it hasn’t been a problem lately, but for basically an entire year I was helping first timers through getting a more recent lutris for games because the one mint shipped was ancient and broken and on top of that the 32 bit wine dependencies were practically impossible to resolve for some games
It’s the Lutris version shipped with 22.04, which by today’s standards is definitely ancient. Because I’m not generally a Flatpak fan for stuff that requires larger packages or dependencies, I went directly to the Lutris PPA. And because I’m running KDE Neon, I had to work around the annoying libpoppler dependency issue that’s always plagued Wine on Neon.
It doesn't just cost FPS. It straight up breaks some games that run fine on other distros.
Does it still have that feature that kills and restarts cinnamon when memory leaks start getting to be too much? I honestly had to laugh at that when that was introduced.
Not even close, if you actually install barebones arch, then barebones arch is exactly that, barebones. You wont even have a DE.
Endeavour is what you want. It’s just straight up arch, but with all the stuff you’d want to set up anyway done for you.
And if you want an “app-store” style app to browse packages with, and not fiddle with the command line to manage packages, install pamac. It can be expanded with AUR and flatpak support.
Well, Endeavour is just arch. If you want, you can achieve the same install that has only the things you need, by removing things instead of just adding.
IMO it starts off closer to the config most people want, so it’s less work to take it the rest of the way.
Yay is an AUR helper, a program that automates all the steps of installing something from the AUR.
The AUR or Arch User Repository is a way for individuals in the community to easily distribute software, or create software installers, without going though the work of getting something into the official repos.
Here’s the first thing I do on a new system, yay -S pamac. This will install pamac, a GUI for browsing, installing and uninstalling packages. (Both normal repos and AUR)
Generally, packages from the AUR get compiled by your system and then installed. This can be really slow, hence there is often a “-bin” version of packages that installs a pre-compiled binary.
You can also find “-git” versions of packages, these install the very latest version directly from the development repo.
Looks like mid-to-high-level difficulty if you really want to build from source, due to multiple complex interdependent configuration flags that have to match your hardware, and the need to check a kernel option or two. (Based on the Gentoo ebuild for mesa 24.1.2).
plasma has wayland support, tons of customizability, better multi monitor support, a great suite of applications including a text editor with lsp support and much more, and in general looks nicer. cinnamon is sort of the bare minimum
Wayland has objectively better multi monitor support in every case. You were encountering tearing issues before switching, maybe you just didn’t notice.
the rest also isn’t just an opinion, cinnamon does not have an equivalent to kdenlive, krita, or kate. even the existing applications are just not on the same level. it’s an acceptable desktop, but plasma and gnome are just better.
I use KdenLive on Mint whenever I need to edit a video. I’ve never bothered to look for the other two because I use Darktable and GIMP for my photo editing, but I can check to see if they’re available if you want me to.
Why would I care what software KDE comes with? This is Linux. I can install whatever works best for me. Including the whole of KDE software suite if I so chose. You KDE fans are voracious.
Can you explain? As a Mint user with really old hardware, I appreciate using the LTS kernel. However, I also appreciate them giving users other options.
I’m generally in the same boat. I don’t think of Mint’s packages as “old”, but “stable”. I’ve had a few cases where I want the latest features, and there are easy ways to get new versions. Dialing down instability isn’t so easy.
If you have cutting edge hardware, this might be an issue. But most people don’t and for them Mint will work just fine. If you want cutting edge, don’t use Mint. But that’s not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
The thing is that Linux has gone mainstream, with young adults and teens trying it out for Gaming and Streaming. The target people has changed so recommending Mint is not suitable anymore.
