I was Nobara user, then I am using Fedora right now. I want to use things like Hyprland etc. and ya know, Its damn cool to say I am using arch btw. So I’ve decided to use Arch Linux. But everyone says its always breaking and gives problems. That’s because of users, not OS… right? I love to deal with problems but I don’t...
Hey, so I just put this part up first because this is the one I urgently and importantly need answered even tho I wrote that hideous text block first (sorry English isn’t my first language )....
Both use Ubuntu LTS so they have the same packages
Zorin has a more sustainable model of modifying GNOME, so Wayland support, modern stuff etc. But it lacks behind in versions and still simply is a hacked GNOME with inconsistencies.
Mint with Cinnamon has buggy Wayland support, Apps that are often really nice but dont really change much. Cinnamon and the apps are not often used outside of Linux mint.
Both are buggy in some cases.
I would honestly recommend Fedora (or if you want stability as in “the bugs dont change”, Debian, Ubuntu LTS) with KDE Plasma or GNOME.
I use Fedora Kinoite myself, it is modern but the base model is soooo much better for stability than the traditional distros. I use most my apps as Flatpaks, QGis and RStudio through distrobox. All apps apart from QGis are using Wayland.
It is really really good and I hopped a lot.
I do not recomment Mint or Zorin. Same as with ElementaryOS, or stuff involvinf XFCE, Mate, Budgie, LXDE/LXQt.
Is it guaranteed that everything that works on a live USB will also work as the main OS ?
No but the packages are there. Example Fedora: if you install the minimal variant, the installer OS has wifi, but the install without a desktop will not.
If you install any reasonably packaged distro with a desktop, the packges for Wifi will be there.
But why worry? You have a phone and a data cable, even if it would not work, connect over usb, on the phone enable “usb tethering” and you will use it as a wifi or cell network dongle.
This works everywhere, I tested on a 12+ years old Laptop that didnt even have SATA drives or USB 2.0.
Also how do I switch back to windows lol ?
Linux is easy to install, windows is not.
Get 2 or 3 usb sticks/pendrives. On Windows download the “windows media creation tool” and create a boot media. Or download the ISO from their website and use rufus, which is better but you may not have needed drivers.
Unlike Linux, missing random vendor drivers are an issue on Windows and even blocked me from installing it once. This never happened on Linux.
So the better option, get a second SSD. Used one, SATA, as big as you need. 256GB is okay. A SATA-to-USB adapter is cheap. “External SSDs” are often a scam and overpriced.
If you want an NVME, I recommend the enclosures by Inatek which I use, had many nice parts and cables added and even heatpads. Really nice build quality.
Install linux on there and use it. Run it there. This will run on your hardware, if it works it works. The only component you wouldnt test is support for your SSD. I have a really modern NVME but Fedora supports it, so this is very unlikely.
A newer kernel supports more things, another point against Mint, Zorin, ElementaryOS, MXLinux, Debian, etc.
And if you like Linux and want to get windows to the external SSD, boot into a live USB of linux, and use dd to clone your windows drive to the external SSD. This works best if the drives have the same size, otherwise a tool called gdisk will help you very well. But please research before using those.
This will clone the drive bit by bit and it will be bootable, but Windows may not boot from USB because Windows. There is a tool called “win2usb” that can modify whatever is needed, and it worked for me.
And this was all without even opening the laptop. You could just switch drives. Still if you need windows it is always a pain to install, make bootable externally etc.
2 Also what is the message on mints website talking about having to do something else for newer devices ? I now use an old thinkpad and it isn’t an issue but I’m planning to do an upgrade real soon
Linux, the kernel, has all the drivers. It is the core component of every distro.
Linux is developed by a biiig amount of developers, working for Google, Samsung, Microsoft and more. They all develop the kernel and produce different versions:
unstable and testing versions: dont use these
stable: This is what Arch testing, Fedora Rawhide, Debian unstable, etc. will ship. It is the latest, tested and working kernel with the newest features and hardware support. But it may have breakages, that only come out when it gets shipped to the public. So most distros will wait a bit to ship it and have testing versions for the very latest hot stuff.
LTS kernel: more stable, more tested. Does not get feature upgrades until the new release, 2 years of support
Even very “leading edge” distros will not ship the latest “stable” kernel, so you will be somewhere in between.
When developing software, normally you would just have security fixes, bug fixes and features in a new version. But with these products developers may backport fixes to older versions.
Even though the kernel only has 2 years of support, many distros will increase that, maintain their own version and do more backported fixes.
The stable kernel only supports hardware that was supported when it had the “feature freeze”. After this point it is stable, no new features, only fixes.
Release of hardware ≠ linux support. So if your hardware is newer than 2 years you should not use a stable kernel with it. It may be on the market for longer though.
I recommend Intel, all Intel for Latops. If you need graphics intense workloads, use AMD. They have good Linux support, Intel having by far the best in my experience. Avoid NVIDIA and Acer, Asus, Microsoft Surface, or anything you never heard of.
3 Also how does the process vary with RISC-V architecture ?
Jeff Geerling on youtube also makes many videos about it.
In general it is not ready. There are good ARM motherboards and Laptops are just starting. SiFive does a lot of Risc-V stuff, but really this takes time and money.
4
I dont recommend these “beginner distros” with custom easy Desktops. I tried it and really:
ZorinOS: just use vanilla GNOME with the extensions “dash to panel” and “application menu”
Mint: just use KDE Plasma
I love KDE Plasma, the new Plasma 6 on Fedora Kinoite is already great and doesnt really have bugs? And it has sooo many more features than anything else.
I highly recommend the atomic variants, for beginners or just anyone wanting a really well managed system (cant say stable as that is what I explained above) but modern and with a good Desktop.
