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Me: Btw how old are your packages?
Mint: Its rude to ask the age of a distro
Me: well are they maintained properly?
Mint: uhhhh… Some of them are
That’s a big part of why I switched to OpenSuse XD
Most people don’t care about version numbers of CLI software/drivers. For GUI apps there’s flatpak/snap or whatever is the official method a dev chose.
Mint us absolutely perfect for folks like me. I want to use my computer, not work on it. I have Blender, a couple of slicers, GIMP, a couple of DAW type programs and a few other things. Perfect computer. I have no interest in the bleeding edge. Now granted, I don’t game, which saves me some grief but I guess kinda marginalizes me these days, and I’m not even hobbyist level savvy in the console, but I do hate both Microsoft and Apple, ta-da!, Mint. If there’s a better distro for me, I don’t care, I like mint.
Mint us absolutely perfect for folks like me. I want to use my computer, not work on it.
I know you’re not going to believe me, because you sound like the type of person who is “set in their ways”, but the only thing that makes Mint better for you than some other distro is that it happens to already be installed on your computer. That’s it. Mint is not the perfect choice for anyone, because it’s not particularly good at anything.
Keep using it. If it works for you, great. I don’t care what you use. But we shouldn’t be misleading people new to Linux into installing a distro that might not work for them.
Ok, good for you I wasn’t arguing
me: Btw how old are your packages?
fedora: this was committed by some random guy this morning and not even on the main branch, have fun
“btw can you please install the latest nvidia drivers?”
“latest?”
switches back to Fedora
Why do I need latest? Why do I need even know version of a driver for my hardware?
NVIDIA drivers still suck on Linux, but each new update has been bringing massive usability improvements lately.
Since the drivers continue to be worked on after the release of the hardware. Some new functionality for new games may be developed. Or bugs may be fixed.
Seems like a dishonest question. Unless you are only using GPU compute professionally with out of date software.
Honestly…
You’d figure people who go out of their way to buy a nice GPU would understand this.
Someone I personally knew almost gave up on Linux because their mint install would have screen tearing issues due to an outdated driver module and kernel, since Mint follows close to Ubuntu’s kernel releases which are slow.
Cutting edge and bleeding edge kernels is one of Linux’s biggest strengths because 99% of driver modules are in the kernel, so keeping it up to date will significantly reduce the chances of issues with your hardware, especially if its anything new.
You dont need to know the version, but knowing that your updates are based on cutting edge latest stable is what can save you from driver headaches.
It’s useful to have updated drivers if a game or something isn’t working, otherwise it’s hardly a big deal, just need to keep the sysyem as up to date as it needs to run your sysyem, i’m on mint since October and never uad any headaches, even updates drivers recently to try to resolve an issue.
I’m still kinda surprised to hear that people are still having trouble with Nvidia drivers. I would have thought that Nvidia would have decided to improve that because of the AI boom. I wonder why they continue being so bad at this 🤔
That is because nearly all of nvidia’s revenue comes from AI datacenter hardware now, and before that from crypto miners. As long as CUDA works without issue, their main clients by dollar volume are happy
Have 2 Monitors with different screen resolutions. It crashes more often than windows 95 when I try to alt tab between applications.
Computers have a personality and preference of distro based on their hardware
It’s hilarious, and sad, that the same issues I dealt with nearly 20 years ago, are still the same issues.
Let me get this straight, you want to suspend AND resume?
If you were going to resume anyways then why bother suspending in the first place eh?
I think its because ultimately, most linux users either are using linux professionally, and therefore only care about the professional goals they’ve been assigned to completing, or they tend to be rather insufferable (the type to tell new users to enter sudo -rf --no-preserve-root or pretend that the average user both does not need any powerful features, but is also too lazy and stupid to use powerful features, but should still switch to linux to be berated for some reason).
That combines with the biggest thing: That there isn’t the money to go into developing things for linux that there is for mac or windows because the people aren’t there, and the people arent there because linux is basically for snobbish elitists, the fringe of society or professionals, AND has all the problems of that catch 22 in the first place, which further concentrates the worst people being the ambassadors for linux, like the real, felt ambassadors, like what someone actually runs into when trying to switch.
