Linux Mint 22 'Wilma' still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows Linux Mint 22 "Wilma" debuted late last week and holds on to the crown as the most sensible choice if you're looking to move across from Windows. Mint 22 With Cinnamon 6.2 showing a terminal window with Neofetch Cinnamon 6.2 on its native X11 is the best effort to turn modern GNOME back into a traditional desktop in town - …
I'm past wanting or needing novelty. I just want to get things done - mostly writing.
I've been running Mint for more than a decade. On a new system it's a 15 minute install, all defaults, just disable CapsLock and I'm happy.
Best of all is that year after year, version after version, it looks, feels and works the same. None of those "why in the hell did they do THAT?" moments.
I honestly believe that 90% of end users would be fine with an out-of-the-box Mint install instead of Windows or Mac OSs.
And as far as I can recall there gave been maybe two bugs ever that actually bothered me.
I honestly believe that 90% of end users would be fine with an out-of-the-box Mint install instead of Windows or Mac OSs.
I totally subscribe to that opinion.
We'll get there, with help from CrowdStrike et al. One fine day, we will get there.
But I'll be dead before that fine day happens.
Things can go South very quickly if Microsoft screws up again. I foresee them harvesting everything you do on your computer to train their A.I. (Recall but then 100 times worse), for example. Once this gets out people will start looking for alternatives, if they aren't already.
I predict we'll see Linux Mint's market share rise into the double digits the coming 2 years.
For writing, I prefer something like Manuskript or Scrivener (manuskript is open source and free so it gets a boost) rather than a full-blown word-processing application. It's all preference, obviously.
And I, too, would like to see VR take off on Linux. It is supposedly functional with SteamVR (native install, not the flatpak or snap packages), but for budgetary reasons I haven't yet tried it out.
> I just want to get things done
Why, aren't you of those who buy a computer just to play with the OS all day long??? The article seems to agree this is the main purpose of a computer (= some distros being better because they offer "better tools for switching desktop layouts", apparently the main task of people buying a computer).
Seriously, couldn't agree more. Mint is a no-nonsense work OS which allows you to get work done. Reminds me of the stereotypical butler who is always present when you need him, but vanishes into thin air as soon as his task is done.
Did you notice that most of us "happy Mint users" are writers? I'm a novelist myself, started with OO on Win7 a looong time ago. With Mint I can forget the OS and focus on my work. At 45 that's alright with me, the OS disappears and I can focus on my job. Best OS since System 7.1.2 with M$ Word 5.1: the OS was basically invisible, Word 5.1 got everything to get your job done, the laser worked exactly as expected and Mint is the only Distro that just does that, it b****y works. I can even swallow Flats instead of Debs as long as I get to to do what I *need* to do.
[Author here]
> some distros being better because they offer "better tools for switching desktop layouts"
Hey, hang on a sec.
The point is much simpler than that, and yes, it is important, IMHO.
A decade ago I started work at A Prominent North American Linux Vendor. It took about 2 hours on my first day to work out that GNOME was *not* for me. I also tried KDE $CURRENT, also a big no. Cinnamon, no ta, vertical taskbar broken. After a day's work, Xfce seemed the best bet. It still is.
Half an hour of adjustments and it's fine and I used it for the rest of my time there. Fast forward 3 years, I start at A Prominent German Linux Vendor. Give KDE a fresh go as it's the company's in-house fave. Still a big "no". Back to Xfce. Now, it takes 15min to set up just right, because I know what to do.
But that is the key point here. I know how to do it.
If you don't this should not exclude you. The "Panel Profiles" tool means that you don't need to. It can do GNOME 2, GNOME 3, Windows-style, all out of the box, all with built in components, and you shouldn't need to know.
GNOME doesn't support adjustments at all. The GNOME developers know what is best and it is your role to take it and be grateful. Please send them some money, BTW, the company that employs most of them is down to its last $20Bn.
KDE supports approximately 42,000 combinations and the fun is in tweaking 86 options in 27 tabs in 15 dialog boxes (and 6 settings files) to get it just so and that's what they like.
Xfce does all the important ones of KDE and it does it in about half a dozen settings total, but the Xfce folks take the position that you shouldn't need to know and will help you, and that's a good thing and is to be encouraged.
A good way to welcome a new user in is to make it easy for them to get the desktop layout comfy. If you already know what you like, as I do, you do it once and never again. This is a good intro. It's not a toy to be played with forever. It's a one-time convenience, and it's beneficial.
P.S. for the curious, from a default Xfce layout, here's what I do:
1. Unlock the main panel. Move to the left. Set to Deskbar layout, 4 rows.
2. Move all the icons off the bottom dock panel to below the start menu on the main one.
3. Remove the dock panel.
4. Ensure Whisker menus is on, bound to Super, 1 panel row, icon and text.
5. Uncheck square icons in the system tray. Add a weather control, CPU monitor.
6. 2 row clock, time then date, remove logout button because it's on the Whisker menu anyway.
7. Final adjustments, maybe a few separators for spacing it out a bit.
Takes 10-15min now. With Panel Profiles, it takes 5.
> yes, it is important, IMHO
I accept that it might be important to some specific people (I actually know a couple of those), but it still is a niche requirement. Most people are quite happy with the defaults the OS comes with, they change the background picture, and after that they go on with whatever they needed that computer for in the first place.
My Mint for instance uses the default Cinnamon, I just changed the wallpaper. I never felt the need to even try Xfce or MATE, Cinnamon works for me, as it doesn't have any major flaw--for me. Now am I a reference? No of course, but in my experience outside the IT world most people are rather like me.
TL;DR: IMHO time spent in the OS is time wasted*. Either you are actually working inside some program, or you should be with your family, seeing friends, outdoors, somewhere else. *shrug*
* Which is what I hate about Windowses >7: The time wasted accommodating it's sudden whims.
Wish it was so, but it is not. From personal experience.
My wife announced out of the blue one morning, that she needed a laptop NOW for a course she was going on that day. I dug out an old laptop I had spare. It had Windows pre-installed, but was very out of date. When it tried to update itself, it kept failing and was unusable. As I didn't have time to fix it, I threw a Mint install on there thinking that she would be able to get along with it.
She came home from the course that day in tears. She had only ever used Windows and simply could not get on with Mint. The main issue being the fact that it didn't have MS Office.
I had more time that evening to get a working install of Windows and Office on there for her to use for the rest of the week.
Totally missing the point. If your wife *needed* M$ Orifice she just needed it, period. Especially with all the new features, designed to lock you in, you should have fixed her Windows install *in the first place*. Then explored alternatives. You got it backwards man...
Not missing the point at all. She probably could have used Libre Office as it had the functions she needed. She just didn't know how to use it or the OS. Couldn't find what she needed and just ended up massively frustrated.
Possibly if she had time to get used to it she would be able to adapt. My point was that you can't just give a Mint install to 90% of users and expect them to be fine with it. Most people are not technical and can't just adapt. Many of the people who contribute to this site seem to forget that other peoples skill sets are different to their own.
I didn't mean it that way. There *are* unfortunately some things that M$ Orifice can do and LO can't, but nowadays it's mostly collaborative stuff designed to lock you in. From a pure functionality perspective LO current is basically Office 97/98 (sorry, Mac & Win versions had different denominations) upgraded for the XXI Century.
I find LO 7x and even 5.x better than MS 97, 2002/XP and MSO 2007. PDF export better.
I also used Word 2.0a, MS Office 4.3, Wordstar (DOS & CP/M), Wordperfect, StarOffice and Open Office in the past.
Styles browsers & Outline Navigation windows. No direct formatting.
The extra Save As in docx (edit only odt) is fine if you don't edit it in LO.
Switched to LO & GIMP from MS Office & PSP7 in 2014 on XP. Switched full time to Linux Mint + Mate after a few months of dual book in Win7. Only use the Windows in a VM for a badge and a a weather station (not needed as it has a decent dedicated panel).
Did run Notepad++ on WINE for a month or two and then discovered KATE.
No problem moving decades of email & browser settings from Thunderbird & Firefox on XP to Win7 and then Linux Mint.
I've a spare laptop win Win10. Updates are a pain. Not used it for any actual work or games, just so I can see the madness.
Electronics & programming for decades, now a writer. But my XP copy of Eagle and key installed fine on WINE. The Ham radio stuff works on Linux too.
Perhaps I have a more intelligent wife: She moved from Windows XP at work to Mint at home entirely without issue. She had a couple of questions about Open Office (at the time) but they were easily answered, and she got used to Mint in an evening. She's used nothing else for about 10 years. As a Trinity, Dublin alumnus, she appreciated its provenance too!
We have Mint installed on a couple of laptops, all the desktops (except one test machine, running Fedora) in my workroom, and everything Just Works™. I also run my little online radio station using exclusively Mint, and all the DJs have no issues using it.
Interestingly I've had a similar situation with the opposite conclusion.
I gave her LXQT and an hour or so's hand-holding over the similarities and few differences compared to the library computers she'd seen before. Chromium is Chrome with Google's name filed off, LibreOffice does everything she might need from MS Office. That sort of thing. And she was away, with far fewer "why has it done this" calls than I'd expect from That Other System.
More recently she was panicking over homework that supposedly needed MS Office. I sat with her while we opened LibreOffice Writer and, "Oh it's the same, I can do this!"
Now this is somebody who doesn't take to computers naturally, and tends towards anxiety in fact. It just took a little guidance.
So hang on...
$employer does training needs analysis &c and decides $employee could benefit from attending a training course.
Training course information says that participants will need to bring a laptop that has MS Office installed. The training course provider should really specify a version or range of versions and which components essential.
$employer provides laptop with requisite software in good time so that $employee can try out laptop and check software.
Anything else is utterly outrageous.
(If it is the case that Mrs AC is self employed then I retract this comment)
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"With only verified packages, Flathub's cupboard is suddenly bare, empty of anything you're really likely to want."
Really? What do you want on top of the things offered in the Debian repository, on which Ubuntu and therefore Mint is based? Edge... is a pain in the proverbial (ok, I find it a pain to use, but hey, choice i in principle good). And Chrome? Why not chromium? Isn't that one packaged properly? Why not use a sensible browser like Firefox (I don't like Chrome, obviously...)
[Author here]
> What do you want on top of the things offered in the Debian repository
Me personally? (Setting aside the issue of whose repo.)
Chrome, Skype, Slack, and Zoom all spring to mind. I may not like them but sadly I often need them.
The point is that there is quite a lot of proprietary freeware that runs fine on Linux. It costs nothing but it's not FOSS. Having it makes Linux much more viable as a general office/home PC.
If you want to install an officially packaged version of Chrome or Edge, then both Google and Microsoft offer DEB downloads for their browser which will should install on Mint 22. As they certainly worked for me installing them on Mint 20 and 21.
Im planning on doing a clean install of Mint 22 on my PC in the next week or so, after i live booted from a USB stick with it over the weekend and everything seems to be working well, but i didnt try installing any browsers in the live session.
This might help.
Use the export mailbox function on Outlook online.
Gearwheel (top right) -> General -> Privacy And Data -> Export mailbox.
Wait a few days and you'll get an email link to the PST file.
Then use Evolution to import it directly to check.
I believe you can then export it to mbox format, and use Thunderbird "local folders" option to point to it.
Or do as the Humungous suggests in Mad Max 2 and "just walk away". I did that once...I exported a PST file and stashed it then never imported it anywhere ever again. I've never had to mount it to refer back to old emails...of all the people you'd imagine would need to refer back to older emails (I'm a support guy) you'd think I'd have to do it all the time...but turns out...nope! Never have done once!
It is amazingly liberating and freeing to just dump your baggage in the corner of a drive and never touch it again and start with a fresh inbox with no history.
I am 99.9999999% certain you'll never need your old email. The important threads you're currently a part of will naturally return anyway with people replying etc...
I'm dying to try Wilma, but now that I'm semi-retired my hardware park is down to one (1) laptop that currently still runs a ton of applications on Ubuntu 18.04. Yes, I do have USB harddisk space for a full backup, but I'm dreading the idea of simply nuking my only working environment entirely and starting from scratch. I'm going to have to bite that particular bullet sooner or later, of course, but the idea of not having any of my usual data, software or other component of my normal working environment available while I try to build a new one is a little scary. I've got everything in there from Ghost Spectre in a VirtualBox VM to Apache Netbeans. Trying to port all of that to the next install isn't going to be fun. I'd love to have a slightly safer and/or more comfortable migration path but I can't think of one.
[Author here]
> I'd love to have a slightly safer and/or more comfortable migration path but I can't think of one.
Backup. Backup again.
