So I moved to Linux

[Steve Adams]

Affinity (3.x) is currently not even particularly stable under Windows. We were trying to use it for our illustrations at work, but it keeps crashing. We eventually went back to the Affinity 2.x suite.


That's an overgeneralisation. Wine has made tremendous progress in the last couple of years, and a lot of things work as good and as stable as under Windows.

Yes, I use the Affinity 2 suite. I can't even get that to work on linux at all. Staying on windows.

 

[neuropsychguy]

please explain

Macs have Terminal. You can run many tools from there that are otherwise generally available only with Linux. You can install a lot of other “Linux” software via Homebrew or MacPorts. And, there are containers that can fill in a lot of gaps. I have some research software that was linux only that I containerized and now run on my Mac.

There are certainly things that can only be done in Linux and not on Mac, but the reverse is also true. I've found that many things that I initially thought I needed Linux for I've been able to do well on my Mac.

 

[maflynn]

don't know about downsides, but the user interface is dead simple. I don't think it can be easier than this. In fact i was able to find how to adjust my mouse settings in mint easier than on Windows.

Mint uses the Cinnamon Desktop Environment, you can run other distros with that DE, that's one of the great things about Linux. You're not locked into a specific look and feel.

Downsides of Mint as I see it:

• Mint is based off of Ubuntu 24 LTS, so you're already two years behind the curve, so much so, some apps that are included may have older bugs. The developers already patched them in subsequent versions, but mint doesn't hve them. There's currently a bit of drama over this, where the Gnome developers are pointing the finger at mint to fix their (gnome) downstream apps, and Mint is telling users to contact Gnome for support. Gnome is telling them to fix it, because the apps were heavily modified by Mint anyways.
• Gaming support is better on Fedora, CachyOS, bazzite (if that's a thing for you)
• Hardware support is not as deep because its based on a 2 year old code base.
• Performance tuning is a bit more conservative, i.e., it will not run as fast
• File system uses the ext4 filesystem (stable, rock solid), where as fedora, cachyos, offer Btrfs, a great and solid file system that offers snapshots (think time machine for linux)

Its not a bad distro, but it seems many people dip their toe into the world of Linux with Mint, and then they move on to a more modern feature rich distro.

 

[cjsuk]

But you can quickly move the cursor to the top of the screen, and it’s impossible to overshoot. It’s actually faster, at least with a mouse set-up.

That's a sort of side effect with macOS which is pretty difficult to drive from the keyboard. I tend to drive Windows and Linux with the keyboard a lot more which is vastly more efficient. You can navigate the menus from the keyboard without any issue then.

 

[boswald]

To build upon @skoodlyboop comment, Arch and its downstream distros are as safe as any other distro. Their repositories go through a rigorious review and are no less risky then any other distro.

What the problem is, is the Arch User Repository, or AUR, and there's a clear warning for people to use AUR
View attachment 2650229

The files in that repo are source files that are compiled and so its expected that as you the user should review the make files, before building. So far the malware being introduced is easily identified, as its executing a post install script.

That's not to say you should just install AUR packages, I avoid them because they don't go through a review process. If only use pacman to install/update apps, you're safe. Using yay or paru is where you need to be careful.

I have compiled a couple programs from the AUR, and Shelly reported no security concerns. But I'm still really skeptical and cautious, so my choices are extremely limited.

 

[maflynn]

But I'm still really skeptical and cautious, so my choices are extremely limited.

Same here, the one AUR package I have is for a cloud based storage, and I'm thinking, can I live without that. I'm leaning towards yes.

 

[MacBH928]

I hardly recognise any distros any more. Mint, Arch, CachyOS, Bazzite? Ubuntu and Debian I remember, but none of the others. I think the last one i used was Fedora maybe?

I searched a lot and its a lot of none sense. Most "distros" are just tweaked for specific use cases and made by laughable small teams. Even The existence of corporate distros like Suse and Ubuntu is because they need their own OS to sell to their customers for support. For the most part it goes like this:

-Debian: Non-profit linux distro
-Ubuntu: Debian made easier for the desktop user
-Arch: Wild west community maintained distro
-Fedora: Only reason to choose this one is because its a "rolling" release constantly updated on the opposite of Ubuntu that has periodic updates. Whatever rocks your boat

-Mint: Ubuntu made with dead simple GUI for the layman human. Afaik its really just the Cinnamon DE, so you might as well install ubuntu with Cinnamon but they just did the work for you.

