Libb

Hi & welcome from a fellow Mint user.
It’s a stable distribution that comes with a lot of things preinstalled (so less extra stuff to install, but also a lot of stuff you might not need)

• +1 for Encryption, both Luks for the system disk and whatever other internal drive and for USB stick or external storage. If someone was to steal my computer I would pissed off but OK, I can deal with it knowing they can’t access my files. Use a good password (mine is 20-ish characters long all random and, yeah, I’ve memorized them but I have a decent working memory ;)
• • for (automated) backups.
• +1 for automated updates
• +1 for not installing from any source. It’s tempting but it should be the exception (for me, it means yt-dlp and Mullvad for the most, of there is also my RSS app of choice newsboat since it’s not officially available anymore :/)
• I don’t use antivirus on Linux (nor on my Mac). But I seldom download anything and don’t open attachments I’m not expecting to receive ;)
• I would not play with services as a beginner as you risk deactivating something you need.
• The firewall as gui that’s installed by default (on my Mint, at least ;): its Gufw on the command line and it’s called Firewall Configuration in the main Mint menu. Open it, type your password, activate the ‘Status’ toggle. Done. Then you can start adding rules as you need them.

I would add to that:

• Don’t rush to tweak everything at the same time. Try one at a time, it’s easier to revert back.
• Backup your home folder regularly. Not only does it contain all your precious files but it also contains most of your settings and tweaks. So, if you ever need to reinstall you will get back all those settings/tweaks when copying back your home to the fresh install.

On that topic,I’m not much of a geek (a 50-something dude and a 35+ years Apple customer) but I did learn to use git to keep a backup of my config folder. So, when I screw up something (so far, Mint has not once screwed up anything by itself, the few issues I had to deal with were all me-related) , I know I can revert back to the previous version of whatever settings I’ve just damaged without difficulty. Learning the basic of Git is not hard, it’s just…odd, and it works great. If it was compatible with LibreOffice files I would love to use if for that too…

So I’m wondering if an upgrade is safe because

Imho that’s the wrong question. Without backup nothing is safe whether you pate the OS or not. Anything can happen (the disk can die, the computer can be stolen,…) and, yes, most upgrades should go without any issue but then one won’t go well and then what? You need to do backups, we should all ;)

I’m currently using Proton and still have to move to another service

I’ve moved to Filen (German end-to-end encrypted cloud you can rent (or buy) for a year or… a month (maybe worth the cost at least for a month when you will upgrade) and it works real nice for me on Mint 22.1

Depending the storage you need, you can get from 10 to 50Go for free: 10 base *+10 if you use crate your account using this affiliate link (no string attached, it’s real free storage) and up to 30Go more if you also share your own affiliate link. If you’re wondering, I use their 2To lifetime plan.

2/ Related to the first question: I’m using a old laptop (asus zenbook from 2015 or 2016, can’t remember), so would I be find with an old hardware such as mine?

It’s not that old, you should not worry much ;)

Sorry I didn’t used PKMS as keyword :/

Don’t be, it’s not that obvious.

To answer your question… Yeah I suppose analog note-taking is probably the best, You can write without any limitation in every direction !

Will see how the conversation goes in the pkms group, but that’s the road I went and I have zero (like in not a single one) regrets.

There isn’t any community about note taking where I could post my question and no this is not a “What’s the best note taking app” question…

Here, maybe? !pkms@lemmy.blahaj.zone

A community dedicated to personal knowledge management systems.

Does anyone here has some experience and is taking notes that way? I’m really curious on your experience and maybe your thoughts if it’s feasible ? Practical ?

If you ever decide to post over there, in order to no pollute this Linux community I would happily share my own choices but they may not be the most digital solution, as I fully switched back to analog note-taking, using a Zettelkasten system (a fancy name for index cards stored in shoe boxes).

I must be older and even more out of touch than you are, as I only use the default Terminal that came with my distro and I had to do a search to check what were Ghostty and Terminator (I know about the movie, obviously, but I’m also old enough to have been watching it in theatre the year it was first released ;)

Apps I replace with newer versions (on Mint too):

1. LibreOffice, with the latest .deb from their website
2. Celluloid, with mpv. I cannot tell how much I appreciate mpv even though it sucks with DVD, for which I use VLC ;)
3. yt-dlp, with the latest version available from git
4. Screenshot, with Ksnip.
5. Whatever the default image viewer is, with Pix.

