What sends noobs running back to Windows?

[antikythera]

half don't even know what an OS is and all don't care

A bit like most of my family too, even my Mother who used to be a data analyst and competent computer programmer. I put Kubuntu on her machine when W7 support ended, she thinks it's Windows since the boot logo doesn't show while it boots. I haven't even changed it to resemble Windows, it is the stock Kubuntu breeze theme. She's happy as long as openoffice, chrome, skype and thunderbird are on the machine and the MFP attached to it works.

[MurphCID]

A "spicy" view on a random personal experience.

WOW!

[Drugwash]

WOW!

Is it a good "wow" or a bad "wow"?

[MurphCID]

WOW!

Is it a good "wow" or a bad "wow"?

More of an unbelievable WOW! You would think that Linux would have fixed this sort of thing by now.

[Drugwash]

The so-called "progress" can't be fixed, it's a way of life especially at the higher quarters. Backward compatibility is and has been virtually nonexistant in the Linux world. Microsoft caught up kinda late.

As a follow-up on the story, last night I attempted a kernel downgrade on that Mint 21. Found UMKI (successor of UKUU) and installed 5.7.19 without problems, but upon reboot it was kernel panic all the way. So, no go.
Partial success was with installing the Trinity desktop in Mint 19.3, but even there there have been too many "soft" crashes and graphical issues, plus a bug in Krusader that couldn't register MIME types when run as root. Fortunately it was a virtual install so no damage to this daily system.

Either I am too demanding and strict or the software for common people is too defective.

[Neophyte]

Hardware and Software incompatibility (especially in regards to gaming or business software).

[antikythera]

ubuntu bionic trinity ISO of any interest? http://mirror.ppa.trinitydesktop.org/tr ... tu/bionic/

there's a newer build for focal too - http://mirror.ppa.trinitydesktop.org/tr ... ntu/focal/

even if it's just to scratch that itch and run them live for now. trinity desktop setup isn't that simple, you aren't too demanding but note that it is still an under development desktop environment that has not reached a proper release state yet.

[Drugwash]

Thanks, I knew about those already. The idea was to patch in, if you like, the Trinity desktop into this daily Mint 19.2 Cinnamon as an alternative and for comparison purposes on the very same hardware. Testing in VBox was only for checking viability and compatibility.

I've been specifically searching for something... different, something less common than the few major DEs that everybody knows and works with. In the beginning Cinnamon seemed very close to what I was looking for but later on it turned out to be a mess, it's too chaotic in regard to graphics design.
Trinity is not perfect either but it does seem more consistent. And it does deal with crashes very elegantly as opposed to Cinnamon which on many occasions simply froze the machine due to some small error in an applet JS file or similar.

Otherwise I'm not afraid of dealing with beta or alpha software, done that since many years ago, most notably with the now defunct messaging application Miranda IM. It's just that the said software has to deserve my attention, it must "promise" a nice future. (although I myself don't seem to have one)

[antikythera]

If you want something niche to play with, ReactOS. That will give you the warm fuzzy nostalgic feeling (or nightmare depending on your outlook) of windows 2000. It will even run the old programs meant for windows 2000.

Also, https://www.areweguiyet.com/

[Drugwash]

Hahaha, ReactOS is worse than my 16 year old Win98SE. And I never did fancy Win2k anyway.

It's not about that old design, heck even that 98SE has been dressed up long ago like XP thanks to Tihiy's Revolutions Pack. It's about how easy and overall consistent is to "skin" the entire OS in a way that makes it look monolithic, not a bag of puzzle pieces thrown together at random.

As for the (Windows) applications, I've mostly done away with them. All that's left are the very few AHK scripts I've written years back, which I still use today and which run fine under Wine. And Total Commander plus FastStone Image Viewer, that have no match in certain regards.

Never got enough curiosity in my blood to take on looking at Rust. Don't even like its name. Went through a few languages these past years, starting with 8bit Assembler for Z80 which I did like very much. Nowadays memory is very bad, I barely manage to fix a thing or two in the applets I took on modding, and if I pause for a week I forget even the very little learned in javascript and Python. My dream of building the perfect OS (something similar to the hypothetical "Unity/Unify" mentioned in Pyaar impossible) will remain a fading dream.

[petri0]

Sucuri.

[Marie SWE]

A "spicy" view on a random personal experience.

Isn't it fun when it all works so easy in Linux.
I struggling with a similar thing, but I took a break from it a few days, so I don't throw out the computer thru the window with it closed.

[antikythera]

I'm struggling with an issue too, trying not to throw my smartphone out the window. I am so tempted to block my Uncle's number but I won't because he is family after all. Instead I am 'in a meeting' for the next 2 hours although technically it was in reality 30 minutes

The guy is driving me nuts asking questions about a car he wants to buy that is the same model as mine.

[Marie SWE]

do as I did in 2009.. dump the smartphone and go oldschool with a dumb phone.
as for the car thingi.. I have no tips but to duck the questions or start give dumb answers so the questions stops.

[antikythera]

do as I did in 2009.. dump the smartphone and go oldschool with a dumb phone.

Actually I have been considering that for a while anyway. There's a retro Nokia 2720 Flip which caught my attention, It's a feature phone but can be used as a 4G modem and wirelesss AP for a computer if necessary. It has a built in Whatsapp message display function too but I'd never use that crud anyway.

I currently have their G50 smartphone and it does what it is meant to okay but the promised monthly security updates of the stock android one program it falls under never surface. I will look into flashing lineageos onto it instead and manage it myself, I did that with my Motorola before.

[MurphCID]

I'm struggling with an issue too, trying not to throw my smartphone out the window. I am so tempted to block my Uncle's number but I won't because he is family after all. Instead I am 'in a meeting' for the next 2 hours although technically it was in reality 30 minutes

The guy is driving me nuts asking questions about a car he wants to buy that is the same model as mine.

Family tech support, you gotta love it.

[Marie SWE]

Actually I have been considering that for a while anyway. There's a retro Nokia 2720 Flip which caught my attention, It's a feature phone but can be used as a 4G modem and wirelesss AP for a computer if necessary. It has a built in Whatsapp message display function too but I'd never use that crud anyway.

I currently have their G50 smartphone and it does what it is meant to okay but the promised monthly security updates of the stock android one program it falls under never surface. I will look into flashing lineageos onto it instead and manage it myself, I did that with my Motorola before.

Okay, I settle for the simple phone function as Phone book, alarm clock, calendar, calculator and a camera.
I have two USB 4G modem if I need mobile internet one to my laptops when i'm away and one to my network at home as my third failover.

[Drugwash]

Here's my phone, released around 2007; it can be used for 3G tethering but speed is laughable:

[ellymae]

• I can't walk into Best Buy or Walmart and pick up a Linux computer.

• I find that many of the "communities"/forums (present one excluded, of course) are populated by prima donnas who are more interested in showing off their knowledge than answering my carefully-constructed quesitons.

[RollyShed]

Here's my phone, released around 2007; it can be used for 3G tethering but speed is laughable

Hey, what are you doing with my phone, is that where it got to ???

OK, just found it.
But I don't know what make mine is, probably under a bit of plastic I glued on to stop buttons getting accidentally pressed when I'm on my bike. Oh, and my torch has failed. The camera might work, haven't tried it for a decade.