• texture@lemmy.world
    1·
    15 hours ago

    imo the rumor that mint is the easiest is harmful to the whole ecosystem. it implies there arent countless other easy distros and stifles accurate choices for many new people.

  • thenikraj@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    23 hours ago

    I admire how Linux Mint makes it easy to set things up for the user’s liking. Also, it gives so much confidence to the end user in learning the new platform.

  • PointyFluff@lemmy.ml
    15·
    2 days ago

    An OS should GTFO and let you get on with the business of doing shit on your computer, Linux Mint does that nicely. 🐧

    • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
      35·
      2 days ago

      except it doesn’t. Fixed release model quite easily gets in a way of doing shit. Need to add a PPA into config for each separate package you need the latest release of, or simply because the package itself is absent in the normal repo doesn’t help either. And don’t get me started on troubleshooting after “doing shit”.

      Something like fedora does a much better job if you prefer fixed release, but if you like to experiment and “do shit”, arch derivatives like Endeavor or Cachy are just better suited for you. All of the above also have a much nicer documentation than Mint.

        • CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org
          23·
          2 days ago

          well, it apparently was an issue for me on Mint, when i just switched from windows.

          I might misremember things, but i believe some Microsoft stuff was inside PPA, so for someone just switching from windows it’s actually more likely to delve into the apt fuckery.

          Noob distro btw

          • DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
            3·
            2 days ago

            Well, I switched to Linux to get away from Microsoft bullshit so I never tried installing any of their stuff but I can see that being an issue for some people.

      • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        In the context of the comment, “do shit” is explicitly not anything to do with the OS or packages or repos.

  • Knightfox@lemmy.world
    8·
    2 days ago

    I’m a relative basic bitch, I don’t want to spend forever in terminal. Mint has been a god send and I’m so happy I left windows for it. A special shout out to steam for being the goat and making what little gaming I do easy.

  • mastod0n@lemmy.world
    131·
    3 days ago

    Desktop? Debian with GNOME. Laptop? Debian with GNOME. Tablet? Debian with GNOME. Server? Believe it or not, Debian without GNOME.

    • Saprophyte@lemmy.world
      5·
      3 days ago

      :s/GNOME/KDE/g

      One small change and we could be twins. My Debian server also runs Proxmox though, that’s where I distrohop. In VMs.

    • KnoLord@lemmy.zipEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      Okay, I’ll bite:

      Why GNOME? I personally find it very limiting, especially when attempting a Vanilla GNOME config.

      • shirro@aussie.zoneEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        A lot of people seem to feel like this. It’s obviously a valid viewpoint. Gnome certainly has some flaws.I think KDE has better technical foundations and is probably much more appealing to Windows refugees.

        And it’s always fun to customise a window manager setup. I usually have another setup or two for playing around. Currently niri as I got bored with regular tilers.

        I always find it a little surprising how much some people dislike gnome. We are all on holiday here and the whole family got up early today and logged into gnome sessions and started recording and editing videos,.composing music and gaming. They don’t tell me their desktop sucks like people do online.

        • KnoLord@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          Yes, I understand that GNOME (3+) has a place in Linux/*nix world and that, from a common user’s perspective, it might be enough or even more intuitive than Windows and MacOS ever were. Blind hating never helped anyone, especially in FOSS.

          For me, as someone outside the common user’s realm, the weird aftertaste of internal dev drama and their decisions which features are “needed” and which are not needed (server-side decorations, tray-items, etc.) deter me from using GNOME more than the annual one-month tryout (“Maybe it isn’t that limiting to me as I thought?”).

        • rustyj@lemmy.world
          2·
          3 days ago

          Out of curiosity, what music software are you using on Linux? I haven’t found a DAW I’ve liked.

          • shirro@aussie.zoneEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            We are just getting into this. One kid has been heavily using lmms the last couple of months. It is very limited but perfect for him composiing game music.

            Other family just do basic editing with ardour. We want to level up a bit. Just bought a reaper licence and have been playing with it and a midi controller and some plugins.

            Bitwig also looks very nice and seems easy to use.

            We are newbs with this stuff. Normally I like to only use free and open source only but both reaper and bitwig feel like pretty good value.

        • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          I guess average people are not opinionated about desktop environments. they got familiar with one, and it’s fine to them, they’re not even thinking about trying something else.

    • AldinTheMage@ttrpg.network
      3·
      3 days ago

      Debian is my favorite as well. I prefer KDE, though, because it is pretty. I also don’t get the GNOME hate, I just don’t love it as much and at this point KDE is way more familiar.

    • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I will never understand people who willingly subject themselves to Debian when there are so many better alternatives

  • PurpleFanatic@quokk.auEnglish
    9·
    3 days ago

    I feel like I’m missing out on the mint hype train tbh. I’ve never tried it before but there’s an ignorant part of me that’s like “how much better could it possibly be than Ubuntu with Cinnamon?”. I know it must be because so many people default to it and rave about it, even after using Ubuntu.

    My default ol reliable used to be Solus Linux. God I loved that distro. I had an install that lasted 4 years straight, no issues whatsoever.

