your best wrok flow!
@@talkysassis You probably need to do some manual configuring. Fedora kind of assumes you know what you're doing so you should do it yourself. Personally I disagree with that philosophy but it wasn't my decision.
I really like Pop but I wish they'd let you pick between having the separate modules and packing everything in one place like GNOME does, as for me personally having them separate feels pretty odd. With GNOME everything is just a Windows/Super key away.
Would be cool, yeah!
Dude, that's just default GNOME ;-)
@@maxarendorff6521 that's default gnome+the pop-shell extension. It's a really good upgrade, because the default gnome workflow is just a tiling wm without tiling. Luckily the extension is available also on other distros.
you can do something like this. If you are in the workspaces overview you can just click the applications button, simply activate the "show applications" entry in the dock or just press super+a then you have your activities on the left (or right) side of the screen and the application overview in the middle (just tested it on a virtual machine with gnome boxes). On the one hand, gnomes way to do this is way more convenient on the other hand is it gnomes philosophy to have apps that do one thing but this one thing really well.
@@MrMarcetLP So one nice thing with the current way Cosmic is implemented is that it's split into multiple extensions, and you can just kinda pick what you want. I really like the vanilla Gnome workflow especially all of the v40 improvements, but do like the optional Pop tiling on my work machine sometimes. I just disable all of the extensions except the "Pop Shell" and I'm happily on my way. :) I really appreciate that they implemented the pieces separately.
As a developer who spends most of time coding I love Pop for the keyboard commands out of the box, something I really never knew I needed until i started using them, now I can do so much before i ever need to touch my mouse and its something that you really see the value of when you do alot of typing. And yes I know other distros allow you to set these up but i believe PopOS' are really well thought out and easy to learn, not to mention they come preset
I know it's kind of a ridiculous reason but I tried this because of the color scheme initially. It felt like they had actually thought about how to create a relaxing environment to work in.
That's not ridiculous.
I tried it cz I liked the battery icon you are not ridiculous
Yeah it does look great.
Moved from Pop_OS to Mint Cinnamon 2 months ago. Pop was my start in Linux, I like it and think it is a solid distro, but I cannot ignore the glaring issues it has. The main issues that made me switch to Mint were: the slow and clunky Pop Shop; slow download and installation speeds for updates; broken upgrades; 22.04 LTS ISO won't boot on my system no matter what. Been using Mint since then and I like because it just works. I don't care about appearance, too old for that.
2 days ago I moved from pop os to fedora kde. I wanted easier and more customization and wanted to get away from Debian based distros. It was also my first os
Same circumstances to me. Except I switched to Fedora instead.
They fixed the Pop Shop issues you mention.
@Nimit Jain I guess it was for everyone :) This is one of the biggest improvements in the latest update.
"I don't care about appearance, too old for that. ..." Tsk tsk. your desktop and whole experience when it comes to appearance is of the utmost importance! Same as skins in many computer games. appearance and skins is life! This coming from someone that probably is old enough to be your father so pls do not bring age into this :o))))))) Also, age is only a number ... :)
I love the COSMIC environment. So much that I installed it on my fedora system so I could enjoy it on my desktop.
I always really want to like pop os, but every time I've tried it, it gives me some weird issues. I'm hopeful they continue to work on it and it becomes even more compelling with time, I think it has a ton of potential.
Yep, I have been using it as my main OS for almost a year now and I have gnarly issues that are almost impossible to reproduce/fix. It's a bit unstable, but I like it too much to switch permanently.
same here.
That its also problem for me, sometimes chrome installed in 1 sec, sometimes in 50 min
Use Ubuntu more coverage big company
That's just Linux in general.
Ive been daily driving Pop!_OS for a year. Love it. And I LOVE the trackpad gestures. I get so much done with the multi desktops
After I bought a s76 laptop, I already planned to replace Pop!_OS with my heavily customised KDE Plasma but now I respect how s76 have worked hard with Cosmic and what they'll be doing next, and look forward to their steering in their own direction.
