The article states that you can’t link your phone to Linux Mint like you can on Windows or Mac.
Huh?
Bullshit
KDE connect has finally been working well for years now
AirDrop/Quick-share FOSS alternative to transfer files across cross-platforms (LocalSend): https://localsend.org/
LocalSend is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS.
It’s free and open source, source code is here: https://github.com/localsend/localsend
It’s true. Sort of ;) Tried connecting my openSUSE with my Android phone today.
https://github.com/GSConnect/gnome-shell-extension-gsconnect/issues/2116
Supposedly fixed and merged but not released yet. I decided to wait.
You certainly can. I think part of this perception comes from this idea that you’re stuck with the same desktop environment or utilities that came with the system, whereas on Linux you can completely reinstall things you didn’t even know were options from the Windows World.
For example, I can run Gnome and use the KDE connect application if I want to.
To some users, if the system doesn’t recommend the use case or hold your hand through it, they confuse that with being impossible.
You can run kde connect on Mint Cinnamon without problems too
It’s valuable to see comments like this, though. You could claim it’s ignorance on the part of the writer, but a better takeaway is that Linux doesn’t do a good job of explaining how it works. This could have been prevented with some kind of post-install documentation explaining exactly what you just posted, for example. The “New To Linux” experience is really not great if you don’t have online communities or external-to-the-OS resources to reference to find out things like this. I went quite a long time after making the switch before really understanding that the desktop environment is largely independent from the OS and how the two relate.
On that note, having multiple desktop environments available to “demo” on the live USB pre-install would help massively. Hearing “Oh, there’s X desktop environments to choose from!” isn’t useful if you don’t know what the difference is or which one you prefer, and online resources aren’t particularly helpful if you’re coming to Linux from another OS. Fuck anyone who installs, say, CachyOS that has what, like 15-20 options? rather than 3 for Mint.
And there is an extension for GNOME shell called GSconnect using kdeconnect protocol. But I understand there’s none called Linux mint so it’s not as easy for discoverability.
The logo is backwards and it pisses me off
Curious that Ubuntu seems to get passed over in discussions/publications, yet is the largest install base (I seem to recall reading, open to contradicting info)
Ubuntu is not great due to Canonicals choices. However I do wonder if they have more enterprise/business install base.
Not curious, Canonical is widely seen as antithetical to open source ethos. But it is stable and has put in a lot of work for vendor support, which is why so many distros (including Mint) are downstream derivatives from Ubuntu.
Yep. Purely for interface simplicity mint is gonna feel a lot more familiar to people fleeing windows. Yes Ubuntu can install the same DE or even KDE. But it’s not the default. And that confuses people.
This is why I think Kubuntu is a better suggestion than Ubuntu, and also Discover is better than the Ubuntu Software Center anyways and it makes it easy to avoid Snaps and does a good job managing Flatpaks.
For family I’ve been pushing Bazaar. Depending on distro, discover can be lacking on integration. Updating some packages but not others. If your distro does flatpak, and it does. It’s click bang done most of the time. No PPAs, or several user/community repos to cock you up randomly.
Personally I like native and rolling release. But I’ve been using Linux for 30 plus years. When you just need it to work and be a relatively recent release. Can’t argue with results.
I haven’t tried Bazaar
My biggest gripe about it is it uses gtk. Other than that it’s fantastic. It’s an awesome way to discover and keep your flatpaks up to date.
It’s an awesome way to discover
discover
I see what you did there
It used to be the largest, a few years ago. It used to be among the best, a few years before that. It’s still pretty good, but no longer suitable for everyone like it was in the old days.
I started on Ubuntu, then I read more about Ubuntu, and switched to Mint. Ubuntu brings a lot of people to Linux, and then a lot of people leave Ubuntu after learning more about it.
You could read more about Ubuntu, too, the information is available.
Thank you - what made you leave Ubuntu?
What might people read that would convince them to switch?
For me, among other things it hijacked apt for snap silently, or something sneaky like that.
Most basic thing - devs target it for things like schools, yet rip out things for remote management.
Like to get and kind of remote access you have to re-install the services for it. Talk about ass backwards.
it takes less than 5seconds to “reinstall” them. I swear distros cant win with whatever software they include/dont.
I have used every Linux distribution for the past 20 years. I stayed with Linux Mint because it’s up to date, pretty but simple, and reminds of Windows 98/2000, i.e. no fluff.
A good reminder that most versions of Linux now have a live ISO version that doesn’t require you to install it and destroy your computer in the process.
One can argue that Linux Mint isn’t that up to date. But in my opinion, it’s up to date enough.
It’s new enough that you’re not living in the digital medieval era, and at the same time, any software installed is for the most part mature, well tested, and stable. And I find that more important than bleeding edge versioning.
And on the few occasions where I need something newer than what can be found in the standard repos, there’s always the option of building from git or adding additional sources.
I’ve been a linux user off and on in varying capacity since the 90s, combined with some FreeBSD, but linux was only a secondary OS on my desktop until I made the complete switch once I saw the trajectory of Windows 8.
Mint reminds me of how Windows 7 was designed: Simply a good OS.
Yes too up to date can be a downside for most, I want stability and just want my OS to be there and do its thing with a monthly or so update I run.
I think it might give you problems if you try to install it on brand new hardware though, because Mint uses an older kernel by default
Yes, but it’s easy to work around.
Source: I bought a brand new Lenovo Legion autumn 2024, and the GPU needed a very recent nvidia driver, which in turn needed a newer kernel than what was available by default. I had to install a mainline kernel, and download nvidia driver from their site. Took maybe 30 minutes to get it up and running properly.
Yeah but it’s harder when something else is incompatible, like WiFi on a laptop, or Ethernet on a desktop. Not so easy to update the kernel without internet. I wonder if it would be possible for the installer to include multiple versions of the kernel to choose from.
Also use Lutris to easily test multiple distros
There’s also this if you want to do simple tests for a lot of different distros
Awesome, thanks.
This is awesome. I’m definitely going to use this to try out various distros even though I’m happy with Linux Mint. Thanks for sharing!
No problem!
Welcome to linux ,ive started with mint12 cinnamon,had great times wih it
