The x5-Z8330 has 800 passmark points which is enough to run Arch with XFce without issues. 2 GB of RAM though is the sticky point. It is problematic with Debian/Mint as they consume about 800 MBs of RAM on a cold boot (don’t even think of Fedora or Ubuntu that are dogs when it comes to RAM usage), but on Arch you can configure it to consume only 450 MB of RAM: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/660/702/810/921/104/original/3313b7ec1d3cdae4.png (here’s my Arch/XFce with a BeOS theme using 585 MB of RAM with 3 apps open). That’s a life saver on a 2 GB of RAM computer, because Youtube alone on Chrome can use up to 800 MB of RAM, while on Firefox goes up to 1.1 GB. Consider that 128 MB of RAM also goes to the integrated graphics card. But with other websites, or with a third party youtube front-end, or other apps, 2 GB can be enough (just make sure you give it a 4 GB swap file – not zswap). Finally, make sure you use only a background color, not an image. Images, uncompressed in RAM, can use up to 80 MB of RAM if they are in high-res. A plain color takes kilobytes! Also, disable the BT service and any other service you don’t use via XFce’s startup utility. That one takes 45 MB alone, it’s a dog… Load it only when you need it.

Mint is the best for most users. But if you want a Mac style, Elementary OS is the correct answer for MacOS users. Here’s my latest screenshot of it:

It’s just loads some stuff in a window, and then loads the rest of the stuff a quarter of a second later or so. It happens often when using kde. It just doesn’t feel organic to me.

yeah, it’s just not fully compatible that touchpad it seems.

However, there’s a trick.

These DELL laptops have an ubuntu equivalent usually. They used to sell them with either Windows or Ubuntu – in cooperation with Canonical. And Canonical had SPECIAL repos for these laptops (different for each model), where you could find special driver versions for some hardware. This meant that you were stuck in the version of ubuntu LTS the laptop came with. You couldn’t upgrade it to a newer version or to another distro. So I’d suggest you check if that model has an ubuntu equivalent, and then find their repo and see what kind of drivers they have for it. https://ubuntu.com/certified/laptops?vendor=Dell

If it’s not there, it just means that this hardware piece is not compatible with linux period… It happens, Linux can’t support absolutely everything out there, especially since they have been developing for Windows and not for linux.

I honestly don’t like CSS interfaces. They have a way of rendering as-they-load, and it looks unnatural to me for a native app. But even without CSS, Qt has a special way of rendering. It’s the main reason why I don’t like KDE. I kind of see it rendering things one by one, even if it’s in a split second. It bothers me. I much prefer the way things render on pretty much any other toolkit or OS. It’s kind of “there” all at once.

Mint runs X11 so it’s quite easier. Under wayland all hell breaks lose on our PC. And that’s with the latest version available by ubuntu too, not some old version.

no, it was the 565 or 575 i can’t remember, there were older options there too. But regardless, even if removed, it shouldn’t have left apt in a state of panic.

Try Linux Mint or Ubuntu live usb and see if it has the issue fixed for you. If yes, check if they have a different config and copy it over. If not, but it still works better, you might want to move to a debian-based distro. If it also doesn’t work, maybe not much you can do, might be one of these weird dell touchpads that don’t work correctly – i have one of these…

Not true. Ubuntu’s official nvidia driver installation broke twice for my husband’s PC, one other time they removed a version completely from their list (while we had installed it), and then it had orphaned packages and apt was constantly complaining, while every time we put nvidia as the main card (instead of the integrated intel), the PC does not wake up from sleep under Wayland (while it does under X11, so we know it’s not a BIOS issue).

Also, the Mint forum is full of problems with nvidia drivers, despite running under X11, which is the “easier” environment for its drivers.

Overall, it’s a nightmare, and that’s why we now use the integrated intel as the main gpu, and the nvidia for compute only (for blender and resolve).

Maybe it’s better implemented under Arch-land and Fedora-land, but under Ubuntu/Mint/Debian-land, it’s still a nightmare.

There’s nothing like you ask. Most time tracker apps are just a calendar where you write manually how much time you spent on something. So you can use something like Kimai, or use a paper calendar and write on it.

But text log of the active window and a screencap, that’s the stuff of Microsoft Recall AI nightmares that Linux developers wouldn’t be keen to implement. What you’re asking is intrusive AI for others. Maybe you need to actually learn to be punctual and write down your activities, or simply, buy a Snapdragon laptop with Windows AI on it. And even then, that info stays with the AI, I don’t think it’s shared much with the user.