I guess my end goal is to be able to comfortably install and use arch Linux with my own customization’s and be able to fix it when things go wrong.

What tips/ideas do you have for getting better at navigating the terminal, and getting a better understanding of how the os works. What is a good roadmap to follow? And how did you, advanced Linux user, get to the stage your at now?

You learn by doing and by failing. Like we learned to walk, to write, to drive, to kiss, to speak a foreign language, or even to lace our shoes (and, yep, even that was a heavy trial and error process for toddler-us back then).

• Install Arch (in a VM, maybe) and while doing so read the Arch Wiki to understand each step, each action and the role of each app you’re asked to install. The Arch Wiki is an impressively well done documentation.
• Be fine knowing that it will take time to learn anything new (not just Arch, anything), you won’t get good at it the first time. Don’t rush it, take your time.
• Be fine knowing that you will face issues and will most likely fail at some point, be it to instal Arch or in doing whatever new. There is no other way to learn, for all of us, than by failing and then trying again, over and over. Once again like we learned to walk (by falling on our butt), to lace our shoes (by making a mess) or to kiss (by not doing it great at first).

Learning takes time and efforts. Perseverance, and humility. There is no shortcut to learning anything that is worth learning, not just Arch. But the reward is also so much worth it. Einstein had to learn calculus, Da Vinci had to learn how to hold a paint brush, and Tolstoy like Flaubert had to learn to write and I’m willing to bet they all made mistakes while they were learning their respective craft.

Even without referring to geniuses: the first time I tried to install Arch I ran away screaming and swearing I would never touch that thing again. The second time, I had already managed to read a good chunk of the relevant part of the wiki and used it constantly at each step of the process. I still failed at it but at least I understood why I failed and I felt incredibly more… in charge, despite me failing. The third time, I managed to have it running, and to install most the packages I wanted. That was great. There was no fourth time as, as much as I love Arch (which is a lot), I quickly realized using it that constant updates were not what I wanted from my OS and apps (I’m an old-ish user with very basic needs, I’m not even that much of a geek to be honest). So, I switched to the complete opposite of Arch (Debian, another great love of mine I must say). Still, learning and using Arch taught me a lot about Linux in general and about… myself.

Do you guys have higher tolerance to buggy bs? Are you all gaslighting people to get higher adoption? Does it just work? If so… How??

I’ve tried about every distro in multiple different laptops/desktops, amd gpus, basically every possible idea and there’s always weird ass bugs and issues and a ton of involuntary learning involved.

Your question is a bit like asking ‘why do you guys all have a perfect spouse while I only get to live with that stupid creature?’.

Obviously, you would be wrong in considering both your and our own relationships like that.

As far as Linux goes, nope, we’re not more tolerant to BS or gaslighting anyone. That said, maybe you’re the one gaslighting here (yourself, at least) if you’re saying there is such a as a perfect OS?

My Linux machines (Debian/Xfce and Mint/Cinnamon, if that really matters) both have issues. Exactly like, what not-a-surprise, my Mac and my iOS devices have. They’re different issues, but they’re issues.

I don’t know, say, I can’t run Affinity Designer on Linux like I easily can run it on my Mac (‘what a shitty OS that Linux is!’). But then I also cannot change all text size on the screen as easily on the Mac as I can do it on Linux (‘what a shitty OS that macOS is!’). Or have a Windows laptop with as good a battery life as a M Mac (what a shitty… you get the idea).

The only serious question to ask should be: which issues are deal breakers for you, and which are not?

It’s a relatively simple checklist to do. Then, it’s a matter of asking a few questions around to confirm there is no solution available. Problem solved, you will know for sure if you can use Linux or if you cannot. No drama, no existential crisis. And, as a nice bonus, no need to question anyone else intelligence and/or honesty, not even your own.

edit. Any chances you guys could suggest me one setup that “just works” no ifs and no buts? Or does it not exist in the Linux world?

‘Could you suggest a Mac that will just works? Or does it not exist in the Apple (or Windows) world?’ You can’t? And, no, you can’t, don’t believe the marketing. Because if you could Apple would certainly not need to spend the fortune it is spending on customer support and warranty repairs, and the repairman/right to repair advocate Louis Rossman would never have become the influencer he is. Macs and iPhone too have issues.

