Which version of Mint did you install? The new version has zfs modules disabled by default, because they were creating long booting problems on people who were not even using zfs. I stumbled on the problem too, I had mint installed on a usb stick (full install) and on SOME computers, when booted, it would try to load zfs stuff, taking 1.30 minutes of trying to do some systemd job for it.I removed all zfs stuff and nothing got broken.

Ungoogled Chromium doesn’t autoupdate though. Chrome and Chromium do.

Linux Mint will work wonderfully on it. It has 4 GB RAM and a cpu that scores 1220 CPU points on passmark benchmark. That’s more than enough to run Mint with Cinnamon – which is very Windows-like, and the recommended distro for windows users.

I’d suggest you install it for him, and you configure it as it should (go through the prefs). Also, disable a couple of startup things found in the utility in the prefs, e.g. the wizard and the reports, to save ram. To save even more ram, install chrome for your friend (I know, I know, Firefox is there, but Chrome uses less ram on youtube – almost 2/3s). On a 4 gb laptop, for someone who specifically wants to use youtube, that matters. And along with it, ublock origin on the medium level, so it can block youtube ads.

That seems like a policy kit issue. Maybe the system doesn’t have the permissions to do it automatically. XFce usually has such problems in other distros, but I haven’t heard one on mint with cinnamon.

Another thing to look at is what graphics card you’re using. With nvidia you can get some weird suspend issues.

Finally, install a newer kernel to see if that fixes the issue.

That’s just the state of things. I have experienced this as well, trying to copy a 160 GB usb stick to another one (my old itunes library). Windows manages fine, but neither Linux nor MacOS do it properly. They crawl, and in macos’ case, it gets much slower as time goes by, and I had to stop the transfer. Overall, it’s how these things are implemented. It’s ok for a few gigabytes, but not a good case for many small files (e.g. 3-5 mb each) with many subfolders, and many GBs overall. Seems to me that some cache is overfilling, while windows is more diligent to clear up that cache in time, before things get into a crawl. Just a weak implementation for both Linux and MacOS IMHO, and while I’m a full time Linux user, I’m not afraid to say it how I experienced it under a debian and ubuntu.

Epson’s software is quite sub par in recognizing their own hardware. Over here their own utility can’t find my epson scanner, for example. Although it does work if I use it the IP address. Something in their network detection code is just erroneous. As for the epson printer itself, it stopped connecting to my wifi, no matter what. I now have it connected via an ethernet cable, and things work better. So definitely try an ethernet cable.

If all have problems, then it’s something that likely can’t really be fixed via the forum. It’s either a bug, or a not-fully featured feature yet. Qemu often has 3D problems anyway when enabled. 3D is a really hard problem to get right. Stay with 2D acceleration, or try the latest VMWare to see if you can use 3D with it instead. Otherwise, install on bare metal.

According to the releases so far, and how far ahead the code has come, and how many bugs it has still, i’d say that 1.0 will probably come around August or September. I’m running Cosmic and it’s still not there, too many rough edges.

Yes, it is, for two reasons:

1. Affinity company has replied to my request saying that there won’t be a Linux version, ever.
2. The hacks that exist to run Affinity on Linux are a moving rug, newer wine of affinity versions break stuff all the time. Don’t rely on it.

Your best bet is to run Gimp3 (which is excellent), or Photopea online. Learn Photopea so you can know Photoshop if in the future a future employer requires it, while for your own projects, learn Gimp3. I run the official Appimage without any issue.

The only one that doesn’t have it at all, or don’t plan for it, is lxde and mate. Every other DE has some form of support coming over.

Ι hope they stop all their old protocols, and include only xmpp, matrix, irc, and maybe a couple more relevant ones, but drop msn/icq etc old stuff.

Buy a supported usb bt dongle, they’re tiny. Better than fighting with models that don’t work well.

