Always looking for a better OS but back to mint again. Easy, productive and 99.9 percent bug free. I keep finding more quirks Ubunto my second favorite and although some other distros are good they are missing stuff. Any takers? TRG you especially.
Am I weird? Just spent to weeks trying linux os's
- Thread starter Comptech
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I did the same thing a couple years ago, my favorite was Mint MATE. Problem was it drained the battery on my laptop so much faster than Windows I had to switch back. I've grown to really like Windows 11 so now I'll only use Linux on older machines that don't have a Windows license.
I had a really old single core Pentium I was running Puppy on...no idea why. Guess I'm weird too.
I had a really old single core Pentium I was running Puppy on...no idea why. Guess I'm weird too.
Back in the mid-90's when I first got interested in Linux distro's, at one time I had 11 of them installed on my desktop at the same time. Somewhere along the way PCLinuxOS ended up as the default boot OS that I kept going back to to get any real work done, and I'm still using it. Every now and then I pop an interesting looking new or updated distro on my laptop to give it a look, but PCLOS continues to be my "daily driver". PCLOS has been pretty much bullet proof for years, and is a rolling release that's easy to keep current.
Dishdude windows 11 is the other OS on this machine and it does work great on a old lenove tiny PC I5 6500 with 16 gigs of ram and a 1 Tb nvme samsung drive. Enough trying distros, 11 on the main drive and linux Mint on a 512 gig SSD.
On a side note. been buying Lenovo think center tiny PC's from ebay. My latest was a I7 8700 with a single 16 gig memory chip. No hard drive, got it for $110 bucks. Put another 16 gig memory chip in it and a spare 1 Tb Samsung Nvme 980 Pro in it and it screams. Typing of of one now.
2 weeks ago, I committed to using Linux, primarily. I've had dual boots with various distros for years. Ubuntu - several times, Mint, Peppermint, some others, too but settled on Manjaro with KDE Plasma. for the last year, I rarely booted into it, other than to update things. I have a 10" Mini Laptop that came with Win 7 I used to load different Distros on before setting up the DUal Boot on my Desktop and Manjaro was by FAR the smoothest, fastest and best looking. SInce it's Arch based, commands are different than on the more popular Distros, but easy enough to figure out.
Since I made the commitment to go to Linux full time, it took a few days, but now, I'm here and happy I made the switch. I still boot into Windows for gaming but that's it.
It took some Googling to figure out how to do things in Terminal like take ownership of folders I needed to write into, find a scaled back Terminal other than the default Konsole (I use Kitty now) and things like that but I have a Notepad Widget on my 2nd Monitor I just jot things down on.
The hardest part is learning new names outside of Office (I was already using Libre Office anyway), Windows Explorer, Control Panel etc but having a world of FREE and Open Source options is well worth the learning curve. I even found an open source version of One Note so I can keep syncing all my pages I use on that app across all platforms and MS Edge so using the same browser was seamless. Plus, being able to Customize has always been my favorite part of using computers, rooting phones, etc which is just too hard anymore without resource-consuming third-party programs. Not so with Linux. Even having multiple Desktop Environements and switching form one to the other is great!
Since I made the commitment to go to Linux full time, it took a few days, but now, I'm here and happy I made the switch. I still boot into Windows for gaming but that's it.
It took some Googling to figure out how to do things in Terminal like take ownership of folders I needed to write into, find a scaled back Terminal other than the default Konsole (I use Kitty now) and things like that but I have a Notepad Widget on my 2nd Monitor I just jot things down on.
The hardest part is learning new names outside of Office (I was already using Libre Office anyway), Windows Explorer, Control Panel etc but having a world of FREE and Open Source options is well worth the learning curve. I even found an open source version of One Note so I can keep syncing all my pages I use on that app across all platforms and MS Edge so using the same browser was seamless. Plus, being able to Customize has always been my favorite part of using computers, rooting phones, etc which is just too hard anymore without resource-consuming third-party programs. Not so with Linux. Even having multiple Desktop Environements and switching form one to the other is great!
Take a look at PCLinuxOS, Hip. I've been running it as my "daily driver" for almost 20 years now. For those rare occasions when I need Windows, mostly for family and friends tech support, I pop it up with Oracle's VirtualBox VM, no rebooting needed.
About PCLinuxOS » PCLinuxOS
www.pclinuxos.com
For tinkerers, the rolling releases are "fun" but for those who just want their computers to do computerly things, a less bleeding edge distribution is certainly easier. Arch and all of its derivatives (including Manjaro and Arco) are the likes of what gave Linux a bad name in the first place -- requiring applications to be built before you could use them.
Getting warnings about software being old is a downer with Debian and derivatives but the neat part is that you can find a .deb for almost everything where you may not find other formats of packaged software.
I'm trying to motivate myself to try Fedora but it seems to have a lot of the same package issues (.rpm) and I'm just not a fan of appimages, flatpacks and the increasingly invasive snap packs.
At least with PCLOS, the rolling releases allow me to see what's new and determine when and which updates I want now and which I want to let "age" a bit to see if anyone else reports any problems. Oh, and I'm long past the "tinkerer" stage of my life. As I said, PCLOS has been my daily driver OS for close to 20 years. I've also taught seniors computing classes using it, and converted several companies from Windows to either Red Hat or PCLOS over the years.
I really like the way Arch works and you don't have to build apps any longer. I either use pacman, pamac or yay to install just about anything or download the binaries and use chmod but mostly, when U used Ubuntu and Mint, they gave me bad attitude about Linux. Arch reinvigorated me.
I can't remember the last time I compiled an app, but it was probably an experimental alpha or beta app. With PCLOS, all of the updates for everything I have installed are handled by the Synaptic Package Manager. PCLOS uses an update notifier to display a flag on the systray when updates are available. One stop "shopping"...
I have this little Atom-powered deck-of-playing-cards-sized appliance running Lubuntu and CUPS to allow my non-AirPrint printers to work with our iOS devices. Canon still has a Linux driver for the imageCLASS M4770n multifunction in the home office. Apple dropped support for it in the latest macOS releases, but I can print through this little black box.
Arch does the same thing. Many Distros are pretty polished enough to be DD's and come with installers, normally Calamares.PCLOS uses an update notifier to display a flag on the systray when updates are available. One stop "shopping"...
Does Arch offer a bootable DVD download? I recall Arch was in the mix years ago when I was still searching for "the one" that fit my needs best among the 11 distros I had installed at the same time on one PC. Maybe I should take a look to see what the developers have been up to these days.
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You can burn the ISO to a bootable drive, although DVD's have been more or less replaced by thumb drives. I'm sure Rufus on a Windows machine would work. Not sure what the best package is for creating bootable drives on Linux.
Ok, I'll see if I have a thumb drive big enough that's not currently in use. Thanks!
If you're going to play with Arch a bit, I'd use EndeavorOS or Manjaro, They're probably the most complete packages out of the box.