Thing i love on Pop OS is window stacking. You can stack windows with super + s and then drag and drop with super key to create a stack of windows, which can be navigated as cards in internet browsers. It really helps me organize my working flow. I like having all communicators on one monitor and rest of stuff on second
I'd say the biggest plus is system76-power. Just a few clicks to switch to Nvidia graphics. No need to install optimus or similar apps, you can just switch out-of-the-box. (It was very confusing to install optimus on Manjaro when I hopped.) Though, I had to do it through the command line since I use a desktop PC and not a laptop.
Nice pfp ;)
wait if you are on a desktop PC, wouldn't it just use nvidia gpu by default since that's where you will connect your display output?
@@siontheodorus1501 Good question. Right now, I do have my display plugged in directly on the card. But, when I had just bought it, I had it on my motherboard because my CPU has integrated graphics, and that's what I was using before.
12:30 there are number of reasons: 1) same reason why people install Arch. Creating your own desktop environment around a wm teaches you a LOT of what happens under the hood of your system, and really makes you appreciate the desktops you use 2) better tiling. Pop-shell does a phenomenal job within the constraints of Mutter, but it is really held back by its limitations. If you only want tiling, then pop-shell or material-shell (and these are the best desktop options) really can't hold the candle for bspwm, awesome, sway or xmonad. 3) you get exactly what you want and nothing else 4) performance. Many distros gnome desktops starts at 1.5Gb ram usage. Mine starts at about 450Mb. My bspwm desktop starts at 100Mb and boots to desktop in under 3 seconds. And you can feel it in general usage too, it just feels more snappy, regardless of your specs. With modern hardware it's not a big issue, but a good wm can make even an old and crappy net book fly. 5) some people just prefer the aesthetic 6) bragging rights 7) it's a good way to learn coding Okay, I admit. All of these boil down to "same reason that people install Arch linux".
I used to run Xmonad under Arch on a 512MB RAM Pentium 3 system, it worked pretty well
Very interesting review! Would be interesting to see a very good fusion between fedora and cosmic desktop environment!! I would like to see a video that point out that with software one can have different installation issues/options and even versions when installing via command line, flatpak, compiling it or even using appimages, and each every method has it's own issues/advantages at the user experience
great video Nick ! I also installed PopOS 1,5 yr ago on a sister model of Tuxedo, the Schenker Vision 14 with high DPI screen resolution 2880 x 1800 dpi . The only thing annoying at the initial install was to search and learn the grub parameters necessary to remove the screen flickering due to the high res frequency. Once I went over that hurdle everything went extremely smooth. I even took advantage of the system refresh option, once I steered myself into an unstable system. Everything was fine again after that. So I really recommend to combine the best of the 2 Linux manufacturer's worlds: PopOS + Tuxedo/Schenker Laptops. Great Experience!
I use PopOS as my daily driver on my main laptop in a corporate environment - so, meetings, reports, spreadsheets, design work, data parsing and analysis etc - It’s rock solid, reliable (mostly! Occasional hiccups with the Pop Shop) and I like the theming and the overall the workflow really suits me. I also use Steam with Nvidia for the occasional Gamez! I have a second laptop running Manjaro, but that’s my ‘fun’ machine and don’t care if it go boom. Great vid 👍
Pro tip: open "extensions" and disable "Cosmic Workspaces" to get Gnome 42 horizontal workspaces and gestures back. Boom, now you have everything you love about Pop OS and still get what you prefer with vanilla Gnome! This is also the exact setup that I prefer.
Oh and, I've got the latest updates and the launcher now says "Type to search for apps, or type ? for more options", so either you missed it or they already fixed your suggestion in just two weeks of you releasing the video!!
Oh nice!!
There are so many good distros that it is hard to not just keep hopping. With that said the Gnome 40+ workflow has been working so well for me in Fedora that I think I’ll stick with it for the time being. But if System76 ends up making their own ultrabook laptop I may jump ship from Apple to them depending on how much it is
Thank you for making a great review, each distro has its own pros and cons, with your videos we can combine the most useful for our experiments and try to contribute to the community.
I'm using Pop Us. I just got Pop Os upated to Kernel 6.5.7. I like Pop Os because it'shas a modern feel. Pop has new Kernel support. Linux Mint feels outdated and has small icons sometimes unreadable. Pop Os has an easier installer to understand. Mint is running on old Kernel and might break if you install the new Kernel. Pop Os also has a recover option if you need to reinstall the Os which is cool to have. I got KDE installed on my Pop Os exerience so that I can change the Login Screen Background.
