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1 • Firefox License (by Quizzical on 2025-03-03 02:41:50 GMT from United States)
So Firefox = full throttle spyware now?
2 • Why changing DE ? (by GruntZ on 2025-03-03 06:24:17 GMT from France)
I was on Xubuntu for a very long time (since 10.10), with Compiz+Emerald as Desktop Environment (DE) and an AWN dock, but I started to want to abandon *buntu 7 or 8 years ago (because of the "snap") and I tried to find my bearings on Mint and Mint Debian Edition by testing in VMs. For 2 years, I have been switching my desktop PCs to Mint, and my laptop to LMDE. Both are now visually and functionally almost identical to my old PC (still under Xubuntu 20.04); only AWN has not found a credible replacement.
Since the interaction goes through the DE, with all the small personal adjustments that one has made over time (keyboard shortcuts and other visual habits), changing it only brings a nuisance, at best temporary, if the underlying functionalities remain the same.
New useful features are very rare, and well-thought-out improvements are made "under the hood", without changing usage habits.
If I am so attached to my habits, it is because in my former professional life, they were called "productivity". And the changes of GTK3 then GTK4 (disappearance of menus and movement of buttons), plus the "fashion effects" with "Material Design" and borderless windows are unbearable to me.
I would spend my retirement under this same DE, as long as I can keep it operational.
After all, the Unix commands that I use since SystemV have not changed and still do the job ;-)
3 • Poll (by Craig on 2025-03-03 06:38:19 GMT from United States)
"Do you install new desktop environments or new distros more frequently?"
More frequently than what? I had to read the question a few times to get it straight in my mind.
It should read, "Which do you install more frequently, desktop environments or new distros?"
4 • BSD (by Kruger on 2025-03-03 06:58:04 GMT from Australia)
Why would you choose GhostBSD which offers no encryption options as opposed to NomadBSD which provides the option to encrypt your data with GELI on install?
5 • Changing DE? No way. (by dr.j on 2025-03-03 08:17:42 GMT from Germany)
There was a time when I was looking for the perfect system for me. At that time, I tried out many distributions, DEs and application programs. But this process has been completed years ago. If I am not forced to (wayland, discontinued programs, other further developments, new boot processes for the nvme SSD etc.) everything remains as it is. Because all this “tinkering” and searching is not an end in itself, but has a purpose. Once this has been achieved, the tinkering is over.
6 • Immutable distributions (by NULL on 2025-03-03 09:57:46 GMT from Germany)
IMHO the following statement is factually wrong, at least for immutable desktop distributions:
"immutable distributions are almost exclusively developed by commercial companies"
We have the Atomic Fedoras (community), SuSE Aeon (aka MicroOS) which was also developed by an enthusiast and of course the Atomic Fedora Spin Offs like Bazzite - each one of them driven by enthusiastic individuals, not by corporations.
Of course immutable distributions are not the solution to all problems and still have some problems which hopefully get ironed out over time, they are perfect for machines that should just work and be up to date.
It is true, that packages are slightly bigger and perhaps need a few milliseconds more to start, nothing which I every really noticed when using an immutable distribution. (Has the author experienced Atomic Fedora/SuSE Aeon or is he mostly referring to snaps on Ubuntu?)
IMHO immutable distributions solve a lot of problems, especially for community distributions:
- Community distributions simply have not enough manpower to keep packages up to date, and I'd rather have LibreOffice/Firefox/etc. packaged once by the communities that should know best how to build them, than by some random package managers
- Having immutable desktops and servers allows communities to focus on core features and users to just deploy stuff which can automatically update, while allowing users to have up to date software and fearless updates.
Just for the record, at this moment I am running Debian on all my machines but my SteamDeck. For my media machines the only reason I am not running Fedora Silverblue is that standardizing on one distribution makes my life easier and my work setup is not that great yet on Silverblue but I'll happily jump ship once Silverblue (or another immutable distribtion) is friction-less for my use case. For a lot of users which mostly use their web browser and LibreOffice, immutable distros are already a perfect solution for their use cases.
Non-immutable distributions will not go away, and people will be free to use them.
I am just getting tired of the 'immutable distributions are only in the interest of big corporations' narrative. A lot of community people see value for their communities and the same is true for a lot of end users.
