Also it is kind of insulting to call gnome a clone of something else. It is the work of thousands of people all over the globe. It isn’t trying to be a copy of anything.
If you need new drivers then Debian is not the easiest distro. I love Debian but I do occasionally consider distro-hopping again to get some complex things working (like ROCm).
I do think Debian is an excellent starting place, though. If it suits you, great! If not, you’ll have a better idea of what you need to look for going forward. Hopping distros isn’t the end of the world, after all.
Oooh, I get to say an “Umm… Actually” fact. File names are not case sensitive in Linux nor are they case insensitive in Windows.
It’s entirely possible to have a case insensitive filesystem on Linux (I think ext4 supports a mount option for it now). Likewise, there’s a bit you can set on folders in Windows that makes its contents case sensitive. So realistically, case sensitivity is a property of the folder, not the OS.
I hate the fact that if you want to change the case on a file in windows, you can’t just replace the offending letter. You have to change the name completely, then change it back with the correct casing. Then Windows will finally keep it.
Anybody that already has had a computer for 2 years and is coming from Windows will have almost no problems with Mint. Stability is top priority for first time Linux users and you need some visual guide with screenshots. Mint also has a great default look and setup for people coming from Windows. Mint is probably the best distro to put on your mom’s old laptop that is “getting slow” because of viruses.
I’d recommend KDE Neon or Ubuntu also depending on the situation but if I don’t know anything about the person and computer I’d say Mint.
It never ceases to amaze me how out of touch tech enthusiasts are. How much does your average person know about their car? That’s how little they know about their computer.
They might not know what an OS even is, or how to identify where “Windows” ends and applications begin. They do what they bought it for, and if that doesn’t work, they take it to someone who knows how to get it working again. They know how to charge it, and to plug in a headset or USB key or something. If that functionality doesn’t work automatically or they encounter any issue, it might as well have exploded in their hands.
There are people who have been using Windows for 30 years that know literally nothing about it. Putting a “years of experience” metric on it is hilarious. It’s like assuming that if someone has been driving for 50 years that they know anything about cars besides how to drive it and where to put the gas.
Exactly. I know plenty of people who have driven a car for over 3 decades, and do not know what a timing belt or a spark plug does. I don’t look down on those people, but it certainly makes sense as to why they don’t know. They don’t really need to!
Windows users have a variety of different skills and experience. I guess the most likely ones to try Linux first are not going to be the PC-fearing ultra-causal users, who probably follow what their friends do. But the more adventurous and curious ones, or IT workers.
Yeah, exactly. If a person asks for a recommendation they don’t trust their own skills enough to make their own decision or distrohop.
I feel like a website is needed to recommend a distro to people based on a very varied set of criteria that doesn’t just ask “Do you like stability over all? Debian”
Definitely a help website that focuses on user level questions and not IT pro solutions is desperately needed. Today new users are immediately given misinformation by hard core Linux techies with no clue about usability or user level solutions.
I’ve only spent a few hours on my wife’s MacBook Pro which was still running Catalina (now Fedora) back in the days, and I didn’t think Gnome and MacOs were so similar.
To be honest I felt a bit lost on MacOs Catalina and felt like everything was difficult compared to Gnome.
But I guess Gnome is taking a lot of inspiration from the MacOs aesthetic, and it’s okay with me because it looks great.
I don’t have a lot of experience with other DE on Linux, but they lack the clean aesthetic of Gnome.
Well what I meant is that if Gnome was taking so much inspiration from MacOs, being a Gnome user, I wouldn’t have felt lost on MacOS.
I also don’t mind Gnome taking what’s great from every other OS, as it’d clearly be stupid not to if an idea is great.
I also think that people should be more open minded about what others are enjoying. I prefer Linux, but I can also understand that some people just want to have the most compatible OS with everything, aka Windows. Or the best ecosystem, aka Apple.
It is not my choice, and I’m trying to convince people to switch to something else, but just badmouthing their choice when it has objectively some advantages isn’t gonna help.
What changed to make it happen? I am so done with other OS and Linux does everything I need. I really need to learn more about what’s happening and how to better use it so I can further customize and configure.
Lot of just general progress, Linux was so fringe when I started in 2002 compared to now. Most enterprise customers are using Linux the past 15 years and hardware venders are now seeing more and more Linux adoption. We can kind of thank Chrome a bit for that but also more people generally having an interest and using it and developing drivers for their hardware
One annoying thing though is you can’t scroll terminal on a touchscreen, it’ll just start selecting text. Maybe there’s a non default terminal with touch support.
For me, the systems I’ve installed Mint on for people, haven’t had any problems at this current time. While I have never had an issue using Fedora myself(never been interested enough in OpenSUSE to keep with it when I’ve tried it), I’ll never recommend Fedora in similar cases where I’ve installed Mint. The machines were older and the users aren’t Linux enthusiasts. They just want a working machine to do basic tasks without breaking their bank to get a new machine when their Windows OS reached EOL.
However I can’t confirm or explain why the people you say that are doing this challenge are having problems. I don’t know their hardware specs and I don’t know them so I don’t know what they know about Linux.
(Please note, to all Mint users, I’m not saying Mint is only for non-Linux enthusiasts. I love how Mint is good for the non-enthusiasts and enthusiasts alike).
Whoa, I don’t know why I’ve never considered Linux on a tablet. I have a couple that are gathering dust in a closet, and if this is doable, it sounds like a fun project!
Well all the Linux distros you see being discussed in this thread for PCs. There’s a much wider array of driver support in the kernel for x86 related hardware. ARM tablets, especially Samsung devices, have speciality hardware. Honestly, you’ll be lucky if you can get past any bootloader issues on a Samsung.
Probably, android devices and especially Samsung can be locked down. I don’t know your model though I feel like there are 4,327 variants of “galaxy note”.
Xournal++ is amazing! It’s really the reason a Linux tablet will work for me. I also appreciate using GB Studio and Aseprite with the pen. Makes retro game developing a lot more fun!
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