Well, neither can we help you find the perfect setup for Linux that is guarantee to work without issue ;)

edit: typos

Yes, I could have mentioned it too. It’s such a neat feature to have.

There are probably other things worth mentioning. And then a few others that have become a real pain under macOS, imho. For example, the new settings app has morphed into a Windows-like mess ;)

• Prepare for a shock, I miss… Apple Notes.
  Like, really. Imho it’s a great note-taking app that is also performing really well even on large number of notes, that also natively syncs between the Mac and iOS, with full-encryption. It’s also an app that, well, does not expect its user to become an engineer and/or a dev unlike some certain others text editors out there ;)
• The other one basic app I do miss is Apple Photos.
  Like with Notes, I miss its simplicity while still including those very few more advanced features an amateur and very occasional photographer like myself seldom needed access to. Sure, there are excellent Libre alternatives, much more powerful and more complete, but they are all also much more clunky and complex to use which make it so that I use them a lot less than I used to use Apple Photos.
• Pixelmator Pro, for the even fewer more advanced photo edits I need. Here too, we have Libre alternatives but I have yet to find a one that is as intuitive to use as Pixelmator is.
• Affinity Designer. Inkscape is on its way to replace Designer for me, that’s one thing.
• My spell checker/dictionaries/grammatical guides, for French and English: Antidote.
  It used to run offline (no Internet required) on Linux, on Mac and Windows, and I happily paid for its license to be able to do so. But the latest version has dropped its support for Linux, unless one is willing to use the coud version, which I’m not.

All those apps are very different but they share one thing: they are not complex and unintuitive apps (I reckon it’s at this point I should get flamed to death, so be it).

I mean, even the most ‘complex’ apps I mentioned (like Antidote or, say, Affinity Designer) most users should be able to start using them quick (not master them, but start using them) because they’re not that complex and not that different. Mmm, I’m not an expert UI designer, it’s difficult to explain my feelings around that notion: many things are familiar if not similar between those apps, heck some are even so simple that there is no such thing as a ‘save’ button. I know it’s also very much a question of education and of acquired habits, but still this matters a lot to me and probably to other people like me. I’m getting old (and I’m not in good health) and I want to spend as little as possible of the time I have left learning new apps, to tweak them, or search for workarounds just so I could do what I’ve known how to do for many decades already. If I was to summarize what I failed to say: I switched to Linux not because I’m interested in learning new apps or in changing my desktop look (it’s really cool, I just don’t care much). I switched because I worry about the lightning fast erosion of our privacy in this digital world. It’s the ideology that attracted me to GNU/Linux. I have no major issues using apps under macOS/iOS, I only have major issues with Apple (and MS, and Google, and Facebook, Twitter, and so many other corporations) acting like assholes willing to destroy our societies and even the world itself so they can make a few dollars more during the next quarter. F. that, that’s my motivation to use G/L ;)

Also, thx for reading to that point without burning me (you will find a box of matches in the second drawer over there, you know where to find me) ;)

What desktop do you favour and why? Explain your thoughts.

Xfce & Cinnamon.

If I had to pick between KDE or Gnome, I would go KDE without any hesitation as I quite like it whereas I’m not really a fan of Gnome. Gnome UI is OK I guess, it’s just the way they want to decide for everything I am not a fan of (After 35+ years using Apple, I did not switch to let anyone else decide for me ;). If I don’t use KDE it’s mostly because it requires too much work to “tone it down” and make it behave like I want my DE to. Out of the box, there is too much features I have to turn off and configure, features that are also spread between too many (and not all of them… obvious) menus/settings. What’s great with KDE is that it’s at all possible to configure all that, it’s amazing. It’s just too much for me. Be it XFCE (on Debian on my desktop) or Cinnamon (on Mint on the laptop) I barely need to change anything to have them do what I wish.

So, to summarize I would say it’s my untamed laziness that dictates my choice of a DE :p

It’s also the reason why I do not use one of those tiling WM I know exist and I know, as a user spending my time with my fingers on the keyboard, I would love to use in place of the standard floating windows. Alas, having them correctly configured and running, and then having to relearn decades old habits, would require a time and an energy I have no desire to spend. So, I don’t. Still, I understand why some people like them so much ;)

edit: clarifications

is this really that bad?

