Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
As I detailed in my Darter Pro thread, I have had many adventures in Linux. I got the device and it had Pop OS which used the Gnome desktop which was just too different for me. Plus you had no easy way to remove software (Mint Right click on the menu and uninstall, easy, perfect), plus you had to add plug ins in order to get Gnome...functional. They use Elementary O/S store for their POP shop, and it is ok, but again I like Mint. Plus it is hard to remove software. It is like they decided to remake the Mac O/S desktop and just did not get it right. Ok, so I went back to Mint. YMMV
This last weekend I decided to try Arch. Yeah, not so successful, never managed to get it operational. I tried the Arch Wiki which is pretty awesome, but my skills are not up to the challenge. I almost turned in my Linux card on this one. I probably should have tried Manjaro, but no one ever said I did things the easy way. So I went back to Mint.
I installed MX Linux 19.3 AHS (for the 5.8 kernel) since I needed the later kernel to make the Darter Pro work properly. It did not have any love for a 4 series kernel, it wanted a 5.4+ kernel. So far it is not terrible, but XFCE has those clunky 1990's looking system tray icons. I will probably keep playing with it for a couple of more weeks unless I get a wild hair up, and decided to do something else. I am thinking that at some point I might decide to try to install Slackware (probably when I am feeling exceptionally masochistic), or just plain Debian. I think I know how to get the Kernel updated from 4.19 series to the 5.8 series.
The Lemur Pro is going to stay on Mint, I WILL NOT make a change there since it just works. Again System 76's coreboot firmware really, really wants a 5+ kernel, preferably the 5.8 series. Since I am less enamored by the Darter Pro it is going to become my play machine until I get tired or I break the machine. I will not try Ubuntu, Been there Done That (BTDT), I might try Fedora (I am used to Debian's way of doing things), or perhaps Magia or OpenSUSE at some point as well.
But I am still just a very very casual noob user, and need more hand holding than I care to admit in some of these installations.
This last weekend I decided to try Arch. Yeah, not so successful, never managed to get it operational. I tried the Arch Wiki which is pretty awesome, but my skills are not up to the challenge. I almost turned in my Linux card on this one. I probably should have tried Manjaro, but no one ever said I did things the easy way. So I went back to Mint.
I installed MX Linux 19.3 AHS (for the 5.8 kernel) since I needed the later kernel to make the Darter Pro work properly. It did not have any love for a 4 series kernel, it wanted a 5.4+ kernel. So far it is not terrible, but XFCE has those clunky 1990's looking system tray icons. I will probably keep playing with it for a couple of more weeks unless I get a wild hair up, and decided to do something else. I am thinking that at some point I might decide to try to install Slackware (probably when I am feeling exceptionally masochistic), or just plain Debian. I think I know how to get the Kernel updated from 4.19 series to the 5.8 series.
The Lemur Pro is going to stay on Mint, I WILL NOT make a change there since it just works. Again System 76's coreboot firmware really, really wants a 5+ kernel, preferably the 5.8 series. Since I am less enamored by the Darter Pro it is going to become my play machine until I get tired or I break the machine. I will not try Ubuntu, Been there Done That (BTDT), I might try Fedora (I am used to Debian's way of doing things), or perhaps Magia or OpenSUSE at some point as well.
But I am still just a very very casual noob user, and need more hand holding than I care to admit in some of these installations.
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
You rarely see people mention Devuan these days...
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Mine is Linux Mint Xfce (always current distro version).
Side by side with Kubuntu latest LTS.
It used to be Mint Cinnamon, but it is still not playing well with nvidia drivers
no matter which version. I don't think they will ever fix it.
My needs are simple:
Access to single click icons. Less mouse travels.
You can even have a group of single-click icons in Xfce where you can
shut down, sleep, without having to deal with any confirm dialog, etc.
Still trying to figure where I can have a single-click shut down/sleep in Kubuntu.
I avoid having to use keyboard shortcuts as if you're hanging on for dear life.
Less mouse clicks, short distance mouse travels. That's what I want.
Side by side with Kubuntu latest LTS.
It used to be Mint Cinnamon, but it is still not playing well with nvidia drivers
no matter which version. I don't think they will ever fix it.
My needs are simple:
Access to single click icons. Less mouse travels.
