Just like migrating from Reddit to Lemmy it’s the same as migrating from Windows to Linux, there’s shortcomings and learning curve and the more I use Lemmy the more I hate about Windows, because unlike reddit Lemmy is open source and open source softwares communities is more popular than proprietary communities and people like to shit on them (and I loved it). (Sorry for horrible English)
I was strictly Linux for years, but got tired of every single install, game, non-FOSS, and driver being a one to two hour ordeal. But seeing how much it’s improved through the posts on here makes me want to try it again.
Mint is basically plug and play. I had an issue about a year ago when I first switched to mint that my sound was intermittently goofy. It went away in an update though and now I have fewer issues on my Linux mint install than my my windows install. I have a bunch of settings that windows just reverts back each time it updates and it annoys me because I know it doesn’t have to be like that - it is only like this because Microsoft wants me to use the machine in a way I don’t want to.
But, all that aside, mint is easy. Ubuntu is easy. Basically everything just works out of the box.
My experience with Mint the last 8 weeks has been… mixed.
My biggesst issues:
-It handles two monitors with different resolutions poorly. I settled on accepting that one screen has just bigger UI now. There is an experimental setting that allows individual scaling per screen, but some apps don’t seem to use the systemwide scaling. It basically creates more problems than it solves.
-Dark mode is random. Some apps don’t support dark mode, but Mint still forces light fonts. Which makes those fonts unreadable on the light backgrounds.
-Window management is… weird with two monitors. If you have your screens setup in a certain way, windows will appear partly off screen,aking them undraggable or closable. Some windows you can just WIN+arrow but some popups don’t allow that.
Permissions can be a pain in the buttocks. Some flatpaks don’t give the right permissions, so you’ll be googling and sudo’ing your ass off at times. How can a flatpak for Arduino NOT give permissions to use USB? Dafuq?
Also, any permissions outside your home folders can (out of the box) only be changed through commandline. Which makes it a pain to install, for example, fonts, unless you dig through the 6 font managers that software manager shows. 2 of those font managers don’t have a gui, 1 can only install 1 font at a time, so after trying 3 programs you finally find one that works.
-Now that we talk about the software manager… It can be a pain to find the right stuff. Sometimes you search a program, and you’ll find 7 versions because thank FOSS and all it’s forks.
-Most documentation and questions are answered with using commandline. And sometimes, as a noob like me, you’ll damage more with those answers than you’ll solve.
I have had multiple OS wide hard freezes when unplugging USBs from an external USB hub. Only hard resetting the PC worked.
What I like so far:
-You can split the explorer in to two navigations. Super useful.
-you can fully customize your start menu and launch bar.
-the backup function is amazing
-most steam games work great
-it starts up rather quick
-it doesn’t track me like Windows does.
Might try Pop OS soon, although I also accept that switching an OS can just take time to get used to. Took me a few months to get accustomed to OSX years ago when I had a Mac Mini for 6 years.
Interesting. I only have one monitor, so I haven’t run into a lot of those.
Have you used any other distro which you prefer?
After typing this message, I realized how much crap I have to deal with in Mint (with my specific setup, not saying everyone has the same experience or that Mint is bad for everyone). I just installed PopOS. It absolutely handles different screen resolutions better out of the box. The tiling feature is interesting, but I’ll have to learn how to use it properly the coming weeks.
Overall, feels more sleek than Mint with the two hours I spent with it. Pop!_shop feels less cluttered with random repos than Mints Software manager. Where Mint out of the box feels like Windows 7 with a theme that sort of works but sort of feels unfinished and dated, PopOS feels more like OSX. This comes with less customizability on the looks, but atleast stuff that has a place on your screen looks right and has the right amount of padding.
Time will tell if this is the distro for me, or if I’ll be a distrohopper for life until I eventually land on Arch for the bragging rights.
I’ve put very little effort into setting up my Linux Mint installation, but I could see if I had specific problematic hardware or if played specific DRM-laden games that it could be a big pain.
For the most part, the games I want to play work automatically because Steam handles it so nicely. For everything else, I mainly use proton.