I am using pop os on my old laptop last 2 years. PopOS perfect distro for laptops with NVIDIA, supports hybrid graphics mode, and works fine just from a box.
Very informative review. You're right, all distros are evolving and becoming much more user friendly and Ubuntu are no longer the only ones in town. My only wish with Pop would be a Kde plasma edition, but i understand they may not have enough resources. I hope they survive and prosper.
Why don't you just install KDE and use it?
@@hypolyxa7207 I know it's an option but for distros which don't have a specific flavor it can sometimes be a buggy experience. However when i was making this comment i meant in the context of the features mentioned in this video for Pop to have their own take on the kde desktop entirely, like they did with Gnome. Like a custom theme perhaps, support for autotiling like they do with gnome, their custom launcher. It is my understanding that all of this would be missing if you just installed kde on Pop os. But i guess now that they're working on their own DE they won't be interested.
Loved that you talked about all the distros I've tried when I started going again into Linux. It's like you're reading my mind. This was the last one and I liked it, even more than the "beautiful" Deepin (which is good-looking, but I feel it's charged, kinda heavy), but I feel is another one that, as of now, it's still pretty much Ubuntu. I would love to see them moving from Gnome to see what can they get done differently. For me, it isn't enough to leave Ubuntu 22.04, but it was very good. The idea about having folders on what in Windows is the Start menu (which we had, until Windows 11... Yeah, I still hate that particular change from 10 to 11) is so much better than I expected, but even on Ubuntu you can use the gestures to move side to side (or the wheel in the keyboard or mouse, that would be amazing on Pop). It shouldn't be too hard to add though, and that's the best part about Linux: Borrowing features from other desktops or, if you fancy, adding the projects you like for fixing these things.
Very comprehensive. Love your detailed analysis of the different operating systems which is very insightful compared to the others. For the safe recovery partition, I would have appreciated if you had done a deep dive instead of glossing over it. Sounds very useful and important but no screenshots or explanation from you how it works!
I really like pop_os's system restore feature, saved my system and files once, but I had too many issues with extensions misbehaving and the pop_shop freezing up often. I ended up changing over to fedora Gnome edition and haven't looked back. If it wasn't for these issues I would probably still be on pop_os, it is without a doubt a nice distro.
PopOS is going places. No doubt about that. They just keep on improving what they've built. PopOS is my go to distro on my laptop. I don't care about touch pad gestures, but while I'm one of those people who keep a mouse with him on the go, I can see the development team over at System76 eventually improving that feature. It may be something already on their road map after they no longer need the gnome base for their DE.
For auto-tile, I can use gTile on Mint Cinnamon.
Nice review. I used pop briefly but heard about Fedora plus the kde desktop so I switched to Fedora + kde. Didn't know pop had a more frequent update cycle. Also like that idea of restore partition
Pop has been my daily driver for over 2 years now and I have no regrets. I occasionally get curious about other distros and install them on secondary drives/devices, but none of them support the things I want to do as well. I consider myself an intermediate/advanced Linux user, and while I do install ULauncher to use instead of the Pop Launcher (mainly due to the customizability options) I appreciate all of the little things System76 do to make this a really user-centric experience. Thanks for the video NIck!
I use tiling window manager because i want to build my own "desktop environment" and choose every app and tool my self and window managers are very lightweight, customizable and minimal.
This is my first Linux Distro, I have been using it for about a month now. I came from using Mac OSX since OSX has existed. I love it. I feel like for a Linux noob it is great (as I still am a Linux noob). I appreciate learning the shortcomings, thank you! works great on my 2011 iMac.
coming across your channel today couldn't have come at a better time, I have been seriously wanting to get away from Windows and your content is helping me decide on that shift.
I've been using Pop!_OS as my daily driver since December last year. It's been great, even with Nvidia. I've had no issues with most games, Epic games launcher has been kind of a pain, but I have not done anything yet to try and fix any issues I have. Steam works like a charm and for gaming it's really a no brainer when it comes to choosing a distro based on "gaming friendly" status. I love Pop!_OS and I'm going out of my way to recommend it to everyone looking to get away from the hell scape that is Microsoft WIndows. Thank you for covering this Nick, I love your videos
just switched over from windows myself due to a friend who showed me the glory of Linux, and I've gotta say that I can't ever see myself going back to that clunky, bloated mess.
