PS. “but what about GIMP, or Krita, or Inkscape, or OpenOffice, or using rsync for cloud storage, or <YOUR_FAVORITE_TOOL>?” you may ask. Trust me, I tried it all. Every last presentation, raster/vector graphics software out there. Regardless of how much I hate Adobe, their software is top tier, and until GIMP becomes the Blender of graphic design, I can’t really rely use it for most of my purposes :(
The Trust me, I tried it all. and mentioning OpenOffice in one paragraph doesn’t feel quite right. OpenOffice is obsolete. Instead there is ONLYOFFICE and LibreOffice as open source choices for Linux users, available as Flatpak, Snap and probably AppImage.
Nobody should use OpenOffice. It is just an an ancient version of LibreOffice at this point.
The name OpenOffice is much better. Many people every year probably get pulled into OpenOffice without realizing what it is. I hate that Apache is just sitting on that codes and pretending it is still active.
Some people say that OnlyOffice has the best Microsoft Office interoperability. If LibreOffice is not good enough, maybe give OnlyOffice a try.
Okay. Your Arch Linux review ends with naming your favorite options which include Proton, Microsoft and Adobe. As you don’t seem to mind using closed source software, did you have a look at WPS Office (Some Linux distributions include this), SoftMaker Office (Available for Linux and Android), Zoho Office ?
As for The GIMP (People have complained about its project name, but developers refused any changes) : From what I read Krita and Inkscape seem more promising. Krita has David Revoy as open source advocate, vocal on Mastodon : www.davidrevoy.com
I used WPS, it was worse than Libre from the usability, plus quite bloated with all sorts of stuff (luckily, I don’t have to pay for the Office, and will never actually do that willingly). Haven’t used the other two, however, will have a look, thanks!
Both GIMP and Krita are very nice and decent, just not powerful enough for many things I need photoshop for. Inkscape is actually much closer to Illustrator (not as powerful, but still), so that might be the only one with the “getting used to it” issue.
Actually, one other thing I should have mentioned, is that I also transited from using Premiere Pro to Kdenlive (and sometimes even Blender for very light video editing). Kdenlive is an amazing success story for KDE, hope that happens to Krita as well.
PS. The name GIMP sounds amazing! Love it, they should never change it )
Actually, one other thing I should have mentioned, is that I also transited from using Premiere Pro to Kdenlive (and sometimes even Blender for very light video editing). Kdenlive is an amazing success story for KDE, hope that happens to Krita as well.
Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to really daily-drive Linux (and this Arch experiment is no exception). Don’t get me wrong: I love linux and the idea of having independent open-source and infinitely customizable OS. But unfortunately I professionally rely on some of the apps, that have no viable alternatives for Linux (PowerPoint, Photoshop, Illustrator, Proton Drive).
There are viable alternatives for Linux as you mentioned. But non are going to just be drop-in replacements for those tools. There are a lot of graphics design tools out there now that are just as powerful as Photoshop for what most people need. But the big issue is they are different in just enough ways that it can be a challenge to switch to them once you are used to the way Photoshop and the other windows only tools work. This is just something you are going to have to get over if you want to try Linux longer term.
But it can be far too much to switch all at once and with a completely new OS as well. So don’t. Instead start using these tools and alternative on your Windows install now. Start trying out different ones (there are a lot, both open and closed source), and giving each a decent attempt to use. Start out with smaller side projects so you don’t interrupt your main workflows and slowly over time start learning and getting used to the different way these other tools work. If you make some effort to do that while on Windows then the next time you try out Linux they wont seem as bad. But if you keep sticking with Windows only software on Windows you are going to find the same issue every time you try to switch.
agree, yes, especially the ProtonDrive configured through rsync: i really need it to be reliable, since i often travel and absolutely need my documents synced automatically with my PC. even in the early versions of ProtonDrive windows/mac app, it was often not syncing, and i would find myself on the road need to download a few gigs worth of slides and pdfs.
Where would one find custom Pipewire profiles for specific speakers and would those work for an unwashed Mint peasant like me? I have external speakers for my PC but the sound has room for improvement. I tried tweaking with Easyeffects but that is not really that easy if you have no idea about sound engineering.
in my case it was kinda easy, since they were actually linked in the Arch wiki directly!!! but, yes, i guess in general it might be an issue. maybe look for keywords such as “easyeffects profile <YOUR SPEAKERS>” or something along these lines. you can also play around a little with the app to find the settings that work for you.
Same for me. Arch is great and I’m happy with it, but I need MS Office (I know about Libre Office, but there are files that are made in MS Office and I have to work with them) and at least CorelDraw (at least until SVG spec allows tab characters in text objects) to fully work in Linux. Until then, I have to use Windows :-(
I’m not sure how it can be even remotely compatible without the fields support? It’s not even possible to have something as basic as current chapter name (heading) in page header/footer. This is essential. Also, LibreOffice has this.
