CrabAndBroom

@CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml

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(Constructively) What is your least favorite distro & why?

I’ve been distrohopping for a while now, and eventually I landed on Arch. Part of the reason I have stuck with it is I think I had a balanced introduction, since I was exposed to both praise and criticism. We often discuss our favorite distros, but I think it’s equally important to talk about the ones that didn’t quite hit...

CrabAndBroom,

Yeah I was gonna say Manjaro too. I used it for a while while I was heading towards Arch but wasn’t feeling fully confident to go full Arch as a daily driver yet, and it was nothing but trouble for me. I found that it tried to prevent me from breaking things, which is not necessarily bad, but it would also break things by itself and then this feature would prevent me from going in and fixing them.

I much prefer it when the OS just gets out of my way and lets me do what I want, even if it’s dumb lol

CrabAndBroom,

Someone already said Manjaro, so my second pick would be ElementaryOS. In the past they’ve had this weird attitude about open source things being free (I get supporting devs for projects you like of course, but I don’t agree that it’s “cheating” to not pay for every single piece of open source software you use), and they seem to get a lot of hype and praise for what’s essentially just Ubuntu painted up to look like MacOS IMO.

voxel, (edited ) to linux
@voxel@infosec.exchange avatar

Hey 👋 dear Linux Community,

I'm still kinda new to Linux (started using this year 😅) I already made it to my main OS, even if I still missing some things which I used on Windows, anyway. What I wanted to ask you guys, what recommendations do you have for Linux Mint (Cinnamon)? In terms of security, optimization, (a way to make the UI looking modern ;-;) and privacy? I would be very interested in what you do guys to optimize your Linux setup :) I'm pretty technical, so there is nothing which could overwhelm me (probaly).

Thx! 🤍

@linux

CrabAndBroom,

In terms of security, IMO just using Linux, having a regular firewall setup and using common sense online and not clicking on anything overtly sketchy probably puts you in ahead of 90% of people on the internet lol. I’m also quite partial to running OpenSnitch just to make sure nothing’s connecting to the internet without my say-so.

For privacy, I think it depends on your threat model but for the average person I’d say a VPN of some sort and mainly just being cautious about how much personal info you post on social media will cover a big chunk of it. Maybe a more privacy conscious email provider like Proton or Tuta over something like Gmail would help too, but none of that is strictly a Linux thing.

Kind of boring answers, sorry! But IMO the boring fundamentals do tend to cover the majority of stuff. Also there are places like privacyguides.org if you want to rabbit-hole it, but be warned that you might end up becoming one of those people who only goes on onion sites and pays for everything with Monero lol.

Also no idea about customizing Cinnamon, apologies.

Steam Deck Switch emulation

Hey so I installed Yuzu (and many other emulators) via emu deck so the installation is taken care of I think except for the product keys and title keys I have a switch but dont want to fuck with getting the keys out of it and all that so Im trying to just download them I found a website called “theprodkeys.com” is this...

CrabAndBroom,

Reddit has started getting a bit fucky with VPNs lately so maybe that’s the cause? I mean you could obviously go there without the VPN on, but also fuck them lol.

CrabAndBroom, (edited )

October 14, 2025 apparently.

Edit: could also affect as many as 240 million machines that don’t have TPM.

CrabAndBroom,

I find sometimes installing a bunch of different DEs can cause weird cross-issues, so I tend to just make VMs to try out new things. I have a bunch of them on an external drive like little specimen jars lol.

Also as a side note, I keep a VM that’s as close to my current setup as possible, so if I get the urge to try something weird I can do it there first and see if it breaks anything.

CrabAndBroom,

I’m currently using Arch (btw), but I have been hearing the distant call of NixOS lately…

CrabAndBroom,

I mean, if I went 'round saying I was a sysadmin just because some angry Finn lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away

CrabAndBroom,

As much as I don’t like recommending people go to reddit, tbh r/panelshow and r/tv_bunny tend to cover most of it pretty well, and quickly too. TV Bunny has been a good source for old British sitcoms like Bottom and Blackadder as well.

CrabAndBroom,

There is still an older version of Scrivener available for free, from when they were beta testing it on Linux. It still worked well last time I checked. The Windows version also runs really well in WIne, although it takes a bit of setting up initially.

