61–70 of 114 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suggest Linux Mint. Stable Ubuntu derivative with a sane, "just-works" desktop environment (Cinnamon).
What if I don't want any desktop environment, but just want to run the i3 window manager?
That's what I have been doing the past 7 years.
Quote1: "For example, just compare the file manager application on both Ubuntu and Windows." Both defaults are crap. I use Total Commander / Double Commander on Win/Lin. Quote2: "Linux still has a few (~2%) market share in the general-purpose users' segment compared to Windows. Therefore, there are not so many malicious programs that target Linux users" Ah yeah, the famous security through obscurity. I think I prefer…
I agree that article is crapy and I wasted my time reading it.
_My first computer was a Pentium II one and it had Windows 98 installed when I purchased it in 2008_ I think this must be a typo. 2008 seems quite a late time to buy a Pentium II, I had my Pentium II in 1998ish.
Packaging systems make things easier. You can install software in less than a minute, and keep things updated pretty easily.
Linux is not the frequent target of malware, specifically ransomware. There will be always that one non-compliant person in an org that clicks every link and believes in every email and having that person use Windows is a bad idea.
Office suites used to suck on Linux... not anymore. SoftMaker Office is on par with Microsoft Office for the most essential use cases.
Gaming is getting better on Linux with many native games, as well as Wine, Proton and DXVK... Many games run pretty well on Linux, you can check ProtonDB for details. Perhaps not every game or the newest games, but you can have a decent gaming experience on Linux.
And for development, Linux is king. Everything is observable, everything can be measured, most things have debugging symbols and source code. On Windows, get used to read assembly code and become a reverse engineer if you want to understand what's going on.
_My first computer was a Pentium II one and it had Windows 98 installed when I purchased it in 2008_ I think this must be a typo. 2008 seems quite a late time to buy a Pentium II, I had my Pentium II in 1998ish.
It's about right if you grew up poor in that time period, and bought something secondhand. I was part of a small club out in the (impoverished) country where we were learning on DOS computers using Qbasic in like the early-mid 00s.
If I had to give an introduction to programming to someone with absolutely no prior knowledge, I might still use QBasic (or rather something like QB64 or an online interpreter) for it. The simplicity of the syntax and no required boilerplate for getting started really lends itself to it.
I switched to Ubuntu on my main machine a few years ago. This is my second attempt. There are still some annoyances I run into, the biggest being that the dock regularly disappears after sleep. How would I ever set my parents up on something where even the most basic features require fixes like this https://leimao.github.io/blog/Ubuntu-Dock-Disappear/ ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Windows 10 in 1 GB? Can you tell me your experience on browsing the web on that?
Yeah, of course - it works fine in Edge as long as you keep to 1-2 tabs max. Running in idle uses about 700MB ram so 300MB is enough to work with. The other things I do with this are running the Netflix app to watch movies and run the Windows 10 Minecraft client - both run smoothly.
Lots of inaccurate info in here but also some valid points. UWP sucks really bad and it does reduce the reliability of the system, especially when UWP-type things end up in the shell (e.g. start menu and action center). I will point out that File Explorer includes a shortcut for opening PowerShell at the current directory, which can be triggered through the File menu or alt-f-r. Its worth highlighting that Linux isn'…
I've long avoided "switchable graphics", for this reason. The complexity breeds issues. Be happy with just intel graphics, or go for an AMD/radeon, to improve your chances of not running into bugs/incompatibilities. Modern graphics are just such a monster of complexity, change, variety, secrecy, etc. (I'm going to venture a guess that the "kernel update [can] render the system unbootable" is due to nvidia binary-blob…
The ones that rely fully on the the dedicated video card are high end and usually have different disadvantages (weight, battery time).
One thing (out of many) I always hated about linux is the upgrades. I have to reinstall the entire operating system just to upgrade. I'm using manjaro now, I want see what happens when there's a big version change.