Linux Mint

[grue]

I threw away Windows 10 and installed Linux Mint two months ago and I can't believe how smooth it is. I feel like I did when I got my Amiga 35 years ago.
Everything just works, almost everything is free through the Software Manager, I'm learning how to use the terminal, everything works fast and without glitches. My 11+ PC feels powerful and capable to do anything again.
I don't play online multiplayer games anyway so I don't care if some of them, the ones with anticheat, don't work

Anyone else using Linux in here?

[Little stoned kiwi]

For about twenty years. Glad to hear you're enjoying it, Mint is a great distribution.

[Ratsoap]

I use Ubuntu 22.04 with Gnome on my work laptop, and it is godawful.

With 16gb of RAM, it was literally unusable, running a couple of VScode windows, plus a few firefox tabs and dbeaver open would send RAM usage to 100%, which in turn would max out the CPU at 100%, meaning the laptop had to be powered off and on again. You couldn't reboot it using the kb or mouse. Cranking the swapfile up to about 20gb was a sticking plaster for that though

Now that I have a 32gb machine it's a little nicer, but I have so many issues with Gnome, for example, centring icons in the dock causes all application icons to disappear, and quite a lot of the time if the laptop goes to sleep, then all icons disappear, requiring a restart, and I've had to completely uninstall Gnome more than once to solve some weird issues.

Currently having a weird issue where clicking the icon of an app with more than one window open just cycles through those windows, rather than showing mini versions that I can click on.

Connecting to a 4k monitor causes the whole system to run at a crawl (this could be hardware I guess, but it doesn't happen on windows on the same machines).

My company insists on using MS Teams, and there is no longer a native app for Linux, so we have to use an unofficial client, which is rather crashy.

Ubuntu server running headless however, is totally fucking bulletproof. Maybe I should just start using VIM and sack the whole GUI off...

[Little stoned kiwi]

Gnome

That's your problem. I mostly like GNOME and have used it a lot over the years, but binned it as it has memory leaks that are inexcusable.
Ubuntu is not as spectacular as it used to be either.

As for Teams, is using it in your browser an option? That's what I used to do.

[grue]

I have 16GB of RAM and it usually hovers around 4GB of usage.

[illlogickill]

Started to get in to Linux via my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B. I currently dual boot Windows 11/Ubuntu 24.04 on my main machine, using Ubuntu the most, Windows 11 for gaming or emulation. However, I do have a great little Lenovo ThinkPad x201i that runs Mint with a Gnome desktop sweet as a nut.

[grue]

Started to get in to Linux via my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B. I currently dual boot Windows 11/Ubuntu 24.04 on my main machine, using Ubuntu the most, Windows 11 for gaming or emulation. However, I do have a great little Lenovo ThinkPad x201i that runs Mint with a Gnome desktop sweet as a nut.

I've found gaming to be better in Mint. But then again I mostly play boomer shooters, adventures and old school RPGs, nothing too taxing.

[tufty]

My main problems with Linux / *BSD have been to do with the combination of a dual head setup and wacom tablet. It used to kinda work, linuxwacom was pretty good so most of the problem came from X and dual head. But with wayland it's all really gone to shit. So for the moment I'm back on OSX.

[grue]

My main problems with Linux / *BSD have been to do with the combination of a dual head setup and wacom tablet. It used to kinda work, linuxwacom was pretty good so most of the problem came from X and dual head. But with wayland it's all really gone to shit. So for the moment I'm back on OSX.

My CintiQ is on a Windows PC that I only use for painting, I don't touch that one, I have everything set and calibrated exactly the way I need for my workflow so...

[Mat]

The issue that ended up driving me back to Windows from Pop_OS! was audio related. Audio's a complete mess in Linux, and the day my GSX-1000 stopped working properly for no particular reason, resulting in me having to go into a command line mixer every time I started up in order to initialise sound, I had enough.

I do try to use Ubuntu on my personal work laptop, in order to keep my hand in, but there again, between 21 and 22 (and persisting to this day), they broke the audio for wireless headsets, meaning you only get mono audio.

Someone more techy may relish getting their hands dirty and trying to fix these issues, but me?
I just want the damn computer to work the way it should.

I'd love for Valve to finally get behind a desktop version of Steam OS, but at the same time, I can understand their reticence, as all of a sudden, they're supporting an almost infinite amount of potential PC configurations.

[grue]

The issue that ended up driving me back to Windows from Pop_OS! was audio related. Audio's a complete mess in Linux, and the day my GSX-1000 stopped working properly for no particular reason, resulting in me having to go into a command line mixer every time I started up in order to initialise sound, I had enough.

I do try to use Ubuntu on my personal work laptop, in order to keep my hand in, but there again, between 21 and 22 (and persisting to this day), they broke the audio for wireless headsets, meaning you only get mono audio.

My Hoco headset worked from the word go! The only thing I can't get to work is my XBOX S controller, but I rarely used it anyway.

