eugenia

eugenia, 6 days ago (edited 6 days ago)

Look, I’m a Linux user, and I prefer to use Free apps. However, the truth must be told: Firefox is not as optimized as Chrome. On older devices, Chrome is twice as fast in youtube playback, and it uses way less RAM overall. Chrome is the better browser in terms of architecture, at least for older PCs (and I have a whole bunch of them). On my main PC, running Debian-Testing, which is a newer PC, I do use Firefox, because it can handle stuff ok with enough CPU power. But for all my older PCs (anywhere from 5 to 15 years old), I have to use Chrome.

Now, if you find me a de-googled, Free, WELL-MAINTANED Chromium browser, I rather use that than Chrome. No, Brave, etc don’t cut it. I want a community-driven, well maintained Chromium browser. Currently, all de-googled versions are not well maintained, or not available as native packages on Debian.

EDIT: So, downvoted, huh? By fellow open source users who don’t want to hear the truth?

eugenia, 7 days ago

Personally, I prefer LocalSend to KDEConnect.

eugenia, 8 days ago

Do you mean a flatpak? Flatpaks are notorious for not integrating. Try to see if hidamari is available first as a .deb file in the official repos (uninstall the flatpak first). If that’s not it, then it seems that it doesn’t work with the Cinnamon desktop, which has control over the wallpaper functions.

eugenia, 8 days ago

It’s not false information. There are a lot of system-oriented things that don’t work through appimages or snaps or flatpaks, exactly because they’re sandboxed.

eugenia, 8 days ago

I’d go with Linux Mint Edge Edition (not the default Mint). Better support for hardware than either plain Mint, or Debian, and more optimizations for laptops and battery (ubuntu might be hated, but they have lots of kernel patches). Also, for some weird reason, Mint with Cinnamon uses less RAM than Debian with Cinnamon. Also, easier support for third party non-free drivers.

I love BSD, but I wouldn’t want it on a laptop. They’re just not optimized for such usage with batteries etc.

eugenia, 7 days ago

Edge is Cinnamon with a newer kernel. So, since you like XFce, try install the XFce version of Mint, and see if it works with your system. If it mostly works and boots, but not completely, you can always install the newer kernel found on Edge using the Update app (there’s a menu option to install newer kernels after installation). But if it doesn’t install/boot, but you’re confident that Linux should support your laptop, then consider the Edge version with Cinnamon.

eugenia, 9 days ago

Ι use Murena’s e/OS, I like the iphone-likeness of it. It works.

eugenia, 11 days ago

Testing AI (knowledge system) was the first job out of college for me in the '90s (I used to be a programmer). I’m not against it, but I don’t like it in my feet either. I like using the operating system all by myself, or generating things on my own. Especially now that I’m an artist, I like painting on paper. I even dislike digital art (I find it flat), let alone generative art.

eugenia, 11 days ago

When it comes to expensive laptops, there are plenty of good options for Linux. But for cheaper stuff, your best bet might be a second hand DELL, a model that specifically says that it supports Linux (newer models use some new Intel webcams etc that don’t have support on linux yet).

eugenia, 14 days ago

Use a distro with the latest kernel, like ubuntu, to have higher chances for this to be supported.

eugenia, 15 days ago

Go with Linux Mint, but the Edge edition. This will have the best chances to support your hardware, because it uses a newer kernel.

eugenia, 17 days ago

A video editor…

eugenia, 17 days ago

That’s a video cutter, not an editor. There’s a difference.

eugenia, 16 days ago

Kdenlive is a desktop app, not an android one, that the OP is asking for. Regardless, kdenlive crashes easily, has no hardware acceleration, and it doesn’t have good color grading tools (particularly in regards to film emulation, which is what most people want to do artistic videos – I used to shoot music videos). For basic videos, it’s ok.

eugenia, 18 days ago

This is my rule of thumb and process to choose DE and distro:

1. Find the CPU model and do a google search with it and the word passmark. The passmark page will tell you how fast the cpu is. If it’s between 500 and 1000, use XFce as your desktop environment. If it’s between 1000 and 2500, you can use Cinnamon (Linux Mint). If it’s more, you can use kde/gnome. If it’s less than 500, use LXQT or LXDE.
2. How much RAM there is in there. These days, you need a minimum of 4GB of browse the internet (the DEs/distros themselves might use less than 1 GB of RAM, but the moment you open a web browser in this day and age, all hell breaks loose with memory usage). For best performance, 8+ GB is better.
3. Ensure that it has over 16 GB of a drive. At 16 GB (as in some old Chromebooks), only Debian fits these days (with 6 GB free space after installation). Mint and the others prefer over 24 GB (both fedora and all the ubuntu-based ones are too big to fit in 16gb without issues – debian fits).