I do think Valve is doing a pretty heavy lift right now, and I am very glad they picked KDE, a DE that focuses on open ended pragmatism.
But don’t you DARE say on Lemmy that Linux isn’t ready for everyone to use…
But don’t you DARE say on Lemmy that Linux isn’t ready for everyone to use…
If we’re talking about “everyone” as in “generic people , who spend either office job time on their computer, and about 1 hour of pleasure time doing non specific hobby stuff” due to adaptation of more wifi drivers etc (even though this is the point of the meme), since everyone’s doing all their shit on web interfaces anyway, yeah, it’s everyone ready.
My fucking father in law is on a chromebook , my wife has been on ubuntu mate for years. I’m running debian with minimal issues (stupid overheating).
But don’t worry, 2025 is the year of the Linux desktop
I had this issue with Debian once…fedora just worked great for me…except the nvidia card! Can’t run anything with the GPU…steam does not run with it…OBS crashes…It makes me wonder about LMDE…
This is why I always have a backup USB of another distro if there is an issue that is truly vexing to solve through normal means.
I just went through the hassle of putting a PXE server on my main server. I put boot repair disc, Debian live, a few installers and I just remembered I need to throw clonezilla on it.
I always end up losing my USBs and I just lost my primary OS USB and had to re-download all my isos so I figured enough is enough.
From my personal experience, ubuntu has been way easier (more of “it just works”) than linux mint. What’s the reason behind people preferring and recommending mint? Is it only the UI?
Gnome is a terrible UI, but no, it’s recommended because it’s been recommended since the 2000s…it’s just momentum.
Marginally better UI means nothing to me if the distro can’t handle basic features like audio through HDMI, therefore I’ll choose pretty much any distro over mint.
Flathub by default, I just really dislike snaps lol. Ubuntu studios prob a good rec for ppl new to linux and wanting to see what good free creative software is available.
It’s recommended because of snap, and ubuntu doing malicious things with snap.
Distro hoping is fine. But there is a certain feeling you get when you can fix your own problems by reading the arch wiki
Honestly. Arch has taught me a lot.
I love fixing arch by reading the arch wiki, or fixing ubuntu by reading the arch wiki
I set up my login manager for fedora and my grub for fedora using the arch wiki…
I tried to find a solution for my failing marriage in the arch wiki. The arch wiki instructed me that the problem was consulting the arch wiki. Thanks for saving my marriage, arch wiki!
or fixing windows by only using WSL and reading the arch wiki
How to enter arch wiki if no internet
Another option that’s available is hosting your own Kiwix instance and downloading the Arch Wiki .zim file.
I have a few other .zim’s from the Kiwix library including Alpine Wiki, Stack Overflow, Man pages and a full copy of Wikipedia. There’s a lot available at that Kiwix library which can make for a good offline digital library.
Well, shit. Got 2 tebibytes to transfer, guess I’d better start now, hey?
Good thing transferring 2 tebibytes is no slower than 2 kibibytes
Just attach two of these bad boys
Instead of a bird can I just use my station wagon full of tapes?
- Andrew S. Tannenbaum
MTU is technically infinite, just need a 2TB microSD card.
For shit and giggles, it should be on Arch Wiki too.
On your other Arch laptop, obviously. You need multiple pre-owned ThinkPads loaded with Arch at any given time to maintain workable redundancy, just like you need several clean pairs of programming socks.
…“clean”? Well shit, I have some work to do then!:-P
Your optimism about sock cleanliness is wonderful
Phone or use an offline copy
Going to save this link just in case the Internet goes down one day.
I saved the comment so I can download the wiki if I ever lose internet.
Not sure that’ll work, I’ll paste the Wiki here
Beginning with Part 1 of 1,204:
I downloaded all your comments so I could read them in case the Internet stops existing.
