I tried PopOS and the pop store is not the best, and gnome is too foreign for someone coming from windows.
And also, too fiddly to make it work with a number of third party extensions vs the customization being built in.
KDE is heavier but also seems more streamlined and Cinnamon is fairly decent too.
I’m doing exactly the same 😁😁
I’ve been using Omnivore, with Obsidian plugin to have local copies of the pages.
Copied from another comment I made
" I have a home server on debian and after a bit of setup woes(partly linux still being so reliant on CLI, partly my inexperience with it), it’s been running super smoothly. Have multiple dockers and it has been a joy. And same for the steam deck, it just works. Some glitches here and there with controller support but that’s just PC gaming. But I installed it on my laptop as well and that was a shitshow. All biometrics wouldn’t work, wifi kept dropping in and out, phantom touches now and then. Sure I could have done some cli technical wizardry but I gave up after trying to make it work half as smoothly on my workflow as in windows. And the windows 11 on it is utter garbage. Partly this is manufacturing not having linux drivers available and partly it is linux just not having guis for essential functions. Hope steam is able to have enough of a push to get much needed consumer friendly guis for more system functions. "
Recent years of 2021, 22, 23, and 24.
As someone who has tried it on multiple devices in recent years, it still isn’t smooth enough. And I’ve been assembling computers for 2 decades now. So not entirely technically illiterate, but just not adept in linux. Definitely heavily reliant on use cases for how smooth the experience is. The server side is very well developed with years of linux leaning heavier on that side, but the splintering of frontend has a bit of an android effect. Lots of really cool things but still some jank that you can’t get rid of.
Exactly this. To both points actually. I have a home server on debian and after a bit of setup woes(partly linux still being so reliant on CLI, partly my inexperience with it), it’s been running super smoothly. Have multiple dockers and it has been a joy. And same for the steam deck, it just works. Some glitches here and there with controller support but that’s just PC gaming. But I installed it on my laptop as well and that was a shitshow. All biometrics wouldn’t work, wifi kept dropping in and out, phantom touches now and then. Sure I could have done some cli technical wizardry but I gave up after trying to make it work half as smoothly on my workflow as in windows. And the windows 11 on it is utter garbage. Partly this is manufacturing not having linux drivers available and partly it is linux just not having guis for essential functions. Hope steam is able to have enough of a push to get much needed consumer friendly guis for more system functions.
This is just factually untrue with the numbers lemmy by itself has being having. Not to say anything of Mastodon and et al. There wouldn’t be a mass exodus of highly engaged folks from reddit to lemmy if users just didn’t move anymore. Threads got big but then instantly deflated to a much lower number immediately.
That and Emudeck.
The most seamless retro gaming setup I’ve used yet.
I bought an old business HP 3500 Pro ans have been running jellyfin and a number of socker containers from it. Plus it is quite upgradeable since it’s just a pc, and cost me just 100 CAD.
For occasional use of a Windows specific software, how feasible is it to keep a VM handy? Not too much of a drag or a bit of a hassle.
Been on the edge of turning the main OS to linux on the gaming rig.
This. The best distro is the one you stick with. AND you’re gonna bounce off from the first one soon enough. You might come back to it later, but just pick one and go for it.
Anecdotally, Mint broke file permissions and then the mounting points for my home server setup. And I find Cinnamon to be quite ugly imho.
I tried Fedora and Debian and much prefer those two vs Mint. Also, KDE is incredibly beautiful on the Steam Deck.
P.S. Fedora and Debian work with secure boot OOTB. Helpful for a laptop install. I know you can make it work with Arch and Mint as well, and there’s issues+opinions with secure boot, but I just wanted something to work. I am not as adept with linux and the guides assumed a particular level of experience with it.
So, this is what baffles me. You use it for one encounter. And it is an absolute blast, coz I mean look at it.
But what do you do with these after that encounter?
That was the game that totally sold me on the Steam Deck Experience. I played a lot of the handheld perfect games on the switch already.
Also, by your definition, Skyrim and Witcher 3 are also Shovelware.
Which, I want you to think hard about for maybe 1 min.
That’s called a port my dude.
Hold the GODDAMN heck up, did you just call Shovel Knight Shovelware??? b r u h
Why would they do that when they could just call it Virtua Boy 2?
I totally see your point and I tried GNOME first to have a uniquely Linux experience. I do agree with you. But the inflexibility of GNOME by default made it a much harder flip. I tried it with PopOS too, after using Debian for a while.
Plus tbh, I don’t think with still how much you need to use the terminal for linux, anyone would be mistaken in the transition. Windows has kludge from the 90s for their settings and linux still needs terminal.