If you’ve got a geeky power user strain in you, try Pop_OS! with their new COSMIC desktop. The blend of traditional window manager and tiling is an absolute delight. But if you’re just trying to stay in your comfort zone as you explore the unfamiliar waters of Linux, I heartily recommend Linux Mint.

I’ve installed Mint on my own gaming desktop, and it’s invariably what I install for customers who can’t afford a PC upgrade to deal with Microslop’s Windows 11 bullshit. They all do fine on it, no one even appreciates the difference from Windows except that they all recognize their old hardware is suddenly much snappier than it was. And as for Pop_OS! COSMIC, I’m running that on the laptop from which I’m typing this comment now. I like them both, but Linux Mint is definitely more battle-tested.

Ubuntu’s GNOME layout isn’t really for me, but if you’re looking for something that’s…I don’t know, a little Mac-ier than Windows-y, then Ubuntu isn’t a bad way to go. I tried Kubuntu (that’s Ubuntu with KDE instead of GNOME) recently and I had a lot of trouble with it for some reason so I just fell back on Linux Mint (which is how it became my desktop computer’s OS).

Don’t over-think it. The joy of live ISOs is that you can put them on USB disks and try various interfaces out. At the end of the day though, it’s like human DNA…99% the same product under the hood, and you can typically change things around after the fact.

Actually, I have a good example of that: I put Linux Mint XFCE on my grandma’s machine because it was especially under-powered. XFCE is just about the lightestweight traditional desktop environment around. I was worried Linux Mint’s typical Cinnamon environment might be a little heavier and therefore leaving some performance on the table. Well, I spent hours trying to troubleshoot why I couldn’t use RustDesk to remotely connect to her computer for support, and it finally occurred to me that XFCE might be the problem. I didn’t have to reinstall the entire OS! I just installed the Cinnamon package (one single line of a command in the terminal), then I logged out, chose Cinnamon on the login screen, logged back in under this different desktop environment, and was able to use RustDesk successfully! No fuss, no muss. I’m not going to say you won’t have occasional headaches with Linux but you tell me what comparable options I have when Windows 11’s heavy fucker of an interface with a taskbar I can’t move around the screen is ruining my day, or macOS replaces a tried and true GUI aesthetic with a batshit broken liquid glass one? I certainly can’t swap in the older GUIs I liked, but in Linux, it’s totally an option, like changing the exhaust on a car or whatever.

Have fun :)

They can force upgrade themselves in the ass.

The only thing I’m looking forward to more than the collapse of the AI bubble is Microsoft, specifically, eating shit at the hands of a public that doesn’t want, need, or give two shits about them anymore. Just like Intel or whatever your favorite example is, see some fucking titan that thought they were some great titan, only to turn out to be Ozymandias when the whole fucking world looks up at them and shrugs. Like the end of the Truman show when this massive, all-consuming industry of a production comes crashing down in an evening, and the television viewers at home happily shrug and say, “what else is on?”

The word about Linux is out, and, as Snazzy Labs recently pointed out, Macs have accidentally become the best value in new computers. There are excellent non-Windows options for ordinary people who just do everything through a web browser and an office suite, for not much money all over the fucking place, and the day their greed catches up to them and they start to lose real market share is so close I can taste it.

Guess my head’s just been in the sand because I’m not in any of those states. Yes, where there are primaries, let’s get to it indeed.

lol what primaries? As I recall last time we were simply handed Kamala, and everyone I know voted for her despite that. But If Biden had stepped away earlier as he originally claimed to intend to, we would have had time for a real primary. And I would have voted in it.

I always get psyched to read articles like this and too often they’re just little stubs. I feel like the second this one gets going it just ends.

Done for my grandmother and at least three customers for my small (small) business. No one has had any complaints or questions. Just make the on screen text and icons kinda big, get them a Firefox icon on the desktop, make sure they can print and call it a day.

I like it.

That’s great. I wish Visio/Vizio were not such common names for software and hardware. We done did those already. Do something else.

I can’t find the interview now or remember who it was with because of my brainrot but roughly than six months ago this woman was saying in no uncertain terms things will get progressively darker and more violent. And I’ve thought of that when every one of these moments has arisen. She was speaking more to the need of a parent whose health premiums quadrupled and SNAP benefits were cut having to care for and feed a sick child and what that might do to their anger and willingness to go do something against the elements foisting this upon them, but of course we never can predict what the precise hinge point moments are going to be during turbulent times. We just knew they were coming. And now they are. And will continue.

