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Mint is so much more usable than the last time I tried and I'm in love (piefed.world)
submitted 5 days ago by toomanypancakes@piefed.world to c/linux@lemmy.world
48 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

My first foray into Linux was something like twenty years ago, I ran Linux Mint briefly and happily, but I screwed something up trying to get flash videos to have sound and kind of gave up and went back to windows.

Flash forward, I got my desktop and my husband's laptop set up with Mint now, and I can't believe how easy it was. Everything has been working excellently, and the laptop is getting more attention than its had in years. The software manager is amazing, I got set up with steam and my daw (reaper) in no time. So far I haven't run into anything I've tried to do that I couldn't do with minimal elbow grease.

Thanks for being so passionate about Linux gang, I don't know that I would have converted nearly so quickly if I wasn't exposed to it here. Y'all are cool as hell.

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[–] archonet@lemy.lol 37 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Mint "just works" in a way a lot of other distros don't. The majority of Linux enthusiasts and users enjoy tinkering, and that's fine -- but people who want their stuff to "just work", generally don't like Linux because it expects you, the user, to fuck with it until it works. Mint doesn't, and I adore it for this reason. You have any idea how floored I was the first time I went to print something and it just worked with my network printer, no bullshit involved? Or how my jaw hit the floor when installing a graphics driver was a two click install process, and nothing went wrong?

Yeah, Mint is rad as fuck.

[–] dumples@midwest.social 5 points 4 days ago

Mint worked better with my printer than windows every did right out of the box.

[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 34 points 5 days ago

It's great. It's exactly what an operating system should be like. It's my first foray into Linux and I'm very happy with Mint.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Somewhere around version 18 it started to really get all the problems ironed out, or so I felt. Love it.

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I started using it at 17.0, Quiana, and used it for ten years. I'm on fedora KDE now and I kinda want Mint Cinnamon back.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Come back 💖! 😋

[–] fox2263@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago

Last time I used mint must have been over 5 years ago. But I’m really loving what’s going on with cinnamon.

[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 21 points 5 days ago (5 children)

I just want a KDE variant without having to manually install it

[–] salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 13 points 5 days ago

If you want a Debian-based KDE, Debian works pretty well for me so far.

[–] vikingtons@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'd have thought cinnamon was a key draw for mint and lmde given it's overall familiarity with windows / user friendliness? Would kubuntu or the fedora KDE spin work here?

[–] Godort@lemmy.ca 9 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Regarding Kubuntu, I don't like snaps and don't want to have to worry about disabling them after every major update

Regarding Fedora, I really like aptitude and don't want to give it up

[–] vikingtons@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Totally understandable. For whatever it's worth, you can permanently disable and remove snap and snapd from an Ubuntu system (I had to do this recently with a raspberry pi 5). The amount of work to do this, however, may be practically equivalent to installing plasma on mint / lmde, but the guides on this are thankfully straightforward in case you're ever interested.

https://www.baeldung.com/linux/snap-remove-disable

This works well in practice, and upgrades still work as intended. I may need to follow this guide again very soon, as nextcloud pi unexpectedly died on me. I'm thinking of flashing either Ubuntu or trying their Debian fork out again.

[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Stop using sd cards and your raspberry pi wont die on you again. Flash on a usb3 external ssd.

[–] vikingtons@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The SD card didn't abruptly die or anything like that, NCP kind of ground to a halt following automatic maintenance. I couldn't get it to cooperate, so I just decided to take it offline.

didn't have anything important on there, was just using it as a test.

That said, I have heard of particularly problematic SD card models that are known to fail with the pi5.

[–] passenger@sopuli.xyz 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Try with an ssd next time, and thank me later. There are so many ways the sd card can fail on you. After I switched to an SSD, no more random weird problems. Just unstable

[–] vikingtons@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

i haven't really had stability issues with kodi/jellyfin, rasbian/Ubuntu, retropi etc. I appreciate where you're coming from but it's kind of a knockabout device to help me learn more about apps I would like to host on a proper server later on.

generally am not happy with my pi5 as a hw offering, even as far as cheap arm based SBCs go.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 6 points 5 days ago

Debian lets you select KDE during installation.

[–] barnaclebutt@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Why is KDE more difficult to install than any other DE? Kubuntu, Neon, archinstall+KDE, etc...

[–] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Neon.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Neon is not a daily driver. Other people in the thread have suggested Debian KDE and Kubuntu

[–] HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world -1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sounds like all you want to do is complain. You have been given numerous options, and none of them are acceptable.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago

Was that directed to me or the one above me?

[–] vikingtons@lemmy.world 17 points 5 days ago

this is a true success story and I love to see it.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago

Oh jeez I tried again after a bad experience with Ubuntu like 10 years ago. I imagine 20 was awful. And yeah Linux is really good now. I hate having to go into my windows partition, it's more borked than my Linux.

[–] moncharleskey@lemmy.zip 10 points 5 days ago (9 children)

The DAW is my last windows transition hurdle. I have been using Ableton for years so I'm dreading the change enough that I haven't even really been looking. How is Reaper?

[–] pipe@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

I'll give a shoutout to a great resource, LinuxDAW.org. A still-being-maintained list of audio software that has an official linux version.

I personally use Bitwig but mostly do my noodling on my synths and never really record anything. I'm going to change that soon, I think.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 5 points 4 days ago

Reaper is great once you get to know it. It does everything you need and more for recording and editing audio and midi (and some video).

For Linux specifically... It's identical to the other versions, so you can download it to your current OS and try it out, if that's what's keeping you from switching to Linux. You don't even need to install it.

