Butbutbutbut Linux is not ready for desktop! I asked a stupid question in an Arch forum and they told me to RTFM! It does not support kernel level anti-cheat! Terminals are scary!
Why not ? I suppose that as long as a browser (and whatever else she need) is working, my grandmother would not need much more. And I could also install a windows11 theme on KDE, if I really want to. A icon is a icon
And in the end I think that my grandmother would be able to mantain neither a window machine, so I don’t see the problem.
I think most of the replies to my remark thought I was questioning Linux for grandma overall. I wasn’t. Just Arch. I don’t think grandma needs rolling releases.
In my opinion also Arch is usable on grandma desktop.
True, it is a rolling release but I would suppose that on such machine there would not be that many packages installed and if the network is configured correclty (so nothing can connect from the outside) it would be not be a big problem, after all what grandma use is not updated on a daily basis.
But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.
So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?
But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.
True, but that would be the end result in any case where an update do something wrong or require some sort of manual intervention, it is not strictly tied to Arch. But you have a point here.
So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?
Only to have some newer software, but you can also update Arch every once in a while, the fact that it is a rolling release does not mean you need to update every day. The everything will depend on which distro normally uses the person who install the grandma machine
I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!
It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists. A LTS distribution where “don’t break the user’s install no matter what” is the rule is absolutely the only system I’d ever trust for grandma.
It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that. If I’m at grandma’s house I want to spend time talking to her, not fixing her computer.
I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!
The only times I got this kind of problems where when I didn’t read some announcement or for some reason some packages (the kernel) were way too old, normally never had it on a normal update. But as I said, you have a point, even if in the end I would point out that a grandma would never be able to solve any problem caused by an update, irregardless of the distro or the OS.
It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists.
Only partially. Normally Arch put the new configuration file as a [something].pacnew and it is the user that should then do something, but as long as the software that use the new file could undertand that it is using an older file and it is able to handle the eventually missing new keys or removed ones there will be no problem. On my desktop I have a bunch of [some_program].conf.pacnew and everything works. Is it optimal ? Maybe not but it is not broke.
It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that.
Honestly, a grandma would just need Firefox with a couple of extension (uBlock Origin and really few others) and a network with all inbound ports blocked (so no one can connect from outside) and few outbound ports open (very few, just the common ones to use a browser). Maybe she need Openoffice, probably a DE (but a window manager could be enough) but she don’t need a lot of software we all install on out machine. It is true that Arch could be a problem when updating but I think we are talking of a very small set of packages that need to be constantly updated and in my years of Arch usage, basic packages rarely break something while updating.
May I ask what’s your job? I’m a web developer completely fine on Linux. I used windows for a long time, I tried mac for some month. Linux is the best.
developer is completely different from designer. I’m a graphic designer, and I also do animations and videos. I use adobe illustrator, photoshop, indesign, premier; affinity designer, photo, blender. I use figma too which is good for prototyping for web or apps, but not graphic design in general. and certainly not photo editing. inb4 gimp–completely unusable for pro work.
For 3D animations, Modo has linux-x86_64 binary. Blender is native also.
I’ve never been into 2D animations.
For compositing, The Foundry Nuke is native also. (If you’ve got the money, or you’re willing to buy it from seejeepeers)
For video editing, most youtubers use DaVinci Resolve.
Inkscape is slow as it’s using SVG for its backend and not as polished as an illustrator but it is feature-rich. Adwaita icons are designed in inkscape. It’s not a big sacrifice.
I learned photoshop when It was the CS4 version. I know it’s got a lot of AI features since then. Luckily, I left it before I could get used to them, so now I can use gimp. And btw, check gimp’s new release candidate. It’s a huge step forward. Everyone could give them their adobe cc subscription fees and we could see how they compete after that.
i like it much better than adobe. up until a recent update in illustrator it even performed better but now AI seems to have surpassed it. but i find affinity designer’s tools much more useful, although there’s been a bug that pisses me of with the contour tool for quite a while now. but i tolerate it because overall it still allows me to design icons much faster.
in case you’re interested in specifics:
the pixel persona in AD allows me to work on raster images without leaving the program most of the time (not all affinity photo features can be used but still having a limited raster editor mode feels much better and smoother than switching between programs). AI simply doesn’t have this in any capacity.
AD’s corner tool instead of AI’s corner rounding with the direct selection tool is much more capable and useful because it’s nondestructive. you can change the original shape with the rounding still applied, which is something you cannot do on AI.