7 • Do you install new desktop environments or new distros more frequently? (by James on 2025-03-03 10:36:42 GMT from United States)
I never install a new desktop, not worth the effort and a good way to get yourself in trouble. It I want to try a new desktop I find an OS that features that desktop to install.
8 • @1 So Firefox = full throttle spyware now? (by James on 2025-03-03 10:40:04 GMT from United States)
Probably not, but it still reports back to the mothership more than I want. Yet there is both Waterfox and LibreWolf that are modified Firefox that don't do that. Waterfox shuts off all telemetry. LIberWolf offers even further security. LiberWolf has a repository. Waterfox does if you want Waterfox classic, but Waterfox itself has to be installed as a tarball from my experience.
9 • Firefox alternative (by Appalachian on 2025-03-03 11:30:58 GMT from United States)
LibreWolf is only an option for replacing Firefox IF you don't mind running a distro which is explicitly meant to be political, and which has firmly planted its flag in one particular camp. They are so intent on injecting politics that they think trying to remain apolitical is a bad thing.
https://codeberg.org/librewolf/issues/issues/1978
10 • Immutable (by Jesse on 2025-03-03 11:33:15 GMT from Canada)
@6: "IMHO the following statement is factually wrong, at least for immutable desktop distributions:
"immutable distributions are almost exclusively developed by commercial companies"
We have the Atomic Fedoras (community), SuSE Aeon (aka MicroOS) which was also developed by an enthusiast and of course the Atomic Fedora Spin Offs like Bazzite - each one of them driven by enthusiastic individuals, not by corporations."
All of the projects you just listed are commercially backed. Fedora is backed by IBM and all of their atomic spins are based off commercially sponsored work, SUSE is a commercial entity. You just proved my point with those examples.
11 • Firefox issue (by wre on 2025-03-03 12:58:22 GMT from United States)
Am I reading this wrong -
doesn't it says version 128 or earlier
doesn't it say to update to version 128?
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/root-certificate-expiration
12 • I screwed up (by wre on 2025-03-03 12:59:34 GMT from United States)
doesn't it say earlier than version 128
13 • LibreWolf (by Hank on 2025-03-03 13:22:32 GMT from Germany)
Firefox alternative (by Appalachian on 2025-03-03 11:30:58 GMT from United States)
LibreWolf is only an option for replacing Firefox IF you don't mind running a distro which is explicitly meant to be political, and which has firmly planted its flag in one particular camp. They are so intent on injecting politics that they think trying to remain apolitical is a bad thing.
What a crazy piece of disinformation.
LibreWolf can be installed or used on most distros.
It is available as appimage and portable as well as in some distribution specific formats.
14 • Immutable (by thesisko on 2025-03-03 13:46:00 GMT from United States)
What I like about immutable distributions is that it makes it easier to support non technical family members.
15 • Immutable (by NULL on 2025-03-03 14:14:59 GMT from Germany)
@10 Perhaps we have to agree to disagree.
It is true, that Fedora/SuSE get support from their respective companies.
But, to the best of my knowledge, the immutable desktops were not created by IBM or SuSE opening a position for developing immutable desktops and paying people to do so, but by volunteers in the community and by the initiative of these volunteers.
My point is, that it seems to me like a community decision to have these works streams and not dictated by the companies backing the development.
At least a dozens ;-) of people in the communities see real value from immutable distributions.
@15 points out non technical family members, where I could not agree more. Again, I am not saying that immutable distributions solve all problems or that one should not use a 'classic' distribution.
I am simply seeing too often the narrative, that this is only in the interest of companies and that there are no benefits for (end) users.
I would for example totally use a (degoogled) version of ChromeOS on my old media player laptop in the living room . For that use case, an immutable distribution with zero maintenance and up to date packages is for me a much better solution than provisioning Debian, as I do now.
16 • Firefox (by Geo. on 2025-03-03 14:15:50 GMT from Canada)
Firefox, what happened to you? Well, there's always Zen browser, or the other mentioned above. 💔
17 • Immutable (by Jesse on 2025-03-03 15:28:55 GMT from Canada)
@16: "My point is, that it seems to me like a community decision to have these works streams and not dictated by the companies backing the development."
