Gimp and PS made no sense to me. Ive learnt $d modling over time and don’t it fairly easy.

Started with Tinkercad. Its fine for the basics. Square plus circle minis triangle etc. It dosnt have a timeline or parametric though, so small changes are pretty hard.

Mixed to fusion360. Free if you can navigate the site. Heaps of tutorials non lone and really solid to. Basically draw in 2d and extend. Draw in 2d and cut. Heaps non other use full ways to modify things too. Its parametric so you can say one side is X long. And change X and the model will scale.
Focus on the 2d shapes, fully constraining them and making them simple.

Moved to Onshape. Its not got the 10active models that fusion has. And runs (surprisingly well) in browser. i can jump on any PC (work cough) and make edits. The tools (for most people) are on par with fusion and I found it more initiative.

Watch heaps of builds on fusion and you’ll get the just pretty quickly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZf1-bLIHY

This is a pretty good start to make Mint (Cinnamon) look better.

Its basically mall built-in tools.

I ended up just putting icons in the middle (to prepare for works Win11 enshitification).

I also put a user button near the time to allow shutdown and removed the god awful power icons from the start menu (or whatever the app launcher is called).

Theres also an extend thin for a bigger start menu more like a grid but thats personal preference.

I think mint should do some of these things so its not so off putting. It held me back forming for so long but IRS much better.

I prefer mint over fedora. Fedora dosnt seem to have as many apps in the store. Yes you can use a terminal but thats not helping linux become mainstream, mint is.

+1 mint also prompts new users to setup timeshift backups.

Endeavour IS is arch with KDE and a few basic apps. Pretty sure you dont need WiFi to test it. For any issues you can just use the arch wiki. I really enjoyed it as first distro as the wiki is so helpful. I moved to Mint tho (not DE) and have loved not having to use the terminal for anything.

I installed an emoji quick search app (not sure what one). It freezes Wayland/mint.

I tried Wayland once and didnt realise I was still logging in with it.

Maybe I misunderstood. Are launchers more like “search” or quick lunch?

I was looking for a start menu replacement.

Playing along for Mint/Cinnamon suggestions. Already using the Cinimenu (or whatever it is) but its still not “it”.

Probably not the place to ask, but. Say In a n00b and have Arch (EndeavourOS BTW) on a 15+ year old laptop. Everything works fine hardware wise. Software is fairly basic web, Inkscape, LibreOffice.

Do I really need all the latest Arch updates? Or can I just do an update say every 6 months?

The sync looks to be a version of KDE connect. That I have running on Mint. I think I had to install it from the Mint software GUI though.

Zorin does look cool though. As easy as it is Mint/Cinnamon is a bit ugly out of the box.

How does this compare for a user who “just wants things to work without terminal/CLI”.

I’ve landed on Mint after trying a few other distros.

Thx

Lol. I’m not a Mac person. Airbook? The thin ones.

Is plasma big screen really an option? Id like to install it on a desktop to act as a android tv. Launch Stremio, YT and maybe one or two other apps/websites. Easy big tile navigation with remote (flirc).

It’s in dev since 2020. The images hosted on the site are bit for any of my hardware. It says theres a Debian package. Installed that though LMDE but it was horrible. Somone mentioned Kububtu can install it with apt, but its not listed. Think I’ll give up.

I like the idea. In regards to lemmy and its instances (so I guess a smaller Scale to what your suggesting … Though I still don’t fully get the fediverse).

I did something similar when picking a Lemmy instance. What was the instance that had defederated others the least. There was a git page somewhere that listed them all.

On the flip side I’ve heard a notion that no one single instance should become the “main” instance. Probably with your suggestion new users would gravitate to the big circle. Thus making it the “default”. But maybe it’s different when looking outside of lemmy instances to the wider fediverse.

For me it’s the wiki. Arch just explaining so simply. Searching an issue for LMDE just lead to forums. And the Debian or Ubuntu wikis don’t seem as good as arch.

Plus must searches for <other distro> issue seem to lead to forums and random “run this code”. All arch searches led back to the Wiki. All hail the wiki.

But srsly. I feel like I’m LEARNING Linux with arch. Rather than just running fixes for the other distros.

This. In my recent experience on one laptop. Arch (Endevour OS btw) installed fine.

But LMDE would not boot. I got a system disk missing error every time after install. So much playing with EUFI settings in BIOS, boot back to live disl, multiple re installs, GRUB repair, remake the ISO (ISO was fine, installed on another PC with no issues). Gave up. Just could not boot to the OS.

Install normal mint. No issues.

And past the install? Bluetooth dongle works fine on arch, but so many issues on mint.

WiFi dongle A works on arch, but not mint. WiFI dongle B dosenr work on arch but does work on mint. Took me a while to work thst one out.

Headphpnes have some weird echo back to me when mic is on. Use pipewire config from archwiki. Worked, but reduced qualoty. Tried a few other configs. Didn’t work. Must have broke something coz now the original config dosnt work. So will just deal with echo.

0 of these issues on windows. And 0 likely your regular user can easily swap to Linux.

Will stay on arch tho. Fuck spez windows.

Diagnosed. Coffe gives me energy, keeps me awake. ADHD meds give me energy and ability to actually do things. They also make me feel normal.

So the calmong sleepy thing not universal. Its also not used for diagnoses, similar to “talking lots” is not in itself a diagnoses.

FYI Ridalin makes me crash in the middle of the day, and if I forget to take it at noon I’m ADHD brain awake by night. Vyvance is much better at riding it out all day and then just crashing.

Seems to be the exact question OP is asking. Except you’ve written it as a satabment instead of a question.

This is what I’ve unknowingly been doing. All my open source apps are in Linux. The transition was pretty smooth.

As a noob where do I find more handy tips like this? Alone with handy/popular apps?

Almost every windows app I had was on Linux (most were FOSS already) but I know there will be some unique or interesting ones.

For example in android there is Obtanium now to update apps direct from git, or the many was to use YT without ads.

Can you explain more? I’m getting into Linux and ops post has been a game changer.