I’ve used Linux since the mid 00’s and, well, I’ve seen some shit. But nowadays? It’s the best desktop OS I’ve used. I recently had to start using a Mac for work and realized just how far DE’s like Gnome and KDE have gotten. It feels like I have to fight MacOS every single day to get it to do the absolute basics, the things that Gnome and KDE does out of the box. And the most ridiculous thing is that the app ecosystem for MacOS is so heavily focused on monetization that if you purchase enough apps to customize the MacOS DE to an acceptable level, you’d likely have spent enough money to buy another laptop. Madness.

TL;DR: Turns out that this year is actually the year of Linux on the desktop!

Wait, encryption counts as bullshit now? ;)

What brand is it? I’m waiting for my crowdfunded mini PC which will definitely be running Linux, so I’m curious as to other people’s experiences.

I think I’ve used it once in 15 years or so. It’s typically easier to go with bash or Python.

I think a lot of people dislike Ubuntu because of Gnome and Snaps, which is weird to me. You can fairly easily change desktop environment and most Snaps have apt or Flatpak alternatives.

Back in the early days of Ubuntu, I was blown away by the amount of interesting free stuff on Synaptic, so I started installing everything that caught my eye. A few hours later and my Ubuntu install was completely borked. I think the install scripts back then we’re pretty unregulated, so there was probably a ton of conflicting dependencies causing trouble.

I eventually reinstalled the os. Then I did the same thing again. Twice. Then I learned.

Same here, but lately I’ve also been pushed towards Snap and Flatpak. I miss the old visual Synaptic tool though…

What about Intraastral Peace Corps?

KDE is the answer to all of OPs problems.

The uutils project is aiming for full compatibility though, so eventually you will be able to just swap them out.

Aside from performance, I also noticed that older PC games work better on Linux than Windows nowadays. I really enjoy playing games from the late 90’s to early 2000’s, and they tend to run great on Linux with proton. Just the last year I’ve played all of Baldurs Gate 1, Icewind Dale 1 and Icewind Dale 2 on my scrappy Lenovo laptop and it’s been great.

I’ve (almost) always had good experiences with Lenovo laptops, especially T-series or X1 Carbon.

Will the future be better tomorrow?

I just got my Starfive Visionfive2 this week, and yeah… not as easy to use a Raspberry Pi just yet.

Just don’t expect a smooth user experience yet, its’ software is still very much WIP. Google hasn’t even finished RISC-V support in Android yet.

Your setup is close to my 2015 very-much-non-gaming laptop, so… I’d recommend retro gaming and/or modern 2D games. A few suggestions would be: Baldur’s Gate 1-2, Icewind Dale 1, Xenonauts, Battle Brothers, Wildermyth, Shadowrun Returns (and sequels), Into the Breach, Fallout 1-2. If you’re into programming games, that hardware should run everything by Zachtronics as well as Human Resource Machine and 7 Billion Humans.

I don’t use Endeavor or Arch (btw), but KDE Plasma is amazing. I’d probably be happy with any distro as long as it supported plasma.

Yes, I found a guide for getting Photoshop CS6 running in wine (PlayOnLinux wrapper). A recent update to something broke it for me, but it might still work for others.

Out of curiosity, do you ever rescue laptops from your work and use or resell them?

Libreoffice is essentially full fat Office at this point. If you need any , more than what it offers, you’re more likely than not a computer savvy person already. Photoshop is hard to fully replace though. I ran it in wine for a long time, still haven’t found a good alternative.