Real improvement for users. They just need to add some extensions live audio input / output selector in the top menu. But YES, this is the new Ubuntu, It lets beginners come nicely. I didn't check if they are updating MESA and printer drivers, but everything else is really good ! Oh, and one last thing : I looooooooooooove flatpak !!!! 😍💘❣❣ 😈
One of the few times I actually looked up the sponsor and gave the product a try. Port Master is dope and I then got SPN and its not bad at all. The SPN could use some tuning for performance but over all great. Left a comment on their channel letting them know I tried their stuff because of you, its the little things that help
I settled on Zorin, because other distros, including PopOS didn't fully support / recognize the hardware and had troubles with the proprietary software I need for work. I chose to skip the tinkering and find something that would work from the get-go. Distro-hopping can be useful 😀
I use Pop Os on my Laptop, and I'm enjoying it. I heard people say that running Linux on a Laptop would result in short battery life because of bad power management. However that doesnt seem to be the case with Pop Os. I also still have Windows installed on the Laptop (dual boot) and use it from time to time. From my experience the battery life seems about equal. Same with heat and noise when I'm plugged in. With Pop Os the Laptop actually runs quieter then with windows. Thats mostly because annoying background tasks like Windows Update Modules installer or Anti Virus arent running. Maybe it helps that the maker of PopOS, System76, sells Laptops and therefore designs the distro to be used on Laptops more than others do. I do miss the Windows touchpad gestures though. The very limited gestures is what I dislike most about PopOS.
TBH I would even say linux has better power management just because you can run less stuff by using a WM or something along those lines. And windows sleep doesn't work properly.
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS gets like a 25% of the battery life (6 hours vs like 24 hours) of Windows on my old Thinkpad t450s with a huge 6 cell battery. Very annoying, not sure how to make it better. It's my one linux complaint, everything else has been fine.
@@MKULTRA_Victim_ Do you have an nvidia gpu? You may need to proprietary driver to do dynamic power management.
I use pop os and it’s pretty amazing. I wish I could do a little more customization, but other than that it’s great
Yeah, it's really, really good!
Hi Pop_OS! Nice to meet you?
KZhead bots got too far, now even operating systems can talk
For more customization, check out KDE :))
@@Get-Rekt I daily Pop_OS and I've been hesitant to change desktop environments because I've had issues that took forever to troubleshoot. Urgh. Hope it's not super involved
One thing I like about Ubuntu and it’s derivatives is their hardware support. I spent weeks trying to get keyboard and trackpad support for my laptop on Arch/Manjaro/Fedora, but on Pop it was functional out of the box. I dislike other aspects of Ubuntu (mostly the non-vanilla packages) but I respect their attitude of being the distro for everyone.
I chose pop os as my very first distro around two months ago and ive been very satisfied with it. I have the dock disabled and I have auto tiling enabled literally all the time.
PopOS is my second favorite distro after fedora. I will definitely keep an eye on it and may retry after it transitions to rust. The current system is very frustrating when trying to create a specific look via gnome look. A lot of times the custom themes don't allow me to keep dark theme.
Gnome with theming and extensions is getting more hard to get it work with. 8 out 10 times I had problems with this distro is usually due to Gnome freaking out on custom settings and everything breaks, usually after a update. Usually the older the theme the more gnome is unstable with. Usually I have to toggle system light/dark mode to get certain themes to work. I don't expect customization being a priority in the upcoming RUST DE. that's in development, but I'm hoping it grows into something that's less troublesome as gnome was.
@@ghostlyhousehorrors I hope we at least have basic customization options. I illogically hate the + or - for the minimize/maximize on popOS.
You can see how developers pay attention to stuff like upgrading options, I really appreciate that. In the other hand you got ElementaryOS, where they advertise themselves as the best option for Windows and macOS users, but you have to reinstall the whole OS again if you want to upgrade your system. Well done eOS 😃👍
Elementary is dead
@@WildVoltorb why exactly? It stays on the top for instance in DistroWatch
@@WildVoltorb why exactly? It stays on the top for instance in DistroWatch
@@JoaquinCorradi distrowatch doesn't help with development...
