Some random thoughts on Mint vs o/s X +Windows 10

[MurphCID]

As many here know, I have just come back to Linux after a long hiatus, and found (what I consider) the perfect distro-Linux Mint. I have a Windows machine for Photoshop, iTunes, and gaming. I have a Macbook Pro 13" 2016 model (not the new one) mostly because I have always wanted a Mac (since 1984), and I could finally afford one. And I have my HP Spectre x360 Linux machine. I love the HP, I love Mint Linux compared to the other two operating systems I use. Mac o/s just is odd, and while I spent a week using only the Mac to get more familiar with it, I just think that the Mac is a great entertainment device, and not really ready for serious use. They made Terminal hard to use, and I tried using it to remove some crapware that would not fully uninstall, and it did not work. There seems to be no good resource for the Mac terminal commands.

My Windows 10 machine is a beast, and I built it that way for gaming, Photoshop, and iTunes. I have to ask my oldest daughter for permission to use my computer these days, because she is always gaming on it. I like Windows 10 pretty well, I do, but I loathe, despise, and hate the privacy issues, the constant "we are rebooting to load an update", that I suffer through.I want privacy, I don't want my computer phoning home to anyone if I can help it. I don't want to be tracked, monetized, or spammed with ads for crap I have no desire to look at or purchase. Since I fixed my hardware problems, it (mostly) works the way I want it to work.

Now Mint: I love it. The installation was just the easiest of any operating system (after I figured out that you have to enable legacy boot). It found all my hardware on the HP Spectre x360 and just connected to the internet like a champ. The o/s is stable, fast, and I love it. It is great for doing the things I want it to do, except for Photoshop, iTunes, and some gaming. I was able to copy my iTunes library over, and it runs under Rhythmbox quite nicely, but it is not the same as iTunes.

There are a couple of things that do drive me absolutely nuts about Mint 18.3. The touchpad on the laptop, even though I have turn off touchpad when typing turned on, it does not work, and I have to manually disable the touchpad unless I want the cursor to zoom over the page if I touch it while typing. Come to think of it, that is my only major complaint, and it does drive me nuts. I beg the Mint team to fix this. Battery life is good, but nowhere the 8+ hours promised by HP for Windows use. In practical use I get 3.5-5 hours depending on what I am doing.

Dream list of things I want in Mint (and most are not things the Mint team has any control about):
ITunes support- Sorry guys, I use iTunes all the time for my movies and music. I have to have music going on when I am working.
Turbo Tax- I NEED this for the never suffiently d**ned Tax time.
Photoshop- I would love to have photoshop with the RAW converter (I shoot in RAW) for my photography work.

That is really just it. I love MInt, I love the Linux Mint community because not only are they so decent, helpful, and patient with noobs, but they really do care about Linux and Mint.

Just some random thoughts.

[Pierre]

Do remember that Microsoft Windows is a Highly Customized Beast,,
and that any Linux System - - is Plain Vanilla.


- you just won't get the same Battery Life . .
- that ITunes was ported to the windows system
- Turbo Tax was written for the windows system
and that neither will ever work well on some Linux System.

there's no $$$ in it,, for either program to be ever ported to some Linux System.

[BenTrabetere]

Dream list of things I want in Mint (and most are not things the Mint team has any control about):
ITunes support- Sorry guys, I use iTunes all the time for my movies and music. I have to have music going on when I am working.

At one time iTunes was a decent music player and manager. Then Apple turned it into a multi-function, do-too-much, unified portal. A poster child for bloatware. I think Clementine and VLS are better music/media players.

Linux support for iTunes is clearly Apple's responsibility, and Apple has proven to be blatantly hostile to Linux.

Turbo Tax- I NEED this for the never suffiently d**ned Tax time.

Do we need to discuss the difference between Want and Need?

Just kidding, but I file this under 'Nice But Not Essential'. I use TaxCut, and it runs well in a Win7 virtual machine. I have considered using an online tax preparer or a local tax service. There are options and alternatives.

