For me, 2015 marks 20 years of using Linux. I hope you're still having fun when you hit that anniversary, because I still am.
For me, 2015 marks 20 years of using Linux. I hope you're still having fun when you hit that anniversary, because I still am.
Childlike Empress
Banned
Well, two and a half years later I had a lot of fun, but developed the thought of setting up a new one recently, as I had experimented a lot (went through more than a handful of GUIs f.e before settling with XFCE and CairoDock). Also, couldn't use Vivaldi for quite some time as it crashed because of some driver I wasn't able to update, etc. Updates generally don't seem to be Mint's strong side, Felt slower as well, maybe because Firefox with x add-ons instead of Vivaldi.
Along came two days ago an article about a new version of Mageia, a name I had never heard. It's the successor of Mandrake/Mandriva and has a rather large independent developer team. Tried out the live version and quickly decided that this was my new Linux.
After saving all the data and configs I needed, it took me two hours last evening from inserting the USB stick to having an almost complete system will all my personalization.
Super smooth, super fast (feels like the new old Desktop I was already thinking about buying, actually).
Can only recommend it, especially for beginners. The two things I knew I would have to go under the hood for (configuring the extra buttons of my Trackball, automounting my external USB drive) I did right now, worked similar to what I had figured out with Mint.
www.mageia.org
Along came two days ago an article about a new version of Mageia, a name I had never heard. It's the successor of Mandrake/Mandriva and has a rather large independent developer team. Tried out the live version and quickly decided that this was my new Linux.
After saving all the data and configs I needed, it took me two hours last evening from inserting the USB stick to having an almost complete system will all my personalization.
Super smooth, super fast (feels like the new old Desktop I was already thinking about buying, actually).
Can only recommend it, especially for beginners. The two things I knew I would have to go under the hood for (configuring the extra buttons of my Trackball, automounting my external USB drive) I did right now, worked similar to what I had figured out with Mint.
www.mageia.org
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
I think I'm using Gnome.
The startup sound I want to play is a WAV file from 2001: A Space Oddessey, where Hal says "I'm completely operational and all my circuits are functioning perfectly", so ideally I'd want it to play after the destop environment has finished loading and is ready to use. (I used to have it set up to play on a Windows 98 machine.) It's not important in the slightest, but it'd be cool to have again.
I haven't found any way to set up sounds, but maybe I could put a script for it in "Startup Applications". I'll try that soon, and see if it works.
Next I'll have to figure out how to get the WAV file of Hal saying "My mind is going. I can feel it." when I shut-down.
Back in the old days (late 90s?) I extracted the boot up sound file from Windows 98 and put it on my Prion Series 5 palmtop, I used to have so much fun playing that file around IT people.
Thinking about it really brings home how far portable computing has come in under twenty years.
But on the topic of Linux, I'm out of IT now and don't tend to get into anything beyond home user level, but I recently installed Ubuntu on an Acer D100 I'd bought and rapidly given up on due to Win 7 running unusably slowly on it. Very happy, I now have a nice little compact laptop for browsing and doing work on, for free.
Trebuchet
Penultimate Amazing
Back in the old days (late 90s?) I extracted the boot up sound file from Windows 98 and put it on my Prion Series 5 palmtop, I used to have so much fun playing that file around IT people.
I heard that sound come out of an ATM the tech was there working on. Less than five years ago! I've also seen BSOD's on them.
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
Yeah, I rebooted a photo print booth a few months back and it was running XP. It's surprising how long old Windows versions stay in hidden applications. Which reminds me I need a cheap XP laptop for some automotive software. I tried a clean install but couldn't get the supporting infrastructure any more.
elgarak
Illuminator
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2003
- Messages
- 4,472
I've tried it. And I agree. It's very nice and fast.
However, I don't know if I share your sentiment that it's ideal for beginners. It's not really the user interface here, though. It's the software repository. There's a good deal of things I would consider standard software that is either not there, or difficult to find. For one thing, I couldn't find a single markdown capable editor in there (it's possible that they're in there... but I couldn't find them. The one I use on Ubuntu [ReText] wasn't there, though I could download and install myself. But the way I had to do that is not really beginner level). And I was irked that LaTeX wasn't installed (in my mind, TeX/LaTeX and Linux go hand-in-hand), and it wouldn't be installed when I got a LaTeX frontend from the repository (there are some Ubuntu/Debian flavors that wouldn't come with TeX pre-installed, either, but in those cases you would at least be told that you need it when you got a frontend from the repository.)
Childlike Empress
Banned
I wouldn't consider those needs something beginners would miss. They would care about a repository that has tried and tested software for general purposes, and not necessary twenty alternatives for each, and that's what the Mageia repository delivers. For more, you can always add sources or do it the manual way like you did. I liked that the Live version is very lean, and it took me one go to the repository to install almost all the stuff I need, plus two or three additional installs on package basis.
edit: For all editing purposes it has Geany in the repository which is IMHO the best there is for Linux and has plug-ins for all special needs.
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