I am afraid you have it backwards. These are company initiatives, not community ones. That's why immutable distros are almost exclusively the domain of commercially backed projects.
Community run projects like Debian, Mint, Arch, etc don't have immutable editions, just commercially sponsored projects like SUSE, Fedora, and Ubuntu.
18 • Gentoo (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-03 15:40:21 GMT from United States)
Gentoo almost scared me away from Linux altogether, many years ago. I was a plebe, and had no idea it was for a certain Linux/nerd demographic who loved to compile etc. I honestly thought it was what "Linux is all about," and reluctantly tried a few others, which was good to do of course, as I learned that there is quite the range of Linux distribution philosophies as to user sensibilities etc.
As to the poll query, heck a desktop environment used to seem tied into what a distro was all about, and some still have that flavor. But as said by others a user can swap out one for the other fairly easily on most distros. But I still try other distros much more often than fooling with going from Gnome to Plasma to whatever. No reason to carve up a distro when one can get another version of the same one or another distro with the WM and/or DE one desires.
19 • DE or Distro (by Keith S. on 2025-03-03 16:38:17 GMT from United States)
I settled on Xfce some years ago after the Gnome and KDE camps started fragmenting (and often with nasty pointless years-long fights so typical of the "libré community.") I prefer lighter DEs, and experimented with LXQT / LXDE for a bit when that mess started up. I even built out a nicer-looking fvwm desktop on an OpenBSD machine once.
Xfce has everything I need and nothing I don't need, and is available on every distro that I like. I just hope their recent experiments with Wayland don't result in the inability to run it on X, or I'll be experimenting with DEs again after years of stability.
20 • Universal Blue - Bluefin (by Linux Revolution on 2025-03-03 17:09:40 GMT from United States)
I'm generally not an immutable linux distribution person. I require too much control and change. However, I do feel Universal Blue got their vision right. I also think Universal Blue's direction and philosophy is the future of linux distributions. They offer different categories of immutability. This does lend itself to more flexibility of use cases.
21 • New desktop environments or new distros? (by Ascanio on 2025-03-03 17:19:41 GMT from Italy)
The same. I install Debian stable every 2 years, with MATE desktop environment.
22 • Changing desktop vs. distro (by Jason Hsu on 2025-03-03 19:38:12 GMT from United States)
I never change the DE that comes with the distro I installed. There's too much risk and not enough benefit.
If a distro offers multiple DEs, I pick the "main" one because it has the best support. If I have questions, I have a better chance of finding answers from fellow users, wikis, help pages, etc. When it comes to fixing bugs and other issues, this one has the highest priority within the development team. The more you stray away from the "main" setup, the more you're on your own. Not all of us can be like James Bond, Magnum P.I., Dirty Harry, Axel Foley, or Indiana Jones.
23 • Changing distros over LXQT (by a humble hobbit on 2025-03-03 21:08:45 GMT from Chile)
Changing DEs often leads to glitches or little annoyances, but I was a lxde fan, and currently a lxqt one (first lubuntu release with it was bad, but it did improve a lot with time). I have tried for years to replace Lubuntu since as much as I love all the work they put in the desktop I really can't stand Ubuntu as a distro nowadays, but no other distro has such a polished LXQT implementation. Even Debian uses xfwm and lightdm instead of openbox and sddm with their default settings. Right now I'm running a Devuan based Peppermint since it is a very nice distro, but my heart aches for another LXQT-centric distro.
24 • LXQT (by Keith S. on 2025-03-03 23:56:58 GMT from United States)
@23 humble hobbit: Devuan ships with an San LXQT option. I thought Peppermint had a sort of strange LXQT/Xfce hybrid thing but it has been a few years since I looked at it. I recently tried out Devuan again and loved it. I don't know the details of which window manager they use though, but it might be worth a look.