You can even have a group of single-click icons in Xfce where you can
shut down, sleep, without having to deal with any confirm dialog, etc.
Still trying to figure where I can have a single-click shut down/sleep in Kubuntu.
I avoid having to use keyboard shortcuts as if you're hanging on for dear life.
Less mouse clicks, short distance mouse travels. That's what I want.
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Even though this is the LM forums I can honestly say Linux Mint is my favorite distro and my daily driver. I run Debian or a derivative on all of my servers. I have Manjaro KDE on a separate SSD mostly for fun and testing.
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
I'm a died in the wool Linux Mint person now.
currently using 19.3 Cinnamon as my go to Daily Driver laptop.
LM 20.x is still in the teething stages, and I will NOT spend any time on something that is not polished to a fair thee well. I have it on a spare laptop for reference the current situation, and it is not ready for me yet.
currently using 19.3 Cinnamon as my go to Daily Driver laptop.
LM 20.x is still in the teething stages, and I will NOT spend any time on something that is not polished to a fair thee well. I have it on a spare laptop for reference the current situation, and it is not ready for me yet.
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
I use KDE Neon on my main machine but have Linux Mint on a Mac Mini that I use as a media player. I use my ThinkPad as a testbed for different distros but right now it's also running Mint.
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
I use Linux Mint. I began my Linux journey back in 1999 and did some distro-hopping for a few years before ending up in Fedora Core (now Fedora) in 2004. Then, in 2012, I was using Ubuntu and tried Mint Maya, I did a full install of Mint Maya the next day and never looked back. Mint has been so easy to set up and use and I've become so used to it that I don't want to change now. Everything just works. Though I have been wanting to try Manjaro and Arch.
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
I know what you mean. I'm still having "fun" learning how to work with 19.3. Fortunately, 19.3 will be supported for a couple more years (April, 2023). Hopefully, I will have learned enough to be more confident and competent by then and surely 20.3 will be stable.
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Ever since I bought the HP desktop back in the first quarter of 2020, I've been super pleased. While yes, I'd really love to have an i7- or an i9-based system, it's been a flawless experience for me. While performance-wise it handles Ubuntu 20 with Gnome 3 just fine, Mint is my main squeeze.
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Recommended keyboard layout: English (intl., with AltGR dead keys)
Podcasts: Linux Unplugged, Destination Linux
Also check out Thor Hartmannsson's Linux Tips YouTube Channel
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
You may want to consider MX-Linux for that task, they have a couple of desktop environments to choose from now (Plasma being very close to W10 since MS ripped off Plasma including the Neon codename) and use SysVinit still
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Kubuntu on the desktop. MX-Linux on a laptop. Debian with KDE on another laptop.
These are the only ones that can be called "daily drivers". I also have a computer in my shop that runs PepperMint, and a LMDE laptop on my desk that gets used once or twice a week.
These are the only ones that can be called "daily drivers". I also have a computer in my shop that runs PepperMint, and a LMDE laptop on my desk that gets used once or twice a week.
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Mint 20 Xfce totally covers all my needs.
Except from mame32 which works fine though wine I do not play games.
Except from mame32 which works fine though wine I do not play games.
- dXTC
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Of the five machines of mine that run some form of GNU/Linux, 4 of them are on Linux Mint. That includes the one I'm using to write this post, a Dell Optiplex 760 circa 2009(?) that is still what I browse the web with 75% of the time, so I count it as a daily driver.
The fifth is a System76 Darter Pro (late 2019, pre-CoreBoot), and I've elected to keep using its default Pop_OS, as Bitwig Studio appears to run just fine on it. I have tested the Darter Pro with Mint via a live USB, and it ran fine as well. It's nice to know that if Pop_OS goes belly up, I have a solid Plan B.
The only one I'll have to consider taking off Mint in the foreseeable future is my old Lenovo Ideapad S10. Its Atom processor is only 32-bit, so if it survives past LM 19.3 EOL, I'll need to switch it to another distro should I want to keep it.
The fifth is a System76 Darter Pro (late 2019, pre-CoreBoot), and I've elected to keep using its default Pop_OS, as Bitwig Studio appears to run just fine on it. I have tested the Darter Pro with Mint via a live USB, and it ran fine as well. It's nice to know that if Pop_OS goes belly up, I have a solid Plan B.
