Linux

[Lyman]

My Wife had an older laptop that had a few problems. She had purchased a new one and this one was just collecting dust. I had been wanting to try Linux for a while now. So I installed Mint 22 wilma / cinnamon on her old laptop. So far I like it a lot. I am planning on installing it now on my Laptop when windows 10 is no longer supported. I have not run into any issues so far. It's only been a day though. I am running chromium for the browser. I tried Linux many years ago and they have come a long way since then.

 

[himemsys]

My Wife had an older laptop that had a few problems. She had purchased a new one and this one was just collecting dust. I had been wanting to try Linux for a while now. So I installed Mint 22 wilma / cinnamon on her old laptop. So far I like it a lot. I am planning on installing it now on my Laptop when windows 10 is no longer supported. I have not run into any issues so far. It's only been a day though. I am running chromium for the browser. I tried Linux many years ago and they have come a long way since then.

Just make sure you have a way of doing everything you need to do. Any specific Win apps, etc. Most have some alternative, but there are edge cases. Some people can't live without MS Office, etc. Personally, I use LibreOffice and Thunderbird even on my Windows work machine. Even though O365 is the standard here.

 

[Lyman]

Just make sure you have a way of doing everything you need to do. Any specific Win apps, etc. Most have some alternative, but there are edge cases. Some people can't live without MS Office, etc. Personally, I use LibreOffice and Thunderbird even on my Windows work machine. Even though O365 is the standard here.

That is my only concern. I plan on keeping my main laptop windows 10 until I am 100 percent certain I can live through every scenario. I feel this will be perfect for learning the ins and outs while still having my backup.

 

[dogememe]

I've tried Linux on a computer as a daily driver over and over again throughout the years and never really got into it. I always end up going back to Windows at most a few weeks later.

On the other hand, I routinely manage servers used for hosting websites and virtual servers and they're all Linux. That's where it shines IMO.

 

[supton]

I have Mint on my home PC. Does what I need, which has been mostly web surfing at the moment. Helps a lot that I have a work laptop that I tend to also use.

 

[zzyzzx]

I keep an old windows laptop around just to use Forscan. Other than that, I use Linux.

 

[97prizm]

My Wife had an older laptop that had a few problems. She had purchased a new one and this one was just collecting dust. I had been wanting to try Linux for a while now. So I installed Mint 22 wilma / cinnamon on her old laptop. So far I like it a lot. I am planning on installing it now on my Laptop when windows 10 is no longer supported. I have not run into any issues so far. It's only been a day though. I am running chromium for the browser. I tried Linux many years ago and they have come a long way since then.

I've been using Linux for 15 years almost exclusively. Yeah it used to be a real pain with drivers. Make sure you install the restricted extras, and windows fonts as Linux doesn't use the same fonts with everything. Remember sudo is your friend in the command line. Sudo apt-get update then Sudo apt-get upgrade.

 

[Finn]

Almost five years now with Linux Mint. Now running Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon.

No problems whatsoever and I'm not exactly a computer specialist.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Linux has come very far in just the last few years as far as ease of installation and general use for the non-savvy. It certainly is a great solution in a lot of scenarios but not all. Microsoft is going to push a lot of people to Linux once Windows 10 support goes away. Same with a lot of Mac users running Intel hardware that can no longer run the latest macOS without a lot of fiddling and quirks.

Kubuntu is my distro of choice.

 

[Dave Sherman]

Dabbled with various Linux distributions over the years, and for a long time I had PCLinuxOS on my primary homebuilt desktop. My old gaming laptop worked quite well on Linux Mint 19, except for one significant problem, if it went to sleep nothing could wake it up again and all I could do was power cycle it at that point. Was a bit disappointed that nothing seemed to fix that, yet had no problem in Windows. Might download a newer version and see if that was ever fixed.

 

[BobsArmory]

I've been on Linux since about 2019. I find it to be fun to tinker with different Distros but I have settled with Fedora for the last year.

 

[97prizm]

I always recommend distrowatch for users as it updates whats being downloaded, new kernel updates etc.

 

[supton]

Dabbled with various Linux distributions over the years, and for a long time I had PCLinuxOS on my primary homebuilt desktop. My old gaming laptop worked quite well on Linux Mint 19, except for one significant problem, if it went to sleep nothing could wake it up again and all I could do was power cycle it at that point. Was a bit disappointed that nothing seemed to fix that, yet had no problem in Windows. Might download a newer version and see if that was ever fixed.

Still does that in the 21(?) that I put on a year or two ago. It's not nearly as bad now as i turned off screensaver lock. It still changes to showing the time, and at some point will turn off the monitors--but a nudge of the mouse brings it back. It seems ok for a few days, leaving it up and running, then at some point it fails. No idea, haven't figured out why.

I'm not sure why I leave it running overnight--it's like a 30 second boot, and I rarely have that much running outside of a web browser. Just too easy to walk away during the day and forget about.

I haven't figured out how to use Wine with it, mostly because I haven't tried. There is one Windows program that I'd like to add.

 

[supton]

Oh and if I leave it running for too long, WiFi performance suffers. And might even quit working. Quick reboot and it's fine.

I hate rebooting my work computer (much like my desk, it has many things open so I can always return to something at moment's thought) but again, since I don't use it for much, doesn't bother me that much.

 

[himemsys]

BTW, my distro of choice is MX Linux. I've used it where linux is required for years. I recently visited distrowatch and was pleased to see it has grown over the years to one of the most popular distros. For example, I use it on a forensic machine at work for opening questionable file attachments that employees receive.

 

[BobsArmory]

BTW, my distro of choice is MX Linux. I've used it where linux is required for years. I recently visited distrowatch and was pleased to see it has grown over the years to one of the most popular distros. For example, I use it on a forensic machine at work for opening questionable file attachments that employees receive.

Does MX still have some type of adblocker built in to the OS? I would be interested in trying it again.

 

[himemsys]

Does MX still have some type of adblocker built in to the OS? I would be interested in trying it again.

Don't know, honestly. If there is, I haven't turned it on. Probably a Firefox addon, maybe installed by default? Check here:
https://mxlinux.org/

 

[ka9mnx]

Does MX still have some type of adblocker built in to the OS? I would be interested in trying it again.

Try Brave Browser. You can lock it down as much as you want. Probably too much for most people but it's completely configurable.

My wife complained about ads and pop ups while surfing. She's using chromium. I finally got her to use Brave, it's Chrome/chromium anyways, and her problems were solved.

 

[ka9mnx]

I've dabbled with Linux/BSD since the '90's. I finally made the plunge in 2005. Went through Ubuntu (until they became commercialized) then moved to Mint. About ten years ago I wanted to go to the heart of Linux and installed Debian. Debian can be daunting for a beginner unless you have a Linux savvy friend but it's solid and stable.

We have three desktop nuc boxes in the house and two laptops running on Debian. Mine, wife's and TV. They never get turned off. Updates, upgrades and backups are performed when I sleep.

The mother-in-law uses a cheap laptop to surf the web. About three weeks ago she asked to look at it because it wasn't running right. It was bloated with spam, persistent pop ups and whatever Windows 10 can pick up. I'm not Windows savvy and tried, but couldn't help her. I noticed her laptop was too old to update to Win 11. Reluctantly, I suggested we install Linux. She didn't care so away I went. She sees no experience difference between Linux and Windows.