I care. I have Ring because it was the fastest way to get cameras on my property after trouble with neighbors. I found out how liberal they are with user data and handing it over to law enforcement but I couldn’t justify the expense in upgrading. For me this isn’t a bridge too far in a moral sense but more like a powerful reminder I’ve been lax in my responsibility. I’m pricing out some Reolink cameras I can host locally at home and put on a private subnet I can just VPN into. I’ll have to buy the kit piecemeal because I don’t have a lot of money to toss around but I am firmly committed to getting off Ring cameras in light of this news.

I think you’re essentially right but sometimes I look at the Linux panels and wish they looked a little less…burdened with aesthetic growing pains or like…aesthetic arrested development. They don’t have to be skeuomorphic or frutiger aero or like, keep up with the Joneses, but config menus in Linux are often one of those little reminders, no matter how trivial, that this isn’t a polished product but a humble labor of love. It’s endearing. But sometimes it feels like holding a toy from the CVS when you want a Transformers from Toys R Us lol.

Bought a used Surface Laptop and didn’t think about it being weird proprietary hardware. Just figured it was a good price. Bought AMD because fuck Intel. Well, it turns out you have to run a surface-laptop custom kernel, a big pain to get going for a normie like me, and even then, because I bought the AMD one, my biometrics and touch screen are completely unusable. It’s like the one SKU that it’s just a bust on and since this is all volunteer maintained, it’s likely they’ve given up on fixing that on this obscure, years old model of laptop.

Whoa I didn’t know Affinity could run in Wine. How well??

I had to do something very basic recently which was to make my single-channel microphone ‘mono’ in the sense that it was present in both ears. This involved a lot of googling and command line action. I don’t mind that in principal but I can’t say I learned anything. I don’t remember what I ran, why I chose the option I did to make it work…and I know when I have to do it again it will be arcane again. If Linux is ever going to be truly mass market and bridge the uncanny valley of weird little use cases between pro users and Facebook grandmas, this sort of thing needs to be more readily available in settings applets. Call me a normie but there it is.

My concerns are mostly all unfair. Just want to acknowledge that right up front. Compared with macOS:

• Cider is an admirable but buggy solution for Apple Music (whose own web player is barely usable)
• I wish Alt+Tabbing had the option to bring to the fore all window instances for a given app like macOS’s Cmd+Tab; as it is I am always having to hunt down stray Firefox or Files windows, which get further buried down the Alt+Tab bar(in Cinnamon) when you minimize them.
• no OS does common alternate characters (dash and em-dash, accented characters, etc. all accessible with variations on the Alt key) or Japanese language input (Ctrl+space and then just start typing phonetically) as well as macOS does. The composition key is useful to a degree but it feels like second class citizen shit compared to the macOS implementations that make some typing and much language learning basically useless for me on my Linux devices.

Compared to Windows:

• pretty basic (and again Cinnamon centric) but Files / the file browser in other apps could use some love. Typing the first few letters of a file name in Files takes me there and highlights it which is great but if memory serves (not near machine now), I can’t just hit Enter from that point to open the thing. Equally annoying is when browsing for a file to open or save, there is often not a create folder option or button, and when there is, it isn’t tied to a keyboard shortcut like Ctrl+Shift+N or F12. I sincerely hate switching input methods when it isn’t called for, so having to grab my mouse just to click the new folder button and return to typing or worse, to leave that browser altogether to go to Files and create the folder because the button or command to do so didn’t exist in the browser window is a real drag.

In general:

• the least fair complaint of all because it seems especially like the answer is “well then why don’t you pitch in and help?” (The answer to which is, “I don’t have the skills, I’m sorry, I’ll be quiet”), is trying to replicate workflows in off-brand software. I love LibreOffice spiritually but trying to do some basic PowerPoint stuff recently, it really let me down. ONLYOFFICE was much more usable but it still has a lot of jank and, I suspect, a memory leak because the longer I use it, the slower and less stable it becomes. Krita seems more usable than GIMP, but neither is as usable as Affinity Photo, let alone Photoshop. Put another way, it’s tough to be constantly reminded you’re compromising in order to live a largely faster, stabler, freer computing experience. MacOS is a pile of shit these days but when compared to Windows (since I’m not gaming with it) I never feel like I’m compromising. It can do everything Windows can, and often better. If there isn’t Windows specific software, macOS may have competitive indie darling software to fill the void. Pixelmator for example (before being gobbled up) didn’t feel like it was a somewhat rudderless, good faith effort by a tired gaggle of volunteers…it felt premium. I’m still waiting for that experience on Linux.

China no. 1

there’s more than one amendment that has an opinion about that

The reason I’m a Clicks convert isn’t the typing. I only use the keyboard for that half the time. The reason is it opens up keyboard shortcuts which make the ordinarily horrible experience of doing anything on a smartphone much better.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of Nazis.

Thanks for doing that. I was typing the original comment from my phone, in a hurry.