It just works.
I’m kind of shocked how easy it was to set up. I used ventoy to make a bootable iso of Linux Mint Cinnamon on my Mini PC (Ser5 Pro), and I had zero issues with anything. Ventoy even plays nice with secure boot.
Where’s the setup?
There really wasn’t any. I booted into Mint, synced my keyboard/trackpad combo and my earbuds then was off to the races. It detected all my hardware including my Elgato HD60 X without any steps. The only thing I had to work around was downloading the deb build of Discord Canary to enable audio output in Discord streams since it was only recently added to Discord’s dev/beta build (Canary).
Speaking of which Elgato’s capture software doesn’t support Linux (shocker), so I simply installed OBS, pointed the audio/video to the capture card, and it worked. Easy.
My Use Case
I have the aforementioned mini PC mainly to be jockied by a capture card for streaming Nintendo Switch to Discord. Aside from that I use it as a productivity machine in my living room for internet browsing (omg webtv!) and Kodi. The Ser5 uses an AMD Ryzen 7 5850u with integrated graphics, 16GB DDR4, and a 500gb M.2. All of the ports, HDMI audio out, etc were automatically detected by Mint.
Conclusion
Linux Mint feels premium compared to Windows 11. It’s snappier, more modular, and offers a Linux GUI that’s familiar/easy to use. Plus now I have the benefit of no preinstalled spyware or bloatware. Feels good to actually own my computer.
Thanks for reading!
It just works
Sometimes, and until it does not work.
I have Linux on a Lenovo laptop, when I connect it to my hdmi matrix there is no resolution that works for it to correctly display. There is no way to keep the display from turning off despite setting it to never turn off.
A friend just had her Windows 11 PC hijacked and used to drain money from her bank account. Not too much of a worry with Linux of any flavor.
It took 5x as long to wipe the disk and reload Windows as it would have to load Linux, plus another hour to change the settings to turn off as much of of Window’s advertising and spyware as possible. Microsoft will no doubt change the settings back when Windows update runs, or maybe they’ll just pile on more ads.
I’d much rather deal with some hardware incompatibilities than Microsoft’s bullshit.
Yes, this is Linux. If your hardware is supported, it’s outstanding. If not, you will need to figure it out yourself. Vetting purchases for compatibility is the most important part. As a bonus, it also makes you vote with your wallet for the manufacturers that don’t do a bunch of proprietary bullshit.
Same can be said about Windows though… it is supposed to just work, but then why do I get a call from my parents every month cause something is broken on their Windows 10 computer?
Windows is a disaster. Linux Mint was easier to install than Windows 11 and it’s not even close.
Windows 11 no longer “just working” is what made me finally take Linux seriously as an option and I am so glad I did.
I genuinely think it is ready for prime time. As I said elsewhere the concept of immutable distros is a game changer for those of us who like to customize but hate the command line
Immutable distros help tremendously with the “It just works (and doesn’t stop just worksing)” aspect. Fedora Kinote is what finally allowed me to transition from Windows. Literally zero issues for over eight months now and I am not a super techie person. I hate the command line and need GUIs.
Honestly I think an immutable KDE distro is going to be the windows killer for pretty much anyone looking to switch. It’s literally better than Windows in every way.
Try Aurora which is Kinoite with some nice extras added
That was the “just works Windows killer” for me.
You can rebase directly to it to just try it out, and simply rebase back to standard Kinoite if you don’t like it.
Same thing with Ubuntu.
I started on Mint, then went to Arch Linux with Gnome. Now, I spend hours a day every day editing the dozens of config files for my Arch + Hyprland setup. I discovered NVIM plugins and decided to figure that out on my own instead of using one of the pre-made plugin packs. Now 90% of the software I use is cli. You can do anything from a terminal, and once you start it’s hard to justify using bloated GUI applications instead. Especially once you make your TE and prompt pretty.
Next stop will be your privacy journey which would completely break your chains towards Discord which gave you trouble.
A better way to word this is “Next will be your privacy journey which will send you down an inifinte rabbit hole that you consumes you”.
Lol no but seriously, it’s a fun rabbit hole, but can get out of control if you’re not careful.
If you go to deep you’ll get paranoid lol. Atleast that is my experience.
But also be proven right several times a year when data leaks & corporations are shown again to be evil.
