On Saturday, 25 May 2019 at 17:33:42 UTC, lagfra wrote:
> On 05/25 12:10, Yatheendra via Digitalmars-d wrote:
>> On Saturday, 25 May 2019 at 07:16:59 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
>> > Thanks for the input, all.
>> > 
>> > If you don't already know me by know, I'll warn you: There's a lot of ranty-ness the further this gets. But I *do* have a (tentative) plan...
>> > 
>> > [...]
>> 
>> Have you looked at
>>         https://elementary.io/
>> You have to pay for it, but it is a pretty good Linux option (for you too,
>> if I may guess at from your comments).
>
> You don't have to pay for it, it's sufficient to put 0$ under the "Custom" menu and you can download it for free. Donations are just encouraged, I guess.

I didn't know that (but I feel one should still pay for libre software maintainence).

> I've used EOS for this exact purpose a while ago (introducing a friend to linux), but it seemed a bit confusing since its DE relies heavily on "magic" screen angles and mouse scrolling to move between windows and workspaces. Could be good with a powerful laptop though, especially if the user in question comes from the OSX environment.

I suggested Elementary because I am a fan of the Enlightenment desktop that it uses. I feel any non-techie can figure out most software if its aesthetics are up to scratch.

> IMHO the easiest and most complete DE for a beginner is Cinnamon with Linux Mint, but if your laptop / PC is constrained on resources I strongly advise setting up Devuan with XFCE:

Is it a proper DE, with auto-mounting of USB sticks, controls for WiFi, etc. I thought only GNOME and KDE did that.

> https://devuan.org/
>
> It is apt-based, lightweight and doesn't use systemd, which makes it a lot easier to reason about and straightforward if you need to debug some system errors.

After moving to Gentoo Linux, I realized how crippled most pre-compiled software is on other Linux distributions. For example, IceWM looks so much better with proper font support compiled in, which most distributions don't compile it with.

On 27/05/2019 8:35 AM, Yatheendra wrote:
>> IMHO the easiest and most complete DE for a beginner is Cinnamon with Linux Mint, but if your laptop / PC is constrained on resources I strongly advise setting up Devuan with XFCE:
> 
> Is it a proper DE, with auto-mounting of USB sticks, controls for WiFi, etc. I thought only GNOME and KDE did that.

Yup Cinnamon does that too its a very good DE and is very "granny-friendly" from experience. Hence why I would use it for anything serious (although I do like LXDE for VM's).

On filesystems for portable disks (as in, portable across OS'es), I have been happily following a suggestion I came across online: format drives as UFS, the open standard filesystem present on DVD's. Apparently, it just happens to be adopted for use on DVD's (hence the cross-OS support), but it is a general-purpose filesystem.

On Sunday, 26 May 2019 at 20:42:34 UTC, Yatheendra wrote:
> On filesystems for portable disks (as in, portable across OS'es), I have been happily following a suggestion I came across online: format drives as UFS, the open standard filesystem present on DVD's. Apparently, it just happens to be adopted for use on DVD's (hence the cross-OS support), but it is a general-purpose filesystem.

I know about UFS. However it isn't very good for large disks. I use it for small pen drives. It isn't optimised for constant deletions, so it will end up performing poorly. Its much better than any of the FAT series or NTFS though.

On 5/25/19 9:34 AM, Uknown wrote:
>> - It turns out, based on actual hands-on experience, LXDE (Lub. 18.04) is still just as crap as ever (though vastly faster than stock Ubuntu), but LXQt (Lub. 18.10) is actually really, really, *REALLY* freaking *GOOD*. In fact, *so* freaking good, I'm REALLY tempted to ditch KDE in favor of LXQt myself!!! (Biggest holdback is the fact that <https://github.com/papylhomme/diskmonitor> doesn't have a widget or systray tool for LXQt. God I wish [*proactive*!!] S.M.A.R.T. tools like that were more standard!!! It's an absolute SIN against computing that they aren't </rant>)
>>
>> [...]
> 
> Well a lot of the major DEs have manpower issues, and to add to this a massive transition from X11 to Wayland. Kind of hard to work on "minor" issues.

Well, yeaaaa....and I certainly sympathize with those manpower issues, buuuuut, even still...

Dragging an edge, or an item...mounting a panel...resizing something...even if it isn't a uniform resize...

...seriously, these are things that just about any Indie game dev could do practically *in their sleep*. And these DE's have had **24 YEARS**...nearly a quarter of a century...to *copy* it. *AND*, TONS of that time was *WAAAAAY* before Wayland was even a thing! And yet...nothing...

Hell, I'd even do it myself, but I've long since run out of patience for big C and C++ codebases. D ruined me ;)

On 05/26 08:35, Yatheendra via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Saturday, 25 May 2019 at 17:33:42 UTC, lagfra wrote:
> > On 05/25 12:10, Yatheendra via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > > On Saturday, 25 May 2019 at 07:16:59 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)
> > > wrote:
> > > > Thanks for the input, all.
> > > > > If you don't already know me by know, I'll warn you: There's > a
> > > lot of ranty-ness the further this gets. But I *do* have a >
> > > (tentative) plan...
> > > > > [...]
> > > 
> > > Have you looked at
> > >         https://elementary.io/
> > > You have to pay for it, but it is a pretty good Linux option (for
> > > you too,
> > > if I may guess at from your comments).
> > 
> > You don't have to pay for it, it's sufficient to put 0$ under the "Custom" menu and you can download it for free. Donations are just encouraged, I guess.
> 
> I didn't know that (but I feel one should still pay for libre software
> maintainence).
> 

Yes, I totally agree.