1. Move your home directory to a separate partition.
2. Mount your new partition as /home. Check it works OK.
3. Shrink your root partition, since it now has no data in it.
4. Dual boot.
Lots of guidance out there...
https://www.howtogeek.com/442101/how-to-move-your-linux-home-directory-to-another-hard-drive/
https://www.tecmint.com/convert-home-directory-partition-linux/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
Or, y'know, if the budget permits, buy a spare laptop from Morgan Computers, or Tier1Online, or BargainHardware, or someone more local to you, and use it.
I used to have a whole home test/research LAN -- the kids on Reddit call such things a "homelab" -- for trying stuff. Now it's replaced by half a dozen laptops, and takes next to no space.
Alternatively, how about swapping out the SSD/Hard Disk with a new one, and installing on that - if the new install works/and is to your liking, keep that and put the old device into a caddy/USB adapter and copy across - If things go pear-shaped, no bother, put the old storage device back and rethink
Quotes from GP
"Or, y'know, if the budget permits, buy a spare laptop from Morgan Computers, or Tier1Online, or BargainHardware, or someone more local to you, and use it."
Yup - and the well known auction site has a lot of 'buy it now' suppliers who will do you a Thinkpad of reasonable spec for not much.
"Backup. Backup again."
I have a couple of laptops of similar spec and if one goes down / gets left on the bus / gets stolen I can have the other one up and running within minutes. Rsync and I also do things like tar up my dot files and directories. I have local backups to external hard drives and online back up for crucial files.
Quote from P
"swapping out the SSD/Hard Disk with a new one, and installing on that"
This is also a strategy I use. I have a small storage box with half a dozen hard drives both SSD and mechanical. Never wipe anything until the successor has been working ok for 6 months or so. Older Thinkpads (e.g. X220) allow swapping hard drives quite easily.
Older Thinkpads (e.g. X220) allow swapping hard drives quite easily.
Indeed so. Just 1 screw holds the cover in place over the drive slot, then slide out the caddy. Get some spare caddies (cheap), then no need to swap the disk to/from the caddy that you just took out.
You'd be hard pressed to swap out the disk in the time it takes a F1 team to swap a set of tyres, but you'll be not far behind if the replacement is already installed in a caddy
"Backup. Backup again."
Thank God I'm not the only one, I was starting to believe I was going nuts: 4 backups, either on encrypted LLVMs or if not possible everything's compressed in a 7z file with a 42 character password (yes, 42). Ever since I lost 4GB of music on my original iPod (remember those?) my very 1st commandment is "Redundancy is Everything, with a remote (but not Cloudy) option as well".
> now that I'm semi-retired my hardware park is down to one (1) laptop
I'm fully retired. My last laptop buy is a refurb Dell Ultrabook Latitude E7470 from 2016; was $2,000 new, I paid $389 24 months ago, I see similar flaptops under $200 today. Liam tests with slightly more expensive much older ThinPads; he types for a living, I don't no more. This E7470 won't do Win11; I call that a bonus. I gifted the E4740 several Gigs DRAM-- I remember the pain (not the price) of my second 256k(Kay) bank (9 chips) of RAM so I think a couple sticks is cheap now.
The refurber put Win10 on it which I had avoided so I left it as a penance. Now that Win10 is coming apart, I'll probably be arsed to put a Mint or MX on it (but I do so love a couple Win apps, oddballs that won't run as Wine).
Backmarket.com can be a source for refurb and/or off-lease machines. I just got an iPhone7 for $80. I can see a scratch but the Bluetooth is SO much better than any of 4 Androids I have at controlling my hearing aid.
I actually got a couple good years out of a $150 Chromebook on sale at Walmart. Loved every mouse or thumbdrive I showed it, no "hunting for drivers". Most things it did, it did automagically; a few things were forever out of reach. But when the "drive" and/or RAM filled up with Chrome updates it was a slug, and not realistically upgradeable.
I normally give this advice in the context of using Linux in a way that is certain to not tamper with an existing Windows installation, but for your context it would be equally valid.
The idea is to run your new/replacement Linux directly from a USB drive - i.e you boot it from the USB port.
I've detailed the method here - https://dev.to/geraldew/ubuntu-linux-installation-to-a-usb-external-drive-with-efi-boot-46pj - but a caveat is that I wrote all that as a tech description rather than a friendly "how to" guide.
In your case, having created and then booted such a system, you would then mount the computer's internal drive to access or copy off the contents that you wish to migrate. (Note: drive encryption and Windows fast boot affects the ability to do that - it's not my use-case so I don't cover it.)
BTW when the internal drive was spinning platters and the external is a USB3 SSD then this might even produce a faster system.
Don't shy away from home build. It really is not that hard to do, with dozens of "how to" books and YouTube videos out there. The only tricky bit is ensuring mutual compatibility of all the components you decide you need. If you go to a decent supplier (eg Novotech, and there are others out there as well) they will happily talk you through what will work with what, particularly if it leads to a sale. They can even build you a "bare bones" system, which you can complete yourself if you happen to have a few spare HDDs and a monitor and a keyboard. Best advice, get a high-ish end motherboard and corresponding processor, and as much RAM as you can afford, to delay obsolescence for as long as possible. Even cheaper, try to find a "junk" system and rebuild / replace key components. That way, you can pick up a case, power supply, monitor and keyboard for next to nothing. Remember that Linux OSs are free
FIRST STEP - get, beg, scrounge or borrow a laptop or chromebook so that you can follow each step on, say, youtube or websites as you go along, and to download the OS of your choice. SECOND STEP, see how much you saved, not to say how much you have learned. WARNING! once you have completed your first working home build, you will immediately start thinking about the next improved version. It can become addictive...
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"Wilma Flintstone is the most sensible and level-headed resident of 345 Cave Stone Road, the calmer one who often gets her rash and sometimes wildly exuberant husband out of trouble.
Except when she occasionally lost her mind (most often along with Betty) due to "shopping fever" -- "CHAAAAAAARGE... IT!" Then it was Fred who had to pay the bill save the day.
Cat: I think in all probability, Wilma Flintstone is the most desirable woman who ever lived.
....
Lister: This is crazy. Why are we talking about going to bed with Wilma Flintstone?
Cat: You're right. We're nuts. This is an insane conversation.
Lister: She'll never leave Fred, and we know it.
Everyone who wants to replicate the Windows paradigm (NOT WINDOWS ELEVEN, and no macOS contamination, but the UI metaphor of Win95/98/2k and eventually of Win7) should look for KDE, as I did. (Although MATE and XFCE can also be configured with a single, bottom panel.)
And Mint is the only mainstream distro to refuse KDE to its users. So this article is complete BS. Sorry, Liam, I appreciate you so much, just not this time.