25 • Orbitiny desktop (by rhtoras on 2025-03-04 00:43:09 GMT from Greece)
Well i am dissapointed with orbitiny desktop... there are new desktops with freedom and efficiency in mind. One example is Lumina Desktop which free of bloat components and works fine on old computers too. I don't like a desktop environment looking like a cheap copy of a windows version even if i can modify it how i like it. To give an example of what i mean. Mate desktop looks unique in a vanilla version which is exactly the oposite of gnome desktop which looks like a macos clone on steroids. And although macos looks -in my eyes- nicer than windows then gnome is just a copy of it. Where are the new ideas ? Is there anything fresh ? Calla desktop or ydesk also look nicer even if they borrow ideas from other desktops. And NO borrowing ideas is not the same as cloning. OK orbitiny is not a 100% clone of windows but it feels bloat and buggy at the same time something windows already is. I personally like simplicity. Last but not least i like the idea of a new desktop environment and orbitiny is a new one and i am watching this closely. Also using codeberg to host it's code is a breath of fresh air. Hope this desktop will improve at least in the efficiency and freedom departments. What i am saying is: using less ram and working without bloat components.
26 • 17 • Immutable (by Wally on 2025-03-04 00:48:09 GMT from Australia)
"immutable distros are almost exclusively the domain of commercially backed projects." To be fair there's Vanilla OS, Endless OS, Nitrux and rlxos. And it's still early days
27 • @,26 • 17 • Immutable, again (by Wally on 2025-03-04 01:16:35 GMT from Australia)
Missed one: blendOS. And there's astOS, which installs an immutable system using the Arch ISO.
28 • Re: LibreWolf (by Appalachian on 2025-03-04 01:32:43 GMT from United States)
@13: Perhaps you might care to follow the link I posted (which takes you to the LibreWolf forum), read the comments from one of the LibreWolf devs, and tell me where I misrepresented what they wrote. Or perhaps you would rather not, and you would instead prefer to continue tossing around words like "disinformation" to dismiss any facts you happen to find inconvenient.
29 • DE's (by Friar Tux on 2025-03-04 04:53:02 GMT from Canada)
@25 (rhtoras) While I prefer a "Windows like" desktop, I'm old and like the familiarity, I do, however, like to play with radically different DE's. One of my absolute favourite is Eagle Mode. It is a zoomable window manager (?). You just continue zooming in till you get to the file you want. Or you can zoom completely out where you'll find yourself in "space" with various apps and games you can zoom into. Definitely different if you like different.
But to answer the actual poll question, I change distros more often, but try to stay with my DE of choice - Cinnamon. (Fell in love with it when KDE stopped working a few years back.)
30 • Firefox alternatives (by Andy Prough on 2025-03-04 05:13:12 GMT from Switzerland)
If you are going to look into the different Firefox alternatives it's best to look at the fully free ones including Mullvad browser and IceCat, both of which are very serious about user privacy. And if you are fortunate enough to be running the fully free Trisquel GNU/Linux as your distro you will get the fully free and fully private Firefox fork called Abrowser.
Librewolf allows the enabling of DRM, which is a privacy nightmare, so I can't recommend it.
31 • Orbitiny New Home (by JOH451 on 2025-03-04 10:51:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
@25 You spoke too soon about Codeberg. It appears the project has been migrated to Sourceforge at https://sourceforge.net/projects/orbitiny-desktop/.
32 • Et tu, Firefox? (by El Zorro Ardiente on 2025-03-04 10:55:04 GMT from Spain)
Several comments on what Firefox is doing, and of course, condemnation. But my wondering is not about what, but about why? It may just be that good intentions and fine principles don't put meat in the soup pot. As shown by such as Microsoft and Opera, it's not easy to maintain a browser, and I expect it's not cheap. MS and Opera surrendered to Chromium, but for Firefox, that might be anathema. In it's heyday, Firefox had over 30% of the market. Today it's a paltry 2.9% or so, most of which in taken by Linux and BSD users. Users are notoriously cheap as far as contributions, and the lower the market share, the less money from the search engines, which are Firefox's main source of funds.So, my concern is not so much whether Firefox is going to sell my private goodies, (They are welcome to whatever turns them on.) but whether it's going to be around at all for long.
Privacy-focused browsers are mentioned, but every single one is based on Firefox. So, if no Firefox, then what? There is Goanna, the fork used for Pale Moon and Basilisk, and nothing else but Chromium and Apple's WebKit. May the forks be with you!
33 • Immutable (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 11:02:01 GMT from Canada)
@26: "To be fair there's Vanilla OS, Endless OS, Nitrux and rlxos. And it's still early days"
True, there are a few community projects using immutable filesystems. Though few of them have gained much traction yet.
