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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: July 21st, 2024

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  • Distro: short for distribution. Linux is not an operating system. It’s a piece of technology (specifically something called a kernel) you can use to create an OS. Those Linux based OSs are referred to as distros. We are usually not calling them “Versions” because the Linux Kernel is also frequently seeing updates and that would just cause confusion.

    Debian and Ubuntu: Popular distros. Ubuntu tends to be a bit more user friendly than Debian and was the default recommendation for new user for a long time. In recent years its popularity among enthusiasts declined because of a series of unpopular decisions, mainly the adaptation of something called snaps which is not completely open source and takes a bit more time to launch apps than alternatives. Debian on the other hand really values stability. Updates arrive less frequently than on other distros but undergo really rigorose testing.





  • Is the new UI broken or are app developers just not implementing it into their apps or what’s wrong with the current situaltion?

    Both, kinda. The new UI relies afaik on xdg-portals to get which apps are running in the background. Therefore only flatpaks should show up; but they should show up automatically, without any tweaks by the devs.

    Also the UI only displays that an app is running in the background. It can’t communicate any type of status information.







  • There used to be a Kodi/XMBC skin for that but development on that seems to have been abandoned years ago.

    Depending on your use case Kodi might be a better fit for your HTPC as it tightly integrates with Jellyfin and also has a Spotify plugin. And some skins work generally the way the xmb used to work - they just look very different



  • Vittelius@feddit.orgtoLinux@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    3 months ago

    One thing to make your girlfriend’s transition easier: you can reconfigure the UI to be more similar to more recent versions of MS office. The first time you open it, there will be a popup that brings you directly to the relevant settings menu. It’s not one to one but the major options are going to be in similar places after you changed the UI.


  • Replacement with a different stability.

    As the famous quote from Spider-Man goes: “with great power comes great responsibility.” Past WW2 the US acted as hegemon. They where the most powerful country and tried to use this responsibility on the global stage - at least to an extent. NATO, free access to US markets for other countries (though that also benefitted the US because it cemented the USD as reserve currency)

    Now the government wants to keep the power but have none of the responsibility. It’s similar to their position on free speech.

    To put it an other way: They want to be a bully.



  • All the open source alternatives also work on windows. You could try them on your current OS and make the switch to Linux once you’re confident you’ve found a workflow that works for you.

    Lightroom: Darktable Photoshop: Gimp (version 3 just released) or Krita Illustrator: Inkscape

    One note though: The Windows versions tend to be a bit of an afterthought. Performance can therefore be not as good as the Linux version.



  • Since you are already familiar with the Steam Deck, I would go with a distro (that’s Linux-speak for version) that uses KDE Plasma, as that’s the desktop environment used by Steam OS. My recommendation therefore is Bazzite or Aurora. Both OSs are developed by the same team using the same core technology. Bazzite is more “gamer focused” (a.k.a. they are pre-installing steam) while Aurora targets more of a developer audience. But I would argue that the differences are, at the end of the day, mainly cosmetic. Aurora is still pretty noob friendly and you could still develop on Bazzite.

    Both systems are “Atomic” which basically means that a system update can’t screw up your system. And if you screw something up, then you can “rebase” the system which reinstalls the OS but keeps all your data and installed apps*. It uses flatpak with flathub as its appstore so you have the same apps available as on the Steam Deck.

    Now for the downsides: Some apps are a bit harder to install. Mainly apps that need deeper system access such as vpn apps can take a couple more steps to install here than on other distros. There is also no live system. Many distros have a “live mode” where you can test the system before installing. This allows you to check if your hardware is supported. Aurora and bazzite don’t have that.

    Lastly the userbase is growing, but other disros such as Mint are still more popular. You therefore might find less specific documentation and tutorials on the internet for it than with other options.

    *Technically it’s more complicated than that, there are edgecases of apps that don’t survive a rebase, but don’t worry about that.