Eugenia

Yes, it is, for two reasons:

1. Affinity company has replied to my request saying that there won’t be a Linux version, ever.
2. The hacks that exist to run Affinity on Linux are a moving rug, newer wine of affinity versions break stuff all the time. Don’t rely on it.

Your best bet is to run Gimp3 (which is excellent), or Photopea online. Learn Photopea so you can know Photoshop if in the future a future employer requires it, while for your own projects, learn Gimp3. I run the official Appimage without any issue.

The only one that doesn’t have it at all, or don’t plan for it, is lxde and mate. Every other DE has some form of support coming over.

Also, I forgot to say, to save ram on ram-starved PCs, use a single color background (my favorite is #317E9F). Or if you’re going to use an image, make sure its pixel size is exactly the screen res. If you use a 4k image (that Mint usually defaults on), on a small screen resolution, you’re wasting anywhere from 50 to 100 MB of RAM (because you count it uncompressed in memory, not how much storage it takes). Little known tip!

If you have the funds for it, or your friends help you with the purchase, get some usb sticks for $9 each (Mint requires 20 GB of space with a few apps in it, so a 32GB stick is enough, but it won’t be enough for long if they play with Steam, so a 64+GB stick is preferable), and install Mint on one of them (I use this https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/917k6WqTLSL.__AC_SX300_SY300_QL70_FMwebp_.jpg , because it’s tiny, it’s really annoying to use a large usb stick permanently). Make sure you create a /boot partition (512 MB, fat32, with the esp/boot flags on it), then a 4 GB swap partition, and then the / partition for the rest (unless Mint does that automatically for you, make sure there’s a swap).

Then configure it to be as user friendly and as clean as possible (I configure Cinnamenu to be clean of useless things, like emojis menu items etc, there’s a good cinnamon menu editor installed by default but they don’t expose it on the menus). Go through all the prefs to get sane defaults for everything. Install using the command line some apps (they will use the flatpaks, but it’s best to get the important apps from the repo): gimp, steam, a few time-wasting games as in my screenshot above, inkscape, kdenlive, shotcut, audacity, vlc, xsane, scribus, homebank, foliate, krita, htop/neofetch for your own enjoyment, and then from the web, download the .deb files for onlyoffice (it has better compatibility with MS formats than libreoffice), chromium or chrome (for those who can’t live without it), Obsidian, latest Blender, and localsend (they can send files between phones, and other OSes that the app is installed too), and Xournal++ if any of your friends have a touchscreen laptop. That’s enough to get anyone started.

Once you’re 100% sure no more changes are required, dd/clone that one usb stick to all the other ones (so you don’t have to do the installation multiple times). Then, give to friends.

Linux Mint is what you need. Don’t put them on rolling release distros, they all have troubles after a bad update (it happens to all of them eventually). You want a stable distro for newbies. So that would mean either Debian (which unfortunately doesn’t have many GUI panels to do admin stuff apart from what the DE offers), or Mint (which does).

I wouldn’t suggest Ubuntu or fedora because they use about 2 GB of RAM on a cold boot, which means that you need an 8 GB PC to do stuff comfortably. With Mint, if you remove a couple of unneeded services, it starts at 900 MB of RAM, which would run on a 4 GB laptop easily when you load lots of web browsing tabs. Your friends would probably try Linux first on their old laptops, instead of their current ones too, from fear that it would nuke their Windows, so the ram usage matters.

If a friend of yours have a too-old laptop/PC with 2 GB of RAM, then I’d suggest you install the Q4OS distro on it (with the Trinity Desktop), with Falkon or Chromium as browsers (they use less ram than firefox). It boots at 350 MB of RAM, and it comes with an easier-to-use interface than other lite Linux distros (e.g. puppy linux, antix, DamnSmallLinux etc).

Another thing to know about Mint is that it’s one of the few distros that can install to, and boot from a USB stick. Basically, you create a live USB stick, you boot from it, and then you insert a second usb stick (64 GB or more), and then you EJECT it from the desktop when it auto-mounts. It will then allow you to install Mint on that second usb stick! So for friends that don’t want to dual boot, or they’re afraid their Windows will get nuked, you can get them to boot and try Mint that way (with their changes SAVED, unlike with the live usb that loses the changes after a boot). I’ve been running from USB on two machines, where I can’t easily replace their slow hard drives, without problems (although the emmc inside goes bad after about a year if used a lot – it’s more of a semi-permanent solution, but great to introduce friends and family to Linux without nuking Windows).

