★ WELCOME ★

TechHut talks about Ubuntu sort of being a reliable blank slate and so that's good for other distros like Pop! and Mint to base themselves on. Next thing of note, TechHut's reaction to Luke's selection of Linux Mint, “Solid!” That's how I feel about it as well. I really don't know why so many Linux YTers go from distribution to distribution or like the bleeeeeeding edge distros. I guess it's those guys that like using bridges to bungee jump off of, me I use a bridges to cross over rivers.

Well, Chris is off to a strong start but I don't know what he runs. I had absolutely no issues installing NVIDIA drivers on my Linux machine. Maybe that's because I have an older card, 1070ti I think? I think Luke had the same experience with his NVIDIA card on Linux Mint that I had, so maybe it's the Arch side of the community that this is an issue? Yeah I was right, click here to check out Luke's experience. This is exactly the same as my experience, and I hope Luke has a newer NVIDIA card than I do.

I really appreciate Luke's take on picking Linux Mint and not just because I am a fanboy, but because Mint has been unbelievably stable on every computer I've installed it on. Chris, Gardiner, and DistroTube all work with other distributions quite a bit I imagine. Most people do not want to be on the bleeding edge, unless it's a game. It's the crazed Linux fan that would want to be on a bleeding edge distribution, right? So if you are a bleeding edge fan that's great, but please quit calling Linux Mint as a “starter” or “newbie” distribution. That makes it sound like its for retards or geriatrics and that's not fair. Polished, stable, Window-user friendly are ways that I think we should be talking about Linux Mint. Probably Pop! as well but I can't really say because I don't use Pop! I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu at all. I just think their focus is on servers and services for desktop farms, which means Ubuntu has (or at least had back a few years ago) a focus on not letting users break their systems to the point where you pretty much had to pull a wisdom tooth to get certain things that ought to be fairly straightforward done. To be fair, they may have changed their attitude towards individual desktop users since I washed my hands of them.

I don't like Chris's take on the app stores to install software. My take on it is that for a newbie, you want to install from the app store. At a certain point you will want to get the latest versions because you trust the open source authors, such as say Inkscape. Now, as a new user of Inkscape you go and check out some tutorials on Youtube and notice that the newer tutorials are using a newer version, so that's when a newbie would want to learn how to install software via the terminal or .deb package etc. That's my take on it. Go with the app store until you have more time to focus on getting the latest version of Blender or what have you. The downside of the app store, really is that you usually will get a fairly old version of the software and that's okay until you get your Linux feet under you. And it's really okay if you are not sure if you can trust the author. By virtue of it being in the store, that gives you a bit more trust.

Well this is much more balanced take about the state of Linux than DistroTube's near-rant. Gardiner seems to think Gnome 3.x is a great desktop for new users and that KDE is bad. I have no idea. Luke chose Linux Mint so that is going to be pretty familiar to him in terms of general layout and feel. All in all, Luke just had a couple of easy hiccups to deal with. So, when I install Linux Mint I just start with one monitor. I figure that's going to be easier, and then I add the second monitor once the installation is complete and all is working well. The only thing that I struggle with when installing Linux is dealing with setting up partitions manually. Now, I like to set it up manually so the /home directory is on its own partition. The reason for that is you can re-install Linux and not wipe out the /home directory. In this way you can update to a different version of your operating system and keep your files and most your application settings in tact. I also like to setup a /timeshift partition for Timeshift backups. It works great if you do everything correct. But dealing with master boot record and UEFI partitions etc. is the most confusing part of partitioning, at least to me. I've been able to punch on through it successfully everytime.

Anyway, I appreciate Gardiner's take on the challenge more than DistroTube's because LTT's Challenge is a MAJOR promotion for the Linux desktop and being negative about the Gnome desktop in association with the challenge just seems like your discouraging folks from trying Linux. Linus would have been fine if he had taken his time in trying to get Steam to work. Both Gardiner and DistroTube should be warning folks to learn how to use Timeshift or some other backup PRIOR to monkeying around in the terminal. Please guys!

I understand DistroTube's issues with Linux projects that have shot themselves in the foot. However, he has a big Linux channel and he failed to focus on how great some non-Gnome environments are. Not only that, I think he was misguided to try to bring Linus's Pop issue into this. I'm not an expert but I'm not so sure Linus's problems were with the desktop environment. Seems to me he did a terrible job of researching how to fix his Steam issues from some rando-on-the-internet's advice. You shouldn't be running terminal commands you don't understand unless you at least know how to use Timeshift or the equivalent before you go out hacking at snakes. I know I've broken Windows several times in the past following command-line/registry advice that wasn't suited for my version of Windows. I'm not saying that Linus's frustrations aren't untypical for a PC techie coming over to the Linux world. What I am saying is that the same level of care is needed when you start tinkering under the hood of Windows or Linux.

Anyway, I've been using Cinnamon with Mint for what I'm guessing is 7 or 8 years now and they've kept it stable (meaning they haven't gone away from the Windows 7ish styling and pissing off people that aren't interested in new adventures on a desktop being foisted on them but rather want the desktop to look and feel the same even as it is improved upon. So the guys and gals over at Mint have a great track record on improving what I would call a great experience to a near perfect experience. I've never had any issues with Cinnamon on modern equipment, but I think it is too resource heavy for some very old/slow PC and so XFCE sounds like a great option there. But, since I love Cinnamon I've never felt any need to try Plasma. If it's great, then great, but I like Cinnamon, I like Mint and the repositories. I like that they aren't keeping all their eggs in one basket and working with Ubuntu but developing a straight from Debian distro.

In my opinion Unity/Ubuntu was just too frustrating and restrictive to migrate from Windows. I even tried MATE on Ubuntu. That was okay until I found Linux Mint. I never looked back. If I recall correctly Ubuntu dumped Unity a couple of years after I moved to Mint. Was it Gnome 3.x that they went to as their default? I think that's right. Anyway, there's way WAY too much focus on Linux channels on distributions. Pick a damn distribution and stick with it, unless you have a good reason to move. If so, then move for Christsake. But if you are a Linux Youtuber, just don't hop because you're bored, your part of the reason newbies get so confused and frustrated. If you aren't a YTer but have local friends that have a good handle on their Linux distribution, then you should consider the distribution their on. Otherwise, a newbie should be on a newbie friendly distro and STICK with it until you begin to know something. I personally can vouch for Linux Mint as being newbie friendly. I installed it for my wife who is not really tech savvy at all and she has ZERO issues with it. I never had any friend or family member run into a problem that was Linux Mint specific. What I mean by that, is once in awhile someone will run into a file permissions issue or Windows compatibility issue and that would have occurred on any other distribution (to the best of my knowledge anyway). Other than that, the only issue I think that's really holding desktop adoption back is PURELY gaming compatibility. All the user-friendly distros need to be working closely with Steam because they are cracking through.

With gaming, there are some people that want to run games that employ DRM or propriety anti-cheat, so maybe they will be trapped in that universe because they simply can't give up the mind numbing COD releases. Honestly, I think that if Valve (or somebody working with them) would develop proprietary anti-cheat with DRM and open source anti-cheat without DRM that would open the floodgates. For Linux purists they can run games with open-source anti-cheat. For Gaming purists they can run proprietary anti-cheat with DRM. For myself, I would stay away from DRM for solo-play games, but I might be convinced by a family member to play a multiplayer game that has DRM. For myself, family is more important than either an operating system or the games you can run on it.