What Linux Distro do the Linux users of GH use?

[Leslieann]

Seeing this thread in Spy reminded me that I've not messed with my OS in a long time and on checking it's been nearly two years since I installed Arch, most of that running XFCE.  That has to be some kind of record and I've not had any problems so it will be extended.

This is why I call Linux boring.
Within 6-12 months my Windows installs were always trashed.

[suicidal_orange]

Seeing this thread in Spy reminded me that I've not messed with my OS in a long time and on checking it's been nearly two years since I installed Arch, most of that running XFCE.  That has to be some kind of record and I've not had any problems so it will be extended.

This is why I call Linux boring.
Within 6-12 months my Windows installs were always trashed.

I've ran Linux as my primary OS for about 16 years, trashed many installs going too bleeding edge like running CVS XF86 (I think that's what Xorg was called back then?) so the graphics in my laptop worked and similar when transparency was nearly available.  Or there was a new desktop environment to check out and I didn't want the mess of updating multiple or the allure of Gentoo's complete optimisation bit me so that meant a new install on a second partition sharing /home...  New job means less time at home so I'm now just a user rather than a tweaker.  Maybe there is nothing to play with and it's got boring but I'm sure I could find something to break if I looked

[Leslieann]

Seeing this thread in Spy reminded me that I've not messed with my OS in a long time and on checking it's been nearly two years since I installed Arch, most of that running XFCE.  That has to be some kind of record and I've not had any problems so it will be extended.

This is why I call Linux boring.
Within 6-12 months my Windows installs were always trashed.

I've ran Linux as my primary OS for about 16 years, trashed many installs going too bleeding edge like running CVS XF86 (I think that's what Xorg was called back then?) so the graphics in my laptop worked and similar when transparency was nearly available.  Or there was a new desktop environment to check out and I didn't want the mess of updating multiple or the allure of Gentoo's complete optimisation bit me so that meant a new install on a second partition sharing /home...  New job means less time at home so I'm now just a user rather than a tweaker.  Maybe there is nothing to play with and it's got boring but I'm sure I could find something to break if I looked

Oh, it can break, I've done it many times but it's not the same as Windows where there's a registry that just gets more and more bloated with garbage.
Not that Linux purges perfect, but it just doesn't get bogged down by it like Windows does.

The other big difference is Linux, as strange as it may seem to Windows users, actually adheres to stricter control of data than Windows. Sure a program may get placed in a different place but al MY data is in the home folder, if I copy that everything is backed up. If you do that in Windows and paste it back into another Windows install ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. There are things that should never be copied in there, save files in random places, for as much as Windows users thing Windows is standardized it's really a gigantic mess because companies and users are free to place anything anywhere. It's maddening.

[sharktastica]

I run a bunch of old and new ThinkPads, for which I usually default to either TinyCore or Mint respectively. TinyCore is extremely lightweight - it takes a while to set up right, but I find it squeezes out every bit of an old machine's performance and allows me to save money with upgrading old machines storage with makeshift IDE SSDs. TinyCore with FLTK/FLWM is 16MB by default, however, I use the 106MB CorePlus since it has wireless and non-US keyboard support built in.

Mint just works. 'Nuff said.

I also presently have single machines running Arch, Kali, Kubuntu and Manjaro at the moment.

[hong@RebultKeyboards]

Windows on desktop (mainly for gaming and Adobe suite) Fedora on my laptop, been loving it.

[hvontres]

Started off on Redhat many moons ago (possibly Fedora 6), eventually switched my laptop and desktops to Kubuntu. I also run straight up debian on my Rpi's and a couple of other servers.

[yui]

Started off on Redhat many moons ago (possibly Fedora 6), eventually switched my laptop and desktops to Kubuntu. I also run straight up debian on my Rpi's and a couple of other servers.

i am the only one being completely inept at installing and using ubuntu? don't get me wrong i have plenty of debian and opensuse machines but when i want to give a pc to someone i'd rather it run ubuntu because most of any help online is for ubuntu or ubuntu based distro, but i always end up with a stuck boot screen or kernel panic every time i try to install it... and when i am on an ubuntu machine i can't make heads or tails of the interface...