[MattyP]

Had Mint on dual boot with my last Windows box and it was great. Have to say though really enjoying OSX at the moment. It just works really well. Still have a terminal and access to all the command line stuff and gets regular patches from Apple and runs on their hardware so none of the weird driver issues you sometimes get on PCs. Blissful computing.

[SuperMappy]

Hindsight being 20/20, I honestly don't think I needed to get a computer that is compatible with Windows 11. Virtually all of the things I use windows for have an exact Linux equivalent like Firefox and VLC or a close equivalent like Remote Desktop and Steam. Win 11 is slowly eating away at my patience, I suspect due to feature creep. File explorer is only kinda slow on a good day. Some of the task i used to do with Windows programs I use web based equivalents for like email and messaging. What even better are the task where I don't need a desktop anymore like Media Player on my Roku TVs to play videos and music.

Be this as it may, if Windows 12 needs newer hardware I am not getting it.

I am waiting for the day when Microsoft is blamed for the explosion of e-waste due to people just tossing their old "Non Windows 11 compatible" computer in the trash.

[grue]

Hindsight being 20/20, I honestly don't think I needed to get a computer that is compatible with Windows 11. Virtually all of the things I use windows for have an exact Linux equivalent like Firefox and VLC or a close equivalent like Remote Desktop and Steam. Win 11 is slowly eating away at my patience, I suspect due to feature creep. File explorer is only kinda slow on a good day. Some of the task i used to do with Windows programs I use web based equivalents for like email and messaging. What even better are the task where I don't need a desktop anymore like Media Player on my Roku TVs to play videos and music.

Be this as it may, if Windows 12 needs newer hardware I am not getting it.

I am waiting for the day when Microsoft is blamed for the explosion of e-waste due to people just tossing their old "Non Windows 11 compatible" computer in the trash.

I kind of feel like a Jehovah's Witness who wants to preach how he's seen the light but it is truly amazing how Linux gets out of your way and lets you do your thing however you want.

[KlaxonCow]

Fucking Windows.

I retain the pre-installed copy of Windows that came with this laptop because, you know, I've paid for it and I might have need for Windows at some point. It's on its own nVME drive, so I can always pop it out and replace it, if I need more disk space.

Booted into it, just out of curiosity, and then when I rebooted, it came up with Windows again. No GRUB menu.

So, apparently, UEFI lets an OS change the boot order and it puts Windows back to the top as the first boot device. Yeah, fuck off. I switched it back.

But that's supremely annoying, as I was barely 5 minutes in Windows 11 and it changed my boot order. And it was actually not so easy to change it back, as tapping Del and F11 and F2 and so forth didn't bring up the UEFI - maybe I'm just getting the key wrong, because it doesn't really say, other than F12 is boot options (but that's the temporary boot order, while I wanted to fix the boot order permanently) - so I had to go into Windows, then do the "startup options" thing, choose "troubleshoot" and then the "UEFI firmware" bollocks. There's an extra reboot from Windows in there somewhere as well.

I really don't like how Microsoft has taken control of the boot process. Sure, we still - for now - have the option to turn SecureBoot off and we have - for now - Microsoft issuing digital signatures for a Linux "shim", so it can work with SecureBoot just fine. But, you know, it's Microsoft - not an independent third party - who issues those digital signatures. It's Microsoft mandating SecureBoot and TPM for booting Windows 11.

And now I discover that Windows can even change the boot order to put itself back at the top. Very much like how, after every Windows update, they try to re-assert Edge as your default browser. Windows apparently also re-asserts that it's first in the boot order as well - and doesn't even ask you or even warn you it's done this.

(Which is actually terrible security. They've opened up the means to programmatically change the boot order. Some "rootkit" can now silently force itself first in the boot order to take complete control of the machine, where previously it could only be done manually in the BIOS / UEFI by a user. They're actually opening up new vulnerabilities to the boot process, because now OSes can programmatically change it.)

Hopefully, one day, RISC-V becomes properly price and performance competitive with ARM and x86 - in fact, as it can't be locked down in a proprietary way, it'll create a competitive market of chip manufacturers trying to outdo each other, as with "IBM PC compatibles" before it that eventually outgrew IBM themselves - so that there's an open alternative that can't ever be "walled gardened".

Learnt my lesson. Do not boot Windows. Even out of "curiosity".

There is the thing that, after a Windows Update, Windows will overwrite the GRUB bootloader with its own bootloader. And it won't ask you about it. But I thought I was safe from this, as I've got Linux and Windows on different nVME drives, with GRUB safely on the Linux drive - so putting the Linux drive first in the boot order gets me GRUB and I can select OSes from there. At least for now, Windows doesn't fuck up the boot sector of other drives, so GRUB is safe (stress on "for now"). But they can still fuck it up, by re-arranging the boot order without permission.

I'm seriously considering popping the Windows drive out and sticking in a blank 2TB nVME I've got, so I can't boot into Windows. I haven't bothered because I'm still a long way from filling up my 2TB Linux drive to need another drive. But I could do the old "/home" on a different drive trick or maybe just RAID the Linux drive for redundancy.