Using these rules, I’ve converted many laptops and computers for my family here in Greece, installing the most appropriate each time. The least powerful computer was my mom’s old laptop, with 16 GB internal, 2 GB of RAM, 600 passmark points. As long as she’s only opening 1 tab on Chrome (Debian/XFce), she fits in the 2 GB RAM without swapping (most of the time). I use Chrome and not Firefox for these older laptops because Chrome uses LESS memory than Firefox (there’s an additional setting for it in the settings to help the matters more), and its youtube playback speed is much better too. I use firefox on more powerful computers, and it’s my default too, just not for underpowered computers.

eugenia, 18 days ago

I think they’re the same. It’s FF that it’s problematic with ram usage.

eugenia, 18 days ago

My mom and my family used chrome before, and they’re used to its bells and whistles. I personally use firefox.

eugenia, 18 days ago

For me, it works just fine as a decision point. And real work usage of the computers I moved to Linux was very similar to what they report, they reflected just fine. So I don’t see any point to not use it, or even more so, to not suggest it to others, when the discussion warrants it.

eugenia, 18 days ago

Do the calculations yourself, because I have.

eugenia, 18 days ago

Many times you need to use the terminal with Win and Mac too. Sometimes something goes wrong, or you need to enable something that doesn’t have a UI. So in the last few years, I’ve used the terminal with these OSes too. So I don’t see why you wouldn’t use the terminal with Linux too.

The only time you wouldn’t use the terminal at all, is if someone else is your sysadmin, and you’re just driving a browser or a couple of apps, as a plain user. Then sure, you’ll never need to touch the terminal. My mom only uses a browser for example on her linux laptop. It’s good enough for her. But when there’s an update or anything else such, I’m the one dealing with it.

eugenia, 19 days ago

Debian is the best for your needs, because that’s what Google uses internally too (they used to use ubuntu, but a few years ago they moved to a slightly modified version of Debian-Testing). All its engineers are using Debian-Testing at their desktops, so it’s the best tested and tried distro for Android. Although all other distros are also expected to work fine.

eugenia, 20 days ago

Get a second ssd, I’m sure your PC has a placeholder for it. Normally, I’d say that you simply resize your main / partition using gparted, however, because it’s encrypted this might be dicey. Hence, get a second SSD.

eugenia, 20 days ago

I actually agree with Linux Mint’s decision. You can not trust any random upload. Either it’s an official/verified upload, or it shouldn’t be there at all (or it should be a separate app for those who want it). That’s why in my system, I only install from the official debian repos and not the community ones. I just don’t trust random anonymous uploaders.

eugenia, 23 days ago

Υou can download the Windows iso, burn it in a usb stick before you nuke it to install linux, and find free legal serial numbers online (there are various serials for all versions of win10/11, all legal – it’s considered semi-activated with these).

eugenia, 25 days ago

I use XSane and TheGimp to scan and edit my paintings, Firefox with privacy extensions to browse, VLC to play videos, Gnome Mahjongg to waste time playing. I used to use Resolve to edit videos, I’ll soon start using Kdenlive. As a visual artist I have a thing for film emulation that Kdenlive can’t do, but it’s something I’ll have to leave behind.

eugenia, 25 days ago

On Resolve there various helper for-film-emulation plugins, and also third parties like Dehancer and Cineprint (which are exceptional), that do near-perfect film emulation. These things don’t exist on Linux video editors. They barely exist for Premiere/FinalCut. It’s a Resolve-first ability.

eugenia, 25 days ago

Film emulation is a whole “sub-genre” of photography and video, where creators are trying to emulate the look and feel of various types of films, like kodachrome, fujifilm, etc. In fact, most movies and music videos have a layer of such emulation during their color grading process. I also treat my videos that way for a more cinematic look.

eugenia, 25 days ago

Plank is quite buggy, it’s not your idea. If you want to use Mint, use its cinnamon panel, not a dock. In fact, I filed a feature request a few weeks ago with Mint, to make the panel auto-resize to look like a dock, and there wasn’t a peep about it by the devs. So if you want a dock that’s less buggy, your best bet is Gnome with the Dash2Dock or “Dash2Dock Animated” extensions (the first one is less buggy).

eugenia, 28 days ago

I personally prefer Debian or Linux Mint (Edge edition). They’re very, very solid.