CrabAndBroom,

Several of them are on the KDE store now too!

CrabAndBroom,

There’s also dotacat written in Rust for people who find lolcat too slow.

CrabAndBroom,

Fly-Pie is a good one! Also the same person makes modern versions of Burn My Windows, Desktop Cube and other such things.

Is Ubuntu deserving the hate? (lemmy.ml)

Long story short, I have a desktop with Fedora, lovely, fast, sleek and surprisingly reliable for a near rolling distro (it failed me only once back around Fedora 34 or something where it nuked Grub). Tried to install on a 2012 i7 MacBook Air… what a slog!!! Surprisingly Ubuntu runs very smooth on it. I have been bothering all...

CrabAndBroom,

Personally I don’t really hate Ubuntu, but I tend to find that everything it does, there’s something else that does it slightly better.

For example, it’s supposed to be a good ‘beginner’ distro or good for something that ‘just works’, but IMO things like Mint or Pop!OS do it a little better these days. Snap is supposed to be a nice simple way to manage packages without worrying about dependencies, but Flatpak does it better and so on.

So yeah I don’t hate it, I just don’t see any particular reason to really use it. Opinions may vary though of course.

CrabAndBroom,

I think the A031 Tumbleweed logo is actually my favourite there. But the winner’s not bad either.

CrabAndBroom,

TBH I dislike Appimage purely because I can’t be bothered to go and check them all individually for new versions all the time, it feels like being on Windows again. I don’t mind a little bloat for the sake of convenience. But that’s just personal preference of course.

CrabAndBroom,

Also, I’d say install Windows first, then Linux. Windows assumes it’s the only OS in the universe and tends to steamroll over the whole boot setup, so I’ve found it much easier to just let Windows do whatever it wants first, then fix it with Linux afterwards.

CrabAndBroom,

Mullvad I think is very good for this. They have an extensive description of their no-logs policy on their site, and have also been raided by the police before, who apparently were unable to find any customer information.

Shenanigans are always possible of course so you shouldn’t 100% blindly trust anyone, but all the available evidence seems to point to them being pretty legit IMO.

CrabAndBroom,

Microsoft has been trying to make me hate computers since the 90s lol

CrabAndBroom, (edited )

If you’re bored, a fun activity is to show the headline (and sub-header) to a non-Linux person and watch their face lol.

Ubuntu Budgie switches its approach to Wayland

Elementary OS going full speed ahead, but Parachutist Parakeet considers a new, post-Enlightenment glide path

I'm currently downloading a show that is on a service to which I subscribe

I have a Galaxy Tab S7 and for a trip to Spain I downloaded some stuff to watch on the flight. When I got on the plane none of the stuff downloaded on Disney+ would play. Maybe an issue with downloading to the SD card? I don’t know, but regardless Disney offers SD card as a download destination so they should make sure it is...

CrabAndBroom,

I’ve done this before with Netflix too. I was trying to watch a show and it was constantly stuttering, pausing and dropping out to unwatchable resolution. I know it wasn’t my internet connection because the torrent for the episode downloaded in like two minutes lol.

CrabAndBroom,

Using a file manager without split panels feels like going back to the 90s for me now. You mean I have to open two different windows?!

CrabAndBroom,

Yeah every once in a while I see a screenshot of GNOME that looks really nice and get tempted to try it again, and usually within a day or two I’m back to KDE lol.

No shade to people who like to use GNOME, but it’s really not for me.

Gamers who have gamed for a long time

do you find it difficult to get into games? I’ve got Epic Games and Steam Games libraries chock-full of classic top-tier games along with many other newer games like Stray or 2077, and a bunch of indie titles. I just can’t be bothered to download and install them, much less try to get into the characters and storylines. Used...

CrabAndBroom,

Yeah for me it’s the sheer number of games, plus the increasing enshittification of games and just being older and having less free time. I literally have like 200 games I’ve got for free across various platforms, so if I fire one up and it’s clearly not finished, or it’s immediately trying to sell me stuff or even if it’s just a bit boring and annoying I’ll dump it immediately and move onto the next one.

Whereas when I was a kid I had a SNES with about 10 cartridges and that was it, so I played the shit out of those even when they sucked lol

CrabAndBroom,

Yeah same here, new objects have to go through customs first lol

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