PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S [he/him]

Debian 12

Understood, although I have had good luck with either using the Flatpak or installing the .deb distributed by the app developer for packages where the Debian version is too old.

But like…yeah, that’s kinda it IMO. None of the distros come out of the box absolutely perfect for me and my use case, but Debian is close enough, well-documented enough, and flexible enough to be configured into a “perfect distro”. I haven’t really had a reason to distro-hop on any of the systems I installed Debian on.

KDE Plasma. It works for me, and it has enough features so that I can adapt it to my workflow as my workflow changes.

But I don’t know what I’m doing

2 years out of date is usually fine for me. When it isn’t, I haven’t had a problem using the Flatpak or a .deb directly from whoever released the software.

You are probably a boy. You either have a PP, or are storing PP for later use, or both; only you have this sacred knowledge.

Edit: the person to whom I am responding is literally named PP_BOY.

For my use cases (audio, programming, engineering school, watching crap on FreeTube) I value stability and predictability over security and shiny new stuff. In the rare cases that things break, they break in ways that are already well-understood, so usually have workarounds or solutions.

In the few cases I do need something newer than the Debian repos provide, I just use Flatpaks or get an updated .deb from the devs of the particular software.

So yeah, zero rush for Plasma 6 for me. It looks nice, but I’ll just be chilling on Plasma 5 until it comes out.

live spongebob AI youtube stream

Please I need the link

*Laughs in Debian

Nice

I still need that Windows partition for two reasons:

(1). I need Windows because my audio interface uses a proprietary driver only available on Windows. It simply does not perform as quickly on Linux. It’s for real-time audio recording and production, so I need absolutely every clock cycle I can possibly spare. For that reason, a VM is out of the question for this particular application. On Linux with JACK, it uses JACK’s default USB audio driver, which is really good but not as fast as the custom driver ostensibly using FocusRite’s hidden features. It’s not Linux’s fault, it’s FocusRite’s for not supporting Linux and mine for “backing the wrong horse” about ten years ago when I bought it. To my knowledge, Linux pro audio was simply nowhere near as developed as it is now. It is only this exact piece of hardware, which I currently cannot afford to replace, that requires me to keep any copies of Windows alive. Other than for similar reasons where users are trapped, Windows sucks as an audio production operating system, whereas Linux with JACK is great.

(2). I need the Windows partition as it is because there is some old but important work there that I need to finish. I wasn’t very organized about where I saved my work, i.e. things are all over the place. Eventually, I have to spend several hours moving the project files and effects off the drive. Since these projects were recorded on Windows, I will probably have to move all my Windows-exclusive effects to Linux. Yabridge actually does an excellent job for this, but it’s not painless.

I’m currently in grad school for engineering, so I won’t have time to bring over my project files until at least the summer. But even then, all the compatibility layers are starting to add up on Linux. The projects I want to work on were nearly maxing out the CPU and RAM on Windows. Really, I need a hardware upgrade, but I can’t afford that for a long time.

I’m on Debian and that kind of stuff basically doesn’t happen. For the first couple weeks I broke stuff every once in a while because I didn’t know how Linux worked, but it’s basically been smooth sailing on all my computers for about six months.

Contrast with the Windows 10 on the same laptop which just the other day decided it doesn’t want to play anymore. I guess I ran an update the last time I touched it (like a month ago) and now it won’t boot. Debian boots perfectly. Even in safe mode, I can’t boot into Windows and Automatic Startup repair refuses to work even using both the recovery USB and installation media. Probably going to have to reinstall Windows from scratch.

Which Linux distribution should I run on my Arduino Uno for maximum performance?

Actually I tried out KDE Plasma on my grandmother’s budget laptop from about the same time. It was a little too slow with default settings, but once I killed the animations (can be done in Settings app) it ran pretty well. It ran a whole hell of a lot better than the Windows it came with.

I also tested KDE vs XFCE in my old gaming computer, and I actually managed to get slightly less RAM usage in KDE than XFCE, so long as no plugins were used.