That's how fixed-release distros work, as opposed with rolling-release distros.
PopOS is underated, Pros: Titling window manager, Flapak packages and one more thing i don't remember Cons : No wifi driver installed, small community. and Somebody buy him a T Shirt :)
Very informative and extremely well presented. Thank you!
Loved Pop because of the tiling windows which they hopefully can upstream to gnome, I think it's better than any other OS. But I ultimately left it because of how their update system would regularly cripple my computer. I highly recommend to ONLY use the pop os store to update...if you use their system plus apt you quickly create a nest of dependency issues. Once a month I would forget and update nvidia drivers the wrong way, waste a morning getting my GPU back online. See also the infamous Linux tech tips video of ruining their DE from the CLI.
Yeah the issue with Papa S is a lot of their stuff is baked in to the pop shop and that causes significant issues when trying to do stuff with terminal like install certain drivers that have other dependencies that rely on the pop shop I really want to love it and I used it for a bit but might just switch to mint because they still have a good store and easy to use
I use Pop!_Os and think it's the better, user friendlier desktop experience in linux. Yes, it has some things it could do better, but that is also the case with every other distro. I find Pop_Os AND Fedora to be the best linux options out there. I stayed with Pop Os because I'm more familiar with debian/ubuntu based distros.
Linux Mint is also really good
Just switched to lmde 5 from Xubuntu 20 and so far I'm liking it very much. No ui lags or stutters, installed free version of Intel va acceleration, microcode etc out of the box and earlier i used to install those manually since Ubuntu 12.x
12:29 "Why would you want a tiling window manager that only does tiling, when you can have the best of both worlds?" I've been asking people that question for 20 years now, ever since I switched to a hybrid floating/tiling window manager in 2004. Glad to see a more mainstream option is finally available.
Pop_OS really is a nice distro, while it's not my daily driver (I use arch) I think it's a beautiful distro, I need to get a new laptop soon and am looking at the Framework laptop. If I get the framework laptop then pop will be my laptop OS!
You forgot btw
@@carlosflores4179 lmao
@@carlosflores4179 LOL, I was literally about to put the same thing.
Pop_OS desperately needs to have differentiated colors for *active* and *inactive windows*. That aspect is so dysfunctional in term of pacing in my workflow it makes me return to Ubuntu or fedora
But hey, it does!
Pop_OS highlights your active window if you turn on the "Show Active Hint" toggle. I don't usually use it (I usually can see which tab is highlighted without it), but it's a handy feature to have.
@@Garet43 Yeah, I know about that, and I would use it every now and then. But then again, not always would I want the yellow highlight around windows. This is a simple case of not properly implemented theming. Which is a shame, because *_-- excluding active/inactive window theming --_* I literally love everything about Pop_OS.
@@gorofujita5767 There's a setting right beneath the active hint toggle for choosing a color for the active hint
Been using Ubuntu since 2005 and I recently switched to Pop-OS on 3 of my 4 devices, including desktop. No Distro is perfect but System76 is doing a lot of things right. Oddly enough, the feature which cemented my decision was the customization features of the dock where where you can minimize its size - the result is an almost 3d view in concert with my chosen background, and a very professional look. The number of positive reviews indicate that I am not alone.
Subscribed, @The Linux Experiment, I normally hate paid promotions in YT, normally selling how great a mobile game is they probably never played or a VPN they never used. Your paid promotions are truly a passion you have, your first segway was an open source software with the second about a laptop you already said you used. Your integrity is something to be admired and I think more youtubers should follow your footsteps of only including paid promotions they are generally interested in or have a real passion for. Also great video :D
PopOS was my first distro, and made me switch to Linux because it was such a great experience! Though I'm now using arch btw, I keep up with System76 news and I'm looking forward to seeing Cosmic desktop. It's one of the few distros I'd easily recommend to new Linux converts.