I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say it’s gone “mainstream” since you still have to be moderately nerdy to know about it. I get your point though. This is one of the reasons I am so happy the Steam Deck exists. Before Valve released the Steam Deck nobody wanted to make games for Linux, so Valve said “fuck it, we’ll do it ourselves” and proved it was not only possible, but a better experience overall. While not all games work, having 78-80% of your game library work on Linux, with no Windows OS performance tax, is a great experience. Even with the Proton compatibility layer games generally run faster than on Windows.
this video from last month has 600k views. Ive seen several recent linux videos with 150k+ views. Brodie, Horn and the Linux Experience constantly pull 50k to 200K views on some of their videos.
I do want to add that new games can also require new packages, the way Alan Wake II did at launch. Even on Arch you had to compile the development version of Mesa for it to run.
If you want cutting edge, don’t use Mint. But that’s not their focus at all. Mint is for people who just want their computer to work with minimal hassle.
These don’t seem like competing needs. When I think “just work with minimal hassle”, I don’t think “I need to restrict myself to outdated hardware”.
I’m perfectly happy running old packages in general. I’m still on Plasma 5, and it works just as well as it did last year. But that’s a matter of features, not compatibility. Old is fine; broken is not.
I think Mint is mostly for the “I have a PC that’s a few years old and want something easy and reliable to replace Windows with” crowd. Because it works great for that. It’s the perfect beginner distro.
I recommend fedora to every one. It’s the correct kind of stable distro. The kernel updates are slow to roll out after being tested and all… But guess what version of plasma I have? 6.1. That’s just a few weeks later than arch got it.
Plus not to mention how easy setting up my Optimus gpu was because of rpmfusion. I have never had such ease with any other distro.
Fedora (including Silverblue/Kionite) is hard to recommend as a first distro though. It’s an excellent platform when you know your end goal and how to get there, while providing “leading-edge” packages that’s great for gaming.
But a project like Bazzite? Phenomenal new user experience for gaming and a very easy recommend.
If you want a non-gaming alternative to Bazzite to recommend, there’s it’s two universal blue siblings, Aurora (general purpose desktop) and Bluefin (silverblue/workstation distro). They both have the same setup as Bazzite but without the explicitly gaming elements. universal-blue.org
Yeah, I think they’re based off the fedora atomic desktops of Silverblue and Kinoite respectively which are gnome and kde based. They do angle Bluefin as more workstation oriented, for what it’s worth.
Vanilla OS 2.0 looks promising in my opinion. But it’s not out yet unfortunately. It’s an immutable distro that has integrated containers for all the main Linux distros. You can for example install Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch stuff on the same machine.
no, a container is not a virtual machine. Containers, unlike virtual machines, uses the same kernel as host system. That means you cannot spin up a windows container on linux because windows uses NT kernel and linux uses linux kernel. What containers like that will in fact do is allow you to get applications from different distros as if you were running that distro.
For your use case (windows xp game emulation) there are two options. A virtual machine or using wine. My suggestion is to try first “bottles” and then VM
#NobaraGang. I gave Mint a go a few years ago and just never really got anywhere close to replacing my Windows install.
I’ve gotten 90% of all use cases handled by Nobara at this point. The main outlier being my sim racing setup just because according to forums the drivers for all the peripherals are just really not ready for adoption yet. My sim rig will stay on Windows for now as the whole reason I invested in a proper cockpit and peripherals was to reduce the friction involved with enjoying the sims. Also, anti-cheat seems to be a no-go on Linux for now so as an iRacing enjoyer, Linux is out of the question for the time being.
That said, my entire home studio for recording (incl. Hardware peripherals), my daily driver use case and all my other gaming needs are currently met by Nobara. I’m so happy to be able to end my reliance on Microsoft.
I’m so happy to be able to end my reliance on Microsoft.
Microsoft is a frequent contributor to core Linux technologies these days. Lennart Poettering to Microsoft has probably been the most prominent move but there are others that work on Azure Linux and WSL who also upstream their work.
What I was trying to say was that I’m happy to be free of Microsoft’s ability to just sunset an operating system version that I liked and replace it with an even more privacy-disrespecting, ad and AI-bloated nightmare.