[Leslieann]

i am the only one being completely inept at installing and using ubuntu? don't get me wrong i have plenty of debian and opensuse machines but when i want to give a pc to someone i'd rather it run ubuntu because most of any help online is for ubuntu or ubuntu based distro, but i always end up with a stuck boot screen or kernel panic every time i try to install it... and when i am on an ubuntu machine i can't make heads or tails of the interface...

You have to shut down half your brain, then it will make sense, I have to do the same with HP printer and scanning software.

[iri]

Started off on Redhat many moons ago (possibly Fedora 6), eventually switched my laptop and desktops to Kubuntu. I also run straight up debian on my Rpi's and a couple of other servers.

i am the only one being completely inept at installing and using ubuntu? don't get me wrong i have plenty of debian and opensuse machines but when i want to give a pc to someone i'd rather it run ubuntu because most of any help online is for ubuntu or ubuntu based distro, but i always end up with a stuck boot screen or kernel panic every time i try to install it... and when i am on an ubuntu machine i can't make heads or tails of the interface...

If that doesn't work for you, then why do you keep doing this?

[yui]

If that doesn't work for you, then why do you keep doing this?

well it is not for me, my favorite are OpenSuse for virtualization and development and Debian for when i do want to deal with instabilities. being able to install Ubuntu would be nice for others, as when you are new to it having forums online with solutions that you do not need to translate to zypper or/and add repos would be nice, although i had put OpenSuse on my mother's computer and the only problems she had with it were printers, I guess that Ubuntu is nice for newbie power-users, kinda like myself

[hong@RebultKeyboards]

i am the only one being completely inept at installing and using ubuntu? don't get me wrong i have plenty of debian and opensuse machines but when i want to give a pc to someone i'd rather it run ubuntu because most of any help online is for ubuntu or ubuntu based distro, but i always end up with a stuck boot screen or kernel panic every time i try to install it... and when i am on an ubuntu machine i can't make heads or tails of the interface...

You have to shut down half your brain, then it will make sense, I have to do the same with HP printer and scanning software.

I would say that with most printer software our there.

[sloth.]

Oh a linux thread, glad to see more keyboard enthusiasts using linux!

I am currently using Gentoo since half year or so, having a blast. Portage gives every customization possible, USE flags are here to stay, every package I want is there or in layers, fast as crazy and no systemd among other advantages 

I love using my keyoboard with a tiling wm like bspwm and gives me a lot of productivity.

[davidbachman]

Oh a linux thread, glad to see more keyboard enthusiasts using linux!

I am currently using Gentoo since half year or so, having a blast. Portage gives every customization possible, USE flags are here to stay, every package I want is there or in layers, fast as crazy and no systemd among other advantages 

I love using my keyoboard with a tiling wm like bspwm and gives me a lot of productivity.

Same here ! Gentoo user Gentoo is life !

[Sup]

Running elementary OS on my laptop and Windows on my main computer  .

[gorauskas]

Vanilla Ubuntu 20.04

[qiAip]

It depends on what computer.  My casual desktop runs Manjaro and the workstation runs OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.  In WSL2 I run Debian and OpenSUSE 15.2 and server at work CentOS (for now).   But what really made the biggest difference and help me get more into keyboards was actually window managers - being able to really get the environment and keyboard to work in sync to do exactly what I want in a workflow that's unique to how I use it was just revolutionary.

[yqqdrasil]

I distro-hopped quite a bit when I was younger, and again when I was going to uni.

Arch was fun for a minute. LFS and Gentoo drove me crazy.

Eventually I just started using the minimal install of Debian and trying different tiling window managers. Stuck with it for a good bit before I got fedup of switching back to Windows whenever I wanted to play games.

After my Thinkpad T420blazeit died I gave up and just use only Windows now lol. At least I didn't have to study for any of my Linux courses. However I always keep a USB with Ubuntu or Debian on it for when I do something stupid like reformatting the HDD my bootloader is on. I did it again last month when I rebuilt my PC. You'd think I'd know better but I tend to surprise myself with new levels of stupidity quite often.

[xtrafrood]

Ubuntu 20.04 (mostly work), and Manjaro KDE (games, VLC/MPV, Jellyfin, etc.).


edit - Thought I'd share my transition from Xorg to Wayland


Though Ubuntu's Hirsute Hippo 21.04 is still in development, the feature freeze is in a few weeks, so why not give it a try for non-video work purposes.