Until today, didn't realize the Pop Os has become the new Ubuntu. Everyone is talking POPos, every laptop manufacturer (HP, Dell etc) using it and its really good ! It's like a new baby which was genetically modified to remove all the bad parts of daddy Ubuntu while adding new feature of its own. It would do a whole lot better if it was promoted as linux to a newbie user
Thanks for including the window tiler update, I think I’m convinced to give it a whirl. 😉
Love that stormtrooper canvas!! Also you've convinced me to download PopOS and give it a try!
Pop_OS looks good but I think standard GNOME or Ubuntu Unity or Elementary OS looks better especially when it comes to the system icons and the standard UX and UI. Would be nice to see a move to Mir or Wayland display servers but I don't really care since I still use X11 and KDE Neon
Exactly! PopOS feels and looks too cartoony and too modular, it completely breaks the super integrated feeling of gnome. It looks cartoonish, and feels clunky. While its a great starter distro, I'm kinda scared to recommend it to people since I've already had comments on how "childish" the UI looks. Yea you can costumize it but that's not something a casual users will do. Even the name Pop_OS! doesn't feel professional at all, which is sad, makes linux look like this "childish non premium OS that no one uses". Oh well... guess my recommendation for new Linux users will stay Ubuntu. Mint is also too "old feeling".
System76 is has been working on their own window manager for a while now. So pop os might be better in that regard in the future
@@azenyr You coul try telling people about Zorin OS.
@@azenyr The main problem I have with Pop_OS is the colours, the iconography and the entire window design which completely puts me off while with Zorin OS, it looks to me like a really ugly paint colour whether it's in light or dark mode and this is from someone who liked the UI/UX of Windows 10 Mobile in Light theme. I think the Mint UI is still pretty good, a bit dated looking now with all it's menubars but then so is macOS. Personally, I think the best UI/UX would be a combination of GTK4 and BeOS 4 / Haiku OS so the colours and icons of GTK4 with hamburger menus instead of global menus plus the window management of Be OS...
@@azenyr Enjoy Snap.
You can add pop shell on Fedora running gnome though Nick. It's in the repos and S76 as a wiki page on how to just sudo dnf install it. . It even adds the super key launcher like what Pop uses too. The only difference is that under Wayland, you can't hide the titlebars in Pop shell (this works on x11 though).
There are two killer features that are in Pop!_OS that you left out. It's not just you, but also every reviewer 1. Resizable, relocatable and remembered application positions on the desktop. It is accessed by pressing Super + Enter. The arrow keys move the app around. Pressing shift and the arrow keys resize the application window. Reopening the application will place it at the same size and location it was last placed on the desktop. 2. Battery management. Pop!_OS has the best out of the box battery management I have ever seen implemented in a linux distribution. I simply select which battery usage profile I would like and it just works without any additional need for configuration. This is a godsend for laptop users
I was using bspwm as my window manager for the longest time because I absolutely love tiling window managers, but I ended up just going back to gnome and using the pop shell for window tiling only, and I must say I much prefer that experience over a tiling wm
Cosmic is after KDE Plasma really good. I don't like Vanilla Gnome, so I am happy to see that PopOS uses/makes their own DE that they will make completely independend
Yeah, I like the GNOME based Cosmic and the new one will be even better
I chose PopOS. I needed a new OS install and as Microsoft now wanted me to pay extra to have normal features of previous Windows versions, I've just moved to Linux from Windows about a month ago. I was initially concerned about picking a distro that uses the Gnome DE, but despite not being a Windows analogue I haven't had any trouble getting used to it. In fact, I find it much easier to use Gnome than the rare occasions when I've had to use MacOS. This is probably due in no small part to the Cosmic improvements. Gaming was a big reason for choosing Pop over the alternatives, but I also need a distro that handles productivity tasks and I figured I couldn't go wrong with an OS that is being shipped with hardware. I think you are unfair to the launcher in this video; the question mark for help is clearly explained in the searchbox when you hit Super and I like not having to worry that I might get a terminal when I want to launch a GUI app. While researching, one of the big features I liked the look of was the launcher, and it hasn't disappointed. On my Win10 laptop I cut down the start menu years ago from its ridiculous size out-of-the-box. However, I only really use the start menu to search for an application's name -- Win Key + + Enter has been my standard way of launching programs since Win7. I'm sure there are other launchers out there, but Pop's implementation was talked about and that caught my eye when looking for a distro -- Super + + Enter is lovely and familiar. The fact I can do more now compared to Windows, kind of like a combination of Start Menu search/Run/CMD.exe, just makes it much better. I tried to live with the auto-tiling, but I had to abandon it after a week or so. It's easily the buggiest part of Pop and/or I happen to use a bunch of programs (e.g. Steam) that refuse to play nice with the auto-tiler. I prefer the control of floating windows anyway, which I'm sure is a surprise to nobody given I'm a Windows user. I miss being able to name workspaces (or "desktops" as they are known on Windows) and I wish System 76 would have incorporated more of Gnome Tweaks into the default settings app (idk if that's planned). Things like cursor and more in-depth theme changes would be nice. I can remember waaaay back in the day, Windows allowed users to tweak the appearance of all kinds of things but that got slowly buried further and further. Eventually, it mostly all vanished (save for a few things like cursors) and it's a bit sad PopOS shares this philosophy. Otherwise, these are the only disappointments I've had so far. It became just another PC depressingly fast -- I did expect it to be an exciting challenge and journey yet instead it just works(tm).
