Really? i get handheld terminal command lines with embedded copy functions when i search for solutions to my Mint problems. It's a pretty kind and helpful community.

I imagine most Linux communities have half a dozen or so online users, at any given time, just refreshing the New Posts section waiting to fix someone's problem and blow their mind.

The Arch and NixOS users feel attacked.

!It’s really fun when they start arguing and blowing each others minds.

And I bet they’d introduce the kitty to the power of sudo pretty quickly… though giving the new murder hobo the power of sudo seems less wise than teaching Microsoft support peeps the power of grep.

I mean, look at that little guy. He’s totally gonna take over the world.

(Fuck it. Can’t be worse than the current assholes)

Linux

I hunt buffalo, btw

There's a misguided imagination cloud about Linux, then in reality the incredible wealth of help and support Linux users invest and receive.

It's the FOSS "lone-wolf" thing. If you feel like you're on the outside, each Linux user sounds like a crazed wasteland wanderer.

Meanwhile, we're using comfortably customized environments curated and supported by our community, updating in the background, and enjoying stable 20-second boots.

linux mint and a little patience!

I'm thinking of trying something different from Mint, any tips?

why, what are you missing? that'll lead you to radically different answers

That gets a lot of people in trouble and I really advise against giving people terminal commands when it can be avoided. Unless the person already is familiar with the terminal, they're just typing magic words into a black box and it reinforces the stereotype that Linux is this complicated and arcane thing.

After all, what use are detailed instructions and explanations?

It's more complicated to describe how to do something in a gui and it will only work for one environment if it's set up the same way.

The landscape has changed a lot.

When I first was trying to get into Linux 15-20 years ago, this is pretty much how it was. I can remember being very frustrated that very few people I encountered seemed to be willing to assist at an entry level; there was all this presumed knowledge which I didn't have (and if I'd had it, I wouldn't have been looking for help in the first place).

Today there is a lot more entry-level help and assistance. There are more user-friendly distros and a lot more information online that is accessible to the average user who hasn't memorised every GNU/Linux man page.

That said, there are still situations where getting help or advice is a real challenge.

You can indeed use sudo in kitty:
https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/

Yeah, i had a similar experience. I was messing around with a small Media Center/NAS hybrid running Debian, and it really, really wasn't happy with the integrated GPU of the AMD A4 i was using, causing instability and tons of graphical glitches especially in video playback, which were not acceptable on a potential media center. My attempts to get help from the community as a linux noob that did not even have enough knowledge to know what commands i could use to get relevant information to add to my cry for help got me a lot of harsh replies before someone was nice enough two days later to help me out. We got it fixed together after a few rounds of replies, but my first impression was not very good.

Nowadays there are so many online resources available, and support boards often have basic information available about what information should be attached and HOW TO GET IT, which reduces friction a lot, and also makes the community a lot more accessible for new users.

I've been liking Zorin as an easy to use alternative to Mint

In hopes of this question not being a practical joke 😅:

The desktop environment makes more of a difference than the distro. Switching distros will also give you a different desktop environment (because not much else uses the Cinnamon desktop environment that Mint uses), but yeah, you'll probably care the most about the desktop environment.

So, instead of choosing between distros, I would recommend choosing a desktop environment, for example look at KDE Plasma and GNOME Shell.

And then you can either:

1. install it on Linux Mint in addition to Cinnamon. You will be able to switch between them from the login screen.
2. Or you can pick a distro that offers your chosen desktop environment out of the box and switch to that distro.

I will say that option 2 is kind of 'cleaner'. It will be better tested and integrated, if it's officially supported by the given distro + you start from a clean slate where Cinnamon isn't also installed.
But yeah, I would actually recommend starting with option 1. You won't have to learn both a new desktop environment and distro at the same time. And it's less big of a step in that you can easily switch back, if desired.

As per usual, do make a backup whichever option you go with. Sometimes, it can cause problems to have two desktop environments installed, because they might edit the same config files, so it's good to be able to revert...

Lemmy user: You need to hunt YouTube videos using yt-dlp and no I won’t help you because you’re new.

What gets me is when I search for the solution to the Resistance 2 installation issue on Ecosia, the gamfaqs snobs are like you’re new we can’t help.

Not at all my experience, I started using Linux in 2005, and Ubuntu was part of an explosion in available help for new users,
but also many smaller distros had it, like for instance PC Linux which I think back on fondly.
Beginner friendly distros was as much a thing back then as it is today.
The biggest difference is more that Linux has become better, and some things are a lot easier today.
Even Arch has an easy installer now!

Goddam that almost killed me. 🤣

causing instability and tons of graphical glitches especially in video playback

Flashbacks to me struggling to get the fglrx drivers working.

If you never got to experience the "joy" of that... There was a time long ago when getting graphics acceleration working with ATI/AMD GPUs on Linux needed proprietary drivers. It was a struggle, significantly worse than dealing with the Nvidia drivers today. Things improved so much when AMD released and upstreamed their modern open-source driver, around 10 years ago now.

The Debian version of Mint. :D

Most Linux distros have live DVDs that let you try it out without installing it... Try a few of the major distros and see what you like best? You could also install a few and dual-boot (multi-boot I guess?)

