213
Linux Mint's success also means maintainer stress - The Register (www.theregister.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
63 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 95 points 6 months ago (24 children)

I hope they don't feel pressured to change just because there's more users. They've reached their success by being deliberate and streamlined, it's what makes Mint great. Long live boring and reliable.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 24 child comments
    •
  • [–] 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (15 children)

    Agree. There are dozens if not hundreds of Linux distros, I'd they want different, try another. Just keep it simple, secure, and windows can fuck off. I have bazzite on a gaming laptop for games with the kiddo, Zorin on my main laptop and desktop.

    And before I get shit for having so many devices, I save devices the clients were going to trash because it was "old" and not reliable enough for professional business environments. Which I do agree a bit. Most of my devices are 8th or 10th gen Intel, I replaced the nvme with my own and canibilize memory, I'm not rolling in several thousand dollar systems. And I give away SO many to neighbors, full systems, laptops, monitors, etc, ready to go. Wasting tech is against my religion.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 15 child comments
    •
  • [–] 29 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    You have seriously misread Lemmy as a whole if you think having three devices is going to make people angry. What an odd thing to get defensive about.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

    There's many more, those are the Linux devices (plus a steam deck). I don't like taking about all the shit I've accumulated over the years, makes me feel sad and wasteful.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    I have well over a dozen Linux machines running in my home. More than half of them would be considered garbage by most people. Clearly, I disagree.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    At some point, though, you have to come to terms with the power usage.

    One or two modern machines could do everything a dozen shitty old ones do (even if you have to emulates some of them as VMs), and with a lot less power usage than running a dozen shitty old computers.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (7 children)

    I have bazzite on a gaming laptop for games with the kiddo, Zorin on my main laptop and desktop.

    Btw, if you want Bazzite but without the gaming stuff for work computers, there are also Aurora and Bluefin. The latter is more conservative, based on CentOS and using Gnome. They are all Universal Blue projects, so you're not dealing with vastly different systems.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Only Bluefin LTS is based on CentOS. Standard Bluefin is based on Fedora.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Standard Bluefin is based on Fedora.

    I don't get Universal Blue's desire to give slightly different flavors and entirely new name. With the non-LTS option, what is the difference between Bazzite Gnome and Bluefin? Preinstalled code editors instead of Steam and Lutris?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    You're hitting a problem I have with Ublue as well. I wanted to experiment with immutable distros last year, but Ublue provided extremely little information on how their different flavors actually differed under the hood. I ended up having to search through their forums for like an hour to find snippets of how their different when some people asked, but it was never comprehensive.

    From what I recall, Bazzite had a few kernel optimizations for gaming, and received updates at a faster frequency than Bluefin, with one of the devs saying that Bazzite would be more likely to experience regressions due to it being more bleeding edge.

    Looking at Bazzite's front page now, they actually seem to be doing a better job of mentioning what's unique about it than when I last tried it. But Bluefin and Aurora are still ambiguous.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago (7 children)

    The more Ubuntu enshittifies, the more work Mint has to do to work against it. That's why my personal recommendation is against Mint. Ubuntu just isn't a good foundation to build on, IMO.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    For awhile there, PPAs were the reason to stick with Ubuntu as a base, because the .deb package format was (and still is) very popular, and PPAs allowed fairly easy distribution of software without dealing with the standard repository. Flatpak has kind of solved that problem by now, and so like you say defuckulating Ubuntu is just getting to be a bigger and bigger chore.

    Which is why LMDE exists.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

    Which is why LMDE exists.

    Too bad LMDE is based on Sid. Some stuff can break on occasion.

    I few months ago I helped an older lady at a repair café to replace her Win10 with LMDE (because that's what she wanted). Installed just fine but didn't boot after reboot. Installed LMDE 2 or 3 additional times, to make sure I didn't overlook something. Same result.

    Then installed Fedora and it just worked.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    I have never had a problem with LMDE. My mother has been using it for about a year now. I used to have to come solve Windows problems for her a couple times a year but she had never asked me for any help with LMDE.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    It's unlikely that an already properly installed bootloader just breaks. The base is Sid, Debian Unstable.

    Just because breakage doesn't happen all the time, there is still a higher than average chance. Sid is Debian's beta test branch, not a rolling release distribution. It just wasn't the right choice for the lady at the repair cafe.

    I was corrected that LMDE is not based on Sid. I redact that part of my comments. The experience I had installing LMDE on a lady's laptop at a repair cafe was as described, though.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

    LMDE is not based on Sid, it's based on Debian Stable. LMDE 7 is currently based on Debian 13 Trixie. You sure you had the right ISO?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    LMDE is not based on Sid, it’s based on Debian Stable

    Oh wow, you're right. Did that change at some point and I just didn't pay attention? My bad!

    You sure you had the right ISO?

    I had the correct ISO and the experience with the lady's notebook was as described. Maybe the notebook needed newer kernel code?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago*

    It's always been based on stable, AFAIK.

    Maybe the notebook needed newer kernel code?

    If it was able to boot the Live USB to install it, I figure that means the kernel is new enough to actually run the laptop properly. I can only guess something in the installer itself was messing up somehow? Or perhaps it wasn't making an entry in the boot table? That's an odd one for sure.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent