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I tried Linux mint recently and was impressed. My parents seem to use it without issue. As long as you don’t game, need to use office or some other windoze sof

I tried Linux mint recently and was impressed. My parents seem to use it without issue. As long as you don’t game, need to use office or some other windoze software it seems like a viable choice.

rowanG077 5y ago
Games should work fine on Mint. The only reason I can't recommend Linux for most people is that there is no usable office suite. And no the libre and open office really are not usable.
- tryptophan 5y ago
  My parents mostly use google office for when they need it, which is like never. Libre-office seems a little rough around the edges, but it works for 95% of use cases I can think of.
- KozmoNau7 5y ago
  I've been exclusively using LibreOffice for ~10 years, and OpenOffice before that, and aside from just doing some things differently (not worse) compared to MS Office, it's been smooth sailing. And for most people Google Docs or... Office 365 are all they really need.
  - rowanG077 5y ago
    It's simply cannot touch Microsoft Office. And Microsoft Office is already a dumbster fire. And good luck if you want interoperability.
- indigo945 5y ago
  WPS Office is alright for most people, if you are okay with proprietary software from a Chinese vendor. However, it obviously doesn't cover e.g. Excel power user needs. Or you can just use Google Docs, or even the browser edition of Microsoft Office.
reader_mode 5y ago
Do you use a high DPI screen ?
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  If you use a high DPI screen things have been fine for many years. Mixed DPI is a different story, no idea if it works well, but it doesn't really work well on Windows, either.
  - josephg 5y ago
    I use mixed dpi screens on Linux mint. It works but it’s officially experimental and there are some small bugs. (After sleeping all my window move to one of my displays. And some other small things)
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      > After sleeping all my window move to one of my displays. Well Windows 10 does that randomly as well, don't even need to use mixed DPI. Arguably "better than Windows for multihead" is a very low bar to clear, since Windows is utter garbage at dealing with it.
cassepipe 5y ago
Installed it for a friend. Most of his steam games were working and some who didn't I easily installed them with Lutris Iirc. Libre office may not look super polished but it really covers any normal person's use case and beyond. The only thing he does not get are updates but automatic updates are coming soon anyways. I am a programmer and I run Linux Mint myself on all my machines because it just works. Any software that's not in the packages I use an Appimage or Flatpak or language specific packages manager such as cargo.
falcrist 5y ago
As recently as a decade ago, Linux was borderline unusable for a home computer. Lots of driver problems. Lack of software. In contrast to Apple's OSs (and increasingly Windows) which assumes you don't know what you're doing, Linux as a whole basically assumes you already know everything you need to know about what you're doing. Fixing a display issue could be a whole adventure, complete with side-quests as you worked your way to a solution. Not the best experience TBH. Some time between 2010-ish and 2015, Linux (at least Mint and Ubuntu) suddenly became MUCH better. I'm not saying it's perfect, but things tend to "just work" much more often. A lot of the open source software improved by leaps and bounds during that period as well. Sadly for the past few years, I game at home, and I'm stuck using windows programs at work (embedded development), so I haven't really kept up well with Linux.
- jtolmar 5y ago
  > As recently as a decade ago, Linux was borderline unusable for a home computer. Lots of driver problems. Lack of software. [...] Linux as a whole basically assumes you already know everything you need to know about what you're doing. This really doesn't match my experiences at all. Using Linux in 2008 was essentially the same as using Windows. I got my parents using Ubuntu in 2010 without complaints. Instead of the "you have to know what you're doing" line that's been around for 30 years, I think the situation has been more "80% of the installs works perfectly" for a long time. But if you get hit by that 20%, from a driver issue or whatever, then expect a few days of debugging followed by constant hassles for the life of that machine. And yeah, a lot of niche professional programs are Windows-only, so if you need them you're stuck. And gaming on Linux has been getting better, but only the chart-toppers and obscure indie games have actual Linux support with any regularity, with anything between those extremes rarely having any support.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
I mostly play older games, but the ones I play work on Steam through PlayOnLinux. I've used Linux as my primary OS off and on since the 90's, I switched back again recently and I'm impressed. Almost everything worked except for the color printer, and that doesn't work on Windows either, I have to get the MacBook out. 2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop, for sure.
josephg 5y ago
Viable, but not great. My Linux mint install gets a duplicate mouse cursor appearing sometimes, just floating on top of everything on my desktop. If I don’t reboot the machine often weird things break. Like after a few days my media keys stop working on my keyboard. My trackpad sometimes stops working and needs to be power cycled. (One time after awaking from sleep my mouse was moving upside down.) The activity monitor in the tray freezes for me after a week or so. I’ve had some hard graphical freezes as well, which I assume is an AMD graphics driver bug. Then bugs aside, I hate how inconsistent the keyboard shortcuts are between applications. I’ve been spoiled by macos where the same keyboard shortcuts to move a text editing cursor (cmd+left/right and so on) work the same in every application. Not so in Linux - and I can’t even configure it to work based on my muscle memory because IntelliJ doesn’t support using the start/meta key as a modifier. And some applications don’t support smooth scrolling for some reason. So yeah, it’s viable. But I can’t say I’m impressed. I love having the source code, and knowing that if I want to I can actually fix these issues. But I’m still considering bouncing back to macos for my next computer.
- sixothree 5y ago
  There's always that one deal-breaker on linux. Some hardware that you need just doesn't work or the software does some very minor thing that makes it unusable.
  - josephg 5y ago
    Yeah. Though I'd say broken things are the exception, not the rule now. It mostly works most of the time. And the list of broken / awkward interactions is much smaller than the list of stuff that just works out of the box.
philliphaydon 5y ago
I got sick of any Debian based OS. On AMD hardware I get nothing but problems on Pop_OS!, Mint, Ubuntu. Screen tearing, screen flicking, random reboots or screen freezing etc. Been on Manjaro as the recommendation of someone on HN and it's been absolutely rock-solid. No more random reboots, no screen tearing out of the box, no flicking. Works and works well, but still have the occasional issue. There was an update the other day where I had to find out which package wasn't being used and remove it so I could do an upgrade. If you update NPM outside of pacman it gets messy when theres an upgrade in pacman. But after ~10 years of on/off use of Linux, then Jan 2020 putting myself on it full time, I'm a bit over it, Windows just works, since Windows 10 I've never had any issues at all. I miss just getting work done and gaming. Edit: Oh the thing I hate most about Linux is multi-monitor setup. I had 2x 1440p monitors, 1 was 144hz and the other was 60hz. If either 1 was connected, boot time was like 20s, very quick, if both were connected, it was 2-3 minutes to boot. Took me ages to figure out having 2 different monitors caused Ubuntu boot times to suffer. If I took the wifes 144hz monitor which was same as mine, boot time < 20s, but mix-match, 2-3 minutes.

