Show Us Your Linux Desktop

[Mr. Fox]

2 minutes ago, Etern4l said:

 

Just be aware that Zorin may contain some opt-out telemetry:

 

https://www.linux.org/threads/zorin-os-15-and-privacy-concerns.26415/

Yes. I always elect to opt-out of that kind of thing. Not only with Zorin, but any/all software or OS. I think it should be illegal to have to make a choice to opt-out of anything. You should have to go to extra effort and deliberately opt-in, not deliberately opt-out. Opt-out should be automatic for everything.

[kojack]

53 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

Zorin is a really good distro. It works well for me, and 6.2 is the best one yet. The only thing I do not care for with their default DE is the menu is not configurable. I usually install Cinnamon along side the Zorin DE so I can tweak the aesthetics more to my preferences. I do really like the Zorin OS dark theme. I think it looks and feels great.

Yes, System 76 is a great company with innovative products, not the least of which is Pop_OS! Another excellent distro with working NVIDIA support out of the box. I wish there were more companies like them that gave preference to Linux and furthered the development of Linux as a complete and outright replacement for Winduhz. I think you will love Zorin OS. I am impressed enough that I went the next step and purchased the "Pro" version of 5.9, 6.1 and 6.2. The chances of Linux getting better improve when we support those efforts.

 

I find I am using Linux less (temporarily) because of poor NVIDIA driver support on kernel 6.X and some of the more recent 5.X kernels. I have reliability issues relating to NVIDIA drivers with the newer 5.X kernels and above, and my two Z690 systems do not have full and proper CPU functionality on 5.X kernels. Clocks are not read correctly, etc. So, I have temporarily paused my zealous pursuit for replacing Winduhz with Linux until that gets sorted.

With the basic copy you don't get the interchangeable styles like mac/os/windows etc correct?  that's only on the pro level?  I am thinking about trying the "lite" version to see how it reacts with the old hardware on my acer. 

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, kojack said:

With the basic copy you don't get the interchangeable styles like mac/os/windows etc correct?  that's only on the pro level?  I am thinking about trying the "lite" version to see how it reacts with the old hardware on my acer. 

It is not quite as full featured, but it will certainly let you test drive and decide if you want the full OS. Or, you can just use the lite/free version and install and alternative DE like KDE, Cinnamon or whatever you like.

[Mr. Fox]

Things are finally starting to fall into place. I was beginning to think I would never get the ASUS motherboard to function correctly on Linux like my EVGA motherboard. ASUS is such a pain in the butt sometimes. CPU seems to be functioning correctly now.

I used Linux all day long for work yesterday. Once I figure out how to get Micro$lop Office working correctly on Linux, I might finally be able to kick Windoze to the curb. Everything is just so much cleaner without a trashy OS.

[i.bakar]

i know that most of linux users like there theme quite simple but i love how garuda dragonized looks.

[Eban]

34 minutes ago, i.bakar said:

i know that most of linux users like there theme quite simple but i love how garuda dragonized looks.

 

I literally just checked distrowatch.....I thought Garuda dragonized looked suspiciously like Kali linux 

 

Nice colours 

[i.bakar]

13 minutes ago, Eban said:

 

I literally just checked distrowatch.....I thought Garuda dragonized looked suspiciously like Kali linux 

 

Nice colours 

i had the exact same idea a year ago since i know kali has the blue dragon logo 

[Mr. Fox]

Linux Vista

Linux 7

@Raiderman

[Vista]

KDE Neon, which I don't use very often, due to a few issues with certain hardware not working correctly with it.

[Mr. Fox]

OK, got Linux up and running on the Apex. Everything Windows used to be that was right and good.

 

I have a hard time deciding whether I like Cinnamon or Plasma better. They both have their pros and cons. Easily switching between them at will on the login screen is something that sets Linux apart. With the clowns at Micro$lop you get to choose anything you want as long as it is what they want. Control-Freak Gestapo Bastards.

