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I'll second Mint, but I'd suggest going with 21 over 20; just because it'll be supported through 2027 instead of 2025. I also think that the cinnamon edition is the easiest to use if you're familiar with Windows.
 
Thanks gents. To start, I'm going with Linux Mint "Elsie" -

LMDE 5 "Elsie" - Linux Mint

Linux Mint is an elegant, easy to use, up to date and comfortable desktop operating system.
linuxmint.com linuxmint.com

Fingers crossed!
 
DrEntropy said:
Given most folks' reluctance to escape the Micro$haft corral to adapt to another O/S
Click to expand...
I had been a MircoShaft/ PC user for many years. Then, around 2008 I bought SWMBO an Apple iMac (having heard they were more user friendly and her not being very computer savvy). As I started playing around with her iMac, I found myself liking it more and more until finally, in 2011, I decided to take the plunge and got my first iMac, a 27" with an iNtel Chip. For a long time I also ran Windows on that machine and could switch back and forth between OS. About a year ago I finally upgraded to a new M1 (Apple chip), which is Amazingly fast! The Apple OS is not, strictly speaking, UNIX, but it is UNIX-based. Having been converted to an Apple fan boy, I could never imaging going back to MS.
 
I'm still on W7 with a partition for XP so I can run an old version of AutoCAD. I found that a new version of AutoCAD was more expensive that an new computer.
 
I switched to Mint 3 or 4 years ago and there was only one driver I had to search for, an obscure Canon color printer. I finally found the driver at Canon/China. Their US site did not list that printer but China did. It also required a library that I found somewhere in eastern Europe. Other than that, all my hardware worked as well or better (usually faster) under Linux. There were a couple of programs I liked under Windows that I have not been able to replace but I don't even remember what they were anymore so must not have been too important. Like Doc said, all the browsers except MS Edge which nobody likes anyway, work fine on Linux and Libre Office seems to do everything MS Office does and for free. In fact, I have nothing on my computer now that is not free and open source, including everything that I create.

Unless you have some Windows programs you just can't live without, I think you will like it. Oh, that Canon printer died a couple of years ago and Mint recognized my new HP immediately and either already had or found and installed the drivers. I should also add that I am fairly comfortable with Terminal but rarely have a need to use it and many times I do is just because it is quicker that doing the same thing with the GUI.
 
I used to be more of an Apple fan but they seem to have really went (in my opinion) downhill recently. I've worked almost exclusively with
Apple stuff at the college for the past 20+ years, so I have some data points for comparison. MacOS 10.3 thru 10.6 were fantastic - stable, predictable and because they were basically Apple's Finder running on top of BSD, very controllable. Up to OS 10.4 you could use the BSD style UFS file system - it was a little slower than Apple's HFS because it did a lot more error checking and verification, but it was virtually unkillable.
10.5 and 10.6 made you use their HFS file system which works fine to about 80% capacity then it starts self-destructing. Its faster because it doesn't actually verify anything - calls a write function and hope the hardware keeps up. Even with that millstone, 10.6 was probably the best version of the MacOS they made in terms of reliability and serious functionality.

Starting with 10.7 they started "creeping" in more IOS-type features and eye candy. Overall performance and stability were starting to fall off, but with some tweaking you could disable most of the nonessential junk and the core OS was still usable (although looking thru the system log started to become a nightmare, thousands of error messages generated every day by Apple's own code. By the time they got to 10.11 and 10.12 it seems very apparent that the Mac computer was becoming an IOS accessory device/docking platform rather than the other way around. They also started playing the games of "you can't install an OS older than what your computer shipped with" so even if you wanted to keep using the older versions you couldn't unless you also had a similar vintage piece of hardware to run it on.

The current versions of their OS (Mac OS 11 and 12) went almost fully back to a closed system - they are still using a mostly BSD core under everything but they have "sealed" the entire system volume with encryption so you cannot modify/change/delete/disable anything, which means no more killing all the unnecessary background processes to get some performance (and privacy) back. They also started removing "for your safety" a lot of core functionality - the full Python and Perl environments aren't there anymore. The decided to drop BASH in favor of ZSH (but at least left BASH on the system in case you needed it). I can understand not having insecure things like telnet and ftp enabled by default, but completely removing them makes it real hard when you run into the special cases where you need them (HP Jetdirect ethernet-to-parallel printer interfaces come to mind, they were built before SSH was a thing and you need to telnet to them to configure them). Every time their software updates it rewrites your sshd.conf file so any customizations you've made get undone. And you can't disable the software updating thing because the system volume is no longer changable. And making/deploying machine images (set up one, deploy to many) has become almost impossible (Apply claims it is impossible, which its not its just really convolutedly hard).

So in some ways I feel like Apple let me down - we still use a lot of Apple hear at the college but they have made my job fantastically harder. The folks over on the Windows side aren't faring much better - its not an Apple vs MS thing as much as it is both of them vs. us in trying to keep everything here at the school running.

At home I still have a mix of Apple gear for specific purposes (all older hardware and OS's), Linux machines for general purpose stuff and a couple Win10 portables that are single-use devices for running the control software for digital audio mixers.
 
