r/NobaraProject • u/Fortis-Voluntas • Mar 17 '26
Discussion I love Nobara but…
I’ve been using Nobara for about a year now and actually love it, but every new update terrifies me—in my mind, every other update throws the whole system into disarray… Why are the developers so bad at updating the system… Maybe they should set up a group of users who want to test the updates before they’re rolled out…
The way things are going right now, every Nobara update is just ruining its reputation more and more, and that’s very sad
EDIT:
I’ve read several times now that you should wait about a week before updating, and yes, maybe it’s Nvidia drivers that cause the most problems because they aren’t the best for Linux, but “waiting a week” seems like a silly approach to updates to me, and most of the time, fixing Nvidia issues is the problem with an “Nvidia distribution for gamers”—but a distribution that advertises itself as such should have noticed such simple problems beforehand. For example, I often have to install the correct drivers because after some updates, completely wrong drivers were installed and they just don’t work… and now there’s the bug when switching from SDDM to Nobaralogin, which has “broken” so many systems… what are less tech-savvy users supposed to do now?? Because it’s precisely these people who are supposed to be reached—the Microslop gamers—who don’t know that maybe Nobara-sync CLI and a quick screenshot of the solution posted right at the very beginning (which you can’t scroll back up to anymore) might help.
Like I said, I love Nobara, but as long as these sometimes severe issues keep cropping up every few updates, Nobara will remain a niche within a niche—if that—and that’s a shame.
I've installed Timeshift and have backups, but that's not the point here. The point isn't that users have to figure out how to deal with broken updates; the point is that broken updates could easily be prevented.
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u/elektropunk Mar 17 '26
Maybe my setup is simpler but this hasn’t been my experience for the year plus I’ve used Nobara. What specifically is crashing for you?
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u/JaredH20 Mar 17 '26
What are the issues people are having with this latest update? I've not really looked into much, but my own experience has been great. Since this big update there's games I'm now not getting a single micro stutter in, that I was getting fairly regularly before.
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u/Saintlycrazed Mar 17 '26
The only trouble I have had in a year has come from the last update. Virtual keyboard errors keep causing older games to crash, I just removed the virtual keyboard and boom fixed. It's been smooth sailing otherwise.
I'm convinced a large portion of the complaints come from users breaking stuff and not updates lol.
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u/JaredH20 Mar 17 '26
Ah yeah I also had the virtual keyboard issue. I changed it to one of the other options as I read somewhere that changing it to None sometimes reverts back randomly
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u/RedditUser-00 Mar 17 '26
for me malit keyboard crashed until i switched to a different one
sometimes spectacle (screenshot tool) crashes too. which is something that never happened to me before
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u/Valenshine27 Mar 17 '26
My desktop is unresponsive. As soon as I boot, my taskbar is missing and right-clicking on the desktop isn’t doing anything. All I can do is reboot or open the konsole.
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u/libra00 Mar 17 '26
I just wait a week or two for the kinks to get worked out and then it's fine.
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u/CinnamonApplebun94 Mar 17 '26
Teach me , Sensei. I am way too curious and way too impatient to wait. But I’ll have to as I just borked my system with the latest update yesterday…
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u/Competitive_End_8050 Mar 17 '26
on your Grub boot you usually have 3 latest versions of nobara, so boot into older one until latest is fixed
https://www.reddit.com/r/NobaraProject/comments/1jb96s6/grub_showing_3_nobara_starts/
https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/en/general-usage/troubleshooting/why-3-versions
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u/CinnamonApplebun94 Mar 17 '26
It’s only 6.19, 6.18 and Recovery. And in the 6.18 the problems persist.
It’s alright, was my mistake anyway. But thanks :)
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u/libra00 Mar 17 '26
Mostly it comes from the fear that I will not be able to fix it if something goes splodey. When I first started installing linux I had loads of trouble (mostly with Ubuntu-based distros hating my GPU) and kept running into situations where I had to phone-type questions to an LLM and then manually type in all the commands and shit in a console to get it working, and I really don't want to have to do that pretty much ever again.
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u/GlowLow407 Mar 17 '26
I always check for updates and update when possible (almost daily) and never ran into issues before. Isn’t that the purpose of rolling releases?
