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I left Windows for Mint about 2 months ago and it's just so much better. All that stupid bullshit you have to deal with on windows just went away, I felt actual

I left Windows for Mint about 2 months ago and it's just so much better. All that stupid bullshit you have to deal with on windows just went away, I felt actual relief. No more ads, no more forced updates because you walked away from your computer, no processes that it forces you to run so that it can spy on your mics. It just works. If you want it to look like windows 7 you can, if you want it to look like an iPad you can. I've made mine into a weird hybrid of windows 7 and OSX which I love. My start button actually shows my programs instead of loading bing and showing me 100MB of pictures of nigerian football players. The only thing that was stopping me before was games, but games all work on linux now. Other than one or two that require specific anti-cheats that use 0days to hijack windows, there's basically nothing that doesn't run on linux now. In fact, a lot of my games actually work better because proton dynamically patches out bugs from the original windows implementations. I don't think I've found any software or anything that I use that hasn't got a linux version. Windows is dead to me, I haven't used it since.

Maxburn 4y ago
Me too my friend, I find mint a decent general desktop OS and I rarely touch windows for personal use. Still struggling with iTunes though.
- wombatpm 4y ago
  Everyone struggles with iTunes. And every update makes it worse. I’ve used it on Mac and Windows and both suck
  - Maxburn 4y ago
    I just don't have a mac, that's really the only issue here. I went out of my way years ago to try and wrap my head around itunes, all the (too many) things it does etc. They mess that up a bit with updates (not as bad as windows) but it isn't terrible once you realize it's a whole bunch of apps rolled up into one. It doesn't do any of them really great but it's just a gateway to my devices so it isn't horrible.
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    > Everyone struggles with iTunes. And every update makes it worse. I’ve used it on Mac and Windows and both suck It's technically no longer even there on macOS, thank God. It was becoming a sort of kitchen-sink dumping place, and I am glad that I can now manage my iPad through Finder (though I still wish I could just treat it like any other bulk-storage device, as I can on Windows, at least it's there). There are apps called "Music.app" and "TV.app", if I want to access my music and videos the Apple way, but I can and do just ignore them if I don't want to use them. There are probably a multitude of other features that were in the old iTunes app that I never even noticed or have forgotten, but I think that a lot of users who used to be forced into using iTunes on macOS now can avoid both it and its replacements.
    - Maxburn 4y ago
      What are you using for a music replacement app? My library is 32GB now and I don't think I'm using any of the other itunes features these days, just using it as the path to sideload MP3s.
      - JadeNB 4y ago
        > What are you using for a music replacement app? My library is 32GB now and I don't think I'm using any of the other itunes features these days, just using it as the path to sideload MP3s. After fighting a long time to own my music, I have to admit I got tired of maintaining a library, and mostly listen on Spotify these days. But I never liked the library-based model anyway, and so (when still dipping into my own library, and especially when watching movies) prefer an app like VLC that accepts that I might occasionally just want to play a media file without making a library. (Same thing with Books: for some reason, Apple can accept that I might just occasionally want casually to open a PDF in Preview, but finds it impossible to believe I might want to do the same thing with an ePub. I still haven't found a good non-library-based ePub app for macOS; I wind up just using the one that comes with calibre.)
        Maxburn 4y ago
        epub; BookFusion. No mac app but the web reader might work for you. Sync reading position and notes between devices. I just read a lot of books and it works great for that. It even has a cablbre plugin used to upload books to it. https://www.bookfusion.com https://www.bookfusion.com
- thebiss 4y ago
  Can you use music.apple.com under chrome on mint?
  - Maxburn 4y ago
    Pretty much the only use case I have for itunes is to sideload music to my iphone, so I go into my windows partition a couple times a month to do it.
    - djcannabiz 4y ago
      I had a similar problem, I just switched to foobar2k https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669 on my iphone. There are some... interesting UI design choices, but no itunes required. Decoupled https://decoupled.app/ https://decoupled.app/ is also nice.
      - Maxburn 4y ago
        LOL, Decoupled had me in the first paragraph of that about page! I don't know why I never thought to try third party for music stuff, I will definitely check these out, thank you. My music library is about 32GB now, hope those can deal with that.
- MagicMoonlight 4y ago
  What do you use iTunes for? You can transfer photos etc out of IOS on mint. For music and videos you can download VLC on IOS and then it has a magic feature where it opens a localhost website which you can visit on your PC and transfer everything across over Wifi.
garbanz0 4y ago
My experience leaving Windows was like yours... until I did a software upgrade or had to replace my graphics card, etc. Hours of fighting the command line, glitchy graphical bugs. For me, the desire to cultivate my linux computer like a garden ended up being a distraction from using my computer like the tool it is. Just my 2cents.
- tuxinator 4y ago
  When was the last time you tried Linux? I just replaced my entire computer (CPU, motherboard, GPU, etc) and my Debian (bookworm) installation booted with zero issues. No need to reinstall anything. I certainly remember fighting with xorg.conf settings, graphics drivers, and kernel modules in the past. I haven't had to deal with troubles like that in nearly 10 years though.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    > When was the last time you tried Linux? Ugh. Like, literally every time someone talks about having problems with Linux this exact same sentence is said in response. I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly. It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.
    - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      There is a lot of Linux distros out there too. Trying Debian Stable versus a bleeding edge Arch Linux will likely give wildly varying degrees and complexity of 'issues'.
    - burnished 4y ago
      What would you want them to do differently? They believe things have improved over time and want to share that information. I think it’s helpful but you seem to think it’s tiring or that they just shouldn’t?
      - 4y ago
accrual 4y ago
> no processes that it forces you to run so that it can spy on your mics Is this hyperbole or a real thing that happened?