As someone who slightly customize his Linux DE, I would say that the real but potential issue when using some non-official theming (or very niche ones) is that one does indeed risk having issues after a major system update, thing breaking off or just plain not working anymore. It’s no 100% certain, but the risk is real. And that is something that, on a work machine at least, is never an option (the machine is supposed to be available and work in a predictable and reliable manner, hence why I’m so madly in love with Debian plus it’s so well optimized :)). On a personal machine? Well, that’s up to anyone to decide what their priorities are.

Luckily one is not required to use extreme theming. Personally, I limit myself to whatever is provided with my version of Linux in order to change font size, colors/theme, wallpaper, cursor appearance and so on. So, everything is easier to see for my old eyes.

It works very well and since it’s part of the distribution I know it will not break after an update. The downside is that it’s often much more limited than what some other dude may have done somewhere on their own machine and then decided to share online. I don’t mind it ;)

90% of those are nvidia related.

I’m not a Fedora user (Debian and Mint are my go to) but I don’t have a similar impression. Also, my own NVIDIA GPU has always worked OOB (even without installing its proprietary drivers, it just works better after installing them) and still is, but it’s also considered old being a 970.

Imho, a simpler advice would be along the line of what you mentioned already. Something like: don’t rush for the latest/greatest hardware. Often, new stuff will lack support.

2. no theming. no icons, no fonts, no plymouth screens, nada. as few extensions/plugins as you can, run it as close to stock as possible.

I agree with the idea of not wasting time but configuring the theme/look (which is part of the OOB experience, on Mint and Debian at least) can be essential to work in decent conditions.

As a matter of fact, theming is one of the technical reasons why I switched to Linux from Mac. The ability to have the text as large as I wanted it to be: getting older, one slowly realizes that small thin light-greyish designer cherished fonts lose a lot of their appeal in favor of those non-fancy but larger and bolder dark fonts that are more easy to read :p

So, I would object that theming can be a very legit, like 100% legit part of the process of turning a Linux machine into a usable working machine one will be able to work on for hours (like tweaking the keyboard layout would be for anyone, like me, writing in more than one language). And that is not even mentioning people with disabilities.

3. don’t dual/triple/whatever boot.

Unless one has too, sure. Try running any recent edition of Photoshop in Wine and do real paid work…

My own solution was to keep a dedicated machine for anything like that: Photoshop and video. Note that for video one may decide to let go of FCP or Premiere and switch to DaVinci Resolve, instead.

6. separate your system stuff from your applications as much as possible. purge all user-facing apps, like firefox and media players and such from the system’s package manager (apt or dnf) and reinstall them from flatpak

Why would that be a good idea?

I mean, I do my best to avoid all those third-party installer (like Flatpak) because they are not as well integrated to the system as the native installer is (in my case it is ‘apt’), and because they also waste much more disk space for the reason that, like you said:

the apps include everything they need to work,

Which, sometimes/often, means a real lot of extra stuff.

the setup is easy to maintain and recreate

That’s the exact reason why I use the native installer and not those third-party ones. That and the faultless integration with the system (menus, themes and stuff like that).

And in the odd case I would have to reinstall Linux (an even stranger need on a work machine, since that machine I would not tweak it beyond what I deem necessary for me to be able to, well, work on it and therefore it would be rock stable), even in that case I would need to reinstall it, I find it so quick to reinstall all my apps by typing a single line: “sudo apt install app1 app2 app3 app9999”, no matter how many apps.

I am keeping such a list in a text file, I update every time I start using a new app, just in case one of those days I truly am forced to reinstall my system. So, I know it would only be a matter to copy-paste said command line in a new shell. Not pretty but real easy and quick ;)

Flatpak (…) upgrades are better (no reboots necessary)

Once again, I’m not a Fedora user but does Fedora really need to reboot after updating a bunch of apps? I have hard time imagining that.

Sorry if my comments sounds critical, it’s not my intention. But while I was reading your post I was very surprised how affirmative you were on certain decisions/choices and how much my own personal experience was different.

greybeards dunking on you because you’re not a “real” linuxer?

And if you’re wondering, nope, I am not one of those ‘real user’ either even though my beard would be grey, if not plain white now… if I had one. I come from 35+ years (happily) using Apple hardware and software for work and for personal stuff ;)

Edit: clarifications.