 

[raptorddd]

On 11/29/2022 at 9:15 AM, Mr. Fox said:

I

Most people (me included) don't have the knowledge, desire or time to compile code and fix broken Linux code. Being "free" is both a strength and a major weakness. It is probably pretty safe to assume that most of the experienced Linux developers do not own cutting edge hardware, and they're only going to burn calories on hardware that matters to them.

 

old post but...

sorry for my ignorance. but reading this, you mention linux beign free is the weakness of it because no fixes ar available or you must fix stuff to make it work..

am getting sick of microsoft. they want to control the OS. no freedom to do as you wish.

 

question is what if linux was not free,? will it change a bit.? why are they free and are they going to continue beogn a free OS. 

since friday i tried W11 i like it. but using startisback only.. but i encounter many problems that i gave up. not sure if they were because of my end or thats how the OS is.

i like my OS tweak the way i like it. so i used same tweaks as in W10.

 all this on a unsupported CPU. i have a 2nd GEN cpu.

but i found that at times it would like hang for like 2-3 minutes... had to clean iinstall again.. then once i had it all set up.. it would not shut down i had to press power button.. next start up CANT LOG IN to my profile bla bla bla.. clean install again.. then the last time i could not make it turn off or restart. it would stay at shutting down screen or restarting screnn...

i dont know much about linux. but i wish it be more friendly. why not make like windows.. as you mentioned its free. so thats what you get.. why not charge for it..

i think the day that it runs like windows then all people would jumpp to linux.

[Aaron44126]

41 minutes ago, raptorddd said:

old post but...

 

If you're interested and have a spare flash drive (8GB or larger) then it is easy enough to try.  Download an Ubuntu ISO, follow the directions to make a bootable flash drive, and then boot off of that and poke around and see what you think.  It will give you a full desktop environment with a web browser and you don't actually have to install anything.

 

I think that the default GNOME desktop is good for beginners, but there are others that you can try.  It is not as customizable as some others, but it is well-supported and very stable, and there are extensions that you can install to change some behaviors if you like.  @Mr. Fox mentioned KDE Plasma and Cinnamon.  I have tried both.  I found Plasma to be my favorite, it is very flexible and a good power user experience, but also a big "rough around the edges" and buggy.  Cinnamon is another solid option and good for new Linux users to check out, but I couldn't use it because I found high-DPI support to be lacking.

 

Depending on what you do with your PC, it might be easy to transition to Linux or it might not.  You've got to be open to things being a bit different.  Linux does support older hardware better (IMO) so it could "breathe new life" into your machine, booting and operating much faster than Windows 11 does.  You can easily install Steam on Ubuntu, and after toggling a few options in Steam settings, install any Windows game that you want (see YouTube videos for instructions).  I just came off of using Linux as my main OS for two months and the main drawback to me was professional software (MS Office, Adobe, etc.) which you cannot use if there is no Linux version.  There are free alternatives which will be fine if you only need to do light work in this area but probably frustrating if you are actually used to using them for productivity.

 

"Why not charge for Linux?"

No person or company is in a position to be the gatekeeper and charge for it.  It is just a collection of free software.  Even if Linux Torvalds decided that he was going to cut off free access require payment for the Linux kernel from now on, he would face pushback and likely legal challenges from other users who contributed code to the kernel under the open license.  The software is licensed in such a way that no one can take it, create an "improved" (paid?) version, and then fail to contribute their changes back to the community if asked (without being ready to face copyright claims in court).

 

If someone were to try to charge for it, then someone else would just make it available for free, and no one would use the paid option.  I mean, Red Hat does charge for their distribution and they have a business model going off of that, but in that case you are more paying them more for the support than for the software.

 

As for "fixes" and specific hardware support, indeed, as a largely community project then people get to pick and choose what to work on and their priorities might not be in line with yours.

[Etern4l]

53 minutes ago, raptorddd said:

sorry for my ignorance. but reading this, you mention linux beign free is the weakness of it because no fixes ar available or you must fix stuff to make it work..

 

Not sure who said that but you get frequent patches and updates, none of which are forced on you, mind you.