I tried Linux mint recently and was impressed. My parents seem to use it without issue. As long as you don’t game, need to use office or some other windoze software it seems like a viable choice.

rowanG077 5y ago

Games should work fine on Mint. The only reason I can't recommend Linux for most people is that there is no usable office suite. And no the libre and open office really are not usable.

tryptophan 5y ago
My parents mostly use google office for when they need it, which is like never. Libre-office seems a little rough around the edges, but it works for 95% of use cases I can think of.
KozmoNau7 5y ago
I've been exclusively using LibreOffice for ~10 years, and OpenOffice before that, and aside from just doing some things differently (not worse) compared to MS Office, it's been smooth sailing. And for most people Google Docs or... Office 365 are all they really need.
- rowanG077 5y ago
  It's simply cannot touch Microsoft Office. And Microsoft Office is already a dumbster fire. And good luck if you want interoperability.
indigo945 5y ago
WPS Office is alright for most people, if you are okay with proprietary software from a Chinese vendor. However, it obviously doesn't cover e.g. Excel power user needs. Or you can just use Google Docs, or even the browser edition of Microsoft Office.

reader_mode 5y ago

Do you use a high DPI screen ?

formerly_proven 5y ago
If you use a high DPI screen things have been fine for many years. Mixed DPI is a different story, no idea if it works well, but it doesn't really work well on Windows, either.
- josephg 5y ago
  I use mixed dpi screens on Linux mint. It works but it’s officially experimental and there are some small bugs. (After sleeping all my window move to one of my displays. And some other small things)
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    > After sleeping all my window move to one of my displays. Well Windows 10 does that randomly as well, don't even need to use mixed DPI. Arguably "better than Windows for multihead" is a very low bar to clear, since Windows is utter garbage at dealing with it.

cassepipe 5y ago

Installed it for a friend. Most of his steam games were working and some who didn't I easily installed them with Lutris Iirc. Libre office may not look super polished but it really covers any normal person's use case and beyond. The only thing he does not get are updates but automatic updates are coming soon anyways. I am a programmer and I run Linux Mint myself on all my machines because it just works. Any software that's not in the packages I use an Appimage or Flatpak or language specific packages manager such as cargo.

