Running alternatives to Systemd.
Slackware!
Gentoo!
You can’t have your entire system configuration in a repository of plain text files, which has lots of advantages, but it’s not worth caring about unless you feel excited to get into it.
Why not? Isn’t this the whole concept of Bash Script, Ansible, Terraform, etc… I mean it can be as simple as a git repo that pulls down an install script then syncs your dot files. What am I missing? If you’re referencing Nix, you can also have that on Mint.
Yeah, I’m talking about not just Nix, but NixOS. Nix (the package manager) can do a lot, but NixOS + disko + home-manager can literally be all of the configuration for your machine from drive partitioning through to dot files. Throw in nixos-anywhere and impermanence and you can have an insane amount of control over all of your computers.
Ansible, Terraform, Chef, etc. do have some overlap, but the main difference is that those tools iterate through the system modifying it piece by piece and NixOS is declarative.
If something fails in some of my bigger Ansible playbooks, it could mean 30 minutes of just running through all the steps again. I could probably break it into sections, but then I have to worry about making sure they all get run when things get updated. In my NixOS install, it’s way faster, I can roll back to a previous state, and troubleshooting is way easier in my opinion.
Ah alright. My point is OP is asking what can be done in other distros that can’t be done in Mint and your answer was have the entire configuration be in plain text. I completely agree that if you want that kind of reproducibility NixOS is the most refined, well established, and best way to handle this. However to answer OP I would say this is possible in Mint but just much more painful.
Found the other NixOS user. ;)
If you are using Gnome distros: you can feel exactly what it feels like getting back to working in a restricted, overhyped, overbranded environment like Windows.
If you are using Ubuntu: you can get advertising during your system’s software upgrades. No, really.
If you are using Arch: you can post aroudn the internet saying you use Arch btw.
Depending on the distro, you can use some alternative software stacks, but that’s mostly the backend (eg.: systemd versus openRC, Apache vs Nginx, X vs Wayland); most “desktop app” level is mostly the same for each desktop environment, is kinda the point.
Natively install RPM packages? Really, there’s not much. Find a setup that you like.
You can’t easilyy switch between different inages like on an atomic fedora system.
Do you have to switch now? No.
Hopefully we get an official XFCE Atomic desktop someday.
You can create a ublue version in a few hours if you’re down to it. Creating an inage isn’t that difficult 👍🏼
I love xfce. But ive tried gnome w tiling shell extension and wow. But i still miss xfce , once they come over to Wayland i think I will go back 🤷
Brag about being an Arch user (BTW.)
If you are speaking about stock Linux mint Xfce, with the default kernal, mesa version etc., your support for very new hardware - Arrow lake, battlemage and RDNA 4 will be imperfect. In general, very new hardware (launched within the last 6 months) will not be supported properly because the lts kernel being used was written before these products were launched
Arrow Lake
Why would anyone curse themselves with that though?
The ultra 7 is actually a good all rounder. Decent performance (well balanced between gaming and production workloads), good efficiency and good pricing with respect to the AMD options. AMD is of course better for pure productivity (9950x), pure gaming (7800x3d and the upcoming 9800x3d) and is better at the low end (7600, 7600x)
Xfce? All keyboard shortcuts involved the Meta key won’t work.
Which keyboard shortcuts do you mean specifically? I think I fixed this exact issue earlier today!
Meta+arrows key to shift windows around
Or is the key call Super? I know for sure it’s the “Windows” key.
Yeah that’s the exact issue I fixed yesterday: the Super (Windows) key is configured to open the whisper (start) menu and this overrides any of the other xfce keyboard shortcuts like moving windows around.
The fix was to go into Settings > Keyboard > Application Shortcuts and change the one that’s set by default to open the whisper menu (
xfce4-popup-whiskermenu) to something else. I found some bug reports saying that the problem is that xfce doesn’t expect shortcuts that are “modifier only” (as in only the Super key), and once I changed that one then the shortcuts to move windows around suddenly started working.No idea why distros ship with this configuration already broken, but hopefully this helps!
They work just fine.
The only thing that does not work is just binding meta only akin to win key to open the start menu for example.
I had trouble using Flatseal to adjust permissions for Flatpak applications in Linux Mint. But that was a few months ago and may have been fixed. Other than that I never really had trouble with stuff being broken or unavailable in Mint.
I guess if you use very new hardware you might prefer a newer kernel than the one Mint uses. Or if you want the latest versions of packages, a rolling distro might suit you better. Or you might prefer a different filesystem. But if none of this bothers you, there’s no need to switch. Mint generally works well.
I’ve never had an issue with Flatseal in mint. Out of curiosity, what was your issue?
Honestly I can’t remember the details. It was a few months ago and it may have been just a temporary thing or a quirk of my installation. I think it had to do with some component relating to DBus not being present that I couldn’t figure out how to fix.
I mean…
Steam? Maybe? I dunno, I don’t game but the Steam kids seem to prefer Arch. I’m sure they have their reasons.
Practically? Probably nothing terribly significant.
Reasons are usually just newest kernel/mesa/etc. Most of the time the difference is very small, and often inconsequential. However, every now and again there is a major development that might make it worth it (IE: The graphics pipeline that all but made dxvk-async obsolete)
SteamOS is arch, so some of the derivatives are too.
Steam shouldn’t really care though.
I’m a complete noob in the games department. Btw, I see that you don’t use Arch.
Man, I got stuff to do. Lol.
Steam and Lutris work well! I can game on XFCE Mint just fine. I actually have an easier time of it than on a number of distros, thanks to the combination of flatpaks and the Ubuntu base. But, I am not “the kids”.
I think “they prefer” Arch because a lot of them just bought a Steam Deck and that comes with Arch and it just works.
Compared to Arch(-based): Accesing the latest packages. It’s not impossible, especially if you go for Debian testing repos, but it’s definitely extra work.
Compared to special-purpose distros (i.e. gaming, portable, high security/privacy, pen-testing): Whatever their special purpose is will usually be harder to achieve.
Compared to huge corpo distros (SUSE/Fedora and derivatives): Ease of more intricate setups and maybe some security testing.
Compared to Ubuntu: Paying a corporation to not withhold security patches from you.
Waste time configuring things and troubleshooting things when your ultra custom system breaks.
File-by-file integrity check against signed checksums upstream to trivially confirm validity of deployment.
But that’s probably not interesting.
Nerd stuff