 

Linux has been around for over 30 years, and while not mainstream on the desktop, it basically powers the Internet and a large proportion of mobile devices. You don't need to worry about it going away.

 

Linux does have some learning curve involved, but learning is good, right? Pick a beginner-friendly distro and have fun. There is a ton of tutorials on the web and YT to get you started.

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, raptorddd said:

old post but...

sorry for my ignorance. but reading this, you mention linux beign free is the weakness of it because no fixes ar available or you must fix stuff to make it work..

am getting sick of microsoft. they want to control the OS. no freedom to do as you wish.

 

question is what if linux was not free,? will it change a bit.? why are they free and are they going to continue beogn a free OS. 

since friday i tried W11 i like it. but using startisback only.. but i encounter many problems that i gave up. not sure if they were because of my end or thats how the OS is.

i like my OS tweak the way i like it. so i used same tweaks as in W10.

 all this on a unsupported CPU. i have a 2nd GEN cpu.

but i found that at times it would like hang for like 2-3 minutes... had to clean iinstall again.. then once i had it all set up.. it would not shut down i had to press power button.. next start up CANT LOG IN to my profile bla bla bla.. clean install again.. then the last time i could not make it turn off or restart. it would stay at shutting down screen or restarting screnn...

i dont know much about linux. but i wish it be more friendly. why not make like windows.. as you mentioned its free. so thats what you get.. why not charge for it..

i think the day that it runs like windows then all people would jumpp to linux.

Windows is a terrible mess and getting worse. I would encourage you to explore Linux and use a desktop environment like Cinnamon, as it is the easiest and most closely resembles what you are used to with Windows. Plasma is a close second. A really easy solution is to use POP_OS and then install Cinnamond Desktop Environment if you don't like the POP_OS GUI. (I despise it and won't use a default Linux GUI like Unity. It needs to closely resemble Windows aesthetically or I hate it.) POP_OS is very suited for gaming systems with good AMD and NVIDIA GPU driver support baked in. The developer of POP_OS (System76) is a major Clevo laptop distributor and custom desktop builder. They built POP_OS to be their own in-house OS for the systems they sell, so you know it's going to be good.

 

There are Linux distros that are not free. They generally have a free variant with less support. Red Hat (RHEL) has Fedora, but I think I heard it was going closed source. But, that doesn't matter because what the paid versions do benefits those that are free and vice versa.

 

Running older hardware in your scenario is perfect. Linux mostly has issues with bleeding edge hardware, and I do believe it is because the people that are most influential and involved in Linux development do not have bleeding edge hardware. I also believe most of them are not avid overclocking enthusiasts or gamers, so excelling with those endeavors isn't high on their list of priorities and may not even be within their technical skillset to address. It might take longer before some things function properly if you have the newest hardware available. It took a while before Linux understood my 13th Gen CPU  and initially a lot of things like CPU and memory clock speeds were misreported. 

[Aaron44126]

15 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

It might take longer before some things function properly if you have the newest hardware available. It took a while before Linux understood my 13th Gen CPU  and initially a lot of things like CPU and memory clock speeds were misreported. 

 

There's a trickle-down thing going on as well.  Most distributions don't ship the latest Linux kernel available right away.  So when new hardware comes along, you have to wait for proper support to be added to a new version of the kernel (which might not happen until after the hardware's launch) and then you have to wait for your favorite distribution to ship an update which includes that kernel.  The time that you have to wait depends on the distribution's release cycle.  "Rolling release" distributions (i.e. Arch) will get it more quickly.

 

I ran into a similar thing with my Precision 7770, which I picked up at launch in July 2022.  Ubuntu is my distro of choice.  Ubuntu didn't have a kernel that supports the Intel 12th gen iGPU until October 2022 and they didn't have a kernel that supports a 120 Hz display on said iGPU until April 2023.  (Despite both being supported immediately at launch on Windows.)  Bleeding edge issues, but something to consider if you're buying/building a brand new PC and plan to run Linux on it.