Nobara is at least under my control in a significant way. Windows, like so many other software solutions these days wants to treat me like cattle and I want no part in that.
I agree that Linux Mint is closer to what the vocal Linux desktop community would like to see, but Ubuntu is anything but abandoned. Where I work, both my coworkers (excluding myself) and customers are either using RHEL or Ubuntu. That’s it. Sure, everyone on Lemmy and Reddit swears against Ubuntu and has no need for plain-RHEL, but a lot more of the non-vocal Linux community is using Ubuntu. I prefer Pop!_OS, but that’s besides the point.
Source: Ubuntu is anywhere between 4th and 6th place on these charts:
I have no idea what this challenge is (I automatically assume it’s some cringe when I read “challenge” also that pic is… what?), but you don’t run Mint/Debian/Ubuntu if you have super-fresh hardware, like AMD 7000-series or Intel 14th gen and so on. in that case you have to go with Fedora or one of its derivatives (Nobara, Bazzite, etc.), because they have the newest kernels that allow this hardware to run OOB.
if you have a bit older hardware (like 2-3 years old), Mint or Debian is your best bet; Ubuntu if you have to, and only as a stepping stone. it’s a solid base and if you use flatpak for everything (Firefox, Chrome, Lutris, Steam, etc.) you won’t have issues with old packages and you’ll get the best of both worlds - stability and supported hardware.
I think it started with Linus and Luke of Linus Tech Tips doing a 30 day linux challenge to see what it’s like daily driving linix. Jeff of Craft Computing did one recently as well.
Which is his fault, but also this would never happen on Windows. The power and lack of hand-holding of Linux is a great advantage for power users, but with great power comes great responsibility, and many people don’t need the responsibility.
For sure, which is why I only use Mint anyway. I need my hand held. But Linus was doing power-user things without power-user reading. You can’t really claim the car is no good when you opened the hood and started swapping hoses without checking to see what goes where.
Yeah, I feel like Linux needs a the equivalent of Administrator accounts on Windows. Root is the equivalent of the System account on Windows, something even power users might never encounter, because it’s a level of power you shouldn’t ever need.
We need users to have permission to install software and do other administrative tasks, without having permission to do very destructive actions like uninstalling core system packages. Aunt Flo should be able to install Mahjong from her distros package manager GUI, without needing dangerous root access.
Well, no, not exactly. Most accounts on desktop linux distros are admin accounts. The way I would define that is whether or not the user has sudo permissions, either by being in the sudo group or sudoers file. Some distros do ask if you want the user to be admin. And that’s pretty analagous to being admin on windows and getting a UAC prompt for an elevated process.
Yeah, but there is no separation between being able to do day to day administrative actions like installing software, and being able to do destructive actions no one should need to do unless in exceptional circumstances.
Right, that was the other point I meant to make. There absolutely is a way to seperate the powers that sudo grants. The sudoers file allows you to limit a user or groups permissions to only certain commands. Distros could and should absolutely take advantage of this.
Because Mint is popular among the crowd, and such challenges are also driven by the crowd. Better to see it as some social or meme dynamics, than to explain it with logical reasons. I also see more new users who use arch, because of the “I use arch BTW” meme.
As a Fedora Silverblue user I find it hard to recommend it to new users. It’s not an issue with Fedora, but with the state of Linux desktop in general. At least with Mint/Ubuntu people can rely on social media and the community if they have problems. And Fedora is a more niche thing, and doesn’t have a big crowd.
Moreover, I chose Fedora because of my experience, which allows me to have opinion what is better. But I don’t think it’s a good idea to explain the years of the Linux desktop drama to new users, when they are just doing the first steps or trying to feed their curiosity.
It is comparatively to Debian/Ubuntu derivatives. Even Arch and NixOS probably have more users now. Lately I see some popularity of uBlue derivatives among new users, but I don’t know how many people use it, and where the popularity comes from.
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