There’s something that strikes me as fundamentally hilarious that “good with computers” in the Windows world means “disabling all of Windows’ pushy services that rip control from the user and sell their data.”

Like “I think I’m pretty good with computers!”

“Oh yeah? How much of Windows have you managed to sabotage so it stays out of your way?”

LMAO . It could be such a good OS but its dark and anti-patterns are truly bizarre.

Also OP, if you want pretty and Cinnamon can’t do it for ya, you can always install KDE (my fav!) or GNOME or what have you right on top of your existing system.

Research before doing so! But it’s possible. :)

I also love Tumbleweed and rock it as my daily driver!

To complement this point, OP, you can also get that sweet rollback functionality in any distro! Usually the easiest way is selecting BTRFS as your file system on install, and installing a software called “TimeShift” that will manage snapshots for you.

BTRFS can be complicated, but basically, it allows remembering the changes in files, without needing to copy the ENTIRE file. This saves a ton of space. (You don’t need to get into the weeds deep diving if you don’t want to. Snapshots are great, everything else is great, as long as you aren’t doing crazy specific RAID setups or something lol)

Otherwise, on EXT4 for insurance, your rollbacks would just literally be copied files, which can eat your storage fast. :)

Tumbleweed is known for rolling (heh!) this in quite smoothly by default, but this is just an example how any distro can be tweaked how you like! (Highly recommend setting up Timeshift on ANY install.)

I absolutely second the advice in this comment: Try some live USBs or virtual machines and just play around for what feels right. Distro hopping can be lots of fun, but you’ll find one that “feels like home.”

:)

I agree with most folks here that usability-wise, both are truly fine! Mainly I think philosophy is where Mint might have an edge here.

Ubuntu, run by a corpo named Canonical, has had some controversial decisions in the past, such as inserting amazon ads into the system’s search feature, or “opt out” analytics being default, and lately, a system called “snap.”

Snap is controversial because it has a closed source backend, but effectively works just like its open-source counterpart, the “flatpak.” It’s packaged so the software has everything it needs to run.

Some people say they work great, others hate them, but Ubuntu doesn’t make it very easy for you to have a choice in the matter.

If you don’t like the idea of snaps, it’s a bit of a pain to get rid of it. And otherwise, Ubuntu will sneakily use it as the default way to install most software. Philosophically, this can feel a lot like why people left Windows behind!

Long term, that’s why I favor and recommend Mint to most newcomers: It doesn’t play those games, sometimes the drivers work even better, the community is fantastic, and the vast knowledge that works on Ubuntu should work on Mint too.

So that’s mainly where the difference will lie.

Either way, I wouldn’t sweat it too much while you’re learning, as long as it does what you want! And purple-orange is pretty snazzy. ;)

Mint just feels a little “cleaner” in my humble opinion. Most software you’d want the latest of, like GIMP or Discord, will be found as a Flatpak in Mint’s app store.

Hope this helps you get a clearer view!

Microsoft knows this has so much power with a certain computer user demographic and I hate it so much. It was the worst, having to teach people to install certain useful software while also directing them to override big scary warnings…“But just this time! Don’t do it all the time!”

It made me look shady, it made the software look shady, for no good reason.

…And you just know, sadly they’re the same kind of users that will probably repeat that pattern with a suspicious .exe they got in an email.

Just wanna say, I’ve seen you on a lot of posts and I really appreciate your fervor in trying to reach out with hope and education after this dark turn of events. It’s important work and I’m really glad to feel we aren’t alone.

I don’t know if we agree 100% on a lot of things, but if we win a world where we can keep peaceably debating the merits of various pro-human policies, then we’ve won, and that’s worth fighting for.

Please make sure you’re taking good care of yourself and getting fresh air once in a while too, amigo. All this doomsaying by people can weary the soul. But thanks for putting so much effort into your outreach posts. :)

–Sincerely, A Christian-Anarchist (USA)

Bough it

Twish it!

Pull it!

(Yeah I know this joke is a stretch lmao)

Dammit, Manjaro. Why you gotta be WEIRD?! I used to love their branding, but they keep doing crazy things that would clearly alienate the userbase that’s left…

NGL on pretty much any install, I’d end up looking up pros and cons of every filesystem AGAIN…

… It’s BTRFS now. Simple. Easy. Lol

But it was a lotta research to reach that conclusion. So yeah I get that newbie apprehension!

Me, a long time KeyPass enjoyer:

“Y’know people keep talking about BitWarden, maybe it’s more accessible and I should give it a tr…(sees this) PFFFFFTTTT! DODGED THAT BULLET.”

A little LESS chaotically, you can use emojis to name objects in Blender now… Which, I dunno, could be kinda fun in the right doses.

This picture had me progressively laughing harder as it progressed though LOL.

Woo! ALWAYS a good day to see InkScape getting some updates! I suck at it but I sure do appreciate it. :D

I hear it’s prone to Rust.

You can just hear it as kitty wedges into that pipe.

(PHOOMPF) … “MEooow?” :|

Hey I didn’t know that! Cool! :)

I agree, because I really like their color scheme and logo. =\

(Infuriating TikTok voice:) “These red states are putting atmospheric additives in their coal plants to turn the sky red! Wow!”

That’s pretty neat. I do hope they do some solid UI/UX research on it, and figure out their own way of smoothing things out without simply “making it like Photoshop” like the grouchy masses are clamoring for. :p

Blender had some odd ideas at first, but I really appreciate their unique approach that, IMHO, makes an Autodesk product feel heavy and kludgy by comparison.

So weird I’m used to hearing about FBI using us for images. 🤔 Lol

Quite rude towards a total stranger simply admitting they don’t know something yet, but okay.