I’ve still got a backup copy of The Internet from back in the day when you could install The Internet on your computer using a cd which arrived in the post. I also have a backup pile of optical drives so if necessary I can burn you a copy of The Internet and post it to you? Though I haven’t got a copy of the postal service.
Knowledge don’t rust. What happened happened. It’s static. Sometimes we discover that a speck of dust was in the wrong place, but we got it more or less right. I mean, I could look up shit in our 50 year old encyclopedia and it would still be mostly correct…
Whenever I have a Linux box without Internet I just USB tether an Android phone—if the phone is on WiFi then it uses that (not cell), so it’s basically just a WiFi adapter that’s almost universally supported. (I think it NATs, so in some circumstances won’t work, but good enough for most emergency use cases.)
I’ve never tried that. I do the wifi hotspot but what do I need to do USB tether?
The wifi hotspot uses mobile data and requires an active wifi reciever on the computer while the usb tether can use mobile or wifi data and only requires a working usb on the computer.
You basically only plug a usb data cord between the computer and phone, and then activate usb tether in the phones connection settings
I had to look up tethering on my phone to find that USB was an option. I never knew! Thanks! Much easier than remembering to turn off the mobile hotspot, or adding another wifi connection to the computer (hotel or wherever).
Thanks!
With some apple laptops, you have to do something like that in order to get the firmware for the wifi chip in 90% of distros, I think endeavourOS was the only one snacking the correct AUR package right at installation 😇
Just download it and setup on your own server
I am a nerd with many computers. That helps.
you can download the arch wiki on kiwix (for android), it’s like 30 megabytes
Distro hoping is fine.
Yeah. I hope my distro keeps working as smooth as always. I really hope.
I use the Arch wiki for non arch stuff
That and the man pages
You ever read the man pages for mount?
Should i?
man mountY’all are using Linux for that?
The ones for goo are especially satisfying.
You guys read man pages?
I won‘t lie the Arch Wiki has not helped me once. Odd threads in the forums or 2 minute long Youtube videos, though? Couldn‘t make it without those.
Total oposite experience for me.
That‘s very curious to me because the Arch Wiki doesn‘t offer any answers to „I have this problem with this program, because I want it to do this thing here“. It only explains you endless pages of fundamentals that may or may not be related to your problem. I‘ve got a Computer to run so I search for the quickest solution to the many little quirks and problems Arch has. If I have to learn about software architecture fundamentals every time something comes up I wouldn‘t get anything done. My machine just has to do the tasks I need it for so most of that knowledge is kind of useless to me 99.9% of the time. Again, I don‘t want to tinker with my OS endlessly. I just want stuff to work. Luckily there has been at least one soul experiencing the same problem as me and already posted a solution. Don‘t get me wrong good documentation is crucial. I don‘t think any of this would work without it. But most users like me rely on giga nerds who can make sense of it and explain it efficiently.
Me: Oh and Mint, could you also add my old printer that I can’t get to work on any other OS I’ve tried?
Mint: Sure thing.
Ha. On Windows I had this ancient Ethernet Canon IP printer. Windows hated it, even with the supplied Canon drivers and network Utility. It always needed messing with every time to get it to show up as a printer on the network.
When I moved to OpenSUSE I went into YAST2 printer discovery. It found the printer right away, and suggested a model, and asked if I wanted to install the GutenPrint driver for it. Yes please. And do you want to announce this printer to others on your network (via CUPS) Yes. Done. Worked 100% with no Canon utilities.
me: hey mint, suspend automatically.
mint: no.
me: suspend manually then.
mint: no.
me: shutdown
mint: no.
…
sudo shutdown nowsudo shutdown now
No.
For your case…
Alt + SysRq + O
Alt + SysRq + R E I S U B
sudo su - && sync && sync && sync && init 0
Let that sync in!
I find that to be the most convenient and also the quickest way.
Mint: It’s already set up
My experience has been the opposite. I built a new PC last year, and only Fedora and Arch recognized the Radeon GPU and the Intel Wi-Fi. Mint was shipping a kernel that was too old to recognize either one.
