Start with Mint, it’s the one that probably you’d be happier with if you’re a new user.

I bought a d-link usb wifi for $7. It worked fine on Linux.

Try a newer distro, in case the bluetooth stack on Mint from 2024 is too old. Maybe the latest ubuntu, and see if that works (try the live cd, no need to install). If not, try Fedora, which is different enough to possibly implement things a bit differently. If that doesn’t work either, you’re probably out of luck. The asha protocol has bugs on linux. Basically, Linux is great for common hardware, not so good for uncommon one.

I’ve installed that, doesn’t really make a difference. I’m not interested in skin deep changes, but in how the program works mostly internally.

I’m missing the ability to adding shadows, and to change each color individually in HSL, as in the Secondary color tool in PS. Gimp 3 manages that stuff better. Not 100%, but it works fine enough for my needs. I have more trouble with Krita on these features. So for me, Krita is not the answer to edit my traditional painting scans.

I’ve used Linux since 1998 (red hat), along BeOS. But I went back to Windows because XP was rather good, Linux was becoming good too slowly, and BeOS was dead. Still kept my Linux partitions though, while my laptop was now running MacOSX. After a few years, with 7, Windows became even better, so I moved to it full time, including in laptops. In the 2010s I tried Linux a couple of times again, but it was having these small bug things that was breaking the overall good experience. It just wasn’t ready for the desktop, sorry. My laptops became once again MacOSX, while I was doing photoshop cleanup for my traditional paintings with Windows 10. Then, in 2022, I retried Linux, and it was finally ready for how I always wanted it to be. The overall experience was good. Linux came to 100% usability for me just this year, with the release of Gimp 3, which allowed adjustment layers.

Basically, I have a baseline standard of how well I expect OSes to work on the desktop. I want the number of bad surprises to a minimum. I’m too old for tinkering, I want things to work. For Linux, this came true only in the last few years. So now I’m switched to it on all my computers. I only kept one macbook air with macos, all the other older mac intel ones are now running linux too. My main OS is Debian-Testing, while on laptops I run Mint. I have no Windows PC anymore at all.

I have 4 Apple laptops running Linux, so I have some experience with it all.

The Macbook Air 2011 has wifi driver bugs, on large downloads/updates you will experience crashes (complete lockups). This happens with either of the two drivers available for it (foss linux and broadcomm). I suggest you get a tiny usb wifi for it for $6. You blacklist the internal driver first.

For the 2008 macbook, consider if it has 4 gb of ram or not. If yes, use linux, if not, have it as a toy. Maybe install something Q4OS (with trinity DE), or even Haiku. I personally don’t use Linux on less than 4 GB of RAM. Yes, it loads fine on lite distros, but the moment you want to do some web browsing, you’ll hit the swap, which destroys the drive. 4 GB RAM is my minimum. Also, the fact that it doesn’t have EFI, it will work best with Q4OS (which is Debian based), and Haiku.

For the 2013 one, I’d suggest Linux Mint, it works great. You might, or might not require a usb wifi too. On some newer macbooks the wifi works without crashes during usage, but it doesn’t let the machine wake up properly you see. So all that stuff need to be tested by you.

On the 2015+ macbooks, the webcam doesn’t work usually (the third party driver doesn’t work properly either).

I never had problems, particularly with a popular package like Chromium, and I’m even using Debian-Testing, which is supposed to be unstable. You’re definitely fiddling enough with your system to get Debian to get into DLL hell.

I personally use an extension to have the top bar hide when i maximize an app. I can’t stand the wasted space either.

You can install anything you want via their flatpak app, which is pre-setup (unlike ubuntustudio that does come with media apps, but doesn’t have an easy way to get flatpaks going – it only has snaps).

The biggest advantage of ubuntu studio is their special pipewire setup, included in a package called ubuntustudio-pipewire-something. This can be installed by any distro that uses Ubuntu’s repositories, e.g. Mint, Zorin etc. As for the apps included, they’re easily installed manually. So you can go with Mint for a first distro.

I own 3 Macbook Airs, running Linux. The solution was simple: buy a $6 TP-Link wifi usb stick, which is tiny, and it solved all my problems (same for BT). I used to have crashing problems with the linux AND the official broadcomm wifi driver, or the laptop wouldn’t wake up from sleep etc. I just blacklisted all that, and I use the tp-link one. Sure, it eats away 1 usb port, but it’s no biggie. No more crashes, or not waking up properly.

Top reads available memory more correctly than htop imho.

Did you see this? https://askubuntu.com/questions/1425270/sony-bluetooth-headphones-connecting-but-as-an-unknown-device-with-no-option-t

Look at my reply here, where I explained the FOSS apps, their pros and cons: https://lemmy.ml/post/36874236/21366132

Maybe you have a bad burning image? Try re-downloading it and burning it with Balena Etcher.

Erm, no, it doesn’t. Plasma requires over 1.2 GB of RAM on a clean boot. It’s a much more complex DE.

I’d suggest EndeavourOS with XFce (removing the endeavouros addons after installation to save ram). I can make it boot at 460 MB of RAM. Hyprland uses about 900 MB. Might be of interest with just 4 GB of RAM. For example, on Omarchy, which uses arch/hyprland, it uses about 900 mb of ram, but it’s super slow with btrfs and some changes they’ve made. So on an old PC, XFce might be your friend. XFce can be themed really well, here are my attempts:

macos: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114009689446895521

macos classic: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114875117360852977

win11: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114874435763184758

beos: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114751365408638345

No, it won’t update itself. This is just to try if the problem improves.

Don’t run snaps. Download the .appimage/tarball of firefox and/or chrome .deb file, and try with that. The snap packages have weird restrictions that could create problems with other apps. Another thing to try is try another DE that allows more than 1 hw accelerated app at a time, the fastest to install and without conflicting with your kde, is xfce (use X11).