On the flip side we can add SteamOS from Valve as another commercial example. It is probably the most widely used immutable Linux distro, outside of Android.
34 • DE or Distro? (by penguinx86 on 2025-03-04 11:37:09 GMT from United States)
When I want to try a new desktop environment, I install the full distro in Virtualbox. I'll play around with it for a few days. Then, I'll go back to using Mint or Debian as my main distro with Xfce as the DE.
35 • Distros and DEs (by Peter on 2025-03-04 13:13:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
I never change distro now. Debian is where I've laid my hat and I'm happy with it. I have a spare SSD in my main PC which I'll install a 'guest OS' if I'm interested enough in it, but I'll always go back to Debian. To be honest, and I can appreciate the irony that I'm posting this on Distrowatch. I'm not really that interested in distros anymore unless they offer something different, like I'm currently running FreeBSD as my 'guest OS' but that was just a learning exercise and it'll probably go at some point.
DEs? Perhaps I'm weird, but I like both Gnome and KDE. KDE for the desktop, Gnome for the laptop. And Xfce, I'll always have a soft spot for that, because it was the first one I used when I switched to Linux and let's face it, it really doesn't change that much!
36 • Librewolf (by Osmo on 2025-03-04 14:40:16 GMT from Sweden)
@9 please stop being so political Appalachian - its ok to use something made by someone you feel angry at for not agreeing with you.
37 • de's (by shawn on 2025-03-04 14:41:41 GMT from United States)
As for DE it's xfce, with a nvidia card and a 4k led tv it's the only choice that works, worst is KDE since wayland is terrible with nvidia like they worked to make it that bad on purpose. Gnome is just to nothing to see and I like to see my widgets but this screens switching windows maxing out stuff is silly so that moves gnome to no go, now mate I tried but it's off since it's not intuitive to me like the kde start menu is a pain with stuff where you do not expect it not new user friendly with kde and way to many options and iit's slugish if you install a bunch of themes it seems to want to stop working and with 64gb ram and a 6 core cpu that means it's not good under the hood since it should use as much ram as it needs not slow to almost a crawl after a bunch of installs that's just programming for looks and not power so more like a cheerleader and not any athlete, ones just pretty and one is functional unless fooling the user isa function.
38 • Moz terms and DE changes (by grindstone on 2025-03-04 15:19:45 GMT from United States)
@1 yes there's a Debian bug filed but...the slow death from Mozilla brain-wizards direction defies belief. Infuriatingly stupid both short and long-term. They're trying to smooth it over with word-salad but let's see what the sausage-making process does with it.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1099130
@2 Amen. Same & same (base xub 20.04). Took years to get it the way everything works (machine does a LOT).
@5 Yes--once needs met and stabilized, tinkering ends.
39 • Changing distro and desktop (by David on 2025-03-04 16:59:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'm still a bot puzzled by the question! I only change when forced to by unacceptable developments, like abandoning Gnome when version 3 came out and Centos when that went downhill. So long as PCLinuxOS and Xfce exist, I'll keep using them.
40 • about distrowatch search menu (by gugl on 2025-03-04 17:38:50 GMT from Moldova)
First of all, blendos is missing from newly added "declarative" distros,
and I would like to add my 2 pennies, the people who like using nix as package manager, but at the same time a traditional distro know that not every distro supports nix, cause nix doesn't work with "selinux", so I suggest an idea for future improvement of distrowatch search:
to add a search section with security modules used (selinux, apparmor, tomoyo, none)
41 • Declarative (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 17:43:18 GMT from Canada)
@40: > "First of all, blendos is missing from newly added "declarative" distros,"
Despite what the blendOS website says, the distribution is not declarative, nor is it immutable.
> " the people who like using nix as package manager, but at the same time a traditional distro know that not every distro supports nix, cause nix doesn't work with "selinux""
Why not just turn off SELinux if you want a distribution which doesn't use SELinux?
