9mo ago

1 month of Linux Mint and some thoughts.

About a month ago I switched to Linux mint from windows 11.

The first thing I noticed was mint being faster and less bloated than windows 11.

I also liked having actual control over my settings without a corporation being able to undo them at will.

Another thing I noticed was not having to add extensions to text files to run as a program instead having the option in properties.

For certain windows programs and games I was able to use wine which was great because I like to use gamemaker 8.1 which was made before they added linux support.

I tried different wine environments starting with bottles then trying Steam proton and Lutris. With Lutris being the one I ended up using due to it being the only one that I could get to run every program I needed.

The ms paint alternative called drawing took some use to due to it automatically cropping out parts of the image outside of the line when pasting in a screenshot from the clipboard.

Although I do still miss ms paint but that is mostly nostalgia.

Fortunately there is an option to save the screenshot after taking it.

Migrating from windows I appreciate the SUPER key bringing up a menu on the bottom left which brings up some apps and the search bar. Which always searches on the OS unlike windows 11 which sometimes searches the internet instead.

Another detail I noticed is if you type paint or notepad in the search it brings up drawing and the text editor which is nice for people transitioning to Linux.

Being able to move the panel or add new ones was also a breath of fresh air from windows 11 making the task bar more restrictive.

Having the option of deb packages and flatpacks is really useful as well.

I also no longer have to worry about telemetry or microsoft trying to show me ads or pop ups.

TL:DR Mint is a way better experience than windows 11.

72 comments

There's a great ms paint alternative from KDE called Kolour Paint, which you can grab from the software center.

Now list all the bad things.
- Need to launch DaVinci Resolve Studio from the CLI to figure out why it won’t launch from the GUI, and then launch it again with a list of libraries to exclude in order to get it working.
  Really weird errors if you try to use a USB stick formatted with FAT after applying a kernel update but before rebooting.
  Multiple password prompts when attempting to update Flatpak applications over ssh in its default configuration.
  Basic applications included with commercial operating systems often missing (e.g. paint application missing from Pop!_OS).
  Good luck figuring out emergency mode if you don’t know what fstab is. And changing kernel parameters on Rocky 9 must be handled via grubby, not by editing configs like in Debian, Arch, or Pop.
  Can’t emulate SSD on VM qcow2 files on Debian unless you use the version in backports; can emulate SSD but can’t use anything involving spice in RHEL9+clones unless you add a copr repo because it’s been removed. This makes desktop virtualization annoying.
  Can’t participate in Microsoft Teams calls if the input and output audio devices are the same device or the call disconnects/reconnects every few seconds. Microphone and speaker must be separate devices for optimal experience.
  Can’t use OBS Virtual Camera in Teams on Firefox.
  That’s the stuff I’ve dealt with in the past 3 weeks.
  
  I’ll add a few more
  Lightroom doesn’t work at all, needing either a reboot to launch windows or a VM that struggles with performance. OSS alternatives won’t really handle the size of libraries im working with from limited experience with them.
  Multiple displays of different resolutions and refresh rates wouldn’t work properly (though I hear this one is becoming less of an issue with the new DE software)
  Nvidia drivers
  
  I love the fact that at least 3 of these issues are still Microsoft's fault.
  
  This is satire, right?
- Not OP but about the same amount of time:
  Mint refused to put sound out through my sound card. It saw my card, knew the exact brand and card and driver version, could see when I plugged and unplugged things from each of the jacks, but would not output any audio. I eventually solved this by just using the DAC on my new speakers and tossing the sound card lol.
  Text scaling with an nVidia card is broken and looks god awful. 1440p monitor scrolling the Mint website and the text is gray/yellow jaggy mess. Installing an experimental driver and scaling up a bit fixes it for the most part but is a sub-ideal solution as I don't like scaling.
  There's no perfect replacement for the Snip tool. I want to just spr+shift+s, click/drag a box, and done. So far the closest I've gotten is shift+prntscrn, click/drag, enter, which is more annoying by far.
  There's no dark theme for mint-Y. I love the look of the XP/7ish theme it's got going on but it's light mode only. Travesty.
  Too many password prompts when updating flatpaks. I should have used a way shorter password for this OS.
  Plugging in 2 monitors of different screen resolutions can cause some serious issues if I alt/tab. Fixed by unplugging and plugging in one of the monitors but it's fucking annoying.
  
