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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Have fun! Whatever you do, if you run into an issue you can’t solve, stick with it. You’ll learn and become better over time.
I’ve been gaming on Linux for about 3 years now and it’s been great. Had some hiccups here and there but they were solved with some searching.
our local leftist third space.
You have no idea how jealous I am.
Sometimes I look at my life and I feel jealous of myself. Tbh I deliberately moved here (the boonies, and a leftist / alt-culture hotspot of grassroot community living), and it has its cons, but... Next week a wool felter is taking me foraging wild plants to teach me basket weaving, then I'm teaching her the basics of fermenting food (for booze, taste, or preservation), while my 10yo kid is 500km away for her country-wide robotics competition. I'm happily trapped in a caricature.
Mince alors! If been to France multiple times, went to Burgundy last, and je parle in petit peu francais as well. You went full Braiding Sweetgrass and I really envy you! We moved to the county in west Germany and it's all conservatives here. Not that they are actually conserving anything, though.
Und ich spreche Deutsch! Been to Bavaria (I know) a few times as a kid / teen, my grandmother taught highschool German for decades, and my dad reads Goethe for fun. German was the language I actually loved. Never use it nowadays though, and it's so rusty I can't do anything with it anymore. And my traitor kid just picked Italian as her 2nd foreign language. She sucks.
where is this? asking for a friend.
Central France. You coming?
guess i have to find a way to get accepted into europe (and finding a bunch of money)
So, in a week or so?
😂
I thought it said “nerd space” not “third space” and I was like what’s that??!!
I need one though.
What's a "third space"? 🫣
It's a term from city planing. Essentialy places that are not your place of work or someone's home.
Here is a more in depth explainer by NotJustBikes: https://youtu.be/VvdQ381K5xg
Critically somewhere that doesn't cost money to simply exist in.
I don't understand that explanation. Your workplace doesn't cost money to exist in, it's quite the opposite. Often a third place is a pub or something, in which you're expected to buy a drink or something.
A city park is also a third place and that doesn't cost you money to be there.
Yeah, a third place doesn't have to cost money, but it also isn't a requirement that it's free.
Thanks! I had no idea that was a term. I suggest we upgrade those places to "second place"
We're sort of required to have a home to sleep and such, and a workplace to make money, so third place is the term that makes sense. Somewhere you aren't required to be, but you enjoy being.
Do you live in a city? If you do, there is something of the sort in most cities; you just need to know the right people or look in the right places.
If not, yeah, rough, you could try travelling in to a city though.
Before anyone says anything, no my city is not huge, no I am not in the US. The political left is active pretty much everywhere on earth, sometimes more or less underground depending on the conditions, but they'll have some sort of spaces for themselves.
Mint is a good choice. It just works.
Haha! No it doesn't.
Finally moved my gaming machine over while upgrading storage the other day. Pretty much seamless.
Sounds like you're in good hands. Enjoy the ride, plenty to learn and to feel good about understanding :)
Mint is a good choice for your first linux.
Second this! Been using it for years. Not a single problem. It just works
Plus it's built on Debian right? So if you ever want to bring things even lower-level you're positioned well to learn more in preparation.
The "main" version is built on Ubuntu. There is a Debian based version (LMDE), but the Ubuntu based one is the "recommended" one.
Ubuntu is Debian based, so it stays true
Good luck!
Oh so now I'm committed I need luck all of a sudden?
That's great to hear! Welcome, and have frustrating fun!
If you don't mind me asking; in your context, what does "leftist" mean? When I hear the term, it's usually meant as a pejorative for some nebulous group the utterer doesn't like.
Thanks !
Not a native speaker, so don't put too much faith in my answer, but: for me, it means actual left, faaaar left, not the milquetoast leftf-wing parties that sometimes win elections in Western Europe.
There's a good measure of gift economy, for example. We share many resources, grow food for each other (I do squash, a neighbor does leek, and so on--but we don't trade, we just take what we need.) When we need musclepower we just pass the word around and strangers or friends come build a wall / clean out an old barn / stack firewood. There's a buy-nothing warehouse were we drop everything from clothes to building materials, toys, kitchenware, and art supplies.
I volunteer to manage a pay-what-you-want hostel for hikers. There's a lot of grassroot community politics / activism.
It's nice.
2 years ago when I started my switch I tried ~10 distros and then did a prolonged test of about 2 months for each of the 2 distros that were the closest to being perfect out of the box and settled on Bazzite.
I wish you a happy journey and if you don't like one flavor don't ditch Pizza, there are many more flavors to try and one of them surely will become your favorite.
Nice move.
Feel free to check back and share your experience.
Yo, so first of all, congrats on being able to ditch Windows! Second of all, I got hype-convinced to make the switch a few days ago and I have LOVED it. Moving from Windows to Mint (at least so far) was a breeze. There's a tiny bit more thought overhead that goes into fixing things sometimes, but if I'm really honest about that, I had a lot of that with Windows, too, I just have decades of fixing Windows experience.
The only thing stopping a mass exodus is that there is no single version of Linux that is just dominating. I know that defeats the purpose of Linux, but that is what the dumb masses (such as myself) want. We want easy, and we don't want to be special. If I have a problem I want a thousand others with the same problem, not my own little unique problem that I have to take hours away from my day to fix.
Then Linux Mint is what you're looking for.
I'd say the stopping thing is a few multiplayer PvP games with anticheat, also some software that won't work in Wine (adobe products, corel products, microsoft products).
Yes, I know alternatives exist (Krita, Inkscape, LibreOffice). No, they are not 100% drop-in replacements. I for myself love working in LibreOffice Writer, but when you work in a place where everyone except you uses MS Word and expects DOCX files, you can't "just" switch to linux without issue.
"It feels as good as never giving a cent to Amazon, Uber, and streaming services.
Yay. " Yay indeed. Just started my Cinnamon journey. Old Win7 laptop - never going back, to Apple either.
Apple, with their M silicon, has been tempting recently, but I really can't bring myself to pull the trigger when I could have a top of the line Framework for the same price as a middle range MacBook pro. Sure, the MacBook is probably more powerful, but the framework would actually be mine.
That said, in the current ram/ssd economies I'm not buying a laptop at all if I can help it. Unfortunately, I want one so I can edit on the go, and uploading TBs of video footage to my home PC and then editing remotely isn't going to work, so I'll probably have to cough up some dough eventually.
i quite like the out-of-the-box experience of debian13 running gnome, but i had to do quite a bit of tinkering to get my nvidia card running. it is running now, and i basically feel like i have a brand new computer.
I know you're getting a million suggestions and to be clear- nothing is wrong with Mint, but I recommend Fedora Kinoite as a first distro if you're coming from Windows. KDE is going to be more familiar and the way the backend is designed makes it basically impossible to meaningfully break.
I'm about there as well. I'm worried tho, cause I do some Sim Racing and some games don't support Linux, and I'm worried the equipment won't work. I know dual boot is always an option, but at a certain point, I fear I'll just default to Windows because it's what I know.
Mint is very comfortable for a windows user! If you're on even slightly older hardware I really doubt you'll find Windows more comfortable.