I agree with your reservation about Manjaro. However, you did get one thing wrong:

They pushed an update that caused steam to uninstall your desktop environment. Famously covered by linus tech tips…

That was Pop!_OS (unless it happened a second time??)

And it’s not like it contains any sensitive information. I’m sure all your emails are just friendly correspondence with your pen pal.

Because why not 🙂

Because security.

Great comparison, a dialect used by millions of people to a dead language. It really shows how much you care about the people who speak that dialect…

I’m glad to see other people go into Linux for positive reasons instead of just hating Windows. What really got me was Compiz. Initially, it was all the crazy effects like wobbly windows, but soon I realized how much I liked the “Workspace” paradigm and then being able to customize things as much as I wanted. Then, the whole free software thing, distro-hopping, the great communities, etc.

I can’t find anything to anything to support their assertion that a E5300 is a “Pentium 2”, but the chip is from 2008, so it’s not relevant to your situation. Maybe they meant it was a Pentium from the Core2Duo time, but that’s still not a “Pentium 2”.

In addition to what other people have said about gdebi, I’m surprised it’s not there by default in Pop. I thought it was there in pretty much all Ubuntu-based distros (except where alternatives are used).

I totally get not wanting to use the terminal for this purpose. It’s pretty rare that I download and install a .deb, but when I do, it’s nice to just click it straight from the browser and not have to navigate to my download folder in the terminal. And given how rarely I download and install .deb files, I have to look up the command every time.

Nice try FBI!

I’ve been using Linux Mint Cinnamon for years now, after distro-hopping for a decade. I think there’s 2 main reasons Mint has stuck:

1. Cinnamon - I think it looks pretty while not being overly heavy (though I think that all DEs are pretty efficient nowadays, I’ll take all the performance I can get out of this 14-year-old ThinkPad x201). It has good features while operating fairly stable. It’s also stable in that there’s few drastic changes.

2. Ubuntu, but slightly better - I like Ubuntu, and used it on-and-off for years (Warty through at least Precise), but Ubuntu’s made a lot of drastic changes over the years which messed with my workflow. Other changes I just disliked (ex Snaps), and I feel like they keep trying to force these changes on users. Whenever something’s hard or impossible on Mint, I feel it’s a technical challenge, not the distro actively preventing me from doing it. It’s nice to have a Ubuntu based distro because most instructions found online Just Work™.

It’s all Ext4, but I run SnapRAID on top of that on my data drives. I’m sure lots of people would tell me I should use ZFS/BTRFS instead, but I’m used to SnapRAID, and I like the idea if something goes wrong, I won’t lose all my data.

Oh, I don’t disagree. I’ve definitely done some of that. I think I installed i3 or awesomeWM back on LM19.x/20.x. However, this is a guide that says things like, “For a smooth and trouble-free installation”. It seems to be aimed at a general audience when I think those people should just be re-directed to a KDE-distro.

If you want KDE, why not use a KDE-distro? Any time I’ve installed a different Desktop Environment, I’ve found it pretty janky.

It also might not come on even for affected users. OP’s comment in the reddit post:

From gathering info on their issue tracker, the act of opening the video file but not grab frames is some weird usecase that is acting in weird ways. Additionally, the indicator light is turned on by the uvcvideo driver in a lot of hardware (yes, an attacker can theoretically watch you without you noticing). A possible fix for this is would be in the kernel itself, which should basically ignore the fd being open and only truly act when frames are grabbed.

IMHO, it has a TrackPoint, there’s no need for a a trackpad. I have a x201 on Linux Mint and literally just disable the trackpad.

I’m pretty sure that’s not what autoremove does.

“uninstall” isn’t an option for apt. You might be thinking of “remove” but in OP’s case “purge” probably makes more sense.

Can you explain? As a Mint user with really old hardware, I appreciate using the LTS kernel. However, I also appreciate them giving users other options.

If you have new hardware, why wouldn’t you use the Edge ISO?

They have a fairly new version called Edge that ships with a newer kernel (currently 6.5).

What packages are broken? I haven’t run into any.

P.S. I think Snaps are now the fuss, so I still think Mint is Ubuntu with the fuss.