#Debian-based

[arch-official]

Hey! I'm a windows user, got a question for someone who is looking to make the jump, what distro do you think is the best to migrate over to?

I'm struggling to figure out Linux but like windows sucks ass so

linux mint. It's the uncontested champion for newcomers. It's reliable, fast, simple, and it just works.

Lot's of experienced linux users even use mint.

if you want something a little challenging though then ubuntu and Pop_OS! are both great alteratives.

[natural-blogarithm]

backing up my laptop for the first time in months because my OS is acting up. i should probably do this more often.

[mozilla-firefox]

do you have any advice on transitioning from windows to linux?

can't recommend estradiol and progesterone enough

[goon]

i wanna try a linux distro as a daily driver for a little bit but idk which one to use

[protoctist]

forcefemming a cute boy by wiping his windows install and putting a linux distro on her desktop

[unidentifiedfuckingthing]

puppy's been using one of these free mini pcs to set up a minecraft server (linux experience is using ubuntu for a bit like, 10 years ago) and she tried for like 3 hours literally just to download openjdk to debian and neither of us could figure it out. i dont know enough about debian streams and the documentation is like dizzyingly opaque and all written in that unreadable thin monospace font. we wiped it, i put endeavouros on it and went to the bathroom for like 20 minutes, and she had fully installed java & minecraft and already had a server up. someone who didnt know what "run command as root" meant earlier today. i <3 arch

[systemdeez]

I'm using the liquorix kernel now if anyone cares.

[nksistemas]

antiX 23.2 Lanza con Base en Debian 12 y Sin Systemd: Una Experiencia Ligera en Linux

La nueva versión de antiX 23.2, conocida como “Arditi del Popolo”, ha llegado al mundo de las distribuciones Linux, continuando con su enfoque minimalista y libre de systemd. Esta distribución es una excelente opción para quienes buscan un sistema operativo ligero y personalizable, ideal para hardware antiguo o para aquellos que prefieren un control más fino sobre su entorno Linux. Actualización…

[ryjelsum]

tbh if you are 'into computers', setting up a file server with samba (what you need for it to work with windows and generally most other things) is a fun weekend project. and generally hosting your own stuff too in a lot of other respects. but the file server is a very good first project. if you have an old laptop with a broken screen or something like that it's actually perfect for something like this

smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

[brandinotbroke]

Linux distros - what is the difference, which one should I choose?

Caution, VERY long post.

With more and more simmers looking into linux lately, I've been seeing the same questions over and over again: Which distro should I choose? Is distro xyz newbie-friendly? Does this program work on that distro?

So I thought I'd explain the concept of "distros" and clear some of that up.

What are the key differences between distros?

Linux distros are NOT different operating systems (they're all still linux!) and the differences between them aren't actually as big as you think.

Update philosophy: Some distros, like Ubuntu, (supposedly) focus more on stability than being up-to-date. These distros will release one big update once every year or every other year and they are thoroughly tested. However, because the updates are so huge, they inevitably tend to break stuff anyway. On the other end of the spectrum are so-called "rolling release" distros like Arch. They don't do big annual updates, but instead release smaller updates very frequently. They are what's called "bleeding edge" - if there is something new out there, they will be the first ones to get it. This can of course impact stability, but on the other hand, stuff gets improved and fixed very fast. Third, there are also "middle of the road" distros like Fedora, which kind of do... both. Fedora gets big version updates like Ubuntu, but they happen more frequently and are comparably smaller, thus being both stable and reasonably up-to-date.

Package manager: Different distros come with different package managers (APT on ubuntu, DNF on Fedora, etc.). Package managers keep track of all the installed programs on your PC and allow you to update/install/remove programs. You'll often work with the package manager in the terminal: For example, if you want to install lutris on Fedora, you'd type in "sudo dnf install lutris" ("sudo" stands for "super user do", it's the equivalent of administrator rights on Windows). Different package managers come with different pros and cons.

Core utilities and programs: 99% of distros use the same stuff in the background (you don’t even directly interact with it, e.g. background process managing). The 1% that do NOT use the same stuff are obscure distros like VoidLinux, Artix, Alpine, Gentoo, Devuan. If you are not a Linux expert, AVOID THOSE AT ALL COST.

Installation process: Some distros are easier to install than others. Arch is infamous for being a bit difficult to install, but at the same time, its documentation is unparalleled. If you have patience and good reading comprehension, installing arch would literally teach you all you ever need to know about Linux. If you want to go an easier and safer route for now, anything with an installer like Mint or Fedora would suit you better.

