I am not secretly John Boone. Image from the Linux Mint website.
Tonight, I said to myself, “What should I do? I already had a shower, what else is there?” And then I noticed that Windows had an update available. It always does. I installed it and it needed to reboot. It always does.
I used the opportunity to jump back over to Linux Mint and girded myself for the billion updates I’d skipped last time. They completed, but it then required…a reboot. I guess Mint always does, too.
I rebooted.
I then spent time tweaking the whole system, installing extensions and applets, slapping on a new dynamic wallpaper so it doesn’t look like a clone of my Windows desktop. It looks fairly snazzy now. I get weirdly hung up on visuals, so this is important to me.
I copied over my music library to the dedicated SSD for Mint, so I could listen to (non-streaming) music. I am doing so as I type this.
The best part, though, is I don’t have any version of Bejewled available on Mint. This increases my productivity by about 1000%. I may have a bit of a Bejeweled problem.
Anyway, things are working, and the system feels a lot more solid now. Will I stick with it and use it more than my previous attempt? Maybe!
I decided to peek in at Linux Mint again and this meant there were a plethora of updates ready to be installed. After doing so, I had to reboot, then fix the updates that didn’t install properly, and so on.
I mean, it was no better or worse than doing the same in Windows 11. I mean, it was a little worse in that Linux-y way, but not overly so.
But I never gain any traction with Linux because I just don’t spend enough time with it. And I don’t spend enough time with it because there are so many niggles that irk me. Not a lot, but enough.
But still, I try, because I am a dope and a sucker for new things or different things.
And it is different.
Now that I’m (mostly) updated, I’ll stick with it for a bit and see how it goes.
After re-installing Linux Mint on its own separate drive back in September, I pretty much ignored it. Whoops! As a result, when I do log into it, there’s usually a pile of updates awaiting. Some updates on using Mint itself:
Update Manager: This is currently not responding when launched. It shows updates, but everything is greyed out. I’ll probably have to reboot, or recompile the kernel or whatever it is you do in Linux when these things happen.
TickTick: There was a version of TickTick in the Software Manager, so I don’t need to use the web version. Yay! The window widgets are the same as the Windows version, because this is apparently a wrapper based on the Windows version. I’m okay with that.
Diarium: Still no progress here.
Overall, I have to say, I’m just not feeling it this time. If everything I did was inside a web browser, it might be decent, since Mint comes with Firefox, which is my preferred browser. But there’s just too much other software I use to give up both Windows and Mac right now.
I will check back again sooner, though, mostly to avoid a giant pile of updates again. Assuming the Update Manager works again in the future.
Why? I can’t say, precisely. I feel I didn’t fully test it out last time. This time I want to try to meet some of the challenges I encountered and find ways to work around them. Or something like that.
Also, I may be a bit of an idiot.
But this time it’s installed on its own separate drive., so reverting to Windows-only in the future should be easier, if I decide to do so.
Am I going a little loopy? Have I been bribed by the Linux penguin? Do I like mint so much that I want an OS named Mint, too?
The answer is: I’m not sure!
After my PC experienced a near-death experience on Saturday (August 20, 2023, for people or bots reading this in the far future) I had time to think about my options while waiting for its miraculous recovery:
I currently can’t afford a new PC, so I was hoping I’d only have to replace some of it to get it going again (fortunately the miracle recovery meant I didn’t need anything)
It made me wonder how much some aspect of Windows, specifically, was responsible for The Incident
It made me further wonder if I had been running, say, some version of Linux, if The Incident would have happened at all.
The answer to the latter is I just don’t know. My theory, that some app or process pegged the CPU at 100%, causing the system to overheat and the fans to spin up and roar like supersonic jets, is just that, a theory. I will probably never know precisely what happened. But it really has me thinking more about ditching Windows for good, and how to best address the deficiencies I previously found in Linux Mint.
Ars Technica has a story on how Linux has now surpassed the Mac on Steam, thanks to the popularity of the Steam Deck, which uses Linux as its OS. The race between Linux and Mac is close, but compared to Windows, it’s like a 100-meter dash where the first runner finishes in 10 seconds and the other two cross the finish line an hour later1Windows:: 96.21%, Linux: 1.96%, Mac: 1.84%.
But this post is about that old internet maxim, “Never read the comments.” On Ars, you can vote a post up or down. Too many down votes and the post gets hidden (though you can always click to see it). You know you’re in for a fun ride when the first four posts in a comment thread are hidden:
The first post was a benign but contentless “Ok…”, the second post a comic that Wheels of Confusion points out may have gotten the order of the panels wrong (and for proper comic effect/ting, he is right). The third post was the word “green” (presumably a suggestion for the colour of the dragon, another content-free contribution), while the fourth was the following insightful reflection on the first post: “Sensing pissy Mac fan boy. Could be wrong, could be right.”
It’s actually not nearly as bad as I would have guessed!
For context, here is WoC’s post, which includes the comic in question, in case you are lazy, like me, and don’t want to click links and stuff:
I have to admit, when I started this post, I hadn’t looked at the comments and thought they’d be particularly dumb/juicy. Instead, they’re just kind of lame. This will teach me to look for blog gold in a pile of…stuff that isn’t gold.
Tonight I pulled the plug on my Linux Mint installation, fixed the boot launcher to boot straight into Windows (farewell, grub!) and reclaimed the space on my main drive that had been reserved for Linux, allowing Windows to once again hog all of it.
I may try Linux Mint (or another distro) in the future because I’m still interested in messing around with it, but if I do, I will put it onto its own drive. I’ll still need to dual boot, but won’t have two OSes sharing space on the same physical drive, which puts constraints on both.