I'm using libinput-gestures for my USB Jelly Comb glass touchpad (my config), and key-mapper as a stop gap before I install a custom controller in my Kinesis Advantage2.  Whew, no more xmodmap.


Why I like Wayland/Hirsute Hippo:
Better general touchpad support in Wayland.  Cursor speed can be cranked up so that highlighting text never requires two hands.  I forget I'm using an operating system, much like Focal Fossa 20.04.


My Hirsute Hippo gripes so far are:
Nvidia GPU support (Firefox), no kinetic scrolling (inertia, etc., which was fine in 20.04), Night Light and or Redshift is not functional (for me), and the wallpaper is not out yet.

[missalaire]

Ubuntu 18.04 and 20.04 (work)

[MelonBred]

Been using PopOS 20.04 on my personal machine.

[Andrew_Debbie]

Ubuntu 20.04 (Home)

Ubuntu 20.04 and 18.04 (Work)

[econeuler]

Nice to see people posting in this thread

To add,
- Debian + i3 for work (desktop)

I'm running Arch on a laptop at home, but have though of switching to Arch on my work desktop as well,
because I'm getting tired of installing from source (plus bloat).
The only reason why I'm hesitating is that I need stuff to work nearly 100% of the time for efficiency. How
is the probability of messing up dependencies etc on Arch if you use it as a main system? Any thoughts?

[suicidal_orange]

I'm running Arch on a laptop at home, but have though of switching to Arch on my work desktop as well,
because I'm getting tired of installing from source (plus bloat).
The only reason why I'm hesitating is that I need stuff to work nearly 100% of the time for efficiency. How
is the probability of messing up dependencies etc on Arch if you use it as a main system? Any thoughts?

Moving away from Debian because of compiling from source and bloat?

My Arch has been running for 2.5 boring years of near daily use and I've not had a single problem, its the equivalent of windows + office + a couple of mature audio related programs + 1 game (which should be run in Windows) so you wouud hope it would work.

Have you had problems on the laptop?  What is work?

[Leslieann]

I'm running Arch on a laptop at home, but have though of switching to Arch on my work desktop as well,
because I'm getting tired of installing from source (plus bloat).
The only reason why I'm hesitating is that I need stuff to work nearly 100% of the time for efficiency. How
is the probability of messing up dependencies etc on Arch if you use it as a main system? Any thoughts?

Arch makes it easy to install TONS of things, much more than Debian, and dependencies are much less of an issue, I hated that on Mint. On occasion the AUR will bork an install because of a dependency or soemone forgetting to flag something in the kernel but once installed it's usually fine from then on, it's that first install that's kind of iffy once in a while. Still less hassle than dealing with Debian and Ubuntu repos and such, I don't miss that at all. I probably run into this more than most as I experiment a lot.

That said Debian is way more reliable.
Don't get me wrong, Arch is at least as stable as Windows 7 or 10 and is easier and faster to fix (downgrade and timeshift are lifesavers), I'm usually back up in a minute or two and happens about once a year but that's still not as good Debian, but I mean, how good is good enough?

I'm with S.O. though, what bloat? Debian should be lean and mean.

If it's mission critical, stick to Debian or switch to RHEL or RHEL derivative. If you's your personal desktop go with Arch/Arco/Manjaro/Endeavour.

[econeuler]

I'm running Arch on a laptop at home, but have though of switching to Arch on my work desktop as well,
because I'm getting tired of installing from source (plus bloat).
The only reason why I'm hesitating is that I need stuff to work nearly 100% of the time for efficiency. How
is the probability of messing up dependencies etc on Arch if you use it as a main system? Any thoughts?

Arch makes it easy to install TONS of things, much more than Debian, and dependencies are much less of an issue, I hated that on Mint. On occasion the AUR will bork an install because of a dependency or soemone forgetting to flag something in the kernel but once installed it's usually fine from then on, it's that first install that's kind of iffy once in a while. Still less hassle than dealing with Debian and Ubuntu repos and such, I don't miss that at all. I probably run into this more than most as I experiment a lot.

