#Linux Weekly Roundup for March 23rd, 2025: #GNOME 48, #GIMP 3.0, #Fedora Linux 42 beta, #Blender 4.4, #elementaryOS 8.0.1, Kali Linux 2025.1, #EndeavourOS Mercury Neo, #Rescuezilla 2.6, #Finnix 250, #Calibre 8.0, AerynOS, new #RaspberryPi tool, and more https://9to5linux.com/9to5linux-weekly-roundup-march-23rd-2025

Elementary OS 8.0.1 Brings Bug Fixes, UI Tweaks, and Performance Boosts
—Linuxiac

https://linuxiac.com/elementaryos-8-0-1-released/

Everyone's different so I'm not forcing this on anyone, I'm also not particularly recommending this to anyone, but from my personal experience, #ArchLinux or rather its derivatives like #EndeavourOS (NOT including #Manjaro) or even #SteamOS (to some degree, not apples-to-apples comparison since that OS is purposefully locked down) has actually been the most user-friendly to use and easy to maintain lol.

I think it's been 3 years or more now since I've made the switch? Not only me tho, since I've "deployed" the same setup also on our family PC, and on my wife's personal rig, and surprise, surprise.. we've faced not a single issue despite not being a sifu in #Linux wizardry. I've had many, MANY more issues/frustrations using other distros for "normies" like #PopOS, #ElementaryOS, (and Manjaro ) and the biggest hurdle on those distros has always been software installation.

It was almost always the case, and I still see it happening now based on others' accounts of their experience, that you'll very quickly encounter a case where you want to install something, it's not found on any of the distro's repos and you'd have to add a dedicated software repository purely for that one package - and many other packages, before you could install them. Even worse, sometimes you'll have to go thru the same hassle to get their dependencies too. For a "regular" user that these distros are "catered" to? will almost certainly lead to breaking the system in some way.

This should be a bit better now thanks to #Flatpak/#Flathub, but I'm still seeing people needing to do shit like download random scripts off of #GitHub just to get something like #DavinciResolve installed and running. On an Arch-like distro, the only setup really I've done on all machines is to install yay which can be used in place of #pacman (Arch's default package manager), Flatpak, and #KDE's app store frontend, #Discover. In 99% of cases, I can install/update the Flatpak of an app, if not, it'd either be available on Arch's repos or the #AUR (which comes with yay right out of the box) - all through the GUI.

Everything else from that point has been a breeze - and this is despite using an #NVIDIA GPU on at least 2 systems, mine esp with a much more complicated setup including multi-monitors, multi-capture cards/devices, professional audio equipment, touchpad, etc. None of us have ever encountered any Arch/distro related issues since we first started daily driving EndeavourOS - some minor issues that prop up here and there (rarely) have only been issues that face all Linux users like the transition to #Wayland and so on.

Again, this is not a rec - I'd still recommend users looking to migrate from #Windows to maybe try some of the more "mainstream" distros like #LinuxMint (+1 bonus tho if it comes with official #KDEPlasma support) since they should theoretically be more "stable" as a non-rolling release distro, but if that's not working out, something like EndeavourOS could be an option.

This is a fun one, the #zed editor logs me out of my #ElementaryOS session when I try to open it.

I'm going to have to try to learn how to get comfortable in #vim for the gajillionth time, aren't I?

The first #linux distro I used was #slackware, back in 1997, with a 2.0 kernel. I briefly tried #redhat but disliked its windows 95 aspect.

At that time I often had to compile software (or try to), there was always a missing library, or a version mismatch, or a different compiler / glibc version needed, and so on.

I've used Window Maker (based on the nextstep look) for a long time, until I had to use the windows installation provided by the company. I don't remember why I stopped using Linux at home.

In 2017 I tried several distros, #ubuntu, #elementaryos, used #debian for a while, often had drivers issues. Last year I installed #arch on a "old" laptop that could not receive #windows11, and I was very surprised to have no driver issue at all (except one thing : I've stopped trying to make the hybrid nvidia card working).

I also have a M1 mac mini (16g), a very pleasant machine, but I find #macos a little bloated, the ram used when you've just started the machine is a little high for my taste.

A thing I like in the macos UI is the top menu, reminding me the #amiga workbench. I hate each window having its own menu (and I hate the buttons being on the right side of the window), happily in #gnome that's easy to modify.

For hacking (in its original sense), nothing better than linux though.

That's all for now, I wanted to share a little bit of some of my computer history thanks for reading.

Getting hang of #elementaryOS... Some weird moments, mostly caused by #linux itself, not so much by eOS.

You expect something to happen, and then it doesn't. Or it happens, but there's no UI response whatsoever, stuff like that. Elementary can’t polish up all the weirdness going on. :-P

Lessons learned: avoid flatpaks & such, search for an ubuntu/debian package instead. Usually they work, you'll save disk space (dramatically), and they even seem to integrate better into eOS.

So far, at least.

What are some neat or different #linux distros that are still functional as a daily driver? #linuxdesktop #linuxmint #ubuntu #archlinux #debian #fedora #opensuse #elementaryos #popos

Hace mucho no participaba en el #viernesdeescritorio

Esta vez, he cambiado el fondo para poner al perrito Sif. Es el mejorcito de los wallpapers que encontré de él.

I've been using #elementaryos for the last month or so in an effort to get good with a distro I could realistically recommend to people coming from the Mac, and in general it's going well.

But when I read a thread like this, it makes me crazy, and I kinda just want to give-up altogether.

https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/9/why-cant-i-place-files-on-the-desktop-by-default-and-how-can-i-get-this-featur

Upgraded my System76 Pangolin from #ElementaryOS 7 to 8. This is a PITA because there's no "automatic" upgrade path, it's a "backup and re-install" situation.

That said, I rsync'd my home directory over to another machine (hidden files and all), then rsync'd the whole thing back after erasing and re-installing the new OS version (importantly I did the restore before opening any applications, etc.) and things kinda "just worked". The mail app opened with all my accounts setup & working and even some of the applications I'd installed were functional.

I did have to re-install a couple applications, and there was one flatpak application (orca slicer) that gave me a little trouble but most everything remembered it's settings and such and overall I was really impressed.

I think it would be possible to include a small application in Elementary to automate this the next time it's time for a major version upgrade. Maybe I'll work on that as my first contribution to the project...

Spent two hours setting up a new iMac for one of my client's that I had previously set up on a nice little Lenovo Mini Think center machine with Linux Elementary OS that she paid $300 for. Seems she didn't like Linux. Set up my client's email, transferred files and set her up only to be told, in a surprised tone, hey this looks just like Linux. So she could have saved herself that $2000 had she given Linux a bit more time and patience. #linux #ilovelinux #elementaryos #foss #freesoftware #