Agreed. Out of all the distributions I have tried, Fedora (and its various spins and derivatives) are what tend to have everything actually work out of the box.
My first distro has been Nobara after swapping off windows.
It really is dummy proof.
For those on the edge. Just do it. Windows 11 is free to go back to. You risk nothing by giving Linux a try.
The guy behind Nobara does a LOT of important work to make Linux usable at home, especially when it comes to gaming. And in case anyone doesn’t know, he is a software engineer at Red Hat, the company sponsoring Fedora, the distro that Nobara is based on.
Opensuse Tumbleweed tho
On new hardware it’s generally easier to use a rolling release distro in my experience.
You’re more likely to have a newer kernel and drivers that support things like wifi cards.
IMO, you shouldn’t have to learn Arch just to be able to get a new PC. Eventually, people who like Ubuntu and Mint are going to want to upgrade to a new computer, and they might be in for a shock once they do. That kind of thing is what pushes people back to Windows.
If you can’t install something like EndeavourOS or tumble weed then you likely were not going to be able to reload an os anyway.
Installing vanilla arch is a very useful activity to do at least once so you know how the system works but don’t have to use vanilla Arch and can use any of the derivatives so long as it has the latest kernel / drivers for your hardware.
Mint has a GUI menu where you can select a newer kernel.
Thankfully Ubuntu will focus on shipping the newest kernel each release and Mint’s gonna profit of it. Also there’s newer kernels you can switch to optionally.
I tried basically every distro on my laptop and fedora worked all hardware 100% out of the box + printer + fingerprint reader + all day battery life
Fedora gnome is so good it makes Linux boring
I wish my fingerprint scanner worked D:
Honestly, the only two problems I have had at all are fingerprint scanner (like, lowest priority for me), and the battery continues to drain quickly even when I close the laptop or put it in sleep mode or whatever it’s called
Ah I’m sorry to hear that all I can suggest is trying to look up what your specific hardware is and see if there are any solutions on archwiki or something
I did make sure to get a thinkpad because I heard they have excellent Linux support so it is possible your hardware just doesn’t have a proper solution yet 🤷♀️
But I am not a coder so I don’t really know how to do anything but google and try
Linux being boring is a good thing. I want my OS to be boring. I use Mint, BTW
Unless there is an update and you have to wait for a couple of months to get all the extensions back
And then you just go to extensions.gnome.org and tell to run the extensions anyway by ignoring the GNOME version
Don’t have much experience but I run extensions designed for 45 on 49 without any problem
Unfortunately for me GNOME without extensions it’s unusable and I don’t have the patience to stay 3-4 versions behind to ensure compatibility
Edit: I wrote the wrong URL, it was .org and not .com
I didn’t know that. I’ll check it our asap, thx!!!
Fedora gnome is so good it makes Linux boring
Is this a workflow thing? I was looking at Fedora last week and I’m interested to hear what you like about it.
I’m on Cinnamon and made everything look like OSX, but it seemed like gnome would have a learning curve. And as much as KDE looks like Windows NT, something a touch more modern does seem nice.
Gnome extensions can look pretty much exactly like kde or better depending on your taste, kde is easier to customize and more intuitive. I like that gnome is extension based with each extension being something you pick, many having their own customization and settings.
Some extensions I like: Arcmenu: start menu like windows, kde, etc. lots of layout options, replaces the hot corner big icon search menu thing
Dash to dock: use on handheld, perfect touchscreen menu customizable or (use one at a time) Dash to panel: use on desktop, even more customizable, basically gives you a panel since gnome by default has the hot corner android like app menu (which I also use mostly on the handheld, love the hot corner for moving stuff around)
Windows thumbnails (pip any window, monitor downloads or chats)
I use a lot more but forget the names, nothing really breaks if you toggle use incompatible addons or whatever it’s called. You can also edit the addon and change the version since that is what the devs do 90% of the time to update it.
