Updated: February 7, 2025
It is time for me to do another long-term review of a laptop in me possession. This time, we shall focus on the Slimbook Titan, a machine with handsome specs; a beefy, Linux-only machine I purchased with the explicit goal and mission of moving away from Windows for good. So far, I've given you four reports about this system. The journey started badly, got much much better, and then it went south again, as a result of bad updates. The same type of problem that affected my Slimbook Executive, as well. A confidence rollercoaster.
Before you blame my choice of operating system, please take a look at my recent hardware piece, and read through my software management section for the openSUSE Tumbleweed review. Those shall explain a few things, including: a) Kubuntu is probably the least bad big-name choice out there b) the hardware is fine, as I had tons of problems with pretty much any distro on pretty much any machine. Now, with that in mind, let's commence to start another Titan piece. I will address all sorts of different aspects of everyday usage, including gaming, which is one of the major blockers for leaving Windows and its silliness behind. Let's start.
Updates, problems
Once again, I encountered a handful of issues trying to update the system. Cardinal issues. Dealbreaker issues, unless you're a nerd who knows your way around the command line. I hit similar problems when I tested Kubuntu 24.04 for the third time. But this is 22.04! Ridiculous. Well, what happened was, the PackageKit daemon crashed. The very thing that should be rock-stable. This left my system in an inconsistent state.
The message is meaningless - not only is it repeated twice, it also gives you nothing useful. No way to recover, retry, fix this, anything. Now, if you're a nerd, you hit the command line. Here, you need to run a dpkg command first, then apt fix broken install whatever, which will reinstall this tool, and THEN, you can update the system. Until you do so, you will be left in a half-broken state, with some packages installed and updates, others maybe. Chaos. Pointless chaos.
So you see, this is a big, big problem. Because, technically, this means an utterly broken system. If you don't know how to interpret the Discover errors (which aren't helpful), if you don't know how to use the command line (and why should you), if you're not comfortable running two distinct commands to fix the broken system packages (reconfiguring the package state, reinstalling packagekit by fixing a broken install), then you won't be able to patch your system ever again. It will be left in a limbo mode. This is really sad and infuriating, for many many reasons.
I encountered this issue on THREE different systems, including a physical 22.04 install, a virtual 24.04 install, and a physical 24.04 install. I also encountered issues with PolicyKit, and I suspect the two are closely related. So, these affect two separate generations of Ubuntu, or rather, Kubuntu. Where's the QA in all this? How can such a critical issue propagate into the open? Why isn't there some self-check, self-healing mechanism that would allow Discover to continue working correctly? Then, why would I use Discover, a "store" if it's useless when it comes to errors and problems? Why do I need to revert to command line in 2025? Why, why, why?
What this problem also illustrates is that THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LTS AND INTERIM RELEASES. Because it would seem both are treated as frivolously, the bugs propagate up and down the tree of versions freely, the package management issues are dealbreaking, it takes forever to get into a stable state, which should be there from day 1 with LTS releases, and then, you get random regressions all over the place.
What makes this even worse is that it's not just some tiny package that went wrong. This is the heart of the system, the package management. It should be sacred, and way more robust. And the solution needs to be accessible to everyone, not just ultra Linux users with 430 years of experience. Finally, this entire problem could have been avoided. It results from a "modern" issue. Once, you would launch package managers as sudo or root and get on with it, done. Now, programs launch as ordinary user, but then they "elevate" privileges as needed, ergo, they ask you for a password, hence a popup prompt, hence PolicyKit or whatever, and then possibly something times out in the background, and boom, your machine is borked.
Everyday use, stability
The upside of the update process was that my system was working more much smoothly than before. I did resolve the lockups on my own, but now, everything is so much more responsive. A major improvement. This just shows that bugs come and go, and you're always part of this experiment game, because developers code for the sake of it, there's no product mindset, and this has been the case for at least as long I've been using Linux. An entirely avoidable problem. Entirely. That's the tragic piece.
But yeah, update nonsense aside, the system now functions beautifully. That doesn't mean there weren't some bugs and niggles, but on its own, Titan's 22.04 was stable and fast. I had a platform that I could sort of rely on and use for fun. Speaking of fun ...
Games
I've not made much progress on the gaming front. Most of my titles work superbly. But Assetto Corsa remains an elusive outlier. This probably has to do with the fact Steam still offers only Proton 9.0 whereas you most likely need Proton-9.2 (GE or whatnot) to get the game running. We shall see. After all, I had to wait for years and years for Age of Empires to work under Linux, and now it does, most beautifully. Assetto, this sweet racing simulator, is the one title that really separates me from saying "job done" on the game migration front, vis-a-vis Windows. There were no problems with my Nvidia drivers. X11, of course.
Assetto processed Vulkan shaders fine, but then didn't run.
Hardware, compatibility
No complaints. There were no new issues. Suspend & resume works fine. All of the Fn button functionality works fine, and correctly. The network cards throw no errors, and with IPv6 disabled, I also feel smug and satisfied. Now, I did encounter one NEW problem. My Windows 10 virtual machine, installed through VirtualBox 7.0 wouldn't start. At all. It used to do so just fine before the updates. I upgraded the program to 7.1, and now it did start, but the performance was awful. Utterly awful. I disabled nested paging, and things were awesome once again. Quite weird. Virtualization is correctly set up in BIOS. Could this be another fallout from wonky firmware?
The battery also seems to offer optimistic projections:
Conclusion
My Titan is a very nice, powerful machine. It's a shame the software, the operating system, treats it so roughly. And what about me? Don't I deserve some stability, some consistency, some peace of mind? Why does my Slimbook Titan satisfaction record have to look like the wildest amusement park ride? Why so many bugs and problems and changes? Awesome one day, awful the next. That's no way to build trust and inspire the user. Especially since I want to move away from Windows, I want to have stability and predictability. I depend on it for work. And I cannot afford any whimsicality in my experience.
This time around, it would seem, I got lucky. Update problems, again, of course, but thereafter, smooth sailing, for the most part (VirtualBox aside). But it's these kind of niggles that make me worried. Fast forward to say 2027. I'm using Linux only. And now I need to do something very specific, niche, and it requires Windows. Fine. Power on the virtual machine for just those purposes. Ooops, it won't work. Let's game, nope, sorry compadre, you will have desktop lockups. These kinds of things are killing me emotionally. Windows 10 is reasonably ok (not half as stupid as Windows 11), and for the most part, it's stable. Most importantly, I know the software will work, every single time. I want to have that guarantee when running Linux. I don't want to be dreading updates, don't want to sweat and fret, don't want to debug and run commands in Konsole. I'm not a 20-year-old student with not a worry on their mind. I need predictability. It's a must. I would like to hone in on the will-work mantra some more. I can still run the ancient KompoZer tool in Windows 10 or even Windows 11. It's a self-extracting zip, so put it anywhere, run it, job done. That's a 2007 program. Very simple. Take what you will from this wee example.
Anyway, the Slimbook Titan has settled. Again. It's cushty. Again. It works well. Fast, elegant, robust. The responsiveness is excellent, the stability is good, you get decent battery life. My programs and games work, but there's more work to be done. In some ways, due to various regressions in the previous months, my journey away from Windows has stalled somewhat. I hope I can reignite the enthusiasm and get on with the task. Hopefully, the beefy Titan will serve me loyally. That would be all.
Cheers.