Linux Distros

[Nippo]

I am a mint and Windows dualbooter and the setup has always done well for me. Linux is my main but its always nice to have Windows around in case something isn't compatible. Though at some point I might solo boot debian and run windows stuff in a VM for stuff that isn't compatible. I'm not sure how stable that will be cuz most of my windows stuff involves recording game footage and games.

[Guest]

sure thing!

i'm using an Acer Aspire 5336 with 2GB DDR3 RAM, an Intel Celeron T3500 and a 250GB HDD, with a non-graphical (i.e. terminal TTY) tinycore interface

Oh wow... Maybe I could install it too on my (turtle) laptop as an experiment, but I wouldn't want to lose all the progress it took me to install antiX from scratch on that thing... I remember months ago I was spending hours customizing and exploring Tiny Core in a VirtualBox VM and it's really interesting. Too bad there's not much documentation about that distro and I had to be guided by some videos of a Spanish youtuber I follow called "Locos por Linux".

[Plasmon]

I've been running Manjaro for most of my time running linux (about 7 years now)—I know that Manjaro isn't cool anymore considering how badly the devs have been fucking everything up, but switching to, say, EndeavourOS might take a lot of time that I just don't have now. That said, things have been running fairly smooth ever since I upgraded from a 2013 Thinkpad to a 2022 HP DevOne—it's nice to have a 1920x1080 screen and a modern AMD Ryzen processor, though I miss the Thinkpad's sensibly laid-out keyboard. (Seriously, the power button on this damn thing is in between the print screen and delete keys. What moron thought that was a good idea?) I have a more powerful desktop I built about 2.5 years ago too, but that exclusively runs Windows at the moment, but I am tempted to get a few more SSDs to dual-boot it.

[Guest]

I use Void Linux as my daily driver and have been using it for a while. It's a stable rolling release and it has great documentation. I do wish though I can get rid of things I don't use or want like wayland and sudo.

[devils]

I'm an EndeavourOS user! It's pretty much Arch but easier to use, and I love it. I can't even think of returning to Windows nowadays.

[gamemaster98]

Using Ubuntu because on Mint I had too many issues with the wi-fi driver. GNOME is not so bad on a laptop I think. It's the first time I try linux and I like it so far.

[SilkSkull]

Using Ubuntu because on Mint I had too many issues with the wi-fi driver. GNOME is not so bad on a laptop I think. It's the first time I try linux and I like it so far.

I haven't tried gnome but I heard it's good, I can however attest to how easy Ubuntu is to set up especially regarding not having driver issues :P

[Spots]

I use Manjaro because I like always having up-to-date software and having access to the AUR is nice so that I don't have to compile so many things manually. The desktop environment I use is GNOME with the dash to panel extension because it's what I'm most familiar with and works very well with multi-monitor setups.

[shevek]

Thought this thread might be the most fitting; I am not deep into Linux and only tried stuff out as mentioned earlier in the thread, but I'm looking more into it again now.
I know nothing about how easy or hard it is to edit the user interface on some Linux distros. I'm sure there are vast differences in this depending on what distro you use, and I would love to know what distros you personally consider to be the most fitting or durable in regards to customizing user interface. I don't necessarily mean "letting you switch between premade skins" or "lets you pick from color wheels or premade sets" or download a specific interface you can implement; I mean literally making it yourself or customizing something existing more deeply by hand than just color variation.

The reason is I am playing this game recently, called Secret Little Haven, and I am in love with the design the interface has in the computer you use in the story. Would love to recreate it as a desktop interface on Linux, specifically the look of the windows, task bar, menus etc. I know theres GNOME and KDE, but I have no idea if/how they can be modified and built on. That would work for me.
Has anyone here made their own interface (since there seems to be a small Linux ricing community online) and has some personal insight of it?

[drakonic]

@shevek The distro you use doesn't really affect the look and feel (unless you count themes made specially for the distro by the distro's community) and how much you can change it up. The component that is responsible for look and feel is called a desktop environment (DE), that's what GNOME and KDE Plasma are.

GNOME is nowhere near customizable as KDE Plasma, from what I know only the colors and maybe button styles are easily customizable. I have only used those two desktop environments so I can't tell you about others... I do believe KDE is considered to be the most customizable one however.

Unfortunately, I don't have first-hand experience with KDE Plasma theme editing, but this guide may help you.

[CyberCat2000]

The reason is I am playing this game recently, called Secret Little Haven, and I am in love with the design the interface has in the computer you use in the story. Would love to recreate it as a desktop interface on Linux, specifically the look of the windows, task bar, menus etc. I know theres GNOME and KDE, but I have no idea if/how they can be modified and built on. That would work for me.
Has anyone here made their own interface (since there seems to be a small Linux ricing community online) and has some personal insight of it?

As Drakonic said, it's the desktop environment ("DE") or window manager ("WM") that makes up the appearance of the Linux desktop! XFCE or MATE might be what you're looking for if you want to recreate the look and feel of retro desktops; I know the former has the Windows 95-like Chicago95, which could make a good base for more retro-style customizations! (Maybe look for a Mac-like menu bar too?)

[shevek]

@CyberCat2000 @drakonic thank you two, I will look into it

[Azure]

i used to use pop!_os before switching to ubuntu because i wanted to give it a spin. i liked it a lot, but i heard some equally good things about kubuntu and didn't mind doing another hop over to it. it's been really interesting getting used to kde plasma after so long spent with gnome! i've definitely, totally, 100% abandoned windows altogether—the last time i really used windows in any great capacity was back when windows 7 was still the newest version of windows, and then schools started giving out chromebooks to students, so that's just what i used until my sister bought me an i3 macbook air for college. i still use that whenever i need to run something that linux can't (or, at least, would have a bunch of problems running when i need it to be smooth and snappy) like visual studio.

[m1k3]

You probably won't see this too often but I'm a longtime user of Fatdog64. It's installed on a USB stick and runs completely in RAM, only saving changes to an encrypted file when I tell it to. In fact, the SSD in the laptop I'm using doesn't even have an OS on it - it's just used for backups and secondary storage. I can plug the USB stick into any x86-64/AMD64 machine and pick up where I left off.

[j]

It's installed on a USB stick and runs completely in RAM, only saving changes to an encrypted file when I tell it to.

sounds a lot like tinycore, which is what i use! thanks for sharing something i hadn't heard before.