Don’t feel bad about the distro you land on, especially not Linux Mint. It’s the #1 distro I recommend to completely new Linux users.

I use it myself for any computer that I want a #JustWorks experience on. The Cinnamon desktop environment is super stable and easy to use. And so far, Linux Mint is the only distro I know of where you truly don’t have to use the terminal for anything even kernel updates/rollbacks, alternative driver installations, and major version upgrades.

The Mint team is wonderful and they’ve created a fantastic product.

I like good GUIs. There are GUIs that are clean, responsive, well designed, and full-featured.

Sadly, that is rare nowadays, regardless if the software is FOSS or not.

It seems like for proprietary software, the corporate approach is to design slow, boring GUIs that lack most/all advanced functionality. It’s designed for dumb users who just want to click and swipe.

FOSS on the other hand rarely has full or even part time UI/UX devs due to the cost. So often the GUIs are clunky, messy, and a horrible pain to navigate. The upside is that they usually have extremely deep features, but good luck finding them.

If I have to pick, FOSS all the way, but I wish I didn’t have to. There are a few FOSS programs that have very nice UIs, Bitwarden, Protonmail, Musescore, Godot, and many are getting better, but the landscape is still rough out there.

As for CLI, I prefer it for some things, it’s just faster depending on the function. I find myself operating with a hybrid setup now days. I have become proficient enough with the command line that I can switch seamlessly between my GUI environments and the CLI-only environments. I don’t really think about it much anymore.

Exactly my expectation, sadly. The crypto/NFT rush and then the AI rush has shown GPU manufactures, Nvidia especially, that people will still pay for GPUs, even at insane prices. So of course being a publicly held mega-Corp, they will keep the high prices and set it as the new baseline. Same to a lesser degree with AMD.

Ram will follow a similar pattern. Temporary extreme market conditions will create scarcity, prices spike to unheard of levels, desperate consoomers will still buy out what supply they can get, and signal to the companies selling it that the new high prices are actually totally fine.

The days of mid tier GPUs being $200-$350 are long gone. So are the days of 64Gb kits of mid-teir RAM for $200

And no, the market isn’t going to adjust in a good way for gamers with devs and studios writing more efficient code that runs high quality graphics on lower end hardware. We will get the dystopia option, no more consumer PC parts, rent a pre-built to use at a huge markup, or you pay for an online subscription to a cloud gaming platform. Either way, it enshitifies.

Free Options:

• Go to your local library, borrow DVDs, Music CDs, and Audio books. Take them home a use one of the many free software options to rip the content onto your own computer.
• Stream recording. You can find all kinds of free streaming sites to watch movies and TV shows. You can use the ytdl command line tool to rip those movies and shows to your own computer, and I don’t think that will trigger your ISPs alarm bells, I might be wrong though. If that is too advanced or isn’t working, just go full goblin mode and start playing the media full screen, then use OBS or another free screen cap software to record your screen. Set it and forget it.
• Torrent raw and risk it from your own home. Depending on your country, this might not actually be a big deal.

Cheap Options:

• Mullvad is $6 per month. You can almost certainly afford that. But if you truly can’t, then if you’re in the US (idk about other countries) donating plasma can net you $30-$40 on the low end and $60-$80 on the high end. And assuming you’re reasonably healthy, you can donate once a week. Even just one session at the low end would net you 4-5 months of VPN access.
• Sell stuff on Ebay, Craigslist, etc. You probably have some old junk laying around. Old computer parts, clothes, random tools, etc. All you need to do is find something worth 6$ and bam, there’s a month of VPN.
• If you live in an area with multiple ISPs and you pay for your own internet, call the other ones and tell them what you’re currently paying for internet, ask them if they can beat it by at least $10 a month. They will almost always say yes, and they will often include free installation and equipment set up too. You’re now saving at least $10 a month on your internet and can afford a monthly VPN plan.

Thanks for the response. I’m doing great now. Got a new job as a sysadmin making about 35% more than my old job, and I get to work on Linux a bunch, and my team is really solid.

Still sucks that I lost all that work, but I was able to get some of the old hardware back for free, so my old servers can live again in my home lab.

Make sure to use Steam cloud save, and be aware that Cities skylines can run both natively on Linux and through Proton, so be sure to try both to see what gives you the best performance.

I use a handful of mods and haven’t had any issues beyond just mod weirdness.

Lol this is somebody’s hackerman fantasy post, the chain smoking, the terminology, I can practically hear the early 2000’s drum n’ bass/nightcore in the background.

Yeah, especially because Cities Skylines runs great on Linux.

Sorry, typo, I fixed it now. Pseudo-VM is what I meant.

It’s alright now, does what it needs to do. It’s kind of a pain because of the weirdness of running as a pseudo-VM, but better than no Linux at all.

Sorry for your loss :( Same thing happened to me about a year ago.

I was the sole IT admin for a small company. Used Debian with KDE on a snappy little Thinkpad. No issues managing all the infra with it, even though most of it was MS trash. I used Reminnia for RDP into the Windows servers, and the Browser for all O365/Entra administration. A Windows 11 VM for the rare times I needed to test Windows-only apps or configs.

Worked like a dream, but then we got bought out by a huge competitor. Their IT team took everything over. I had to decommission my on-prem Linux servers, Ansible automations, Open Project tracking and FOSS ticketing system. Finally, I had to give up my Sweet little Linux Thinkpad and use their standard-issue HP Windows 11 garbage laptop. They were slow, clunky, buggy, and ugly, it was awful.

I quit a few months later after securing the job I have now. It pays about 35% more, has twice as much PTO, and about 50% of my workload is Linux stuff. It’s so much better.

My advice, if it’s truly non negotiable, install WSL first thing. It’s not nearly as good as having actual Linux, because it’s running inside of Microslop’s horrid OS, but it’s better than nothing. Try to be an advocate for FOSS at the company, see if you can convince leadership to let you implement Linux-based solutions wherever they might fit, make yourself the de facto expert on them so you at least get to work on Linux and FOSS infra.

Aside from that, start job hunting. Try to find a job that will let you be more Linuxy.

Linux Mint. Everything including full system version upgrades and GPU driver installations can be done via GUI.

The default look and feel is Windows-y, and the Mint team does a great job of pre-loading their distro with all the basic apps most people need, including a good printer app, scanner app, PDF viewer, media player, etc.

I’ve been liking vanilla Debian more and more lately. It takes a bit of time to set up properly, and there are some drawbacks for certain software stacks. But in general, rock stable, no muss, barely any fuss.

Once it’s set up, it’s awesome for workhorse servers.

And as long as you don’t need anything cutting edge, it’s not bad as a desktop OS. I used Debian12 with the Plasma DE for a while at a job I had and it was very usable. A few weird issues, but nothing terrible.

All we want is a really good FOSS browser and email client…

“A great commander secures his victory before entering into battle. A poor commander first rushes into battle, then searches for victory.”

~Sun Tzu, The Art of War

If I want simple and super stable, Cinnamon. If I want sexy, custom, and slightly less stable, Plasma.

Ooh yeah, that is better 🤌

Slopilot

“Old men keep dreaming up battles for young men to fight.”

Daggers - The Chariot

President of peace, eh MAGAts?