AD’s contour tool, despite the bug that doesn’t properly round corners when you expand, is still much more fluid to use than AI’s extremely clunky, 1998-ass-feeling offset path. apart from not requiring entering fucking numbers into a fucking dialog box and instead allowing you to offset the path with simple scrubbing… it’s also nondestructive so it can stay on an object even as you edit its original shape. so i still prefer to do workarounds for the bug rather than dealing with that terrible experience in AI.
gradients are so much better in AD than AI i don’t even know where to begin. it’s just easier to use and more importantly you can use transparency gradients separately from color gradients (but also can have opacity info on a regular color gradient as well). so you can have an object that goes from 100% blue on the left to 0% green on the right but also add transparency gradient that goes 80% from top right to 20% on the bottom left and see the combination as a result in one object.
AD has “erase” as a blending mode which is small but can be very useful if you’re designing something to be exported to png. Has a couple more modes that AI doesn’t have but this one’s the most straightforward and useful imo.
It’s nothing huge but I like the vector crop tool in AD, you can just crop anything without thinking about it.
consistency between programs when using affinity is a great experience you don’t get to have when working across Adobe tools which even for the most closely related ones feel like they aren’t being developed within the same company but different … I wanna say planets? yeah it’s like they’re being developed in different planets instead.
one time payment for major versions only. i bought affinity 1.0, got all the updates for free up until 2.0, which i was able to buy on discount for upgrading. now i get all the updates on 2.x for free.
there are things that AI does better and i use it when i plan to use those, and sometimes use one and copy paste to the other to use the best of each. best highlights are repeat function (Ctrl+d). now there’s also radial repeat which can be great. blend can be very useful… most of the time though i go with AD.
Butbutbutbut Linux is not ready for desktop! I asked a stupid question in an Arch forum and they told me to RTFM! It does not support kernel level anti-cheat! Terminals are scary!
Etc, etc.
Huh, thought you were mentioning only the cons.
You jest but would you really install Arch on your grandmother’s PC?
Why not ? I suppose that as long as a browser (and whatever else she need) is working, my grandmother would not need much more. And I could also install a windows11 theme on KDE, if I really want to. A icon is a icon
And in the end I think that my grandmother would be able to mantain neither a window machine, so I don’t see the problem.
I think most of the replies to my remark thought I was questioning Linux for grandma overall. I wasn’t. Just Arch. I don’t think grandma needs rolling releases.
In my opinion also Arch is usable on grandma desktop.
True, it is a rolling release but I would suppose that on such machine there would not be that many packages installed and if the network is configured correclty (so nothing can connect from the outside) it would be not be a big problem, after all what grandma use is not updated on a daily basis.
But that means she’s not getting security updates and since she’s grandma she really needs them. On the other hand, if you’re automatically upgrading her Arch install then there will be breakage she is hopeless to fix.
So what advantage does Arch offer grandma over a traditional release LTS distribution which will be nice and stable, not breaking or changing unexpectedly on her but still remaining current with security patches?
True, but that would be the end result in any case where an update do something wrong or require some sort of manual intervention, it is not strictly tied to Arch. But you have a point here.
Only to have some newer software, but you can also update Arch every once in a while, the fact that it is a rolling release does not mean you need to update every day. The everything will depend on which distro normally uses the person who install the grandma machine
I used Arch for about 7 years. I still have it installed on an old PC but I haven’t used it recently. Every time I told pacman to update everything it felt like an adventure. Never knew if I was going to reboot to a working desktop or to a console printing cryptic error messages that take a while to Google on my phone before I get things back up and running. I wouldn’t wish that experience on my worst enemy’s grandma!
It all comes down to the maintainers of Arch putting all of the responsibility for breakage (especially due to old configuration files) 100% on the user. That’s not a system any normal person should use, that’s a system for Linux hobbyists. A LTS distribution where “don’t break the user’s install no matter what” is the rule is absolutely the only system I’d ever trust for grandma.
It’s fine if you want to assume all responsibility for updating grandma’s system and fixing breakage every time. I don’t have any interest in doing that. If I’m at grandma’s house I want to spend time talking to her, not fixing her computer.
The only times I got this kind of problems where when I didn’t read some announcement or for some reason some packages (the kernel) were way too old, normally never had it on a normal update. But as I said, you have a point, even if in the end I would point out that a grandma would never be able to solve any problem caused by an update, irregardless of the distro or the OS.
