Mint is very easy to transition to from Windows and pretty stable. I’ve probably used that the most in the last 5 years and my only gripe is that it’s a little out of date (but that adds to the stability) and configuring sound has been a bit annoying.
I was considering it, but I’ve done little auditions of Ubuntu over the last 10 years and something doesn’t feel right. It was awesome in the late '00s, but it hasn’t clicked with me since. Maybe it was the 1-2 pow of trying to make a phone OS and then the phone-looking launcher.
Thanks for the tip, though. I’ll give it a go if my next candidate gets too messy. (Yes, it’s definitely the distros’ fault, not mine. Okay, maybe 20% mine. Or 95%. Something like that.)
Not gonna lie, that did make me feel like a badass. Plus, there was the added surprise challenge of finding half the online help was in German.
And just like that, my attempt at Linux on the desktop (take #4123), which was going to be Fedora, is back in flux. I don’t want to start investing time into a learning project in major transition and an uncertain future.
Ironically, I’m looking again at OpenSUSE, which I had left back during the SuSE-> OpenSUSE period. (You can tell I’m OG because I’m one of the few that uses the correct capitalization! haha)
Kinda on topic, there are 2 really good deals running right now. 1 for the Surface, 1 for the Lenovo Yoga.
https://slickdeals.net/f/16728539-thinkpad-x1-yoga-gen-6-14-3840x2400-oled-i7-1185g7-16gb-ram-512gb-ssd-1099-free-s-h?src=category_page
and
https://slickdeals.net/f/16727681-microsoft-surface-pro-8-13-2880x1920-i5-1135g7-8gb-ram-128gb-ssd-610-free-s-h-w-amazon-prime?src=category_page
The Surface might be too bare bones for some, but $610 is decent. (Also, there are several “generations” in the store now. This is the middle, non-ARM flavor with 11th Gen Intel. The Surface 9 has the current generation.)
The Lenovo is a much bigger discount and better specs, but I’ve heard worse stuff about the Lenovo support. Apparently Lenovo’s consumer support and build quality is very different from the business offerings.
I hear the bus width is actually more important…
Yeah, I assume I’ll be wrestling with package managers regardless (I remember YAST having it’s own thing that didn’t always play nice with others), and supposedly Ubuntu was looking to move away from snaps, so another major factor that will be changing soon.
But Arch? I dunno, man. Younger me used to update shit daily and read changelogs, but current me lets stuff go a few months. I;m not sure that attitude or my level of comfort are quite at Arch levels. I’ll give it another look, though. Or maybe I’ll just go FreeBSD to spite everyone and embrace my masochism!