And no, the "fix" for the increasingly wider screen is NOT a vertical panel. Also, the icons-only taskbar in Win10 and Win11 has contaminated KDE too, but I always switch from Icons-only task manager to the classic one. Why are people becoming so dumb all of a sudden? The best invention Microsoft has ever made is the Win95 metaphor, in which you see, without moving a finger, the titles of the windows of all active UI programs. Why would people prefer the macOS-style of plain icons with colored dots or underlines, which give you ZERO information?!
I'd also notice that KDE displays the captions on the taskbar much smarter than Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE: when there are only 3-4-5 windows, they're wider. In C/M/X, they're too narrow, regardless of how much unused space is available!
The only reason one would want to use the Icons-only task manager: when a vertical panel is used. Otherwise, it's just brain damage propagated from macOS to Win10 to KDE.
When KDE was created in 1998, they tried to offer a Windows lookalike desktop for Linux with some consistency across applications, and that was good, even though it deterred many Microsoft sceptics back in the day who would have been more sympathetic with a recreation of the concept that didn't also copy the looks.
Today, KDE suffers from far too many options scattered across illogically and unsystematically organized menus. If I as a software guy and veteran nerd feel overwhelmed and disoriented with a DE, I'm not sure it would be a good suggestion for an average Windows user looking for an alternative.
Cinnamon, even more than Xfce or MATE, is a much easier and more logical transition from Windows, and operating it is much more intuitive for someone who just wants a classic desktop metaphor that looks decent and is easy to operate and walk through.
Linux Mint KDE used to be a flavour until Mint 18.3, by the way. It was droppped because it had "very little in common" with their then-present project, or so they said back then.
"Today, KDE suffers from far too many options scattered across illogically and unsystematically organized menus"
I'm a bit puzzled by this.
Do you mean the application menu hierarchy? That's editable so the organisation can be whatever you find logical.
System settings - there are a few oddities but not many that strike me. I can't see why Appearance and Personalisation are separate but Users and Startup&shutdown really should not be in those but in System Administration. At first it does appear illogical that Applications is in Personalisation but it has to be remembered that this is intrinsically a multi-user system and different users may have different choices here.
> If I as a software guy and veteran nerd feel overwhelmed and disoriented with a DE
I learned Pascal under CP/M, and I've used various Unices, so I'm not that young either. I don't feel overwhelmed with a DE. Maybe with systemd.
> I'm not sure it would be a good suggestion for an average Windows user looking for an alternative.
Considering the average Windows user a bit dumb is not nice, you know.
> Cinnamon, even more than Xfce or MATE, is a much easier and more logical transition from Windows
No, it's not.
> for someone who just wants a classic desktop metaphor
Not classic enough. MATE, with a single panel, as it's preconfigured in Mint, is "more classic" (so to speak).
Cinnamon, in my view, has configuration dialogs that make a terrible waste of lateral space. Yes, screens are wider than 20 years ago, but Cinnamon is so poorly designed that it gives me cramps.
> that looks decent and is easy to operate and walk through.
Try walking through Windows' Control Panel, and then say again that KDE is disorienting. I cannot find anything in Windows, and even the search results are confusing.
[Author here]
> should look for KDE, as I did
No. I try it regularly. For me it is a confusing overcomplicated mess, but the deal breaker is that it does not honour Windows keystrokes. That, like it or not, is the standard.
Alt+space, X should maximise a window. Alt-space, C close it. Ctrl+Esc open the start menu. Ctrl+Shift+Esc, task manager or replacement thereof. Windows+R, run. Windows+D, desktop. Windows+E, Explorer. Win+(1-9) open the _n_th app pinned to the panel.
Even Unity got this right. Xfce does. MATE mostly does. KDE gets it all wrong and worse still has invented its own.
I want to see _one_ start menu, with config options, not 3. I want to see _one_ file manager, not a choice of 2 or more. _One_ text editor, etc. etc.
I want a global option to disable all hamburger menus and CSDs.
KDE is 26. It is time to grow up, and abide by existing UI conventions and standards, not keep on inventing new shiny and accommodating every developer who wants to add their own new app.
I want less, but working better and more compliant. KDE persists in offering more half-done options in each release, and for me, and for many Windows-alike Linux distros, this rules it out of contention.
> the deal breaker is that it does not honour Windows keystrokes. That, like it or not, is the standard.
You are probably about 4 years older than I am. You have worked with EVERYTHING. Can't your memory muscle adapt to 2-3 sets of standards? How can that be? Your brain could accommodate Czech and other foreign languages, but not some keystrokes? C'mon.
> I want to see _one_ start menu, with config options, not 3. I want to see _one_ file manager, not a choice of 2 or more. _One_ text editor, etc. etc.
Speak for yourself. I want FeatherPad as a Notepad replacement, then I'm happy to have installed, simultaneously, Kate, Geany, Sublime Text, VSCodium, PyCharm, ReText, and more. Just in case. Sometimes, a specific task can be performed easier or better in a specific app, so I want to have CHOICE.
https://ludditus.com/2024/07/25/what-you-need-to-know-when-using-my-custom-almalinux-kde-iso/#8
< "Can't your memory muscle adapt to 2-3 sets of standards?"
Why should it have to? People who regularly uses multiple systems and DE's (like Liam and many of his readers), don't want to have to stop and think about which keystrokes do task X in environment Y. KDE is all about customization it seems, so why not at least give an easy option to switch to the more standard keystrokes?
> You are probably about 4 years older than I am.
I'm 56 (you know). Maybe.
> You have worked with EVERYTHING. Can't your memory muscle adapt to 2-3 sets of standards?
It can and it used to, but you know what? Life is too short.
I wrote about this in 2021:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/17/tilde_text_editor/
And again this year:
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/24/rise_and_fall_of_cua/
In the 1980s I was willing to learn multiple UIs because there wasn't a single standard yet, and it was useful to be able to run multiple programs with unique strengths. But the 1990s brought standardisation and harmony and it stopped being necessary.
Today, the advantages offered would have to be _extraordinary_ and they are not. Nothing offers me such a compelling proposition that it's worth undoing a third of a century of muscle memory. I don't write code. I don't need Emacs or Vi. But by using the standard Windows/CUA keyboard interface, I can operate my whole computer, under multiple different OSes, at the speed of thought as the Vim-heads like to boast.
Doesn't matter how well they know Vim, and how fast they are. CUA means I can operate *ALL PROGRAMS* that fast, even ones I have never seen before.