That said Debian is way more reliable.
Don't get me wrong, Arch is at least as stable as Windows 7 or 10 and is easier and faster to fix (downgrade and timeshift are lifesavers), I'm usually back up in a minute or two and happens about once a year but that's still not as good Debian, but I mean, how good is good enough?

I'm with S.O. though, what bloat? Debian should be lean and mean.

If it's mission critical, stick to Debian or switch to RHEL or RHEL derivative. If you's your personal desktop go with Arch/Arco/Manjaro/Endeavour.

I see, yeah this has been my impression as well. Do you continuously back up your computer then, so you always can roll back if you mess something up?

I'm running Arch on a laptop at home, but have though of switching to Arch on my work desktop as well,
because I'm getting tired of installing from source (plus bloat).
The only reason why I'm hesitating is that I need stuff to work nearly 100% of the time for efficiency. How
is the probability of messing up dependencies etc on Arch if you use it as a main system? Any thoughts?

Moving away from Debian because of compiling from source and bloat?

My Arch has been running for 2.5 boring years of near daily use and I've not had a single problem, its the equivalent of windows + office + a couple of mature audio related programs + 1 game (which should be run in Windows) so you wouud hope it would work.

Have you had problems on the laptop?  What is work?

What I mean is that at some point it gets annoying to install new software by cloning git repos etc, instead of just be able to use the package manager, from my understanding the packages available with pacman is pretty much up to date? And with bloat I mean that there are programs on my system that I don't use feels cleaner to install only what you need.
What would you say are the main reasons for people switch to Arch, from, e.g., Debian?
Work is some software development and academic stuff (grad student).

[suicidal_orange]

What would you say are the main reasons for people switch to Arch, from, e.g., Debian?
Work is some software development and academic stuff (grad student).

I started with Slackware, then used Gentoo for years while at uni before losing my love of computers having failed to get a job in the field, then I was forced to get a new motherboard with UEFI bios and couldn't be bothered to learn how to make it boot.  That forced me to try various flavours of Mint and OpenSuse but coming from command line updating the 'helpful' GUIs irritated me and whenever I had a problem it was back to the command line to find that (after re-learning the commands) there were more updates available without updating the repositories which annoyed me further.  Arch kept being mentioned in this thread so thought I'd give it a go.

I guess most people would go from Windows to a friendly GUI distro, what their thinking process might be for going further so anything pre-packaged isn't available I have no idea - when put like that it sounds stupid.  If you want really lean Gentoo's use flags are (were?  As above I'm out of touch...) the best way of only having exactly what you need.

Software devel means a text editor and compiler?  You're unlikely to break that and if you do it can be done on a live CD/USB.  Or put /home on a separate partition and most of your program config will stick across multiple distros anyway so if you have a bit of space dual booting Debian/Arch while testing is a perfectly viable option, and you can chroot in from Debian to run updates while being productive in another window.

[econeuler]

What would you say are the main reasons for people switch to Arch, from, e.g., Debian?
Work is some software development and academic stuff (grad student).

I started with Slackware, then used Gentoo for years while at uni before losing my love of computers having failed to get a job in the field, then I was forced to get a new motherboard with UEFI bios and couldn't be bothered to learn how to make it boot.  That forced me to try various flavours of Mint and OpenSuse but coming from command line updating the 'helpful' GUIs irritated me and whenever I had a problem it was back to the command line to find that (after re-learning the commands) there were more updates available without updating the repositories which annoyed me further.  Arch kept being mentioned in this thread so thought I'd give it a go.

I guess most people would go from Windows to a friendly GUI distro, what their thinking process might be for going further so anything pre-packaged isn't available I have no idea - when put like that it sounds stupid.  If you want really lean Gentoo's use flags are (were?  As above I'm out of touch...) the best way of only having exactly what you need.

Software devel means a text editor and compiler?  You're unlikely to break that and if you do it can be done on a live CD/USB.  Or put /home on a separate partition and most of your program config will stick across multiple distros anyway so if you have a bit of space dual booting Debian/Arch while testing is a perfectly viable option, and you can chroot in from Debian to run updates while being productive in another window.

Yeah that's probably a good idea, I've tried it out on my laptop and vm, but I guess dual boot is another option to get comfortable with it! Thanks for the reassurance, I my only worry has been if something messes up when updating and I need to roll back and it takes time off work etc..
Yes exactly, and that's why it feels unnecessary to have a lot installed, especially stuff I don't use. I use it sort of minimalistic, with a WM, some terminal programs, and vim.