One suggestion would be to install for them the Cinnamenu menu instead of the default Mint one. It’s both cleaner, and a more modern take on the old Windows menu, no useless stuff or duplication of options to confuse newbies – CLEAN interface: https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/391/944/352/704/129/original/7e2ced150dbc8932.png

Also, wait for the Mint 22.1 to be released in a few days, and change the theme to the new “Cinnamon” (it’s their new theme, but they haven’t enabled it by default – it looks great).

Also, because Mint is based on Ubuntu, 99% of the tutorials or fixes online for ubuntu, also apply to Mint.

Me too. Just tonight I lost my cat, and found her hours later, with a tomcat on top… Doctor said she’s too young to be spayed, he was wrong…

Severance is the best show of the 2020s IMHO.

Ι hope they stop all their old protocols, and include only xmpp, matrix, irc, and maybe a couple more relevant ones, but drop msn/icq etc old stuff.

Buy a supported usb bt dongle, they’re tiny. Better than fighting with models that don’t work well.

I’m aware of all these things, and I agree with you. But the FACT remains: Chrome works on a 2 or 4 GB old laptop much faster and with less ram than Firefox. The one thing you don’t want in your desktop experience is to be hitting the swap constantly, because your hdd or ssd will be killed very fast, and the experience will just be slow. The whole point of removing Windows from these laptops is to find efficient software that will bring a new life to them, instead of ending up in a landfill. And that means the following:

1. For PCs with 4 GB of ram, Linux Mint is the best choice (or with XFce if the cpu is slow, or with debian+xfce if the ssd is only 16 gb as in some chromebooks).
2. For PCs with 2 GB of ram, Q4OS is the best choice. It has the best balance between low ram usage and a cohesive DE with good desktop preferences (it’s a fork of KDE 3.5).

But in both cases, Chrome/ium is the best case, because it’s, a. Faster, b. Uses less ram.

What do you want me to do about it? Change the status quo? Stop using it and go with firefox regardless, even if it ends up in an abysmal desktop experience and dead ssds? Why should I do that? The people I install Linux for them on their old laptops want a good desktop experience to replace their now slow Windows, they don’t care if it’s Linux or Gnu/linux. Now tell me, it’s still my fault for people dowvoting?

Which is really funny, since I use Linux since 1998. It’s just that I don’t follow cults.

Chromium is ok in my opinion, but it’s also a few days away from getting updated in the repo for security updates. I don’t like Brave because of its crypto ties.

As for RAM, on low RAM machines Firefox is hitting the swap way earlier than Chrome/ium does. It really is a problem on low end PCs. It’s definitely not as optimized. And it’s not juset the RAM, as I explained, it’s just slower. I use Photopea to edit photos, and there’s an order of magnitude difference in speed on a PC with about 4000 passmark cpu points (and some of my laptops have only 500 points!!). Probably not noticeable on fast machines (machines with over 10k passmark points). Also, where Firefox could do 480p without dropping frames on youtube, Chrome can do 720p on the same video. So for slow machines, I’ll always suggest chrome/ium. For fast PCs, I guess it doesn’t really matter what you choose.

I leave Firefox installed, but I download and use Chrome. Chrome is much faster than Firefox in many websites I use (not only youtube where Google might be using a secret sauce, but also Photopea and other js-heavy websites). Also, Chrome is using way less RAM than Firefox. I have a bunch of older laptops with 4 GB of RAM, so these “small” differences in speed between the two browsers is VERY evident on these older computers (not so easily seen on very fast PCs). Many people don’t like me writing all that, and often downvote me for having written that in the past, but it’s god’s honest truth. I looked into installing a totally degoogled chromium, but it’s not updated asap for security updates, so it’s a no-go for me.

I also prefer VLC for videos, and OnlyOffice instead of LibreOffice (better MS compatibility). Also, because it’s Linux Mint and comes preinstalled with warpinator, I prefer LocalSend instead of Warpinator. Easier to use.

Edit: just as predicted, downvotes. People seem to prefer a live in a lie. Do your own tests guys before you press the trigger!

Gnome is just as beautiful as MacOS. The only difference is that MacOS is colorful, while Gnome is more b&w in its design. In fact, I’d say that gnome is more modern than macOS in its overall design philosophy. So modern, that some people hate it, lol. But modern nonetheless.