Strawberry is great and so was Clementine before it. It’s really a step up compared to what the average distro bakes into their default bundle of applications.

I appreciate their philosophy. I’ve been a Linux user since the early 2000s and have cycled through 30-40 distros at least. I’m not a highly technical user. I would consider myself a solid intermediate. For a daily use system I prefer arch, but my servers run Debian. Most of the people writing install guides for the software I deploy seem to use Debian so I run into less issues this way. It can be hard to follow a guide for Gentoo when you’re using Hanna Montana Linux, know what I’m saying? Same thing with Debian. It’s just a solid choice with the bonus of having a better, more ethical philosophy, and the benefit of being widely adopted and supported by people who can help when you get stuck. I don’t even mind gnome on my servers since it works well with a single screen and it’s super rare that I actually need the server GUI anyway.

Willingness to independently learn and the capacity to let the frustration roll off of you. You will occasionally want to bang your head against the wall, but give yourself the grace to learn.

No shade to Gnome, because there is a place for them in the ecosystem, but this is why I moved from Gnome 2 to KDE (with a few stops along the way). One size will not fit all.

KDE for the desktop and xfce for the laptop

Huh, I hadn’t heard of CachyOS. It seems like everyone went Arch>Manjaro>EndeavorOS. It looks good from the screenshots and I like seeing my favorite DE/WMs in there. If I don’t know what any of those acronyms and technical terms on their page mean, would I still get something out of it? I’m about due for my every-few-months wipe and reinstall.

We’ve been on similar journeys. I started with Ubuntu Warty Warthog and happily remember all the desktop effects lost to time (emerald window decorations anybody?). I went through a Windows phase and settled back into Linux. My newest epoch is the age of self hosting and I’ve been learning a lot especially since the advent of Lemmy. I also play games, but I’ve been using a fully segregated Windows PC for that, though I’ve used Linux in the past.

The last time someone asked this question a lot of people said Mint packages are too out of date. I love Mint, I used Mint for several years, but the graphic driver stuff seems to depend on being very up to date. Someone else could probably explain it better than me. Perhaps it’s not relevant anymore, but I would look into it.

As for KDE, it’s really good now. I used to cling HARD to Gnome back in the old days and really disliked KDE, but things really got shaken up and KDE has been absurdly good for a few releases now. The steam deck even uses it. Also, a lot more distros seem to have releases for more than one desktop environment now. I guess what I’m trying to say is stuff you used to like may suck now and stuff that used to suck could be S-tier. Good luck getting back into Linux. Don’t get discouraged. It’s gotten a lot easier since old timers like us were hacking around on Ubuntu in the early 2000s.

I’ve been a Linux user since 2005ish and a DJ since at least 2013. I’ve tried a lot of music players including Rythmbox. I settled on Clementine/Strawberry or Amorok, depending on use case. Haven’t used either of them recently.

With that said, there is no right answer. Find one you like!

I’m in the same boat. I have to change it every now and then to break the visual fatigue of staring at the same theme for weeks. I miss Compiz with Emerald and whatever we were using 5-10 years ago. Themes are less transformative nowadays. I used to have crazy themed and now it’s hard to find something that isn’t just a recolor of a fairly plain theme.

Having said that, someone shared this great theme roundup here on Lemmy a while back. I used the purple one and now the Solaris color one. https://quickfix.es/2023/10/going-off-theme-the-prologue/

I think they are saying the other way around, their caps lock activates Ctrl. I have mine set up as a left hand backspace. KDE has a number of built in options for this where you just need to tick a box to activate it. I miss it a lot on my work PC (windows)

I have an XPS 13 9370 that has been great for my particular preferences. Having said that, I won’t buy another one. When it finally dies (on my third battery and still going strong) I will go for something more open, repairable, and Linux focused, maybe Framework or System76.

Get what you can afford. In many cases, Linux running on a potato will outperform and outlast a more expensive machine running windows for basic use tasks.

I’ve had people send me route links from that before. I’ll check it out. Without knowing much about it, it’s not Google owned and that’s an automatic point in its favor.

Yes, I did not know they had a PWA. That’s one less proprietary app on my phone. Thank you.

1. I’ve been looking at the Flint. If it works with our Fiber, that’s probably the one I should go with. Pardon me if I sound like a networking noob for this question, but since this isn’t one of those mesh systems like the eeros, how can I cover far away or otherwise low-signal rooms? Can I just use another router as long as it has an access point mode, or will I run into bottlenecks doing something like that.

I appreciate you sharing your experience as I like the interface on the Slate but it doesn’t have wifi and I don’t think it has enough throughput to handle all the traffic. Review sites, with a few exceptions, don’t help me with anything except wasting my time doom scrolling without learning anything.

I’ll take a look at some of your other recommendations. I appreciate the response.

Good recommendation. I gave it a whirl and it works well. Occasionally I’m getting a field that won’t fill, but that could be a bug on the web unless it repeats more. I mistyped a lot with some of the other alternative keyboards due to weird spacing, but Heli seems to have a lot customization options. I’ll keep test driving this one for a bit.

I agree with you the vast majority of the time, though I suppose my situation is uncommon. My neighbors and I talk and regularly shovel each others sidewalks if we’re the first outside in the morning. Having said that, some people are unwilling to live in a society. I regularly have a visitor I don’t like or trust. This person should not be left alone with a potted plant. Having said that, this person has a reason to be at my house and I can’t do anything about it except make it clear that they are being watched and better be on their best behavior.

Random side-note: I used to think my grandmother’s Euro doorbell with the speakerphone and the door buzzer was the pinnacle of future technology!

Anyway, thanks for an outside of the box suggestion, hopefully it will be feasible for me sooner rather than later.

I didn’t realize they had it as a webpage. We were already well into the app-era when I gave in and signed up for Uber. If the webpage works, that’s all I need for those one-offs when I couldn’t avoid using Uber. One app gone is even better than one app replaced!

I am on Android, I’ll check out shelter at some point. That name did come up in some of the conversations I’ve been reading.

I’ll give it a shot. I don’t run groups anymore since they stick with the elected leader of our group and that is no longer me! :-)

I’ve been playing with this loosely affiliated group for close to a decade if not more. We started on mumble and reddit, and it actually changed the group when we switched to discord. It really disincentivises long quality posts in favor of shitposting. Also the reason I’m on Lemmy. Gotta get my long format, threaded discussions somewhere!

I never appreciated snapshots until I ran a server. I used to just install a new distro whenever anything significant went wrong. Now I use them everywhere.

I can’t switch from Celsius to Fahrenheit, the switch just reverts. I do think it looks beautiful and has weather stats that I use when I bike but other apps don’t always have (air quality, UV) .