I used Plex for my home media for almost a year, then it stopped playing nice for reasons I gave up on diagnosing. While looking at alternatives, I found Jellyfin which is much more responsive, IMO, and the UI is much nicer as well.
It gets relegated to playing Fraggle Rock and Bluey on repeat for my kiddo these days, but I am absolutely in love with the software.
What are some other FOSS gems that are a better experience UX/UI-wise than their proprietary counterparts?
EDIT: Autocorrect turned something into “smaller” instead of what I meant it to be when I wrote this post, and I can’t remember what I meant for it to say so it got axed instead.
Linux in general. MacOS if fine, but the app ecosystem is often annoying. And Windows is just a complete dumpster fire these days.
MacOS is a literal dumpster fire. The vast majority of their haters just got an immediate obsolete call. and Windows 11 has been absolutely amazing. I can’t tell if you are being satirical
Literally squeezing the last months out of a Win7 laptop before services abandon it this January, & then it’ll get Linux on its cramped little SSD
Any idea what distro you’re leaning toward?
No. I’m open to suggestions.
If I had to install right now, it would be Debian, just out of familiarity.
Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Linux Mint, even Kali are fundamentally changed from when I last tried them.
Linux window managers change more often than I need to reinstall; I get really tired of picking a distro based largely on its choice of window manager, just to end up with Gnome installed anyway after a few packages fetch their dependencies.
The other nice thing about running vanilla Debian (or Ubuntu) is that at least some of the documentation for some apps, will be applicable!?
It sounds like you’re more familiar with Linux than the average person, so I’ll forgo advising Ubuntu or Mint. I personally prefer Pop!_OS, but that’s also because I was a MacOS user for a while and like the feel of that.
I am also more comfy on distros that use the apt package manager, but learning a new one is pretty minor.
As you said you like Win7, which feels fairly straight forward, there are a couple that strike me as something you might like. They are less flashy, lower on resource requirements, and generally stay out of the way.
Xubuntu - it’s based off Ubuntu, and is downstream from Debian, so there is quite a bit of support in forums that is applicable. It’s pretty lightweight, and gets the job done. Everything generally seems to “just work”. The bad: resizing windows with the mouse cursor is sensitive and difficult.
MX Linux, or a distro with a KDE environment (there are several (Ubuntu, neon, or pop_OS(?)). KDE feels a lot like “windows”, but also incorporates some sensible enhancements. The enhancements aren’t flashy (not like Mint)… they just make sense and feel right. The Bad: you need to go into settings and change single-clicking a file/program from opening the item to selecting it. One thing to note is that MXLinux does add a few things to the right click contextual menu, which might also drive you nuts–it does me. MX is good, but didn’t feel right for me. The other KDE options don’t do this IIRC.
EndeavorOS - A pretty lightweight option that also feels very traditional with few frills like Win7. I don’t have as much experience with this distro as I would like. It uses Pakman and AUR, which I am least familiar with, and is also a rolling distro from what I understand, which might eliminate this option if you’re looking for stability. Although, I’ve read many comments from people who have had zero issues for years with it. But, there are things you have to be proactive about like snapshotting before updating that can make it a hassle.
Distrowatch.com is a great tool to check the pros and cons out if you haven’t seen it already.
EDIT: I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but you can also simply install KDE on Debian as well. This might be a really good option since you’re already familiar with it.
Haven’t looked at MX Linux before, thanks for the info!
Like I said, I really can’t care much about window managers at this point. Mostly, I’m tired of having multiple window managers installed after just a few app installs. If I start out with Gnome\Plasma, I’ll surely end up wanting some apps that have only been made for KDE, & vice versa. Never once have I seen a Linux machine that had all the apps I’d want, using just one window manager.
I suppose most apps could be compiled from source to run on one or the other, but alternative compiles have invariably been a hassle to me…
Since I end up needing at least two window managers installed anyway & they keep changing generations about 10x as often as I change machines, it’s pointless for me to have a preference. The best window manager is whichever one each developer of each app happened to use?!?