  There's no perfect replacement for the Snip tool. I want to just spr+shift+s, click/drag a box, and done. So far the closest I've gotten is shift+prntscrn, click/drag, enter, which is more annoying by far.
  You can surely rebind that to just PRTSCR? That's the default for me. I much prefer being able to adjust the rectangle after an initial selection, not to mention that it remembers what it last was, so that you can to multiple grabs that are perfectly positioned to evaluate or illustrate some difference.
- Scaling is inconsistent, so if it's your media PC, you may end up standing in front of the TV to configure things.
- I am at around 3 weeks of using Mint as my daily driver, here are the issues I have had:
  My Realtek sound card would not output 5.1 over S/PDIF. I worked on this quite a bit before finding a thread of someone with the same model having the same issue where even the guru over on the Mint forums couldn't make it work. Solution was to just use the analog 5.1 out instead.
  NVIDIA drivers are not amazing, especially running multiple displays with different resolutions. I get poor performance on my secondary monitors when running even moderate GPU tasks on my main display. In Windows I could watch a stream while playing a game in a borderless window, but in Mint I will get choppy framerate on the secondary displays. Further game performance is mostly good but I get occasional choppy performance in Proton games, even running via Lutris. None of this is a deal breaker, just mildly annoying.
  This is less of an issue with Linux and more of me being a doofus, but I went to add my ntfs drives to fstab so they mount when I start up. I have done linux server admin professionally for 20 years, surely I can manage fstab - nope! A careless typo caused a startup failure. Fortunately it was easy to boot into maintenance mode and fix the issue.
  
  The wonderful thing about living in a fully Linux world is that you can ditch NTFS. None of my computers or disks use it. It's all ext4 or btrfs, and then ZFS on my media server.

Sometimes i like to thinker, but when i need a Computer to just work/rely on (to play bills and stuff) i use Linux Mint

This is pretty similar to my experience. I don't have time or inclination to muck about with my operating system more than strictly necessary. Mint just works out of the box and does everything it needs to do without getting in the way.

I'll mostly share tips regarding what you said, OK?
Quite a few programs still rely on files in ~/.config/. So if you feel like the options in a program are "missing", give its config file a check. (To see hidden directories: Ctrl+H)
There's another MS Paint alternative called Kolourpaint. I personally prefer it over Drawing; once you install it you'll need to install quite a bit of stuff from the KDE environment, but I think that it's worth.
The super key can be configured to your taste. For example mine brings up composing, so if I type Super+e+1 I get ɛ, Super+a+1 I get ɐ, so goes on. (I open the menu with Alt+F1, by the way.) As implied, as a further tip - if you need certain characters you can create custom keystrokes through a file called .XCompose.
- To expand on this some if you're more of a visual person:
  If you open the keyboard application, (just called "keyboard" when you do a search in your applications.) the second tab is "Shortcuts". From there you can see an interface that shows and helps you change all the shortcuts on the system.
  You can use the search feature to narrow things down quickly. The multiple "screenshot" shortcuts were nice to find for some common use cases I do.

Check out Pinta for a decent paint replacement
- Also KolourPaint
- Pinta would be great if it didn't crash. I've only noticed it getting worse over time.
- Seconded - most notably the ability to tell it to resize when you’re pasting an image larger than the canvas. It strikes me as a mix between Paint and Paint.NET.
- LazPaint is also a decent alternative, very lightweight, though it does take a while to get used to it, several shortcuts are unlike other programs

My personal experience with Linux over the past few years has drastically changed from before being limited by how few games work on Linux when many tools do a decent job, to almost all games running thanks to proton and being limited to some windows specific tools not existing/working on Linux (mostly adobe suite). I'm really in awe how much the Linux ecosystem has improved over the last few years. I'm daily driving it with so few roadblocks for day-to-day use that unless there is a specific program required for work, there's no hurdles for the majority of my tasks.

