New to linux, installed Ubuntu but have issues every restart.

2026-03-14 17:47 UTC

As above switched to Linux and i am enjoying it i picked Ubuntu as TBH it was the first I came across. The last two times it has prompted me to update has caused a drama. First would only give me a black screen of text so I did a reinstall. The latest one went fine it updated to 6.17.0-94 but i lost all networking no wifi By the looks of it the problem I have is i have an older device that has nvidia 580 graphics card. I have rolled back for now but questions are; Is there a way to pre-emt this, as i feel now as soon as i restart it will jump back up and leave me without networking to resolve. its quite a faff trying to find out what to do on my mobile and typing it in the terminal. Is it better to fix or try another distro?

Replies (3)

@spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works 2026-03-14 20:49

I’ve been using Linux for years, but on my hardware I’ve never been able to get Ubuntu to work reliably. I now only use it when booting from a USB for backups, but even on relatively recent Dell laptop with Intel graphics the GUI crashes constantly. IMO it isn’t worth the trouble. After trying dozens of distros I went back to Mint because it just works.

Open ##653439
@WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world 2026-03-14 23:34

On old hardware I use Debian. You can use whatever DE you prefer, I prefer x, but you have a graphics card so maybe you want gnome or kde. Ventoy liveusb with a few different distros can help you pick something that you like and let’s you fully and quickly rage quit a distro if you come to realize that debugging legacy hardware/software compatibility issues is it’s own hobby that is separate from not wanting to be tracked at the OS level or wearing sexy socks or whatever reason you have for using Linux.

Open ##654343
@Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2026-03-15 05:22

Your PC is too old for Ubuntus recent releases. Use a older distro like Debian.

Open ##655367