Community: Pick a distro with an active community and lots of good documentation! You’ll need help. If you are looking at derivatives (e.g. ZorinOS, which is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian), ask yourself: Does this derivative give you enough benefits to potentially give up community support of the larger distro it is based on? Usually, the answer is no.

Okay, but what EDITION of this distro should I choose?

"Editions" or “spins” usually refer to variations of the same distro with different desktop environments. The three most common ones you should know are GNOME, KDE Plasma and Cinnamon.

GNOME's UI is more similar to MacOS,  but not exactly the same.

KDE Plasma looks and feels a lot like Windows' UI, but with more customization options.

Cinnamon is also pretty windows-y, but more restricted in terms of customization and generally deemed to be "stuck in 2010". 

Mint vs. Pop!_OS vs. Fedora

Currently, the most popular distros within the Sims community seem to be Mint and Fedora (and Pop!_OS to some extent). They are praised for being "beginner friendly". So what's the difference between them?

Both Mint and Pop!_OS are based on Ubuntu, whereas Fedora is a "standalone" upstream distro, meaning it is not based on another distro.

Personally, I recommend Fedora over Mint and Pop!_OS for several reasons. To name only a few:

I mentioned above that Ubuntu's update philosophy tends to break things once a big update rolls around every two years. Since both Mint and Pop!_OS are based on Ubuntu, they are also affected by this.

Ubuntu, Mint and Pop!_OS like to modify their stuff regularly for theming/branding purposes, but this ALSO tends to break things. It is apparently so bad that there is an initiative to stop this.

Pop!_OS uses the GNOME desktop environment, which I would not recommend if you are switching from Windows. Mint offers Cinnamon, which is visually and technically outdated (they use the x11 windowing system standard from 1984), but still beloved by a lot of people. Fedora offers the more modern KDE Plasma.

Personal observation: Most simmers I've encountered who had severe issues with setting up Linux went with an Ubuntu-based distro. There's just something about it that's fucked up, man.

And this doesn't even get into the whole Snaps vs. Flatpak controvery, but I will skip this for brevity.

Does SimPE (or any other program) work on this distro?

If it works on Fedora, then it works on Mint/Ubuntu/Arch/etc., and vice versa. This is all just a question of having the necessary dependencies installed and installing the program itself properly. Some distros may have certain prerequisites pre-installed, while others don't, but you can always just install those yourself. Like I said, different distros are NOT different operating systems. It's all still Linux and you can ultimately customize it however you want.

In short: Yeah, all Sims 2-related programs work. Yes, ReShade too. It ultimately doesn't really matter what distro you use as long as it is not part of the obscure 1% I mentioned above.

A little piece of advice

Whatever distro you end up choosing: get used to googling stuff and practice reading comprehension! There are numerous forums, discord servers and subreddits where you can ask people for help. Generally speaking, the linux community is very open to helping newbies. HOWEVER, they are not as tolerant to nagging and laziness as the Sims community tends to be. Show initiative, use google search & common sense, try things out before screaming for help and be detailed and respectful when explaining your problems. They appreciate that. Also, use the arch wiki even if you do not use Arch Linux – most of it is applicable to other distros as well.

[soup-mother]

that post about arguing semantics about calling it GNU/Linux when you're actually using a distro not dependant on GNU at all but for people who insist that linux mint is just ubuntu/should be called ubuntu mint despite it having a full debian based version that isn't reliant on ubuntu at all.

[heirtocragflame]

What Linux distribution should I pick? (More details under the readme)

When I was in high school I was super deep in the trenches and was constantly distributed hopping (even went so far as to install Arch one summer). Eventually though I switched to a Chromebook and then a MacBook, so it’s been maybe 8 years since my primary machine ran Linux. I would still call myself an advanced user though (ie. I use a terminal frequently) but my long break means that I’m behind the times on what the good distros are.

Reading up on the current state of things it seems like corporations have broken everything (surprise surprise) so ideally something that isn’t attached to a corporation in some way (like Fedora and OpenSUSE are)? I would like to dual boot Windows just so I have the extra software compatibility though.

It seems like Arch Linux and Debian are the front runners for my use case? I like the customizability of both of them, although Debian seems possibly too stuffy (I don’t need that much stability) and Arch seems possibly too fussy (I need some stability). But that’s mostly being colored by how I remember them being eight years ago, so I don’t know if I’m off base or not.

Linux girlies help me out 🙏

[autolenaphilia]

Why enshittification happens and how to stop it.

The enshittification of the internet and increasingly the software we use to access it is driven by profit. It happens because corporations are machines for making profits from end users, the users and customers are only seen as sources of profits. Their interests are only considered if it can help the bottom line. It's capitalism.

