circuitfarmer

A bigger issue is that the Steam Deck touchpads don’t work without Steam being open

This is interesting, because the touchpads on the Steam Controller do work without Steam being open, at least on Linux, though without cursor acceleration. I wonder why the touchpads on the Deck were handled differently.

Not true about Proton. It’s Steam DRM that requires Steam running in the bg, same as on Windows.

Totally. Linux is (in part) about choice. If you like Mint, use Mint.

I’ve been a Linux user for 5+ years and played with a bunch of different distros. I have Arch (btw) on a laptop that I don’t have to depend on. But my gaming rig is still running Pop. Why? Because I like it and it’s stable. A bonus that it’s now bundled with Cosmic, because I like Cosmic too.

But at the end of the day, it’s true that you can kind of do anything with any distro. The package manager is one obvious difference. I do like Pacman (from Arch) more than apt on Debian derivatives, but like, it’s just a package manager. Not worth changing a comfortable system over.

Don’t listen to people who say you can’t run a “beginner distro” until the end of time. If you like it, you like it.

Definitely makes a lot of sense to use a VM for it. Though there is something fun about having a spare laptop and just playing on bare metal.

I strongly dislike how the zone is getting flooded with “now it’s not X, but Y” in terms of distro recommendations.

Not knowing what a distro is and where to start is one of the main issues with people who may want to switch to Linux but don’t know how to do it. If Mint getting called out as a good place to start allows them to switch, then they should install Mint. If Ubuntu is all they have heard of, and it makes them try the switch, then they should install Ubuntu. Tbh, the only really dangerous approach is starting with something like Arch which, despite fantastic documentation, is probably more likely to turn new users away.

Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Someone who starts from either Mint or Ubuntu or whatever can distro hop later. Let’s not muddy the waters even more for our would-be Windows refugees.

It’s just more barebones than lots of other options, and distro hopping tends to be about exploration. There isn’t a whole lot to explore on Debian, because its purpose is stability and simplicity.

You find tons of Debian-derived distros exactly for this reason. They build on that stable core but add bells and whistles. Distros usually are defined by which bells and whistles they include by default.

I’m running Mint currently

I’m wondering if there is a lot of benefit to going more barebones

Not really. On the scale at which homelabs operate, I doubt you’ll see any difference at all – except what might be the significant time sink to set everything up again.

I’m not having any issues with my current setup

I’d put this firmly in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” category. Mint is already a distro which is ultimately a Debian derivative. It operates more like Debian as opposed to, say, Fedora or Arch. While it can be enticing to explore the many options of Linux, the benefit isn’t clear here.

Now, distro hopping on a nonproduction system? Something where you don’t care what’s on it and you just want to experiment? That’s one of the best parts of being a Linux user. But at least do that first before even approaching breaking something that isn’t broken.

It sounds more like you want to have fun distro hopping, and believe me: I can tell you from experience that distro hopping isn’t fun if you have to rely on that machine.

Bots?

That would be reported.

Friends don’t let friends be root.

Just to clarify: the “much smoother” is subjective and might be an oversimplification, but the “not using Gnome” part is correct.

Personally I don’t use any Gnome extensions and have much preferred Cosmic to the old Pop Shell. YMMV.

There is no metric anywhere where these numbers signal success.

It is more evidence that AI is running on 100% pure, unadulterated C-suite hopium – the kind of hopium that can only come from the people who make the most and know the least.

Linux user here. What’s a friend?

DE completely depends on your workflow. The way you do things directly impacts what DEs you’ll like and which ones you won’t.

I’m with you on KDE: I respect it and it clearly seems to be one of the most feature-rich DEs, but I’ve had trouble actually using it regularly.

I have been using Cosmic DE for the last 6 months or so. I love it because it seamlessly blends tiled and non-tiled workspaces in an effective way. Part of me really enjoys the simplicity of things like i3, but part of me just wants floating windows. It fully depends on what I’m working on and sometimes just my mood, so for me, the seamless blending in Cosmic has felt perfect.

But how important is DE? Tbh I think it is the most important part of a setup, because you interact with it more than any other piece of the system.

Great result! Thanks for the detailed write-up. May try something like this myself.

Tbh I have no real complaints. I would eventually like some keyboard shortcuts for moving entire workspaces around without the mouse, but what is there is quite intuitive and I find myself not leaving the keyboard to navigate. The defaults are similar to i3 shortcuts.

I like that they work in tiling and non-tiling mode, and each workspace can be set to either mode at whim.

No issues with stability (which was a problem for me in earlier builds).

I don’t use any of the Cosmic utils, though (text editor, terminal, etc). They seem fine but ymmv.

Edit: actually just thought of one thing… If you move a window from a non-tiling workspace to a tiling one, it stays in non-tiling mode. This leads to a mixed mode workspace and I don’t like that. But it’s easily fixed with mode toggle and only a minor annoyance – ideally I want it to switch to whatever mode the workspace is in.

My 3 monitor setup has been really fantastic after switching to Cosmic desktop. Really really loving the mix of tiling and non-tiling features too.

Tangential to OP but just wanted to throw Cosmic out there for folks who haven’t yet tried it.

Would be better if specifically Windows 11 and 8.1 were at top of S tier above the other versions

+Windows Me. Still the GOAT

I only charge myself to 80% each time in a vain attempt to extend my feeble existence

And absolutely no one will do anything about it, because the “progress” must continue

And here is the umpteenth reason to think that C-suites run only on nepotism and empty promises: they’re filled with people who are actively bad at their jobs. But while the rest of us gain skills and hone them to try and make a handful of extra peanuts, the guys in the corner offices get handed jobs by family members or friends, simply because it is their destiny to have it.

And thus they never have to be good at it, and any competition for it is artificial, and you end up with people holding the reins of entire companies who have literally no idea the consequences of their decisions or the impact of their policies.

AI has never delivered a return – at all – and most of these people probably cannot even define how it works or what benefit it is meant to bring, outside of “replace people with machine, bring more $$$, why use more people when less people do trick?”.