Plugins is a different issue for Linux. Some people use Vine or such to use certain VSTis. Personally I'm on a mission to avoid that, so I only use free plugins native to Linux, and honestly, there's not many. The stock plugins works fine, but they don't have any fancy GUIs or particularly great default settings.

A word of caution: Reaper is very customisable. I would recommend reading at least parts of the manual to ensure that you understand how it's "supposed" to be work before starting on some large project and trying to fit the square block into the round hole. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should. I've seen lots of support posts where people describe their projects and even the helping replies are needlessly convoluted. If you know your way around a real mixer desk, you'll find that every combination of sends, auxs and busses are possible in Reaper, so there's really no need to stack up hundreds of tracks and effects and whatnot to achieve basic stuff. Just like every DAW it's easy to get lost in the routings, so it makes sense to get a well structured flow from the start. Especially because it's soo customizable.

Reaper is very stable, which is nice for live performance. I have only had crashes from dodgy plugins in Windows.

Unrelated to Reaper, my experience is that Linux works better than Windows when you have many USB midi controllers. Both Puppy and Mint recognized my ancient hardware straight out of the installation, no matter which port I use (unlike Windows).

[–] 000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

Ardour is also a great option

[–] christov@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Reaper is super rad! The scripts extensions are incredible and personally I'd have no issue using it for professional level use cases. And the licensing is so cheap!

VSTs are a minor problem but some can work under wine nicely, but this isn't reaper specific

[–] toomanypancakes@piefed.world 4 points 5 days ago

I'm super amateur, I don't know that I'm the best person to ask. Sorry! It meets my purposes for learning, but I'm not in the best place to judge if it has better workflow than ableton or anything like that. I can say I've been pleased with how intuitive everything is though, when I looked at lmms and amour or whatever the other Linux one is they were completely incomprehensible to me.

[–] imdc@lemmy.ml 3 points 4 days ago

I don't use DAWs but i just recorded with a guy using Reaper. He had nothing but glorious things to say. You can run it from a usb stick of your using someone else's studio. At one point he needed it to do something specific and just got in touch with the guy and asked and he sorted it. Apparently it's the guy who made WinAmp.

[–] silver13@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Studio One, which i have been using for years, has a linux beta that does already work quite well. But only in a wayland Session which means... no 3rd party plugin GUIs. And no clue when this might change, maybe never. Probably a deal breaker for 99% of the target group. I really want to switch to Linux, but for Audio guys it can be a pain. Reaper rules tho.

[–] defuse959@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

I run Linux on my regular systems with an occasional dabble in reaper on it.

On the flip side, I run ableton on Mac for a couple of touring projects and could never move off of it.

Reaper is a fantastic tool, I’ve had a license for years and really respect what they’re doing. But if you’re doing anything besides home production for fun, it’s just not there yet.

[–] Pulse541@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

FL studio runs well under WINE, others may have more input on if/how Ableton runs.

Bottles is great for managing windows software/wine and has template for installing software with dependencies.

I could never get used to reaper, but ymmv as it is definately closer to ableton than FL.

[–] getgary@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

If you like Fedora over Ubuntu and want a great out-of-box experience, try this distro: Ultramarine Linux. It's like what Mint is to Ubuntu.

[–] swelter_spark@reddthat.com 2 points 4 days ago

Never heard of Ultramarine, but that sounds great.

[–] Suspiciousbrowsing@kbin.melroy.org 7 points 5 days ago

Mint is also my first dabble, it's absolutely delightful

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

I was disappointed that it cannot install flatpacks on live anyway. Is not based on ubuntu 24, and so deskflow isn't supported yet.

When will they update to ubuntu 24.04? Found it difficult to find settings in both mint and ubuntu. PikaOS (also debian based) was much easier to get started. Is linux able to mount macOS formated volumes? Just not on live CDs?

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Yeah it's pretty sick

[–] Libb@piefed.social 4 points 4 days ago

Has been my daily driver for 5 or 6 years now. Loving it!

Welcome back, btw ;)

[–] Zathras@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 days ago

I had been wanting to switch back to linux now that I don't need specific windows programs anymore. Finally convinced myself to go for Pop_OS! After a few hours of messing with settings and apps that weren't quite right, I decided to go back to linux mint as it worked well for me before. So happy I made the switch. Completely on linux now. Only wish I could convince my husband to us it. Maybe one day...

[–] jdnewmil@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I don't suppose you repeated the mistake of trying to get Flash working this time?

Glad it is working for you. There a lot of fascinating software options in Linux... but expecting to be able to run arbitrary Windows software on it is risky, so when you don't drag your history with you it is usually a pleasant experience.

[–] mushroommunk@lemmy.today 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

To be fair, that long ago the Internet felt like nothing but flash videos and flash games

[–] banazir@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

And complete websites implemented in Flash. It is a dark time that I don't like to talk about. The dreams, the dreams won't leave me alone though, they still haunt me.

As much as I miss the early Internet, there's some aspects better left forgotten.

[–] perishthethought@piefed.social 2 points 4 days ago

Da email. Da email. Check check da email!

Good times, but right, right.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

why would flash be a problem? for everything that's not compatible with ruffle, i just run the standalone projector application in wine.

[–] jdnewmil@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I don't know... but it was what precipitated their last exit from using Linux, and it is a defunct, insecure platform that should be unnecessary these days.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 4 days ago

i see. yeah, it should probably not be used for anything other than archival purposes, and even then it needs to run in a secure sandbox.