You think LM being “too old” is a problem for newbies? I’ve been running some distro or other since RedHat 5. I it took me 6 weeks of waiting for Fedora to sort out most of the issues, (and I STILL have some minor ghosting issues and I ain’t no gamer), and 4 tries to get Fedora 40 to successfully take the nVidia drivers for the GTX1650 chipset in my laptop.

You think a new wannbe convert is going to put up with that?

Meh, close enough.

All of them.

Well, I’m not sure a cat can have a bad work ethic if they just don’t have one to start with…

Most pets don’t work because their owners don’t bother to train them to do any work. And interestingly enough, I have indeed seen a Chihuahua herd cattle. There was No Fear. It was amazing to see that little toothed monster chase a 2000lbs bull around a pen and into another and then into a barn on command from the farmer that owned him. And a Mastiff will gladly hunt fox, cougars, wolves, and even people if you want them to. They will also happily Netflix, popcorn, and chill on the couch with you after chewing up that human also.

Why don’t my dogs talk? Well, they just don’t have the physical voice box to form the sounds of human speech, (as you well know). But that doesn’t mean they don’t communicate with people. Actions, like tail wagging, barking in various tones and volumes, rolling on the ground all communicate emotions and situational reports. And us humans understand them just fine. My little Russian Spaniel does her best to “talk” to me with a near continuous stream of moans and groans, and erffs when she sits with me in my recliner. It’s almost annoying when she doesn’t shut up. And they understand my communications. My dogs understand verbal, whistle, and silent hand signals and respond correctly and instantly to them when I’m afield with them. Parrots, have a natural physical ability to mimic other sounds, (as do a lot of other birds). So they are doing what comes naturally to them - a human is not required.

There are lots of dogs out there that do jobs they were never bred for. Seeing eye dogs, dogs trained for deaf people or assistants to people confined to a wheel chair. Turns out Labrador Retrievers are really great at this kind of work. And I have trained retired Springer Spaniel hunting dogs to work in a hospital as therapy dogs. But that’s not why or what those breeds exists for. Ever see a trained animal act at a circus? They are often what most people would call “mutts”. Mixed breed dogs doing amusing things like ride bicycles and drive little cars around and jumping through burning hoops of fire. And you can often see little Chihuahuas preforming in those acts. All doing things none of them were bred for.

I like the cats that we have. One, a grey and white is an excellent mouser. But he comes from a very long line of barn cats and has a wild streak in him. The other two, are far more interested in cat toys and sleeping in laps and beds than in any mouse - and that’s fine. A warm kitty in the lap purring away is a calming and enjoyable thing to have on a cold winter’s day. But I’m under no illusion that cats or most other pets can be trained to do all the things my dogs can do.

Dogs are humans oldest and closest companions and co-workers for a reason.

Let me know when you can train a cat to herd sheep or train one to hunt and retrieve game on command. I’ve got 3 cats and 4 dogs here. The cats make nice and often amusing lap warmers. But beyond catching the odd mouse, they can’t do work.

Mistakes were made. It happens, OK? I’m quite certain Bing won’t let THAT happen again…/////

For my, VERY limited needs for the tiny bit I have dabbled in programing or even just help with some Linux issues, I’ve been using Phind. It seems to work a whole lot better than any of the other search engines. But my needs can’t really twist the tail like real programmers.

It depends on what and how much you grow in your garden. Growing up and even when our kids were young and at home, we grew a large garden to save money. Growing things that store well, like potatoes, squash, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, and other root crops will save you money because they require no very little to no extra processing to store.

Tomatoes, while VERY tasty straight off the vine, often get highly processed into sauces and jarred to preserve. That is time consuming and expensive. But, if you have enough freezer space, you can freeze tomatoes and peppers very easily. But you need enough freezer space for them. Growing string beans are also fairly efficient crops that require little processing to freeze. But, there is still some extra work to be done with them. Sweet Corn take a lot of room to grow enough to make it worth your while preserve.

But best of all is to garden because you want to and you enjoy it. I no longer grow a large garden - me and Grandma don’t need much anymore, but I still grow tomatoes and peppers, turnips, green onions, and amaranth. Amaranth is often used as a background plant in flower gardens, but the whole plant is edible. From the roots to leaves to the seeds. It has a wonderful nutty flavor and is stupidly easy to grow.

Wall Drug did that dumb stuff 80 years ago. Not much original thought to it by Buc-ees. Can you get Free Ice Water^tm there also?

Ah yes, decimalized time. An idea so bad even the French said no, just no after trying it.

Don’t feel bad. I 3D printed the NASA approved pinhole camera to see an 80% eclipse I never got to see.

According to NOAA the chance of overcast has historically been 53% for the the 8th of April for where I live. I was on the the wrong side of the 53% chance.

At my age, in 20 years I probably will be dead according to statistics.

A good number of European cities and countries have tried Linux and open source software in the past. They use it for a few years and then they have almost always have quietly gone back to MS Windows and Office products.

As much as I enjoy using Linux, (and no, I don’t use Arch), and open source for my own needs, I would be willing to bet after a few years, this German state will quietly move back to Micosoft products again.

Meta didn’t “give” anybody shit. They sold that access. Do you see the difference?

As always, users are the commodity.

Those touch screens are all a part of the accessories. And I dislike them intensely also. I also find it very disheartening that in some new cars a software up date is needed to make the dock locks work. A friend had to take his mother’s Kia in to rematch the door locks to a new key. They needed to remove the door handles and plug them into a computer to do so.

The last new car I bought, (2015 Jeep Patriot), made me search EVERY car dealer in 2 states before I found one that had manual door locks and manual windows. I often haul dogs around with me and while they are quite good at locking doors and rolling up windows, they really, really suck at rolling them down or unlocking the doors. It took me a couple of months of weekly searching to finally find one for sale.

“Dumb car” is kind of relative. Computer engine controls have been around since the mid 1970’s. And while the first ones were not very good, they have become pretty darned reliable over the intervening years. And as someone who has owned cars and other heavy equipment with mechanical points and down draft and up draft carburetors, you won’t ever see me willingly own a car with any of that anymore.

If you really want to minimize the electronics as much as possible, look at 1990’s to no later than 2010 models.

Though to be fair, much of the problems with cars are caused by the accessories like power windows, door locks, air conditioning, and power seats. Those are far more problematic than the basic car itself.

I sincerely hope so! I’ll be hungry for more by then!

As one of my Daughters told the Chair of the Physics department at a large Big 10 collage to switch her major from ME to Physics, “I want know the answer, not guess.”

Don’t think of Mint as an “easy distro”, but rather as a distro that tries to stay the hell out of your way as much as possible to get things done. Any OS - Linux, Windows, Mac, BSD, or Unix is merely the means to the end goal of the user and not the reason itself. I don’t want an interesting or complex distro. I want a distro that helps me to do a task.

You want something interesting? Give LFS, (Linux from Scratch), a try. That’s an advanced distro that you can make as interesting as you desire.

I’ve fooling around with Linux distros since RedHat 5 and Mandrake 6. Even wore the sackcloth and ashes of Slack for a bit. What I have learned is that it’s fine to use a “beginner’s distro” or run Slack and boot directly into a terminal to run Emacs all day.

Whatever gets the job done or floats your boat. It’s all about choice.

Just my opinion, but no I don’t think there is a generalized reason to choose LMDE over LM or the other way around. Try them both and see which you like the best. Use that and be happy.

Typed from my LM Cinnamon 21.3 upgrade from 21.2.