I am not learning the unique keystrokes of what is in my considered professional opinion a substandard Win98 ripoff when I have better, faster, more attractive, more elegant, FOSS desktops available to me that don't hurt my eyes to look at.
If KDE was amazing, sleek, elegant, blazing fast and beautiful with it -- still no, because I have perfectly good tools I like already.
But it's not amazing. KDE 1 was in 1998 and I used it, but not now.
It's not sleek: it's bloated with pointless cruft, from two "help/about" menu options on upwards.
It's not elegant: Corel Linux OS was pretty elegant, Xandros was pretty elegant, but since 3 it's been big and overcomplicated, and 4 made it worse, 5 is only slightly better than 4, and 6 is no better than 5.
It's not blazingly fast: with about a dozen mouse clicks to move the panel to one screen edge, it's cumbersome and sluggish _even compared to Windows 10_.
It's *definitely* not beautiful. It is, in my personal and entirely subjective opinion, rather ugly. Not as bad as 4 but only because the ugly tints and gradients were replaced with a flat look. It has ugly textures, ugly fonts, ugly icons, ugly wallpaper, and I am not keen on the dragon mascot either.
And it doesn't do what I want. It has a million options but only the ones its users want. I want the title bar down the side, like wm2. I want a single panel that can span 2 screens. I want no CSD anywhere and a global option to remove it. I want a fast keyboard-driven start menu like in NT4. I want hierarchies, not 2 columns. I want the start menu stored as a simple directory tree, like in Win9x and NT4, with directories and symlinks, with no database or any need for menu editors. I want single-click toggles to turn subfolders into menus like I could in Windows 20 years ago. What I do *not* want are three different shabby half-implemented start menu alternatives, none of which are as good as Win95 did _twenty-nine years ago_.
KDE is a copy of Windows done by people who did not know how to use Windows properly, who didn't know how to configure it, how to tweak it, and who didn't understand that the whole point of Windows 98 rendering Explorer content as HTML was Microsoft trying to defend itself from the US Department of Justice in a monopoly lawsuit. They copied the clumsy ugly hack Microsoft did to justify bundling IE4 into Windows 98 because they failed to understand why it was there, and that this was a *bad thing* to copy not a clever idea to steal.
> Speak for yourself.
I always do in the comments. In copy I try to be neutral and dispassionate, but here, I do not feel I need to.
Choice is good, sure, but the Unix philosophy is "do one thing and do it well".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
This is wise. KDE does the opposite.
> Choice is good, sure, but the Unix philosophy is "do one thing and do it well".
Nope. It's "Make each program do one thing well." Except that KDE is not a program; it's an environment.
Look, I was a fan of XFCE. I had my reasons to prefer Dolphin, and KRename, and Okular, and so on, so in the end I said: why not use KDE? I'm using a mixture of Qt and GTK software anyway! And XFCE is severely incomplete (with apps that have not reach version 1.0), and with CSD and non-CSD apps, some taken from MATE, so it's too much like 20 years ago, but broken by CSD!
Do you know that Qt fixes an exFAT bug in the Linux kernel, and thus only Dolphin has that bug fixed, of all the UI file managers? (PCManFM-Qt uses file operations from Gtk, inherited from PCManFM, only the UI is Qt.)
Do you know in how many file managers, when you copy a huge file and hit Cancel, so a gracious cancellation, instead of having the copied portion deleted (say, fclose() followed by remove()), you end up with a truncated file, and you don't even know it's a truncated one unless you compare the sizes? Nautilus/Files, Nemo, Caja, Thunar, PCManFM, PCManFM-Qt , they all leave the broken incomplete file. Dolphin is the only one that doesn't! Now, tell me WHEN did the file manager in Windows leave you with incomplete files? Again, not forced closing, just Cancel or ESC or whatever.
You know a lot of things I don't know. I know a lot of things you don't know. I could tell you about a certain vulnerability in Thunar that Sean Davis didn't notice, despite being the Xubuntu Technical Lead and an Xfce Core Developer. That vulnerability (unimportant by me, but I'm not the judge of CVEs) still exists in PCManFM-Qt and PCManFM, and you know why? Because nobody checked those file managers to see how they behave.
There are literally tons of crap in everything people use. They're too superficial to care. I could tell you about many things, but nobody is interested in what I have to say. They don't read my blog, which is fine per se, as it's cheaply hosted and it would crash.
But I'm stunned how people with a long experience in Linux can be so superficial. Oh, I could list how often a Linux kernel update broke something for me. For an old laptop from 2016 it broke for eternity the audio jacks (because they're two). I know the patch, I know what models it was supposed to fix, but it did so by breaking another model.
I only report bugs when there's a decent chance of getting fixed. I had in the past simple bugs closed after 8 or 12 years because they were obsolete, but not fixed (one was in gedit, and it was terribly stupid). Today, if I can't find the reason of the bug in the sources, I don't even bother, because I know that nobody will.
Linux is in shambles, but I can't use FreeBSD for a number of practical reasons. Oh, but people get ecstatic about Linux Mint! Liam, you know as well as I do that the romantic age of Linux is gone. About 500 distros have died. We only have a bunch of reasonably working distros nowadays, and their quality is pathetic.
So if I'm using AlmaLinux 9 with KDE on my home computers, this is for me the lesser evil. The crap that stinks less than Windows. But it's not much improved in the last 25 years (I only know Linux since 1994, and in the first years with it, it seemed to be improving). The BSDs are really almost as they were in 1996-1998. What a pathetic world.
"it does not honour Windows keystrokes. That, like it or not, is the standard."
Windows key? Do we have to assume a Windows keyboard layout? I have a couple of wireless keyboards that are only partially Windows-like in layout. What if it's installed on a Mac? Does Mac follow the same set of combinations?
I doubt there's a set of key combinations which will suit everyone. What would mightily piss off KDE users would be deciding it's time to change key combinations to match Windows.
> Windows key? Do we have to assume a Windows keyboard layout?
No. I didn't say Windows key, although one is handy.
I said Windows *keystrokes* plural. Alt, Ctrl and Shift should be enough for anyone. Super is handy but not essential.
Regular readers might have worked out my fondness for IBM Model M keyboards, and they do not have a Windows key. (OK, modern copies do but they are inferior.)
I didn't know whether to up- or downvote this. On the one hand, I'm not at all a fan of KDE (too much bloat for me), on the other hand, I do very much agree with:
> The best invention Microsoft has ever made is the Win95 metaphor*, in which you see, without moving a finger, the titles of the windows of all active UI programs**.