You just needed to install Chrome, not leave the installation with Firefox. Chrome works with streaming services, except one (can’t remember which one). All the other ones work.

As someone with 3 Macbook Airs from the 2010s, running Linux, I can tell you that you’re wasting your time trying to make these drivers work. They’re unmaintained and they have introduced new bugs as new kernels come out (as the kernel changes over time, old drivers stop working 100%). For example, the mid-2011 Macbook Air locks up completely when downloading large files. The 2012 one doesn’t wake up from sleep due to the wifi.

The solution is to completely disable these drivers via blacklisting them. And then buy a TINY usb wifi, like the tp-link one, for $6. It works perfectly and it takes no space (just one of your usb ports). That’s the solution. Everything else is a waste of time, speaking from experience. The kernel bug reports I did went unanswered.

You can leave these as NTFS, but you never know if the linux ntfs driver might do something wrong during a write operation (during reading is usually safe, but in writing operations there could be problems).

I’ll be honest, Linux Mint with a few modifications, is the best option for new users. I’ve installed Mint to 8-9 people so far, and have had ZERO complaints. Literally zero! KDE is not an easy DE to use, it has scattered options, and it often has bad surprises and bugs. Cinnamon instead is much simpler, and things are exactly where you expect them to be. I have a whole list of changes I do to make Mint perfectly workable to new users, I can send it to you if you like via email (it’s a long list): eugenia17 at gmail

You essentially have 3 options with open source audio apps (there are some good closed source options too, like the great Reaper, Tracktion Waveform, and BitWig Studio, but I will focus on foss solutions here):

• Ardour. This is the premier foss app. In fact, a fork of it is closed source used by a big audio manufacturer. So it’s the best tested foss audio software out there. It can do both midi and recording sessions, but it’s best for recording stuff. However, the new version, expected by end of this year, will have major midi updates that probably will put it on top of the king of midi in foss:

• LMMS. Best for Midi. If you’re doing electronic music through and through, this works great. The only downside it has it does not support vst3 plugins (soon enough, this can become an issue, even if you say that you don’t care about plugins). You can still get vst3 support by loading them via the Clara plugin (basically, it acts as a plugin for other plugins), but that can be unstable.

• QTractor. This one is an odd one out. It’s a bit hard to get it going (it requires external synths and some patchwork to connect audio devices), but it is very powerful and I’d say, a more sane UI when editing. It comes with no plugins at all, but it supports all plugin standards for linux. Basically, this one requires more setup, but once you set it up, it gets going easier.

Alternatively, if you’re actually interested only in rec. audio editing (basically cutting, pasting etc), simple stuff, there’s Audacity.

If you’re using Ubuntu or Linux Mint, Zorin, PopOS, install the ubuntustudio package for pipewire (can’t remember how it’s called you need to search for it). It sets up pipewire audio correctly, so more plugins/apps work out of the box (without it, for example, Bitwig studio doesn’t even make a peep…).

I still use hexchat, it works fine.

I get random crashes from kate in the last few versions (appimage). But other than that, it’s the best foss gui code editor.

Winapps is too slow for gpu-heavy apps, like photoshop actually is.

So I went with Gimp 3. It does everything I need. Gimp 2.10 didn’t, but the new version, 3, does. Sure it has quirks: e.g. when selecting a layer with bg transparency, it selects the whole layer (including the empty parts) instead of just the parts that aren’t empty – you need to do layers -> alpha to selection to get the contents. Another one: to get transparency when you delete parts of a layer is to add an alpha channel to that layer (otherwise you get a bg color). But if you learn these few quirks, Gimp does everything photoshop does pretty much.

If you have old PSD files that have adjustment layers or smart objects, pass them via Photopea, and export as TIFF. Then load on Gimp3 and move to that for life.

I got the Epson L8180 (the same model has another name in the US), since I’m an artist and want larger prints. It even prints from the rear, since I do my sketches on an ipad, and then I print my sketches on thick, 300 gsm watercolor paper. It does scanning and printing and copying, and all works on Linux. Gimp supports its advanced printing dialog with the appimage, but not flatpak version (the problem is with the flatpak architecture, not gimp or the driver). Conversely, the xsane app supports the scanner fine, but xsane is itself not very stable. I use the epsonscan2 flatpak version (which works better than the .deb file under ubuntu-based distros). Overall, very happy with printing with gimp3 with more advanced options.

For Mint in particular, there is a difference. There are some ubuntu packages they don’t want applied, and the command line does apply them. While their packagekit gui app, doesn’t. They always suggest we use their app. Also, the app updates spices, and flatpaks.