A day in the life of a Linux Mint user...

[chrisuk]

...well, half a day

I thought it might be interesting to post what I use Linux Mint for each day - to illustrate why I've no need for Windows. I've days where I use the Computer for other tasks (Programming, Learning about Linux/Unix in general, Breaking Linux to see if I can fix it etc), but what follows is an average day:

• Check Email
• Check Forums (I'm on a few that have nothing to do with Computers... Wildlife and the Environment mostly)
• Look for TV episodes that my Wife couldn't record
• Convert downloaded TV episodes to a format recognised by our Standalone DVD Players (Usually just .mkv to .mp4)
• Copy pictures from Camera (SDHC Card) to Laptop
• Delete unwanted pictures - copy the rest to external HDDs
• Process pictures that catch my eye (Crop, Adjust Levels, etc etc.)
• Post pictures to various forums - reply to comments/questions etc
• Browse various Websites that interest me... including comparing how News reports differ from Country to Country
• Continue browsing websites and processing pictures

I have a real life (Wife, Children, Grandchildren), so I'm not staring at a Computer screen all day, but I do spend hours using my Computer (and maintaining family Computers). My Computers use various flavours of Linux, as the hardware varies in age - my main Laptop (used daily for the tasks listed above) runs Linux Mint 18.1.

As I said; I've no need for Windows.

Others may wish to add to this thread with their own usage details

[killer de bug]

Unfortunately, at work, I have to use Windows.
But at home, I have only Linux since more than 6 years. Before that, during my studies, I kept a dual boot just in case. But every single piece of work (professional and personal) could be done only in Linux. I have no use for Windows. I even flashed my android phone using Linux.

[SayCheeze]

I have a dual boot machine at my studio. I'm a photographer, and I HAVE to use Adobe's PS/LR for my work. So, I'm using Win7 for that. I very seldom boot into LM at the studio though.

Yes, I know I can edit my images in some variant of Photoshop in a Linux environment, but I haven't found anything close yet to it without suffering months of the learning curve which I can't provide. ;(

Sooooo, my day in the life is at home on my Laptop. I blew away Win7, and am running LM 18

I'm actually going to try to setup a LM machine at the plant where I work in the a.m. as an IT mgr as well for a standard user that will only need the machine for Emails and some printing.

[austin.texas]

"A day in the life of a Linux Mint user..."

Imagine a thread: "A day in the life of a Windows user..."

[killer de bug]

Yes, I know I can edit my images in some variant of Photoshop in a Linux environment, but I haven't found anything close yet to it without suffering months of the learning curve which I can't provide. ;(

"Months" seems over exaggerated. I think that you need two or three days to find 99% of what you look for. One full week doing only Gimp and you should be ready to go. You just need to find where are the features. Not how to use them. Because you have already done this.

The problem is more that the remaining 1% may not be available. I'm not a pro, so I can't confirm it. But that's a complain I have heard more often than once.

Imagine a thread: "A day in the life of a Windows user..."

It starts with 3 boot sequences in a row. You need this to apply all the updates. Then you need to kill svhost 2 times, because it takes 1 full core of your i7 for no reasons.
How do I know it? Well I have a W7 at work, and this is my daily life.

[JerryF]

I too use Windows 10 at work. The usual, MS Office, Outlook, and a program that was donated by a church member (ChurchPro). I also use it to run TurboTax at home.

I can't say that I've had a bad time with Windows, except ME edition and Vista when it first came out.

BUT, when I'm home, it's Mint 95% of the time. Just the basics---email, web, some LibreOffice.

[chrisuk]

Just to add something about Windows:

I used to dual boot Windows 7 and Linux, but I hadn't used Windows for months, so hadn't booted into it. Last year I booted into Windows - allowed Windows Update to search for Updates - went away and worked on another PC - came back 3 hours later... it was still searching for updates. I deleted my Windows partition the next day

[BenTrabetere]

to illustrate why I've no need for Windows ... what follows is an average day:

You don't need a modern system for an average day like this - I could (almost) get through on my antique OS/2 desktop. Working with a browser that has been obsolete for decades would be a challenge, but the biggest obstacle would be acquiring images from my camera - the 250MB HDD on the laptop would run out of space midway through the 8th images.

This machine cannot handle anything past Windows XP, but AntiX could turn the desktop into something suitable for email and browsing the interwebs, and it would be somewhat useful for LibreOffice, GIMP, etc. The only real limitations would be disk space and processing 27MB RAW files on a system with only 32MB RAM.

Yes, I know I can edit my images in some variant of Photoshop in a Linux environment, but I haven't found anything close yet to it without suffering months of the learning curve which I can't provide. ;(

Have you looked at darktable or RAWTherapee? I use darktable because it allows for selective editing and prefer the way it handles Noise Reduction. If you have a couple of hours to spare, David Hutton's screencasts take a workflow approach to demonstrating darktable.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... o1B468zEA0

[chrisuk]

You don't need a modern system for an average day like this - I could (almost) get through on my antique OS/2 desktop. Working with a browser that has been obsolete for decades would be a challenge, but the biggest obstacle would be acquiring images from my camera - the 250MB HDD on the laptop would run out of space midway through the 8th images.

