Well, maybe it was considered user friendly decades ago, but with the way interfaces evolved, it didn’t progress all too much. Peoples’ expectations did change, though.

Didn’t hear about it, at least recently when Linus Torvals came to Linus Sebastian (aka Linus Tech Tips), they were still discussing Fedora

Yes, they want to phase it out, though currently it’s still there. My general point is, it’s just not designed for Linux newcomers and that’s a big shame.

Interesringly, ostree didn’t solve the VPN issue for me, and for others too. Works fine on all mutable distros I tried, though (including regular Fedora editions).

Can’t remember how it went with Wine. Besides, as far as I remember, installing native packets via ostree drastically increases update size and adds extra entries to manage, putting a limit on how much stuff you can reasonably install this way.

With that, I figured I’d rather take mutable system and apply good practices to it whenever possible. Snapshots? Check. Flatpaks? Always preferred. Sane management for native app repos? Yes. And with that, I never had my system fail me.

My use case can be a bit rare and specific, but there are plenty of different “rare issues” out there, and there’s nothing more frustrating than figuring out your distro doesn’t work with thing X and nothing can be done about it.

Immutable distros are cool, and hopefully it will all get resolved in a sane way. But to me, we’re not there yet.

Last time I touched immutables I couldn’t run software for censorship-resistant VPNs. Regular services are all blocked in my area (even more sophisticated ones like Mullvad and onion-routed Proton tunnels), so it takes a more involved software that doesn’t work on immutables. That was a dealbreaker for me personally.

Besides, some things work better as native packages, not Flatpaks or Distroboxes. Wine is a simple example - sure, you can use Flatpaks like Bottles or Lutris or PortProton, but if you just want Wine without bells and whistles, native packet works much better than Flatpak.

Agree Mint is not the best option, in a big part because of their refusal to embrace QT and KDE, but I don’t think every newbie needs immutability.

We often assume Linux newbies to be a bit of a grandma-style user - just browse, work with docs and play games from time to time.

But people coming to Linux are no average demographic - they are often enthusiastic about their computers and advanced use cases, and that’s when they will get stuck with immutables because things work different there. Some things are different, some are harder, and some are pretty much impossible to do. Tinkering is complicated compared to traditional distros. Besides, it will always feel limiting, even if it directs you towards the best practices.

I like the way things are organized in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed - it’s a regular mutable rolling release distribution, yet, thanks to snapper being beautifully configured out of the box, you can be sure you can revert nearly everything. Big changes, like initiating an update, automatically trigger snapshots of all system and program files, and they are available from GRUB, so you can always revert with ease. To me, it’s a very healthy compromise between ability to tinker and safety of the system.

Unfortunately, however, Tumbleweed does little to appeal to newbie users. Sure, it has some graphical tools (take YaST), but they are severely outdated and don’t explain much to the user, some updates require nuances Discover cannot work with, prompting the user to go with command-line tools, etc. I would love for something to emerge that would be similar in philosophy to Tumbleweed, but more newbie-friendly.

Also, love Flatpaks and install them whenever I can. Saves so much trouble.

I mean, literally Linus himself runs Fedora for this very reason.

About a year ago, burned my family photo collection as yet another backup. Took a stack of DVD-R’s to write, but now I also have it in one more format!

Fair enough

My favorite is KDE asking for user password upon waking from sleep even if you have autologin enabled.

So, all you have to do to circumvent the login window is to reboot.

Incredibly stupid, but should work

My favorite kind of advice

Even with Windows

Interesting

X11 is heavily outdated and vulnerable, but it features one thing Wayland doesn’t: it works with everything.

So, if Wayland checks your points, go Wayland. If something breaks - X11 is there to back you up.

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It is! But the extent to which it is used is limited by the efficiency losses that come with electrolysis, logistics, and reverse conversion.

I assume it could still be useful in applications that require long hauls, as dragging a heavy and expensive battery around can negate efficiency benefits over the long runs.

RustDesk could be a brilliant option, but the company is huge and there’s little chance to alter management decisions of this magnitude. This would take a lot of work on IT team, and as of right now, they can’t even care to update what they have, featuring outdated clients because they somehow “work better”.

But anyway, thanks for advice! Could be useful for my own projects.

X11 applications still run under XWayland

Somehow with XWayland enabled, the app still specifically demanded an actual X11 session

What’s Omnissa’s stance there?

They promise it will be done, but they already moved the dates several times

Migration would be great, but it’s not sometching an individual employee can do of an employer uses what it uses.

You make it look like old Nvidia cards are the only reason X11 is held around.

Heck, I had trouble installing remote desktop for my work (they use Omnissa Horizon) on Fedora, because the app still exclusively supports X11, and Fedora removed it in version 42.

There are plenty of instances of similar things happening here and there, and currently, ditching X11 will still be catastrophic for many users’ workflows.

Ideally, yes. But if Nvidia is stubborn, there are two ways to go about it:

• Say “screw it”, shift blame on Nvidia and not do anything to support Nvidia users (halving the userbase)
• Or do something about it and implement what is necessary to keep them supported.