[Leslieann]

Do you continuously back up your computer then, so you always can roll back if you mess something up?

I use Timeshift but also add script called timeshift-autosnap which automatically triggers a timeshift backup every time I run an update or install something, it may also run on uninstall (I forget). When used to restore (rollback) it sometimes takes an extra reboot and it seems like it has a permissions glitch for a day afterwards but it clears up on it's own you just can't really update for a few hours.

That only works for the OS though and does nothing for my personal data. I keep most of my stuff on my file server and I use Kbackup to backup my home folder to the file server. I use it manually because it can eat up a LOT of space with backups but it too can be completely automated.

[econeuler]

Do you continuously back up your computer then, so you always can roll back if you mess something up?

I use Timeshift but also add script called timeshift-autosnap which automatically triggers a timeshift backup every time I run an update or install something, it may also run on uninstall (I forget). When used to restore (rollback) it sometimes takes an extra reboot and it seems like it has a permissions glitch for a day afterwards but it clears up on it's own you just can't really update for a few hours.

That only works for the OS though and does nothing for my personal data. I keep most of my stuff on my file server and I use Kbackup to backup my home folder to the file server. I use it manually because it can eat up a LOT of space with backups but it too can be completely automated.

I see, thank you! I'll look into Timeshift seems like that is what I'd want if I were to switch to Arch!
Yeah that's nice, I have a script using rsync for backup of /home on a couple of raided disks which works quite nicely, having it running as a cron job.
Is your file server local?

[Leslieann]

I see, thank you! I'll look into Timeshift seems like that is what I'd want if I were to switch to Arch!
Yeah that's nice, I have a script using rsync for backup of /home on a couple of raided disks which works quite nicely, having it running as a cron job.
Is your file server local?

You're welcome.

Yes, it's local, it's just an old desktop with a laptop drive for the OS and a large drive for storage.
Mine uses a 2nd gen I5 with a power brick and dc-dc power supply, total power from the wall rarely breaks 20 watts but only because I never spin down the drives.

[econeuler]

I see, thank you! I'll look into Timeshift seems like that is what I'd want if I were to switch to Arch!
Yeah that's nice, I have a script using rsync for backup of /home on a couple of raided disks which works quite nicely, having it running as a cron job.
Is your file server local?

You're welcome.

Yes, it's local, it's just an old desktop with a laptop drive for the OS and a large drive for storage.
Mine uses a 2nd gen I5 with a power brick and dc-dc power supply, total power from the wall rarely breaks 20 watts but only because I never spin down the drives.

Nice though, I have 2 raid1 hhds in my desktop that spin up for backup and then spin down afterwards. But I've been thinking of tinkering a better solution, e.g., building a NAS, but I don't have a permanent home/apartment atm so maybe that is required first:p

[foxieze]

Favourite distro I've used has been Kubuntu, which is just Ubuntu but uses the KDE desktop environment. Have also used Kali linux in the past but didn't love it. At home I primarily use Windows, as I play a lot of video games with friends.

[yui]

just installed OpenSuse on my new gaming PC, if you plan on using discord, forget it, it just fails to open, and if you plan on using steam in small picture mode, same, your game library will not display (works perfectly fine in big picture mode though), but otherwise i have not found a game that would not work yet so rather happy so far
(for context my previous PC was Debian 10.7, both steam and discord works flawlessly on it)

[foxieze]

just installed OpenSuse on my new gaming PC, if you plan on using discord, forget it, it just fails to open, and if you plan on using steam in small picture mode, same, your game library will not display (works perfectly fine in big picture mode though), but otherwise i have not found a game that would not work yet so rather happy so far
(for context my previous PC was Debian 10.7, both steam and discord works flawlessly on it)

can vouch for discord being crap on linux - in my experience it has managed to open but it has crashed incredibly frequently (to the point where it was unusable). hopefully they can sort this at some point, however small the linux userbase may be.

