Fair enough. Thanks!

Fortunately with Linux, choice is the name of the game!

I’m curious why you wouldn’t recommend mint. Is it due to some kind of problem, or is it just a personal taste thing?

I use mint daily so if there are potential issues I just want to know!

If he got the cinnamon version, that is indeed the default Ubuntu based one. I use the same thing.

One of the biggest draws of regular Mint IMO is that it leverages the advantages and resources of Ubuntu but it removes the parts that many people don’t like.

it shocked me that anyone could value personal wealth over coexisting

Laughs in freedom units

I’m good with cinnamon myself, but you can totally install KDE on mint instead. It is just Linux after all.

When I do a search for mint kde, this is the first result and has step by step instructions. It looks like it can be as simple as apt install kde-standard or kde-full.

https://linuxiac.com/how-to-install-kde-plasma-on-linux-mint-22/

I’m tempted, and I may mess with it some day, but honestly after tweaking some settings I’m pretty happy with how my cinnamon desktop performs.

That’s the proprietary app container system pushed by Canonical who maintains Ubuntu. That’s as opposed to something more widely accepted like flatpak. I’m not an expert on everything Canonical has done to piss of the FOSS community, but I think snaps are the biggest one.

And in regular old Linux Mint Cinnamon you don’t have to deal with that, and you can still lean on Ubuntu’s apt repositories.

And when Mint is right there too.

I have Ubuntu packages all through my system and I don’t need to care about whatever BS canonical is up to. Worst case scenario is I switch to LMDE one day.

My first was Sun Solaris Unix, but now I’m a middle aged engineer who wants to fix company product issues rather than personal workstation issues, and Mint rocks my socks.

The mundanity of my computer working seamlessly every day is right up there with the mundanity of my car starting every morning, as far as how much it bothers me, lol.

But there’s nothing wrong with messing with your car’s engine or your computer’s OS, obviously. Some people are just in a place where they want to do that and some aren’t.

The regular version uses a lot of Ubuntu resources but doesn’t have snaps either.

I might have the exception to this. I’m able to dual boot my work laptop, as can the other engineers in my department. So it’s effectively a Linux machine under my exclusive administration. The only request from my IT department was how to format the host name.

I’m still not taking chances with that thing though, even when on my home network. The rules exist even if there’s a 99.99% chance they won’t be enforced. I have nothing to gain from doing nefarious shit on it just to prove a point, lol.

Can’t take calls? Don’t threaten ME with a good time!

This comment inspired me to go turn off microphone, camera, Bluetooth, and local network access for every app. I’ll reenable as necessary.

Yeah it’s right up there on the list of what shareholders need to survive:

Water

Food

Solid CAGR of investment portfolio

Shelter

Human contact

Etc

(CAGR being Compound Annual Growth Rate)

That’s a good point. AIs/LLMs will exist and will necessarily learn from copyrighted materials without traceability back to the copyright owners to compensate them.

Sounds to me like AIs/LLMs can’t and shouldn’t be proprietary systems owned by private entities for profit, then.

They have LMDE that they maintain so that Mint can continue if Ubuntu ever goes away. And of course, some people choose to just run LMDE now.

Mint is great.

I use Linux Mint cinnamon on a daily basis, typically with one or two command line terminals open at all times (one normal and one in a docker container), and with some kind of code always open too. I use 4 monitors as well, which the same machine can’t handle when I boot into windows.

No apologies and no regrets. Being user friendly doesn’t mean it’s limited. It uses Ubuntu and Debian stuff after all, just with the controversial Ubuntu stuff removed.

The size of Twitter’s user base and its ubiquitous use by celebrities and the media gave the platform an air of legitimacy that is what Musk vaporized his billions to get. He obviously didn’t value the brand or the workforce.

We need that false sense of legitimacy to keep getting chipped away in the eyes of mainstream society.

Yep, now with having my pond chores zen time and being able to enjoy the end results, I think I fully understand what gets people into gardening. I’ve just been forever obsessed with aquatic life.

Oh no, the microbiology guy I’m talking about is beyond full time with his farm. He’s there 7 days a week when he’s not traveling to shows.

And that’s just taking care of the fish and growing them out, not breeding them. He imports from Japanese breeders.

As for breeding new babies and selling them, it’s certainly possible but there probably isn’t a ton of profit in it. Any time I’ve thought about it I’ve thought two things: I don’t want to deal with rando customers and I don’t want to turn my happy peaceful hobby into a job.

I have taken a half step in this direction and it’s improved my life greatly.

I still have a normal job, but my Covid project back in 2020 was to finally put a koi pond in my back yard. I spend way more time learning and thinking about it than keeping up on tech shit. And the job I have now is great - I’m not trying to escape from it or anything.

The best part is that even the guy I bought my recent koi from has a microbiology degree. He’s properly living the “x farmer” dream, but that “job” is much more than a 9-5.