I’m a middle-aged truck driver. I’ve been using Linux Mint (Cinnamon) now for about seven years as my only operating system (without dual booting) since Windows XP Pro became totally obsolete. Granted, I’m a hobbyist programmer and lifelong computer enthusiast. However, there are definitely some easy to install and use distros out there these days.
Lenovo is renowned for their excellent linux compatibility. I’m sure you’ll get a bunch of proponents here saying the same.
BUT, oh boy. Don’t get me started…
Too late. Having used various models of thinkpads in recent years, their inconsistent keyboard layouts will drive you absolutely insane. I swear, at this point they’re just fucking with us.
I’ve got one in pieces somewhere, that has/had the ~ key next to the FN key on the bottom row! How the fuck are you supposed to use Linux if you’re ~ key is down there? It’s fucking stupid.
Not to mention their keys have a tendency to break off with just the mildest of fist slams.
AND the latest work-issued recent model is fucking with us again! It has the FN key ON THE LEFT SIDE of the Ctrl key on the left. Who does that? The Ctrl is always the left-most bottom key. Now, every time I fucking go to press Ctrl+something, I end up hitting FN instead.
Fucking morons! At this rate this laptop will also end up in pieces.
So, tldr; Stay the fuck away from Lenovo if you want to use Linux and not end up in prison for vehicular homicide.
Oh :( As annoying as that is I can’t bring myself to completely take it off the board. Thanks for the warning, though! Nobody’s mentioned that so far :)
It’s not like other keyboards are better, I know why they are pissed and while it is annoying, Thinkpads X, T and P series are great linix machines.
What I don’t like is soldered RAM. I got T490 after almost a decade of using X220, because it, at least, had one ram slot. Now I am rocking 48GB of ram in reliable hardware which os completely supported in linux (except bt having some issues, but still).
What issues are you having with BT? I recently bought a second hand T490 and Fedora with KDE has been great! I have not extensively used BT, but I always use a BT keyboard and it has been fine :)
I have X1 Carbon Gen 6 and I love the laptop overall, I’ve been using it for 4 years so far. I don’t mind having fn and ctrl swapped, but my keyboard has also a stupid placement of PrntScr. It’s on the bottom row, right to the space bar. I can’t count times when I accidentally opened spectacle 50 times, because I hold the wrong key.
I have also happened to have a try with some newer thinkpads and they felt like the company made them worse on purpose. The material felt cheap, keyboard choppy and the trackpad absolutely abysmal with its lack of precision.
With the hardware support under Linux… yeah, they do work, but when you pick a new model, expect some missing features, worse power management, quicker thermal throttling etc. For me it significantly improved over time. With 10yo refurbished thinkpads Linux is great though, they say
Funny, I seriously considered getting one over the past year, but the past couple of months I’ve been reading all kinds of complaints about them. Seems there is a problem with consistent quality.
The Fn and Carl keys can be switched in software. I have a work-issued Lenovo with a similar layout. They can be soft-swapped in the BIOS. There’s also a desktop utility to do the same but I don’t know if they have a Linux version of it. I totally agree, the physical layout is annoying but it has a simple fix.
Probably never. They’re my third option after native packages and built-from-source packages/installs either manually or using the AUR. They’re convenient and the only option I tolerate of those newer package styles (Flatpak/Snap/AppImage), but seemingly having to download a new 800+MB runtime for small 32MB applications is ridiculously wasteful and I wouldn’t touch them if I didn’t have at least a TB of storage.
This is amazing! I hope it stays compatible with the EPEL repositories. I see no reason not to start using it when available. If it maintains compatibility I could see Rocky or Alma starting to follow this as well.
That would be my recommendation as well. I’ve been using a Zowie mouse on Linux for years now.
However, the switches with which you can make the changes are at the bottom of the mouse. Changing the DPI, for example, with one click is therefore not possible. For some users, this is apparently a problem, for whatever reason.
Have been using a Zowie FK2 for a couple years now and it’s really nice. No drivers needed due to being USB class complient. Hardware toggle for DPI. Good build quality. If it would break tomorrow, I’d buy it again if available.
I’d rather have 5GB of binaries than deal with unmet dependencies one more time (despite many people claims, it is still easy to fall into), my only criticism for flatpak though, is that any kind of modification for a file requires you to navigate through at least ten directories.
Directories are probably the most offensive thing about all package management. Developers are happy to throw their files in .hidden directories anywhere they please. No real standards for that.
I don’t know what principles people are adhering to when it comes to the ideal computing environment, but having to deal with the minutia of installation problems to meet some kind of criteria is just not interesting to me either.
I was in that same boat about a year ago and I switched to pop_os as a trial for a while before fully committing to it. Works well with Nvidia and steam and I know for sure Dota works on it. I have found that any game that is steam deck verified (or even playable) works on pop_os without issue.
It’s not this significant (3x). it should be closer to 7%. My guess is that OP is using something like btrfs, whose data used is calculated differently due to the CoW nature, and btop++ is using using a generic tool to estimate disk usage rather than the btrfs utility that DUA is almost certainly using.
I would suggest Linux Mint Cinnamon. It’s very Windows like, and just works. It’s a great distro to get started. I started on it, and many others have. Non-techy relatives really took to it also.
To understand why you might want to use tmux try the following:
Open your terminal
Start editing a file with vim or nano but don’t save the file
Close then re-open your terminal
You will have lost your progress, next we can repeat but this time using tmux so you don’t lose your session:
Open your terminal
Start a tmux session using tmux
Start editing a file again using vim or nano
Close and re-open the terminal
Type tmux a to re-attach to the existing session
Note that this time none of your progress is lost.
Aside from enabling you to have a persistent session, tmux also allows you to have multiple terminal panes open so you can do more than one thing at a time in the window, to see what I mean try this:
Open your terminal
Start a new tmux session using tmux
Type top to begin listing processes
Press ctrl b then % to make a new split pane
Enter ls or other terminal commands
You will see that you can use more than one panel to do things. This can be useful for example if you want to watch run tests and also run other commands.
openSUSE is one of the old desktop oriented distros. I find it somehow similar to the old glorious Mandrake (r.i.p.). Like it it’s a European distro and both of them are relatively KDE centric and so also somehow similar to Windows. So the philosophy behind both of them is to be user friendly in the way you can do relatively much with the central configuration panel.
I think so. GNOME is more an American thing what you can see from its similarities to the Mac OS desktop layout which is still not that popular in Europe. KDE is also a German project and more similar to the Windows layout. And Windows in the last time often steals ideas from KDE^^
People always say GNOME is more like macOS - but as someone who really likes the macOS UI I really cannot stand GNOME3. I’ve tried but I just can’t do it
Man Mandrake brings back some memories. It was my first linux install solely because they had the fastest shipping time for install cd's and at the time I was on dialup so I couldn't just download anything I wanted. I ran it for several years and ended up on a few different distro's and freebsd for a bit.
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