[raptorddd]

On 6/28/2023 at 1:27 PM, Aaron44126 said:

 

If you're interested and have a spare flash drive (8GB or larger) then it is easy enough to try.  Download an Ubuntu ISO, follow the directions to make a bootable flash drive, and then boot off of that and poke around and see what you think.  It will give you a full desktop environment with a web browser and you don't actually have to install anything.

 

I think that the default GNOME desktop is good for beginners, but there are others that you can try.  It is not as customizable as some others, but it is well-supported and very stable, and there are extensions that you can install to change some behaviors if you like.  @Mr. Fox mentioned KDE Plasma and Cinnamon.  I have tried both.  I found Plasma to be my favorite, it is very flexible and a good power user experience, but also a big "rough around the edges" and buggy.  Cinnamon is another solid option and good for new Linux users to check out, but I couldn't use it because I found high-DPI support to be lacking.

 

Depending on what you do with your PC, it might be easy to transition to Linux or it might not.  You've got to be open to things being a bit different.  Linux does support older hardware better (IMO) so it could "breathe new life" into your machine, booting and operating much faster than Windows 11 does.  You can easily install Steam on Ubuntu, and after toggling a few options in Steam settings, install any Windows game that you want (see YouTube videos for instructions).  I just came off of using Linux as my main OS for two months and the main drawback to me was professional software (MS Office, Adobe, etc.) which you cannot use if there is no Linux version.  There are free alternatives which will be fine if you only need to do light work in this area but probably frustrating if you are actually used to using them for productivity.

 

"Why not charge for Linux?"

No person or company is in a position to be the gatekeeper and charge for it.  It is just a collection of free software.  Even if Linux Torvalds decided that he was going to cut off free access require payment for the Linux kernel from now on, he would face pushback and likely legal challenges from other users who contributed code to the kernel under the open license.  The software is licensed in such a way that no one can take it, create an "improved" (paid?) version, and then fail to contribute their changes back to the community if asked (without being ready to face copyright claims in court).

 

If someone were to try to charge for it, then someone else would just make it available for free, and no one would use the paid option.  I mean, Red Hat does charge for their distribution and they have a business model going off of that, but in that case you are more paying them more for the support than for the software.

 

As for "fixes" and specific hardware support, indeed, as a largely community project then people get to pick and choose what to work on and their priorities might not be in line with yours.

i had try linux on flash drive  and even installed to ssd. but only for aa few hours.

i tried mint cinnamon.  i tried to install a game just like that. stock mint. it failed. so wemt back to windows.

i usually just browse,play games. and use some programs when i need to.

 

On 6/28/2023 at 2:06 PM, Mr. Fox said:

Windows is a terrible mess and getting worse. I would encourage you to explore Linux and use a desktop environment like Cinnamon, as it is the easiest and most closely resembles what you are used to with Windows. Plasma is a close second. A really easy solution is to use POP_OS and then install Cinnamond Desktop Environment if you don't like the POP_OS GUI. (I despise it and won't use a default Linux GUI like Unity. It needs to closely resemble Windows aesthetically or I hate it.) POP_OS is very suited for gaming systems with good AMD and NVIDIA GPU driver support baked in. The developer of POP_OS (System76) is a major Clevo laptop distributor and custom desktop builder. They built POP_OS to be their own in-house OS for the systems they sell, so you know it's going to be good.

 

There are Linux distros that are not free. They generally have a free variant with less support. Red Hat (RHEL) has Fedora, but I think I heard it was going closed source. But, that doesn't matter because what the paid versions do benefits those that are free and vice versa.