The only one I'll have to consider taking off Mint in the foreseeable future is my old Lenovo Ideapad S10. Its Atom processor is only 32-bit, so if it survives past LM 19.3 EOL, I'll need to switch it to another distro should I want to keep it.
dXTC
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IT oldie, Linux newbie, and all-around goofy fellow.
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IT oldie, Linux newbie, and all-around goofy fellow.
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
My own take on Ubuntu (18.04, currently).
Using 5.11 kernel -- basically, whatever's the latest stable kernel, I'll be using it. My setup is tiling-focused, using i3-wm; the i3-gaps fork, specifically. I use LightDM for my display manager (GTK Greeter), compton(1) for compositing, xfce4-terminal(1) for my terminal emulator, vim(1) for my text/code editor, Firefox for GUI browsing and links2(1) for TUI browsing, Steam and nVidia's proprietary driver for games, Thunderbird for E-Mail, mplayer(1) for videos, and a mixture of somacli and moc(1) for music.
For i3-wm, I use i3blocks(1) and this old but somewhat maintained function library. I use various 'plugins' over here to aid my i3-wm adventures, such as the aforementioned function library.
Using 5.11 kernel -- basically, whatever's the latest stable kernel, I'll be using it. My setup is tiling-focused, using i3-wm; the i3-gaps fork, specifically. I use LightDM for my display manager (GTK Greeter), compton(1) for compositing, xfce4-terminal(1) for my terminal emulator, vim(1) for my text/code editor, Firefox for GUI browsing and links2(1) for TUI browsing, Steam and nVidia's proprietary driver for games, Thunderbird for E-Mail, mplayer(1) for videos, and a mixture of somacli and moc(1) for music.
For i3-wm, I use i3blocks(1) and this old but somewhat maintained function library. I use various 'plugins' over here to aid my i3-wm adventures, such as the aforementioned function library.
Last edited by Termy on Wed Feb 17, 2021 11:46 am, edited 4 times in total.
I'm also Terminalforlife on GitHub.
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
My daily driver is an Acer laptop with Mint 20. I use it daily as an internet machine as well as my Wine retro gaming machine. I have also been dabbling in some Python programming.
I have an HP/Compaq SFF machine with Mint 20.1 that is my HTPC.
I have an HP/Compaq SFF machine with Mint 20.1 that is my HTPC.
"None of us is as smart as all of us." Ken Blanchard
Mint 21 Cinnamon
AMD© R5 2600 @ stock 16GiB
Mint 20.2 Cinnamon
Intel© Celeron© CPU B820 @ 1.70GHz 8GiB
Mint 21 Cinnamon
AMD© R5 2600 @ stock 16GiB
Mint 20.2 Cinnamon
Intel© Celeron© CPU B820 @ 1.70GHz 8GiB
Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Linux Mint Cinnomon 20.1 (Linux kernal 5.8.0)
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
Mint 20.1, Cinnamon on everything.
Although... the old Emachine I have is really sluggish- I might play with installing something alongside Cinnamon. Waiting on a half-height bracket to come in for a spare video card, see how much difference that makes, first, before I really switch over from Mint on it- I'd rather not switch. I likes my 20.1 Cinnamon.
Although... the old Emachine I have is really sluggish- I might play with installing something alongside Cinnamon. Waiting on a half-height bracket to come in for a spare video card, see how much difference that makes, first, before I really switch over from Mint on it- I'd rather not switch. I likes my 20.1 Cinnamon.
- Swampthing
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
LM 20.1 on my primary laptop and LMDE on my spare laptop.
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Re: Which distro do you use as a daily driver?
on my gaming rig i use kubuntu 20.04 but will distro hop to arcolinux next year. my laptop witch i have for meetings/record music on it has linuxmint 20.1 with i3 vm over it.
CPU AMD Ryzen 9 7900
Graphic Card: AMD ATI Radeon RX 7900 XT/7900 XTX/7900M
Ram 32 GB ddr 5
Kernel: 6.5.0-14 generic
LM Cinnamon 21.3 edge
Graphic Card: AMD ATI Radeon RX 7900 XT/7900 XTX/7900M
Ram 32 GB ddr 5
Kernel: 6.5.0-14 generic
LM Cinnamon 21.3 edge