My company started enforcing Macs this year but as a special exception they’ll let us use Windows or Ubuntu. No other distro and the CTO must still authorize it.
The reason? Meet some vague security guidelines that the PR team wants us to be able to say we meet, by forcing us to run a spying agent to ensure our OS is up-to-date so I’m not vulnerable to leaking data I don’t even have access to. But the tool doesn’t support anything that updates frequently.
I had just built a brand new laptop for work and I refused to sully it with Ubuntu so I installed it on an old desktop and just been putting zero effort into fixing Ubuntu shit. Wifi often can’t handle meetings, none of my cameras worked ootb - also can’t go to the office anymore since I can’t carry the desktop there.
Still a year away from being able to request the company buys me a machine again (last time there were no conditions for it) - but I don’t intend to stay here until then.
I’ll bet you 20$ that when some information finally leaks it is 100% some fuck ass exec giving away company secrets to impress a potential side piece or some geriatric board member ass fuck clicking a “Hot Dingles near you” ad
A buddy of mine and I have been using it for a bit, he more than I. Haven’t noticed any major issues with it. Proton works well for gaming. Overall pretty solid. I’d say spin it up and give it a test drive.
Debian primarily, though I also have arch running on another box. But I basically only run Debian across the board. Almost all stable, with some Trixie and Sid for testing. I also won’t touch Gnome unless I’m forced to, so keep in mind I’m opinionated and hold grudges when you see my recommendations.
I use Arch, but you can’t go wrong with Plasma + Debian. Ubuntu has weird bugs which keeps me from recommending it. I wish Mint still had a Plasma edition. endeavouros is Arch with a user-friendly installer, so that’s an option as well. CachyOS is great too. Mint is good but Cinnamon doesn’t support HDR which keeps me from recommending it to anyone using an HDR display. Debian is probably best seeing as you are used to Mint.
Tried it. You supposedly can customize it any way you want, but after struggling for like an hour trying to make it look clean, I wondered why I was trying to force that. The UI in KDE is not clean. It’s messy and has exposed many options I would never use. People love to hate on GNOME but I think they’re only doing that because they know it’s so popular. And it’s popular for a reason.
I don’t hate on gnome because people can use what they want but coming from windows the UX was so unintuitive i had to switch to a different session without a DE to get rid of gnome. I’m sure it’s learnable and then depending on your preferences pretty great.
I also don’t think plasma is messy though. To me there’s nothing worse than a system hiding options out of the assumption that I don’t need them (see also: windows over time, which is a big part of why I made the switch to linux in the first place).
There’s a huge difference in hiding options and putting them into a menu that looks nice. KDE UI strikes me as busy and ugly. Crazy re: windows. It’s the busiest UI of all.
I get that. Personally, as someone who worked on a Mac and had a Windows PC at home, it probably would’ve been easier to use KDE, since I did need to learn a bit of gnome’s ui, but I just found it so much cleaner compared to KDE.
Might try heavily customizing KDE again sometime, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. At least for now, I can get a nicer desktop for me by using GNOME with minimal extensions than I can with KDE. I don’t like the Windows 10 adjacent style, but of course, to each their own.
Not to say I find GNOME perfect, the complete lack of usability of custom themes as of gtk3 (Gradience has never actually worked for me) is infuriating, but ultimately I prefer my GNOME setup over what I’ve tried out in plasma.
I have a seemingly yearly tradition where I manage to convince myself to try out KDE then am usually back on GNOME after a week. I genuinely don’t get the hate for GNOME. It looks clean, has great defaults (especially the keybinds) and mostly stays out of the way. I don’t hate KDE, it’s just not for me and that is okay.
Yeah, I’ve tried KDE a couple of times. If it was the only option I may be able to get used to it, but knowing there is a much cleaner option makes me dislike it actually. I also don’t get the GNOME hate, I agree with what you said about it.
The keybindings in Gnome never made sense to me. I’ve got decades worth of muscle memory moving windows around, minimizing them and such, and my experience with Gnome was it was made specifically to frustrate that workflow. The app drawer thing, first of all was always two clicks away not one, and wouldn’t automatically sort by category like most Linux app menus will.
I’m on KDE right now, I’d prefer to be on Mint Cinnamon, but it didn’t really play well with my monitor setup and Wayland wasn’t well implemented in Cinnamon yet, so I’m on Fedora KDE. KDE has a problem where, well…
The clock widget and the temperature widget. No matter what, I can’t get them to match each other. Something something different authors, they offer customization, but not in a way that can get them to match font sizes or spacings. The entire goddamn OS is like that. You can get it to do anything you want, but expect an 80 grit polish.
I don’t like the defaults of any the common DEs, so I always end up customizing whatever I use. Last time I tried KDE Plasma I was still running into bugs too often. I’ve been using gnome which is generally more stable, but it has a lot less stuff on it so I end up Frankensteining everything.
It’s probably time for me to try Plasma again though.
People love to hate on GNOME but I think they’re only doing that because they know it’s so popular
You sound like Honey Boo Boo.
My take is GNOME is Mac-inspired, and KDE is Windows-inspired. I never liked MacOS. Therefore, GNOME does not appeal to me. KDE feels familiar, so naturally I used it after switching from Windows.
Just use KDE Plasma
This is what I concluded in the end…
I do at home, can’t choose at work (but we keep pushing the people in charge)
I heard of imposing operating systems (which I’m also against*), but never specific distros or DEs.
* at least for technical people who know what they’re doing and wont spam the IT support
If it is a larger company that defintly would make maintenance easier.
My company started enforcing Macs this year but as a special exception they’ll let us use Windows or Ubuntu. No other distro and the CTO must still authorize it.