But the real question is, why are you building a new PC? If you already have a PC and you want to leave Windows behind, all you have to do is nuke Windows and install Linux (after trying first a live CD to make sure it works for your computer). You see, if your PC is a bit old, as long as you have 8+ GB of RAM, and a CPU of the last decade, you’re ok with Linux. Linux needs ~1/3 the RAM Windows needs. Only 3D games might require a faster cpu and gpu, but Linux won’t.

eugenia, 28 days ago

I like best Gnome with modifications, not vanilla. A permanent dock as per “Dash2Dock Animated”, and the “Hide Top Bar” extension, so when an app gets maximized, both the top bar and the dock get out of the way. Also, disabling tap-and-drag via dconf (I really don’t understand why this is enabled by default on most Linux DEs, it’s extremely bad for usability), and enabling the min/max/close buttons via Gnome Tweaks. Other tweaks I like is the Bibata Modern Ice mouse cursor, and the Faenza icon theme. The rest are ok by default for the most part. It’s better than MacOS for me.

Second best gotta be Cinnamon, using the Cinnamenu menu extension, not the default menu. Overall, they’ve thought of almost everything building this DE and its settings. For those who want the best “Windows” could ever be, Cinnamon it is.

Third is XFce. It’s overall good, but it has some things that trigger me: no user admin app, no ability to turn off tap-and-drag (it just doesn’t turn off no matter what you try), and on Debian at least, the machine doesn’t go to sleep without asking for password (requires a policy-kit manual change). Its biggest advantage is that it’s lightweight and I use it as lot for old machines.

I find the rest under-par. I don’t like KDE, and I have thought long and hard why I don’t. It’s not how KDE is structured or works. KDE in fact is fine as a DE! Very powerful. It’s the Qt toolkit that bothers me. When an app loads, it kind of loads in chunks. It doesn’t blast everything rendered in the screen to feel smooth and modern, it kind of renders it as it reads it. And this just bothers me in a UI more than anything. Another thing I dislike is the long right-click menu on the desktop (same for Cinnamon btw).

MATE is nice but it’s just buggy. You setup your panels one way, you logout, you login back again, and the items have changed position. Fully reproducible for me under many different distros. Very, very annoying.

LXDE/LXQT, Budgie, etc, are not as developed as I liked them to be.

eugenia, 30 days ago

With 8 GB of RAM and 5500 CPU passmark points, that’s a good laptop for Linux Mint. Download their “edge” version of Mint, so you get the latest kernel (so it has more chances of supporting 100% that laptop).

eugenia, 25 days ago

A supported, older Pixel will have the best support for to install alternative Android distros. But to alternative OSes in general (not just android), it gets a bit more complicated and you need to check if the pixels are supported by all or not.

eugenia, 1 month ago

KDEnLive is a good “editor” for simpler projects, but not a good video editing “suite”. It comes nowhere near Resolve’s color grading ability, or even audio editing ability these days. And it has no compositing ability at all. In fact, except Natron on Linux (that gets updated once every 2-3 years with just bug fixes and not many features), there’s nothing about compositing. Blender’s compositing is unusable btw.

eugenia, 1 month ago

When it comes to 2D CAD/CAM, then QCad is the best. They have a GPL version, but their commercial version has a lot more features, like importing/exporting most Autocad files, and CAM functionality. For just $40 bucks, it’s worth every penny. The only disadvantage it has is that it can’t ever have an ARM version, because the plugin they use for Autocad files is licensed, and it only exists for x86 afaik.

eugenia, 1 month ago

You misunderstand the word “editing” in this case. It’s not a matter of adding a few plugins and cutting audio. It’s a matter of having the tools to normalize human voice in a way that it’s expected in a movie, or to have automation about it, or envelopes that tracks the volume and fixes it for you. That’s the stuff that neither audacity nor kdenlive has, because they’re very specific to the movie industry. They have more generic plugins instead.

