Back to Linux after 10 years of macos, happy to start again with Mint

[Olikiran]

Hello,
I am french living in france, so sorry for my english, sometime it could not be so accurate.
I've used around 5 years linux on the mandrake/mandriva distro.
Then i had two daughters, build an eco-house, i could not spend time to configure and play, and reinstall my system...
I am a network IT engineer but i am more and more far from the tech now.
Just to say, that i have some old basic-to-medium knowledge in linux and network.
My hardware is a macbookair mid 2011 with elcapitan 10.11 macos.
Apple has stop to propose/adapt the new macos version on my hardware. Regarding macos I must admit that 9 years without any OS upgrade, only Application package upgrades was really comfortable for me. I had to change the battery recently and upgrade the SSD disk from 64GB to 256GB after 1 year of usage.
in addition to that, my trust regarding GAFAM is decreasing more and more...
So I've read about the linux distro again and I've choosen Mint. I had a quick usb-live test with elementaryOS. the look is nice, good mac integration but some app were not installed or guaranty to work. A warning for firefox, decided me to not go further. My wife has installed for my daughters the ubuntu 16.04 LTS but I do not like the look. So, it's seems that Mint is a good compromise for me between stability, new features, popularity and nice look'n'feel. I do not know much about the rolling releases, the pros'n'cos, etc... but I would be happy to be able to not reinstall from scratch in some years and reconfigure all the app and features. I had many issue with distro upgrade in my old linux times.
I do not know if my mac hardware will be fully compatible with the mint 20/cinnamon version. I hope so, i like it more and more after a week of config and small utilisation. Thank you very much for the work done regarding this distro, and linux engagement it is amazing !

[deck_luck]

/
Welcome to the Linux Mint Forum. I hope you enjoy your Linux Mint adventure.
\

On some of the older hardware without a GPU with a 3D accelerator, the Cinnamon desktop environment might overwhelm the hardware. Fortunately, the Linux Mint Team also provides a lighter MATE and XFCE desktop environment versions.

[kc1di]

Hello Olikiran,
Welcome to Linux Mint Forum, enjoy!

[CaptainKirksChair]

My wife has installed for my daughters the ubuntu 16.04 LTS but I do not like the look.

Well, this is my Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon desktop.



I like the look and feel of macOS. I don't like they way Apple forces their point of view on everyone. You can do anything you want in Mint and there are many themes available. Honestly, Mint has made computing fun again.

[deepakdeshp]

Welcome to the forum.

[deepakdeshp]

Welcome to the forum.

[kelevra]

Welcome to the forum.

[bob466]

Welcome to the Forum.

[BG405]

Escaping that "walled garden" experience is definitely a good thing. The other day my mate invited me to explore his Mac system & I wasn't all that impressed .. zsh and all that & none of the familiar commands I tried were recognized. He had to add those.

[deck_luck]

The other day my mate invited me to explore his Mac system & I wasn't all that impressed .. zsh and all that & none of the familiar commands I tried were recognized.

Good old bash is there. I know some people will hate me for saying this, but my favorite desktop environment is the macOS. I just will not pay the ridiculous Apple tax.

[Olikiran]

Thanks a lot for your welcome messages. I improve day by day my Mint experience. I like it !!!

i like the desktop of CaptainKirksChair with the macos look
How to do it ?

Thanks

[LinBSD]

Thanks for an interesting post. I started using Linux back in 1999 when it was very rough around the edges. Redhat, Mandrake (very good at the time), Xandros, SuSE,Ubuntu (game changer) and then Linux Mint. Bliss. I have several Macs. My ¨vintaged¨ MacBook Air Late 2010 runs Linux Mint obscenely well. So well, I uninstalled MacOS High Sierra. I run Mint on a MacBook Pro Early 2011 from a USB flash drive. The same on a MacBook Pro Mid-2015 15 inch. Great performance on all. Since Mac OS X Lion, Apple have made it more and more challenging to dual-boot. ReFit (boot manager) which used to run reliably now complains a lot. Virtualisation utilities are not the same as running an OS natively. Earlier this year, I returned to my Linux roots after being blinded by the Cupertino light. Eight years ago I dabbled in FreeBSD for a more hardened UNiX experience. I do the same in that I run GhostBSD and NomadBSD from external storage where most things work. in Linux Mint...just about everything works. But technical problems keep us sharp, we overreach ourselves. But sometimes it’s nice not to get bogged down in the terminal, recompiling a kernel...on a hot afternoon.

So long.