 

Running older hardware in your scenario is perfect. Linux mostly has issues with bleeding edge hardware, and I do believe it is because the people that are most influential and involved in Linux development do not have bleeding edge hardware. I also believe most of them are not avid overclocking enthusiasts or gamers, so excelling with those endeavors isn't high on their list of priorities and may not even be within their technical skillset to address. It might take longer before some things function properly if you have the newest hardware available. It took a while before Linux understood my 13th Gen CPU  and initially a lot of things like CPU and memory clock speeds were misreported. 

i think i tried pop OS once..  just to see what is like. tried for half an hour then back to windows.

i heard that pop OS have nvidia drivers i dont remember if i try to install mine but could not...

maybe the little bit a i know is that  it doesnt work out of the box from stock. you need to thinker with it to install most of the things right.?

now when you guys mention steam... what is steam.? i know you buy games there... but what if i have old games not from steam.? could i still play them.? is steam sort of a program to run anygames or just steam ones.? 

if i recall correctly pop OS felt like a phone GUI or there was something very odd that i dislike..

 

i have always asked if android is based on linux why everything runs in android so good. 

 

am going to try gnome ..

[Mr. Fox]

1 hour ago, raptorddd said:

i think i tried pop OS once..  just to see what is like. tried for half an hour then back to windows.

i heard that pop OS have nvidia drivers i dont remember if i try to install mine but could not...

maybe the little bit a i know is that  it doesnt work out of the box from stock. you need to thinker with it to install most of the things right.?

now when you guys mention steam... what is steam.? i know you buy games there... but what if i have old games not from steam.? could i still play them.? is steam sort of a program to run anygames or just steam ones.? 

if i recall correctly pop OS felt like a phone GUI or there was something very odd that i dislike..

 

i have always asked if android is based on linux why everything runs in android so good. 

 

am going to try gnome ..

You choose either NVIDIA or AMD when you download POP_OS iso and it pretty much just installs and everything works as expected. The only real tinkering I have needed to do it make it look acceptable with a GUI that closely resembles Windows. I do not care for Unity desktop environment (GUI) at all. I find most desktop environments that are not aesthetically similar to Windows to be repulsive and won't even try to use them. Pop OS has a slightly tweak version of Unity (Ubuntu) desktop. Gnome can be tweaked and it is not as unfamiliar to use as Unity.

 

Almost everything I have tried on Steam works with installed using Steam's Proton Experimental. Lots of games that are supposedly Windows only have worked extremely well for me on Linux. Titles that are purely DX12 might be a problem. But, most games can use DX11 or Vulkan. I think like one title out of more than a dozen Steam titles that I tested would not work on Linux.

 

Standalone games that are not on Steam and do not rely on a game client like Steam, Epic or Origin, can usually be set up to run using Lutris. Lutris is a Linux game front end for Wine and it works quite well. It was kind of tricky for me to figure out how to use it at first, because I didn't know what I was doing and messing things up.

 

I am far from a Linux expert. There are probably a lot of people here that are. While I probably know more than the average Windows junkie, I am just a hack that figures things out as I go because I'm fed up with the nonsense the idiots at Micro$lop are dishing out and I want an alternative. I definitely don't like Micro$lop anymore and I do not appreciate the bucket of digital filth Windows has become.

[Ishayin]

A few days ago I made a quick screen capture demo of my customised XFCE desktop styling with window button highlights that sync with the system theme (most apps also sync with the system theme):
https://files.trom.tf/s/9S9Wi7soTkw5Eyt

 

I also had a quick go at doing the same for the docklike plugin, since many people seem to prefer a dock style taskbar these days. So you can see that added to the right side of the taskbar in parallel after the first minute. And after another minute, there's also quick a demo of switching between a single and dual row panel, and finally showing/hiding desktop icons (both with shortcut keys – I've also got one setup to enable intelligent hiding of the panel with fullscreen apps, but not shown here).

 

Apologies that its not optimised for the web, so you will have to wait for the whole file to buffer first if streaming it. If it's giving you trouble, you can either just download it, or alternatively see an earlier take I did that is web optimised, but has no cursor shown and is jerky due low frame rate: (webm-av1 / mp4-h264).

[Mr. Fox]

Clean Linux install with Arc A770. Totally hassle-free. Didn't have to do anything special. It just worked.

OS: Ubuntu Cinnamon 23.10 x86_64

Kernel: 6.5.0-13-generic

DE: Cinnamon 5.8.4