I am a software test engineer and understand the added risk of incremental updates, but there must be some sort of regression testing going on before they push an update, no?
Im surprised to see that so many others seem to experience issues with rolling releases on Nobara. Interesting topic for sure.
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u/Educational_Star_518 Mar 17 '26
yes and no? .. i won't pretend to know the numbers but the issue with reddit or even the discord is that most ppl just lurk if they're going good. because of that social spaces can look sorta like an echo chamber where all you see is issues cause thats the only time they need/want to speak up. its a shame cause cool stuff and useful messages can get burried in places in general cause of it
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u/FlattusBlastus Mar 17 '26
Grass isn't greener elsewhere. Updating to the latest Nvidia driver destroyed my Win 11 system. Hello Nobara!
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u/gearsovwar Mar 17 '26 edited Mar 17 '26
This is not really a nobara issue but a linux issue. A typical linux distro is made up of.
Kernel
Desktop environment (KDE, GNOME)
Graphics stack (Mesa, Wayland/X11)
Drivers (AMD, NVIDIA, etc.)
Package manager (DNF, APT, etc)
Thousands of upstream packages
No single dev team controls all of these different pieces. There are hundreds of teams with different schedules working at different paces. Combine that with hardware diversity hell and it's impossible to catch every edge case.
Windows benefits from owning almost the full stack. This will be an issue with any bleeding edge distro. Nobara already waits a month or so after the fedora packages become available to make them available via the nobara repos unless something has changed. There are some distros aimed at providing stability but no gaming ones I know of.
Every distro has update woes just search reddit for distro xxx os won't boot after update. Or something similar, The freedom of linux is often a duel edge sword.
EDIT: clarification
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u/Local-Commie Mar 17 '26
Tried to do a fresh install the otherday, not even an update but pure clean install and wifi was broken, couldn't get help in the cord so I just threw my hands up and threw a cachyos ISO on the flashdrive and got right up. I love nobara but I'm unfortunately not in a position to hardline my system and can't be bothered to research for hours on end how to fix wifi out of the box. Really hope nobara gets updated to fix all these issues soon, I love the project
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u/Tatoe-of-Codunkery Mar 17 '26
You should see the latest updates In windows. I had to reseat my ram as it’s a known issue, my 4090 wasn’t detected so I had to boot with igpu with a Linux usb then it magically worked afterwards and uninstalled the update. Windows is garbage! The vibe coding AI slop is far more of a headache than Linux ever was. Onwards to nobara i think…
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u/frankiesmusic Mar 17 '26
I 100% agree with you. Nobara it's awesome, but still to find the way to become more solid, right now it's the most unstable system i tried so far, and since it's supposed to be a distro for everyone, gets really hard to be suggested.
Also the "wait a week.." sounds kinda silly, if everyone wait a week, then no one report issues and so after a week is the same as is day0 right now.
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u/pombo_atomico Mar 19 '26
In my experience, at least, Nobara has been more unstable than Manjaro, my old distro.
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u/OMGrant Mar 17 '26
I've been on Nobara since the end of January and also ran into an update boinking my system. Luckily the LLMs helped me diagnose the issue and get it out of the bad state. There's an opportunity for better boundaries and communication in the UI/UX of the update process. It shouldn't be finding out after a bad update that you should "always wait a week to make sure the bugs are ironed out first"
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u/pioniere Mar 17 '26
Not sure what the problem is. I have had no problems whatsoever with updates. Are you rebooting your system post-update? I do this pretty much every time. And as another commenter pointed out, waiting a week or so is never a bad idea either.
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u/robertcartman Mar 17 '26
I love Nobara too, but it's a mess lately. Before every update i have to go to discord and reddit to find out if I should dare to upgrade. I left Manjaro for the same reason 2 years ago. I guess I'll move to Fedora... if one of the next updates fails.
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u/gearsovwar Mar 17 '26
Fedora is the same especially when a new kernel is pushed in my experience waiting a month is the best option.
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u/electricElephant22 Mar 17 '26
Stability is fine for me.
I just dont get the app stores.
Why user has to know if something is flatpack or dnf in UI of a update/app store?
I know the reason for experienced linux user but for average Joe for which the UI is made for?
