Laurel Raven

Then: “If you don’t have to pay for it then you’re the product”

Now: “You have to pay for it and you’re the product”

I would say Flatpak is a good choice if you want or need features in the latest version of a package that isn’t in the version Mint runs, which is typically based on the current Ubuntu LTS version (or whichever one was current for the Mint version you’re on).

The main drawbacks are size on disk and the ability to work with other apps and the system, but neither issue is as bad as they’re typically made out to be… If you’re only installing one or two Flatpaks, they’ll seem massive compared to installing the version from apt repos, but that’s because they need to bring in supporting packages which are used by other Flatpaks, so if you use several of them, the space for each is a lot closer to the apt/direct installed version.

And the permissions, which can be annoying if you run into an issue with them, are typically defaulted to something that works correctly for each package, so you likely won’t need to worry about that hardly ever.

But otherwise… Yeah, if you don’t know why you’d want the Flatpak version and it’s in the Mint apt repos/system install, go with system install. Switch to Flatpak if you’re finding features you want missing that are in newer versions.

But they’re shouldn’t really be any reason to use Snaps on Mint.

Yeah, those of us who’ve gotten familiar with the terminal often forget that it generally lacks discoverability and getting to the point of knowing how to find things in it can be painful and annoying.

Not enjoying the terminal isn’t a failing. GUIs exist for a reason.

How is the Union that gave its people the GDPR is the same Union pulling this?

That’s news to me, I’ve used it the last two years and never had an update completely brick my system, or even soft brick it, and I’ve never had to reinstall the graphics drivers like that

They also renamed “do not disturb” to “modes”.

The fuck is that supposed to be?! I was panicking the first time I tried to DND my phone after that, hunting for something while needing to not have my phone interrupt… Whatever I was doing, movie or concert starting, doesn’t matter. I hate the new name and still haven’t gotten used to it.

I wish I was cool enough to run a Linux phone

But there aren’t any political flags on there…

XanderOS way tf back in 2005 or 2006, but mostly just messed around and had no clue what I was doing with it… After that I did a Gentoo install. Been kinda off and on with Linux since, flirting with the possibility of switching to it fully but never actually making the jump until last year when I built a new machine and put Mint on it.

The problem is, Ubuntu from my understanding will try to install the snap version even if you explicitly are installing the deb version, including replacing a deb version with a snap when you update.

I’ve not experienced this personally as I stopped using Ubuntu before they started doing snaps, maybe they’ve gotten better about that, but I don’t trust a corpo run distro to not enshittify at every opportunity, so…

Mint is basically Ubuntu with a lot of the questionable decisions fixed (and uses Cinnamon instead of Gnome, so it’s a bit more Windows like).

It doesn’t have snaps (though they provide instructions to add them if you want), it uses apt for packages and I believe pulls from a mixture of the Ubuntu repos and their own. It also has Flatpak out of the box and the software center does both, and clearly marks which you’re going to install with an easy drop down to switch if both are available.

Flatpak has been pretty solid for me overall, though there are occasional gotchas.

Honestly, I’d recommend going with Mint, pretty much anything that works with Ubuntu will work with it, and it’s better put together in my opinion (and doesn’t try to sell you a pro subscription by implying your system will be insecure if you don’t, which Ubuntu does). I know you’re not looking to switch, but I’ve honestly been very unimpressed with Ubuntu for the last, oh, decade or so

Was going to say this exactly

ACLs are literally what makes up NTFS permissions, too, they just aren’t as clear about it

The only real permissions systems I’m familiar with are the basic octal permissions in *NIX and NTFS permissions. I know those aren’t really quite the same but they’re the closest I have actual experience with to be able to have an opinion about.

At one point I also knew a little iptables but that was over fifteen years ago now.

As said, I really should spend some time with them, I just need the motivation.

For me it’s not so much hate as just not really having experience with it, so most of the time if it causes an issue I either just find a command that sets the policy correctly, or more likely disable it.

I should spend some time figuring it out, but it’s just one more seemingly esoteric and arcane system that feels at first like it merely exists to get in my way, like systemd, and I’m left wondering do I really need this headache, and what is it really giving me anyway?

As good as it runs on Windows, anyway… It is still Star Citizen ;P

(No shade, really promising and most of it is pretty slick and impressive when it’s working and I hope they get it stable sometime soon-ish)

Not just any AI, really shitty and obvious AI

I’ve been hoping it doesn’t get to that extreme but the hope feels fainter every day

I feel like there should be a guillotine in there somewhere…

Zen browser is pretty interesting too