Is Ubuntu/Linux genuinely usable for someone who doesn't know programming at all?

I am a scientist and beyond occasional basic R code for statistical analysis, I don't really have any advanced computer knowledge or skills.

I am beginning to work with very large datasets which my standard work-issue laptop can't handle, so I am getting a decent PC at my own cost. This will also allow me to avoid issues around admin lockout, software install/uninstall requests, privacy stuff, forced updates, forced logins, unremovable AI functions, all the bloat, etc etc etc.

However I would love to escape Microsoft/Windows altogether. Is it realistic for me to transition to Ubuntu?

I am willing and capable of learning a new system, provided it's not crazy complicated or time consuming.

In case it is relevant - most of the software I use is open source (R, QGIS, CloudCompare). And I will retain the work laptop for admin/company-specific Microsoft/OneDrive/etc purposes so I don't need the PC/Ubuntu system to integrate any of that.

Thanks for any advice.

Edit to add: I understand the difference between programming and simply using an operating system. The reason I relate programming to Linux is because the only people in my life that use it are programmers who heavily customise their system (while frequently running into issues doing this). This entire post is basically me asking if that method is necessary or optional.

It's truly addictive to spend your whole day customizing the interface and discovering new things to do every day 🙂

These are all the GNOME extensions I have installed 😅 1. Ambed Fly: A small animated fly that wanders around the desktop and reacts to the mouse and moving windows. 2. ArcMenu: A customizable alternative application menu for GNOME. 3. Blur my Shell: Adds blur effects to the GNOME interface, panels, and overview. 4. Burn My Windows: Adds animated effects when opening and closing windows. 5. Compiz alike magic lamp effect: Adds the classic magic lamp animation when minimizing windows. 6. Compiz windows effect: Adds additional visual effects and animations to windows. 7. Dash to Dock: Turns the GNOME application dash into a customizable dock. 8. Desktop Icons NG (DING): Displays files, folders, and other icons directly on the desktop. 9. Gnome 4x UI Improvements: Provides various improvements and customization options for the GNOME interface. 10. Stopwatch: A simple stopwatch for measuring elapsed time. 11. User Themes: Allows you to install and use custom GNOME Shell themes. 12. Vitals: Displays system information such as CPU, RAM, temperature, network, and battery status

I just moved to Ubuntu from windows. Which IDE is best. i work through remote connnected servers. and my work is mostly ML,DL,research. I asked multiple AI's all of them suggested VS code

Any recomendations?

Anyone else having this? Both USB and BT I'm getting random disconnects. Could go for 10 minutes or 10 seconds. Two different controllers, one quite a bit older than the other. I guess It's possible both are going bad in the exact same way tho... Sadly I don't really have another device to test at the moment, although the last time I used them they were fine, although that was a while ago.

Figured I'd ask to see if anyone else has seen the issue.

I'm reinstalling Ubuntu server 22.04 on an old system I had it on just a few days ago. It's important to note that the only thing that's different between now and last time is I swapped the 1 TB hard drive in it for an older 500 GB drive I had. Now, no matter what i select during the installation, it always has the same error. BIOS just has the basic label for the drive, and when it tries to load into it for just a second it shows a black screen with a white line at the top before immediately booting me back to BIOS. I can boot it just fine by using Super GRUB2 Disk; it scans for the GRUB entries and boots it directly through there. I believe that the issue is that for whatever reason, GRUB doesn't want to boot; I've tried many things to fix it, but none of them have worked. It looks like all of the files are there when i look inside using a live usb. I made sure that secure boot is still off and that the hard drive is the first option in the boot list. compatibility mode is set to auto, and it doesn't work whether it's on, off or auto. Does anyone know of any potential fix?

edit: I figured it out! I don't know if it's normal, but the ubuntu server installers didn't wanna make an EFI partition. So, I manually partitioned out an extra 1 GB at the start, booted into a live USB, made it fat32, and made sure it mounted to /boot/efi using fstab. Then, using chroot, I installed grub---it only brought me the minimal grub bash screen, but i was able to get in and run grub-install and update-grub under root. It definitely wasn't the most elegant solution, but I got it to work and it boots straight into the server now so I'm not complaining.

