Caveman

TL;DR: Try installing some on virtual box, by all means try Linux mint cinnamon but also try Ubuntu and Fedora KDE.

Linux has some jargon and since you want to learn I’ll give you a quick rundown of how a variation of Linux is composed.

“Kernel” is what makes Linux Linux. It’s a way of interacting with the hardware.

A “distribution” or “distro” is a one of the many flavors of Linux.

They are usually “based” on a common foundation like Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Nix and whatever. These also work like an onion where Mint is based on Ubuntu which in turn is based on Debian, all of which use some version of the Linux kernel.

A that’s just a base will just get you a terminal (also called a shell or console) and is very useful to make a server for example.

What most people think of as an OS is the user interface (i.e. clickable shit). The terminology in Linux for that is “desktop environment” (DE).

You’ll see a lot of distributions mix and watch between a base and a desktop environment such as Fedora with KDE, Ubuntu (Ubuntu with Gnome), Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE), Bazzite (Fedora silverblue base with either gnome, KDE or deck DE).

You mentioned Cinnamon. Cinnamon is a desktop environment for Mint so a Linux Mint Cinnamon contains the code of the following:

Linux kernel, Debian, Ubuntu and Mint as a base and Cinnamon to interact with it by using a mouse and keyboard.

There are currently three bases that are really popular right now, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch. In the DE there are currently two that are most advanced, namely KDE and Gnome but Cinnamon is not far behind.

In all honestly, none of this matters all too much, just install a couple of popular distros on a virtual machine like Virtual Bok and do a vibe check.

Take a couple of these, install some programs and fuck around with the settings for a bit, install themes and whatever or watch a quick YouTube video on it:

• Ubuntu (gets hate for being corporate but is solid, uses Gnome)
• Linux mint Cinnamon
• Fedora KDE
• EndavourOS (an arch based distro that’s supposedly easy, haven’t tried it)
• Bazzite (weird way to install programs through the package manager but hard to fuck up beyond repair)
• Something with the Xfce DE just to see the “lightweight” look.

g-push

git push origin `git branch --show`

Soon Linux will be big enough that stores will offer a selection of operating systems. It might be possible already to ask for a custom built PC deal with a discount for no bringing your own OS or having them install it for you.

I’m up for installing Linux on my last phone when it’s added to the list of devices that have official/unofficial support. I’m not going to install anything until WiFi and mobile data is supported tbh.

I tried installing Ubuntu touch for fun a couple of years ago but it didn’t boot. I just want to get to a point where I can install the OS and send bug reports.

LineageOS is based on android so it gets a lot of goodies with it.

I’m very open to being an early adopter of mobile Linux phones. I’ve been unable to because of a couple of factors. I last seriously checked about half a year ago so take this with a pinch of salt.

• Limited support for specific models. This means that the phone will work as a computer but won’t have the correct drivers for gyro, sim and whatnot.
• Lack of extensive driver support. Phones turn off components to save power, this was not supported the last time I checked and halves the battery life compared to stock android.
• Waydroid support incomplete. Many apps will work but some apps will bug out. Waydroid also has performance issues so it’s not as good as WINE for example.
• Not big enough community. A lot of models are maintained by a single dev that checks in every blue moon.

To get a Linux phone to be competitive on performance we’ll need to get driver APIs and component lists open sourced so it’ll be easier to gather the appropriate info and make drivers.

There has been tons of progress though, Gnome and KDE have really strong touch support now and the apps scale decently.

It’s coming but now fairphone is the only phone that openly supports Linux mobile distros and is open sourced.

Important note: This release can only be upgraded to if you’re on 10.7 or later. Make sure to update to 10.10 soon or the process might become more manual.

It’s the other way around. Windows will stop supporting kernel level anti-cheat because of Crowdstrike

FUCK YEAH, YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP

It’s not, Vim is GNU. I listed some of them as “I use open source and proprietary” things. Jellyfin is open source also.

As an example I’m on Linux for a decade now but I also use proprietary services. I use Jellyfin and Netflix, Vim and Jetbrains IDEs, Chess.com instead of Lichess, WhatsApp instead of Matrix.

Sometimes the value proposition does it for me, sometimes it’s the network effect. I’ve ditched reddit because I like Lemmy more but I can see how someone wants to stay in touch with their niche communities that don’t really exist on Lemmy. Probably some people use both.

I torrent a lot on Linux and use Qbittorrent. Surfshark has a great VPN on Linux.

If you want to get into it then Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr and nzb360 ($10) with Jellyfin is a great stack to manage your library but needs a bit of work to set up. You can then use the phone to download and search and watch it with an android TV app.

I had some issues setting it up with a ublue fedora immutable distro which are pretty non-existent on most standard distros.

Fairphone comes pretty close.

Many of the problems with security and disk space are limited by flatpaks using same base layer for applications that is shared and easy to update.

Maybe but probably not. People that develop applications can save a major headache by choosing flatpaks so the ecosystem will gravitate towards it.

At some point new applications that didn’t launch a Linux version will do so but only on flatpak and older applications will start moving towards flatpaks since it’s less dev time.

It looks to me as inevitable that the best versions of an app will be a flatpak but if you’re on Ubuntu based system you can probably get by for very long without them.

Jellyfin is not there yet but it definitely can be. It can be done pretty easily without any centralised server.

1. Sending people magic links to their accounts on their phones that auto log them into Jellyfin.
2. Make IP dictionary to have people type “cat mug door end” which pings the server with a login from an IP.
3. Show QR code.
4. Scan with an authorised app which pings the server to authorise the device on behalf of the user.

It’s passwordless 4 word input + phone scan that can be optimised for TV pretty heavily since you only need make something 10^12 unique to account for all IPv4.

It will take around 15-30 hours to code though for a person familiar with Jellyfin on android TV and server.

I haven’t tried Plex but Jellyfin is super easy. Type in IP, username and password and you’re done. Only need to setup port forwarding on the router to make it work.

I use many KDE activities all mapped to a single hotkey. Meta+H, Meta+J, Meta+K, then L, Y, U, G.

I set my browser and maybe one other as sticky to show on all. I also have specific desktop picture for all of them.

On top of that I have a startup command that opens all applications I use for work. Each application is configured to open in a certain activity.

The end result is that instead of doing Alt-Tab or looking for the window I do Meta+Key and it’s there in front of my eyes with focus.

Also use alias for it like “hist” then do “hist stuff”

I use vim mode everywhere I can and vim in the console, it took a bit of effort to learn but it was fun and satisfying. Highly recommend, I’m a vim user now for 7 years.