Haha. I don’t believe in destiny, but the things you like about Windows are the things I liked about Windows before I switched to Linux.

You’ll find many other fans of cracking / Liberating software, here. It’s where the “Libre” we talk about comes from.

Anyway, keep asking questions of you’re curious.

I’ll just add that I haven’t used the command line for anything basic on Linux in several years. Command line is really not necessary anymore, unless I’m doing something advanced like modding my games. Actually, I guess I haven’t modded anything in awhile that didn’t come with a graphical kit. But I’m sure I still might, for the right mod.

I suppose it makes sense for Ubuntu to slowly go down as the bad news about Snaps and the great news about Linux Mint spreads.

Edit: But if we trust the data, I guess the real great news is Arch, btw. Haha!

Also if they want malware infections through notepad.exe - I can probably accomplish that on Linux with Wine, but it would take more effort.

Edit: I might give up and just send the Malware author a few bucks, out of pity.

Yes. Great point. I do try to give each game a test run before I schedule a group of friends to play it together. I guess I did that on Windows, as well.

When I was a big windows gamer the result tended to just be it works or it doesn’t, on my current hardware. But maybe that’s just gaming today. I think we have better optimization options, in general, now.

I’m not sure when things changed, as my journey was Windows PC Gamer to console gamer to SteamDeck to Linux PC gamer.

I think PC gaming, in general, got much nicer while I was only playing consoles.

I was gonna partition my gaming PC’s main drive and try Linux Mint on it.

Nice!

If you can afford it, I lately recommend getting a separate harddrive, and physically taking the Windows drive out, and putting a blank drive in, to run Linux on.

Windows has never liked to share, and has gotten worse (more aggressive preventing other operating systems from booting) with various integrations into BIOS for secure boot.

Also, either way, be sure to back everything up while Windows is still installed. It is much easier to lose data today, due to secure boot and full disk encryption being the default.

(Putting the Windows drive back in and resetting any BIOS settings should be enough, but it is possible that Windows will decide it wants the full disk encryption (FDE) password. I believe I have found my FDE password on the web through Microsoft account, but there’s just more that can go wrong, today. So I prefer to just have my files backed up so I can relax.)

(And be aware that it may not be possible to backup files directly from a removed Windows drive, if full disk encryption was enabled. There’s probably a utility for it, as long as you have the FDE password. But again, it’s much less effort to just make backups before pulling the Windows drive out.)

I’ve had the best experience booting to a fresh blank harddrive and installing Linux Mint on it, and throwing the Windows drive into a drawer until I find I want the extra drive space more than I want a retreat path to Windows.

My oldish Nvidia 4xxx GPU worked immediately and automatically on Linux Mint.

Your mileage may vary.

Edit: To be clear, I didn’t do any command line, or even change a setting. Mint just automatically detected my Nvidia GPU and got it working during the install while I looked at pretty pictures and new user tips.

(Disclaimer: Folks here have warned me this may have been some combination of luck and my Nvidia GPU being a few years old.)

When my Mint install finished, I searched for “Steam” in the Mint software center and clicked “Install”.

A few minutes later I was playing a game from my Steam library without any issues, without any config changes, and without any command line use.

Edit 2: On Linux, there’s a little Penguin icon in the Steam library filters. Click that, and it’ll only show your games that Valve is pretty confident will run without any issue.

It took me a few clicks to realize it did anything, at all. Very few of my games were filtered out. None of my games that were filtered out happened to fit in the first page of search results.

So at first it looked like penguin filter button did nothing.

90-99% of the solutions originally for Ubuntu worked for me in Pop.

Yes. When I’m running Debian, Mint, or various other Debian variants, the vast majority of “Ubuntu” recipes just work.

Sometimes on Debian, itself, an Ubuntu recipe doesn’t work because some feature hasn’t made it into “Debian stable” yet. But usually it’s fine if the Ubuntu article is at least a year old.