Yep, that was exactly the case back then, and getting the drivers to work was an awful experience, especially since they really didn't play nice with the iGPU. I for sure was way out of my depth at that time, with just enough linux experience to know that instead of "dir" i have to use "ls".

Yep, I like the meme but the landscape has changed a lot

Thanks, it was only a partial joke. I discovered years ago that the best support comes from meme communities. Whatever the issue is, make a meme or wait for a relevant one.

I'm having a lot of stability issues on Mint and Cinnamon lately and if I have to make a clean reinstall why not try something very different. I'd just like to reduce the distro hopping period as much as possible.

The forums were chock full of people sporting muscular, masculine-looking anthropomorphic animal avatars.

Not really missing anything, I just had a lot of stability issues lately and since I'm about to reinstall everything I feel like trying something different.

Nowadays:

"I'm about to start hunting mice, any tips?"

"Ask HumanGPT to do it."

"Bro, you need to start agentic hunting by yesterday, if you don't want to be part of the permanent underclass. Sign up to our webinar on prompt hunting at , the first few classes are free."

but are you also a buff anthro lion?

Ok, hear me out.

It's obvious that not everyone has the same needs and that new users are likely to be overwhelmed by instructions/tools that are highly technically involved, BUT

I think it's actually quite valuable for others to question whether you actually want what you think you do, especially if you're inexperienced. You know, the whole "you don't know what you don't know" spiel?
It's still usually most helpful to get answers to the question you actually asked, but there's a decent chance you will learn valuable context from suggestions that are only tangential and you might even realize that there are much better solutions to your problem, you just didn't have the framework to even imagine them.

Is it? I usually chain names of buttons or something like that:

File - Create - From templates

Why do you cry?

As a longterm ubuntu user, I lately dared to try cachyOS and so far it has been smooth sailing. I "just" had to learn how use pacman instead of apt (the package software manager).

One advantage of Mint: more drivers from third parties are available as deb packages, but my printer/scanner works with open drivers, too. Also there is AUR as a last resort (to my understanding).

Be careful with the AUR. Anybody can upload anything and there has been a lot of malware attacks of late. The best advice is to learn to read pkgbuilds and always check them before installing or updating something from the AUR. If in doubt, ask in the forum.

What if the person you're helping has a different UI language? Or when buttons get hidden based on available screen space? Or when you need to get an older person to use a dropdown menu with hover and click options?

Sure it's doable, but it's so much easier to just copy and paste a command. Of course, whenever I tell someone to do something like this, it comes with a lot of warnings about the shell. If they're close enough I just tell them to never run a random command without consulting me first.

This is partly down to human nature. Some people make it easy for newbies and listen to them. And others get off on talking down to people. For them, a newbie is a great target. Worse if that newbie is not there to learn to be an IT pro. Just wants to use Linux as a user.

For example, just ask for a GUI solution to a problem, and you will see some CLI pros rush to answer. Even though they have no clue about the relevant GUI nor about usability. Thank them and say you really are looking for the GUI solution, and you will sometimes get a diatribe about that Linux is all about the power of the CLI, and it goes on to get quite tedious and gatekeepery. For some, the rejection is a trigger.

If you are an IT pro, you might not encounter this if you don't specifically ask for the GUI way. And maybe come to believe the community is all wonderful.

One simple command vs:

Go to your start menu

Search for program name

Click on it

Scroll down about half way

Click the

Enter

Click the

Click the

And if that's done in Gnome, does it help a KDE user, Xfce, Mate? I think not. And that's if the gui handles the problem at all.

Of course, the command comes with an explanation of what it does.

Depends why you are having stability issues to begin with. My issues with anything based on Debian with a specific computer were always hardware related for example. A problem I do not have with Fedora or anything Arch based.

Sorry to be that guy, but arch = deer.

Buffalo = nixos / gentoo / hannahmontanaOS

Command line is easier for the person giving it but it teaches nothing to the person using it and I agree with the previous poster, just reinforces the idea that Linux is this mysterious non-understandable os. Many knowledgeable people in the community love to gatekeep so it works out in their favor and no one else's.

There is a solution. Tell a person the answer to their question while also calling into question if they actually need what they are asking for. This cat wants to start hunting Mice. So that could go something like, "It's great that you're getting into hunting. Mice are an excellent place to start if you're a house cat. Have you tried waiting outside of their hole? When I hunt elk, I creep up slowly on them when they are unaware. Mice are quite small game, but this might work for them too. Have you considered hunting elk?"

My main suspicion is that is SSD related, that poor thing is old, but I don't know, those crashes are quite random.

I've been using Bazzite on my desktop PC for a little over a month now. I'm mostly using my PC for games, so it was a logical choice. It's also pretty stable because it's based on Fedora and has atomic releases, so you can easily roll back updates if they break something.

I don't know, it isn't that hard for me to help others with UI. 🤷

Very often you want the other person to learn (memorize) the way to do something.
And most of the time that person (in my experience) is an elder being or something, so they prefer UI and I don't want to die on a hill of making them relearn their ways.

For a normie like me, i stick with Bazzite.

Does this one have a soul?