The main reasons for nuking Linux Mint for now is related to something I saw (that I cannot find now) stating that Linux is 98% there for most people–which seems excellent! But that last 2% may include a vital piece of software that isn’t available, and becomes a dealbreaker. Linux Mint is free, which is great, but once you eliminate the price and just look at what it offers vs. Windows 11, it comes very close in most regards, but ultimately falls a bit short–for the average computer user. And for me.
I could use Firefox, Discord, Signal and Obsidian. This was nice. But I could only use the online version of Word. OneDrive likewise is reduced to the web version without using third party solutions that aren’t officially supported (and may come with subscriptions). The photo-editing software is not what I want, and just getting photos into the OS is more of a hassle. The game support is actually decent, but imperfect. Again, that 2% is the killer.
In the end, Linux Mint was fun to play around with, to experiment in, but just didn’t have quite what I needed to be a primary OS. In terms of how I’d rate them in overall functionality for my own use:
Windows 11 10/10 – does everything, though not equally well
macOS 8/10 – comes close, but falls down on gaming and third party peripheral support remains spotty for me.
Linux Mint 7/10 – falls down on photo-editing, some specific apps it lacks, cloud storage and gaming (to a smaller extent)
After some more time using Linux Mint, which I’ve done more often the past few days as Windows 11 is perpetually applying updates that require a reboot (thus making it easy to select Mint from the boot menu), I’ve encountered a few things that have made the experience a little less smooth vs. the Mac or Windows:
Music: My music library is a local folder on the PC and while I might be able to find a way to access the files remotely, right now the music player in Mint wants to just redownload everything, which is not an idea solution (though it works fine if you let it do its thing)
OneDrive: There is a paid solution (InSync) and while I can access my OneDrive folder on the PC through the Mint file manager, it obviously does not actually sync changes or anything. For that, I need to use the web version, barring setting up an open source/free alternative.
Microsoft Office: While I generally only use MS Word when I have to, Office is not available on Linux, requiring me to use workarounds like saving in .docx format in LibreOffice, or using the web versions, where it’s surprisingly easy to come across something the web version doesn’t do.
Journaling: My go-to journaling app, the unfortunately named Diarium, is available on every platform–except Linux. And there’s no web version.
TickTick: My to-do app of choice also has no Linux version, though the web version works decently, at least.
Pixelmator Pro: This is my primary photo editing app and is Mac-only.
On the plus side, it still feels snappier and more solid than my current Windows 11 install. I’ve actually toyed with the idea of completely nuking all 3 terabytes of storage I have on the PC and just starting over. I don’t know if that would actually fix or improve anything, but it appeals to my urge to cull cull cull.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to juggle between all the OSes like a big dum dum.
For the past month, I have been generally ignoring the Linux Mint installation, because my desire to explore strange new OSes apparently ended shortly after I had completed the initial set up.
However, Windows has been driving me mildly batty lately for a few reasons, some more important than others:
Less important: The desktop wallpaper keeps changing on its own. I’ve spent more than a fair share of time troubleshooting this, to no avail. It’s simple to correct, but it’s maddening that it happens. Probably related, Windows will also move my desktop icons from one monitor to another, then back, seemingly at random (not on the fly, but after a reboot or when it is awakened from the screensaver). Multiple monitor mayhem? Maybe!
Somewhat important: General slowness all around the OS. The Start menu hesitates when I click on it, or icons take a few extra moments to load. Nothing feels “tight” or snappy. I almost feel like Windows 11 has regressed to that “time to reinstall the entire OS” version of Windows we used to go through in order to regain lost performance. And that was way back in the Windows 98/XP era. Yeesh.
More important: File Explorer is crazy slow, even at simple things. I have always found File Explorer slow (this is one of the few ways I find the Mac’s Finder to be superior) and it often wants to (slowly) refresh a folder that hasn’t had any changes made to it. Bleah!
Anyway, enough kvetching about Windows 11. I have updated Mint and installed a few apps:
Firefox (actually, it’s pre-installed, but I have updated it)
Obsidian (initially as an AppImage file, then as an actual installed app)
Discord
Those three apps alone give me most of what I need. I have also spent some time tweaking the settings, look and feel of the desktop, and have run into a few kinks with permissions to the non-Linux folders on my PC. But still no need to use a command line yet!
As a bonus, Linux also hasn’t changed my desktop wallpaper arbitrarily. What a treat. For maximum lolz, I am using the AI-interpreted version of the original Bliss/XP wallpaper that you can find on Microsoft’s site here.
My desktop (click for full size):
At this point, I’ll probably keep using it until I need another OS for something specific (Windows for gaming, Mac for photo/image-editing). Maybe I’ll find yet another OS to install. Maybe I’ll just start doing everything on a used Commodore 64 and pretend it’s 1985.
Right now, Mint does feel faster than Windows, but it’s also only a month old and has minimal software installed. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned for Part 3, in which maybe I have to use the command line or something horrible like that.
Today I did a cray-cray thing: I installed Linux Mint on my Windows PC, giving it 500 GB of space on my primary drive, with Windows getting the rest.
So far it has gone pretty smoothly. I haven’t had to use the terminal once!
I’m not sure why I installed it, I think I just wanted to try something different. It did drive home how much of what you do on a computer is done through a web browser, and it doesn’t really matter much what the OS is behind it.
Supposedly Linux is faster than Windows, or uses less resources or something. I’ll keep trying it for a bit, and if I love it, I will marry it! Well, no. But I’ll keep it. If in the end I feel it offers little over what I’m getting with Windows 11, I’ll probably reclaim the space back to Windows.
For now, though, I’m a triple OS guy on the desktop. Such a nerd. Or idiot. We’ll find out soon enough
EDIT: Here’s a link to the Linux Mint page. It’s like I completely forgot my internet manners!