[yui]

can vouch for discord being crap on linux - in my experience it has managed to open but it has crashed incredibly frequently (to the point where it was unusable). hopefully they can sort this at some point, however small the linux userbase may be.

apart from the updates not going through the package manager i had no problem with it on Debian, although i ended up making a small script that grabs latest canary version and it never crashes, sometimes steam does when i run low on ram but never Discord

[foxieze]

can vouch for discord being crap on linux - in my experience it has managed to open but it has crashed incredibly frequently (to the point where it was unusable). hopefully they can sort this at some point, however small the linux userbase may be.

apart from the updates not going through the package manager i had no problem with it on Debian, although i ended up making a small script that grabs latest canary version and it never crashes, sometimes steam does when i run low on ram but never Discord

what desktop environment were you using - i think i remember debian having multiple choices during installation. maybe that has something to do with the crashing?

[blondie]

I use Arch.

My first distro was RedHat, before they had an Enterprise version in the late '90s. After getting hacked because I just installed every single package, and WU-FTP I think it was had a major vulnerability, I switched to Linux From Scratch. Talk about distro whiplash. After a few long, educational, tedious installs, I found Gentoo. It's like LFS, but with scripts to do all of the compiles for you.

After several long, less educational, and less tedious installs of Gentoo, I found Arch. It's like Gentoo, but with most of the packages already compiled for you.

I don't know if these statements are accurate, but that's how I've viewed the distros I have used so far.

[sneakyfox]

I'm using Linux Mint, and I love it. Very easy to use and maintain, works fine pretty much out of the box.

I used debian for a while a decade or so ago, but then went back to windows. Don't really remember why, but I think it was about knowing all the apps I needed on windows and picking the devil that I new. (of course debian is not a devil at all, but it can appear to be until one has worked it out)

[danwomansan]

using gentoo again. as I've gotten more experienced with system setup I've found myself liking it more; it lets me control things i want to be in specific ways, but with automation. it feels to me like how something like manjaro feels to someone who isn't as much of a cranky tryhard nerd.

[yui]

apart from the updates not going through the package manager i had no problem with it on Debian, although i ended up making a small script that grabs latest canary version and it never crashes, sometimes steam does when i run low on ram but never Discord

what desktop environment were you using - i think i remember debian having multiple choices during installation. maybe that has something to do with the crashing?

i use KDE on all PC capable of running it (more than 2GB of ram and at maximum a 15 years old dual core, anything older will struggle and so goes to IceWM) and yeah Debian let you choose between Gnome, XFCE, LXDE, LXQT and KDE if i remember right from the installs i see it is more common to use gnome or xfce. pretty much all major distros will give you the choice either at install (Debian, Suse) or before (Ubuntu)

[foxieze]

apart from the updates not going through the package manager i had no problem with it on Debian, although i ended up making a small script that grabs latest canary version and it never crashes, sometimes steam does when i run low on ram but never Discord

what desktop environment were you using - i think i remember debian having multiple choices during installation. maybe that has something to do with the crashing?

i use KDE on all PC capable of running it (more than 2GB of ram and at maximum a 15 years old dual core, anything older will struggle and so goes to IceWM) and yeah Debian let you choose between Gnome, XFCE, LXDE, LXQT and KDE if i remember right from the installs i see it is more common to use gnome or xfce. pretty much all major distros will give you the choice either at install (Debian, Suse) or before (Ubuntu)

huh. when i tried running discord on my kubuntu machine (ubuntu but with KDE) it would continuously crash. maybe i'll try again. did you say you were using canary?

[yui]

huh. when i tried running discord on my kubuntu machine (ubuntu but with KDE) it would continuously crash. maybe i'll try again. did you say you were using canary?

yeah when i made the script i did not really pay close attention to what .deb i was getting and so got the "wrong" one in my copy paste, but then it may be part of the reason, or that Ubuntu is a bit more like OpenSuse and that chromium based apps tend to crash on it? (steam and discord both are chromium based, and both get the same series of crash when i start them on OpenSuse, steam deals with them better, and actually start, discord just completely fails)

[foxieze]

yeah when i made the script i did not really pay close attention to what .deb i was getting and so got the "wrong" one in my copy paste, but then it may be part of the reason, or that Ubuntu is a bit more like OpenSuse and that chromium based apps tend to crash on it? (steam and discord both are chromium based, and both get the same series of crash when i start them on OpenSuse, steam deals with them better, and actually start, discord just completely fails)

yeah that could be a good idea - i'll launch up a VM when i get home and test it out using a different distro other than anything based upon Ubuntu or openSuse

[yui]

if you launch it from a console (emulator, not the actual TTY) it will give you a trace of the crashes in the console, could help you finding what fails, it could be a simple library incompatibility, on Suse it fails at even displaying its splashscreen window, just gives a white rectangle and crashes, from the sound of it it goes a lot further on Ubuntu, so maybe quite different failure modes, especially if steam works properly.

