DjangoFett

It heavily depends on your needs, wants, and expectations.

In simplest terms, Ubuntu is Mac-like and Mint is Windows-like. At least, on the surface. Basically everything else is feature parity, just requires slightly different arrangements depending on which flavor you’re running.

I didn’t much like Ubuntu as it feels too close to MacOS to me. Primarily because I don’t really like that aesthetic. Ubuntu and Mint were my first forays into Linux as well, but this was also years ago when Mint was relatively new to the scene. While I personally liked the style of Mint, at the time it just didn’t have nearly enough features for what I was into.

These days I settled on CachyOS which is a fork of Arch. Cachy is aimed at gaming, but comes with a very straightforward installer with a huge amount of customization options to really make the OS your own. That’s ultimately what keeps me on Arch is the genuine ease of customization at this point. Rolling releases don’t bother me as i used to do CyanogenMod nightlies and this is like the big boy version of that, but I also can fully appreciate wanting shit to just work.

That said, Ubuntu is arguably the most popular distro because of its similarities to Mac and the “It just works” vibes it tends to give off these days.

The best part of Linux is how easy it is to check out a new flavor and see how you like it. And once you do find the flavor that suits you, the mega nerds in that particular community have probably already figured out how to do that thing you want. And if those folks didn’t for any reason, the folks at AUR* probably did.

*AUR = Arch User Repository and is an unregulated repository of whatever anyone clever enough to develop for Arch has come up with. Peruse and download at your own risk, but there’s some genuinely awesome and useful tools out there.

Then why suggest that?

I am decidedly on the spectrum and very much prefer things to be clear-cur with precisely defined lines.

You can be a healthy individual with solid beliefs and that is precisely why you can’t in good conscience walk away from your family who might be struggling but always means well in their heart of hearts. Not bad people, just misguided. And on top of that, they’re your only support network. You may disagree on everything except that you genuinely love one another and would never wish or bring harm upon one another.

A healthy person would absolutely struggle with leaving that social circle. And this isn’t really that far-fetched a scenario as most people really aren’t that adamant and vitriolic in their beliefs as any given extreme would have you believe.

So are you wrong? Not in every case, for sure. But you’re also not really correct either. Human interactions are mostly nuance, which your assessment is entirely devoid of.

To be perfectly clear, the only AI I am subscribed to is the one Proton gives with their family plan VPN bundle, and I didn’t choose it. I used it to edit a letter I wrote once and otherwise trust it as far as I can throw its server.

This knee-jerk reaction to anything with the letters AI attached being bad is just so silly. Y’all are acting the way Republicans act when it comes to the word “queer.” Just because it’s in the vicinity of you doesn’t mean you’re contaminated, you’ve caught it, you’re now one of them.

This is a highly intelligent individual - controversial hot takes notwithstanding - utilizing a tool in a way that has proven itself to be very effective when used properly. Nobody is saying you have to get ready to be a switch in the bedroom any more than they’re saying you have to use AI.

Distro maintenance is a difficult and thankless task, and having a tool that can scan and analyze code orders of magnitude faster than you as well as make suggestions on how to fix it isn’t an inherently bad thing. Setting that tool loose with unlimited agency would be a bad thing, but where oh where is Linus saying he’s gonna give Claude full read/write access to the entire kernel and walk away forevermore?

Hate on AI bros all you want. I’m with you there, most of them are idiots that don’t know their mouth from their anus and speak from both equally. I don’t think Linus fits that particular picture [hot takes notwithstanding!] when it comes to using the new tool on the market in a reasonable and measured way.

He says on his favorite thinking machine.