Of all the distros out there, they went with Mint?
Uses the heavily deprecated XOrg display manager. XOrg has no isolation of windows from each other, meaning any app can record your screen without notice. All XOrg apps can also log keyboard presses arbitrarily. Since all apps share the same display server, they can easy correlate keypresses (text) with what app it is entered in, kinda like Windows Recall. Cinnamon, Mate, and XFCE all use XOrg. Cinnamon still doesnt default to Wayland.
Bruh every desktop besides window managers and kde/gnome are still on x11 mostly.
Edit: cinnamon and xfce and lxqt has experimental/preview wayland. (updated to put lxqt in experimental)
Sure but Xorg has been like that forever and until recently distros started to default Wayland because of Nvidia, and there aren’t many of them yet. Also some programs don’t run well with Xwayland, some don’t run at all. You’re right from a technical privacy point but it’s not the end of the world and it doesn’t have to be privacy-invading, just don’t run proprietary stuff. By the way, CInnamon will switch to Wayland, when the experimental support is mature enough. Don’t know about MATE of XFCE.
…is that all? that it uses XOrg?
I am semi-literate in “computers”. That means I can build my own PC, do no coding, but manage to troubleshoot most things by sheer stubborness, search and the odd question on a “forum” In other words not afraid of tech.
I can’t be bothered to sift through endless overengineered BS for a PC to do the few things I need it to do these days. Web browser, Steam and streaming, while not scraping every ounce of personal data and sending it to various entities for nefarious purposes. I have Mint, it works out of the box and I don’t have to tinker with it, but enough customizability if I want to.
In my experience, installing Linux Mint onto just about anything is trivial. IMO, the learning curve is more about using a different operating system than it being pre-installed.
That said, as long as you have a preconfigured distro like Linux Mint I think it’s about as easy to use as Windows or Mac. The main difference is that people are already used to how Windows or Macs work, and have forgotten there’s plenty of jank that they’ve learned to avoid. There are still things Linux could improve on w/r/t new user experience but I think the gap is getting smaller every year.
Tbh, using Linux Mint feels really familiar and most software you can just install from the software center. In many ways it’s easier than setting up Windows. Sure, there are some specifics but for just every day use, there is not much of it.
I put off trying Linux for months, only to find it’s not really much change at all. I even at one point had to buy new Windows license because I was not in a place where I had capacity to fiddle with new stuff and it was such an unnecessary and huge mistake. Finally bitnthe bullet a couple of months after and I didn’t boot to Windows for months now - and the transition was super smooth. I changed my primary boot drive from Win to Mint very shortly after the transition.
Friend, I am no Linux shill, but I switched to Mint last week on my secondary laptop, and let me tell you, it’s kinda cash and pretty easy.
I had to verify the integrity and authenticity of the Mint download itself, but it’s straightforward and tells you how to do that. Once you’re done, you install the OS just like you would with Windows.
Full disclosure, I don’t use the laptop for much, so no fiddling needed for me.
Edit: I guess I am shilling it, but I mean I’m not a Linux fanboy
Linux Mint is easier than windows for basic shit, it pretty much has an app store for all your software needs ready to go too.
This month was my first move to linux and while I dont particularly no why I did it or where to go from here, it is definitely not a usability issue.
Far from my distro of choice but better compatibility with one distro usually translates to similar improvements on the others.
I’m very interested in the framework laptops, a 14" UHD touchscreen one would be an instant buy, the current lineup is still tempting nonetheless.
System76 with extra steps, both even being ubuntu based
Sure but are there even any retail pc manufacturers maintaining ANY non-ubuntu distros?
Good stuff good stuff. Have been a Mac user for years now. But the Framework laptops sure are tempting. Then it will be Linux all the way. More free and more sustainable.
Hopefully Apple will be forced to become repairable again like during pre-2015.
Same.
I think I would need comparable energy efficiency as well though. For portable machines it’s hard to go for an x86_64 one when I can get so much more battery life out of an arm one.
Getting official support for a distribution should help with a good out of the box battery life at least. But I think they’d need arm or riscv before it really becomes comparable?
