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Anyone using Linux for their primary system?

Nope. even leaving aside the accessibility, (Orca just doesn't really cut it compared to Windows alternatives,) the DAW software I use for a hobby, is from a bit of brief research a PITA to get running, fun with interface drivers, if there are any and I may not have access to the vst plugins I've got already anyway.

For servers and messing about though, always.
 
Hearse Pileup said:
I think in the near future I want to pretty aggressively migrate to linux. My biggest worry is my dependency on the Adobe family of products.

Has anyone already made the jump? Any recommended software? Any major things they had to get used to? What distro are you using?

I've been using Debian on the server side for a long time, I'd be tempted to use Ubuntu because it 'Just Works', but the telemetry they included when they started embedding Amazon adverts in their platform has put me off somewhat.
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I used to run Linux religiously. I was a bit of an evangelist on it. Now I'm into 4X games intensively. No go on Linux, so I've gone back to Windows 10. However, I still play around with distros in Virtual Box just to keep up with what's going on. If or when Linux provides full support for all my games, I'll go back. Yes I know of Wine and Crossover, but they can be unstable. FYI I used to run a mixture of Linux Mint and openSUSE.
 
I've been using Linux Mint on my home PC exclusively for six years. I only use it for web browsing, word processing, watching films and photo editing (using Darktable).

For the first five and a half, it was great; it pretty much just worked. Somewhere in a Mint 19.3 update I Iost sound, and had to revert to an older kernel to get it back. Mint 20 will not boot, and solutions online look like a ridiculous pain in the arse. So, I am still on 19.3, with an outdated kernel. It works, but I very much hope they sort it out in a future distro.
 
Thanks for some of the distro recommendations everyone! It sounds like I'd have trouble moving completely onto linux, but maybe as a solid dev platform it'd be worth doing, PopOS, Mint and OpenSUSE will all be on my radar, Manjaro too probably.

I'll probably see if I can find a cheap/free way to test out a couple of systems and eventually dual boot my windows machine, it seems like the most practical solution for me.

I've also just got my replacement RasPi, so I should be able to tinker with at least some distro's on that too.
 
Nikkormat said:
I've been using Linux Mint on my home PC exclusively for six years. I only use it for web browsing, word processing, watching films and photo editing (using Darktable).

For the first five and a half, it was great; it pretty much just worked. Somewhere in a Mint 19.3 update I Iost sound, and had to revert to an older kernel to get it back. Mint 20 will not boot, and solutions online look like a ridiculous pain in the arse. So, I am still on 19.3, with an outdated kernel. It works, but I very much hope they sort it out in a future distro.
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My old laptop is on 18.1 and it occasionally loses sound but I just have to reboot. Bits of it are dropping out anyway because several keyboard keys don't work so I'm just grateful it works at all.
 
two sheds said:
Just plug in a live USB ISO and play - although you probably knew that already.
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Yeah, live environments are fine, it's more about the hardware I'm planning to run it on. If I haven't made that decision yet then it will be difficult to assess how much driver and general RTFM'ing I'll have to do to get the system fully set up and operational!
 
Hearse Pileup said:
Thanks for some of the distro recommendations everyone! It sounds like I'd have trouble moving completely onto linux, but maybe as a solid dev platform it'd be worth doing, PopOS, Mint and OpenSUSE will all be on my radar, Manjaro too probably.

I'll probably see if I can find a cheap/free way to test out a couple of systems and eventually dual boot my windows machine, it seems like the most practical solution for me.

I've also just got my replacement RasPi, so I should be able to tinker with at least some distro's on that too.
Click to expand...
Just to reiterate, if you have enough memory (eg more than 8GB, in my experience) then running the Adobe suite in a Windows virtual machine is your ideal solution. It makes for a pretty seamless experience if you set it up right. It's certainly what I would be doing if I hadn't stupidly bought a cheap laptop that can't take more than 8GB. Or I guess it might work if I were to switch to a less processor heavy Linux distro (eg XFCE based or something) but I really like Gnome for desktop personally.
 
So I've run Debian as my primary system since ... Acorn disappeared ... which dates me :(

The laptop I'm typing on now has Ubuntu, and the other day I discovered that Steam works fine and so I can play Steam games happily.

Adobe products are a fucking pain, so I have some Windows partitions lying around, and at some point I'll get a Windows VM behaving on one of the machines.

But generally keeping a network of 6-8 computers (3-4 laptops, one desktop, some embedded boxes being servers) looking and behaving the same is really easy and all the tools I use work everywhere and have done for as long as 20-30 years. Not having to learn new tools can be great.
 
WSL2 is very good. The file systems overlap is a bit of a pita for things like installing python environments. I use Ubuntu for my own work exclusively, and Mac with Ubuntu and Alpine VMs for work. 'tis the way forward.

2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 2021 will be the year of the linux desktop.
 
I think one of the problems Linux has (and all my machines run Linux and I use it at work all day) is that it's very rare to go Currys (other retailers are available) and buy a device that's had Linux installed on it, along with all the drivers necessary.

That's how Windows devices tend to be bought.

The games thing does frustrate me as I suspect most of them are developed on Linux and then ported onto Windows to sell.
 
Nikkormat said:
Mint 20 will not boot, and solutions online look like a ridiculous pain in the arse. So, I am still on 19.3, with an outdated kernel. It works, but I very much hope they sort it out in a future distro.
Click to expand...

Mint 20.1 is out, and all works well. Back to easy installation and problem-free use.
 
