Debian netinstall + Mate desktop (Gnome 2/3 extension?)
I expected to switch back within a week. Surprisingly, I love it. After a few tweaks and Nvidia drivers installed, it's way better than I expected. Super fast, minimal, and no annoyances.
Linux desktop really has improved in the last 20 years, since I last tried it.
I was surprised to find that Ubuntu 16.04 worked better on my Thinkpad T450s than the stock Windows 10 install (which came with a lot of crapware). I had sound stutters and mult-monitor issues on Windows, and everything worked out of the box on Ubuntu.
Fixed that for you :)
echo $(($(date +%Y)+1)) is the year of the Linux desktop.
The "problem" with Mate is that it just works. I interact with Windows and OSX daily, and I have yet to find a feature that makes me thing "I wish my desktop environment could do this". Mate gets out of my way and lets me work.
In other words, it's boring. There's nothing new and shiny to be excited about, because it's as good as it gets. I left Gnome 3 because I was tired of visual effects getting on my way, but those visual effects were what attracted me to Gnome 3 to begin with. I think Mate lacks that "wow!" factor and, as grateful as I am for that, I think this might stop it from being more popular.
I know that you can use Alt+F2 for this, but using super is much more ingrained for me since I've seen Windows Vista (I am using Linux at home and Windows systems at work)
Brisk Menu. It binds to the Windows key by default and still somehow allows shortcuts like Win+R to work.
The windows key is a modifier like shift, alt or ctrl and hence at first it seems like a really, really bad idea to use it a shortcut by itself. The above programs hence implement the same behind-the-scences workarounds other desktop environments and windows use: treat pressing and releasing win alone as special.
You can of course also use this for other keys, for example
caps alone-> Esc
caps+c -> ctrl+c
Alternatively, I win+space instead of just win also is quite natural shortcut.
For me it became the most important feature of a window manager / desktop.
That's how Unity (Ubuntu's default DE) worked, until they transitioned to GNOME.
I'm not familiar with recent Windos but pressing the "Super" key on Gnome opens the "overview" screen (or what's called) with a big "Type to search..." text box that can be used to search files to open or programs to launch.
P.S. I prefer to use shortcuts to launch the common programs, using an extension that mimics Ubuntu Unity style Super + number_key, according to the order in the "Favorites".
I thought Windows reboots were supposed to get less over the years but it has only gotten worse and I've got less autonomy over them with Windows 10. Go away from your computer for a little while and come back to a reboot (a little hyperbole).
Now my gaming PC run Void Linux and with native Steam and Wine (PlayOnLinux, Lutris) I've got access to most of my game library. It's easier to just ignore the few games that do not work on Linux nowadays.
Diablo 3 runs pretty well on it.
(Still, I prefer to avoid Window'isms on Linux so no Gnome, Pulseaudio and other complications (which Void Linux makes easy to avoid).)
It's funny, I can't remember last time I had a forced reboot, either at work or at home, both on Windows 10. On the other hand, I'm shutting down my PC regularly
I close the lid of my laptop and Windows goes to sleep, but during the night it somehow decides to do its thing and reboots. The thing is, I have BIOS password and a dual boot.
It will then just hangs indefinitely on the BIOS password prompt. Fans spinning, CPU unthrottled for hours. And then lose network drivers inside Windows. Reinstalling drivers in the morning is not fun.
I watched a three hour stream of a professional chess player and youtuber and at the start he's saying "...oh, and I just updated my Windows laptop a few days ago so hopefully it won't start to slow down or apply an update while I'm playing". Amazing - he's playing bullet chess where you typically make each move in a second or so, and hundreds of games like that in a row so even a hint of lag is going to result in him moving the piece to the wrong place, or timing out and losing the tournament and he has to "hope" that his own computer won't decide it knows when to update and/or reboot.
I have no idea how people put up with this shit. It's like an abusive relationship.
Others achieve the same via registry modifications...
Do you have this setup online somewhere, like a blog post or a git repo?
I personally use KDE it gives me a 'full blown desktop' feel and surprisingly uses way less RAM than if I ran Windows 10 directly.
Intel graphics are fine too, but as we all know, their performance isn't that good.
I lost video hardware acceleration on my EEE PC with the AMD APU.
As for GNOME, it's way too dumbed-down. You have to find and install dozens of extensions to have a decent desktop.