Just create more ram out of thin air with zram. I’ve got 60gb now. 30 something actual ram (some of my 32gb gets allocated for the APU) and the same amount as zram. I can run 2 chrome instances now!
As a casual Linux user this confirms exactly what I always thought about Arch: there are significant benefits that I would appreciate but I cannot afford the time and energy investment.
If I didn’t have a job, I would absolutely make it happen. But in the limited time available to me I just have too many other things I’d rather be doing
Disagree, actually. The Endeavour defaults are really good and they have a really helpful, newbie-friendly forum.
Plus I have personally found the stereotype of Arch being difficult to maintain to not be true at all. I just installed the linux-lts kernel package and setup btrfs-assistant for system restore and it’s been quite low-maintenance. I had way more issues with Fedora, come to think of it.
Yeah, the defaults are pretty good, that’s why I used it the longest out of arch and derivatives.
Btrfs does help out a lot, but the last time I installed derivatives, only garuda defaulted to it. Endeavour without it wasn’t fun at all.
That really depends on a lot of factors. I’ve used Arch on multiple devices and had it freeze, crash, fail to boot, and had a bunch of other minor issues. It’s usually something that I could fix in a few minutes, except for like that bad GRUB release.
One day I remembered that I previously used mint for 2 years and it never froze, crashed, or had any sort of issue. So now I’m on MX and just use nix to install bleeding edge packages I need. Maybe I don’t have the newest DE, but I know it won’t break randomly, just possibly once every ~2 years after a major release upgrade.
Yeah, Fedora was a massive pain for me as well. But I installed it as a friend’s first distro, and it’s been working just fine. Although I think it might’ve been even better to use RHEL/MX instead.
I use endeavouros. It’s great after you set it up. It doesn’t really give much help. It’s still barebones almost like arch. I even had to install bluez on KDE to get my Bluetooth working. Best thing about it is the installer. In case things go south, you can easily reinstall. And now that arch the install script, it shouldn’t be an issue.
If it’s that simple to solve every time-sink mentioned in the OP, why isn’t that available by default? Or why isn’t there a distro flavor that is just that?
I don’t know how much EOS is helping with the drivers that don’t come with kernel or need proprietary firmware files, but you can easily get them from AUR. Most difficult part is installing yay from AUR because you don’t have yay yet to install yay vom AUR using yay, lol.
With my answer prior I wanted to tell, that you do not have to spend a lot of time installing arch if you use archinstall (it is ready to use in the archISO)
So then I’m still exactly correct about my assessment of Arch? That is too much of a time investment for me and the closest I will want to get is manjaro?
I love Arch, but I’m an old school nerd who likes fiddling with my computer. If you’re the type of person who just wants your shit to work with minimal fuss, then you’re probably right that Arch isn’t the right distro for you. Someone else said that Manjaro has actually migrated pretty far from Arch over the years, so that may not be right for you either now. If you want to try Arch, but don’t want to spend time setting it up then it sounds like EOS is probably a good place to start, but I’m not familiar with EOS at all. That will probably still require some additional configuration for anything special you have going on like custom sound cards, or old printers. I’ve been using Pop_OS on my gaming desktop for a few years now and it’s a really hands-off OS that brings a lot of the cool parts of Linux without requiring much fuss or customization. It is a port of Ubuntu though, so if you want an Arch experience then EOS is the way, or Manjaro for a neutered Arch experience but a little less hands-on. I don’t actually have any first-hand experience with Manjaro or EOS though, I’ve only read about them. If you have a few hours to try them out then you might end up finding a new OS that improves your digital life. Some other people might be able to give you more information, or you can just go for it! Hopefully that helps a little. Sorry I don’t have all the answers.
Edit EOS is short for EndeavourOS , so you don’t get lost looking at other stuff with the same acronym
I can’t tell if you really want to have an argument about Arch or are sincerely curious.
Arch expects you to be pretty involved in deciding what runs on your system and maintaining it. That may or may not be for you. After learning how to use it, I found it really wasn’t particularly bad. Having said that, my years spent with Arch were years ago - I’ve been on derivatives since because I don’t really want/need the level of control provided by installing Arch.
If you don’t want such a steep learning curve and are OK with some choices being made for you, maybe you want Manjaro, but given your comments so far, I’m not sure whether any Arch derivative is a good choice for you.
Maybe it’s just not how you like to do things. Even Manjaro says “hey check our weekly update thread” before you update, to see if you might need to intervene at update time, though IME you rarely do. (Ran Manjaro without a reinstall for years on one laptop.)