> > IMHO the easiest and most complete DE for a beginner is Cinnamon with Linux Mint, but if your laptop / PC is constrained on resources I strongly advise setting up Devuan with XFCE:
> 
> Is it a proper DE, with auto-mounting of USB sticks, controls for WiFi, etc. I thought only GNOME and KDE did that.
> 

XFCE is one of the most lightweight and consistent DEs in my opinion, of course
if one requires everything to work out of the box the choice is restricted to
the heaviest ones. XFCE surely needs to put some effort into configuration, yet
it is very flexible and everything can be customized through GUIs.
Cinnamon supports all the features you list out of the box (at least on Mint).

> > https://devuan.org/
> > 
> > It is apt-based, lightweight and doesn't use systemd, which makes it a lot easier to reason about and straightforward if you need to debug some system errors.
> 
> After moving to Gentoo Linux, I realized how crippled most pre-compiled software is on other Linux distributions. For example, IceWM looks so much better with proper font support compiled in, which most distributions don't compile it with.

I'm a Gentoo user too, and while it is true that pre-compiled software is crippled sometimes, I wouldn't recommend Gentoo to a novice or to someone who doesn't use his machine for development. Gentoo is great for programming and it can be configured to be stable as hell, but it takes practice at the beginning.

On 5/26/19 10:58 PM, Uknown wrote:
> 
> I know about UFS. However it isn't very good for large disks. I use it for small pen drives. It isn't optimised for constant deletions, so it will end up performing poorly. Its much better than any of the FAT series or NTFS though.

Really? Better than NTFS in what way? (Not surprised about it being better than FAT, of course, given FAT's filesize limits and lack of journaling).

On Monday, 27 May 2019 at 17:08:24 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> On 5/26/19 10:58 PM, Uknown wrote:
>> 
>> I know about UFS. However it isn't very good for large disks. I use it for small pen drives. It isn't optimised for constant deletions, so it will end up performing poorly. Its much better than any of the FAT series or NTFS though.
>
> Really? Better than NTFS in what way? (Not surprised about it being better than FAT, of course, given FAT's filesize limits and lack of journaling).

Wait, I got confused between UDF and UFS. UDF is Universal Disk Format. Its meant for DVDs and Blurays, but since its supported by all OSs, its better than NTFS in interoperability. macOS by default doesn't allow writing to NTFS. You need to install Fuse, or enable experimental write support in macOS. Plus UDF also supports Unix permissions, which is a nice extra. Its great for small pendrives. I still use ExFat for my USB3 hard disk.

I don't know about UFS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format

On Tuesday, 28 May 2019 at 04:05:48 UTC, Uknown wrote:
>
> Wait, I got confused between UDF and UFS.
> UDF is Universal Disk Format.

I beat you to it :-[] Thanks for correcting, I did mean UDF.

On Sunday, 5 May 2019 at 23:32:46 UTC, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) wrote:
> We've got a lot of very reasonable, level-headed Linux folk on this board:
>
> I'm helping my mom look for a laptop to replace her ~10 year old one, and given all the mess Windows Update has been making of things since about Win7 onwards, I'm temped to just stick her on Linux (especially if I can't find anything still using Win7). Heck, 90% of what she does is just web browser anyway, with the other 10% being pretty much Linux compatible stuff (Hmm...although come to think of it, only possible exception might be her iPhone...I'll have to look into that, I'm not an iOS guy...).
>
> Any suggestions on a potentially granny-friendly distro? (If such exists.) Personally, I use Manjaro, but I definitely don't want to set her up with that: While I think rolling-release would be a good fit (avoid the mess of periodic OS re-installs), the Arch/Manjaro updates all to often wind up failing and require manual intervention to fix. I've been able to handle that for myself, but she wouldn't be able to and I don't want to be the on-call extended-family IT dept...
>
> Ideally, some rolling-release that can auto-update (preferably in the background) and won't force-reboot, force-interrupt you, or pull the Windows prank of delaying startup/shutdown for several minutes (or more...) for "Installing updates...you may as well go watch an entire series on Netflix 'cause you ain't packing up your laptop *or* getting any emails sent anytime soon...". Supporting rollbacks as well would be fantastic, but I realize that's pretty rare in Linuxland (outside of NixOS/Guix, but I'd say NixOS/Guix would *definitely* be a bad fit for other reasons...)
>
> Would Mint fit the bill here? It's been quite awhile since I've paid any attention to Mint, so I'm kinda out-of-the-loop on that one. But I know it's always intended to be non-expert friendly.
>
> I'm not too terribly concerned about the initial installation and setup, since I can just take care of that. I just don't want to be getting regular tech support phone calls afterwords...


IMO, there are three great/safe/reliable Linux distros to choose from:

1. elementary OS (https://elementary.io): super polished, clean and easy to use. Its what I use since I care about design and user experience...and has an ecosystem of app in its AppCenter. Have been using is for 3 years and still liking it. It's sold at a pay-what-you-want price so you can enter 0 to download for free.
>> The fast, open, and privacy-respecting replacement for Windows and macOS

2. Ubuntu: stable, reliable, easy to get support for just about anything.

3. Fedora: pretty stable these days, on-click upgrade between releases, newest stuff, not quite popular among regular users but is the purest in terms of new software stack.