Well it's not stable on Linux because it's not designed for Linux. Most things running via Wine on Linux are unstable. It's great that Wine exists, I guess, but nothing will ever compare to native applications. I suppose you could always dual boot if you want to make Linux your main OS. I used to dual boot, but it's too much of a hassle.

Are we really arguing that its impossible to use Linux professionally because there is software a specific poster needs that doesn't exist?

Are we really trying to argue that running professional software in a translation layer is good for a production machine?

If you need one specific program that's not available on Linux you can run it in a virtual machine, if you need many of those programs just run Windows or MacOS.

There are projects like winboat.app that let you launch windows apps in a VM behind the scenes. Many moons ago when i tried virtual machine it felt like launching a rocket and your hardware capability literally split between 2 systems halving its performance.

I am not sure what is the case today with modern hardware but I hear a lot of people run VMs on their laptops albeit that might be light weight Linux distros for testing reasons of some sort.

I don't have a high opinion of Adobe's software. It phones home a lot. Adobe isn't a great company and makes it difficult for customers to terminate their subscriptions. They used to be great, like in the 90s. But they've become corporatized kinda like Apple is now.

There is no competition. The only competition I know is CorelDraw is still surviving somehow. Pixelmator got gobbled by Apple probably going to turn into MacOS iSuite member and Affinity gave us hope then sold out to Canva. This is what corporations do, they eat up their competition before it takes them over.

For myself I might convert my macbook pro m1 max to linux when os support ends in 2028, and in between buy another macbook pro.

That way i have the best of both worlds. I can never go back to windows, since using vista it felt very unfinished.

windows is a horror show and as far as i am concerned the real reason people use it is for business as all hardware support it and all business configurations and setups can be done on it. note "can be done" but its not a pleasant experience.

 

[Siliconguy]

It [Mint] is not a bad distro, but it seems many people dip their toe into the world of Linux with Mint, and then they move on to a more modern feature rich distro.

Mint is a good place to start, and in my case I stopped there too. it does everything I need. My PC, my main computer I use for all the "real" work is from 2019. The oldest machine is a 2010 Mac Pro. Mint even runs [OK walks briskly] on 2009 Mac mini. It does quite well on a 2012 Mini too. The 2012 uses the MATE desktop, the others use Cinnamon.The current Mint is supported until 2029.

For me stability is far more important than performance and I don't game so the attractions of some other distributions is much reduced. Fedora in particular seems to want more GPU than the 2010 Pro actually has, and some parts of Plasma flat don't work though overall it is quite pretty.

If you do have hardware newer than 2024 then you might have problems on Mint. On the other hand installing Broadcom wifi drivers in Debian is very hit and miss, and it wasn't trivial in Fedora either though it did work. Both of those required serious tweaking on the command line. In Mint it was click the button in Device Manager.

 

[capamac]

There is no competition. The only competition I know is CorelDraw is still surviving somehow. Pixelmator got gobbled by Apple probably going to turn into MacOS iSuite member and Affinity gave us hope then sold out to Canva. This is what corporations do, they eat up their competition before it takes them over.

(re: Adobe sw). Presumably you're using Photoshop/LR. I find Gimp to be superior to Photoshop coz it's free as in freedom, and free as in beer. Gimp can do the same core tasks as PS. Learning Gimp isn't much harder than learning PS. It's just what one is used to.

I've only bought two Adobe products in my life. First was a used eBay CD version of Photoshop 2.5 for 680x0 Macs. Second was a subscription to Adobe InDesign for a few months, years ago.

Personally I get along just fine without Adobe. I've not used an Adobe app on my computers for many, many years.

Adobe's strength is it's what people are used to. It's what people know. People don't like learning new things. Adobe has XYZ feature in this certain menu. But in free (as in freedom) software, the same feature is in a different menu. This is enough to make the Adobe say "oh free software is bad." Coz many of the Adobe users have fixed mindsets. They don't want to learn, don't want to change.

 

[maflynn]

I find Gimp to be superior to Photoshop coz it's free

Free does not make it better and I think you're opinion of it being superior to PS is probably in the minority. It seems to me, that for everyone 1 person advocating for Gimp, there's 9 others stating its a hot mess