Currently I use EOS, and as the other post has said it kinda splits the difference. I had to do a little more setup for myself after an EOS install than a Manjaro install, and maintaining it is closer to maintaining vanilla arch, but I don’t consider it a timesink whatsoever. It will be until you know what you are doing.
I guess I take a little umbridge to your use of “timesink” as some kind of pejorative. Everything is a timesink until you know what you are doing with it, and less so when you do.
If you are curious, try them. If you are going to get upset and say they are trash the first time you need some sort of manual intervention, then probably it’s better for you to try/stay on some other distro, but it doesn’t happen often, and it’s usually easy (if you aren’t afraid of a wiki and the terminal) when it does.
If you want an argument, I’m not your guy, I’m just trying to answer the questions you seemed to be posing.
I’m genuinely not looking for an argument. My original comment was “yup, this isn’t for me, because it’s too much time/effort”. It only became an argument of sorts when person after person came in to try to tell me why I was wrong for feeling that way?
Like, I get it. There are different variants and options and arch is mostly for people who want to tinker.
But my original comment was literally just “well, this post confirms what I suspected: arch probably isn’t for me because I don’t have the time”. I didn’t intend to be pejorative with the term ‘timesink’. Just too much for me. But I’ll admit I probably got a bit defensive after being told I was wrong for xyz reason by so many people on a matter of personal priorities
totally understand it. it took me about a full day to setup everything the way i liked (i’m also quite picky when it comes to usability), but honestly the next time i do it, i can probably do it in a couple of hours, since i now know all the ins and outs.
This has been some time ago. Because of the apps I mentioned I had to transit after a week of usage. But in that week, it was kinda nice. I don’t think from the upkeep standpoint it’s too different from other distros. Like I said, the main hard-to-overcome issues come from hardware support, often due to vendors unwilling to release drivers for Linux. But most of the major vendors (intel, amd, nvidia, etc.) have decent linux support nowadays, even not considering the myriad of open-source drivers.
I was also genuinely surprised with how well DEs nowadays support touchpads, and how customizable the gestures can be. That being said, ofc like I said, some of the apps do not release Wayland support (mainly the electron-based ones).
In short, lots of things are a bit more complicated than on Mac or Windows, but a lot of other things are much more straightforward and customizable.
Arch is for people who want to fiddle around with computers during their free time.
Source: was one of those people for a long time and still am occasionally. I use Arch on an old laptop and it’s pretty awesome. But I use Pop on my gaming desktop because it’s stupid simple.
That’s what EndeavourOS is for. Essentially it is just Arch with a fancy install, plus some minor tweaks and packages you’d probably install in Arch anyway.
The AUR and the wiki is what makes iArch so good. All other Linux distros rely on good forums and public guides, which means you need to be on Ubuntu or Debian for there to be enough content out there to help you if you get stuck. But with Arch most stuff is answered by the wiki or with a package from the AUR. Also the community is generally very helpful and direct in forums and Reddit posts making finding solutions much easier, in my experience, than other distros.
Chromium browsers have a lot of issues, and so does firefox, but ram usage is not one of chromes weaknesses, Chromium regularly preforms better for me then firefox does under low ram scenarios, Both in terms of chrome being responsive, and in terms of chrome not crippling everything else around it.
This is correct. Ive helped a bunch of people (in Linux) complaining that chrome was eating all their ram when in fact it wasn’t. Memory management is hard and it’s easy to look at the wrong indicators.
It does love its ram but not as much as people think.
Hi, not the Original Commenter but an occasional user of Orion.
It is webkit based but has full compatibility for all Firefox and Chrome extensions. Plus in my experience it’s really fast at loading stuff - noticeably so.
It’s being developed by the people behind the Kagi search engine which is also really good
On an iPhone in specific it means there’s no real difference between them beyond mostly the cosmetic. It’s not just that it’s WebKit, it’s that it’s WebKit that’s also behind Apple’s walled garden.
Firefox that doesn’t render with gecko isn’t really Firefox, is it? I mean I get that Mozilla endorses the app, but it’s not the same Firefox as it would be almost anywhere else.
I agree. The recent EU ruling has atleast fixed that problem for EU citizens while the rest of the world catches up.
We were however discussing browsers in the context of desktops in the original thread. On MacOS, other engines are allowed.
Your issue is with apple’s draconian policy on ios, not webkit.
Further, two F1 cars using the same engine can perform vastly differently depending on how they’re tuned and how the car is built. While I do concur that it is criminal to not let us strap a jet engine to the f1 car, doesn’t mean that there aren’t differences between the currently legal cars beyond the coat of paint.
God, fuck react in the eye with the pointy shit-covered hunting-sticks of our ancestors. Useless technology that directly breaks the web because there’s never any fallback, so all you get is a blank page. Not even a “please-enable js” message.
lemmy.ml
Hot