• AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I do some e-wasting for a number of big companies and have piles of old laptops. I’ve taken to giving the laptops to people that need computers and the ones with Linux don’t taken. I literally can’t give away Linux computers. They can buy their own windows licenses.

  • azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Like if people actually cared that a Windows version goes EoL. That literally means nothing to most people and typical PC user won’t even notice anything until something will functionally break, which will take YEARS after it’s EoL.

  • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 days ago
    • Plasma is more similar to Windows
    • Plasma is more customizable
    • Plasma is just as beginner-friendly
    • Plasma has more features
    • Plasma is more actively developed
    • Plasma looks better

    Don’t get me wrong, Cinnamon is fine, but it gets recommended religiously to beginners for some reason. It just doesn’t make sense, so I will keep repeating this, not least to keep alive the ancient linux tradition of Desktop wars.

    Still, any Windows to Linux transition is a step forward and I support this, upvoted.

    • Karu 🐲@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      As someone who has extensively used both Cinnamon and Plasma: I find Plasma a lot less polished, by a huge margin. Not only do settings have unusual defaults and are located in places you wouldn’t expect, it also often has desktop-breaking bugs out of nowhere even in stable versions, and this has only gotten worse with Wayland. Even as someone who has been using Arch for years now, I still struggle with getting Plasma to not shit itself every once in a while.

      Cinnamon on the other hand does have a lot less features out of the box, but the few things it does, it does them well, and every setting is where a sane person would search for them.

      I would not recommend Plasma to a Linux beginner at all. It’s the kind of unpolished mess that would make anyone who doesn’t care enough about computers to just give up and go back to Windows.

      • PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        Hm thanks for sharing your experience, it’s very different from mine though. Have you used Plasma recently (Version 6+) ? And have you used it on a distro where it came pre-packaged? In my (limited) experience any DE installed on Arch is janky out of the box.

        • Karu 🐲@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          I am running Plasma 6.2.1 as we speak. Admittedly, yes, using Arch has certainly made it less stable. But more often than not, when I search the web for some strange behavior/bug/limitation in my desktop, I often find dozens of threads with lots of people reporting the same misbehavior or limitation from all over the distro space, and I have come to the conclussion that it’s not entirely Arch’s fault at that point.

          Have you done literally any customization to panels? I swear that shit keeps crashing whenever I do so much as unpinning a simple app launcher plasmoid, and even if it didn’t crash, it still takes patience to navigate through all the menus. They completely overhauled the way panel settings look and behave, and I still find the experience annoying as hell. In contrast, customizing panels is pretty straightforward in Cinnamon, and works as expected. It merely doesn’t look as good.

          I don’t hate Plasma, or else I would have switched to another DE by now, but this is mostly because I have learned to tame it, and that took a lot of effort that no beginner should have to go through. Cinnamon is like, the polar opposite of that, which is why I’m okay with it being religiously recommended to beginners.

          KDE’s priorities are just kinda weird. I have the similar issues with Krita, an otherwise excellent drawing program.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    Remember when Windows XP reached EoL the first time in 2009 and people abandoned it? Yeah, me neither, but I remember Microsoft groaning and extending some support for a few more years, until the final EoL in 2014. I expect the same to happen to 10.

  • Zink@programming.dev
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    2 days ago

    Oh is this an excuse to hop on the Mint praise train? Don’t mind if I do!

    For me it was smoother than windows to install, it runs much better moment to moment (it’s like the people that made it were worried about making nice software rather than the business goals being pushed by their managers), and most importantly the fact that it is the “beginner” distro doesn’t compromise its capabilities. I am in the terminal all day every day and I use the machine to work on software for embedded Linux systems.

    • BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world
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      Mint was so easy to install. I’m pretty new to Linux. Not afraid of having to do things in the terminal, but I don’t really know many commands yet. So, I appreciate the graphical managers for updates and drivers. You can definitely tell they really worked to make a polished OS. And I really like Cinnamon. It’s a very clean looking DE that has been super easy to transition to from Windows.

      Unlike Kubuntu, I didn’t have to do any tricks or install anything from github to get stuff from my Steam library to work, everything just worked. And Kubuntu (or perhaps just Wayland) would crash upon waking my PC from sleep and wouldn’t recover.

  • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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    2 days ago

    The average user cares less about their OS being EoL, than that they have to learn a whole new OS that works “completely” different to what they are used to.

    • dingdong@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      This just objectively isn’t true. The XP EOL date actually forced users hands. There WAS refresh cycle in 2014, the only reason it didn’t turn in to the uprising it is seemingly turned into, is because Microsoft kinda got lucky, and this refresh cycle purged Pentim 4-s and Celeron M-s and Pentium D-s, and old Athlons, all of which were ewaste from new.

  • Killer57@lemmy.ca
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    2 days ago

    The Steam Deck and it’s desktop mode is why I decided to try jumping head first into a single boot of Bazzite on my main computer, it’s basically like using a Steam deck, just across four monitors, a year in and I haven’t looked back.

  • dance_ninja@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’m experimenting with Pop!_OS on my aging laptop running it on a USB drive. Was happy to see it supports 2-in-1 functionality.

  • Lad@reddthat.com
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    3 days ago

    I’m a Linux noob so I put Mint on my PC. I like it a lot, very smooth and clean looking.

    • kusivittula@sopuli.xyz
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      3 days ago

      i have been using mint (cinnamon) too for like a year and a half. every now and then i try another distro and a few more, but i always land back where i started. it even looks pretty with the “sweet dark v40” gtk theme.

  • somtwo@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’ve installed mint on my laptop, I like it so far. Everything was super easy to get set up, even the graphics drivers

    • Pofski@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      question, i have a older computer that i want to switch to linux. It has a 1080. Do i just install linux and it will work, or do i have to go look for drivers, or do i have to use the onboard graphics till i get everything installed? How do i have to imagine it?

      • KokusnussRitter@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 days ago

        I am a Linux beginner so i could be wrong, but I believe Linux is very plug and play and has drivers already integrated. At least I don’t remember downloading any when I set it up. I am personally using Linux Mint Cinnamon with a GTX 1060. In Mint there is a Driver Manager preinstalled which let’s you pick a few nvidia drivers and an open source alternative, so it’s very beginner friendly :)

        screen capture Driver Manager

        do I have to use the onboard graphics till i get everything installed?

        To that I can confidentially say no: because I have no onboard graphics and always had video output ^^

      • somtwo@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Why would I do that? People might see me!

        But joking aside, I admit I haven’t done much with the laptop since installing mint (cinnamon for those playing at home). But I did instsll a daw (reaper) and recorded some music ideas using my Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 audio interface

        • Matshiro@szmer.info
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          2 days ago

          Glad to hear that you didn’t had any problem with focusrite, I also use it so at least now I know that it works.