Long time Ubuntu user here but I don't follow what happens to other Linux distros outside of Ubuntu since Ubuntu is relevant to me, so this was news to me.

Ubuntu adopted /tmp as tmpfs meaning files in /tmp use system RAM instead of disk space. On the surface, I completely get it...

However, our company had a history of using /tmp more like /var/cache. And under 24.04 and before this has been fine. You reboot the server, the cache gets cleared, no harm no foul. Maybe not exactly following conventions but nothing was necessarily wrong with this.

When testing the upgrade to 26.04, I kept having weird OOM killed processes, scripts were dying in strange spots. Especially around gziped files in /tmp. Well a 10MB tar.gz can blow up to 300+MB pretty easily for a product catalog. Now that 300MB is using system RAM instead of disk space... You see the problem.

Anyway, PSA for anyone else out there that used /tmp like this. I can't be the only one.

Pretty much given up hope, but asking just in case.

I have a HDD in a slot in my laptop (actual laptop is off an SSD and that’s working perfectly.

A few days ago something heavy fell on my laptop about the right place for the HDD.

About a day later I went to open a file (video, on VLC) and it struggled to open it.

A couple days later and it was pretty much all my video files struggled to open or then came back fault and couldn’t open.

I’ve just gone to backup my hard drive and I’m only able to see about half the files that should be there, and opening the files is a fail.

I tried transferring them and it wasn’t working.

I tried taking the HDD out and putting it in a caddy and the same thing happened.

On the off chance the hard drive isn’t buggered, is there a software fix I could try?

Again; not holding out hope here, pretty sure the HDD is done

keep getting this update in App Center but unable to update it, also in terminal I don't see this when listing snaps to update "snap refresh --list"

Hello, I just finished building my Kubuntu desktop, I need to connect an "LB-Link 950AX Mini USB Dongle WiFi 6 AX900 Adapter" to it to connect it to the internet. Please help me. I have a laptop with a wifi that I can start Kubuntu on to download any needed packages.

Edit: it's a kubuntu 26.04

Link: https://youtu.be/46T4cDQBkDs?is=MA55hE_TUgStl1_l

So I've been following this tutorial from Tech by Matt about turning my second computer into a server. I've gotten to the 10 minute mark where I'm supposed to connect to my server via my primary computer's command prompt. The issue is that my IPv4 address is not located in system information. Upon typing the "ip a" command in Ubuntu, I'm given the 127.0.0.1 loopback address.

Admittedly, my laptop doesn't have a ethernet port so I have to use a USB 3 to Ethernet port. Additionally, I did not plug this in during the installation process since I did not have one available at the time.

Lastly, since I'm unable to have my second laptop constantly plugged in to a ethernet port, I'm looking to host my server wirelessly.

I apologize, but I'm inexperienced when it comes to programming and require guidance to get through this predicament.

I'm having issues with HDR videos. When I played hdr movie it was very dull colored in mpv. I tried youtube and found it it's system issue as there was no hdr option on videos with HDR. How do I enable HDR?

So I'm trying to download openfoam, Ive gotten a virtualisation error a lot and I've tried pretty much everything to turn on virtualization, however, the same error code shows up: wsl 2 is unable to start since virtualisation is not enabled on this machine. I've turned it on from pretty much everywhere I could find, system settings, firmware settings, turning off windows security, windows features aswell as trying to get some other versions which too was not possible, someone tell me what I'm doing wrong, or let me know if there's other way, lowkey might crash out. (Utterly inexperienced in this, for reference. Help will be much appreciated)

I just setup my new Workstation with Ubuntu 26.04, and enabled Ubuntu Pro, if there're no hardware issues, I'm set for 10 years baby!!!!

Installed steam and my games run very well.

There are many options nowadays but the polish Ubuntu provides out of the box is only matched by Mac OS in my opinion.

Many people don't recommend Ubuntu no more but I don't understand why, if you don't like snaps just don't use it.

But to anyone coming to Linux, please try Ubuntu, don't listen to anyone else!

EDIT: I asked Claude why this was happening (IDK why I didn't think of this before), and it's actually not an issue with Ubuntu, but several apps. In my case, PHPStorm, PyCharm and VSCode were all ignoring the setting, and I've had to adjust those manually. Seems to be working now.