    But in recent years I’ve taken a major liking to Bazzite. Oh my god it’s incredible: immutable OSs are fucking amazing. I shouldn’t be trusted with accessing system files, it never ends well. So this really helps.

    • hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      2 days ago

      Another vote for immutable here. I’m running Bluefin for almost a year and I absolutely love it.

      My buddy asked me about options for his computer since it can’t run win11, I gave him several, one of which was Linux. Gave him pros and cons. He took the bait. Been a week now on bluefin, so far so good.

      • deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        2 days ago

        I come back to linux with bluefin from windows. The concept is cool but I often found various issues with fx dragging/dropping files between apps or other interactions between apps due to the containerized approach. Had to switch because of this - mileage varies based on what apps you use. -> Opensuse but had issues with laggy YouTube the first time I opened a video, didn’t want to deal with it (amd setup btw) -> cachyOS, freaking love it. Everything works, it’s fast and the rolling arch style haven’t broken yet

        • hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          2 days ago

          Now that you mention it, I have come across an issue or two like that 🤔🤷‍♂️

          I had a peak at cachy after hearing so much about it, but never tried it long term.

    • chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 days ago

      Mint is my go-to for when I want something to get work done and don’t want to fuck with it. Biggest gripe is the networking menu in Cinnamon kind of sucks for VLANs and it’s still on X11 until they finish making Wayland stable.

    • texture@lemmy.world
      2·
      15 hours ago

      this. im so sick of everyone just telling new people to get mint. cinnamon isnt the best choice for every new person. i hate that its just told to every new person, point blank.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      2·
      3 days ago

      What are some things you preferred in KDE over Cinnamon? I haven’t explored KDE much.

      • chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        Neon is great, but don’t use it for mission critical stuff. I’ve had updates brick my system before because it’s bleeding edge for KDE.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        2 days ago

        kde neon is their testbed I believe, but there are other distros shipping it too.

        opensuse leap and thumbleweed defaults to installing kde plasma. leap is the slower moving version, thumbleweed is the bleeding edge rolling release distro, if you want to try it.

        fedora has a kde edition, that too seems to be stable, maybe its more polished too

  • bunchberry@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 days ago

    I use Debian as my daily driver for at least a decade, but I still recommend Mint because it has all the good things about Debian with extra.

    Debian developers just push out kernel updates without warning you about any possible system incompatibilities, so for example if you have an Nvidia GPU you might get a notificaton to “update” and a normie will likely press it only for the PC to boot to a black screen because Debian pushed out a kernel update that breaks compatibility with Nvidia drivers and does nothing to warn the user about it, and then a normie probably won’t know how to get out of the black screen to the TTY and roll back the update.

    I remember this happening before and I had to go to the reddit for /r/Debian and respond to all the people freaking out explaining to them how to fix their system and rollback the update.

    Operating systems like Ubuntu, Mint, PopOS, etc, will do more testing with their kernel before rolling it out to users. They also tend to have more up-to-date kernels. I had Debian on everything but my gaming PC that I had built recently because Debian 12 used such an old kernel that it wouldn’t support my motherboard hardware. This was a kernel-level issue and couldn’t be fixed just by installing a new driver. Normies are not going to want to compile their own kernel for their daily driver, and neither do I who has a lot of experience with Linux.

    I ended up just using Mint until Debian 13 released on that PC because my only option would be to switch to the unstable or testing branch, or compile my own kernel, which neither I cared to do on a PC I just wanted to work and play Horizon or whatever on.

    • Strider@lemmy.world
      131·
      4 days ago

      From the bottom of my heart fuck rolling releases. Never worked for me (nobody get worked up please, ymmv).

      • gustofwind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        91·
        4 days ago

        lol it’s funny how proactively defensive everyone is about their distro choices

        I use a Mac for my server 🤓

    • mybuttnolie@sopuli.xyz
      11·
      4 days ago

      I’ve been living with fedora (ultramarine) kde for a while now because people praised fedora so much, but i think mint still wins. and i chose ultramarine because am a noob, don’t sue me.

      there are many little things that just don’t work and i seriously can’t figure out. here’s a few: discover fails to update the system and i always have to do it manually from the terminal. wine is broken, it literally can’t run anything i throw at it that worked on mint. plasma theme customization is somewhat broken (also custom themes prevent updating…). using alt key in games run with wine causes some annoying notification sound (not in system keyboard shortcuts). often keyboard leds stay on when system suspended, system can’t be woken up from keyboard. can’t use flameshot with kb shortcut.

      this isn’t a hate comment though, a lot of things are better than i had with mint cinnamon. i do like how it’s a lot faster than mint when under heavy load, autosuspend actually works, no issues with screen not waking up. currently my media pc with mint can’t update because all sources are unavailable and it has some conflict with python3 which it won’t let me uninstall (which i suspect would be unwise, idk)

      • gustofwind@lemmy.worldEnglish
        17·
        4 days ago

        I can only recommend regular Fedora because I have a feeling you just wouldn’t have those issues but I am not a doctor.

