• @TootSweet
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    7819 days ago

    Brag about being an Arch user (BTW.)

  • @[email protected]
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    3319 days ago

    Nothing, at all.
    Some things you can’t do easily in Mint, like create snapshots automatically and boot into them when something breaks.
    But it’s all Linux and freely available software under the hood, and the lines between configuration, customization and forking your distro are blurry.

  • thejevans
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    2319 days ago

    You can’t have your entire system configuration in a repository of plain text files, which has lots of advantages, but it’s not worth caring about unless you feel excited to get into it.

    • @oxomoxo
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      219 days ago

      Why not? Isn’t this the whole concept of Bash Script, Ansible, Terraform, etc… I mean it can be as simple as a git repo that pulls down an install script then syncs your dot files. What am I missing? If you’re referencing Nix, you can also have that on Mint.

      • thejevans
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        418 days ago

        Yeah, I’m talking about not just Nix, but NixOS. Nix (the package manager) can do a lot, but NixOS + disko + home-manager can literally be all of the configuration for your machine from drive partitioning through to dot files. Throw in nixos-anywhere and impermanence and you can have an insane amount of control over all of your computers.

        Ansible, Terraform, Chef, etc. do have some overlap, but the main difference is that those tools iterate through the system modifying it piece by piece and NixOS is declarative.

        If something fails in some of my bigger Ansible playbooks, it could mean 30 minutes of just running through all the steps again. I could probably break it into sections, but then I have to worry about making sure they all get run when things get updated. In my NixOS install, it’s way faster, I can roll back to a previous state, and troubleshooting is way easier in my opinion.

        • @oxomoxo
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          118 days ago

          Ah alright. My point is OP is asking what can be done in other distros that can’t be done in Mint and your answer was have the entire configuration be in plain text. I completely agree that if you want that kind of reproducibility NixOS is the most refined, well established, and best way to handle this. However to answer OP I would say this is possible in Mint but just much more painful.

  • @[email protected]
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    19 days ago

    Serious answer? XFCE doesn’t support multiple monitors with different refresh rates. So that.

    Some of the other answers (like Meta (aka Windows Key) not working for shortcuts) can be hacked around, but unless you switch to a DE that supports Wayland, you will never have stable multi refresh rate differences on multiple monitors.

    • @[email protected]
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      418 days ago

      I’m not a fan of the xfce UX at all, and multi-monitor support still has a lot of issues (under Debian 12), but I am pretty sure having different refresh rates is possible

      • @tekato
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        318 days ago

        Btw, how do you do that in wayland?

        You don’t have to do anything to use multiple monitors with different refresh rates in Wayland, besides plugging them in.

    • @[email protected]
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      117 days ago

      XFCE doesn’t support multiple monitors with different refresh rates.

      I have an LG TV and an old Asus monitor, i’d wager their refresh rates differ but i can’t confirm atm.

  • @[email protected]
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    2219 days ago

    You can’t easilyy switch between different inages like on an atomic fedora system.

    Do you have to switch now? No.

    • ddh
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      119 days ago

      Hopefully we get an official XFCE Atomic desktop someday.

      • @[email protected]
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        119 days ago

        You can create a ublue version in a few hours if you’re down to it. Creating an inage isn’t that difficult 👍🏼

  • @LavenderDay3544
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    1419 days ago

    Waste time configuring things and troubleshooting things when your ultra custom system breaks.

  • @[email protected]
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    1419 days ago

    Use Pacman as your package manager, or something. Linux is Linux. If you use a mainstream distro it should be 90% similar to all other distros. You don’t really have to worry about FOMO when it comes to Linux.

    • JaggedRobotPubes
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      819 days ago

      Everybody giving a version of this answer makes me feel better about maybe switching to Linux.

  • UnfortunateShort
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    1018 days ago

    Compared to Arch(-based): Accesing the latest packages. It’s not impossible, especially if you go for Debian testing repos, but it’s definitely extra work.

    Compared to special-purpose distros (i.e. gaming, portable, high security/privacy, pen-testing): Whatever their special purpose is will usually be harder to achieve.

    Compared to huge corpo distros (SUSE/Fedora and derivatives): Ease of more intricate setups and maybe some security testing.

    Compared to Ubuntu: Paying a corporation to not withhold security patches from you.

  • @[email protected]
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    417 days ago

    Technically speaking: nothing really, provided you have time and skills.

    Except maybe not having access to NDA-ed binary blobs or something…

  • @[email protected]
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    419 days ago

    In my experience, not much, but I’m a marginally functional newbie. Mint manages things for you fairly nicely and has been the best, it just works with out messing with much/anything. (At least for my hardware)

    I managed to get gnome working smoothly on mint and have been happy with it. I started and returned here since I last ditched windows as a native OS.

    The only thing that has made me consider distro hopping from mint is AUR on arch and gnome, though I’ve been successful so far.

    Part of trying the distros that are more advanced and give you more explicit control and configuration is the sense of accomplishment and it makes you figure out how and why things work the way they do. It holistically builds your velocity in your understanding of Linux. (Or gnu whatever that nuance is).

    If your machine has enough resources it is super easy to host VMs of anything you want to try. You can try them all, and it won’t cost you anything but time!

    • @[email protected]
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      619 days ago

      If you feel like you need/want software from AUR you should check out Distrobox. It can run any distro on top of your installation using Docker under the hood, but it tightly integrates into your system so with little effort you can run AUR programs from your launcher as if they were natively installed on your Mint.