[Leslieann]

huh. when i tried running discord on my kubuntu machine (ubuntu but with KDE) it would continuously crash. maybe i'll try again. did you say you were using canary?

Discord is a horrible metric to judge, it's known to be terribly problematic.
Your problem there is with Discord, not Linux or Ubuntu.

[yui]

huh. when i tried running discord on my kubuntu machine (ubuntu but with KDE) it would continuously crash. maybe i'll try again. did you say you were using canary?

Discord is a horrible metric to judge, it's known to be terribly problematic.
Your problem there is with Discord, not Linux or Ubuntu.

what we are trying to achieve is to try to understand what make it work on some distros and not others, it never was advertised as working on debian but seems to work better there than on ubuntu. i think we both know that the main problem is that discord is calling something wrong or something, but what is the interesting part.

[foxieze]

huh. when i tried running discord on my kubuntu machine (ubuntu but with KDE) it would continuously crash. maybe i'll try again. did you say you were using canary?

Discord is a horrible metric to judge, it's known to be terribly problematic.
Your problem there is with Discord, not Linux or Ubuntu.

i'm not saying that discord isn't absolute crap on linux - what i am saying is that there must be a reason for why discord is crashing, and why it seems to be working fine on a different machine using a different distro.

[Leslieann]

Not every distro follows the exact same naming scheme and tree, it's gotten better, but there are still some differences. Another issue could be in the repositories, some are further behind than others.

Mint 18 - VLC 2.2.2 - Firefox 88.0
Mint 20 - VLC 3.0.12 - Firefox 88.0
Kubuntu - VLC 3.0.12 - Friefox 88.0+build2
Arch - VLC 3.0.12-5 - Firefox 88.0-1

And it only gets worse when you look at dependencies, naming conventions vary greatly and some have even changed names entirely, for example a recent change was many switching to a "lib" at the start rather than at the end or adding it where it was missing before. While a name change may break dependencies it may not, depending what called for that dependency, and while X may be compatible with y 2.0, that doesn't mean it works properly when combined with z 1.3 compared to how it works with z 1.2 or the other way around.

You may want to try the appimage before changing distros.

[fohat.digs]

Mint 18 - VLC 2.2.2
Mint 20 - VLC 3.0.12

Just out of curiosity and laziness, I have both my desktop and laptop set to dual-boot into Windows and Mint Cinnamon, but generally use Windows.

In your opinion, which recent release of Mint is most superior for the casual user? I keep my Linux directories lean and clean, and could upgrade with minimum drama (aka trauma).

[foxieze]

Not every distro follows the exact same naming scheme and tree, it's gotten better, but there are still some differences. Another issue could be in the repositories, some are further behind than others.

Mint 18 - VLC 2.2.2 - Firefox 88.0
Mint 20 - VLC 3.0.12 - Firefox 88.0
Kubuntu - VLC 3.0.12 - Friefox 88.0+build2
Arch - VLC 3.0.12-5 - Firefox 88.0-1

And it only gets worse when you look at dependencies, naming conventions vary greatly and some have even changed names entirely, for example a recent change was many switching to a "lib" at the start rather than at the end or adding it where it was missing before. While a name change may break dependencies it may not, depending what called for that dependency, and while X may be compatible with y 2.0, that doesn't mean it works properly when combined with z 1.3 compared to how it works with z 1.2 or the other way around.

You may want to try the appimage before changing distros.

i understand what you're saying there, and it is definitely worth a try, however, why would it be crashing at random points in time if it is a problem with dependencies. it loads up perfectly fine, and sometimes will work for a decent period of time (very rarely), but it almost always crashes at some point, even when i have not given any user input to change anything. is discord trying to do something in the background? if it is, why does it sometimes work for a good amount of time, and sometimes not ¯\_(ツ)_/