42 • on blendos not (by gugl on 2025-03-04 18:07:54 GMT from Moldova)
thank you for answering
Agree that blendos isn't immutable, but I played with it in a VM, by default it installed GNOME, and all it took to switch it to KDE and install some apps was changing a .yaml file in which instead of
track: default-gnome
to switch to:
track: kde
packages:
- transmission-qt
- openttd
and it magically after loooong time cause it is still beta switched to KDE
so I think it is a declarative config driven distro (for now with a lot of quirks)
About disabling selinux on fedora/opensuse in order to use nix -
people who need to use selinux with RHEL/SLES and nix use a nix distro from determinate systems, which happen to work with selinux
obviously people who use nix, google what to do,
I just pointed a niche search case, which majority of linux users, don't want, cause usually nobody messes with security modules :)
43 • blendos (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 18:37:19 GMT from Canada)
@42: "I think it is a declarative config driven distro"
You can add packages to an existing blendos system using a config file, but you can't setup and configure blendos through a config file the way you can with a declarative distribution like NixOS or Guix System.
44 • Bazzite (by mocha on 2025-03-04 19:29:05 GMT from United States)
Glad to see Bazzite added! Tried it out recently on my main computer and loved it. It was my first time trying an immutable distro and was surprised how little that caused any issues, would highly recommend as a gaming or even general use/development environment.
45 • search (by shawn on 2025-03-04 21:16:47 GMT from United States)
a search term needed or you need to leave distrowatch and use google or other search engine to look it up, especially if your a new linux user is have terms like, wayland or xorg since if you own an nvidia card there is no way around the fact that wayland is terrible for nvidia and nvidia drivers are terrible with wayland so that would save a ton of bad installs for new users and trust me I went from intel cpu to amd with nvidia card and it was night and day in the stuff I could use since cinnamon is buggy with intel at times and it also hates 4k resolution and I've never had any luck with ubuntu at all except with the great mx linux an offshoot and a great one at that.
46 • search (by Jesse on 2025-03-04 21:23:50 GMT from Canada)
@45: "a search term needed or you need to leave distrowatch and use google or other search engine to look it up, especially if your a new linux user is have terms like, wayland or xorg since if you own an nvidia card there is no way around the fact that wayland is terrible for nvidia"
We've had an option for searching for systems with X.Org available for around 20 years.
Wayland isn't a specific package, since each desktop rolls their own implementation. But if you know a desktop you want to run that supports Wayland (like GNOME 40) you can search for the desktop.
47 • Firefox (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-05 12:49:44 GMT from United States)
@32 Once in a while I see a post in here that teaches me a thing or three. Thanks for that.
I'm too simple about all this to englow much worry about privacy concerns; if you type something, anything, on the internet it's highly likely that someone who is monetize minded will harvest it and sell it, including your (gathered) personal data and your aunt's bra size, irrespective of which web browser you type it in.
So, don't type it on the internet and even more importantly don't store it in your computer or phone. Let them harvest fake names and other things; pollute the data banks and clouds with phoney baloney, all the while keeping the real stuff about you in the real world.
If you don't know how to do those things then perhaps go off the grid entirely, a lot of people are doing that.
48 • Do you change distributions or desktop environments more frequently ? (by eb on 2025-03-05 17:25:13 GMT from France)
I never change distribution (Slackware since 2005)
I never changedesktop environments (I have none !:-)
I sometimes change of window manager (now JWM).
Thanks to DistroWatch.
49 • BSD (by rhtoras on 2025-03-05 18:26:33 GMT from Greece)
@4 I agree 100% i find nomad bsd a better option than ghost bsd... i only wish they could bring back the old openbox iso but even with xfce i am just fine... the only downside is -at least in my case- sound does not work out of the box and it was kinda hard to make it work... and i have made sound work on openbsd which is consider harder so i am not sure...
The installer of nomad bsd is super easy so is ghostbsd installer... a downside of ghost bsd is that they abandoned openrc init and octopkg...
I also like midnight bsd ideas but this fork of freebsd is not ready yet for daily use.
50 • change desktop environment or distribution (by Kazlu on 2025-03-06 08:37:19 GMT from France)
I have not changed my DE in over a decade. I am very happy and comfortable with Xfce and I welcome slow, mature improvements that keep my workflow the same. I have been trying a handful of distros in the recent years (Peppermint, Spiral, Void to name a few), but every time, I went for the Xfce edition... When available. I only make an exception when Xfce is not among the supported/offered options at install time, because if I go for a desktop installed after the fact, it's way more raw, not polished and probably lacks the features that make the base distro interesting. In that case, MATE does the trick, LXQt is OK. Also, I have one example where I am relying on Qt aplications, in that case I go for LXQt to have more consistency over the desktop. The Ubuntu family is an exception, the *buntu-desktop packages bring all the customizations of the sister distros' desktops and it works well. If you want, say, KDE Mint, you can install Mint and kubuntu-desktop and you'll mix the best of both worlds.