YakkoWarner said:
So in some ways I feel like Apple let me down - we still use a lot of Apple hear at the college but they have made my job fantastically harder. The folks over on the Windows side aren't faring much better - its not an Apple vs MS thing as much as it is both of them vs. us in trying to keep everything here at the school running.

At home I still have a mix of Apple gear for specific purposes (all older hardware and OS's), Linux machines for general purpose stuff and a couple Win10 portables that are single-use devices for running the control software for digital audio mixers.
Click to expand...
I'm too lazy to go point-for-point on your entire post, but it hits nails on heads throughout!

Recently (pre-virus era) had a client wanting to use iPads as point-of-sale devices, running thru a Buffalo WiFi router (on a LAN I'd originally set up as Class-C Ivp4), to the Enterprise Linux server for inventory control, invoice and sales slip printing to Brother WiFi printers... AND allow 'net access for "special order" items not in local inventory. Oh, and about seven Win 7&10 workstation PC's and a couple laptops, with a Linux kernel firewall to keep things semi-safe "inside".

T'weren't fun at all.

Here at our home business, Herself is of necessity on MS PC's for various graphics warez, as the various outputters want file-to-print convenience. My PC's & laptops are all Open Source Red Hat O/S's: CEntOS on boxes, Fedora on laptops. All behind a Linux firewall. The Provider's router has been emasculated, configured as a simple bridge, WiFi disabled, seeing only the firewall machine. A WiFi router inside, no SSID broadcast.
 
Last edited:
YakkoWarner said:
I used to be more of an Apple fan but they seem to have really went (in my opinion) downhill recently. I've worked almost exclusively with
Apple stuff at the college for the past 20+ years, so I have some data points for comparison. MacOS 10.3 thru 10.6 were fantastic - stable, predictable and because they were basically Apple's Finder running on top of BSD, very controllable. Up to OS 10.4 you could use the BSD style UFS file system - it was a little slower than Apple's HFS because it did a lot more error checking and verification, but it was virtually unkillable.
10.5 and 10.6 made you use their HFS file system which works fine to about 80% capacity then it starts self-destructing. Its faster because it doesn't actually verify anything - calls a write function and hope the hardware keeps up. Even with that millstone, 10.6 was probably the best version of the MacOS they made in terms of reliability and serious functionality.

Starting with 10.7 they started "creeping" in more IOS-type features and eye candy. Overall performance and stability were starting to fall off, but with some tweaking you could disable most of the nonessential junk and the core OS was still usable (although looking thru the system log started to become a nightmare, thousands of error messages generated every day by Apple's own code. By the time they got to 10.11 and 10.12 it seems very apparent that the Mac computer was becoming an IOS accessory device/docking platform rather than the other way around. They also started playing the games of "you can't install an OS older than what your computer shipped with" so even if you wanted to keep using the older versions you couldn't unless you also had a similar vintage piece of hardware to run it on.

The current versions of their OS (Mac OS 11 and 12) went almost fully back to a closed system - they are still using a mostly BSD core under everything but they have "sealed" the entire system volume with encryption so you cannot modify/change/delete/disable anything, which means no more killing all the unnecessary background processes to get some performance (and privacy) back. They also started removing "for your safety" a lot of core functionality - the full Python and Perl environments aren't there anymore. The decided to drop BASH in favor of ZSH (but at least left BASH on the system in case you needed it). I can understand not having insecure things like telnet and ftp enabled by default, but completely removing them makes it real hard when you run into the special cases where you need them (HP Jetdirect ethernet-to-parallel printer interfaces come to mind, they were built before SSH was a thing and you need to telnet to them to configure them). Every time their software updates it rewrites your sshd.conf file so any customizations you've made get undone. And you can't disable the software updating thing because the system volume is no longer changable. And making/deploying machine images (set up one, deploy to many) has become almost impossible (Apply claims it is impossible, which its not its just really convolutedly hard).

So in some ways I feel like Apple let me down - we still use a lot of Apple hear at the college but they have made my job fantastically harder. The folks over on the Windows side aren't faring much better - its not an Apple vs MS thing as much as it is both of them vs. us in trying to keep everything here at the school running.

At home I still have a mix of Apple gear for specific purposes (all older hardware and OS's), Linux machines for general purpose stuff and a couple Win10 portables that are single-use devices for running the control software for digital audio mixers.
Click to expand...
I can appreciate some of your frustrations, and agree Apple has made a decision to move more towards an iOS like environment. That said, for my day to day workflow I have no practical issues with the current OS.
 
I am really getting old. When I saw this thread I thought that it had something to do with Peanuts. After reading 27 replies, I am beginning to doubt my first impression. Whatever you folks are talking about, I hope it goes well.
 
DocDup1 said:
I am really getting old. When I saw this thread I thought that it had something to do with Peanuts. After reading 27 replies, I am beginning to doubt my first impression. Whatever you folks are talking about, I hope it goes well.
Click to expand...
🏆 You win!!! Best Reply of the week!
 
tick tick tick tick ...
 
waltesefalcon said:
Any line of discussion on this forum can become about any topic at any time.
Click to expand...
That's not true. Here's a picture of my cat to prove it!

Blue 01-01-2020sm.jpg
 
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