Photoshop- I would love to have photoshop with the RAW converter (I shoot in RAW) for my photography work.

Take a look at darktable and RAWTherapee - both are excellent RAW developers and solid alternatives to Adobe Lightroom. I like both, but prefer and use darktable.
http://www.darktable.org/
http://www.rawtherapee.com/

I used Photoshop exclusively for nearly 20 years to process my images. I used it after I switched to Linux. My life literally changed when I forced myself to learn to use darktable and RAWTherapee. I found that dt and RT can perform most of the corrections I did in Photoshop, and the workflow was faster. The only time I need an editor is for retouching.

These days the only time I use Photoshop is when I am working with someone who needs the image as a PSD. I use GIMP for retouching.

[MurphCID]

I'd settle for the track pad working right and not making me disable it while I am using it to type.

[aknickolai]

Trackpad bug only occurs in cinammon from my experience (in MATE the setting to disable the touchpad while typing works). You can download a program called touchpad indicator and make it load on startup. It is a work around to the touchpad problem on cinnamon.

[AZgl1800]

Trackpad bug only occurs in cinammon from my experience (in MATE the setting to disable the touchpad while typing works). You can download a program called touchpad indicator and make it load on startup. It is a work around to the touchpad problem on cinnamon.

I am using 18.3 Cinnamon, and the Trackpad stays OFF just like I want it, all the time.
never had it flip back on.

[MurphCID]

Thanks. That is the one thing that really drives me nuts about Cinnamon as a desktop. I love it otherwise.

Trackpad bug only occurs in cinammon from my experience (in MATE the setting to disable the touchpad while typing works). You can download a program called touchpad indicator and make it load on startup. It is a work around to the touchpad problem on cinnamon.

[MurphCID]

What machine? How did you do this? I manually turn it off and then turn it back on before I shut down.

Trackpad bug only occurs in cinammon from my experience (in MATE the setting to disable the touchpad while typing works). You can download a program called touchpad indicator and make it load on startup. It is a work around to the touchpad problem on cinnamon.

I am using 18.3 Cinnamon, and the Trackpad stays OFF just like I want it, all the time.
never had it flip back on.

[AZgl1800]

What machine? How did you do this? I manually turn it off and then turn it back on before I shut down.

Trackpad bug only occurs in cinammon from my experience (in MATE the setting to disable the touchpad while typing works). You can download a program called touchpad indicator and make it load on startup. It is a work around to the touchpad problem on cinnamon.

I am using 18.3 Cinnamon, and the Trackpad stays OFF just like I want it, all the time.
never had it flip back on.

My PC is an ASUS TP500L phablet ( the lid goes back 360 degrees )
I always use a special LogiTech USB Wireless Mouse with Forward/Back/DoubleKlick buttons and Scroll Wheel.

I hate Touchpads with a passion, when I am typing, my hands will contact the touchpad and the cursor jumps to hell and gone, and my typing ends up thrashing what I am composing.

I am a touch typist and rarely look at the screen while typing, and a whole phrase will be in the wrong place with an Active Touch Pad.

[MurphCID]

Love it. I am the same, and the jumping cursor drives me to distraction. It is bad enough I am thinking of just getting an external keyboard.

My PC is an ASUS TP500L phablet ( the lid goes back 360 degrees )
I always use a special LogiTech USB Wireless Mouse with Forward/Back/DoubleKlick buttons and Scroll Wheel.

I hate Touchpads with a passion, when I am typing, my hands will contact the touchpad and the cursor jumps to hell and gone, and my typing ends up thrashing what I am composing.

I am a touch typist and rarely look at the screen while typing, and a whole phrase will be in the wrong place with an Active Touch Pad.

[Hoser Rob]

... That is the one thing that really drives me nuts about Cinnamon as a desktop. I love it otherwise. ...

That often happens, one little thing that seems really arbitrary drives you nuts. I could never use Opera because you can't navigate back and forth within a browser tab using a right click.

