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Ah, important comma.
Gave up on Windows for LinuxMint
- Thread starter Brons2
- Start date
I tried Linux Mint/Ubuntu before settling on Linux Mint Debian Edition. Seems to run better on my equipment. I also have a Windows 11 computer as well. Not going to mess with dual boot. Figured computers are like tools. Why not have one of each OS and use each one for it's specific uses. One reason I "need" Windows still is for the HP app that enables print cartridges for life. Once that printer dies I probably won't have a need for Windows. I actually like the Linux experience better. Less bloat 
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Sorry
We've decided to discontinue support for The PC Decrapifer and it is currently no longer available for download
Check Major Geeks or one of the old version software sites
I have a dual boot system right now with Linux Mint Cinnamon, my biggest issue is not being able to access iTunes and some games without some funny secret handshake under a full moon on a tuesday. I only have a nano and I am not willing to spend a pile of cash again for stuff I already own.
We have three old desktops (Intel NUC's) and two old laptops (Lenovo's) running Debian Linux. The third laptop is running Win 10 for my OBDII diagnostics software. Gave up on Windows for daily drivers when 8 came along. Our pfSense box is running on a NUC.
We have the M365 family subscription. For $129 a year with 6 accounts with 1TB of storage each, it's a pretty good deal. I have tons of stuff in mine and I never have to worry about it getting lost, plus my wife will never delete anything in her Hotmail and this is one way to make that work.
Having this subscription is one of the downsides of using Linux, but I found I am able to install the PWA version of OneDrive (and Outlook) on Linux, it's a browser based instance of OneDrive/Outlook that runs with the look and feel of the actual OneDrive client.
Overall, I'm happy with this experiment, and it has gotten better since the system decided to upgrade itself to the 6.8 kernel, performance is smoother. I also added the Intel video driver repository and it picked up an Intel driver for the integrated Iris graphics, which seems to have improved performance at higher video resolutions. I run it in power saving mode pretty much all the time which keeps the bottom of the laptop cool to the touch. I might have been a little optimistic about the battery life at first, it really depends what you are doing, but even so it's still noticeably better than Windows.
At the local church I go to we booted windows earlier this year, save for one. Moved all the existing machine to Linux Mint with OnlyOffice. Been a pretty smooth transition so far. The one machine that is still windows is actually a Windows VM (Running on Proxmox) for the presentation software (Anyone know of any good alternatives to proclaim ?), runs on a Linux thin-client and RDP's into the windows VM. The existing PC's couldn't run windows 11 and for what the church needed them for it would have been a huge waste of money to get rid of them. The money that was budgeted for it went to increasing the food bank donations.
Well I....deleted LinuxMinut and installed Zorin to try it out. I wanted OneDrive integration. I may go back to LinuxMint though, I was expecting more from this integration, although I have to admit Zorin is pretty polished, and runs just as well as LinuxMint did.
It did offer to install them side by side with Grub, I probably should have just done that, although I have a certain glee about wiping things out and starting over. I'm that guy that factory resets their phone once or twice a year, things start running slow, forget it, f-disk, fsck, format, start over. But anyway. Some people are very change resistant. I am the agent of change.
I store all my files in the cloud so wiping the OS is a relatively painless activity anyway.
I do have some security concerns with Zorin, as they do not have a dedicated security team like Ubuntu and are generally reliant on upstream distributions. But we'll see.
It did offer to install them side by side with Grub, I probably should have just done that, although I have a certain glee about wiping things out and starting over. I'm that guy that factory resets their phone once or twice a year, things start running slow, forget it, f-disk, fsck, format, start over. But anyway. Some people are very change resistant. I am the agent of change.
I store all my files in the cloud so wiping the OS is a relatively painless activity anyway.
I do have some security concerns with Zorin, as they do not have a dedicated security team like Ubuntu and are generally reliant on upstream distributions. But we'll see.
All three are Ubuntu under the hood and all three'll have the benefit of Ubuntu's security repositories.
OVERKILL
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I'm contemplating tossing Zorin on my old Mac Pro, which now just serves as a media source machine on the other side of the room. It's using OCLP to run a reasonably recent version of MacOS, but the days of it working are drawing to a close I fear and, for what I'm using it for, while it has a Windows 11 dual boot, I'm probably better served with Linux or BSD.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Well, I went with Ubuntu server, registered for Pro, and then installed KDE for a desktop UI.
I'm in the same boat, and find myself using Windows a lot less lately. Maybe one day I will completely rid myself of Windows, but that day isn't here yet.I tried Linux Mint/Ubuntu before settling on Linux Mint Debian Edition. Seems to run better on my equipment. I also have a Windows 11 computer as well. Not going to mess with dual boot. Figured computers are like tools. Why not have one of each OS and use each one for it's specific uses. One reason I "need" Windows still is for the HP app that enables print cartridges for life. Once that printer dies I probably won't have a need for Windows. I actually like the Linux experience better. Less bloat
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Curious as to why you went with Server if you also went with KDE.
I actually installed Server as well, with the idea of going with not even a window manager, but manually switching between TTY1 (used for when a graphical interface is needed to access the Internet) and pure CLI on TTY2-6.
Had the dream of an ultra-lean system stripped to a near-pure 1970s UNIX environment, something I had done with some success 20 years ago (when I didn't even use a file manager-- lots of "ls -la"!).
However, while I did get it up and running, it was a bit of a nightmare getting all the stuff like sound and suspend/resume to work on the laptop (just two examples-- there were many).
But the real kicker was that in order to install Edge (which, interestingly seems to be the lightest, highest performing heavy-weight browser on Linux), I had to bring in so much supporting infrastructure (e.g., Wayland) that, in the end the resource footprint of that build was barely any smaller than a stock Ubuntu/Gnome LTS install.
I was not happy with all the work needed to get an install with barely the level of functionality I could get with a stock non-server install, so I abandoned it.
So, I'm pretty interested as to why you went with Server+KDE. If I had to guess, I'd say that, like me, you're not getting any real advantages as far as resource footprint, so what was the rationale?
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Longer release cycles. The box is mainly used for torrents and since I was using transmission on MacOS, I could move the config and torrent files from one OS to the other.
Basically, I wanted the desktop experience, for ease of doing what I do with the box, but without the more frequent release cycle of the desktop OS. It's a 14 year old computer, it doesn't benefit from anything "latest and greatest" at this point.
Had no issues getting everything working with the UI, if you do apt install kubuntu-desktop you get the entire KDE desktop experience from kubuntu, there are only a couple of packages that don't get pulled in that self-resolve via the update manager, after you fix network-manager, lol, since server doesn't use NetworkManager OOTB, but it's relatively straightforward to make that change.
I wouldn't have taken this approach on a laptop, as I would expect that perhaps some stuff that a mobile computing platform needs wouldn't be installed or enabled. This is an old Mac Pro, which is basically a server/workstation platform:
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I see-- I remember your unhappiness about FreeBSD ending because it served your needs well due to the lack of continuous updating.
Sounds like your approach of just installing a meta-package of KDE solves the problem I was dealing with. However, not sure I would have hit upon that solution as I don't care about release cycles, so it would probably make more sense for me to just install straight kubuntu.
And speaking of release cycles, the LTS versions of standard Ubuntu have 5 years of standard support, 10 years of extended support. Wouldn't that be enough?
(Note: I'm surprisingly unknowledgeable about computers, so understand that I'm in no way criticizing or judging-- just curious since you seem to be pretty expert in all this. Feel free to not respond if it would be too much work-- you don't owe me an education!)