The reason? Meet some vague security guidelines that the PR team wants us to be able to say we meet, by forcing us to run a spying agent to ensure our OS is up-to-date so I’m not vulnerable to leaking data I don’t even have access to. But the tool doesn’t support anything that updates frequently.
I had just built a brand new laptop for work and I refused to sully it with Ubuntu so I installed it on an old desktop and just been putting zero effort into fixing Ubuntu shit. Wifi often can’t handle meetings, none of my cameras worked ootb - also can’t go to the office anymore since I can’t carry the desktop there.
Still a year away from being able to request the company buys me a machine again (last time there were no conditions for it) - but I don’t intend to stay here until then.
I’ll bet you 20$ that when some information finally leaks it is 100% some fuck ass exec giving away company secrets to impress a potential side piece or some geriatric board member ass fuck clicking a “Hot Dingles near you” ad
What distro do you use with it? So far I liked mint with cinnamon but looking to switch my main PC to Linux and ditch windows on October 23rd.
With KDE, you can go with Fedora if you like something “closer” to mint experience. I use it with Endeavor OS and I’m very happy
EndeavourOS
☺️such a joy
I’ve been enjoying CachyOS myself lately.
deleted by creator
A buddy of mine and I have been using it for a bit, he more than I. Haven’t noticed any major issues with it. Proton works well for gaming. Overall pretty solid. I’d say spin it up and give it a test drive.
Debian primarily, though I also have arch running on another box. But I basically only run Debian across the board. Almost all stable, with some Trixie and Sid for testing. I also won’t touch Gnome unless I’m forced to, so keep in mind I’m opinionated and hold grudges when you see my recommendations.
cinnamint is great. i think you may have already found what to put on the ‘main pc’.
if you’re at all interested in ‘atomic’ variants, kinoite is what is running a couple of kde desktops here.
I use SpiralLinux (basically Debian with some tweaks). I like it a lot! If you want to stay in the Debian/*buntu lineage, consider it.
I use Arch, but you can’t go wrong with Plasma + Debian. Ubuntu has weird bugs which keeps me from recommending it. I wish Mint still had a Plasma edition. endeavouros is Arch with a user-friendly installer, so that’s an option as well. CachyOS is great too. Mint is good but Cinnamon doesn’t support HDR which keeps me from recommending it to anyone using an HDR display. Debian is probably best seeing as you are used to Mint.
Kubuntu FTW!!!
Tried it. You supposedly can customize it any way you want, but after struggling for like an hour trying to make it look clean, I wondered why I was trying to force that. The UI in KDE is not clean. It’s messy and has exposed many options I would never use. People love to hate on GNOME but I think they’re only doing that because they know it’s so popular. And it’s popular for a reason.
I don’t hate on gnome because people can use what they want but coming from windows the UX was so unintuitive i had to switch to a different session without a DE to get rid of gnome. I’m sure it’s learnable and then depending on your preferences pretty great.
I also don’t think plasma is messy though. To me there’s nothing worse than a system hiding options out of the assumption that I don’t need them (see also: windows over time, which is a big part of why I made the switch to linux in the first place).
There’s a huge difference in hiding options and putting them into a menu that looks nice. KDE UI strikes me as busy and ugly. Crazy re: windows. It’s the busiest UI of all.
I get that. Personally, as someone who worked on a Mac and had a Windows PC at home, it probably would’ve been easier to use KDE, since I did need to learn a bit of gnome’s ui, but I just found it so much cleaner compared to KDE. Might try heavily customizing KDE again sometime, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. At least for now, I can get a nicer desktop for me by using GNOME with minimal extensions than I can with KDE. I don’t like the Windows 10 adjacent style, but of course, to each their own. Not to say I find GNOME perfect, the complete lack of usability of custom themes as of gtk3 (Gradience has never actually worked for me) is infuriating, but ultimately I prefer my GNOME setup over what I’ve tried out in plasma.
I have a seemingly yearly tradition where I manage to convince myself to try out KDE then am usually back on GNOME after a week. I genuinely don’t get the hate for GNOME. It looks clean, has great defaults (especially the keybinds) and mostly stays out of the way. I don’t hate KDE, it’s just not for me and that is okay.
Yeah, I’ve tried KDE a couple of times. If it was the only option I may be able to get used to it, but knowing there is a much cleaner option makes me dislike it actually. I also don’t get the GNOME hate, I agree with what you said about it.
The keybindings in Gnome never made sense to me. I’ve got decades worth of muscle memory moving windows around, minimizing them and such, and my experience with Gnome was it was made specifically to frustrate that workflow. The app drawer thing, first of all was always two clicks away not one, and wouldn’t automatically sort by category like most Linux app menus will.
I’m on KDE right now, I’d prefer to be on Mint Cinnamon, but it didn’t really play well with my monitor setup and Wayland wasn’t well implemented in Cinnamon yet, so I’m on Fedora KDE. KDE has a problem where, well…
The clock widget and the temperature widget. No matter what, I can’t get them to match each other. Something something different authors, they offer customization, but not in a way that can get them to match font sizes or spacings. The entire goddamn OS is like that. You can get it to do anything you want, but expect an 80 grit polish.
I don’t like the defaults of any the common DEs, so I always end up customizing whatever I use. Last time I tried KDE Plasma I was still running into bugs too often. I’ve been using gnome which is generally more stable, but it has a lot less stuff on it so I end up Frankensteining everything.
It’s probably time for me to try Plasma again though.
You sound like Honey Boo Boo.
My take is GNOME is Mac-inspired, and KDE is Windows-inspired. I never liked MacOS. Therefore, GNOME does not appeal to me. KDE feels familiar, so naturally I used it after switching from Windows.