Like the title says, my partner’s laptop was still running Windows 10 and they got infected with a backdoor malware. We’ll need to reset her computer. It’s an Asus Tuf Gaming A15.
She’s been using Windows 10 for as long as she could but support is running out. At her work the computers are on Windows 11 and she hates it. Plus she’s fervently anti-AI and wants none of that forced Copilot bullshit and privacy eroding features of Windows 11. She’s seen me use it for over a year now and I also installed it on our old OG 1st gen MS Surface Pro table and she sees how well it’s going. So now she wants Linux on her laptop.
After careful consideration and comparisons, I’ve decided to go with Zorin OS. I thought of Linux Mint, but it just looks so dated. There are inconistencies in the looks and I feel it lacks some features that I found that Zorin OS has. (It’s essentially Gnome with QoL extras.) My only concern is that Zorin has Snaps out of the box but I don’t think that’s a concern for her. I’ll install it on a BTRFS partition with automatic snapshots and grub-btrfs to recover from snapshots. And I’ll schedule monthly backups of her files through rsync, or whatever the built-in backup tool does, onto an external drive.
I’ve tried Zorin on a VM and it was already outstanding. On the live USB session it was able to detect her NVidia card and recommend either the nouveau or NVidia proprietary driver. Everything worked out of the box. So I’m fairly confident everything will work well. One concern I have is she uses her personal laptop for work, and needs to connect to her work’s Microsoft account. I see there’s an accounts section in the settings where this can be set up, but I’ve never used it, so that’ll be a first. Her work also requires Cisco AnyConnect VPN client. There is a Linux client, but you need a Cisco account to download it, and her work IT department does not support Linux, so I don’t know if she’ll be able to get it. One of the IT people has Linux on his machine and was able to set it up so maybe we’ll rely on him for that part. She’ll also need MS Office which uses a work license. I wonder how that will work on Bottles. We can try with Libre Office but I know the spacing and fonts get all wonky when you open a MS Word document or a Powerpoint presentation. Every other app she uses is open source apps like Gimp, Inkscape, Audacity, etc. And she doesn’t game much, but I know this will work just fine. And the Gnome-Network-Displays will allow her to cast her screen onto our NVidia Shield device for watching movies.
Is there anything else I should be concerned about? Maybe hardware wise? Or anything to so with Snaps that could cause issues?
Which OS do you use?
I agree re: mint being dated
Ubuntu is getting into ai, so that means all of its babies are too
fedora toyed with the idea of ai but user push back stopped them (last I heard), but it is still something that interested them.
One of the arch distros is the way to go imo, I have been using manjaro kde (manjaro xfce prior to that) for a few years, I have distrohopped a couple of times out of interest, and never found anything as logical and user friendly as it. I currently also have debian, garuda kde lite, artix, and endeavour installed… but never switch to them.
Debian is weird but interesting, pain in the arse if you have nvidia. It also has weird password restrictions (not really a big deal, and can be modified with some effort)
I used Kubuntu. But I’m switching soon. Might go with a simple Debian stable with KDE. Nothing fancy.
PIika OS piqued my curiosity though. I might try it out. Though I’m not keen on being on Debian testing as a base.
Btw: what do you mean going into AI?
Also Zorin OS is Ubuntu based, but it’s not an Ubuntu baby in the same sense that Mint isn’t one either.
Ubuntu now uses ai, your best bet if you are genuinely anti ai is to search for it https://noai.duckduckgo.com/?q=ubuntu+ai&ia=web
I would assume that means anything ubuntu based will include ai at some stage, or at least become complicated by its inclusion in ubuntu. I guess it depends how removed from ubuntu they now are.
Ah ok I see now.
It looks to me like they’re adding AI tools that you run locally. That doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. And their LLMs are going to be open source. That’s not bad at all.
People think AI = bad. But it’s not inherently bad. It’s the companies behind it that are bad.
There’s nothing wrong with using AI to solve complex problems. It’s when the companies exploits copyrighted material to train their AI or use sloppy data like reddit or block certain topics or introduce a political bias that’s problematic.
ubuntu going down the ai toilet, and fedora trying to, makes me happy that I chose arch. ubuntu and fedora corporate ties are one of the reasons why I made that decision, and are also why they are making the wrong decisions, and are likely to get worse.
ai could have been good, but take a look around you, humanity cannot be trusted.
I understand you completely. But I’m gong to wait and see. Reading from their announcement, sure they are enabling AI, but as I said, AI is not all bad.
Let’s just say Canonical is providing the hammer, but how it’s used depends on the user itself. It could be used for building great stuff, or used to destroy things.
Your partner is “fervently anti-AI”, but you are not.
Is your partner engaging in/reading this thread, and making up their own mind, or are they allowing you to make a decision that doesn’t necessarily reflect, or respect their choices?
Using a different base does not complicate things as much as you might expect, and may also be logical considering you are anti-snap