Only partially. Normally Arch put the new configuration file as a [something].pacnew and it is the user that should then do something, but as long as the software that use the new file could undertand that it is using an older file and it is able to handle the eventually missing new keys or removed ones there will be no problem. On my desktop I have a bunch of [some_program].conf.pacnew and everything works. Is it optimal ? Maybe not but it is not broke.
Honestly, a grandma would just need Firefox with a couple of extension (uBlock Origin and really few others) and a network with all inbound ports blocked (so no one can connect from outside) and few outbound ports open (very few, just the common ones to use a browser). Maybe she need Openoffice, probably a DE (but a window manager could be enough) but she don’t need a lot of software we all install on out machine. It is true that Arch could be a problem when updating but I think we are talking of a very small set of packages that need to be constantly updated and in my years of Arch usage, basic packages rarely break something while updating.
Depends on her needs. If she uses it for Facebook, no problem, since I’ll be admining her system anyways
good I’m convinced. just one thing… which graphic design programs does it run natively?
figma
ok so it’s useless
May I ask what’s your job? I’m a web developer completely fine on Linux. I used windows for a long time, I tried mac for some month. Linux is the best.
developer is completely different from designer. I’m a graphic designer, and I also do animations and videos. I use adobe illustrator, photoshop, indesign, premier; affinity designer, photo, blender. I use figma too which is good for prototyping for web or apps, but not graphic design in general. and certainly not photo editing. inb4 gimp–completely unusable for pro work.
For 3D animations, Modo has linux-x86_64 binary. Blender is native also.
I’ve never been into 2D animations.
For compositing, The Foundry Nuke is native also. (If you’ve got the money, or you’re willing to buy it from seejeepeers)
For video editing, most youtubers use DaVinci Resolve.
Inkscape is slow as it’s using SVG for its backend and not as polished as an illustrator but it is feature-rich. Adwaita icons are designed in inkscape. It’s not a big sacrifice.
I learned photoshop when It was the CS4 version. I know it’s got a lot of AI features since then. Luckily, I left it before I could get used to them, so now I can use gimp. And btw, check gimp’s new release candidate. It’s a huge step forward. Everyone could give them their adobe cc subscription fees and we could see how they compete after that.
Why do you use affinity if you have adobe?
i like it much better than adobe. up until a recent update in illustrator it even performed better but now AI seems to have surpassed it. but i find affinity designer’s tools much more useful, although there’s been a bug that pisses me of with the contour tool for quite a while now. but i tolerate it because overall it still allows me to design icons much faster.
in case you’re interested in specifics:
the pixel persona in AD allows me to work on raster images without leaving the program most of the time (not all affinity photo features can be used but still having a limited raster editor mode feels much better and smoother than switching between programs). AI simply doesn’t have this in any capacity.
AD’s corner tool instead of AI’s corner rounding with the direct selection tool is much more capable and useful because it’s nondestructive. you can change the original shape with the rounding still applied, which is something you cannot do on AI.
AD’s contour tool, despite the bug that doesn’t properly round corners when you expand, is still much more fluid to use than AI’s extremely clunky, 1998-ass-feeling offset path. apart from not requiring entering fucking numbers into a fucking dialog box and instead allowing you to offset the path with simple scrubbing… it’s also nondestructive so it can stay on an object even as you edit its original shape. so i still prefer to do workarounds for the bug rather than dealing with that terrible experience in AI.
gradients are so much better in AD than AI i don’t even know where to begin. it’s just easier to use and more importantly you can use transparency gradients separately from color gradients (but also can have opacity info on a regular color gradient as well). so you can have an object that goes from 100% blue on the left to 0% green on the right but also add transparency gradient that goes 80% from top right to 20% on the bottom left and see the combination as a result in one object.
AD has “erase” as a blending mode which is small but can be very useful if you’re designing something to be exported to png. Has a couple more modes that AI doesn’t have but this one’s the most straightforward and useful imo.
It’s nothing huge but I like the vector crop tool in AD, you can just crop anything without thinking about it.
consistency between programs when using affinity is a great experience you don’t get to have when working across Adobe tools which even for the most closely related ones feel like they aren’t being developed within the same company but different … I wanna say planets? yeah it’s like they’re being developed in different planets instead.
one time payment for major versions only. i bought affinity 1.0, got all the updates for free up until 2.0, which i was able to buy on discount for upgrading. now i get all the updates on 2.x for free.
there are things that AI does better and i use it when i plan to use those, and sometimes use one and copy paste to the other to use the best of each. best highlights are repeat function (Ctrl+d). now there’s also radial repeat which can be great. blend can be very useful… most of the time though i go with AD.