Personally I'm a bit in between an in-depth technical user and just someone who "uses the PC", I can

Personally I'm a bit in between an in-depth technical user and just someone who "uses the PC", I can figure most stuff out from my limited programming experience, but I don't really have a strong computer science background and I'm sort of catching up as I'm getting more and more into techie stuff. Like I'm doing the CCNA off youtube (Network Chuck) to understand networking etc.

I always say: I graduated as a designer, slowly became a web developer, slid into building back-ends and now dev-ops, so I suppose at the time I retire I'll be an embedded systems engineer

But I'm mainly interested in finding the best possible Linux alternative with the least amount of typical Linux-style chafing where jumping into the terminal is the only way to move forward so I can start recommending that to friends and family.

The way MS is shoving AI into every nook and cranny of Windows while barely seemingly having a grasp on its hallucinating properties and "well it works but, yeah it works" really looks like the platform's setting itself up for some high times for cyber criminality

old folks can barely keep up as it is, they don't need the latest and greatest, they need to be looked after a bit better.

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 7:47 AM

In that fashion I'm also a bit sorry to see that platforms like MX and openSUSE have amazing click-and-succeed tooling baked in while they could've maybe spent that time and effort making it work a little better across the whole of Linux.

YaST is awesome, I just want that for every disto.

DocMAX•6/9/24, 7:53 AM

is bazzite the future of linux gaming?

DocMAX•6/9/24, 7:56 AM

how can i make paru skip all questions by default? is there an option for .config/paru/paru.conf?

GGattaca Personally I'm a bit in between an in-depth technical user and just someone who ...

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:01 AM

As a distrohopper, I've tried to look at all the distros I use with a similar perspective, in case I ever recommended a Linux distro to a family member. Here's a few things from each:
Ubuntu: Ubuntu I would usually say is a great choice, but in my personal experience their new App Center has a lot of issues and has sort of made Ubuntu much more of a hassle to use.
Linux Mint: Overall my experience with Linux Mint has been great, the only problem I think is that it looks old. For people who don't mind, that's fine, but for those who do, it becomes a deal-breaker.
Pop!_OS: Pop is great, except for the fact that they haven't updated since they've been working on Cosmic. I'm sure it's still fine on the security end, but their packages aren't very fresh. Also, if you're planning to dual-boot, Pop doesn't have a dual boot option in the installer, so you'll need to do that manually. So if you're going to give it to a family member with dual boot, I suggest you do the install for them.
Zorin OS: Zorin is extremely old. While I personally have had no issues with this, I've heard people say tat gaming suffers due to the older kernel. I cannot say this has happened for me though. I don't game very much.
Manjaro: For God's sake and the sake of all things holy, stay away from Manjaro. Despite people calling Manjaro 'user friendly', it's not 'beginner friendly' in the slightest. It's 'user friendly' for advanced users. Manjaro also has a history of weird bugs, and they have issues with the AUR because they hold back some packages. It's also based on Arch, so you'll need to mantain it, and you can't just install it once and forget about it.
Fedora: While Fedora is great, it's also got some issues because of some licensing stuff. So if you're going to use Fedora, I'd say go with Ultramarine Linux, because it's just Fedora but with sane defaults.
<-- more below -->

Mmuhdsalm As a distrohopper, I've tried to look at all the distros I use with a similar pe...

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:02 AM

Thanks for your insights so far!

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:02 AM

Love reading these thoughts.

DocMAX•6/9/24, 8:05 AM

Arch is great but things break quickly

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:05 AM

Yeah I don't want to go near Arch just yet... I love the idea of it, but I feel safe, warm and fuzzy in Debian/Fedora based distro's.

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:11 AM

Personally I think the only desktop environment that looks good is Gnome... and I don't use it.

I'll pick Cinnamon or KDE Plasma any time, and if I have to, I'll plug extensions until Gnome looks like Cinnamon/KDE Plasma.

Honestly what I'd just love is a desktop environment that looks and feels as modern as Gnome, doesn't go out of it's way to be different just for the sake of being different (I know that's not the truth but it feels like it at times) and has a "two-mode" setup.

KDE is so cluttered with all its configs somewhere. I just want a toggle at the top of the config screen "nerd mode / user mode" and in user mode, all of the UI tweaking is hidden.

I appreciate Cosmic, and I'll definitely give it a look as soon as it's stable-ish, but I do hope our desktop environments don't become as fragmented as our distro's. It's good to have choice, but more than a handful of strong contenders is already a lot.

Aasen23 what language did you pick at this screen

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:13 AM

Yeah I'm at this step and I completely cruised through it without looking at it, sorry to have wasted your time, I'll have coffee BEFORE my first distro hop in the morning next time, thanks for the help though!

