On a seperate note, I’ve recently started using GNOME. I like it, but it’s really difficult to find a terminal emulator that matches the theming as far as title bar and window decorations go (Im not a fan of the GNOME console, it’s not as easily customisable as I’d like). They’ve all had white title bars which clash with my dark theming. The only one I’ve found that works nicely is Black Box, which I have been enjoying, but I can’t figure out how to blur the background (maybe I do this through the compositor prefs? I’ve tried setting it in blur my shell but it doesn’t seem to work), so i’d like more suggestions
I’ve tried Kitty and Alacritty, as those are the ones I’ve used in the past, along with Konsole, but that seems sacrilegious so I haven’t tried it with GNOME.
I’ll come back and post pics of my Konsole setup on my main rig in the spirit of the post once I get home :) I use fish and custom theming
It’s possible to get a relatively recent version of Adobe Photoshop, but it’s very clunky due to WINE’s arguably lackluster application support (most of the contributors focus on gaming). The alternatives can do the job though, GIMP (there’s a Photoshop style to make it more familiar) and Inkscape are pretty decent and light alternatives.
<rant> Honestly, and I don’t mean this to hate on either software as I used both a lot before I discovered piracy on Windows: the quality of GIMP and Inkscape is well below most competing FOSS projects, let alone their proprietary challengers.
GIMP is powerful, but might as well be declared abandoned with how they’ve been preparing to port it to GTK 3 for a decade. It has some great features being held back by poor hardware acceleration and falling behind features provided even by alternatives like Photopea. It’s the X11 of photo editors.
Inkscape is okay, but the workflow stinks. BoxySVG is comparatively much more intuitive if it wasn’t lacking in a bunch of features. Inkscape has also basically been abandoned imo, with the project still not managing to get Apple M1 support working on the latest MacOS for nearly a year.
The barrier to contribute to either project is also sky-high imo, with their insistence on using C for cross=platform, front end applications. Normally this wouldn’t be a massive deal but it’s one of the key reasons I think Photopea and other proprietary freeware apps are running circles on these two projects - The turnaround for features and UX is so much better with modern languages. </rant>
This is one of those rare times I’d say “no, that thing does not need to change.” The strength of Linux is its lack of centralization with several strong contenders leading the pack. Packaging is not a problem for expert users, and casual users have options. I personally think flatpak and snap are polluters and wasteful, but haven’t broken one of my systems in a while so I don’t mind using them. Options for packaging benefits both the users and maintainers; only someone seeking to monetize that wants to consolidate. Before you know it, graphical installers will have ads. Screw em
I personally think flatpak and snap are polluters and wasteful, but haven’t broken one of my systems in a while so I don’t mind using them.
I’m in a same boat. I have this and that installed via flatpack/snap and they mostly work, but I don’t like them in a principle. And, while they strictly speaking haven’t broken anything the garage computer I’m writing this with has multiple pieces of software which is installed both via apt and via snap. The one from apt is obsolete/broken, so I should go trough and clean them up, but in the other hand the snap ones (signal mostly) complains every now and then that new version has been installed and that it’ll restart automatically after x days. No matter how many times I run updates the message stays until it magically disappeares.
This installation was once xubuntu 16.04 and it’s been upgraded with different hardware for years and until recently it was pretty sufficient to just open console now and then and run apt update && apt dist-upgrade. After that the system would be up to date, run browser and spotify just fine (that’s what I need from a garage computer, play music and offer a way to quickly search whatever online to help with projects) but now it’s in a state where I can’t just let it do it’s thing. It requires handholding and TLC more and more often and I don’t like it. Just let me upgrade a system for decades which used to be possible (and maybe still is) with Debian.
But I’m getting older by the day, I used to have Debian installations which went trough 3-4 major releases without major hiccups and it was wonderful. I like when things just work and I don’t need to pay attention to the operating system itself, it’s just a platform for me to do whatever I need and the less it gets in the way the better. Of course things are better now than back when we had to build our own kernels, but I suppose some of you here are younger than 2.6.0 kernel, so maybe we’ll not go that far into history.
There are excellent suggestions in this thread. However, I want you to change your mindset. What you’re asking is like “I don’t want to drive my car. I’m sick of 4 wheelers. I want to ride this new thing called a motorbike. What are some good motorbikes? It should have AC and the safety and comfort of my previous car. Also are there any 4 seater bikes which is family friendly?”
When you are shifting from one platform, please be prepared to make some changes in the way you normally operate. You can’t magically expect the new platform to be perfect when you have a decade of experience in the previous platform.
at this point a lot of people who don't like Snaps just ditched Ubuntu for something else like Linux Mint or Debian
otherwise you will be constantly fight against your distro maintainers with every upgrade
I’m afraid Ubuntu has always been like that. For me it all started with core settings binaries being able to run only if X was running too and not including make tools in base installation in the times when not everyone had internet access
Don’t know. The AUR is a big reason I use Arch. Obviously there’s PPAs/OBS or whatever but they’re not implemented nearly as well, I don’t need to go searching for new repos with the AUR or messing with repo priorities (fun times on Suse…) since everything is in the one place and there’s procedures for taking over orphaned packages. I use about twenty or so packages from it, many of them not packaged for any other distro. Personally not interested in using Flatpak since two package management systems is not my idea of KISS. Poor man’s AUR imo :).
I hate how weird the focus on arch installation is. I got attacked on reddit for calling endeavour arch. Like, I used that shitty method of installation in 1997, it’s tedious and there are better ways now.
Yeah people definitely go overboard with that. I think the only real problem is that Arch-based distros might be using other repositories and not be completely sync’d with Arch itself so then users will go to Arch support forums or communities with problems that don’t affect vanilla arch. But I’ve never really cared when people using derivatives claim they’re on an Arch system.
Installing isn’t even as big of an undertaking these days too, so it’s less of an achievement then people would like to think. Last time I did a clean install on my laptop I just ran the ‘arch-install’ script included on the vanilla ISO and it was super easy, lets you choose where you want it installed, pick from a list of desktop environments, and you pick between alternatives for other common packages then you’re good to go without having to do much manual work during the install itself.
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