To use it as your daily driver and (learn to) deal with whatever issues and question you may face? That’s how I did it ;)

Took my first steps last night, I flashed a USB stick with Mint Cinnamon and gave it a spin.

Happily using Mint myself, welcome onboard ;)

Imho, the best way to help a beginner should have happened many years before they put their hands on any Linux distro. It should have happened when they were still a small child, at school. In the way they were taught how to… learn and how to get better… aka, by expecting difficulties and by expecting to fail, often.

Failing should be expected as a beginner learning anything new. Like, say, we all learned to walk as toddlers. It was not by being told we walked perfectly but by falling on our diapered butt. Failing at outing one foot in front of the other and falling, over and over again.

That sounds obvious but, to my old eyes at the very least, it also sounds almost like an heresy when compared to what I see kids being taught nowadays. That things should be frictionless and that nobody should fail at anything, ever. That’s such a poor choice that doesn’t prepare them much. Well, imho.

When I switched (from 35+ years being an Apple user) to Linux, it was frustrating.

Even when where things went smooth, it could still be frustrating and it often was. If only, because it required me to change 35 years old habits. And when it wasn’t going smooth, even when I was using the best docs and guides, at times it could be incredibly and utterly frustrating, when not completely maddening. Either nothing on my machine was ever exactly like described in the doc, or the app version was different and some setting had changed, or my issue was a somewhat different, or the solution simply did not work, or I missed a tiny detail or a word somewhere in the guide. Whatever. Frustration was a constant.

That’s what people should be taught to expect and to be fine with. And not just with Linux, btw ;)

Hi. I’ve been thinking about trying out Linux for a while now (haven’t used it before).

Welcome :)

I have 1 PC which I share with my son. I mainly use it to browse the web, listen to music, watch movies and TV shows, Office for work, etc.

Depending your 'MS Office ’ expectations, you should have no issue using LibreOffice. 100% compatibility doesn’t exist, though, but for most users it should work more than fine. For the most part, it is only a few advanced features and tools that are lacking, and some layout stuff. I write books under Linux as easily as I wrote them under, well, not a Windows PC in my case: it’s a Mac.

I am not a gamer. So, for that I can’t help much, but you have the ability to dual boot your PC and chose between Windows and Linux when it starts. Maybe that would let you use Linux while keeping a small Windows partition for your son games?

Here is one guide among many others (I have not used it myself, it’s just an example there are plenty more): https://opensource.com/article/18/5/dual-boot-linux

FYI, you can try Linux directly from a live CD (or a USB stick) without even have to install it on the computer. It’s really cool.

As for the distro I was considering Ubuntu.

You can use whatever distro you fancy, you can easily try a few different ones either by using the live CD/USB I mentioned, or by running them in a virtual machine — something I have never done myself as it’s a bit too intimidating and techy to old-and-not-much-of-a-geek me :p

I use Debian (on my desktop) and Mint (on my laptop). Ubuntu is based on Debian, and Mint is based on… Ubuntu (from which it has removed stuff I’m not happy with in Ubuntu and added a few others I like). There is no good and bad distro, only those that you like and those that you… like less ;)

Edit: to a beginner, probably more than Ubuntu I would suggest Mint, at least if I can judge on my own personal experience: everything worked out of the box, including my stubborn Apple Airpods.

Well, Debian has a 32-bit ISO, and since Ubuntu is based on Debian you may consider giving it a try?

https://www.debian.org/distrib/

I’ve been using Firefox since it was called Netscape, and before that I was using Mosaic. Nowadays, I’m also using Safari (and Vivaldi) but I still can’t imagine not using FF as my default browser. More exactly, FF with the uBO extension, which is another nice gift to all of us — a bit like FF pop-up blocker was back then.

I would have loved if they had released an anniversary icon for FF. Too bad they did not, but that’s probably just me getting old, all nostalgic and sentimental :p

I don’t really understand all these articles explaining how to switch to Firefox. You install firefox and use it, that’s all.

They don’t give a crap about the article usefulness, that’s just more ads to sell.

Why do you think the web is so much riddled with crap content? More and more of it generated by clueless AI? It’s not to be helpful to their readers, that I can tell you ;)