Anxiously awaiting the Mint 19 update with all of the new Cinnamon work too.
(unless she's picked up bad habits using previous OS's). Forced upgrades ... man that's WAY far into the Dominator zone.
* Good understanding of APT and vast experience in working from the command-line.
Have fun Grandma!
Side note: has anyone else had problems with system settings reverting to default after updates? I've turned off the suggestion notifications several times, as well as neutering cortana.
Every reboot update hangs immediately on the restart. I have to hard shutdown and then restart.
It boots normally, complains the update failed, and re-downloads the giant update files again in the background.
Then lets me put it off another 4 days. Thanks MS!
To be honest, that windows could degrade that much, without the people running en mass to chrombooks or linux, shows just how far these are away from what people expect from a desktop experience.
They dont want to relearn gui concepts, they do not want to miss theire programs, they do not want to study computer sciences to use theire machines, and they suffer in silence through all this for that. Im sure this is supossed a statement to show how bad windows is, but it truely reveals how pitiful the competition beyond niche-groups is.
Not that evangelists will see it that way. Their way of doing things is right, everyone else's is wrong and stupid.
Is systemd the best init system? No. But to some of us it was an improvement over what came before it and it really hasn't given us the trouble that others claim it has given them.
I remember a colleague who ran Linux From Scratch on his laptop who was abhorred by the changes. We spent an afternoon trying to remove the stuff from an Ubuntu VM image he didn't consider necessary and a lot of it was really alien to him. As an fvwm user he really couldn't understand why almost everything needed dbus and pulseaudio. I couldn't understand a lot of the strange packaging dependencies either. And yet these are things that to me have improved real pain-points in linux distros.
Arch seems to have the same problems, and in addition few days ago I discovered that my wifi stopped working (that laptop was docked and was using wired connection for last few weeks but had wifi working before).
The worst part is those are the machines I use for work ;(
> The worst part is those are the machines I use for work ;(
Why are you using experimental OSs on work machines? The LTS versions exist for a reason.
Did you disable Wayland? You can easily select X.org on the log in. Or just use 18.04 which went back to X by default.
Also, I think you are being unfair, upgrades on Windows are bad too. You are always recommended to a do a fresh install.
You need to work on describing your actual issues instead of being so vague if you actually want help with things. Like with this:
> Arch seems to have the same problems, and in addition few days ago I discovered that my wifi stopped working (that laptop was docked and was using wired connection for last few weeks but had wifi working before).
I do not know if your wifi gave out on 17.10 or Arch. Arch is it's own bag of worms-for all I know you are running a prerelease kernel on that new Intel NUC that runs poorly on Windows right now due to bad drivers.
Arch breaks a lot on it's own. You shouldn't be using it if you don't intend to fix it. If you want a more user friendly with Arch, try Manjaro.
While package management is a solved problem (well, on all platforms outside of Windows that is), that doesn't mean that occasional issues will not arise. Though for what it's worth: I run Arch which is about as hands on as it gets without compiling your own packages and it's been 10 years since the last time a package update cost me 45 minutes or longer of my time.
For example, I sometimes play some games on my brother's Win 10 PC (I don't use Windows on my laptop, and don't want to bother with setting up Wine and the games on it). A couple days ago it wanted to update, and I told it to postpone. Then I left for 15 minutes and came back, there was an update going on. It blocked us out of the computer for the entire afternoon and most of the evening doing black magic behind a soft blue screen.
Even applications you'd expect to be native (apt packages) like `gnome-system-monitor` are included as snaps by default in the desktop version of ubuntu 18.04. All it takes is a someone with sufficient authority to make disabling snaps very difficult.[1]
Unfortunately, there are plenty of lunatics on both sides of the fence who think they should have the final say in what you can do with your computer and when you can do it.
[1] E.g gnome developers decided to change the default behavior of the power button, then decided that users shouldn't be allowed to change this behavior: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=755953
This is what's nice with the distro ecosystem. Someone messes their thing up and gives you the middle finger? Say bye and switch to a saner thing. Your apps will work on almost all of the Linux distros (GNU/ or not) and *BSD w/o any effort, and getting them to work otherwise is not only possible, but usually easy.
"Automatic updates for everyone"
If you don't want your software to automatically update then don't use a distribution format where the software automatically updates.