One of my random Linux boot-up sounds is the WinXP boot theme.

When GIMP’s version 3 came out, it got a lot of great reviews. I can’t tell you what’s different or better, but in using it myself since then, it doesn’t “feel” as daunting. Very subjective, but definitely try it out again; it might work for you this time around.

Oh no…

“I’ll remember THAT, it’s such a trivial thing.”

I am indeed using Gnome. I had uninstalled the Snap LO and found the more current version because of some issues, and I want to say maybe the older one did have a floppy and that’s why it stood out. Or it could be theme-related. So many apps now don’t even have an icon, so I can’t say I’ve seen many that have a different icon than the old save version.

And laid. 3 dice!

I’m (un)fortunately old enough to remember the green screen terminals, mainly in the university library to look up books, new tech that would replace the still-existing card catalogs. Good breakdown of the wording. A bit parallel with the save icon, although some software has migrated from that, I noticed LibreOffice has a generic down arrow implying it is being downloaded to something, I guess.

I immediately thought, no, terminal. But apparently, console is correct depending on what it’s displaying/being used for?

WIndows will install it. Running it correctly… different story.

It works, but it’s a lot slower and clunkier. And looks worse. Probably could improve with some tweaking, but I don’t use its special features and addons that much, and gedit works quite well for me.

I’ve used VLC in WIndows forever, but it started giving me glitchy behavior in Ubuntu. Tried to upgrade to see if it was an old version/Snap thing, got frustrated with it not working. So I went through all the lists of Linux players, tried most of them. I like Audacious. It’s not perfect, but it works well, and I can deal with some of the minor things that are more preferences than problems. That’s all I wanted.

I barely remember WinMe…

As I installed over it with 98SE on a laptop. Didn’t even hear the screaming.

For better or worse, right? Keeper.

That goes back to my point, that there’s choices out there with Linux, from the OS distro on up to the applications. That’s not being different just to be different, it’s trying to fill niches where there are needs. And things change, even the tried and true sometimes go obsolete for newer approaches. Stagnation is a killer. But if it works for the needed purpose, then great.

I just don’t get the internal arguing within Linux. Embrace even the “crazy kids”, after all that’s where Linux came from.

So you’re saying diversity is a bad thing? That seems very anti-Linux. The very fact that you can choose not to change for so long instead of being forced to accept the next version is diversity itself.

Everyone has different needs and preferences. Finding something early on and being able to stick with it is great, but many don’t find that right away, or things change with their needs or the distro.

Plus it depends also on how long you stick around each time. I know I dipped in and out of dual booting for a long time, only now in the past year settling in well. And each time I tried Linux again, lots had changed so I couldn’t just go back to what I used before.

Isn’t part of being in the Linux culture to experiment with things, even if it’s just the window manager, settings, or particular apps?

It’s not necessarily garbage, but it sure isn’t curated either. Throwing everything into the blender and hoping the mechanism will usually spit out good info is a scientific spinning of the roulette wheel. Sometimes the odds are pretty good. Sometimes they’re horrible, and you should know better than to expect anything but.

But AI has become the shiniest hammer, and every damn thing is a nail now.

I’m all for it. I think it was the initial vision for the internet and web, and we got sidetracked by growth and commercialization. I do have to wonder if such a move did happen, a sudden shift of mainstream to here (in general, the Activity Pub’s various forms), could it handle it? Fast growth was a huge hit with the Reddit migration(s), and that was “just” Reddit.

Discussions that I’ve seen (not here necessarily but in general) seem to bring up Kubuntu as a light weight option for systems that can’t handle the more “bloated” vanilla Ubuntu. And it’s why I put it on an old MacBook I had, because other mainstream Linux flavors were a bit much - no, I didn’t try Arch, I’m also still a beginner technically. Kubuntu works great without overloading it. Doesn’t mean you can’t use it on a more powerful system of course.

My only regret with using Ubuntu for my main is some issues I’ve run into with Snap, but I’m learning how to figure that out and find alternatives like Flakpak, Apt, or using an AppImage when it fails me or seems broken. The lack of updated versions has been the biggest problem. Other than that, the OS itself has been running great. I did have to go with 22.04 because 24.04 just refused to install correctly, had 22.04 also given me problems I probably would be with a different distro.

The early ones were easier. The one I had needed to do some mess with a grounding screw and some other stuff that I forgot (there are websites dedicated to the procedure guidelines and which requires what), and like you say, it’s not going to be able to do much anyway. Such a contrast with throwing Kubuntu on an old MacBook, and 10 minutes later it was better than new.