51 • @23 LXQt (by Kazlu on 2025-03-06 09:26:34 GMT from France)
LXQt outside of Ubuntu? Well, I suppose it depends on what you want to avoid in Ubuntu. If Mint is far enough from the Ubuntu problems for you, you could install Linux-Mint and then install the lubuntu-desktop package to recover the exact same Lubuntu polish. However, if you need to go further away (like I suppose you do since you went for Peppermint Devuan), you may try wattOS (still uses LXDE ;) ) or the LXQt version of Spiral Linux (very polished Debian spin with nothing but plain Debian repositories). Technically, it should be possible to mix Devuan base and the level of polish of Spiral Linux, but I am not sure what is the best route.
52 • Stay Calm and Forget Your Privacy (by Random Void User on 2025-03-07 00:24:18 GMT from United States)
Thankfully I've been using Brave in place of Firefox for some time. With the recent FF change, I deleted it. Configuring privacy was already enough work. I still use LibreWolf AppImage, FF without the labor. If I have an argument with some LibreWolf setting, I can change it.
Brave runs faster than FF in my tests. Google code is suspect but after passing Chromium and Brave teams, followed by my own tweaks, I figure it's scraped clean. Brave's cryptocurrency can be ignored, and AI nonsense shut off. Tor tabs are unique. The "bad" reviews mostly rail on the founder's politics and profit model. I just don't care. What I want is my privacy. Brave is good code, as one may expect from many teams working it.
I tried Zen, but found its defaults at odds with its claims. Google search in a "privacy" browser? And consumer-grade spyware apps in the default panel on first launch? Nothing about Zen made sense, so I dropped it. Its interface confuses, and it suffers as many privacy headaches as FF, at first blush. The website tranquilizes into calmness, instead of offering a FF build matching the tin. Others apparently feel the same.
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/1f38jkp/my_privacy_review_zen_browser/
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/zen-browser/20312/27
53 • Ungoogled-Chromium (by illumos on 2025-03-07 06:07:18 GMT from Japan)
Why not use Ungoogled-Chromium?
Google's spyware remains on Chromium, but it has been completely removed from Ungoodled-Chromium.
Brave is developed by a company so I don't know when it will change licenses like Mozilla, but there is no such concern as Ungoogled-Chromium is a community-driven development.
If you're worried about FireFox or LibreWolf, you should use Ungoodled-Chromium.
54 • Small linux recovery system in a single ~35Mb file. Just drop an EFI executable (by Anon on 2025-03-07 10:49:37 GMT from United States)
FYI: https://github.com/hugochinchilla/lifeboat_linux
Small linux recovery system in a single ~35Mb file. Just drop an EFI executable in your EFI partition
55 • Distributions or desktop environments (by Just4fun on 2025-03-07 14:22:40 GMT from Sweden)
I don't use desktop environments. To keep distributions as simple as possible, I start with a minimal installation (mostly Arch or Artix) then add openbox as a window manager and a program launcher and then add ONLY the programs that are really needed.
56 • Browser Privacy Concerns (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-07 15:15:42 GMT from United States)
I'm from Mars and am not familiar with Earth's human ways, so I typed "what is all the concern about browser privacy?" in your Google.
The AI response in Google was, "The main concern about privacy in browsers is that websites and third-party companies can track users' online activity through cookies and other tracking mechanisms, collecting data about their browsing habits, interests, and location, which can then be used for targeted advertising or even sold to other entities, without the user's full knowledge or consent, potentially leading to privacy violations and unwanted profiling"
I'm sorry, I thought it was going to give a response talking about your checking accounts passwords or your medial diagnosis from that time you went on vacation with your secretary.
Not about companies harvesting individual data pieces of your population so that they can more accurately tailor advertising to your needs and tastes. It must be awful seeing those ads which are about something personal like that.
57 • @56 Browser privacy concerns (by Kazlu on 2025-03-07 15:55:09 GMT from France)
Hi there Slappy McGee and welcome to Earth! Please let me expand on this so you may better understand the issue.
