When “It Just Works” Didn’t

After meeting the two villains of this saga — the Flashbang Bug and the Big Freeze — I started my distro testing with the obvious choice: Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is supposed to be the stable, mainstream, polished option. It’s the trailhead everyone recommends when you say, “I want Linux to just work.” And honestly, I wanted that to be true.  It’s the one used by corporations and startups, the reliable recommendation.  I wanted to install Ubuntu 25.10, log in, and get back to teaching and writing without thinking about kernels, ACPI tables, or power management.

That dream lasted about five minutes.

The Setup: High Hopes and a Fresh ISO

Ubuntu 25.10 ships with a newer kernel (6.17), which I hoped would finally support my Ryzen 7530U properly. The install was smooth. The desktop looked great. GNOME animations were buttery. Everything felt modern and clean.

For a brief moment, I thought:
Maybe this is the one.

Then I closed the lid.

The Flashbang Bug Arrives on Schedule

I opened the laptop again and Ubuntu greeted me with the full force of the sun.

100% brightness. Every. Single. Time.

This wasn’t a one‑off glitch. It wasn’t a misconfiguration. It wasn’t a GNOME extension misbehaving. It was the exact same kernel‑level brightness reset I described in Part 1 — the Flashbang Bug in its purest form.

And here’s the thing about GNOME:
It’s fantastic when everything works.
It’s miserable when something doesn’t.

GNOME hides complexity by design. That’s great for beginners. It’s terrible when your hardware is misbehaving and you need to intervene.

There is no “advanced power settings” panel.
There is no brightness override.
There is no hidden toggle to force the system to remember your settings.

If the kernel says “100%,” GNOME salutes and obeys.

The Real Problem: No Tools to Fix It

I’m not opposed to tinkering — I run a site called Hacking The Hike, after all — but I’m also a teacher with a full schedule and a family of seven. I don’t have time to write a custom systemd service just to keep my retinas intact.  Quite frankly, I don’t think I should have to.

Ubuntu left me with two options:

1. Accept the flashbang every time I resume
2. Start hacking around the kernel with scripts and overrides

Neither option felt acceptable for a daily‑driver laptop.

Ubuntu’s Strengths (Because It Wasn’t All Bad)

I’m probably biased because I have used Ubuntu for a long time.  Like 4.10 long time.  But to be fair, Ubuntu did a lot right:

• The desktop looked fantastic (yes, it is subjective but I like the Unity style)
• Wayland was smooth
• Gestures were fluid (I really like swiping between virtual desktops)
• App support was excellent
• Everything outside of suspend worked flawlessly

If not for the brightness bug, Ubuntu 25.10 would have been a strong contender.

But when a laptop blinds you every time you open it, the rest of the polish doesn’t matter.

Verdict: Too Rigid for Broken Hardware

Ubuntu is great when your hardware behaves.
It’s not great when you need to fix something deeper than a theme or an extension.

The Flashbang Bug made Ubuntu unusable for me, and GNOME’s “simplicity first” philosophy left me with no meaningful tools to fight back.

So I moved on to the next logical step:
Kubuntu 25.10 — same base, different desktop, more control.

Surely KDE Plasma would give me the levers I needed.

Right?

Next Up: Part 3 — Kubuntu 25.10, The False Hope

KDE gave me more control than GNOME ever would…
but it also introduced a new failure mode that made Ubuntu’s flashbang feel almost gentle.

Stay tuned.