For social media it's users are mainly seen by the companies that run the sites as a way for getting advertisers to pay money that can profit the shareholders. And social media is in a bit of death spiral right now, since they have seldom or never been profitable and investor money is drying up as they realize this.

So the social media companies. are getting more and more desperate for money. That's why they are getting more aggressive with getting you to watch ads or pay for the privilege of not watching ads. It won't work and tumblr and all the other sites will die eventually.

But it's not just social media companies, it's everything tech-related. It gets worse the more monopolistic a tech giant is. Google is abusing its chrome-based near monopoly over the web, nerfing adblockers, trying to drm the web, you name it. And Microsoft is famously a terrible company, spying on Windows users and selling their data. Again, there is so much money being poured into advertising, at least 493 billion globally, the tech giants want a slice of that massive pie. It's all about making profits for shareholders, people be damned.

And the only insurance against this death spiral is not being run by a corporation. If the software is being developed by a non-profit entity, and it's open source, there is no incentive for the developers to fuck over the users for the sake of profits for shareholders, because there aren't any profits, and no shareholders.

Free and Open source software is an important part of why such software development can stay non-corporate. It allows for volunteers to contribute to the code and makes it harder for users to be secretly be fucked over by hidden code.

Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird are good examples of this. There is a Mozilla corporation, but it exists only for legal reasons and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla foundation. There are no shareholders. That means the Mozilla corporation is not really a corporation in the sense that Google is, and as an organization has entirely different incentives. If someone tells you that Mozilla is just another corporation, (which people have said in the notes of posts about firefox on this very site) they are spreading misinformation.

That's why Firefox has resisted the enshittification of the internet so well, it's not profit driven. And people who develop useful plugins that deshitify the web like Ublock origin and Xkit are as a rule not profit-driven corporations.

And you can go on with other examples of non-profit software like Libreoffice and VLC media player, both of which you should use.

And you can go further, use Linux as your computer's operating system.. It's the only way to resist the enshitification that the corporate duopoly of Microsoft and Apple has brought to their operating system. The plethora of community-run non-profit Linux distributions like Debian, Mint and Arch are the way to counteract that, and they will stay resistant to the same forces (creating profit for shareholders) that drove Microsoft to create Windows 11.

Of course not all Linux distributions are non-profits. There are corporate created distros like Red Hat's various distros, Canonical's Ubuntu and Suse's Opensuse, and they prove the point I'm making. There has some degree of enshittification going on with those, red hat going closed source and Canonical with the snap store for example. Mint is by now a succesful community-driven response to deshitify Ubuntu by removing snaps for example, and even they have a back-up plan to use Debian as a base in case Canonical makes Ubuntu unuseable.

As for social media, which I started with, I'm going to stay on tumblr for now, but it will definitely die. The closest thing to a community run non-profit replacement I can see is Mastodon, which I'm on as @autolenaphilia@chaosfem.tw.

You don't have to keep using corporate software, and have it inevitably decline because the corporations that develop it cares more about its profits than you as an end user.

The process of enshittification proves that corporations being profit-driven don't mean they will create a better product, and in fact may cause them to do the opposite. And the existence of great free and open source software, created entirely without the motivation of corporate profits, proves that people don't need to profit in order to help their fellow human beings. It kinda makes you question capitalism.

[daemonhxckergrrl]

s6 seems cool + interesting + wanna try it out bc it seems to fill in the gaps runit had for me. if u rlly can't go 5 secs w/out tryna start an init war, the tribalism button is 4 u <3

@artix-linux-official @gentoo-official @void-linux-official @arch-official @debian-official figure y'all might have insight or know folks who do

[nixcraft]

apt moo is a fun little Easter egg hidden within the apt package manager in Debian-based Linux distributions like Ubuntu. The origin of the cow theme in apt is unclear, but it likely relates to the cultural significance of cows in open-source communities as symbols of abundance, community, and sharing. That is my best guess. Also check our APT command guide here.

[unidentifiedfuckingthing]

i hhave no idea what my endeavouros or nixos use for bluetooth because ive literally never had to find out. because its Fine. i open up my bluetooth app and it shows my bluetooth devices. every single fucking time i had to use bluetooth on mint i had to spend like 5-10 minutes clicking all of the greyed out buttons over and over and web searching and getting nothing and then for an indeterminate reason it would just start working. i never figured out what did it. like, from the bottom of my heart, if you ever think theres a linux problem, theres a good ass chance its actually an ubuntu problem