    • satanmat@lemmy.world
      5·
      4 days ago

      Kinoite Ride or die

      FOR ME it does the things I need it to do; and it works; and hasn’t blown up my house yet so 🤞

    • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      Some reasons

      • Package availability
      • Preconfiguration curiosity
      • Features (e.g. USE flags, different inits, musl, package manager speed, newness vs stability, different core utils, etc)
      • Reliability
      • Education
      • Community

      But yeah… It’s a mite silly to be distro-hopping just to try different desktop environments.

      Methinks several still-new users are yet to realise the desktop environment and distro are not tied together, and nearly all distros offer nearly all desktop environments to install, just one command away.

      It gets even more fun when exploring all the window managers, not just the few desktop environments. And… there be ways to ease that exploration even further.

  • HexagonSun@lemmy.zipEnglish
    36·
    4 days ago

    Went back to Mint a few times but ultimately I like Plasma over Cinnamon, so Debian it is!

    • bisby@lemmy.world
      143·
      3 days ago

      You do know that you don’t have to change distros to change DE right?

      • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
        8·
        3 days ago

        I absolutely loved the release of LMDE, it’s just what I like though, the simple intuitive interface of Mint, without dealing with Canonical’s bullshit (really sour about snaps, ignore me lol).

        Edit: picked back up my phone and reread what was on the screen when I realized you probably meant desktop environment and not Debian Edition when you typed DE.

      • HexagonSun@lemmy.zipEnglish
        10·
        3 days ago

        Yep. I was using Plasma on Mint for a while but the consensus was you’re best off using a DE officially supported by the distro.

        Never encountered any issues personally up to that point, but seemed to be the majority opinion when I researched it.

        But my most recent switch was from Endeavour, so made much more sense to install Debian 13 than to Install Mint and then immediately switch DE.

          • HexagonSun@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Well, context is everything. Obviously there’s no single best distro for all use cases.

            This is a 13 year old MacBook Pro, with ancient Linux-hating hybrid Nvidia/Intel graphics that needs an NVRAM modification and vga_switcheroo to do things like video acceleration properly.

            And not my main computer, just for learning Linux and playing some old games.

            So Endeavour worked great, but seemed like ultimately a computer that old is probably best off with stability and minimal updates rather than being bleeding-edge and subjecting it to gigabytes of updates each week.

  • Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    473·
    4 days ago

    Mint has been glazed since the beginning of time. Not a single laptop or computer I have ever owned has worked out of the box with it. As opposed to alternatives like Ubuntu or Fedora. I must be the single most unlucky person in the history of Linux.

    • Zron@lemmy.world
      431·
      4 days ago

      I’ve had the opposite experience. Mint has just worked on literally every piece of hardware I’ve ever owned.

    • tym@lemmy.world
      9·
      3 days ago

      I’ve had 0 issues with mint OOB… less than Ubuntu. Guess I got lucky regarding hardware compatibility.

    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
      17·
      4 days ago

      Is it always a new laptop/computer?

      I’d be suspicious of Mint on anything brand new (and hence only recently fixed in a lot of packages).

      • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
        4·
        3 days ago

        Is there any company out there that sells PCs with Linux pre-installed? I make a ton of money selling custom built PCs that have Linux pre-installed and tested.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
          8·
          3 days ago

          Several. System76 (the cosmic dev) is a major one, literally making the distro just for their laptops.

          They’re mostly white boxes though. I don’t any and manufacture their own hardware (except Framework possibly???)

        • gustofwind@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          3 days ago

          You can find Linux models from dell lenovo and I think even hp but you gotta search for them

          There are also some specialty companies that make Linux desktops and laptops but you also gotta really seek them out

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Sorta same, but my problems expand beyond just Mint… I had a lot of problems with Ubuntu several years back, so I was convinced to switch to Manjaro. That was an absolutely unabashed fucking nightmare. I thought I was either cursed or just too stupid for Linux for a while. I still don’t know if I just got very unlucky or if I was/am too stupid for the distros that everyone shouts praises from the rooftops for… I stumbled into Garuda Linux and it has been a dream come true.

    • Deathray5@lemmynsfw.com
      1·
      3 days ago

      As someone who runs a small volunteer run IT support group that tries to suggest Linux I’ve found that I often need the Ubuntu PPA to get Qualcomm WiFi cards to work.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 days ago

      In the past 5 years I’ve only ever had minor issues*, like a power button light not being on. But as a developer, I’m aware my hardware choices are more likely to be popular with other developers who would have already noticed and fixed issues.

      * excluding on niche distros, like Puppy ones.

    • LumiNocta@lemmy.zip
      3·
      4 days ago

      I used it on an HP elite X2 and everything worked, touchscreen and it’s specific screen cover/keyboard

      It’s weird tho because I didn’t expect that at all.

      • 0x0@infosec.pub
        5·
        3 days ago

        Most distros works out of the box with that weirdly enough, only one I’ve had issues with was debian and the pen, but that worked itself out straight away after updating it