Maxburn 4y ago

Me too my friend, I find mint a decent general desktop OS and I rarely touch windows for personal use. Still struggling with iTunes though.

wombatpm 4y ago
Everyone struggles with iTunes. And every update makes it worse. I’ve used it on Mac and Windows and both suck
- Maxburn 4y ago
  I just don't have a mac, that's really the only issue here. I went out of my way years ago to try and wrap my head around itunes, all the (too many) things it does etc. They mess that up a bit with updates (not as bad as windows) but it isn't terrible once you realize it's a whole bunch of apps rolled up into one. It doesn't do any of them really great but it's just a gateway to my devices so it isn't horrible.
- JadeNB 4y ago
  > Everyone struggles with iTunes. And every update makes it worse. I’ve used it on Mac and Windows and both suck It's technically no longer even there on macOS, thank God. It was becoming a sort of kitchen-sink dumping place, and I am glad that I can now manage my iPad through Finder (though I still wish I could just treat it like any other bulk-storage device, as I can on Windows, at least it's there). There are apps called "Music.app" and "TV.app", if I want to access my music and videos the Apple way, but I can and do just ignore them if I don't want to use them. There are probably a multitude of other features that were in the old iTunes app that I never even noticed or have forgotten, but I think that a lot of users who used to be forced into using iTunes on macOS now can avoid both it and its replacements.
  - Maxburn 4y ago
    What are you using for a music replacement app? My library is 32GB now and I don't think I'm using any of the other itunes features these days, just using it as the path to sideload MP3s.
    - JadeNB 4y ago
      > What are you using for a music replacement app? My library is 32GB now and I don't think I'm using any of the other itunes features these days, just using it as the path to sideload MP3s. After fighting a long time to own my music, I have to admit I got tired of maintaining a library, and mostly listen on Spotify these days. But I never liked the library-based model anyway, and so (when still dipping into my own library, and especially when watching movies) prefer an app like VLC that accepts that I might occasionally just want to play a media file without making a library. (Same thing with Books: for some reason, Apple can accept that I might just occasionally want casually to open a PDF in Preview, but finds it impossible to believe I might want to do the same thing with an ePub. I still haven't found a good non-library-based ePub app for macOS; I wind up just using the one that comes with calibre.)
      - Maxburn 4y ago
        epub; BookFusion. No mac app but the web reader might work for you. Sync reading position and notes between devices. I just read a lot of books and it works great for that. It even has a cablbre plugin used to upload books to it. https://www.bookfusion.com https://www.bookfusion.com
thebiss 4y ago
Can you use music.apple.com under chrome on mint?
- Maxburn 4y ago
  Pretty much the only use case I have for itunes is to sideload music to my iphone, so I go into my windows partition a couple times a month to do it.
  - djcannabiz 4y ago
    I had a similar problem, I just switched to foobar2k https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669 on my iphone. There are some... interesting UI design choices, but no itunes required. Decoupled https://decoupled.app/ https://decoupled.app/ is also nice.
    - Maxburn 4y ago
      LOL, Decoupled had me in the first paragraph of that about page! I don't know why I never thought to try third party for music stuff, I will definitely check these out, thank you. My music library is about 32GB now, hope those can deal with that.
MagicMoonlight 4y ago
What do you use iTunes for? You can transfer photos etc out of IOS on mint. For music and videos you can download VLC on IOS and then it has a magic feature where it opens a localhost website which you can visit on your PC and transfer everything across over Wifi.

garbanz0 4y ago

My experience leaving Windows was like yours... until I did a software upgrade or had to replace my graphics card, etc. Hours of fighting the command line, glitchy graphical bugs. For me, the desire to cultivate my linux computer like a garden ended up being a distraction from using my computer like the tool it is. Just my 2cents.

tuxinator 4y ago
When was the last time you tried Linux? I just replaced my entire computer (CPU, motherboard, GPU, etc) and my Debian (bookworm) installation booted with zero issues. No need to reinstall anything. I certainly remember fighting with xorg.conf settings, graphics drivers, and kernel modules in the past. I haven't had to deal with troubles like that in nearly 10 years though.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  > When was the last time you tried Linux? Ugh. Like, literally every time someone talks about having problems with Linux this exact same sentence is said in response. I'm pretty much always trying Linux these days on various devices and I still constantly run into issues. Constantly. It's great that you have zero issues, but please consider that a lot of us aren't so fortunate.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    There is a lot of Linux distros out there too. Trying Debian Stable versus a bleeding edge Arch Linux will likely give wildly varying degrees and complexity of 'issues'.
  - burnished 4y ago
    What would you want them to do differently? They believe things have improved over time and want to share that information. I think it’s helpful but you seem to think it’s tiring or that they just shouldn’t?
    - 4y ago

accrual 4y ago

> no processes that it forces you to run so that it can spy on your mics Is this hyperbole or a real thing that happened?