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!
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The sense of ownership and control the Linux experience offers is something I’ve never felt with Windows.
The secret of Linux is, if all your hardware works, it’s actually easier to use for casual users. Most people nowadays use computers for web browsing and maybe playing media and light office tasks. A Linux Mint setup will have everything you need for that either preinstalled or ready to get fun the software store. If you don’t need anything else, then it gets it of your way and just works. No viruses, little danger of malware, no crud to uninstall, no Microsoft account, no nagging apps, no ads, no attempts to upsell to paid cloud services or Pro, and no AI.
The problem arises when you want to go beyond that, and there’s no obvious path ahead,v then people not used to the Linux way of doing things may run into trouble. But 90% of users, if someone sets it up for them, will do fine.
This is why Mint is what I always recommend to people who are switching over for the first time. Congrats and welcome.
I got 35+ years into Windows. I’m the guy they get to “fix” stuff in PROD. I fight Windows all day. I’m not doing that at home anymore.
Linux Mint is terrific, also recommend it to new Linux users. I just want things easy, clean, and fast. Also, fuck Microsoft.
Debian + KDE
I bounced around to all sorts of systems and DEs and came to this same conclusion. Debian + KDE is where it all ended up after try easily over 20 different systems throughout the years.
It’s the most “we trust you, but also respect your time” combo I’ve found.
Hell yeah!
Welcome to a world outside of enshittification!
My brother recently texted me asking for advice about installing Mint on an old laptop. He is the one that got me into computers as a kid, and he has worked at Microsoft for maybe 25 years. It made me so happy lol.
Microsoft has a whole Linux division now. They’re fully in the “extend” portion of their plan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish
Plus now I have the benefit of no preinstalled spyware or bloatware
Now you get to choose the bloatware and spyware yourself! /s
Real shit tho
Welcome to stability. You are in control.
sudoresponsibly.welcome home! <3
Welcome! We are happy to have you. Remember, RTFM. ;)
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.
Oh for sure. Fuck these big companies. Unfortunately some offer services that just can’t be beat yet by open source/privacy companies.
This is sometimes true, but I would rather have a slightly worse UI and/or have to use 2 applications for more specific tasks than trading off data just to have everything under one bloated umbrella.
Been there lol. I think it’s a common thing for privacy newcomers. Not focusing on threat level and instead trying to optimize every bit. It got me too.
Once Revolt gets screen sharing.
Welcome to the dark side, we have cookies
Having said that, just as a suggestion, take a look at KDE. It feels a bit more windows like, is extremely customizable and as such can be made to work exactly how you want it
You’ll probably be installing programs and changing a lot of settings over the next few weeks. Make sure you use TimeShift (pre-installed on Mint) to make system snapshots. (It works like System Restore on Windows. You can even run it from your Linux Live flash drive if you mess up something so badly that you can’t boot from the hard drive).
LibreOffice comes pre-installed and you can use Thunderbird for email. And if you used Steam to play games on Windows, you’re in for a nice surprise. Steam has a native Linux client and it uses Proton / Wine to let you play your Windows games on Linux. It’s handled everything I’ve thrown at except for a couple of older games.
