I use Nobara with KDE for my gaming computer, Mint with Cinnamon for pretty much everything else.

Mint is the closest to a “Just Works” experience for me. Cinnamon is rock stable, especially on Mint Debian Edition. I don’t remember the last time Cinnamon crashed or had any major bugs for me.

I use Debian for most of my servers, stable and simple. Arch on a junker Thinkpad to test and mess around with new programs and window managers.

~50x

My policy is double my download, minimum. But I almost always hit much higher than that, my average is probably between 5-10x

All my torrents are public sites, and I only torrent pretty common stuff, so I don’t feel too bad about killing a torrent after a week or two. I figure 5-10x average on easy-to-find, mid quality media is plenty in the karmic sense lol.

As far as I am concerned, always give better than you get, even if that’s 1.01 but try to aim higher.

Of course, if you’re seeding a rare or otherwise hard to find piece of media, then you should keep it alive for longer. I am in the process of upgrading my torrent machine, and once that happens, I will be able to hold far more active torrents, and my average ratios will be significantly improved.

Happy sailing!

Flatpaks are pretty great for getting the latest software without having to have a cutting edge rolling release distro or installing special repos and making sure stuff doesn’t break down the line.

I use Flatpaks for my software that I need the latest and greatest version of, and my distros native package for CLI apps and older software that I don’t care about being super up to date.

My updater script handles all of it in one action anyways, so no biggie on that either.

Flatpaks are the best all-in-one solution when compared to Appimages or Snaps imo.

Hell yeah! Love seeing old hardware like this still running a modern OS.

With Linux, if your hardware is a decade old, you’ve barely even reached middle-age.

Meanwhile Windows 11 won’t even allow an official install on hardware that’s 4-5 years old.

Long live Linux & FOSS ✊

I’ve been settling on Linux Mint more and more as my generic workhorse distro. I have the least amount of issues with it out of the box compared to any other desktop distro.

It’s clean, relatively low bloat, includes codecs and drivers for basically everything I’ve ever needed to use/do, and Cinnamon’s only crime as a DE is looking kind of boring. But it’s easy to select a new theme, so not really a huge issue either.

I use a bunch of different distros for different purposes, but if you held a gun to my head and made me pick a distro I had to use exclusively for the rest of my life, it would be Mint with Cinnamon.

If something was to replace it, it would have to be even cleaner, simpler to setup, and have even better general stability and compatibility.

Cool!

Valve doubling down on Linux as the default OS on the Steam Deck was such a great decision. It obviously has given them a massive competitive edge. Windows has become so horribly bloated, and Microsoft has almost zero interest in making it run more efficiently.

In my early teens, I got really into computers, built my first PC when I was about 13, started learning Windows batch scripting and using GameMaker to make goofy PC games.

Along the way, I found Trinity Rescue Kit and was also introduced to Fedora Core by a nerdy guy who worked at my local YMCA.

I didn’t actually enjoy it too much back then, so I left it alone for years until about 5 years ago when I started to get back into the free software movement and related interests.

I’ve been 100% on Linux for about 4 years now and never looked back.

I’ve been using KDE for over 4 years on over a dozen different machines and 5+ distros and I’ve never had major problems with crashing.

I do experience small bugs fairly often. Maybe once every month or two, little glitches or odd window behavior. Nothing huge, but they do happen. To be fair, I like to modify and customize KDE quite a bit, so that is probably causing some of my issues.

In my experience, Cinnamon is the most stable DE I’ve used by far. Least amount of random bugs, simple but stable. I don’t think I’ve ever had Cinnamon crash on me actually.

Depends on the use case.

I use Nobara on my gaming rig because I wanted up-to-date packages without being on the cutting edge like Arch. And I also wanted all the lower level gaming optimizations without having to set it all up manually. Plus, KDE is soooooo nice.

Debian on my servers because I want extreme stability with a community-driven distro.

Linux Mint on my personal laptops, because I like having the good things from Ubuntu without all the junk. Plus the Cinnamon desktop environment has been rock stable for me. It’s my goto workhorse distro. If I don’t need something with a specialized or specific use case, I throw Mint on.

Arch on my old junker devices that I don’t use much because I like making them run super fast and look sexy and testing out different WM’s and DE’s.

Void on my junkers that I actually want to use frequently because it’s super performant and light on resources without needing to be built manually like Arch.

Ubuntu server if I am feeling stanky and lazy and just need something quick for a testing VM or container host in my home lab.

Aww man, not Arco :(

Sad to see this, but glad the educational material is staying up for a while.

Hopefully some pieces of this are carried on and maintained/forked.

If it’s just for my own personal use, .odt

Otherwise I save it as a .docx

I used LibreOffice all through university. Wrote dozens of papers, did a bunch of presentations, collaborated with other students who were using MSOffice, never had any significant issues.

I’ve been using it for well over a decade since then at my job and for my side business and still it works great.

Watch some YouTube vids on how to customize the UI, you can make it look a little more modern and MSOffice-like if that will help your GF feel more comfortable using it.

Make sure to download to Microsoft Fonts on her system if she is planning on collaborating with other students, that way you don’t run into weird fonts compatibility issues when the other students are using Arial, Times New Roman, etc.

Right on!

Yet again, FOSS showing why it’s always the way to go vs proprietary tech. So glad I started my self-hosting journey with Jellyfin!

Cyb3rMaddy does more cyber security content, but she has a fair bit of Linux content too, same with LaurieWired.

VeronicaExplains is my favorite for pure Linux content.

Yup sorry, typo, I corrected it in my original comment. Weird it isn’t working for you, I think I have the F-droid version.

InnerTune uses YouTube music, so far it’s been really good. No sign in, no ads, decent quality, and grabs alternative versions like covers and acoustic versions too.

It allows you to download the songs, build a library, create playlists, and you can free listen to related music.

Edit: Corrected typo, it’s InnerTune.

Sea of thieves has been working on Linux for years, and really well. I regularly play it on both my Linux gaming rig and on my Steam Deck, it runs awesome on both.

Linux Mint OS, QBitTorrent for the client, Proton VPN for the VPN with qBitTorrent bound to only that interface and port to ensure no IP leaks.

Works Awesome.