Well, for example, upgrading between releases is done by manually editing sources.list and some other steps, and there’s no easy tool for that. This is not difficult, exactly, but for people with little experience it’s a bit daunting. Debian in general isn’t the most new user friendly distro, in my experience. Distros like Mint and Ubuntu make the Debian experience slightly easier. Not that Debian is some esoteric system.

Well, what about just using Debian? It’s a bit hassle, maybe, but if you have prior Linux experience, you’ll be fine.

It may be a lot to take in at first, but seems to me you’ve got it!

A repository (or repo) is a server that hosts program files for your distribution. Distributions host their own repositories from which you can install software with your package manager, like APT or DNF or others. If you only install software from your distribution’s repository, there’s likely no clashes with software versioning and dependencies, and the packages are about as reliable as they can be (which doesn’t mean there’s never malware). If you add third party repositories for software not available from your distribution’s repository, it’s more likely there will be issues, because the distribution doesn’t guarantee the packages work well together.

For example, Debian and Arch don’t retrieve and install their software from the same source. They have their own servers (repositories) hosting software compiled to work with their particular distro and to be used by their chosen package manager.

Flatpak (or Snap or Guix) is a separate package manager that handles it’s own dependencies and doesn’t clash with your distribution’s own software manager.

Does this help?

Very little. If I’m being honest with myself, I have a slight preference for how DOS/Windows handled mounting drives. I’ve never been a huge fan of the UNIX directory structure anyway. I’d like to see some sort of filesystem hierarchy reform for a clearer format.

But of course, using Linux is a relief in most ways. There’s no going back.

That is where all the best ancient philosophy comes from!

“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”

-Perineum

It’s frankly stunning just how little these people understand basic politics and the systems they are dismantling. They are profoundly stupid and too ignorant to realize just how intellectually ill-equipped they are. They have no understanding of why the structures they are tearing down were set up, and think that political institutions purposely created to serve their interests are hampering them. They repeat age-old mistakes and think themselves geniuses for it. It’s almost inconceivable that people this malignantly incurious reach positions of power. But they have, they do, and they will again.

Well that’s a depressing read. The American rot runs deep. It’s frankly disturbing how accurate that article still is.

The writer drops some great lines though.

Thanks.

I am reminded of two quotes from Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson:

How many more of these stinking, double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote FOR something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?

How low? Now, I guess we know. Voting for the lesser evil for 50 years has got you Trump. Twice. How much lower are you going to go?

I have no solutions. Things will probably have to break completely before the mending can begin.

One of the reasons I feel Debian isn’t quite new user friendly is definitely having to manually modify your sources list when there’s a new version release. It’s not exactly hard, but for a new user it can be intimidating. I do find it weird that Debian hasn’t created an automatic tool for that, unlike practically every other distro out there.

Debian is good, but sometimes its age shows.

For my desktop: openSUSE Tumbleweed/Slowroll. I like to keep my desktop as up-to-date as possible, and openSUSE is pretty good. Sure, there’s the occasional udev update that breaks inputs in the desktop environment, but that’s the other side of the coin.

For my laptop and other uses: Debian. The old reliable doesn’t mind if I don’t update as often, and unlike rolling releases, updates aren’t wont to break anything. In a pinch I could use it on the desktop too.

I have a cup of mate every morning, yes.

Mate is one of those desktops that I occasionally consider, and it’s definitely something I could see myself using. Mate is certainly a cool project and I hope it stays around. It reminds of my early days with GNOME - before the bad thing happened and darkness descended on that project.

I hope they get Wayland going eventually.

I can’t say I’ve had those issues myself, so my recommendation may not be valid in your case. I’d say maybe give Fedora with KDE Plasma a try, and try switching between X11 and Wayland sessions if issues persist.

I personally don’t like Ubuntu, but that’s mostly because of Canonical making the occasional sketchy decision.

On the whole, distro choice doesn’t matter quite as much these days, as most distros should work fine out of the box. Whatever issues you have should technically be solvable with a bit of troubleshooting.

Sometimes Linux just doesn’t play well with your setup. Good luck, and I hope you find something that works for you!

Won? They will do it again. The only winning move is not to play their game. Choose Free Software.

Is SteamOS even available for desktop PCs yet? I don’t think it is.

From the SteamOS page:

We expect most SteamOS users to get SteamOS preinstalled on a Steam Deck or device that incorporates SteamOS. The only devices officially supported on SteamOS right now are Steam Deck and Legion Go S. We are working on broadening support, and with the recent updates to Steam and SteamOS, compatibility with other AMD powered PC handhelds has been improved.

Until this changes, which I think is in the works, I recommend using some other popular distro.

Guix is a package manager you can install on most distros and works beside other package managers, similar to Snap and Flatpak. And it’s a distro.

You did the right thing. We in general have to willing to inconvenience ourselves to hang on to what privacy we still have. I’m sorry the situation is so difficult for you, but I applaud your determination. To thine own self be true.

Honestly? If you can, refund it and tell them why.

I basically jumped from XP to 8.1 and I was amazed at how much of an improvement 8.1 was on a technical level. Yes, the UI was horrendous, and any usability expert should have been able to tell you it was a terrible idea, but apparently they weren’t listened to. Luckily there was Classic Shell that restored a proper Start Menu, so I never had to use the horrible touch interface.

8.1 was the last good Windows (with caveats). When support ended I went back to Linux, because 10 and 11 are enshittified to all hell.