asking seriously. because i installed kubuntu after setting up luks2 encryption in installer and it all seemed fine. until i booted into ubuntu and saw grub menu asking for commands . i asked chatgpt it gave complex fixes and stuff. so im now installing windows 11 again and deleted kubuntu.
now im not blaming linux. but this is a genuine question. is linux hard?
i had bitlocker encryption working perfectly on windows 11 no boot issues.
Encryption is complex stuff; if you had a problem, it was with that. It sounds to me like you’re very ready to use Kubuntu, but maybe need some mentoring for encryption, if that is important to you. Very easy to mess that up if the complex fixes are too much at the moment. Note: at the moment. You learn as you go.
Edit: I don’t use ChatGPT, but I have found the google AI that shows up on search, tends to be pretty good at this sort of Linux system problem. Still might overwhelm you with acronyms and such.
You were just unlucky. This doesn’t usually happen.
As for the broader question: it depends on what you want to do. If you’re looking to do simple office stuff and web browsing, Linux is pretty much exactly like Windows and Mac OS (except you can’t really use the desktop version of Microsoft Office).
Some things are easier – e.g. you can get most apps from Flathub or the included software manager, and the system will take care of keeping them up to date using the same update manager as the OS. Most customization is also easier on Linux, since more of it is built in.
Some things are harder – e.g. regardless of how obscure the app, it will usually install the same way in Windows: you download an installer and run it.
On Linux this can get very complicated with smaller and more obscure apps – to the point where you might have to e.g. set up a container with a specific distro, install older versions of dependencies in that container, modify a makefile, compile from source, and then edit some configuration files manually – all to do what you might accomplish by just running an installer in Windows.
…but that’s unusual. It is an argument for testing out Linux somehow before committing fully to it (e.g. by dualbooting or running it in a VM) – just to see if you can get your vital software (or good alternatives) running.
It’s your beginning; you knew nothing.
You were judging the difficulty of using the system by just the boot screen, it seems.
You probably had difficulty following the documentation.
The problem you’ve encountered is an easy one to fix.
Even if you are fond of AI, try providing it with more context next time. It could give you a fix.
Try reduce your AI usage. It’s not good for you.
Read more. Follow the instructions. Documentation is supposed to be helpful.
Linux is not hard to use. Windows is a much bigger pain in the ass.
Don’t ask chatgpt about anything, that is always a bad idea.
Give Fedora a try, I would avoid Ubuntu and the derivatives.
Asking AI in my experience is not always bad but you have to know at least a little about the subject for it to be helpful. If you just tell it “this doesn’t work, fix it” and leave out important information then it comes up with strange solutions.
I have helped so many people, windows, Mac, and Linux that have spent hours with AI to get nowhere. It’s like it goes on a tangent, then becomes sycophantic and just loses the plot.
I agree that you need to know the subject matter first.
I remeber one person with a sound card issue. Hours of chatgpt. He asked me and I took 30 seconds to say it’s a bios setting.
I tried ChatGPT a bit with a charging issue, it was registering 0.0V on the battery. Just going round in circles with the diagnoses, and didn’t make any changes whatsoever. People online say wait for the regression to be fixed.
Five days later it’s charging again. Got to work with general opinion instead of an llm.
That’s not usually what happens, you should get an installer that’s a gui, and it should give you a gui, something went wrong with your installation.
Without more details I can’t say what happened for sure though
Yeah, although just trying the installation another time might be easier than debugging this problem…
That’s not usually what happens
But the front fell off!
i mean if you need caht gpt for fix anything… i dnt know kubuntu . i use mint regularly no issue on a thinkpad. i have used the comand lines only for get my minecraft and gmod server running. now i double click a script.
Your install was probably fine. But odds are you chose a (somewhat) manual installation and installed Grub (the bootloader) to the wrong device. If you’re up for a retry: go the fully-automatic route with the installer. You can try it in a VM first. Just set up VirtualBox on your Windows machine and install Kubuntu to a virtual disk. That way, you can figure out what may have gone wrong. And if shit hits the fan again: you still have a functional operating system, reset the VM and go again.
“i asked chatgpt” microslop is for you
Disagree, asked chatgpt and fixed many issues. A lot of the time the documentation is too long and esoteric
As a sysadmin with years of experience I can tell you now chatgpt is almost never right, giving outdated or subtley wrong advice and commands that are fine as a shortcut if you already know the commands and can correct or ignore the mistakes, but exceptionally dangerous if you are just learning the ropes. The documentation is long for a reason, there are often lots of corner cases or exceptions to be aware of.
At work I usually feed Copilot the relevant documentation, f.e. a 700 page pdf with the commands for a L3 Network Switch and then ask it to help me find the relevant commands and tell me which pages to read. It digests those 700 pages a lot faster than me and usually point me to the correct commands.
As a hobbyist, I’d say that LLMs are usually good at the basics. Once you get into unusual and very specific situations (or the context gets too big), they can get weird, but they’re often surprisingly good sparring partners in those cases as well.
Then again, what I might consider unusual, might not be so unusual to an expert.
chatgpt apparently knows big words.
Linux Mint is your answrr. Any flavor should work
It’s different, which sometimes translates to harder.
It doesn’t work the same as Windows which means that some of your hard earned knowledge of Windows is wasted and some is actually coming back to bite you as you approach a task the wrong way.
I use Fedora 45 KDE as an example of how Linux might have hidden steps that isn’t mentioned straight away:An example of how easy it can seem to setup Fedora 45:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/beginners-guide/install_fedora/Things that guide conveniently forgets to mention - rpmfusion, ffmpeg and nvidia:
https://rpmfusion.org/EnablingRpmFusionDuringFedoraInstall
https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia
https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIAUse the Discover store to make it easy to find and install software if you prefer gui over terminals:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/kde/appinstallation/To ensure that an app installation works well in Linux you should always try to use the official repositories, flatpaks, docker or appimages.
Downloading an installation file (.deb/.rpm) from the developers github is not the normal way to install software, when you use a repository (or alternate methods like flatpaks, docker and appimages) you save yourself a lot of headaches when it comes to updating your software and lowers the risk of “dependency hell” where different software want different versions of the same libraries.To get Multimedia and Nvidia gpus to work properly you want to use rpmfusion to install the drivers.
Never install the drivers directly from Nvidia, it will only come back to haunt you with weird errors, bugs and problems and is a common trap for former Windows users.The guides aren’t difficult, but the main guide forgets to mention the extra steps needed that most users want to do.
Must be as easy as windows, but in windows the easy way to fix a big problem is install again, un linux you can reinstall or… Fix with commands. Probably in your case you need to write commands because something go wrong with the installation, maybe you did something wrong, or maybe Ubuntu read something in a bad way and make a mistake installing Ubuntu. Is impossible to know if you don’t share the exact error message.
Kubuntu gives me some 2000s vibes when I did try it too, off the disks they were sending me for free. (Thanks for that, Canonical.)
Save yourself some time and just use Fedora instead. I’m seriously surprised someone still tries Kubuntu in 2026, and that it’s still alive.
I’m on Kubuntu, it’s fine
It’s tough at the start when you know nothing.
Linux is a spectrum, from super hard to very easy. Sounds like you hit a not-easy one.
If you want an easy time, stick with the major distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, etc), and avoid any complex setups. Use that for a while to get familiarity, and then build up from there.
I disagree, I got more edge cases with Ubuntu and Fedora than an immutable distro. It’s always when trying to update stuff it inevitably breaks. An immutable distro just works, it can rebuild the world when updating and you never get into trouble
You underestimate the network effects of a distro being popular, more people means more likely hood of your specific issue having been mentions online somewhere and a solution being available.
I have no experience with immutable distros, but aren’t they pretty config file heavy? Are they that nice to operate as a brand new user?
I use Fedora Silverblue and it’s pretty beginner friendly. It’s hard to break and you just install and uninstall apps with the Software app. I don’t think you need to worry about a single config file.
That does sound beginner friendly. I’ll have a play with that sometime.
I personally use one that’s config file heavy and I like it because I have two devices so I can change something on both without issue
I get that, and its a pretty strong selling point, but I dont think that makes them beginner friendly.
Ubuntu and Fedora than an immutable distro
Bazzite is Fedora and immutable
That’s why it’s not just called Fedora
Depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Installing a Linux distribution and using it for everyday tasks (including full-disk-encryption) should be fairly easy. It’s basically just pressing “Continue” a bunch of times for me. And after a while I get a desktop with a browser, an email client etc and I’m set.
If you want advice: Maybe go for one of the more popular distribuitions as of today. (K)Ubuntu is okay-ish but I don’t think it’s all that great. Or maybe ask someone to help you find the issue. Computers are known to be fairly complicated in general and there’s always some annoying issues.
