eugenia

eugenia , 1 month ago

Ι don't agree with what they did. They removed browser integration, not just the "favicon" thing. If this was a problem for normal users, well, normal users would just use Firefox's built-in password manager, not keepassxc. That change made the app useless to me, and going forward it will be a headache for NEW users who won't know of the -full package. It was a bad decision.

eugenia , 1 month ago

I used to install interesting and cool distros back in the 2000s. Now, I personally just want stability, and not bad surprises. So when I distro-hop, I only do it among well known, largely stable and well supported distros (e.g. mint, debian, fedora, ubuntu). I don't go for the weird anymore, although I did install Alpine on qemu in order to try it out. And the few times I feel adventurous, I try BSD or Haiku OSes.

eugenia , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

For your desktop, I suggest you install Linux Mint (Edge edition, to make sure the newer kernel included there supports your hardware better). After installing it, right click on the panel, and install the 'Cinnamenu' applet (it's available for download from the window that opens when you click Applets). Then, place it where you want after enabling "panel editing", and then right click the new menu to customize it as you like. Cinnamenu is a more modern-looking menu than the default Mint, with larger icons. Please note that in June or July, there's going to be a brand new, major version of Mint. Think of Mint as how Windows should have been, a better version of it. This is my Linux Mint laptop: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/253/256/932/509/491/original/6183bb790dcb8365.jpg

Now, if you want something that is closer to MacOS' look and feel, then you would need to install Gnome, and use Gnome extensions to enable the dock to stick to the main desktop. For a Gnome distro, there's Fedora 40, the new Ubuntu, or Debian (IMHO, the most stable of the lot, but slightly older software version). This is my Gnome desktop: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/349/393/342/603/119/original/3c3c5c7e35ac726e.png

And if you have a large hard drive, feel free to install 3 of these (e.g. Mint, Debian or Ubuntu with Gnome, Fedora KDE), to test drive them all. They can all happily live next to each other in separate partitions. Just make sure you create a /boot partition (this holds the bootloader for all OSes), and then 3 large ones to put the / (root) partitions of each distro (these will hold the actual OS for each).

eugenia , 1 month ago

I'm using a 32" 4k monitor without scaling, even if my eyesight is not the best. I have no trouble at all with it. It's the more common 27" 4k monitors that have tiny fonts and need scaling. But 32", 4k it's fine at 100%!

As for 1080p, it's enough for most things. You mentioned the dpi comparing it to a 24" 4k monitor, but why would you need 24" for a 1080p monitor? Anything above 20" is a waste for 1080p.

eugenia , 1 month ago

I personally don't have a problem with run0 over sudo, however, I don't want to have to remember to use a different command on the terminal. Just rename it "sudo", and do the new stuff with it. Just don't bother me having to remember new commands.

eugenia , 1 month ago

I've been putting together a lot of old laptops for friends and family, so here's my opinion based on my experience:

Your CPU speed is ok (that CPU scores 932 passmark points, which is ok for dekstop usage and youtube at 360p (you should set up his youtube at 360p, and to not autoplay). If this was Chrome, that cpu could do 480p, but firefox is much slower than chrome on youtube. The difference in speed is not visible on fast systems, but it is visible on very old ones (anything less than 1500 passmark points).

Your biggest problem is the RAM. You have only 2.77 GB of RAM, which is NOT enough for normal web browsing in this day and age -- if you're using lots of tabs. The moment you will open more than 2-3 tabs with heavy websites (e.g. facebook, nytimes, and linkedin), you will start swapping like crazy with Cinnamon. So your user will always have to be conscious of what apps they have open (and make sure you configure 4 GB of swap too, just in case).

Mate and XFCE should be using less RAM, indeed (about 600-800 MB instead of 1.3 GB on Cinnamon). I find XFCE more stable personally, and it only uses 100 MB more RAM than Mate on average. The only good thing Mate has over XFCE is that it comes with a user administrative gui app. I usually install that on xfce ("mate-user-admin").

eugenia , 1 month ago

For graphics stuff you will be using Gimp, Inkscape, and Krita. No adjustment layers, or cmyk, sorry. If that is enough for you, good, if not, you're out of luck.

For 3D modelling, only Blender.

For video, DaVinci only works sometimes, depending on distro, version of the app, drivers installed etc. It's a bit of a crapshoot. A good alternative is kdenlive if you don't need hardware acceleration, proper color grading and film emulation, or compositing.

Google laid off most Dart/Flutter developers just a week ago or so.

Thunar for file manager, not Nautilus. Nautilus crashes in folders that has hundreds of svg files in it (e.g. a theme folder), or when you're trying to copy a 30 gb folder to a new folder on the same secondary drive (it only copied 9 GB out of the 30, all files were owned by me). Both bugs bit me just the other day.

eugenia , 1 month ago

While the normal Debian has outdated packages as you said, I'm using Debian-testing (rolling release), and it works great for me. It has newer packages, and it's surprisingly stable. In my experience, more stable than Arch, and it has a larger repo than Tumbleweed.

eugenia , 1 month ago

Woman here. I met my husband on IRC, on a channel about BeOS, 24 years ago. So don't knock the internet or the bar as potential ways to find someone. If you're meant to be together, it can happen anywhere.

eugenia , 1 month ago

The replies here are good. Different rendering engines. Also, try another font. Like Roboto, or Inter, by Google.

eugenia , 1 month ago

It's just a buggy installer. I had a similar crash problem with an HP PC.

eugenia , 1 month ago

4 GB of RAM is enough only if you install something like Debian+XFce (not gnome/kde/cinnamon or ubuntu/fedora), and only if you only use up to 3-4 tabs of web browser at the same time along 1 more app. Basically, you will need to always be conscious about the things you have open. But it is doable if you are the conscious user type like I am. Definitely not enough for things like 4k video editing, or multiple apps open with many tabs open each. Also, always go for the x86 version, it's better supported.

eugenia , 1 month ago

FreeCAD is what you need for 3D cad/cam or 3d printing. And for 2D cad, or 2D cad/cam, there's the free GPL version of QCad (recommended to buy the full version for $40 to get cad/cam and more import/export file support from autocad). Anything else (librecad, openscad, Design etc) are not as well rounded imho. And then there's onshape, but that's not Free software.

eugenia , 1 month ago

TWO of my laptops were bit by that bug/error. Not one. Two.

But what they offered was not a real solution. I'm an experienced computer user, and still didn't wanna mess with that "solution".

This was done just to force people to upgrade to a Win11 (and maybe get a new PC too, if their old one couldn't run Win11). If not that, then simply, incompetence in general.

It's all laughable, really.

eugenia , 1 month ago

Both my laptops were Win10-native, not upgrades from previous versions.

eugenia , 1 month ago

Reading the bug report about all that ( https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/adwaita-icon-theme/-/issues/288 ), it's crazy to see how the gnome dev (Red Hat employee) replies to the issue. He completely ignores the issue in the beginning, then that he doesn't care to follow the spec because it's "old", and yet, he still advertises to the OS as an fdo theme, so OSes ship with it. He's hurting non-gnome apps, and he simply doesn't seem to care about it. To me, this shows a person who simply doesn't care about ecosystem.

eugenia , 2 months ago

It's called a browser? :-)

Honestly, I don't understand people downloading apps to run things like discord, facebook, spotify, and now lemmy. These are webpages, and were designed to work as webpages. So, best would be to use a web browser.