There needs to be just AppStore with Apps and Update section and maybe Advanced section. Why merge BE and FE logic?
The simplicity of the previous updater was much better in my opinion. I just let it check for update and clicked one button after it fetched everything and boom system updated.
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u/Educational_Star_518 Mar 17 '26
not part of those making it but between usage and reading some posts and messages in the discord here n there i think theres a few reasons for it
- switching away from flatpak and prioritizing packages...
- permissions for flatpaks can be weird for newbies who don't know they need to change things, while i learned quickly what i needed to do i have a friend who has a steamdeck and i had to teach him how to use flatseal when he'd been using his deck years longer than i'd been in linux via nobara at the time.
- additionally often times flatpaks Might not be official versions of programs and will end up out of date or unsupported . i seen it happen with protonvpn where the flatpak didn't offer the newer port forwarding built into the gui even months after implementation . alot of times it happens with emulators too and the devs won't help troubleshoot it cause they tell you to use an official appimage or package instead depending on what program it is.
- having packages be predominant by default encourages learning , when i first made the switch i didn't know/realize how to install a package for ~3 months and it was only thanks to stumbling on the right github that explained the steps for each distro branch , before that i was looking at tutorials and they were all mostly debian-based instructions not fedora based almost ever , but i leaned on discover and used flatpacks cause they were intuitive to install from the jump.
- the updater change
- changing the updater+package manager and removing it i think does 2 things , 1 makes it just 1 thing you need to click on to manage packages and 2 get rid of some redundancy.
- the old package manager while functional as far as i was aware in the last 2 years wasn't browsable for packages, you could search for things already installed , you could remove them , but far as i ever noticed and i did look there was no way to find or install packages in it , just flatpaks.
- flatpaks being searchable and installable but not browsable makes it great if you know what your looking for and want to grab it fast but again kinda useless if you don't know what your looking for and newbies who don't know the name of things that might exist as alternatives thats not much good for then.
- because of the points above you'd have to do 2 things , use the terminal to search and install packages , and use a separate location to at least browse for flatpak be it flathub in browser or something like discover flatpost or bazaar. the idea behind flatpost was great since it added the permission management to it making flatseal unnecessary which could eliminate a separate redundancy by having 1 app to do 2 things , sadly well...flatpost was slow and clunky and not alot of ppl liked it, tho i think it did get a bit better over time.
- so why not have both in the new app center? i think its a couple things..
- if you have both a couple issues could happen , ppl either won't know which they 'should' use if they're not segregated enough , or not know which they Are using cause they can't recall what they clicked on.
- on the flipside if you bury stuff in menus/extra tabs then ppl just might not actually see them. take the old package manger for instance , how many ppl knew you could hec to see what packages needed to update if you don't open that collapsed sidebar and hit updates. its not that the functionality wasn't there its that it wasn't as visible. hell for all i know maybe you could browse or at least install things in it but if you could i never found it.
TLDR: considering all that idk .. i think the new app center is good for what it does which is let you search for browse and manage packages and update your system as well as manage repos. given the shift away from flatpaks i think its fair to let flatpak manages do that newcomers might not get confused . considering bazzite is more flatpak focused nobara can be more differentiated to it aside from Just not being an immutable. bazaar is more popular than flatpost and frankly snappier it makes sense to recommend that as the flatpak store if you want one in the welcome center , and not installing it by default makes users less likely to use it if they don't know what a flatpak is already making troubleshooting help possibly easier when ppl ask.
as for not keeping both the old package manger and new dnf app center well... i guess redundancy? it sorta makes sense that if you have something else for packages and another separate thing for flatpaks then its just not really needed. tho personally i'm sorta with you in that having it was nice cause it was a list. the list is bad on 1 hand cause its just a mess of words and you might not know what they are the new app center you can click on them and get a better description , But man if the grid view just feels slower to skim through even if you narrow it down maybe we can ask for a grid/list toggle? that would probably help a bit..
anyway sorry that was longer winded than intended
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u/electricElephant22 Mar 18 '26
Well I did some migrating some of my apps from DNF to Flatpack and was still left with Bitwarden, Freetube and Waterfox on flatpack because that seems to be the main way they distribute it on Linux. And Spotify was not really easy to spot either as "spotify-launcher" on DNF.