falcrist 5y ago

As recently as a decade ago, Linux was borderline unusable for a home computer. Lots of driver problems. Lack of software. In contrast to Apple's OSs (and increasingly Windows) which assumes you don't know what you're doing, Linux as a whole basically assumes you already know everything you need to know about what you're doing. Fixing a display issue could be a whole adventure, complete with side-quests as you worked your way to a solution. Not the best experience TBH. Some time between 2010-ish and 2015, Linux (at least Mint and Ubuntu) suddenly became MUCH better. I'm not saying it's perfect, but things tend to "just work" much more often. A lot of the open source software improved by leaps and bounds during that period as well. Sadly for the past few years, I game at home, and I'm stuck using windows programs at work (embedded development), so I haven't really kept up well with Linux.

jtolmar 5y ago
> As recently as a decade ago, Linux was borderline unusable for a home computer. Lots of driver problems. Lack of software. [...] Linux as a whole basically assumes you already know everything you need to know about what you're doing. This really doesn't match my experiences at all. Using Linux in 2008 was essentially the same as using Windows. I got my parents using Ubuntu in 2010 without complaints. Instead of the "you have to know what you're doing" line that's been around for 30 years, I think the situation has been more "80% of the installs works perfectly" for a long time. But if you get hit by that 20%, from a driver issue or whatever, then expect a few days of debugging followed by constant hassles for the life of that machine. And yeah, a lot of niche professional programs are Windows-only, so if you need them you're stuck. And gaming on Linux has been getting better, but only the chart-toppers and obscure indie games have actual Linux support with any regularity, with anything between those extremes rarely having any support.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

I mostly play older games, but the ones I play work on Steam through PlayOnLinux. I've used Linux as my primary OS off and on since the 90's, I switched back again recently and I'm impressed. Almost everything worked except for the color printer, and that doesn't work on Windows either, I have to get the MacBook out. 2022 will be the year of Linux on the desktop, for sure.

josephg 5y ago

Viable, but not great. My Linux mint install gets a duplicate mouse cursor appearing sometimes, just floating on top of everything on my desktop. If I don’t reboot the machine often weird things break. Like after a few days my media keys stop working on my keyboard. My trackpad sometimes stops working and needs to be power cycled. (One time after awaking from sleep my mouse was moving upside down.) The activity monitor in the tray freezes for me after a week or so. I’ve had some hard graphical freezes as well, which I assume is an AMD graphics driver bug. Then bugs aside, I hate how inconsistent the keyboard shortcuts are between applications. I’ve been spoiled by macos where the same keyboard shortcuts to move a text editing cursor (cmd+left/right and so on) work the same in every application. Not so in Linux - and I can’t even configure it to work based on my muscle memory because IntelliJ doesn’t support using the start/meta key as a modifier. And some applications don’t support smooth scrolling for some reason. So yeah, it’s viable. But I can’t say I’m impressed. I love having the source code, and knowing that if I want to I can actually fix these issues. But I’m still considering bouncing back to macos for my next computer.

sixothree 5y ago
There's always that one deal-breaker on linux. Some hardware that you need just doesn't work or the software does some very minor thing that makes it unusable.
- josephg 5y ago
  Yeah. Though I'd say broken things are the exception, not the rule now. It mostly works most of the time. And the list of broken / awkward interactions is much smaller than the list of stuff that just works out of the box.

philliphaydon 5y ago

I got sick of any Debian based OS. On AMD hardware I get nothing but problems on Pop_OS!, Mint, Ubuntu. Screen tearing, screen flicking, random reboots or screen freezing etc. Been on Manjaro as the recommendation of someone on HN and it's been absolutely rock-solid. No more random reboots, no screen tearing out of the box, no flicking. Works and works well, but still have the occasional issue. There was an update the other day where I had to find out which package wasn't being used and remove it so I could do an upgrade. If you update NPM outside of pacman it gets messy when theres an upgrade in pacman. But after ~10 years of on/off use of Linux, then Jan 2020 putting myself on it full time, I'm a bit over it, Windows just works, since Windows 10 I've never had any issues at all. I miss just getting work done and gaming. Edit: Oh the thing I hate most about Linux is multi-monitor setup. I had 2x 1440p monitors, 1 was 144hz and the other was 60hz. If either 1 was connected, boot time was like 20s, very quick, if both were connected, it was 2-3 minutes to boot. Took me ages to figure out having 2 different monitors caused Ubuntu boot times to suffer. If I took the wifes 144hz monitor which was same as mine, boot time < 20s, but mix-match, 2-3 minutes.