First things first: you asked a Google AI for a response. Google is one of the worst companies when it comes to privacy, so it's not the best place to ask. It is not in their interests to give you an honest answer, but rather a believable not too worrying answer. It's like asking a dictator what is wrong with dictatorship: they will very likely not tell you the truth.
Personal data being used for tailored advertising is not false. But it is not the main concern. The problem is that the data is not *only* used for that. First, the data is sold to whoever is ready to pay the price for it. It may be advertising companies, but also people with mischievous intents. Second, it is also possible that this data is not well protected and therefore might be stolen. It could even be used maliciously by people inside those companies. Moreover, the information is not *just* what websites you visited. It's also everything you buy, where you booked vacation, etc. And of course, since for that purpose you use personal information like email address, phone number or physical address, that information can be associated with *everything else* associated with these from other sources. For example, the location history of the phone carrying the same phone number. In the end, it is possible to track someone, know where they were, what they did, when they did id, repeatedly or not, what they bought, who they met, what they said, what they ate, if they were sick, happy, sad, etc.
Now, what kind of mischievous intents are we talking about? Anything you can imagine: identity theft to buy stuff with your money, fake ID forgery, stalking for the purpose of blackmailing... From threatening to disclose where you were that night to your significant other to blackmailing people working in military facilities with the knowledge of where they children go to school or do sports, there is no limit.
So, yes, it can be awful. But since it is not awful every day for everyone, people tend to neglect that.
Have a safe stay here on Earth and, as far as possible, use libre software!
58 • Browser Privacy Concerns (by Slappy McGee on 2025-03-07 18:02:12 GMT from United States)
@57 Thank you, Kazlu (which by coincidence is my Uncle Ulzak's name spelled backward! Small universe), for the welcome and for the expanded information. I do appreciate that!
Now, when on Earth again, if I ever do come back, I'll use libre software and stuff.
But you did miss your chance to ask, "Are you sure your concerns did not emanate from Uranus?"
59 • @56,58 Privacy concern (by Slap-Happy on 2025-03-07 18:35:32 GMT from United States)
Very funny Slappy McGee, especially the last sentence. Google is the only browser that finds my data online, on a breach, and also tells me that I have the same passwords on multiple sites. And tells me I have weak passwords...all from a company that, according to some comments here are trying to circumvent my data. Go Google Go. I've Never been hacked because of Google. Period.
Also @54, find idea on the OneFileLinux!!!
60 • @58 planetary considerations (by Kazlu on 2025-03-07 20:09:53 GMT from France)
"But you did miss your chance to ask, "Are you sure your concerns did not emanate from Uranus?" "
Well, I happen to have a couple of good Uranian friends and I know they are very sensitive when it comes to confusing planetary cultures, so I try to avoid asumptions. They have told me time and again with a lot of conviction that "nothing compares to Uranus!".
61 • Back to My Subject (by Random Void User on 2025-03-07 21:00:06 GMT from United States)
Zen calls itself a privacy browser, but ships a non-private configuration.
Corporate concerns are off. Uber-corp quasi-monopoly big brother Google pays little brother Mozilla. Mozilla now succumbs to the dark side. Meanwhile Brave runs an independent, open-source profit model that's opt-in, not opt-out like everything Google and Mozilla. That is, if they deign to compile an out for you, and by some good luck you happen to learn it, a few years into heavy browser usage.
Ungoogled Chromium is nice, but needs to ship official binaries like Brave. I'm happy for Linux users running distros that build it for them. It should be the default browser in every distro, and ultimately forked away from Google, along with Android, so that the entire web engine, and by extension the Internet, has community direction, not corporate.
Number of Comments: 61
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K12Linux was Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP.org) integrated with Fedora, in a convenient Live USB or DVD media installer. Since 1999, LTSP has empowered many schools and businesses with Linux-based terminal servers and thin clients, allowing low-cost clients or recycled computers to become powerful Linux desktop machines. K12Linux allows easy deployment of a Linux terminal server, capable of serving entire networks of netboot diskless clients. Clients login to the central terminal server, where they can use any Linux desktop environment and most desktop applications. Significant long-term cost savings are made possible by central management of software and accounts.
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