this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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For my personal use, Linux has every single thing I need right out of the box. That's why it's my main OS.
Your chosen GNU/Linux distribution installs the applications.
Microsoft and apple are the reasons boomers have learned helplessness with tech. It helped them sell units in the 90's to imply you didn't have to ever consider anything under the hood because it all is supposed to just work like magic. you just hit the switch and let electricity do it's thing.
That's not an inherently bad thing though, same as it's not inherently bad that not everyone can repair their car, or sew up tears in their trousers.
it is bad if they don't realize how simple it is to pump their own gas. That's about the equivalent of a possibly regular task like being able to unencrypt your own files. I'd say it's important enough that you should not be relying on anyone with the potential security of your own personal data.
The relevant aphorism is "make it as simple as possible, but not simpler". You can add functionality to make things easier, same as syntactic sugar in programming languages. You shouldn't turn the person using your system into an object, just accepting what it gives them in response to their magic movements or clicking pictures.
You're not from New Jersey I see
Sorry, didn't get the reference?..
TBF, I personally learned helplessness with house repairs. There's no MS and Apple there. My colleagues are not like that, for example.
If you don't mind me asking, what's your distro and why did you settle on that particular one? I'm in the process of trying out different distros in anticipation of eventually moving all my stuff over and getting out of Windows completely, and that was really high praise, lol.
So if you have a moment I'd really appreciate hearing about why you picked the distro you did, because being front loaded is one of the things I'm low key looking for: I don't know Linux well enough to know what I might need out of the box, so the more that's already on it the better (no shortage of drive space, fortunately). If it appeals I'll load it up on a LiveUSB and test drive it myself. Thanks!
If you're new, Ubuntu (or one of its variants, like Xubuntu or Kubuntu) or Linux Mint are great "safe" options. The only thing to consider with Mint is that there is only an LTS release so you will end up with older versions of some programs. I've been using Linux as my primary OS for 17 years but I will still throw Xubuntu on a laptop if I just want to get something up and running quickly - other than having some extra packages installed out of the box there's nothing "wrong" with it.
That said I use openSUSE Tumbleweed as my daily driver. I like the rolling release and cutting edge packages, plus I like that YaST allows me to install the system exactly the way I want - picking and choosing individual packages.
Thank you so much for your response. I have tried Mint; it ran perfectly out of the box with zero issues on a 13 year old laptop; I just didn't care for the Cinnamon DE so I have it on my list to try again with a different DE. Snaps aren't too much of an issue because it supports other repositories.
I've also tried OpenSUSE Leap but not Tumbleweed; I think I had to do the full install (no LiveUSB) but as an OS it was great. I ran it for a week but had some video issues with it, weird horizontal lines that go across the screen for a few seconds at boot, shut down, and login. Not a deal killer but I've set it aside for right now while I try other distros. (One thing I love so far about the Arch distros is that the online knowledge base is truly easy for someone with basic tech knowledge but no Linux knowledge to find what they need.) Really appreciate you taking the time to respond, thank you!
I don't mind. I have two machines that run Linux and one that runs windows. Main desktop I built last month runs endeavourOS. A 13" laptop that runs Ubuntu. A 15" laptop that runs windows. I like arch because it is always on the latest software. Some people like to be on the cutting edge and others don't. I'm the former. But I didn't want to run vanilla arch because I'm too lazy for maintenance and building my distro from ground up. EndeavourOS is arch with an installer and extra repos. It gives you a solid distro out of the box that you don't need to do much work on after it's installed. It just works. Never had an issue. I just update twice or once a week and I'm good to go. I have it set up with btrfs and snapshots in case it does break.
Ubuntu on the laptop because I like Ubuntu on little machines. Every single thing works out of the box. Ubuntu is very neat. A lot of people hate on it and on snaps, but I honestly don't care. I use what works for me. Anything Linux is good to me and they vary in how good they are. Also, Ubuntu is kind of nostalgic to me. It was the first thing I knew about Linux back in 2013.
But here is the thing, I told you what I use, but it may not work for you. That's why I love Linux. There is a distro for everyone. You can try what I use and see if you like them, if not keep distro hopping until you settle on something you love like I did. I personally wouldn't listen to any suggestions on here, Reddit or anywhere on what distro to use (that's just me btw). I distro hopped for almost two years until I settled on what I have now. Hope this helps.
Thank you for your response, this is exactly the info I was looking for. It may not work for me, but knowing WHY someone else loves it tells me a lot about it. I listen to every suggestion, but I first tried Linux back in the 90s: I'm not really swayed by emotive pleas because I've already heard them all. (The first time I ever heard that joke about if OSs were airlines and Unix/Linux would be the one where people brought the parts and assembled it on the runway while fighting the entire time was around that same period; it has only ever gotten to be even more true over the ages, lol.)
At this point I have over a dozen LiveUSB or install sticks and I'm just rotating through them, spending a week or two on the distros I like. I'm on Zorin OS right now, which is on the list because it claims to have great Windows app support out of the box, and it's great but I still need to test that part (and I'm procrastinating because it's a major pain in the ass but I will eventually).
EndeavourOS is one of the ones I keep hearing about, and it's very high on the list at distrowatch.com, but I don't really hear about it from the folks that use it so this is exactly what I was looking for. I really appreciate you taking the time to spell out what you're using on what hardware and why, it cuts out a lot of the chaff that inevitably flies around distro choices. "Yeah, I know you like [____], but WHY does it work for you?" is a lot more helpful, and you gave me that. EndeavourOS is absolutely on my list now, and knowing that it comes preloaded with everything I might ever need helps a lot. Thank you again.
Of course. Good luck to ya. Make sure to post your questions here on this community if you run into any issues. I've noticed that the Linux "sub"/community over here on Lemmy is way more relaxed than on Reddit. You can ask questions, you can post random shit and no one will yell at you. Mods can sometimes be a pain in the ass on reddit.