Community - Thanksgiving, Thanks to YOU, and Linux Stuff
Just some random stuff tonight. =D
HAPPY THANKSGIVING to the folks in the USA
This is my first Thanksgiving living overseas. It's not celebrated over here and was "just another day".
It's not a huge change because over the past 9 years I rarely went to family Thanksgivings. Instead, I enjoyed just making my own meal at home and hanging out with the dogs.
Many times I went out to eat (alone). The first two years I did that I was actually surprised at just how many couples and families go out to eat for Thanksgiving. I did not know that because in my family my entire life everyone had a family celebration at home.
THANKS TO YOU BEAR BLOGGERS!
I have been reading many of your blogs over the past nearly 2 weeks now. Actually started reading them before I even decided to create my own here. Wanted to see what kind of folks were here. :)
Many of you seem to think that nobody is reading your blogs or nobody will find your writing interesting.
And I just wanted to say that I AM READING YOUR BLOGS and I enjoy the thoughts and experiences you are sharing.
This is the HUMAN stuff that is largely missing on social media. This is the real people stuff that was so common before social media turned everything into a competition for attention seeking and...
Seriously... THANKS for blogging! And for as long as you enjoy it keep it up because I enjoy reading them and I am sure others do too.
LINUX
Finally, I noticed many people here have switched from Windows (and even MAC) to LINUX and some are doing so right now.
Some people are dealing with problems and I'm no LINUX guru and only switched full-time just a couple months ago but I tested 15 different distros on 4 different laptops (3 oldest were Intel + NVidia and new one is AMD with iGPU) from my oldest 2008 HP to my newest - this one "el cheapo budget gaming laptop" I bought 2 months ago on Amazon - and in my personal experience...
Zorin OS 18 is probably the most stable and easiest to use especially for running Windows software and games. The cool thing is they have built in to tell you if there's a native Linux version available OR LINUX alternatives. At least as best as I remember. I use that on my older laptop only for secure website access.
Linux Mint 22.2 Xfce is great for me. It's what I am running on this new AMD budget gaming laptop and is my so called "daily driver" - never heard that outside of the Linux community btw.
I did encounter some issues with LM Xfce but it was actually things I was using / testing and not the actual OS itself.
Being very privacy & security minded I was using FireJail (FJ) to run programs and due to the way it communicates with the OS it actually causes conflicts with the Xfce Windowing system including taskbar.
Also I started thinking FJ is just increasing the attack surface & adding complexity.
So I stopped using FJ, removed it completely and have not had any issues with the desktop since!
Finally, I also liked Q4OS + Plasma. It's just nice. It looked nice. It was easy to use. It required even less resources than Mint + Xfce.
I think for a general usage machine surfing web, watching videos, doing development I would be comfortable with it especially on an older low powered laptop.
Obviously, I can't promise Zorin OS 18 or Mint 22.2 Xfce will solve any of the issues. I am just saying it might be worth giving them a try.