Both systems were tested with Debian 12. On the gaming PC, I actually used the XFCE iso, so it was installed first.

So depending on how your distro ships the default KDE Plasma settings or how you set it up, it actually can be a lightweight option compared with XFCE.

I’m on Debian because the software in the Debian repos is stable. So for mission-critical software, at least for my purposes, I’ll pick the version in the Debian repo, especially if it requires detailed integration with the operating system such as real-time audio. If the software does get updated, it is probably important and nearly guaranteed not to break. A great example has been KDE Plasma: I don’t get the bleeding-edge features, but it’s been a rock-solid, fast, still modern desktop environment on every computer I installed it on, including an old laptop that is so underpowered that Windows 10 is a Power-Point presentation upon a fresh restart. If Debian takes several months or longer to update it’s Plasma packages to Plasma 6 when it comes out next year, that would be fine for me because I don’t desperately need any new features from Plasma.

However, for software that really benefits from being up-to-date and isn’t a showstopper if it breaks, for example FreeTube, I prefer the Flatpak. I primarily use Discover for simple package management and upgrades, and it was trivial to install the Flatpak backend, so now my Flatpaks get updated like anything else. However, Librewolf (a browser, which I prefer to keep up-to-date) is installed from a non-Flatpak external repo because I had problems giving its Flatpak version webcam permissions (even if I enabled them in Flatseal).

AppImages have been great for working on new computers because I can (usually) just download them and go. Except for programs that I expect to be portable, I don’t typically use them in the long haul. Still, they’re super convenient to have around.

I don’t touch Snaps because of the closed-source backend and their role in Canonical’s transparent attempt to lock down Ubuntu, but if they open-source the backend I might consider trying them.

IMO part of why I’ve stuck with Linux is because there is (usually) a choice of how to compute. I.e., there are several ways to solve a problem where Windows or Mac would pigeonhole you into their workflow. Having multiple options is inherently a good thing as far as I’m concerned, even if I don’t use all of them.

That’s literally been the types of jobs I’ve been applying for, and they always want me to be an instant expert in their proprietary SCADA/DCS/PLC software even for “fresh graduate” positions. Not using proprietary software is tantamount to not working in manufacturing engineering.

Considering I have no income right and I’ve been rejected from ~150 jobs, I need to take what I can get.

Because a handful of programs and likely my job will force me to use Windows. I’m interviewing next week for a position where they’ll give me “all IT equipment”, and there were several technical questions about Windows in a prior interview, so no Linux there.

Still, whenever I can choose to do so, e.g. at home, I pick Linux.

Sounds like you picked the wrong distro!

I’ve put Linux on a few computers over summer. Actually, I put Debian on a few computers, but I tried a few different desktop environments. Debian internally works fine for my needs, and IMO it’s kinda a “low drama” OS. So on my 4-year-old laptop and 7-year-old gaming PC, I used KDE Plasma, and on my 15-year-old PC I used LXQT, which is considered lightweight, after trying a number of options. The laptop has NVidia graphics and the 15-year-old PC has some janky GeForce integrated graphics, so I have gotten stuff to work with NVidia. Debian in particular has a really straightforward guide on the wiki on how to install graphics drivers.

I use Librewolf (Firefox derivative) on most of my Linux PCs, but Firefox ESR (extended support release, bundled with Debian by default) performed fine on the two newer computers. It’s a bit sluggish on the older one, but fit for purpose.

I really think you should give it another try. Debian has live installs preconfigured with all the different desktop environments. That’s how I picked Debian with KDE Plasma: I tried it out for three days and I decided i needed to have it.

There are probably compelling reasons to go with a distro other than Debian, but IMO Debian works great for me almost 100% of the time for a few different use cases. It’s probably not the best OS for everyone, but I do think it’s “pretty good” for most people. It’ll get the job done.

But more importantly, there’s a Linux distro for every niche. There are lots of lightweight distros with old PCs in mind that are much faster than even old versions of Windows. If your computer somehow can’t deal with a desktop environment, a window manager like Fluxbox will work great.