[MurphCID]

... That is the one thing that really drives me nuts about Cinnamon as a desktop. I love it otherwise. ...

That often happens, one little thing that seems really arbitrary drives you nuts. I could never use Opera because you can't navigate back and forth within a browser tab using a right click.

And it has to be a quick fix, if I was a guru, I would work on it.

[MurphCID]

I was at an (overpriced) Coffeeshop yesterday, and a hipster came up behind me and saw me working on my computer. He (of course) had a decal covered laptop of uncertain heritage, and he could not understand what I was doing (I was using terminal at the time). I was using Alpine to read, and write some emails. We started talking, and he had never heard of Linux. After showing him the things on my computer, he opined that he might go home and look up Mint and try it out. Imagine that, me an old dude, actually able to teach a millenial something that he did not know. I even showed him that he could use Chrome, and Twitter so he could star connected.

He then went over and started speaking with his very tattooed, body pierced mac using girlfriend, and she wanted to know if Mint could run iTunes. I told her no, but I did show her my iTunes library on Rhythmbox as I finished my extremely overpriced Latte (50-75 cents worth of coffee, and 30-50 cents worth of milk for $4.20 incl. tax). Please excuse my snark, I am very ill right now, and not a pleasant person to be around right now.

[AZgl1800]

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and it allows the Touchpad to be disabled in the BIOS, which I have done.

[sarge816]

Turbo Tax- I NEED this for the never suffiently d**ned Tax time.

You probably are already aware but Turbo Tax works great online in the browser, although there may be reasons you need the actual software. I've been using it online for 10+ years without a hitch and have smartphone apps to keep track of things like miles driven, etc. for write offs.

[AZgl1800]

You probably are already aware but Turbo Tax works great online in the browser, although there may be reasons you need the actual software. I've been using it online for 10+ years without a hitch and have smartphone apps to keep track of things like miles driven, etc. for write offs.

Bad thing to do IMO,
no way to store all the files on your computer, I have all of the executable TurboTax programs, and all of the documents needed for each year in a separate folder, that I can access w/o the need to get on the Internet.
I do NOT want my tax info floating around in the cloud somewhere.

[sarge816]

Bad thing to do IMO,
no way to store all the files on your computer, I have all of the executable TurboTax programs, and all of the documents needed for each year in a separate folder, that I can access w/o the need to get on the Internet.
I do NOT want my tax info floating around in the cloud somewhere.

Yeah, I can respect that feeling. I've been paying bills and doing financial things online for so long that I guess it just doesn't concern me all that much. I have all my investments, retirements, mortgage and cars and everything else you can imagine all with online access and bill pay. Doing my taxes online just seemed a natural extension of what I've been doing forever. I think to be completely protected, one would have to abstain from any online billing and financial activity and go back to snail mail and writing checks. But writing checks (with account and routing numbers easily stolen) has it's own set of issues.

And btw, I do have all the documents on my computer. After completing taxes, you can download and archive all tax forms and paperwork. I've got them all archived back to 2007, if that was what I think you were talking about. But I agree, you do open yourself to additional threats whenever you use cloud or online bill pay.

[MurphCID]

I think that iTunes would be a "killer App" for Linux, especially for the new generation who live in iTunes. Heck, even old guys like me love iTunes.

[bob466]

That's easy...never used a Mac...never wanted too.

Only tried Windows Spyware 10 in a VM and it sucked...Windows 7 was better.

Mint is great...solid as a rock...best OS out there...don't want to run anything else...leaves Mac and Windows for dead.

[MurphCID]

That's easy...never used a Mac...never wanted too.

Only tried Windows Spyware 10 in a VM and it sucked...Windows 7 was better.

Mint is great...solid as a rock...best OS out there...don't want to run anything else...leaves Mac and Windows for dead.

I agree Mint is great, but OS/X is a neat entertainment o/s. I would be happier if I could get under the hood and actually use the terminal in OS/X.