in KDE I use Krohnkite for tiling and it works flawlessly, turning KDE into a tiling WM, and can float a window when needed. There's a successor to Krohnkite called "bismuth" as well. I've also installed Pop!_OS's tiling window feature into Debian-Gnome and it works as you'd expect.
The only problem with that distro is when you migrate from another. Installation can be a little bit complicated. But after installation you will never ever want to return to your previous distros. I love it! Beautiful, no glitches, very stable and very well optimised!
seriously considering moving from opensuse tumbleweed to pop_os! the only thing blocking me is my love for rolling release distros
Funny. I left it for openSUSE TW two weeks ago
@@methamphetamememcmeth3422 same openSuse is just the right distro. Yast seemed to be a advance tool but turned out to be the best thing for me
What is wrong with OpenSUSE that it made you think of switching to Pop!_OS?
Also one of the most important things is the fractional scaling event from Nvidia every app looks pixel perfect. Never rubbed into an app that looked small or weird in my 4 and 1080p screens
Excellent guide as soon I get my upgrade this Holiday season I will be flipping over to Pop OS gonna be upgrading to a i5 12600k and a 6800 xt. :)
I still run the distro I began with: Mageia. In the beginning days, I bought a small introductory book with Mandrake and Red Hat on a CD. KDE was at Release 2, if I remember. I stayed with Mandrake when it became Mandriva, then when the Mandriva team started Mageia, choosing to follow Gael Duval's concept, I went with them. I have tried other distros, but always come back to Mageia. Every user has different needs, and different preferences. I tried PopOS, and could see no reason to change. Hardware support would be more important to this presenter. Mandrake/Mageia has always had good support for video drivers.
I loved it too, until it displayed the system upgrade dialog. Assuming that it would “just work” I started the upgrade. After rebooting the video driver was shot and the desktop was no longer usable. Because is barely started using it, I went back to Ubuntu. Never been happier. Thanks for an excellent review though!
What a coincidence, I also just switched to Pop os after using fedora for a few days because it's hard to work with wayland and an nvidia gpu. Infact, Fedora is a great distro with gnome. btw I really love the tiling system in pop os.
I bought a HP Dev One and am enjoying the Pop!_OS experience. Thank you for your recommendations.
Pop!_OS puts in a lot of behind the scenes work, and it shows. It removes a lot of the "bloat" of distros like Ubuntu while adding things like their desktop focused cpu scheduler. I also love their USB flashing software. I hope they add SD card flashing to the mix in the future!
I really love what system76 is doing but they really need to work on there software center. also for me fedora is more better, faster and snappier for me.. though pop os comes up with presinstalled with nvidia can really be a deal breaker for newbies..