And as you say, you can (and I do) get that with Xfce, and I suspect probably Cinnamon and Mate as well.
> I'd also notice that KDE displays the captions on the taskbar much smarter than Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE: when there are only 3-4-5 windows, they're wider.
You get that with the Fluxbox WM, which is my go-to set-up.
*Was that really a Win95 innovation?
**Especially with multiple workspaces, where you are less likely to have a zillion windows open on any given workspace.
> And as you say, you can (and I do) get that with Xfce, and I suspect probably Cinnamon and Mate as well.
You definitely can, but it works better in KDE. It's better implemented, I'd say.
> You get that with the Fluxbox WM, which is my go-to set-up.
Fluxbox, Openbox, etc., are not DEs. At some point, I needed fixes for some tearing that appeared in specific generations of Intel graphics, and I could apply those fixes with KWin. So Lubuntu was out of the question, because it used Openbox, which couldn't care less about that specific hack.
P.S.
> when there are only 3-4-5 windows, they're wider.
That is a *bad thing*. It is poor design because it defeats muscle memory by making window button size a moving target, likely to spontaneously change when 1 more window opens. It's the opposite of a good, thoughtful, well-considered design. It's a bad design by developers thinking "hey we can squeeze more info in here if we let the controls change size on the fly" which is the epitome of the core design problem of KDE all over. It's creeping featurism: the unchecked desire to put more twiddly bits in, rather than exercising control and discretion and restraint and embracing "less is more".
Your example is _why I think the design is bad_.
With all due respect, your thinking is wrong. As the number of windows increases and GROUPING IS DISABLED, guess what? In all those desktop environments, they'll get NARROWER. And, since they'll get narrower anyway, why not start with them a little bit wider?
Think again. You literally didn't think it through.
KDE DOES NOT start with those labels 1/5 of the screen's width. But they're wider, so that what you read is meaningful. Cinnamon starts with a window at 1/12 width. I repeat, as they'll get more numerous, they'll stretch ANYWAY, so it's impossible to use your muscle memory and say "I'll hit window number 4 with my eyes closed".
You have a pathological hatred of KDE. I disliked KDE for many years, then I used REASON.
Now I hate GNOME with a passion.
> You have a pathological hatred of KDE.
"*I* make decisions based on reason and experience.
*You* make decisions based on preconceptions and bias.
*He* is a pathological bigot."
This is not hard.
There is stuff you like that I do not like. There are things you want that I do not want. Some of these are important to you.
There is stuff I like and want that you do not want. Some of these things are important to me.
What you want does not match what I want. That does not make you right and me wrong, or me right and you wrong.
Try to understand that the reasons I have carefully spelled out to you are highly important to me and are deal breakers.
Your benefits are of no interest or importance to me, but the things I list, that you've never noticed, are paramount for me.
> Alt+space, X should maximise a window.
That's a valid complaint. I did have this reflex since Win 3.1. Not anymore.
> Ctrl+Shift+Esc, task manager or replacement thereof.
Oh, because Ctrl+Esc is so very different, eh?
> Ctrl+Esc open the start menu
Isn't the Windows key simpler? It does have this function in Windows too! Since Windows 95 and since your keyboard started featuring this Meta/Super_L/Mod4 key. Ctrl+Esc is so Windows 3.1. We're almost 30 years past that.
> Windows+D, desktop.
This one works as intended in KDE (Meta+D = Peek at Desktop).
> Windows+R, run.
Windows and you just start writing, then press Enter, ignoring the search results. Windows+R is redundant in Windows too. It's a relic of the past.
> Win+(1-9) open the _n_th app pinned to the panel.
Very few people do that.
What you didn't consider criticizing, because it would have meant to find faults even in XFCE, is another memory muscle thing from the times of Win 3.1: CTRL+F4. In Windows, it would close the current tab in the tabbed interfaces or the current window within an MDI application. But in most Linux DEs, CTRL+F4 is used to switch to the fourth virtual workspace or desktop, unless you explicitly disable that key binding. To me, this is the most “memory muscle-breaking” issue in Linux, or in Unices as a rule. But if you disable it in KWin, Firefox will honor it, which is important to me.
> Your benefits are of no interest or importance to me, but the things I list, that you’ve never noticed, are paramount for me.
Let me list things that “you’ve never noticed” and that are most likely “of no interest or importance” to you, but they should matter.
Neither you nor the other readers (who instead bothered to vote “thumbs down”) seemed to care about a number of issues I mentioned.
1. Nobody asked about that exFAT bug in the Linux kernel for which only Dolphin has a fix (inherited from Qt; I repeat, PCManFM-Qt only uses Qt for the UI, but file operations are using GTK, as inherited from PCManFM). I could have given them a quick explanation.
2. Nobody cared that Thunar doesn’t necessarily get security patches during the lifetime of a Xubuntu/Ubuntu release; except when this is about a LTS one that gets a backport from the next non-LTS release, should this happen to include that patch. (Mint is Ubuntu LTS.)
3. Nobody realized how outrageous it is to have all file managers except for Dolphin leave you with partial, broken files, upon canceling a file copy or move. Cancel or Escape should do what it has always done in Windows, i.e., to cancel the operation and delete the partial file. Only if you kill a program or if you press CTRL+C in MS-DOS or in any shell is the outcome of a partial copy acceptable. Again, Dolphin is the only file manager to do what Windows has been doing since 1991 or 1992 (I cannot vouch for Windows 3.0).
But I was already too aggressive for today's snowflakes. “There is a large hole in the wall, this ship is going to sink!” “There is a large hole, Sir! Or else I won't listen.”
> That is a *bad thing*. It is poor design because it defeats muscle memory by making window button size a moving target, likely to spontaneously change when 1 more window opens.
With respect, I don't believe this is a one-size-fits-all issue. There will always be ergonomic trade-offs. So for me, it is important that I can read an (untruncated) window title at a glance - e.g., a document title. Since I use multiple workspaces and generally not too many open windows per workspace, the window "button" sizes may change, but they are large targets (I rarely miss!)
That just happens to suit the way I work. YMMV.
(I am not a fan of KDE as it happens, but for different reasons.)
If you visit the Cinnamon Spices page, you'll see that there are a number of themes which include program titles with the icons in the taskbar, so there's no need to fully switch desktop environments.
"The Xfce and MATE editions were more reliable, although the Xfce flavor showed a similar issue to our testing of Xubuntu 24.04 – sometimes, the first login attempt fails, and we needed to retry."