eugenia, 30 days ago

That’s mostly due to the difference in recording equipment rather than editing.

eugenia, 1 month ago

The sad thing about this is that 90% of the skins available for WinAmp since then are gone. You can’t find them to download them anymore.

eugenia, 1 month ago

It depends if you’re using Gnome or KDE. If you prefer KDE, use Qt. If you prefer Gnome’s interface ideas (that looks quite different), use GTK+ with libadwaita. GTK+ has good bindings for Python, and Rust, and a new, rather Gnome-specific language, Vala.

eugenia, 1 month ago

GTK4 is what I meant to say. To me, it’s the same as GTK+, because that was the original name. Just like I spell nvidia as nVidia, because that’s how it was spelt back in the early 2000s. It sticks

eugenia, 1 month ago

Ιt depends on your competence. My mom’s laptop is Debian with XFCE (2 GB RAM old Chromebook converted to run Debian) and of course, she doesn’t use the terminal. But then again, she doesn’t even know how to open a new tab on Chrome. She just uses 1 tab at the time (which is why it’s enough with 2 GB of RAM). So she’s never going to see a terminal in her life, and it’s going to work just fine for her, since the only thing she does on a computer is load 1 tab on Chrome, and mostly use Facebook, or youtube, or news/recipe sites that I have put on her bookmark bar. When the computer needs to be updated, I do it for her once a month or so (using the terminal).

But if you’re trying to do a lot more than that, then maybe, sometimes, you will need to fix or change things using the terminal.

eugenia, 1 month ago

What I like from Endless is that it always shows the app icons when no app is open. IMHO, that’s the correct UI, not an empty desktop.

At the same time, I can’t quite get that distro very seriously. It’s just one guy working on it.

eugenia, 1 month ago

Torvalds only worked on the kernel, not a whole OS. Also, it isn’t true that he was alone in the first couple of years. He had commits by others almost immediately after release.

eugenia, 1 month ago

A wayland screen recorder. Not everyone needs a complex app like obs. Also, a jellyfin/emby front end maybe?

eugenia, 1 month ago

As far as I know, SSR doesn’t work with wayland. Kooha seems nice though, even if I can’t try it (I don’t use flatpaks).

eugenia, 1 month ago

No, that mobile OS is not ready, and probably won’t ever be. I have it installed on an OnePlusOne, it’s just alpha. Postmarket OS is much better and further along, but still not good for day to day usage. I eventually ended up on Murena e/OS, which is based on a more private, totally de-googled version of LineageOS (which is Android).

eugenia, 1 month ago

There are many multimedia solutions for ARM (e.g. libreelec, kodi, plex, jellyfin etc etc), however, these work best for non-big-streaming sites. The moment you’re after a really good youtube experience, or netflix/disney+/etc, then things start break down for various reasons.

Personally, I’d just install the default Raspbian OS (maybe even just DietPi), making sure that their Firefox or Chromium supports drm websites, and then I’d connect the Pi to the TV, and then I’d use a keyboard + touchpad, like this one: www.amazon.com/…/B014EUQOGK/ This allows you to use the machine exactly the way you need it to, without bad surprises and incompatibilities. Not the way you want it to, but more like the way you need it to.

Also, please note that if you’re having a Pi with only 1 GB of RAM, it won’t be enough for what you’re having in mind. I have a 3B+ with 1 GB of RAM, and my Emby server (music only!) constantly needs more than 1 GB of RAM, resulting in the Pi to swap, which means that it wears out the microSD a lot.

Finally, if all else fails get an AppleTV, or a Chromecast with AndroidTV, or a Roku if you’re in the US, but I think the desktop/browser solution can be workable. Not pretty, but most workable for DRM streaming services.

eugenia, 1 month ago

No, it can’t be done that on kde or gnome. Here are two such questions on the “other” site, as some people have offered some workarounds there in the comments: reddit.com/…/is_there_any_way_to_separate_kde/ and reddit.com/…/multi_monitor_independent_desktop_wo…

eugenia, 1 month ago

Ι don’t agree with what they did. They removed browser integration, not just the “favicon” thing. If this was a problem for normal users, well, normal users would just use Firefox’s built-in password manager, not keepassxc. That change made the app useless to me, and going forward it will be a headache for NEW users who won’t know of the -full package. It was a bad decision.