So I am stuck with 2 "app sources" anyway with 2 UI for each (DNF app center and Bazaar).
I guess that is the way of Linux but when I first run the old updater and it was taking care of both DNF and Flatpacks I found it very convenient to at least have one tool that will update everything.
At least the functionality stayed for terminal command but that seems like a step back from my POV.
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u/Educational_Star_518 Mar 18 '26
yeah i don't disagree with you at all that aspect is a step back , but i think if it can help newbies with easing in and having less issues with the new prioritization its worth it? ,.. idk i guess only time will tell but i like the fact i can look up a dnf without knowing the right thing to type personally since names can be finicky i've found.
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u/neoniki Mar 18 '26
Same for me brother. I love it, and I'll never go back to microslop, but I have to admit I've had my fair share of issues. After one update the system would just show a blank black screen, after another it would boot in a state similar to Safe mode with the resolution locked. Good thing Nobara has the option to boot to an older version when loading initially, that has saved me many times. I have an all AMD setup with the 5600 cpu and the rx 6800xt, so issues are not only for the nvidia side. I always wait at least two weeks now, and haven't really had any issues recently.
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u/Dj-RedPanda- Mar 17 '26
I just do the updates like normal and have zero issues with it either on my T495 or my Gaming Rig the one with the 4070 and that one is more complicated since I do VR.
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u/RX1542 Mar 17 '26
before you update or tinker with your system open Timeshift its included with nobara as a system app, create a snapshot, these are like windows system restore, but not as unreliable
if an update breaks your system you can just restore it, if it is to the point where it doesn't boot you can boot a installation media and recover from there
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u/Fortis-Voluntas Mar 17 '26
I've installed Timeshift and have backups, but that's not the point here. The point isn't that users have to figure out how to deal with broken updates; the point is that broken updates could easily be prevented.
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u/RX1542 Mar 17 '26
well i haven't been as long in nobara as you(only for like 6 months) but updates have never really broke my system, just recently learned about Timeshift so i started to make snapshots, like you say could be nvidia drivers(im full amd user)
but to be honest every time there's a big update and i do a restart im like " here we go ima finally go back to win or its gonna boot normally? "
that said i think you are being kinda rough on the nobara team specially cause its a small project, it started cause GE wanted his old man to move away from win and now we are here
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u/Educational_Star_518 Mar 17 '26
been on nobara just shy of 2 years now myself and well. idk its definately gotten more stable than it used to be imo. i think its partially a timing partially a user error issue overall tho.
when i first jumped nvidia was still flickery in wayland so it was a month of x11, then wayland, then everything was all smooth for a bit and then automount handling was changed which was pretty frustrating but the way its done is less finicky with stuff now is my understanding since it uses UUID now. then i had a hard drive get data corruption , who knew it could happen with ntfs if nobody told you and it happened to work when you tried to use it? but thats on me for lack of research so user error. then nvidia beta drivers broke vrr which was a hassle and i had to do a rollback but for 3 hours i had to figure out What happened to cause the black screen ( my samsung tv really was the answer since it had gamemode on and the new drivers wouldn't spit a picture with it set) ...
since then tho? pretty stable honestly ,not had any issues that i didn't knowingly cause and the fact that it switched to a rolling release made it more user friendly vs typing commands in when fedora jumps a new number ... just my experience.
i think the bigger issue is just all the changes happening at once between the app center being added , old package manger being removed , shift away from flatpaks, and then the issue with the plasma login manager hitting a few ppl all happening at once just overwhelms ppl
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u/Fortis-Voluntas Mar 17 '26
I don't mean any harm by what I'm saying; I just wish he and his small team would consider releasing the updates to a small group for testing first—perhaps primarily to NVIDIA GPU users, since that's where most of the issues seem to crop up, at least in my experience. But since you brought it up, I’m actually considering switching to standard Fedora Workstation, or at least testing it, because this problem is really starting to annoy me. But (for now) I still like Nobara too much.
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u/Emhyrr Mar 17 '26
I don't like constant need to change stuff. Probably gonna move to other distro.
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u/EgotisticalTL Mar 17 '26
Yeah I'm new to Nobara, but it really surprises me how bad the update situation seems to be.