Want to test if a game runs on Linux? Great, set aside a couple of hours beforehand: first to install steam and set it up, then to figure out Proton, then to troubleshoot the game not even booting up, then to fix any glitches or whatnot, then to get your controller working.

Alternately, install Linux Mint. Search the software store for Steam. Click Install. Let Steam do it’s first run install stuff. Sign into Steam. Click the little Penguin icon to see which games should run fine on Linux. Install some by clicking on them. Enjoy games.

I love the phrase “ricing my daily Debian driver”.

I do often have this feeling “everyone could be enjoying this”.

Once in awhile it comes out when someone asks me about how I countered some Microsoft or Apple bullshit, and I admit I jumped ship and have been enjoying software freedom.

A few have actually switched after interrogating me about my experiences.

If you have the luxury of access to multiple computers, or the expertise to dual boot, those are what worked for me.

I ran Linux and Windows side by side for years.

Over time, returning to the Windows shifted from “Ah, nice and familiar” to “oh, not this bullshit, again”.

Once I was comfortable with both, all the corporate bullshit became very noticable on Windows.

Your logic is sound.

The motive and skillet are certainly there.

But there sure are many eyes on RedHat’s source code, and IBM has a lot to lose if they got caught putting in a back door.

Plus, the US government uses it for their own sensitive stuff, so one would hope they have the wisdom not to shit where they eat, installing a back door that 100% would get used against them.

None of my arguments really outweigh yours, if I’m honest.

But I also don’t blame anyone who trusts RedHat Linux, today.

+1 to this line on inquiry.

When I’ve managed to get a modern Linux desktop to freeze, I’ve had a bad power supply, or heat issues, each time ( specifically when I have had a full freeze, where even the alternate terminals didn’t respond ).

No, I can’t access another tty during a freeze, unfortunately.

That’s may be a hint!

The only times I’ve had the desktop freeze on Linux and the alternate terminals fail to respond, I had a hardware issue.

In one case, I was on a Raspberry Pi, and my power supply was not delivering clean enough power for the board.

In another case, my fan wasn’t connected properly and the motherboard was overheating.

Edit: Oh! I think I had this behavior once with a RAM stick that was terribly subtly not quite all the way in the slot.

Good question.

Seems like waypipe is needed for Wayland. https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html/getting_started_with_the_gnome_desktop_environment/remotely-accessing-an-individual-application-wayland_getting-started-with-the-gnome-desktop-environment

I initially misread your question as “What good is remote desktop software?” and I thought, "look at this person, humble bragging that they are fit enough to occasionally walk across the room.

I guess now I need to go exercise.

Also ssh -X is nice.

I second the recommendation of Linux Mint. Try a Live USB, and see if it feels fast. If it does, it is a great option.

In terms of theme, have you considered that Linux Mint’s theme is sexy as hell? I wouldn’t install it apologetically. I think it sells itself well.

Edit: and the practical stuff is all in the same places as on Windows, anyway. Start menu is in the lower left. Bar is along the bottom. Time and network applet are in the lower right.

The few ways I have noticed it is different seem to be because Mint doesn’t require corporate branding and names a few things in plain language, instead of MS jargon.

To me, XMPP is still the instant messaging gold standard. Everything has an app (or seventeen apps) supporting it, and it tends to just work.

My experiences with XMPP are: very good.

Matrix does more. I have used it on and off for fancier online meet-up type stuff. As others have said, it is relatively new, and that has various costs and drawbacks.

I won’t use the word piracy to refer to sharing. Sharing is good and it should be lawful. Those laws are wrong. Copyright as it is now is an injustice.

Once again, I’m impressed by Stallman’s focus on not accepting a bad faith arguement at face value.

We didn’t always have shitty laws about when we can copy a file.

Some of us remember when creators had to get creative how they monetized their work, instead of bludgeoning fans with the threat of jail time.

Paranoia is good.

That said, I’ve run his build for a year or so without any issues.