I've just tried an install of Mint 22 xfce under VirtualBox, and same as... the first login fails, and sometimes the whole X11 install locks.. Although you can get a login via ctrl-alt-f1 etc.
But. enabling 3D and setting the Video memory to 128MB seems to solve it.
> But. enabling 3D and setting the Video memory to 128MB seems to solve it.
Yep, tried that. No better.
Oh, hang on, no, I tried that for Cinnamon. Let's give it a go with Xfce...
*clickety clickety click*
Huh, logged in first time. Test of 1/1 but it worked. Good catch, well spotted!
Mint was always the "distro most likely to just work" on a laptop.
I just had to reinstall Windows on an old Windows Surface clone. To get the wifi drivers you have to go to their website and run a diagnostic tool to identify which wifi driver it needs - did anyone think this through ?
Not that anyone asked, but I am mostly done with my migration to Mint (minus a few odds and ends that I'll get to in time), and I'm mostly happy with it. Along the way, I've upgraded my video card and motherboard, and I do have to say that Windows handled that process much more gracefully than Mint, which I had not expected (I expected Windows to BSOD and require a reinstall). When I dropped in the new Radeon video card, video in Mint was sluggish, so I tried to install updated drivers to no joy. Of course, it being Linux, the correct answer was to upgrade the kernel from the stock 5.15 to 6.5. While that process is infinitely easier than it once was, a deterrent to the average user would be the fact that Mint didn't in any way notify me that I needed to update the kernel, initially causing me to suspect bad hardware, whereas Windows detected the new hardware and downloaded and installed the correct Radeon drivers without user intervention. Not everyone wants their drivers automatically updated, of course (although I was certainly pleased), but I guess the Linux developer mindset is still that users need to know, without feedback from the operating system, that the kernel needs to be updated to incorporate new drivers.
There are other niggles as well, but Mint is certainly faster to boot and log in than Windows, and the lack of advertising and dark UI patterns makes them worth overcoming. Also, somewhat to my amusement, Linux is actually faster accessing NTFS volumes with the kernel-mode driver than Windows.
> Linux is actually faster accessing NTFS volumes with the kernel-mode driver than Windows.
The Paragon ntfs3 driver destroys data. The Linux kernel team has not acknowledged that, but you'll find a few reports. I have lost data myself because of this stupid driver that shouldn't have tainted the kernel!
Since then, I'm back to ntfs-3g. Slower, but safer.
People assume that, if something is in the kernel, it works well. It doesn't. I wish they stopped screwing the kernel with random code.
"The Paragon ntfs3 driver destroys data."
[citation needed]
No, seriously, I would love to see some concrete information about this issue. I did a quick Web search, and I see assertions of data corruption but without a lot of information. Since the kernel maintainers appear to be set to remove FUSE driver support from kernel 6.9, it seems like they would want to know about data-eating bugs in the kernel driver.
This thread contains a huge back-and-forth regarding what errors the NTFS3 driver throws vs. the NTFS-3G (FUSE) driver. I honestly don't have the technical knowledge to fully tease out the truth, but it seems like a number of commenters in that thread and other locations are fingering multiboot scenarios and dirty/corrupted NTFS volumes for the data loss issue. I agree that the driver should perhaps handle the issue better, but it's not clear that the driver is fundamentally at fault.
Amusingly, the thread above ends with the following note from the moderators:
Closed due to pointless dogmatism.
If anything will be epitaph of Open Source, it's this.
> No, seriously, I would love to see some concrete information about this issue.
It destroyed my data repeatedly. And I'm not dumb. I never EVER encountered such a thing in 40 years of using computers and 30 years of using Linux. Because I was using the FUSE driver since I needed NTFS write access in Linux, and common sense otherwise.
I posted about it in this chapter on my blog:
https://ludditus.com/2024/05/27/epic-linux-saga/#12
The other references, as anecdotal as they are, they're ... for reference only. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO ME.
Again, I have used dozens and dozens of distros in the last 30 years. You don't know me, and you shouldn't know me. You don't trust me, but you should. I'm anything but dumb. I have never lost data in 40 years, not even from failing floppy disks, not from malware, but I lost data because of the Paragon NTFS driver. To trust the ntfs3 driver in Linux is like trusting Satan (which, of course, doesn't exist).
It claimed to have copied an entire folder structure, and it took some time (SSD, but still...), but the files were gone, and unrecoverable after unmounting. No tool on Earth could find them.
trusting Satan (which, of course, doesn't exist).
Some might hold that the Father of Lies has won that hand. :)
In the film The Usual Suspects the master criminal Keyser Söze is likened to the devil who had cunningly convinced most of the world of his non-existence. :)
That movie's ending is of course a caution.
" I have used dozens and dozens of distros in the last 30 years. " Surely you did a minimum of research before 'trying' yet another one ...
I have used 3, starting in 1996 with Coral, moving to Ubuntu, and settling on Mint 11 and upgrading since.
Maybe its because I was doing serious work. It sounds like you weren't ....
Ubuntu is highly stable, though not perfect - but it is user friendly out of the box. More important, it doesn't crash easily without the user messing with it, and it is extremely well supported. I have always found answers to problems I had with Ubuntu. There are dozens of detailed books on Ubuntu, as well as training courses, but I usually find my answers through Google, You Tube, or Ubuntu and Linux forums.
Mint, on the other hand, is prone to problems, and it's hardly supported at all. There is little written about how to work with Mint, almost none of it up todate, and little other support on the Internet. When you ask for help on Mint forums with any problem you get told "reinstall". Its developers clearly don't care at all. The operating system and its files are arranged completely differently, which is quite unecessary and must have been done deliberately to make it hard to work with Mint under the hood, since Mint is basically Ubuntu with the desktop made more attractive and user friendly. This means that usually the solution to problems in Ubuntu don't work in Mint.
I have consistently used Ubuntu since support for Windows 7 ended. I have grown used to it and love it. Mint does look more like Windows 98 or 7 out of the box, and Ubuntu isn't the most customizable, but it is customizable enough to get a presentable desktop with a bottom bar you park your often used software on and not a garish orange side thing . And you can change the desktop background.
Otherwise the experience is highly similar between Mint and Ubuntu; Mint is just Ubuntu with the desktop experience rearranged and different apps that do the same things (usually not as well).