This machine cannot handle anything past Windows XP, but AntiX could turn the desktop into something suitable for email and browsing the interwebs, and it would be somewhat useful for LibreOffice, GIMP, etc. The only real limitations would be disk space and processing 27MB RAW files on a system with only 32MB RAM.

[...]

I think you might struggle to encode videos too

[BG405]

Imagine a thread: "A day in the life of a Windows user..."

It starts with 3 boot sequences in a row. You need this to apply all the updates. Then you need to kill svhost 2 times, because it takes 1 full core of your i7 for no reasons.
How do I know it? Well I have a W7 at work, and this is my daily life.

My W7 systems used to spawn loads of svchost processes. A royal pain! And as for those reboots ..

Followed by a painfully slow session waiting for things to load, regular Firefox crashes (often several times a day) and the occasional BSOD.

A typical day with Linux Mint is an absolute pleasure and is so much more productive. These are most of my common activities:

• Forums (mainly this one at present, a few others)
• General web browsing
• Emails (REALLY need to start using Thunderbird as M$ have made Outlook pretty much unuseable, even on a high monitor resolution. Everything is huge, formatted for tablets. Can only see 4 or 5 mails in list)
• Playing music videos & watching downloaded shows & documentaries
  Transferring photos etc. from camera SD card, using internal reader on the Acer or multi-hub on the Dell
• Editing some of the photos using GIMP; a few get published too
• Copying those photos to other machines for backup & easy access, using the network
• Printing via the network, often wirelessly
• Google Earth, quite often
• Occasional video editing using Kdenlive on the Acer (KDE)
• Online banking, when needed
• Mosttly, at present, learning about Linux esp. the CLI (mainly via Forums, above)

Will add more if / when I think of them.

[SayCheeze]

I'll try and make an effort when time affords it, to play with GIMP or DarkTable "again". Just last week shooting for a catalog, I edited over 2300 images in 2.5 days. I run sharpening actions to get the images ready for layout in the catalog. Of course that kind of volume of editing in only done around 6 times a year when I'm shooting for the catalog. At home, the usual count of edited images for customers is around 20.

I love my Linux Mint at home on my laptop, and enjoy messing around with it at the studio when I boot into it. But PS/LR has me locked in the windows world ;(

[Moem]

On a daily basis, I use my Mint laptop...

• To browse, read the news, read webcomics, participate in forums, write blog posts
• To fetch, read, write and send email
• To chat, using several protocols like IRC, ICQ and Telegram (all through Pidgin)
• To create and edit images
• To transfer files with FTP
• To play games
• To create and edit documents, including PDFs, and to send them to my printer

And this is the only computer I use.

[BenTrabetere]

I apologize for hijacking the thread The moderators might want to spawn a new thread.

Just last week shooting for a catalog, I edited over 2300 images in 2.5 days. I run sharpening actions to get the images ready for layout in the catalog.(

This suggests the images were consistent - any corrections or adjustments applied to one image could be applied to the other images. This can be done easily and quickly in darktable.

You make edits/corrections to a the first image in the darkroom and then apply those corrections to the other images using the History Stack module in the lighttable. You can also use the Style module in the lighttable to save a History Stack.

[SayCheeze]

thanks, but this catalog work cannot be automated short of sharpening. We deal with one model, two models and up to 3 in one frame. Trust me. If I could automate all of it I would. Each file has it's own individual file name, along with it's style name. The volume is just nuts. 17K images shot in 3.5 days. 2300 edited. I get to go back next week for round 2.

[all41]

On a daily basis, I use my Mint laptop...

• To browse, read the news, read webcomics, participate in forums, write blog posts
• To fetch, read, write and send email
• To chat, using several protocols like IRC, ICQ and Telegram (all through Pidgin)
• To create and edit images
• To transfer files with FTP
• To play games
• To create and edit documents, including PDFs, and to send them to my printer

And this is the only computer I use.

Is all this after coffee?

[Moem]

Is all this after coffee?

This is after, during and before tea.

[Spud1200]

Mostly I use my machine for on line activities as such:

Web Browsing (Forums, Reading the News, You tube, E - Mail, & Shopping)
Learning Linux (Bash, Reading as much as I can digest, Forums)
Learning about PC & tech security (LInux, real world)
Chatting (Forums mainly)

I do very little on the actual system as I'm too paranoid about security. I refuse point blank to have <violates forum rules> on my computer and I mainly use it for on line activity.

I bet theirs a few hear that do.

I only have a Pentium Duel Core system for my Linux Box but meh it works fine for mainly Web Browsing.