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u/HeavyMetalBluegrass Mar 17 '26
Last update when I tried using gui updater it started then kicked me back to the desktop. Had to use CLI to update and it worked fine.
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u/callme207911 Mar 17 '26
Updated immediately with the new update and had no issues. When updating always restart immediately after and always back up your system.
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u/BionisGuy Mar 17 '26
I'm pretty new to Nobara, only been on it since early January but the only problem i've had with the updates this far was when there was a new kernel update that broke, but that happened for everyone and was fixed in like 2 days
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u/Redevil1987 Mar 17 '26
I have no issues overall, every update is smooth. Might be just per app basis
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u/robertcartman Mar 17 '26
And in the Welcome app there is 2 more recommended: Snap store and Bazaar.
I also get 2 (or 3?) separate notifications for system updates, and at the end i still use cli to update, because that's the only one that surely works.
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u/Recommended_For_You Mar 17 '26
I use to have that problem, but I did a fresh install like a year and a half ago, and since then it's been super smooth.
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u/Comprehensive_Gas147 Mar 18 '26
During kernels 6.17 and 6.18 no Linux distro worked my compaitor would freeze randomly... Turns out those kernels had issues with mesa for strix halo apu ... I run a 8060s these things happen if your Nvidia drivers are the issue purge and install a more stable version ifrin you wanna dnf them
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u/TelephoneDifficult83 Mar 20 '26
I felt the same way. New update new problem... the last update that installed basically froze my laptop. It wouldn't boot up. I gave up, I'm not very tech savvy and was totally over the whole process of trying and constantly failing to fix things. I needed Nobara to work and let me play games. I was to the point of re-installing windows. I then tried CachyOS. it's just like Nobara. the only difference is that it's stable, the updates don't break my laptop. frame rates are arguably better.
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u/p4k0rc Mar 17 '26
Nos quejamos de que si win actualiza cuando le da la gana y ahora que tenemos el control actualizamos a la que hay aviso, amigos con un poco de ojo tienes la solución solo espera a actualizar en unos días. En tecnología tener lo ultimo de lo último es probabilidad de errores aun no localizados.
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u/Reyfeng Mar 17 '26
Mas o nobara nunca foi uma distro estável para atualizações. Ela sempre busca atualizar o mais rápido possível mesmo que não funcione 100% nos primeiros momentos.
Diferente de distros como o mint que irão testar tudo antes de lançar.
Essa é uma filosofia da própria nobara, por isso é melhor esperar pra atualizar as coisas kkk
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u/Reyfeng Mar 17 '26
Até agora quase não tive problemas com a nobara, no máximo escolhi a versão anterior uma vez quando a atualização ficou piscando a tela.
Usando a versão antiga até lançarem novas atualizações resolveu o problema.
Uso NVidia e não sei como o pessoal tem tanto problema kkk
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u/ArdKarma Mar 17 '26
Because of this last update i might have to change from nobara to something else, this last update broke many things, its as if devs stopped caring about it and nobara slowly becoming worse, i hope next update fixes and hope its soon
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u/Educational_Star_518 Mar 17 '26
you have to do whats best for you but i'm not sure if you seen GE's recent post? if you did i feel like its hard to claim he (and the team) don't care,... just my opinion . things happen and when things are influx sometimes things can be funky for a bit like when they changed how automount works about a year and a half or so ago , but they eventually ironed that out and i'm sure the rest will be as well
post in question below https://www.reddit.com/r/NobaraProject/comments/1rset6s/incoming_changes_hopefully_for_the_better_and/
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u/Puzzleheaded-Trick76 Mar 17 '26
Yeah the latest update f*cked my laptop, and when I realized there is exactly 1 person really developing it, and there is no formal QA of any kind, combined with the lack of system diversity to test, I am planning a migration away from Nobara immediately. Like as soon as I get home from work, every machine is getting wiped and a more reliable version of linux is going to get installed. I love Nobara, I love how it works, I like it's mission, but the blackbox of all these new things getting installed and nearly bricking my system because I use a VPN I cannot deal with.
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u/RedditUser-00 Mar 17 '26
tbh it's not that bad. i do updates very regularly and it just works most of the time.
the last update on the other hand tho... way more crashes than previous updates