Oddbean new post about login | logout On a lark, I installed Linux Mint on an hold tower I had lying around and I'm giving linux desktop a go after more than 15 years using Apple products exclusively. So far I'm pretty damn impressed. I'm having a lot of trouble learning keyboard shortcuts and things like that but install apps has been insanely easy and there are high quality free versions for pretty much everything I was using on my Macbook Pro. Any tips from you Linux maxis out there? Also, what's the best privacy-focused browser these days? Sounds like firefox is going down the ad path... Brave touts itself but I hate all the shitcoinery in their browser.
just use plain degoogled chromium firefox was already not enabling the total disablement of DRM, any time a page opens with spotify content it nags you to enable DRM, that was a red flag for me i'm a fan of Zorin OS, i even paid their pro version fee, because it supported my new Radeon 7800 XT when no other live USB was even booting - other linuxes now have caught up but good AMD support is my top criteria because i refuse to use the blue and the green for my daily driver
I've been using mullvad browser for a few weeks. Only used it for nostr but it seems clean.
It's been a while since I've used mint. I enjoyed it at the time. I use Brave and just turn off the Shitcoin stuff.
It's still there lurking though 😂
Librewolf (desktop) and Mull (Android).
And you can use FF service to sync.
Mad and linux-ish suggestion: if you are very very very used to vim keybindings you can try qutebrowser, bit that's more a side-broswer than a daily driver. Jokes aside, Mint is really good. My suggestion is to try to not to be dispersive with regards to the installation methods for the software you install, meaning that going with flatpak+.deb+snap+.AppImage+source ecc can make the update of dependencies and software very cumbersome. Instead, try to centralize into a few methods...for ideological reasons I would not recommend Snap, go for flatpak. I don't know how the "windows emulator" market is for Apple products, for GNU/Linux you have mainly Wine. But overall Wine is not very good, try to avoid emulation if possibile. If you're using Gnome as a DE I suggest to proritize the utilities that Gnome bundles in its suite...they're very nice and well done.
I'm so addicted to vim keybindings that I refuse to use any WM other than i3 or sway :D
i3 is genuinely the best WM out there...I highly prefer that WM approach to the classical DE approach. For several reasons I find myself now using Gnome and no tiling at all and it's painful XD. With i3 you push yourself to minimizing the amount of time spent in GUI and maximizing the terminal usage...that helps a lot to learn exponentially. That's why I like i3. With regards to qutebrowser, have you tried it?
I just really despise using a mouse and fiddling around with high-friction window activities. I typically have very direct goals and should be able to achieve them with a keystroke or two. 95% of that can be achieved in terminal+tmux+vim. For everything else, I expect the rest of my environment to work as close to tmux+vim as possible. is that too much to ask?! lol Yep, I use qutebrowser. I like it for the obvious reasons you can guess from my above comment. Lack of extensions is a bit of a problem for some things wrt nostr, bitcoin, etc. but for most everyday browsing it is excellent.
Thanks. I've been flatpak and apt so far. Trying to keep things as stock as possible so I'm actually using Linux instead of trying to emulate anything (so emulators are definitely out). Thanks for the tips! And no, after many failed attempts VIM is still dark magic I'll never understand. 😆
You can also run Windows, in case needed, in a virtual machine, using Virtual Box, on Linux Mint.
A couple of quick Cinnamon tips (the desktop environment in Mint): Turn on focus follows mouse, and set a hotkey to move and resize windows. Both are in the Windows settings. That makes window management really smooth.
I love Mint, been using it for a few yrs. I sometimes experiment with other distros, but always come back to Mint. (Because, no, I dont want something that even reminds me of Windows). For browsers, my fav is Libre Wolf. It's worked flawlessly for me, and its a fork of Firefox, i think, so very easy. Sometimes I play with Mullvad browser since i have a paid subscription to mullvad, so their browser is free for users. Thats basically it for me. I keep Brave in the background as a last resort.
Before going too crazy, try experimenting with mint inside a docker container. That way if you completely screw up your system packages you can reset without fear.
Good for you, i used Mac for a long time, then I had to use Windows for work which extinguished all joy... Then finally, I jumped into Linux full time and I've been so happy ever since. Sometimes I have to use Windows so I run that in a VM, but with enough RAM the world is your oyster. I am just a vanilla Debian user, and it's great. I've been enjoying KDE vs GNOME quite a bit. Welcome and enjoy!