I use uBlue Kinoite-main, it is a base image and they somehow just removed the guide on how to rebase it.
<span style="color:#323232;">rpm-ostree rebase --reboot ostree-unverified-registry:ghcr.io/ublue-os/kinoite-main:latest
</span>
After the reboot just a short fix:
<span style="color:#323232;">rpm-ostree rebase --reboot ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/kinoite-main:latest
</span>
They use a different method for signing, the tool is in the image, so the verified version only works after rebasing to it.
From that on, you never have to manage updates again. The system will update and version upgrades automatically. You may never need to touch the terminal again, even though I recommend it.
If you want a more “specialized” version of their distro, you can use Bazzite or Aurora. They have even more “nice to have” things included.
You install the apps as flatpaks, or through distrobox, or via homebrew (yes the thing they also use on macs) or via rpm-ostree.
You will likely find all you need in the software store.
For the meantime when buying a new machine look at Novacustom (EU) or System76 or Starlabs (US). They support and ship coreboot on some devices, but on very powerful machines.
I dont think switching not officially supported desktops on Ubuntu base is easy. You need to uninstall the packages, remove the repos, add the new repos, install the new packages and hope you got all the configs. On Fedora Atomic desktops for example this is waaaay easier.
Dualbooting with Windows works but causes many common problems. I always recommend at least using a separate SSD, to avoid having GRUB being overwritten by some janky “security cleanup” during “windows update”
rufus is way better on windows with “debloat windows” options
Keep in mind windows doesnt ship many drivers in their ISO. So use their shitty media creation tool and hope this will add the needed drivers automatically, at least when creating the media on the same machine
Otherwise, ChrisTitus’ “WinUtil” has “microWin” integrated. A utility that can convert that Windows ISO to a more minimal variant and also allows to include drivers.
Mint is 95% Ubuntu LTS. That means it is a stable base, used in maaany companies, for servers etc.
Linux Distros are a puzzle of packages.
Just in my experience, especially desktop linux struggles a lot with instability and development.
In my Experience, at least KDE Plasma on Ubuntu base was always horribly unstable. But I want to stay with Plasma :D
Linux Mint also has their own desktop, forked from GNOME 2 or 3 idk, because they didnt like what they did. A lot didnt like it, Budgie, Cinnamon, Mate are the same here.
And as GNOME is still the biggest Desktop on most distros, that says a lot about the state of these “protest desktops”.
I have the feeling Mint has an extreme difference between “how much is it used and recommended” and “how much is it developed”, unlike many other projects.
They are doing kinda fine (no idea when they will ship with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS) but they also simply dont really change much.
All these old Desktops base on a big huge core, XOrg, handling all the display, input, output etc. That is made for terminals and mainframes, is fundamentally insecure and just got patched and patched over the years to support things like multiple screens.
As XOrg is not really maintained since years, Wayland really is the new alternative.
Wayland is waaay better, just still incomplete for some use cases.
Any Desktop without Wayland support is unmaintained and insecure. XOrg is not magically patched by some mint developers.
GNOME, KDE Plasma and some window managers have good wayland support. COSMIC, a very cool new alpha-stage desktop, is wayland only.
Cinnamon does its own thing but I have no idea how they want to compete with GNOME, KDE Plasma and now COSMIC. Every desktop does its own thing (they dont need to but do anways, reading code is less fun than writing code).
And once the core component is unmaintained, Desktops with less developers are struggling hard.
Okay, XOrg is still maintained then. I dont know if RHEL 9 already defaults to Wayland but can imagine not.
I agree on the points with missing support, various things, especially remote desktop, need to be adapted to switching was not easy.
Still, they are too late. These things are doable now and it is still an incomplete implementation.
I think their work is good, their desktop and apps have a clear scope and work well in that. But I wouldnt recommend it, because I dont recommend Ubuntu base, and because I think currently there are better desktops.
Yes that is true. Especially when buying stuff used you can get way cheaper prices.
I mean you are financing coreboot development, a Linux Desktop, an OS and more.
Btw Pop!_OS is another distro recommendation if you want to stick with Ubuntu base. I dont personally like their style that much, but the new COSMIC desktop is already usable, and the old one is based on GNOME, so modern and solid.
I can just imagine that they could switch to it a bit fast.
Love me some arbitrary executed code /s (Plasmoids are not themes) (slrpnk.net)
Cool Plasmoids on Plasma6:...
Bro tried to divide by zero (sh.itjust.works)
Decision of Next Os
I was Nobara user, then I am using Fedora right now. I want to use things like Hyprland etc. and ya know, Its damn cool to say I am using arch btw. So I’ve decided to use Arch Linux. But everyone says its always breaking and gives problems. That’s because of users, not OS… right? I love to deal with problems but I don’t...
How the Kremlin launders disinformation around the globe, attempting to sow division and undermine democracy (www.info-res.org)
Archived link...
Old XKCD, still relevant (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Was trying to extract a totally legit copy of Skate 3 I downloaded today to play on my Steam Deck
DKIM: many mail servers still use non-random keys (CVE from 2008) (16years.secvuln.info)
The CVE...
Linux mint or zorin OS for layman beginners who just want everything to work and focuses on stability , privacy , security ? Also what to do if I switched to mint and WiFi stopped working ?
Hey, so I just put this part up first because this is the one I urgently and importantly need answered even tho I wrote that hideous text block first (sorry English isn’t my first language )....
Gitea is hosted on Github, ignored issue since 7!! years (github.com)
Instead of delivering a nice funny image, just scroll through this issue.
jk, we still love you Gitea ..for now (lemy.lol)
We all know who’s the real steward of free software and federation...
Thunderbird for Android / K-9 Mail: April 2024 Progress Report - The Thunderbird Blog (blog.thunderbird.net)