Just installed 26.04.1 on an ASUS Vivobook from 2021. I have tried to disable the middle click pasting via the trackpad, both via the terminal using gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-enable-primary-paste false and via Gnome Tweaks. Nothing seems to be helping. What else can I do?

Please let me know if you need any other information.

Mint 22.3 Cinnamon

What it says above. Computer is a Dell Optiplex 9020 Ultra Small Form Factor (USFF) with 16gb RAM and an SSD. Country is Mexico.

I installed Ubuntu on a dual boot along windows 10 on a DELL laptop. everything is alright with windows. but when i restart from Ubuntu, it everything goes black, I think it actually shutdowns, but when it starts again it does not load the boot loader or anything else. its just a black screen that doesn't change. The keyboard lights respond when i use it. but the monitor stays off.

This problem does not happen when i use windows for both restart and shutdown. Also, it does not happen on Ubuntu when i shut the system down and turn it on again. it only happen when i restart.

When this happens. i have to hold the power button to force shutdown it and turn it on again.
It happens no matter i use the start menu restart option or use sudo reboot.

Can you guys help me fix this?

Hi everyone,

I need some tech support. :-)

Just set up a dual boot on a Lenovo Thinkpad L13 Yoga, and Ubuntu is so amazing on this hardware. I've tweaked UI a bit and not really installed much yet, but I'm having a maddening problem when I close the lid. The laptop goes to sleep, but absolutely refuses to wake (it's almost like the power button and lid opening don't work any more to wake it). I've googled a bit and tried a few things, but nothing seems to allow me to wake it after closing the lid other than a reset by holding the power button for about 10 seconds (which indicates the power button is indeed working).

Things I've done:

1. Ensured LinuxS3 is selected in bios for sleep state (it was previously set to Linux/Windows and was locking up like this when going to sleep with the lid open, but this seems to have cured the lid-open sleep problem).
2. Installed a lid management extension in Gnome extensions. Tried both Sleep and hibernate, same result.
3. Found this thread: Laptop lid not responding : r/Ubuntu and tried this update to the grub config. Again, same result.

This really seems to be the only problem I'm having, and I'm at my wits end as resetting to wake from sleep every time is maddening. If there's a log I can check please let me know and I'll post the entries I find.

Thanks,

Gary

How can i create a non-admin user account that has no password, just for someone to do basic tasks and not any administrative higher level operations. Just for them to do web browsing and documents.

The GUI wont allow me to make an extra user account without a passcode. What is the best method?

If you have time please look into this post if you can help me resolve the audio issue!

So I’m going through the interview process at Canonical, I did the written interview and the assessment test and got into early-stage interviews.
I haven’t done any yet and will schedule them soon but I wanted some advice on what I should prepare for an operational role.
Also I need to know how long the hiring process takes recently for operational roles as I already left my old job and need to know how long I’ll need to wait to set my financial expectations.
Also wanted to ask about financial compensation aspects: What level do their salaries fall to? I understand they are based on country but do they look at minimum living wages or higher?
Do they provide compensation for laptop, internet, etc…?
Do they do fair promotions or do they always hire new people for roles?
Am I bound to the country I’m in or is it ok to keep working while visiting a different country in the same timezone?

I have seen a lot of negative feedback about the interview process, I understand why it’s done and it definitely pushes out anyone not willing to put the work in but it’s also really long for someone needing a job and surviving on savings.

Any other advice would be really appreciated.

I just downloaded ubuntu 26.04 and the brightness is bugged . The slider changes but the brightness doesn’t changes and is set to max. I have tried every option including brightness CTL then downgrading my kernal to 6.8 (currently 7 .0.30) then then changing default Linux grub to quick splash native then too many other things I searched but nothing worked. My laptop is Hp elitebook 840 g6 , with intel graphics I have also tried to change the backlight brightness manually but it also didn’t worked . if anyone knows the fix, please inform me my eyes are getting fried.

I've installed latest Ubuntu and my favorite password manager KeePassXC. Why it is looking so ugly? Buttons are different. There's ugly border around. Mouse cursor looks different. How to fix this?