I played a bit with Suse around 2000, but I switched to Linux as my main OS with Ubuntu in 2005.
Now I use Manjaro, because I like the rolling release concept, and it’s easy to use different kernels, and it’s a good KDE distro IMO.
In my experience it’s also among the best for Steam games.

Maybe buy a system preinstalled with Linux.
That way you know the hardware supports Linux, and the installed Distro has the necessary drivers.

What annoys me is that this was an issue as far back as the early 90’s. On DOS and Windows 3.11. It’s such an annoyance that I don’t get how this problem still exist?!
If the unmount function can see if write is finished, a file copy function should obviously be able to see it’¨s own copy state.

You can use sync in terminal. But it’s tricky because it sometimes returns even when the writing isn’t finished.
My method is to use sync multiple time, if it returns immediately 2 times it should be clear,
Only then do i dismount the stick, because I don’t like to dismount a device with pending operations. But when the dismount says the stick is ready to be removed, you should be clear.

i bet MANY people are left with halfway stuff written on their usbs after being in a rush and removing it insecurely on linux after the transfer is “done”.

AFAIK it can actually destroy the USB if it’s removed while being written.

I’m using X11 so that could be. I just don’t get why it would be different between X11 and Wayland?

File transfer progress bars generally aren’t worth shit, I have no idea how this is still a problem. It dates back to the early 90’s, and it’s still not done properly.
Almost everything to do with file transfer report it to be finished before it actually is, because it doesn’t consider write back cache. So it’s only the reading part that is finished, not the writing part. Meaning the transfer isn’t actually finished. Never never never trust it is my motto. Personally I’d rather not have the dysfunctional progress bar, if I could have an actually accurate completion notification.

PS: I just switched back to KDE/Plasma after many years. Overall I’m pretty pleased, but also a bit puzzled about a lot of the simplifications.
like inability to disable caps lock, and the inability to change double click speed for the mouse. So now I need a startup command for the caps lock, and I needed to edit an ini file for the mouse for such simple things, that used to be accessible through settings???
But they finally added the ability to use numpad for hotkeys, which I found out, and was what made me switch back to KDE. Now I only miss the ability to use the scroll wheel on hotkeys too. To finally have similar functionality like I had 10-15 years ago with Compiz. 😜

Weird, am I blind or is there no SteamOS?
I know it’s based on Arch, but it is NOT Arch.

I used Awesome about 5 years ago, and was extremely happy with it, unfortunately an upgrade of Awesome broke my scripts so nothing worked, and I didn’t have the time to be distracted and fix it. So I switched to XFCE.
Pretty annoying to have many hours of work destroyed like that. If they have a promise now to not break compatibility with upgrades, I might consider trying it again. But I don’t care for a user environment that breaks completely because of changes in an upgrade.

I think you missed the joke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMac

Ah yes of course, I just haven’t used manual mount for almost a decade. So I completely forgot we used to do that. I have to unmount it first though, because USB sticks are automatically mounted.

Yes that’s annoying too, I have no clue why it does that, but when the sync says “clear”, I always wait a couple seconds, and run sync again a couple of times, to see if it’s actually finished. And only THEN unmount the stick.
Copy to USB does not seem very solid on Linux IMO. So I also ALWAYS buy sticks with activity LED.
But even that can fool you, sometimes when I think a smaller copy is finished, because the LED stops blinking, it suddenly starts up again, after having paused for about 1½ second?!?!

noatime

Oh boy, yes I remember I used to disable that shit ages ago in fstab, that’s quite annoying that’s still necessary!!!
How do you do that for USB sticks?

except linux waits on updating the UI until all write buffers are flushed, whereas Windows does not.

I wish that were true here. But when I copy to USB the file manager ( XFCE/Thunar ) shows the copy is finished and closes the copy notifications way way before it’s even half done, when I copy movies to a stick.
I use fast USB 3 stick on USB 3 port, and I don’t get anywhere near the write speed the stick manufacturer claims. So I always open a terminal and run sync, to see when it’s actually finished.

I hate to the extreme when systems don’t account for write cache before claiming a copy is finished, it’s such an ancient problem we’ve had since the 90’s, and I find it embarrassing that such problems still exist on modern systems.

A standard boot system for Arm would have been awesome 10-20 years ago! I dreamed about that already back in 2005 when the OLPC idea was new, but when the netbooks finally came out, based on somewhat similar ideas, they were exclusively Intel!!!

I must admit that after having waited in vain for 20 years now, I no longer give a shit. I cannot fathom how Arm didn’t create such a standard at least a decade ago?
Initial Netbooks with Linux were very popular, but when vendors switched to a deprecated version of Windows, that ran way worse in every way, popularity of Netbooks actually dropped for a while, and the entire concept was basically declared dead. Because they were next to unusable compared to the early Linux Netbooks.

Netbooks with Arm/Linux could have been HUGE!! But now the time has passed, because many use IOS or Android instead.

None of that ever happened

It was so fucking obvious, how he was paid by companies to do some arbitrary shit, and later there would be a stellar review of their products.
You had to be blind to not see it. It was hidden advertising, and it’s even illegal! But I think he changed his approach to make it BARELY legal now.

He has since apologized, made the victim whole (or as whole as can be)

Yeah after it became a scandal that hurt his business and reputation.

Oh, does he still exist? I’ve blocked his channels, because he is simply not trustworthy. Everything he makes is at best infomercials. He’s a sellout.

Edit:
To those who downvote, really?
It’s been so obvious already years ago, that his reviews depend heavily on who advertises with him. He was also called out on it, and even ADMITTED it! (Apologized) Then said he would be more open in the future. Note he didn’t say he would change, only that he would hide it less! Fool me once…
Also the incident where he was a total asshole to a small cooler developer, and used the prototype wrongly, then wouldn’t deliver it back, despite that was the agreement, and it was a pretty expensive prototype to make for a small company, and then he auctioned it away!
He was revealed to have behaved like an asshole all the way. But go ahead and support him if you want.

That’s a pretty decent amount of time ago. I switched a bit earlier, when XP was still going strong. In 2005 when Ubuntu Breezy Badger came out. Goddam it was a good distro for the time, and it became my main OS. For years it was like free gifts when a new Ubuntu came out. In the early Ubuntu days, Ubuntu was way ahead of all the rest, and the forum was amazing.

Yeah well, you can say anything and I wouldn’t know. I haven’t used Windows for 15 years, and Linux became my main OS in 2015.
I just ordered a new CPU and SSD, and I’m quite looking forward to making a new install, because my current system is running on a 6 year old installation. Although it’s a rolling release distro, I can see there are desktop improvements I haven’t got. Also I’ll be going back to KDE, since they’ve fixed the hotkeys on numeric keypad issue. I’m almost giddy about it. 😀 😜

IDK, Steam Deck is kind of a game changer, with SteamOS also getting a lot better. Kinda easy to say it is what it is in hind sight IMO.