Lemdro.id

1 point

1 year ago

Thanks for taking the time to explain the differences a bit, it’s very much appreciated. I’d heard about the Snapstore thing and also Red Hat’s decision regarding RHEL; while I don’t understand it all yet I do think closed-source defeats the whole purpose of Linux (and why I’m getting off Windows) so yeah, I’m with you on that.

So far, with Mint I haven’t had any problems running Cinnamon at all (decided to try the heaviest DE first) but I will probably still end up trying Kfce as the DE on Debian, for example. It was actually shocking how well Mint runs on 4GB of RAM, lol.

But I have plenty of time and plenty of USB sticks, and I will try all the feasible distros mentioned, taking notes along the way. Thank you again for the suggestions!

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PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de

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4 points

1 year ago

save some usbs write cycles and use ventoy:

https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

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0 points

1 year ago

This is genius. My spouse is busy formatting unused USB drives for this Linux try-every-distro project right now, so your suggestion is just in time, lol. Thank you!

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PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de

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2 points

1 year ago

weve all been there. enjoy and have fun.

edit: lovely that you can enjoy this together.

my SO always asks me why Im working when I come home from work…

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https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/282
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/381
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/246
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1056

2 points

1 year ago

I have a bit of bad news. Ventoy is not supported on Macs. Mac minis, Macbooks, just Mac hardware in general as far as I can tell.

But it’s a fact that’s buried deep into the Github notes when you go looking for support; if you’re not running a Mac there’s no way you would have known. But there it is:

But this comment especially from the repository owner was delightful after I’d already done everything suggested and more:

Ventoy actually doesn’t support Macbook. I never test it on Macbook.
You can do some try though

Lol, no. No more try, though at least this post let me know it was not user failure. But I want you to know it was a great suggestion, I did learn more along the way so it wasn’t all a waste of time, and I’ll definitely try Ventoy again when I get to non-Apple machines.

Thought I should tell you just in case you run into another Mac user. And thank you for the well wishes – we’re both nerds, so one of us disappearing into tech at odd moments is standard operating procedure around here. Happy Labor Day if you’re in the US.

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PoisonedPrisonPanda@discuss.tchncs.de

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2 points

1 year ago

I indeed did not knew that.

And actually I would not have thought that this would affect ventoy.

but now we know.

is there also a different procedure to write bootable media for macbooms?

edit: thanks for digging and replying. some will for sure appreciate your post in the future. good luck anyway. have you found yet a suitable distro?

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1 point

1 year ago

Well, now I’m back to one USB at a time for Macs, using Rufus to do the deed and just overwriting the ones I know I won’t like. Same as it ever was. I think the problem has to do with how Ventoy interacts with the boot process that involves assumptions about Mac architecture; everything the author suggested, like enabling Grub2, just laughed and flashed the ol’ cursor. Not all Macs are the same under the hood and there have been some fairly big swings in architecture over the years, so when I read that he had not ever tested it specifically on a Macbook it made me think he tested it on one other Mac somewhere and that was enough for him, lol. I still think it’s genius just not on Macs.

Some of the distros I can try now; others have to wait until I get more memory in the Macbook. So right now I’m just doing preliminary look-sees just to find out if I like a given distro, and if it will find drivers and do hibernate without an issue. Funny thing is that one I can’t really look at yet except via review videos may be the one I go with: OpenSUSE Leap. As far as I can tell, it has no Live USB trial, you have to install it. But it’s incredibly feature rich, can bend to a user’s needs even if those needs aren’t foreseen out of the box, it’s not overly CLI dependent but CLI tools are there if you prefer them, has an extensive selection of software, supports multiple package handlers, and most importantly, the wiki is very complete. I just can’t install it until I get more RAM in the test box, lol.

I expect similar with Debian, to be honest, just because it’s so robust, though Debian does support live USB preview. Same with Pop! OS, there is a live USB preview but I have to wait until I get more RAM into the test box.

But of the ones I’ve tried so far, Linux Lite 6.4 seemed kludgy and repellent (not sure why, but I hated it); Zorin OS 16.3 Core was visually gorgeous but seemed VERY limited in other ways (maybe the paid tier would be different); Solus 4.4 “Harmony” with Budgie was responsive, intuitive, and fabulous to use but I need to look under the hood further, and Linux Mint 21.2 remains the winner so far, but I would rather go with a different desktop than Cinnamon (I do not find Cinnamon intuitive) so it’s on the list to retry with Kfce.

So I’m still looking. And now I have an in-law with an old MacBook Pro who is also paying close attention in case I find something, lol. But it’s all free and it’s been years since I did something like this, so I’m happy. Thanks again for your help!

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