If you have a desktop/laptop, you run Linux.
If you have a Mac, you run OSX.
Im not sure where you’re going with this OP, unless you’re looking for purchasing advice. It’s kinda like asking if a car or truck tire is better, with the answer being “well, do you have a car or a truck?”
Neat! Bookmarking that, thanks.
Mint.
You’re already familiar with it, so it will just be the least time invested doing stuff.
If you’re trying to squeeze out performance/efficiency, you can load CachyOS and play with it. As an example, it has a scheduler (lavd) specifically designed to minimize idle power use, and another one (tickless) specifically optimized for docker containers/VMs. It has easy access to optimized Java to make modded Minecraft faster. Stuff like that. But ask yourself if you want to spend time messing with that.
I just let KDE handle it. I think… it was a long time ago. I’ll turn on my PC and check my fstab in a sec.
But yeah. I’d recommend a fresh install, with the philosophy of “don’t mess with the defaults unless it isn’t working, or you have a very good reason.” As not only are CachyOS defaults pretty good, but they’re set up in a way so the system will maintain itself through updates.
It’s (ironically) very different than my experience with Ubuntu, where I had to manually maintain a bunch of stuff and fight the system packages.
I think I may have installed ntfs-3g before the reboot
Isn’t this the legacy driver? Why do you need it?
…Respectfully, it feels like you’re falling into the classic Arch trap of “messing with too much stuff.”
I mount a whole bunch of NTFS Sata partitions at boot, on CachyOS, and they don’t need a password or FUSE driver package or anything. It just works out of the box. The only thing I chose to mess with was adding a single mount flag in fstab, and only so it plays with Windows permissions better.
For LLM hosting, ik_llama.cpp. You can really gigantic models at acceptable speeds with its hybrid CPU/GPU focus, at higher quality/speed than mainline llama.cpp, and it has several built in UIs.
LanguageTool, for self run grammar/spelling/style checking.
Keep an eye on Open Web UI. I’ve heard rumblings that it’s starting to enshittify.
FYI, A1111 is obsolete. The diffusers or comfy-based backends are way faster, richer, less buggy and support newer things.
I’d recommend UIs that support SVDQuant, in particular.
I suppose not. Not yet.
I know people are particular about WMs, but having to minimize a window vs keeping the window decoration in place seems like a… very minor distinction.
Is the use case rearranging a ton of windows? Something like that?
Oops, thanks.
Apparently, this is hardly hyperbole. For example: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=377162
Talk about arrogance. In the window paradigm, only a few desktops ever REQUIRED a similar look and feel for all windows. Apple was the worst offender for that. I suggest that if Edmundson wants a similar look and feel, he should go get himself a Mac and stop mucking up KDE.
From a quick look at the proposed patch - and obviously without having the full picture - it’s true that it would add some complexity. But it’s code for the sake of people’s convenience, not the other way around, right? IMHO, as long as:
- shading is off by default,
- users get a clear message about limitations and SSD/CSD complications before enabling it,
- the implementation doesn’t introduce impossible-to-maintain logic and limits some weird edge cases like resizing a shaded window, then it’s worth doing.
TBH this is one reason I got off Ubuntu/KDE Neon.
It kept trying to roll Nvidia+KDE fixes forward (including one I dealt with in their bug tracker), which I had to manually figure out and maintain, which I kept breaking, so I finally decided “why don’t I just use a distro where everything Nvidia/KDE is up to date?”
It’s a very Linux thing.
People get very particular about their setups.
The KDE bug tracker now:
I don’t even know what window shading is…. What is it?
It looks like it’s still being discussed:
Yeah. I would massively emphasize this too.
Don’t mess around.
Especially don’t mess around with AUR. Discrete packages are fine, but AUR tweaks that mess with the system are asking for trouble, as they have no guarantee of staying in sync with base Arch packages.
Ease of use.
I’ve run the same CachyOS partition for 2 (3?) years, and I don’t do a freaking thing to it anymore. No fixes, no tweaking. It just works.
…Because the tweaks and rapid updates are constantly coming down the pipe for me. I pay attention to them and any errors, but it’s all just done for me! Whenever I run into an issue, a system update fixes it 90% of the time, and if it doesn’t it’s either coming or my own stupid mistake.
On Ubuntu and some other “slow” distros I was constantly:
Fighting bugs in old packages
Fighting and maintaining all the manual fixes for them
Fighting the system which does not like me rolling packages forward.
And breaking all that for a major system update, instead of incremental ones where breakage is (as it turns out) more manageable.
I’d often be consulting the Arch wiki, but it wasn’t really applicable to my system.
I could go on and on, but it was miserable and high maintenance.
I avoided Fedora because of the 3rd party Nvidia support, given how much trouble I already had with Nvidia.
…It seems like a misconception that it’s always “a la carte” too. The big distros like Endeavor and Cachy and such pick the subsystems for you. And there are big application groups like KDE that install a bunch of stuff at once.
Hence, Zuckerberg has just recently fired most of the LLAMA staff, the lab’s leader is rumored to be leaving for their own startup, and the new lab where all the funding’s going is a bunch of tech bro egos that are pro-closed models.
…And I suspect PyTorch is too “utilitarian” for Facebook’s leadership to draw enshittification attention.
Llama was an anomaly, and it seems they’re done with that. Which is quite sad. But on the plus side, it could be a death knell for Meta (as all that ego in the new lab will be a catastrophe).
Well, the next question is “what do you do when you drive?” Cars and trucks have wildly different roles they’re good at.
So basically, what do you want your computer to be good at doing? That dictates your hardware purchase and the OS you will end up using.