They can now ditch the dumpster fire of an OS that is Windows and lobby for the adoption of a corporate choke-point on Linux while continuing to bludgeon the remaining bits of your dignity and soverignity. At least this could be so for enterprise Linux.
Vanilla Debian or LMDE. Caveats are:
Use system packages as much as you can and only use Flatpaks if you need the latest and greatest of a certain app (example being the LibreOffice suite for better document compatibility).
Learn how to backup your system with Timeshift and your data with Pika. You’ll have a really wonderful system that you can will serve you well and at the same time be a good base to improve your Linux knowledge.
This is what worked for me when I first started. My workstation still runs Debian many years. Its rock solid and I have no reason to change to anything else.
My only regret its that I didn’t move to Linux sooner. God luck on your journey.
I remind myself that it’s mindfulness, speech and conduct that that matter. Labels by themselves are meaningless.
Thanks. This is what I concluded from my reading too. Just needed to jump an extra hoop or two to allocate for btrfs which I didnt know about but going back and redoing the zrsm swap was not difficult.
Ha. Learnt something today. Thank you for the share. You are kind.
note: the term “virtual memory” I used in my response above refers to swap memory. I was having trouble recalling.
In the beginning it was that I wanted to try Gnome and Fedora. I was new to Linux then and experimenting was exciting.
But I guess the important point here (for me at least) is why I stayed on. Fedora
I realised the system packages for LibreOffice and some other apps were newer on Fedora.
Being able to run this laptop mostly on fairly current system packages meant more compatibility (eg. formatting cnsistency on LibreOffice) and not incurring resource overheads from running the same software on Flatpaks. I’ve not scientifically tested this but it does “feel” a lot snappier running system packaged apps.
I made the decision to move to Sway when Fedora 43 came out and that freed even more resources from not having to run Gnome.
Gnome was a good introduction to a keyboard driven workflow and moving to Sway was a lot easier because if my experience navigating via the keyboard on Gnome.
None of this was premeditated. Its just how things turned out for me. And with Linux, I’d probably optimise more as I go along.
My system just grew to adapt to my needs, preferences and limitations every step of the way. And I think that journey will continue to adapt as I go.
Will I recommend LinixMint to anyone? 100%!!! I cannot find any fault with it. Its super reliable, beautiful UI, decent customisations, etc. I’ve set up LMDE (the Debian variant of LinuxMint) for a few Windows-refugee friends of mine and they’ve been having a great time.
Will I go back to Mint? If I could run Sway on it, then perhaps. But I dont have a need to at this moment.
My daily driver is a 2014 i5 machine with 4GB RAM, running Fedora 43 Sway (riced but no animations).
It can simultaneously run Emacs, Librewolf 6-8 tabs (research), Helium 2-3 tabs (for email, calendar & cloud drive) and 1-2 desktop chat apps. If I flick on Freetube at this point, it’ll freeze up.
I’ve got a pretty minimalist approach to work so I don’t have too many things running most of the time. I use mostly system packages and Flatpaks sparingly. I can keep running this thing as my daily driver for a few more years.
Also stick a 27" display and a pair of 5" powered studio speakers into it in the evenings to enjoy some movie streaming.
ps: I’ve recently configured another 12GB of virtual memory (?) on the SSD to support the 4GB RAM on the machine and that has significantly helped with multitasking.
ps2: Sharing the above to encourage to try Linux out. I came to this with zero knowledge amd experience. Really amazing what’s possible.
ps3: May be also good to mention that if first ran Linux Mint (with no optimisations or modifications) on this machine and only moved to Fedora a year later. Both distros worked flawlessly. If anybody is keen to know why I moved from Linux Mint to Fedora, please ask and I will share my experience.
I walked away the samw way I walk away from “no-cash” stores. They can keep thief website and lattes to themselves.