So like it says in the title. I’m looking to make a change. The only coding I ever did was like, some very light HTML on stuff like LiveJournal 20 years ago (because I’m ancient in internet years, haha) and even that I barely remember.
I’ve seen people talk about LinuxMint in other comment sections and how that one might be closest to something like Windows (in that a layman like myself can use it out of the box like buying a new laptop from Best Buy or whatever store). Is that actually a good one or is there something better for somebody like me?
I’ve seen enough people go ‘NO UBUNTU!!!’ to steer me away from that one, but otherwise I have no clue what would actually be good for somebody in my shoes.
I have a laptop that still technically runs Windows 8 that I just use for downloads so I’d be trying it on there so that if something goes wonky I’m not fucked. After looking at the LinuxMint website, the specs on that laptop meet the requirements for it.
Thanks so much!
The command prompt is not a GUI.
I WOULD have cared to read the explanations, there just weren’t any or they sent me down a billion rabbit holes. Just yesterday in fact I did try Linux Mint (after having tried various Linux distributions over the years, ending in confusion every time). I hate (HATE) just following instructions without knowing why I’m doing what I’m doing so I tried very hard to understand every step. It was nothing but frustrating because my earlier post is only a slight exaggeration.
I relate. There’s a lot of people on Lemmy that feel Linux is better in every way over MacOS or Windows and it’s simply not true. I’m following some vague instructions right now to bring a device up-to-date that appear to be re-compiling kernel unexpectedly. I just wanted my display to rotate correctly, and be able to play some games.
(sorry, rant incoming)
See, I’d be absolutely willing to learn that Linux is indeed “better” than Windows (in fact, I do suspect it probably is - once you know your way around it). What annoys me absolutely endlessly is how people go on and on about how eeeeasy it all is and modern distros are juuuust like your current OS, really, and there’s absolutely zero need to be intimidated because it’s all so very intuitive and you can’t do anything wrong*! It isn’t easy. And it doesn’t have to be easy, I’d be okay with looking shit up - if explanations and guides didn’t assume you already know your way around the OS (“do cryptic thing xYz, duh”), if they weren’t out of date because they were published an entire month ago and if people didn’t pretend.
* I almost broke my display tablet in my Mint experiment because while trying to get the driver to work, I followed a guide that explained nothing (so for every step I looked up another guide which lead to another guide to another guide to another guide…). No I don’t know what went wrong because I don’t know what the guide was making me do. Luckily, I’m tech savvy enough to fix it on my own - under Windows.
Thank god I’m not the only one. I was convinced it was me! i used Mint for two months, and when everything works it’s good, but the second you encounter a problem it becomes a nightmare.
It’s been great for standard use, but yeah some things just get weird sometimes in every OS. 2 mint cinnamon OS’s acted different, over and over with power and lid settings. pop-os had stupid shit with an old laptop that no matter what I did the airplane mode would enable when you opened the screen, not closed. I use RustDesk for remote access across my machines and phone, where you install from matters, if you install from the software manager their website or the flatpack… You will have different results/features. Run your own server for it, now the docker container is continuously restarting. Fix that and my file server, jellyfin server, Pihole server, or something else is doing something wonky. It’s 100% my fault I’m trying to run to much off of one device, but once I get it all working I say hmm… What if I try to run a Piefed instance off of it, and realize no matter how I run the reverse proxy the incoming ports may have overlap. So I need to divide things up more.
That’s all beyond my abilities :)
My main problem was just a printer. I did find a driver for Mint, and it worked flawlessly for a few days. And suddenly it stoped printing again. I tried to configure the driver, I uninstalled and reinstalled, it just does not work anymore. Getting help is difficult online because everyone seems to think much knowledge is a given, and the hints got more and more complicated until I just had no idea what I was doing. Reading up on the commands used got more and more overwhelming and intimidating, so I, at some point, just gave up. Same with gaming, if a game runs it’s absolutely fine, but when it does not it’s tough to find easy to understand documentation how to fix it.
I won’t give up, but I reinstalled Windows 11 on my main PC again. Mint runs on my laptop that I use occasionally. Linux has come a long way, and it’s amazing how the usability improved over the years, but, at least for me, it’s not quite there yet. But until Windows 12 comes out I’m pretty sure it will improve much further, until then Win11 has to do. My first step is taken.