I really like the top bar, hot corner, workplace swapping on mouse scroll, control center, etc. Kde is a close second for me, and I may be swapping back soon just because I get bored using the same thing. Prob not if you can’t backup your layout, really like what my gnome desktop looks like and its functional/productive.
Tophat is great for quick resource monitoring. Ddterm for a dropdown terminal. Campeek to quickly check webcam. A timer for self timing some online work I do that is self reported. It’s just perfectly setup and not crowded at all while having so much. I do miss the pop out tab sticky notes on kde.
I used to use KDE but so many small visual inconsistencies and oddities would annoy me that I was definitely already feeling like trying something else. Also I really like fingerprint login which kde had trouble with.
Switched to gnome just to try and once I setup my extensions it just felt right. (Extension manager downloaded from regular App Store)
Fedora has a great gnome implementation that is preconfigured much better than any other distro I tried. Fractional scaling was available without configuration and gnome’s online account login + fingerprint login also worked out of the box.
Everything just works but my thinkpad is also linux certified which could explain why everything is so easy. Still, other distros required more gnome configuration work and I’d have random problems with sleep mode, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.
Also, it brings me a little personal peace of mind knowing the distro is supported by fedora and red hat. That is serious institutional support and I think is just a good thing for Linux generally but also could explain why fedora has an edge to me
Interesting, my experience was the opposite. I tried multiple gnome based distros, but I always hated it. Was ready to try and accept it to use Linux, but then I finally tried KDE and it felt like such a breath of fresh air. Granted, I haven’t used it much yet, but from the little I did, I love it so much more than gnome in every way.
Thanks for the details here. Fedora is a bit more secure than Mint, so I was hoping to jump over there if everything worked. But I didn’t do my research about gnome extensions beforehand, so customizing the UI was a hill I didn’t expect.
Lol KDE looks like windows NT? Uh… No.
Wobbly windows is best thing ever by the way.
KDE looks like whatever you want.
Can kde still do the cube natively? I loved the cube
Yes.
Well, I’ve only seen KDE on TW, so maybe it was just the default theme color scheme that gave me NT flashbacks. Though I did actually mean that as a compliment. Maybe I also don’t remember NT well enough.
Yep same here. Fedora gnome. Though I went bluefin, atomic immutable etc. So not only does it work, I can’t break it either lol. Been rock solid for about a year now.
If I put my Mint computer to sleep, the wifi adapter stops working completely. 🤡
First thing to do on most linux distros, but especially mint, is turn off everything sleep-related forever.
I feel like no OS can get sleep to work properly lol
Sadly, MacOS is leading the pack with sleep working as expected. This is the most cursed timeline.
I’ve never really had problems with it on windows either. I use it 95% of the time as I want to continue where I left off. This includes leaving huge videogames on like Witcher 3.
If I had to guess it’s because Apple controls both hard- and software. Sleep is a delicate business where both the OS and the hardware have to work together to get it right. Linux and Windows run on an endless combination of different hardware components whereas Apple knows exactly on what hardware their OS will run.
And in true macOS fashion it only works if you stay within the Apple ecosystem.
Applications and sleep are intimately tied to native macOS workspaces, which are themselves cursed af.
If you use an alternative manager, like Aerospace (which reimplemented workspace/tiling), then applications cannot sleep properly, leading to severe battery drain.
Feren OS on a ThinkPad L390 sleeps and wakes perfectly. Probably because of thinkpad
SteamOS gets it mostly right
my desktop with arch (btw) also sleeps and wakes without issues
Same with my Arch install btw, suspend works fine. 🤷♂️
My openSUSE works without issues on my ThinkPad, including sleep. Back when I used EndeavourOS on a 2015 MacBook Pro putting it to sleep caused various problems (don’t really remember what).
I’ve literally never had a problem with this…that I know about.
What are you all turning off?
Ha! It’s the one issue that’s been giving me the biggest headache through multiple distros. To be fair I believe most of my problems originate from Nvidia hardware and software.
God yes, it was fucking with my partners graphics drivers, and killed most games I have running.
Wrong target, the graphics drivers are.
