southsamurai

Eh, it worked for me the best back when I was new to Linux, and I’ve never tried anything that was better, just different since then.

I went through the usual Ubuntu experiment, but their baked in DE at the time was just unpleasant. Tried manjaro? I think, it’s hard to recall if that was before or after that initial flurry of trying things out. But there were a half dozen that got suggested back on the Linux for noobs subreddit when win10 came along amd I was noping out.

Mint did the trick. Cinnamon as a DE did what I wanted, how I wanted it. It came with the stuff I needed to get started, and the repo had the stuff I wanted without having to add anything. It worked with all my hardware without jumping through hoops.

I’ve tried other stuff and like I said, nothing better, just different, so why screw around?

Tbh, that’s also how I feel about pretty much everything I tried though. If I had run into one of the others that happened to “fit” the same way back then, I’d likely still be with it because there’s really not a ton of difference in day to day use between any of them. The de matters more in that regard, imo.

Flip a coin between cinnamon and plasma

Pft, everyone knows macOS is just a fancy DE on top of Hannah Montana Linux

Calibre is the answer to pretty much all ebook questions, including this one.

Imo, the great thing about mint is stability first. You can tinker with it, but it’s generally about being able to plug it in, and get started using your device with as little puttering around as possible. It tends to be one of, if not the, most out of the box easy to install on any hardware.

Yes, it lags a little behind since it’s a derivative distro, and they tend to keep packages stable over recent. If you need more recent packages, it can suck since you’ll have more work to do to get it set up. But the average user doesn’t really need need bleeding edge stuff.

Then you’ve got their flagship DE, cinnamon. Again, right from install, it’s usable, visually easy, and pretty much bug free. But it still has enough depth of features to play with if you want.

When I started exploring Linux as win10 started being more and more obviously something I wasn’t going to like, I tried a bunch of distros on multiple machines. Mint ended up being the most reliable on all of them. By the time I was picking up enough background to be able to move to something else and make it work, mint was still doing what I needed, so I only play around with distros when I’m gifted old hardware and patch something together out of it. And I end up going to mint on those because there’s really nothing better for my needs, and I like it.

It’s one of those things where it depends on the computer. My old box that’s running win 7 has nothing but music and backed up media files on it, isn’t connected to the internet at all, and there’s really no point to it being encrypted.

My laptop leaves the house, and is connected, so it gets the treatment. My general purpose PC is, though that was more just because of a random choice rather than a carefully chosen decision. I figured I’d try it for a few weeks, then nuke it if it was a problem. It hasn’t been, and I haven’t needed to do anything to it that would require a change.

The other people in the house have chosen not to.

I’m not certain I would encrypt my main desktop again, just because it’s one more thing to do, and I’m getting lazy lol. I don’t have any sensitive files at all, and if things in the world get so bad that some agency is after me, I’m going to be hiding out up in this holler I know, not worrying about leaving a computer behind. Won’t be power anyway, and the only shit they’d find is some pirated files.

I’d be more worried about my phone and my main tablet than any of the PCs, and those would either go with me, or get melted down before I left. Thermite is cheap and easy.

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The headphones, and any other gear, probably make some difference; I’m balling on a budget, with some tin t2s for iem, and beyer 770s (80 ohm) for cans, through a fiio DAC for the cheaper devices (but my main player is an old lg g7). Now and then I’ll break out the portapros, and it’s more prevalent since they tend to be a little muffled in the mids and highs no matter what they’re plugged into.

But just the difference between something like gmmp, phonograph, musicolet, vanilla, etc, it can be a huge difference for me. Gmmp is decent, but there’s static where there shouldn’t be, and using the eq tends to distort on the low end even at low amounts of boost.

Can’t recall if vinyl stood out from the rest of the pack or not, since it’s been a couple of years since I did an extended comparison. All of the ones using the standard android audio processing were prone to some degree or another of mudiness to my ears. Some would get distorted playing through anything other than headphones, particularly with hip-hop and house tracks. That was with multiple aux cables, Bluetooth, and on multiple devices.

But, yeah, I would love it if max ported his eq app to other platforms.

Poweramp

There’s nothing else out there that’s really an equal, foss or not. The closest it gets is neutron, and that’s a hot mess of an app.

It’s the sound quality that’s standout. It doesn’t hurt that it’s a decent player in every other way too, but even apps built for audiophiles don’t match it in real use, in every situation.

None of the foss players are worth a damn sound wise; might as well use whatever comes with the device on that factor alone.

Windows 10.

The way they rolled it out, and everything they shoved down the throats of anyone that “upgraded”

I think 16 terabytes? Might have been twelve. I was consolidating a bunch of old drives and data into a nas for a friend. He just didn’t have the time, between working and school and brought me all the hardware and said “go” lol.

You’re asking about the desktop environment and its default settings, which may or may not be the same on any given distro.

But I have a tie between Plasma and Cinnamon (mint’s DE). They both take only minor tweaking to get where I want them, and I can use them both out of the box with zero complaints.

It isn’t hate. It’s disgust.

But it’s everything. The intrusion, the quasi monopoly, the shitty anti,consumer choices, all of it.

Since either Linux or win 7 do almost everything I need, I’ll never use anything higher than win 7

Gods, I hate those. I won’t watch anything that does it

Really?

Poweramp

The way it handles its own audio engine is pretty much the best available.

Cixelsydm’i

Dyslexia!

Yeah, obviously, or the title wouldn’t even have happened.

And it’s been that way for a while now. Back when windows 10 happened, I was able to install mint, get most of my preferred programs set up, and handle data transfer with zero CLI use. Which was awesome, because my dyslexic ass would have taken forever otherwise. It wasn’t until I started putzing around for pop and giggles that I even opened a terminal.

My mom w as able to jump right in after installation of mint, and go through the gui to try things out, no issues.

Thanks :)

Seems like it might be at least a partial answer to my preferences