I went back to Pop, it took about half an hour and no fiddling in the command line at all to get back up and running fully tweaked to my liking, which is actually what I expect from a modern linux distro nowadays, especially on dell or lenovo hardware.
 
dervish said:
Something really nice about the new kernel is the automatic firmware updates, which just work. As soon as Pop installed it told me about a firmware update, one click later it had rebooted and installed it.
Click to expand...

Mind you ubuntu isn't bad with that either - it asks whether you want to update, you enter your password and it does it. I was going to say the same for Mint but then I realized I've forgotten to update it for a while so I just have :oops:

I do find it confusing with ubuntu though, it keeps asking me if I want to update to latest version v20.04 and I keep clicking Yes and it keeps ignoring me.
 
two sheds said:
Mind you ubuntu isn't bad with that either - it asks whether you want to update, you enter your password and it does it. I was going to say the same for Mint but then I realized I've forgotten to update it for a while so I just have :oops:

I do find it confusing with ubuntu though, it keeps asking me if I want to update to latest version v20.04 and I keep clicking Yes and it keeps ignoring me.
Click to expand...

You might find it better if you open a terminal and

--> sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo apt autoclean && sudo apt autoremove

This will update all the things and clean up any old kernels left over. Will make it a lot quicker if you have anything that require depmodding (?) the kernel for future updates, it won't have to do it for every version then, obviously don't do autoclean or remove if you are going to need an old kernel.

When it's finished run

--> sudo do-release-upgrade

and it should complete, if it doesn't at least it might give you a better error message.
 
Which variation? One thing I've noticed with Ubuntu is that every couple of months one of the updates (I think when you have to do a reboot) means that it either doesn't boot at all or boots really really slowly. Luckily enough I found a boot repair usb which has (touch wood) always corrected it. Impressive little bit of software.
 
two sheds said:
Which variation? One thing I've noticed with Ubuntu is that every couple of months one of the updates (I think when you have to do a reboot) means that it either doesn't boot at all or boots really really slowly. Luckily enough I found a boot repair usb which has (touch wood) always corrected it. Impressive little bit of software.
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I've basically tried everything over the years. Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Mint, Arch, NixOS, Fedora, ... I'm definitely forgetting some here.

Currently on NixOS for some machines and Arch for others.

For me, at least so far (unsure about my career plans going forward) it's been an investment in my future, paid for itself many times over. A bit like a mechanic tinkering with cars in their spare time I guess.
 
hypernormalized said:
I've used Linux as my main OS for over a decade now.

Disagree with proprietary software on principle, though I'm a vegan by day, I do have a dual boot for the odd game.

I can see why the man on the street doesn't use it.
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It definitely isn't for everyone. I've been using it for about 20 years but I still don't use it as my main OS, and wouldn't recommend it to anyone as their main OS.
 
iamwithnail said:
2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 2021 will be the year of the linux desktop.
Click to expand...
'Sudo' kinda dictates that we will never see the year of the Linux desktop. Linux geeks have a thrombosis if you dare to mention a root account, while normal people want control of their PC, and never the twain shall meet.
 
Although most stuff you can do with GUI in Windows you can do with GUI in Linux can't you? I'm stretching here a bit because I've not done a lot in Windows recently.
 
two sheds said:
Although most stuff you can do with GUI in Windows you can do with GUI in Linux can't you? I'm stretching here a bit because I've not done a lot in Windows recently.
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It's the bollox of intalling PPAs and such shit, just to install things like Kodi. Nobody wants that shite... Apart from Linux geeks, who, apparently, love it.
 
/quickly goes and looks up PPAs and Kodi

Yes fair enough you would think all that would be GUI as well. I suppose it depends what you want to use it for, my uses are fairly basic and I don't often need to get involved with Terminal. I quite like the challenge when I do - searching out someone who's done it already. But I can quite see why people don't.

Doesn't really matter to me though I don't think - everything I need is pretty well available. I quite like that it's (hopefully) not worth hackers' time to develop viruses for it.
 
two sheds said:
/quickly goes and looks up PPAs and Kodi

Yes fair enough you would think all that would be GUI as well. I suppose it depends what you want to use it for, my uses are fairly basic and I don't often need to get involved with Terminal. I quite like the challenge when I do - searching out someone who's done it already. But I can quite see why people don't.

Doesn't really matter to me though I don't think - everything I need is pretty well available. I quite like that it's (hopefully) not worth hackers' time to develop viruses for it.
Click to expand...
I love enjoy the messing but most people don't, which is why Linux will never become mainstream.
I see (and have always seen) Linux as an optional (but necessary for me) tool in my toolbox, whereas I view Windows as an absolute necessity. I couldn't possibly perform my daily tasks without Windows, whereas I can easily do without Linux for months, and only boot it up when I'm likely to be using it for days, and CBA using it from within Windows.
 
I only use Windows for complex Word documents that don't work properly in Libre Office, so I don't use it for networking or anything like that. I've found it easy to set up (luckily because I'm not hugely tecchy) for most stuff.

The suppositories are usually pretty invisible and more secure (I assume) than downloading software straight from any random company's website. I find things do rarely go wrong. Mind you same was true of Win7, not sure about Win10. One thing though I fucking hated that 'app' screen that Win 8 forced you to go through screaming 'Buy, buy, buy' at you. Not sure whether Win10 retains that.

As you say though if you have to use it for work - most people will be using Windows so I'd assume you'd definitely need Windows.
 
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