Right on the money: See also the official mullvad docs: https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls#linux

Or just git depending on the use case.

Nothing in live week ever be 100% guaranteed to work forever. You’ll be fine, mostly.

1. Yes, Live Linux system and regular install are practically identical. It’s the same software. Everything should work. There’s reason to assume Wifi will suddenly break. (Actually, Live systems differ a lot from a traditional install, but you can assume that what worked on the live system will work later. It is the same software after all. Same kernel including all drivers.)

2. Keep this USB you have just booted from. This is the tool to recover if things should go south.

3. You can keep Windows, usually, when installing Linux. The process requires “shrinking the Windows partition” and a boot loader that can handle both. Pretty standard; the installer should guide you.

4. You can totally use a phone to google how to fix your Linux.

Have fun with Linux Mint. It’s the Just works Linux.

Web apps

I’ve been macOS user for past decade.

I find macOS UI superior to both Gnome and KDE.

I’m not surprised.

Also, I’m not sure if Gnome tries to mimic OS X or Windows or KDE, for the sake of this argument. Gnome (classic) was invented to replace (original) KDE, which sort-of tried to replace Windows.

Stuff evolves. UIs oscillate between minimalism and overload.

Yes, what’s strange? This is the beta release or release candidate or pre-release snapshot for a version that will enjoy long-term support.

Without iMessage, right?

Most specialized software are web apps running in a browser hosted on the cloud these days. I’m sure they exist, but I couldn’t name any HR, ERM, CRM, … software that’s not a web app.

The desktop OS is becoming irrelevant. That’s why those who want a Mac or Linux notebook can make it work, at least from a purely technical point of view; i.e. if the company allows it. That’s also, why there will never be a year of the Linux desktop. (I mention Macs here, because while OS X gets some commercial software that you won’t get on Linux, it’s not that much outside of some niches)

There will never be a year of the Linux desktop because you gain very little from replacing Edge on Windows with Firefox on Linux (a different software that does the same thing). However, you loose some specialised software and your IT supplier, your IT service provider, half of your IT staff and some of your non-IT employees’ skills. This does not sound like a good business case.

Linux on the desktop never happened, because Linux on the server replaced desktop applications.

I don’t know if it is fair to call it a disaster. I don’t know enough from the inside, but I believe in retrospect the goal was maybe to ambitious or plain wrong.

They were attempting to port huge amounts of decades old Office macros to OpenOffice. That failed, but before the LiMux project they had already failed to migrate the same to a modern version of MS Office.

The goal for LiMux was to be a better Windows than the best Windows Microsoft would offer at the time. Literally impossible.

That combined with strong lobbying and users confused with a different UI and probably a lot of small day-to-day issues (which happens with any software, but can make an IT department look bad) made it politically hard to sustain an ‘experiment’.

The current IT lead of Munich, hired after migrating back to Microsoft, does not seem to be a Microsoft fan.

Same in Jerboa. Extremely annoying.

I have a fanless, reasonably-light linux laptop from tuxedo. Unfortunately, it seems their current models are more powerful, more heavy and probably not fanless.

Did you consider dell xps or system76?

As a Linux user, you can pretend the os x is just Linux. That’s not true, but you can make it work with brew, some googling and your favourite ide / tech stack.

On the plus side, macs are less problematic to integrate with corporate software. You can run commercial software that’s not available for Linux.

Windows is just Windows. A step back from either Linux or mac. Two steps backed when managed by corporate IT.

This also surprised me. The Debian platform has been terrific over decades, at least for me.

My journey was

• SuSe (yast, compiling kernels, configuring X, …, good for learning, but not good for productivity)
• Red Hat (free at the time)
• Debian (still compiling kernels)
• Debian (with kernel and modules via apt; and working X11, heaven)
• Ubuntu (Debian for Desktops)
• Ubuntu (why would i ever install another distro?)
• Ubuntu (okay, any other distro would do, but why?)
• Ubuntu (snap, Wayland, … okay i’m too old to understand this, but if it works?)

Are Mint or Pop_OS better than Ubuntu or Debian? In what way?

Yes, it’s done by the package and when you configure it to, which in practice is right now.

Actually, that’s one of the things Ubuntu got right with Snap (hate is as much as you want). They install the new version in the background without interrupting your flow. The next time, you close Firefox and choose to open it again…tada… it’s the new version.

Yes, it’s a weird part of Linux history. He wrote the code, which is part of the mainline kernel, and his name is on it. Reaching out before removing this seems natural. They didn’t invite him to a party.

Hans Reiser and ReiserFS were controversial before the murder. I guess, maintainers want some sort of closure and move on.

Well, from non-LTS, you can always go to +1, the next release. If this happens to be an LTS, sure, you will automatically be on LTS. (Then you can change your settings to say on LTS or keep tracking non-LTS release).

If it works for you then use it, however if you want the latest packages you’ll have to NOT use the LTS releases in which case be prepared to do a FULL REINSTALL every time a new version comes out.

This is just wrong. You can update the LTS release to the next non-LTS release. You only have to unchecked “LTS only”. You can also wait for the next LTS release.

You never need a full install. I haven’t done such a thing for a decade.

Well, I’d file this as innovation. Innovation is trying and failing. It’s an experiment. And I’m okay with this.

Is it wasteful to have KDE and Gnome? Why don’t they give up and merge with each other? Did we really need systemd? Or docker? And why Wayland when every single distro is on X and every single application is on X?

Ubuntu started as a Gnome-based distribution and it is was better than the competition on the desktop at the time. Or good enough. It got popular.

Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of Unity or Gnome 3, but it worked. I found snap totally weird and against how things should be on a Linux system. But snap updates (while still annoying) have solved problems with deb-based updates of browser (“Quit all running firefox or you’ll experience problems”).

Maybe I’d like Debian more. After all I came from Debian to Ubuntu. But it’s not worth to make a fuzz.

Ubuntu is nice. Apt/DEB works as they should. Some default apps, mostly browsers, are snaps now, but this does not bother you at all. You were getting them from your distro anyway.

Flatpak and AppImages work just fine if you need them.

The Ubuntu desktop (any flavour) just works. Others are different, but nothing is bad about Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is trying new things, proprietary to their ecosystem, e.g. Unity or snap. On the big picture, those are experiment. Ubuntu is still Linux.

The community reaction to snap is overblown. So Canonical developed something you don’t like? Ignore it. This has mostly been a waste of time for them.

(Yes, maybe that dev time would be better spent on flatpak or open-source apps. But that’s their time. I’m not paying Ubuntu developers, so can I really complain?)

Well, not an expert. We learned now that logos are not signed. I’m not sure the boot menu config file is not either. So on a typical linux setup you can inject a command there.