Yes absolutely, but the solution is to disable sleep.
I’ve been having this exact same problem. I don’t have a fix, but hey, comradery.
It’s annoying, but it isn’t feeding my data into the AIs.
Usual suspect, the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card. Milk spoils? Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Card! Freshly divorced? Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card!
Not true, sometimes it’s DNS.
Nah, it’s not DNS
Narrator: But it was DNS.
This was my exact experience with Manjaro.
I used to had linux mint in an old computer and for some reason the wifi didn’t work. I asked a couple of times how to fix it but was ignored everytime. I didn’t care because I used it connected it with the network cable, but my wife was really frustrated because she can’t take it around the house to listen to music and so. After a while of me telling her that I would fix it, she got really mad and told me that if in 2 weeks the wifi of that wasn’t working she would pay a technician to install windows on it. So I came back, not asking for a fix for the wifi bit for other distro easy to use like Mint and talked about the reason why I was leaving mint. And now, of course, people was willing to help me fix the wifi and even wrote me a script to execute on start to fix it.
When I first started using Linux, I was told that if I had a problem, I shouldn’t give a well-reasoned, well-documented description of what’s wrong and what steps I’ve tried, because everyone will ignore it. Instead, I was told to say that Linux sucks because I’m having this problem and I’d get 3.8 million angry fixes within 10 minutes.
This is true of nearly every topic.
If you’re like me and you work with computers for a living and you don’t really want to put in the hard work of fixing computers at home, you can do what I did. Which is to download an abliterated local AI and tell it what the problem is and what specs you’re working with and it will almost always fix it for you in like five minutes.
And when it doesn’t fix it in five minutes, it will destroy your operating system with whatever commands it tells you to paste in a terminal, and you were going to be wiping and reinstalling it anyway, so nothing lost.
all this time spent on setting up a local llm and reinstalling a whole system + setting it up again instead of reading the documentation 😭😭😭
Mfs can’t fix a wifi and are asked to install a maintain a local llm server.
This is how Microsoft develops Azure, except they don’t have the option of starting from scratch.
she got really mad and told me that if in 2 weeks the wifi of that wasn’t working she would pay a technician to install windows on it
That sounds super toxic tbh.
Why? Imagine your house’s door doesn’t work so you have to make a long trip through the back. You keep asking your partner to fix it. They insist they’ll get the door working. Either they can’t or don’t, doesn’t matter, but you have the money and are willing to pay for someone to fix it. Your partner insists they can fix it. I think it’s reasonable to say something like “if it’s not fixed in two weeks I’m paying someone to fix it.”
A door is not a computer. Treating your SO like your child is very toxic. If you still don’t see the problem I truly feel sorry for whoever you’re with.
Edit: A fully formed adult mind (referencing the wife from earlier) would conclude they should get a Windows computer for their very own, not manipulate and humiliate someone else.
I used to had linux mint in an old computer and for some reason the wifi didn’t work.
To me this implies it isn’t their primary computer. It’s not “manipulating and humiliating” someone else. It’s just saying, “you’ve been saying you’d fix this but it hasn’t worked, I need to use this computer for something.”
And no need to feel sorry for my wife. We’ve been together over half our lives, married for over a decade, and extremely happy with each other. My wife has done things like this to me. It’s not toxic or manipulative. Sometimes I overestimate my own skills and/or get distracted with other things.
Lmao, you need to grow up. How we didn’t think in just buying a new computer?! When you start to paying for your own rent, utilities and food, you would see that “just buying” the thing is never the solution to anything, because if you have the money to buy the things you don’t really have the problem.
If OP installs Linux on the machine she uses, something she needs doesn’t work, and OP doesn’t fix it, she really has no other options.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If OP is unable or unwilling to fix a problem that is important to her, why isn’t she allowed to pay someone to fix it?
You wouldn’t say its toxic if she threatens to call a plumber after OP promised multiple times to fix the leaking toilet.
Sound more like tongue in cheek to me, but it is impossible to tell from this few sentence comment.