I’m aware of all these things, and I agree with you. But the FACT remains: Chrome works on a 2 or 4 GB old laptop much faster and with less ram than Firefox. The one thing you don’t want in your desktop experience is to be hitting the swap constantly, because your hdd or ssd will be killed very fast, and the experience will just be slow. The whole point of removing Windows from these laptops is to find efficient software that will bring a new life to them, instead of ending up in a landfill. And that means the following:

1. For PCs with 4 GB of ram, Linux Mint is the best choice (or with XFce if the cpu is slow, or with debian+xfce if the ssd is only 16 gb as in some chromebooks).
2. For PCs with 2 GB of ram, Q4OS is the best choice. It has the best balance between low ram usage and a cohesive DE with good desktop preferences (it’s a fork of KDE 3.5).

But in both cases, Chrome/ium is the best case, because it’s, a. Faster, b. Uses less ram.

What do you want me to do about it? Change the status quo? Stop using it and go with firefox regardless, even if it ends up in an abysmal desktop experience and dead ssds? Why should I do that? The people I install Linux for them on their old laptops want a good desktop experience to replace their now slow Windows, they don’t care if it’s Linux or Gnu/linux. Now tell me, it’s still my fault for people dowvoting?

Which is really funny, since I use Linux since 1998. It’s just that I don’t follow cults.

Chromium is ok in my opinion, but it’s also a few days away from getting updated in the repo for security updates. I don’t like Brave because of its crypto ties.

As for RAM, on low RAM machines Firefox is hitting the swap way earlier than Chrome/ium does. It really is a problem on low end PCs. It’s definitely not as optimized. And it’s not juset the RAM, as I explained, it’s just slower. I use Photopea to edit photos, and there’s an order of magnitude difference in speed on a PC with about 4000 passmark cpu points (and some of my laptops have only 500 points!!). Probably not noticeable on fast machines (machines with over 10k passmark points). Also, where Firefox could do 480p without dropping frames on youtube, Chrome can do 720p on the same video. So for slow machines, I’ll always suggest chrome/ium. For fast PCs, I guess it doesn’t really matter what you choose.

I leave Firefox installed, but I download and use Chrome. Chrome is much faster than Firefox in many websites I use (not only youtube where Google might be using a secret sauce, but also Photopea and other js-heavy websites). Also, Chrome is using way less RAM than Firefox. I have a bunch of older laptops with 4 GB of RAM, so these “small” differences in speed between the two browsers is VERY evident on these older computers (not so easily seen on very fast PCs). Many people don’t like me writing all that, and often downvote me for having written that in the past, but it’s god’s honest truth. I looked into installing a totally degoogled chromium, but it’s not updated asap for security updates, so it’s a no-go for me.

I also prefer VLC for videos, and OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice (better MS compatibility). Also, because it’s Linux Mint and comes preinstalled with warpinator, I prefer LocalSend instead of Warpinator. Easier to use.

Edit: just as predicted, downvotes. People seem to prefer a live in a lie. Do your own tests guys before you press the trigger!

Gnome is just as beautiful as MacOS. The only difference is that MacOS is colorful, while Gnome is more b&w in its design. In fact, I’d say that gnome is more modern than macOS in its overall design philosophy. So modern, that some people hate it, lol. But modern nonetheless.

Honestly, I’d go with ubuntu, just because lots of llm tools work with it, and because it has good support for dgpus. I personally use debian, but for your case, i’d go with ubuntu.

Here are your choices to try out yourself and see if they can do what you need:

• GnuCash (distro support, flatpak)
• HomeBank (distro support)
• KMyMoney (distro support, appimage, flatpak)
• ActualBudget ( https://actualbudget.org/ , appimage, flatpak)
• Denaro (the newest on the block with modern UI, flatpak)

And for Android:

• IvyWallet

My husband, who mostly codes in assembly these days (he’s mostly retired so his hobby is old atari, amstrad, and spectrum computers), went from VSCode, to Sublime, to now Kate. He prefers to use 100% open source apps, without strings attached. VSCode is nice, but it has lots of weird stuff in it that aren’t necessarily up to the spirit of open source. So Kate works perfectly for him, although VSCodium would do well as well (it’s just that Kate has better syntax highlighters for his weird assembly). Also VSCode/ium is using about 250 MB of RAM, while Kate about 45 (and Sublime only about 32).