"Mint, on the other hand, is prone to problems, and it's hardly supported at all. There is little written about how to work with Mint, almost none of it up todate, and little other support on the Internet. When you ask for help on Mint forums with any problem you get told "reinstall". Its developers clearly don't care at all. The operating system and its files are arranged completely differently, which is quite unecessary and must have been done deliberately to make it hard to work with Mint under the hood, since Mint is basically Ubuntu with the desktop made more attractive and user friendly. This means that usually the solution to problems in Ubuntu don't work in Mint."
That is all just flat out wrong.
In just over 10 years of using Mint I have had one audio problem with it. That's it. If you don't like Mint just say so, but don't spread untruths about it.
I have always found answers to problems I had with Ubuntu.
That's not a great recommendation, you know, because it implies that you have problems.
But then, as "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" showed, support is a cost centre for commercial software and a profit centre for free software, so incentives get a bit muddled and sometimes perverse. If Ubuntu Just Worked, Canonical would lose an awful lot of income.
Been running LMDE 6 since the end of Feb, and it's never let me down. A couple of weeks ago those wonderful folks that run the Debian Backports Repository provided a stable, signed 6.9.7 kernel upgrade, which I installed immediately (of course), and then a couple of days ago the Cinnamon Desktop upgrades from 'Wilma' appeared in my update manager. It all plays nicely together, and I'm loving all the improvements. It feels like Christmas has come early this year.
Meantime, Microsoft are still looking for new ways to spy on people and ram adverts down their throats. Dearie, dearie me.
I'm so glad I moved to Linux last year, and it just keeps getting better. Boots fast, runs smooth and works just fine with all my hardware (Server, NAS drives, All-in-one printer, Wifi, Bluetooth, Tablet and pen, etc, etc). It makes my 10 year old Dell feel like new.
I feel sorry for all the people struggling to run Windows 11 on aging machines, but I'm pleased to see that Microsoft are continually shooting themselves in the foot at the moment. They appear to be determined to put themselves out of business. Hopefully they'll succeed.
quote: We reckon that the developers of Mint, ZorinOS, Linux Lite, and Asmi would all benefit from cooperating.
The developers of all distros would benefit from cooperating with each other, hardware manufacturers and box shifters like Dell. But they never will. Herding cats.
The Linux community's failure to produce a retail alternative for mainstream users has kept Microsoft in business. If they had ever bothered to get their act together, Windows would have gone the way of CP/M decades ago.
quote: If you have an aging PC that can't run Windows 11...
Take it offline and keep using it with proper software and local storage. Move your work to a tablet on a memory card as required.
"Take it offline and keep using it with proper software and local storage. Move your work to a tablet on a memory card as required."
Or run Mint and skip the faff - which you can also run in a disconnected mode, and can lawfully make copies of the distribution media to store under your mattress if you insist.
To be fair, the XApps initiative is something in that direction, isn't it?
Should've just switched to Plasma and create a "Kubuntu, but done right" kind of distro. I mean Ubuntu itself already tames GNOME and makes it usable, newbies don't care about what Snap is or does, and Gtk3 will get killed one day, meaning big problems for Cinnamon/Xfce/Mate and any other sane desktops that still use server-side decorations.
I updated from 21.3 to 22.0 overnight using the mintupgrade application (it can take several hours -- especially if you're not right there to respond to the prompts immediately).
At a first glance, the new version appears to be a significant improvement over the old. It's both quicker to boot (and to revive from sleep) and crisper to respond generally. The update honoured my personal foibles (generic Firefox rather than the wired-in version so that I can force updates/rollbacks on my own schedule).
AND -- the big bonus for me -- they seem to have resolved some kind of low level hardware conflict which was causing hangs on revival from sleep about every 4th or 5th time. Awesome job, you guys!
Definitely faster to do a clean install and then run my scripts to install software and data. Took me about 25 minutes.
I tried the upgrade path on a second identical machine and it took over an hour, and THEN it borked the Welcome screen because it hadn't installed matrix. I don't intend to use Matrix but, I installed it for completeness and to hopefully ward off future glitches.
BTW, if you have an Nvidia card, be ready to uninstall it for the open source driver and reinstall the Nvidia driver. The "update" will mess with your resolution.
I’m looking to introduce a die hard Windows user to Linux and started reading this article on Mint with excitement, getting less excited as I continued. Then I read that Linux Lite has no confusing desktop choices, etc. Hmmm…. Seriously? Sure, maybe there’s no perfect one size fits all distro (the benefit of Linux for power users) but with Microsoft on the nose it’s time users who want to switch away from Windows to get a definitive solution.
I don't know what constitutes "a die hard Windows user" to you, but good luck convincing them to switch to ANY linux distribution if they aren't already disenchanted with Microsoft, and even if they are, it's going to be a tough sell if they use any software that isn't easily available on linux. It's an easy switch for many casual users, though. My mother barely noticed a difference, but she had already been using LibreOffice for years, and other than that, Chrome, Zoom, and an easy way to pull photos from her digital camera was all she needed. I've got Mint with Cinnamon on her desktop, and Lubuntu with LXQt on her weak, old, budget laptop. Either one is fine for her.
Not a diehard Windows user here (I wouldn't have said). I've used quite a few Linux distros over the years and of course all my servers run Linux; I'm quite comfortable with the CLI - that's where I started with the BBC Micro!
But Linux desktop? Half the software (hyperbole check) I use is available only on Windows so it's either spend ages finding an equivalent and losing years of familiarity or use some gruesome kludge like WINE. Been there - and the hoops you have to jump through are many and not all issues are resolvable.
Life's too short: an OS is about support for the apps, not the OS itself; I don't spend ages interacting with the OS but with apps. Yes, Windows does force some horrid choices on you, like the M$ = Disney approach to the UI, like it's single-user only lockdown, and like its licensing.
I should add that the years I spent faffing with GEM, DESQview, OS/2 and even NeXTstep are not included in my mental map of what really happened back then... :)
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I think so too.
Used Cromix in 1985
UNIX and XENIX in 1987
Linux from late 1990s (DSL, Redhat/Centos/fedora, Suse, Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and others).
NT in all its incarnations since 1994.
Also used CP/M 80before and after DOS (all versions up to 6.22), Minix, Concurrent DOS, UCSD-P, CP/M 86 and ISIS-II, Amiga, Atari-ST(Gem?), Jupiter Ace.
Windows home users are traumatised by their experience, to the point that they are terrified to try anything else like linux. Also, mint cinnamon or xfce have Win98 in common, not Win 10 or 11. That's a plus. And a minus at the same time.
The plus is usability. The minus is that new users are terrified to use it, in case they bork it.
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