(in case anyone reading needs to hear it, one can just use the word “search” instead of a brand name)

Here are three variants of Linux Mint with different Desktop Environments: (click their example image to make it larger)

• Linux Mint (Cinnamon Edition) - the default, I’d use that until you have a reason not to
• Linux Mint (MATE Edition)
• Linux Mint (XFCE Edition)

All of those are Linux Mint, they use pretty much the same core tools under the hood, but the desktop environments change how you engage with them. Mostly the way things look, the way you organize programs on your screen, and the default apps (like which text editor it comes with by default). This can change your experience a lot, I think Cinnamon looks nice and is smooth, while MATE and XFCE are more lightweight and might be better for older computers or if you don’t like something about Cinnamon.

Now, those are all somewhat similar, they have a program start menu in the bottom left, a taskbar on the bottom, the basics are familiar. There are some (not officially supported by Mint) which are more different, like GNOME (Ubuntu’s desktop default) which has a different app launcher instead of a start menu and a different way of switching between programs. Then, as others mentioned, some people choose to not even install a pre-designed Desktop Environment and only install some of the more core components of a DE, like the Window Manager. People who really love the keyboard might use a tiling window manager, these tend to make you think “wow, this person’s a hacker”, where they’ll rapidly switch between programs using keyboard controls, with the window manager automatically shifting and dividing new windows so that they tile together to fill the screen. Loosely speaking, the opposite of a tiling window manager is a floating window manager, where windows just float and you move them around with your mouse, just like Windows (well, apart from the tiling options in more recent Windows versions when you can drag a window into the corner and it tiles to fill the screen.) I think the “best of both worlds” midpoint is a dynamic WM? I’m not sure. hyprland is an example of that.

I haven’t given it a try yet, I’ll have to give it a read.

Looking at Nature Index’s lists of top institutions, Chinese institutions hold:

• 2022: 4 of top 10 [#1, 8, 9, 10]
• 2023: 6 of top 10 [#1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10]
• 2024: 7 of top 10 [#1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10]
• 2025: 8 of top 10 [#1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10]

It’s a pretty clear, rapid rise in China becoming the main contributor to their database, and given the US political situation and academics famously being poached by China and Europe, I don’t think Harvard will retain that #2 position for even another year.

Not who you asked, jumping in until they reply: Windows and most GNU/Linux distros are much further apart than most GNU/Linux distros are to each other. Unless you’re doing a lot of manual meddling or using hacky tools, the biggest change between Mint (Ubuntu/Debian-based) and a Fedora-based distro, in my experience, was that apt is replaced by dnf, so if you install apps from the command line instead of a prettier software manager (I did lots of programming so this was normal for me) then the names of programs and libraries were a bit different. I’d also make a list of things you’ve installed (VPN software, chat apps, etc.) and look them up in the Fedora packages site or their own website and make sure they’re all available. I would assume they would be, Fedora is popular enough.

The desktop environment (Cinnamon vs. KDE) will be an initial change, but they’re both familiar enough with a program menu, task bar, like how Mint lets you carry over some of that same basic surface-level intuition that Windows taught.

Yep, if you have the means, I recommend having two SSDs until you feel confident using one of them full-time. The only downside is that if your computer is so small/cheap/old like mine was all those years ago and doesn’t have enough cables to keep both drives plugged in, switching between them can be annoying for a while.

(just checking you actually meant schizoid, which is notably different to schizophrenia. both could make sense here but imply different things)

Nearly all media is state controlled. Even privately owned media companies because both the media and the state are just tools the owning class uses to maintain power.

More info on this:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

So, an ML Leftist?

That position isn’t specific to ML tendencies. I personally see more anti-electoralism rhetoric from anarchists, for obvious ideological reasons.

As much as I don’t like clickbait titles, that is a good point.

Yeah, props to the Nanoleaf team for helping the author out. Win-win. The author says at the end that they intend on sharing it around more once it has more polish, so I hope they upstream it properly and demonstrate to Nanoleaf that helping out volunteers helps their product reach more customers. (I know it’s iffy to suggest it’s ok to neglect Linux and let us sort it out ourselves, but if we get open-source drivers in the process with the help of the company, I think that’s a net win)

Maybe I’m biased by being in socialist circles but I’d be surprised if many lemmy.ml users in tech comms had “Never Heard Of” Palantir or Thiel.

A good thing about tech is that if you have a spare device (even a cheap single-board computer like a Raspberry Pi or similar cheaper one, or a partly-broken laptop) or a working virtual machine, you can break things. That’s a core characteristic of the old-school hacker mindset, to try stuff and break stuff until you understand stuff. Usually, the worst case, you just reinstall the operating system and have a fresh clean environment (or, better yet, you restore a backup you made! Learning how to fail gracefully is a great skill)

I bricked a certain wacky laptop setup twice and had to start over (luckily with backups) just trying to get a custom startup loading screen. But once I realized why it was breaking and how to avoid it, I had a cooler looking computer!

It should show up fine in a mobile browser.

It’s just a flat-colored version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vector-based_example.svg

I know it’s been said, but Brave is a hard no. Replace it with Ungoogled Chromium. I haven’t seen the video so I don’t understand why it’s in the “not ideal for a normal human” list, and I am biased since I use plenty of “not for normal” tools.

Now the noob is using wepb for a bunch of rasterised vector graphics with 4 or 5 flat colors, and he’s wasting more disk space than before.

I just tested with this image:

Default GIMP WebP export settings (90% quality): 88.8 kB

Lossless WebP mode: 85.6 kB

Default GIMP PNG export settings (compression level 9): 189.8 kB

So I don’t trust this claim unless you have some evidence.

Was tempted to troll lemmygrad with this classic meme: https://lefty.pictures/post/view/15726

Good to hear. I was very very slightly disappointed when I read Pelican was a Python tool. I’m also a Hugo user.

Take pride in a minimalist webpage.

Last week I was thinking of making a meme pointing out how all the famously ultra-minimalist http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ and its many rebuttals are really put to shame by this one. Also, you’ve reminded me of some of those little webring banners people would put on their site bragging about being minimal, which are fun.

In fact, it should still be the default unless you need something it doesn’t support or really need to reduce file size.

I disagree. It is wasteful (we’re talking ~30% savings with lossless WebP or JPEG-XL) and widely misused, which matters at the massive scale of the Internet with technically inexperienced people making up plenty of those images.

Keyboard has too many keys, bloat/10

probs don’t need that mouse either