yeah, haven’t tried LibreOffice but it seems like a good way to go! I do worry about Track Changes having issues (that’s been an important function for me in the past), but I’m not planning to use this computer for work right now, so that’s not a dealbreaker.
Thanks for all of this! Yeah, I’m not sure whether I’ll need to dual boot or not since this won’t be my main work computer, but I’ll keep that in mind.
Everyone seems to be recommending Gnome. I’ll check out Cosmic too. At first glance, it looks pretty cool, but I don’t totally know what I’m looking for yet since I haven’t really had to look at desktop environment choices before.
re Fedora - very well maintained and stable sounds excellent! I’m assuming this applies to both Fedora Silverblue and Fedora Cosmic? Might look into Pop!_OS as well, if it’s popular I’m guessing I could find resources to troubleshoot anything that goes wrong.
I’m curious about Atomic options. That sounds like a great option for someone who’s kinda worried about screwing things up, especially if I really do get into programming this time and fall into the rabbit hole of fiddling with computer things. I’ll definitely read up on that.
“It just works…” oh, man. You’re giving me deja vu from when I first tried a Mac. This is the #1 reason I’ve stuck with Macs until now, outside of when my pre-pandemic work/school required me to use a PC. OK, sold. Definitely going to be looking at Linux Mint!
Awesome! That’s very promising. It looks like a lot of other people are recommending Fedora, too. I’ll definitely check it out!
Thanks! Yeah, I think it’s hilarious that I’ll have more options on this older Mac than I’d have on my current/newer Mac, which doesn’t have an Intel chip. Usually it’s the other way around, isn’t it?
Based on most of the comments here, I’m probably going to end up with Gnome, but I’ll check out Cinnamon too.
also: Cinnamon on Mint sounds like a delicious tea recipe. Why do all of the Linux things have such fun names? Cinnamon, Gnome, Fedora… maybe this is just a natural result of Linux having the penguin logo
OK, good to know! Yeah, it seems like a lot of people are recommending the Gnome desktop environment. I’ll look into Fedora for the distro.
Interesting, what do you mean by “fresh”?
Yeah, it’s an Intel Mac. Intel Core i5, which appears to be in that x86-64 range if I’m understanding correctly.
I think I’d prefer stability over rolling release. One of the things I’ve really appreciated about Apple’s stuff is not having to deal with zillions of updates, like I did with my last PC. I’m not sure what you consider to be tinkering “a bit” with a computer, but I haven’t had to do that in a long time, and I suspect I’ll be happiest keeping that to a minimum (at least for now). So based on this, I’ll look at Fedora and Mint.
Thank you for all of this info!
Awesome, I’ll do that!
side note: I love that it’s called Gnome. Other people have garden gnomes, but I will have a computer Gnome
It’s a MacBook Pro Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015. Model A1502. https://support.apple.com/en-us/111959
yeah, this is the part that really worries me. Ads are fine IMO, psychological profiling not so much. I used to hear “if you’re not paying, you’re the product,” but now you’re the product even if you are paying.
By the way, are any of the other streaming services better than Spotify for not having your data sold to third parties?
Yeah, I really like the idea of something with a large userbase. I’d definitely be relying on support from forums if anything went wrong, as I don’t really know anyone who uses Linux. Thank you!
It’s nice that you can switch DE’s easily with Linux. Makes it a lot less intimidating to choose one!