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:13 AM

Solus: I have not used Solus since the infrastructure issues they had in early 2023, so my information on it is extremely outdated. However, last I used it, their store did not support Flatpak, and there was a weird bug where steam caused the entire system to get destroyed. If you've been following Linux news, you'll know a similar thing happened with Pop OS, but the difference here is that whereas Pop OS's software store stopped you from doing that, Solus' store didn't. They also have limited packages, but they also have a request page where you can request packages. However, the news from early 2023 said they were planning on moving to a new immutable base with Solus Linux 5, and I'm honestly extremely intrigued to see how they do things with that. (This information is around a year old at this point, so take it with a grain of salt)
Vanilla OS: Vanilla's going through a bit of a transitionary period, and they themselves discourage installing it at this point.
Fedora Silverblue: If we're talking about the vanilla Silverblue, I don't like it. The Fedora licensing issues are back, but this time they're immutable and changing them is a hassle. However, if we're talking about the Universal Blue project...
Universal Blue: Universal Blue is what changed me from a silverblue hater to a lover. They provide their own version of Silverblue which removes all the licensing issues and include a lot of tweaks, most of which I don't need because my hardware isn't that great, but for someone who does it could be deal breaker (I don't really know). They also provide Bluefin and Aurora (I'm running Bluefin currently), but I don't really know much about them at this point. I also like the idea of forking my own image, but I'm assuming your friends and family definitely wouldn't.
<--just a little bit more below-->

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:24 AM

I want to dedicate this message to a few Fedora based distros that really intrigued me:
Nobara: Nobara claims to be Fedora but point-and-click friendly. I've heard a lot of things about Nobara being great for gaming, but as a non-gamer I don't know much about that. The thing that scares me a bit is that it says it's a 'hobby' distro, so from what I can tell if the creator abandons the project everyone is pretty much screwed. Which isn't likely, given who the creator is, but even then.
Ultramarine Linux: Ultramarine is also another 'Fedora but friendlier' distro, but their primary goal is to make a distro that is set-it-and-forget-it, and although they are working on beginner-friendly apps and stuff, and they've said that friends and family are part of the target audience, being beginner-friendly is not the main goal. The team behind Ultramarine also has another distro called TauOS, but from what I could learn it's still in the planning stage.

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:25 AM

All of this is just my personal experience and interpretation, though, and my hardware has been generally Linux-friendly, so YMMV

Mmuhdsalm I want to dedicate this message to a few Fedora based distros that really intrig...

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:26 AM

Never tried MX Linux?

I couldn't handle the UI but the tooling is supposedly great. I'll try the KDE version to see if they managed to screw that UI up

GGattaca Never tried MX Linux? I couldn't handle the UI but the tooling is supposedly gr...

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:27 AM

Not yet. I probably should though

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:27 AM

MX Linux doesn't have an upgrade path though

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:27 AM

So you install version x, you're stuck with it

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:28 AM

That's not a problem for me, but it's completely useless for the average user

Mmuhdsalm Not yet. I probably should though

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:30 AM

I also didn't see you list base Debian, it's actually doable these days!

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:31 AM

Most of these notes are from when I was a frequent distrohopper. That's not to say I don't still do it, but I've lost my files a few too many times, so I don't do it as frequently and always try to do it carefully

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:32 AM

In happier news, I got a spare machine recently and I'm planning to do all my experiments on that

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:32 AM

Ah, I've been "hard drive liberated" for a decade now, I use tools like pCloud and git to make sure I don't have anything of value on my own hardware

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:33 AM

Though as a developer I generally don't have a lot of big files

GGattaca Ah, I've been "hard drive liberated" for a decade now, I use tools like pCloud a...

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:33 AM

I don't trust the cloud

. I probably should back up to a hard drive, though

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:33 AM

pCloud is Swiss

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:34 AM

And I think EU's shown themselves an advocate of taking care of people over companies the past few years

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:34 AM

I feel safe enough keeping stuff in EU-based servers

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:39 AM

OK I need some help with something extremely important that's been blocking me for days now.

I need a proper naming scheme for all of the systems I have, and I need a good pool to sample from because I might have anything from ten to fifty computers in my "care" at some point

(Yeap...)

It used to be moons of the solar system but I'm so fed up with those wacky names.

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:40 AM

Japanese cartoon suggestions can leave the building as quickly as they entered.

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:40 AM

I mean, you could just name them common household items

muhdsalm•6/9/24, 8:40 AM

But I'm assuming you're looking for something more fun?

GGattaca Yeah I'm at this step and I completely cruised through it without looking at it,...

asen23•6/9/24, 8:43 AM

no worries

Mmuhdsalm I mean, you could just name them common household items

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:49 AM

Yeeeaaahh gattaca@spoon doesn't really do it for me

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 8:51 AM

I'll go for Jagged Alliance 2 town names until I run out

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 9:12 AM

I did have a weird issue last night on Bazzite, I was watching series, the screen would go off and by no means other than a reset I'd get my screen back.

DocMAX•6/9/24, 9:18 AM

does anyone know how to install an rdp server on bazzite that launches a KDE desktop?

DocMAX•6/9/24, 9:19 AM

https://planet.kde.org/arjen-hiemstra-2023-08-08-remote-desktop-using-the-rdp-protocol-for-plasma-wayland/

DocMAX•6/9/24, 9:19 AM

ahh!

DocMAX•6/9/24, 9:27 AM

https://github.com/KDE/krdp
how is this installed?

Mmuhdsalm I want to dedicate this message to a few Fedora based distros that really intrig...

GattacaOP•6/9/24, 9:38 AM

I'll try Ultramarine per your recommendation