Linux has what is called distrobutions which is when someone packages an OS... Ubuntu is considered the most popular and it has official flavors/spins or whatever they call them anyway one of these Ubuntu flavors is Kubuntu which is the distro I recommend because it uses a thing called KDE Plasma
Let me know if you've any questions, you can always ask in !libre@hexbear.net too
any thoughts on kubuntu vs mint? this thread has got me thinking i should give linux another shot after some very unsuccessful forays in the past, but the number of distros is kinda overwhelming
my focus is definitely on minimal ongoing hassle and avoiding command line shit wherever possible
Well, anecdotally I’ve had a bit more trouble with Mint than any official Ubuntu flavor. For your first real try, I’d recommend going with just regular, plain old Ubuntu. The documentation and online resources benefit from its popularity and it doesn’t change much between releases.
Linux is much nicer to maintain than Windows even when you’re not fiddling with the nuts and bolts of it, but I haven’t found a situation where avoiding the command line has made my life any easier. Just accept that you’ll have to learn a tiny bit of command line stuff (that will save you time and headaches down the line) and don’t sweat it if you don’t remember how to do something, there’s tons and tons of info online.
i appreciate the response, and im not trying to call you out or anything or start a struggle session here, but i feel like its a real blind spot of the open source community in general to not realise just how much of an absolute dealbreaker command-line stuff is for so many people. i get for people in the it sector etc that a lot of it is second-nature, and im sure its a timesaver in a lot of instances, but i will take the worst piece-of-shit gui over the most elegant and intuitive command line 1000% of the time and i dont think im alone. im not super techy but i grew up on dos, ive tried debian and redhat in the past, ive recently had to muck around in shell in macos, and i fucking hate command line. if anything, in many ways a little bit of command line is worse than a lot of command line, because youre just parroting what some guide is telling you without the slightest idea of what youre actually doing
no struggle session needed my friend, I completely understand your points
Linux, unfortunately, still suffers from a lot of stuff that’s pretty anti-user, where something that should have been a solved problem 10 years ago is still missing or half-baked, and the people working on it don’t bother improving it because it doesn’t hinder their personal workflow. The relative necessity of the command line is one of those things.
With KDE and Gnome being what they are now, you can basically avoid using the terminal in 2021. It might still be necessary for some more machine level stuff, but for general purpose you can do most things in a GUI now. AppImages work like exes on windows too so you don't even need to use your package manager, just use whatever the built in "store" is for your distro.
All of these things can be done on linux with no need for the command line whatsoever but you might have trouble with running multiplayer vidya that don't support linux natively unless they're one of these (there are other multiplayer games that also work)
If what you're saying were wrong we'd still be using ms-dos. It is astounding that many are still blind to it and how every single time someone says "you'll still need to use command line though" they are essentially writing down the dealbreaker for the vast majority of people.
I haven't tried mint myself and honestly I don't like the design... KDE's really good because it's more than just a desktop environment and it's a very active development and community so things are always improving. KDE's also what my parents are using so yeah I'd recommend Kubuntu, check this post if you go with it
Edit: and my parents don't know what a command line is
I tried KDE out again recently and I find the settings menu in KDE to be a bit labyrinthine these days. GNOME is terrible in many ways but the settings menu isn’t as much of a clusterfuck.
Once again, I am recommending Zorin to anyone who's coming fresh from Windows. It's a distro based on Ubuntu with a focus on GUI tweaks that bring the Ubuntu experience closer to Windows.
Plus because it's just Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu forums.
Linux has what is called distrobutions which is when someone packages an OS... Ubuntu is considered the most popular and it has official flavors/spins or whatever they call them anyway one of these Ubuntu flavors is Kubuntu which is the distro I recommend because it uses a thing called KDE Plasma
Let me know if you've any questions, you can always ask in !libre@hexbear.net too
any thoughts on kubuntu vs mint? this thread has got me thinking i should give linux another shot after some very unsuccessful forays in the past, but the number of distros is kinda overwhelming
my focus is definitely on minimal ongoing hassle and avoiding command line shit wherever possible
Well, anecdotally I’ve had a bit more trouble with Mint than any official Ubuntu flavor. For your first real try, I’d recommend going with just regular, plain old Ubuntu. The documentation and online resources benefit from its popularity and it doesn’t change much between releases.
Linux is much nicer to maintain than Windows even when you’re not fiddling with the nuts and bolts of it, but I haven’t found a situation where avoiding the command line has made my life any easier. Just accept that you’ll have to learn a tiny bit of command line stuff (that will save you time and headaches down the line) and don’t sweat it if you don’t remember how to do something, there’s tons and tons of info online.
i appreciate the response, and im not trying to call you out or anything or start a struggle session here, but i feel like its a real blind spot of the open source community in general to not realise just how much of an absolute dealbreaker command-line stuff is for so many people. i get for people in the it sector etc that a lot of it is second-nature, and im sure its a timesaver in a lot of instances, but i will take the worst piece-of-shit gui over the most elegant and intuitive command line 1000% of the time and i dont think im alone. im not super techy but i grew up on dos, ive tried debian and redhat in the past, ive recently had to muck around in shell in macos, and i fucking hate command line. if anything, in many ways a little bit of command line is worse than a lot of command line, because youre just parroting what some guide is telling you without the slightest idea of what youre actually doing
no struggle session needed my friend, I completely understand your points
Linux, unfortunately, still suffers from a lot of stuff that’s pretty anti-user, where something that should have been a solved problem 10 years ago is still missing or half-baked, and the people working on it don’t bother improving it because it doesn’t hinder their personal workflow. The relative necessity of the command line is one of those things.
With KDE and Gnome being what they are now, you can basically avoid using the terminal in 2021. It might still be necessary for some more machine level stuff, but for general purpose you can do most things in a GUI now. AppImages work like exes on windows too so you don't even need to use your package manager, just use whatever the built in "store" is for your distro.
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What do you use your device for if you don't mind my asking
these days my home desktop is mostly web, piracy, videos, and vidya, nothing terribly fancy
i realise the vidya will likely mean keeping a windows partition anyway
Lutris+Wine has been great for me, even on heavier/newer stuff like UE4 games
90% of what I play could run on a toaster from 2006 though so ymmv
All of these things can be done on linux with no need for the command line whatsoever but you might have trouble with running multiplayer vidya that don't support linux natively unless they're one of these (there are other multiplayer games that also work)
If what you're saying were wrong we'd still be using ms-dos. It is astounding that many are still blind to it and how every single time someone says "you'll still need to use command line though" they are essentially writing down the dealbreaker for the vast majority of people.
I haven't tried mint myself and honestly I don't like the design... KDE's really good because it's more than just a desktop environment and it's a very active development and community so things are always improving. KDE's also what my parents are using so yeah I'd recommend Kubuntu, check this post if you go with it
Edit: and my parents don't know what a command line is
I'm gonna second trying out Ubuntu but also recommend removing snap and replacing it with flatpak at your leisure.
I tried KDE out again recently and I find the settings menu in KDE to be a bit labyrinthine these days. GNOME is terrible in many ways but the settings menu isn’t as much of a clusterfuck.
They're working on it tho and I think it's way easier for a Windows user to switch to KDE because it looks familiar.
Once again, I am recommending Zorin to anyone who's coming fresh from Windows. It's a distro based on Ubuntu with a focus on GUI tweaks that bring the Ubuntu experience closer to Windows.
Plus because it's just Ubuntu, you can use the Ubuntu forums.