I believe you can install Pop Shell on Fedora straight from the repo, which gives you the tiling option. For KDE there's a Kwin script Kronkhite, which honestly seems way more functional, but it is as stable as Gnome shell extension, and works only on X11. Anyway, Pop OS came onto my radar recently, because I was looking for some reliable DE with decent tiling extension that won't break after an update, which was the case with Kronkhite. Not sure if it's still broken on latest Plasma. And a distro / DE maintained by literal hardware manufacturer seems like a good choice for stability and dependability (in contrary to gnome extensions and kwin scripts)
My complete Linux journey: Debian introduced me to Linux in 2013 ElementaryOS made me switch to Linux full time in 2017 PopOS made me fall in love with Tiling in 2020 Fedora made me build my own system with XMonad in 2022
I'd love to see a Linux mint review. For me, it's way more user friendly and intuitive than pop os
Right also mint is light os than pop
It's happening once 21 drops:)
Mint is definitely easier to pick up, but I'd say Pop_OS is better for user productivity. The tiling system and workspace management system are far better, imho.
@@Garet43 I can definately see pop OS being better for some people, but there's these little things like how you can't easily pin an app on your desktop that make me recommend mint to friends instead, especially friends that haven't used computers before
The launcher should have chips above the search box and for web search it should be a “web” chip, that uses the default, and when it is used it could display all of the web search options. This would cover discovery and could be disabled for users that already know the keywords. I agree that giving new users some knowledge of each feature so they could understand how it is equivalent to what they already know about other OSs.
Been using it since january. It's been working ok, longest use one distro installation for me so far.
the latest tuxedo generation are awesome, i have an old one, where the food sometimes get loose and the screen is slightly wobbly, but over all already great machines ... the new one are even better :-)
Even though I am not a fan of Ubuntu/Debian-based distros anymore as much as I was, I *really* do hope they will release the entire DE for other distros to be picked up, I like it a lot
I have persevered with Ubuntu for 15 years, but gradually disenfranchised by the ever-changing interface, and more recently with having to fix hardware issues. It was the NVIDIA driver support that sent me to pop_OS, and I'm pretty happy with the results. I found the desktop extremely intuitive, it supported my state of the art NVIDIA hardware out of the box, and the initial install was the fastest and easiest of any of the Ubuntu flavours, with built in disk encryption and recovery partition. I also have a soft spot for the nostalgic sci fi vibe.
i'll never forget pop os, after i saw that one video of anthony from ltt it looked so cool and got me into linux more
A few months back, I was messing around distro hopping on an old laptop (2012 HP i7). Had been running MX-Linux for while, so decided to try POP! The installer booted to a 320x240 screen resolution, which was completely unusable as most of the controls were off screen. I spent several hours ddging the issue, trying to poke around in the boot media and finally just gave up. Ended up with Mint, but probably will change it in a couple months, because why not?
I've been using it for a couple of months now. And it's amazing.
Pop was my first distro and I enjoyed it. I eventually used to Manjaro. I still use Pop on my Media Center pc and it works awesomely. Also I'm using it to teach my family Linux before I switch them from Windows ( they don't want to buy new hardware just to run Win11).
I have installed Pop OS recently. I am impressed with it's simple and snappy performance. Coming from centos 8, it is an upgrade. workspaces is a bit odd though.
This is helpful. Thanks.
That tiling/floating window feature is something I've wanted for years. I might actually switch from Linux Mint Cinnamon just for that feature.
i usually just use the launcher for opening apps, or as a calculator, today i learned about running commands and searching the web.
Really love the launcher when we press super button, actually I'm really love fedora, but because of the launcher still using pop os until now
very beautiful Distro 💕 nice and sleek
Also software engineer, been using it over a year. Converted my hp omen to full popOS. Spilled coffee on it like a noob. Managed to power on and install cpu monitoring software in like one command. Pop just works, coding is more enjoyable, and it doesn’t shove updates down my throat. Oh and gaming, wine and proton make Linux as a daily driver manageable. I love it
Manjaro KDE is just working so well on my laptop, I don't feel like switching... haha Used POP about a year ago, great distro. Might have to give it a try again on something...
This is my main distro. It works really well with my i7-9750h/rtx2070 max-q laptop, up until a few weeks ago where Nvidia 515 came out, and forgot how to use my GPU... rolling back graphics drivers wouldn't help. Had to recover my OS to fix and stay on 510 for now
Pop Shell for Tiling is available in the Fedora repos as well and works nicely with vanilla gnome.