Welcome aboard! Have a look at krita, Albert, and flameshot for some alternatives to the things you talked about. I like em, maybe you will too :D

On of my favorite small Linux things is you have a second text buffer other then the ctl+c ctl+v. Middle click pastes whatever text was last selected.
- Ooooh I though middle click is just a shortcut for Ctrl+c or Ctrl+v, depending on the context. Good to know it's a separate buffer!

There's always going to be that game... For me it's home world. The best space game without drama. If they made it for console... No issues. But I hate computers. I didn't know there was a home world 2. I'm now going to have to buy a computer and it's going to have to run home world 3. I'm sure there isn't going to be a linux port of it. Not yet. When there is. It will be amazing.
- Homeworld 3 is looking well received on Linux via proton: https://www.protondb.com/app/1840080?device=pc

I'm not a gamer, but I've tried all types of distros, and have gradually always come back to LM. Like you said stuff works as expected, and you're usually pleasantly surprised at how easy things are to do, setup, change and config. It's still a breath of fresh air if you have to use Windows for your day job. 😀

Mint was my first distro after migrating from Windows and I loved it! It was exactly what I wanted from my computer without any bs. I've discovered that I can change a lot by editing dconf files (or actually using a program for it).
Later I've tried KDE Neon and never looked back.

Another detail I noticed is if you type paint or notepad in the search it brings up drawing and the text editor which is nice for people transitioning to Linux.
That feature is actually implemented on a per-application basis. Each application has a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ or possibly in ~/.local/share/applications/ which includes a lot of the stuff you see in the Menu, including the application's name, the comment it displays when you hover over it, etc.
Check this out: In the Nemo file manager, go to /usr/share/applications/, then scroll down until you see Text Editor. If you double click this, it will launch Xed, Cinnamon's text editor. But if you right click, Open With...and choose Text Editor, you'll see a text file named xed.desktop with a bunch of stuff like Name{en_GB]=Text Editor so that it displays the name correctly in a bunch of languages. Scroll down near the bottom and you'll see an entry that says "Keywords=text;editor;tabs;highlighting;code;multiple;files;pluggable;notepad;" or something similar. If you type any of those words in the Menu's search bar, it'll come up with Text Editor. You'll need root permissions, but you can even add your own here if you want.
On the same note, if you type "letter" or "document" it will find LibreOffice Writer.
I never did like the idea of trying to make the search bar in the Start menu an omnifunctional thing, because all it does is make it useless. The Menu's search bar should be for finding and launching applications. Searching a couple directories full of .desktop files for names and keywords is very fast and responsive, which is what I want for launching programs. Recursive file searches through the entire file system take longer, as do web searches. Those functions should be separate.

Congratulations. My experience is pretty close to yours. Besides some software and shortcuts I miss from windows, it just works, and in these little moments I need help, there probably a dozen of threads with suggested solutions.
Be aware of Time Shift though. A part of new users report it taking all free space on the drive and crippling system, if used on ext3-4 file system + saving back ups to the system drive + having things like flatpack or TS's own folders not excluded. It happened to me and a lot of others, as I've encountered this question multiple times on the web, so keep an eye on it. You can actually open any save point as a folder from TS's interface and see if it saves what it shouldn't.

Another detail I noticed is if you type paint or notepad in the search it brings up drawing and the text editor which is nice for people transitioning to Linux.
These are the sort of details that make me happy. Similar thing with the Spotlight menu on MacOS.

run text files as a program?
- No .exe, just run scripts that you don't need to make .bat or anything like that. That's what I assume they mean.
- Change permissions and it will try to execute. If you have a valid script then you are good to go
  
  yeah just sounded like a file with actual.txt which I would change to .run or something else if I was going to make it an executable.

I have been meaning to create a mspaint for Linux. I typically try to copy the layout and features almost exactly so people can enjoy free and open source versions of software they may miss.
I'll get right on to it as soon as I can, but I have been having trouble with drawing programs in Godot.

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