It definitely is. But you know what’s worse? Returning a used lawnmower at the end of summer, expecting a refund. Regularly.

Speaking as a guy, not always true. I’ve lost some of the skill, but there was a time when I worked with paints mixing colors, and I was very good at finding the right shades for people who were lost (men and women). I understand that there are subtleties within every color.

My sarcasm would always come out though, when someone would bring in a piece of wood and ask to color match it. I’d ask “which brown”… but then would give them excellent service and figure out what worked for them. Hated and enjoyed that job.

Default? I think the first thing I did once I settled down with my current setup was find a background of my own liking, not something curated. And it’s all mine; no one else has it.

For those that care, all zero of you, it’s a bunch of frames from a cool star field animation, timed to rotate to the next every few seconds or so. Because I could not find anything that would simply play a video as a background, I made something that worked. If that’s not Linux level, I don’t know what is.

“I’m all for trying new things and experimentation. But I also know to count on techniques that work.” ;)

Oh no…

“I’ll remember THAT, it’s such a trivial thing.”

I am indeed using Gnome. I had uninstalled the Snap LO and found the more current version because of some issues, and I want to say maybe the older one did have a floppy and that’s why it stood out. Or it could be theme-related. So many apps now don’t even have an icon, so I can’t say I’ve seen many that have a different icon than the old save version.

I’m (un)fortunately old enough to remember the green screen terminals, mainly in the university library to look up books, new tech that would replace the still-existing card catalogs. Good breakdown of the wording. A bit parallel with the save icon, although some software has migrated from that, I noticed LibreOffice has a generic down arrow implying it is being downloaded to something, I guess.

I immediately thought, no, terminal. But apparently, console is correct depending on what it’s displaying/being used for?

WIndows will install it. Running it correctly… different story.

It works, but it’s a lot slower and clunkier. And looks worse. Probably could improve with some tweaking, but I don’t use its special features and addons that much, and gedit works quite well for me.

I’ve used VLC in WIndows forever, but it started giving me glitchy behavior in Ubuntu. Tried to upgrade to see if it was an old version/Snap thing, got frustrated with it not working. So I went through all the lists of Linux players, tried most of them. I like Audacious. It’s not perfect, but it works well, and I can deal with some of the minor things that are more preferences than problems. That’s all I wanted.

I barely remember WinMe…

As I installed over it with 98SE on a laptop. Didn’t even hear the screaming.

For better or worse, right? Keeper.

That goes back to my point, that there’s choices out there with Linux, from the OS distro on up to the applications. That’s not being different just to be different, it’s trying to fill niches where there are needs. And things change, even the tried and true sometimes go obsolete for newer approaches. Stagnation is a killer. But if it works for the needed purpose, then great.

I just don’t get the internal arguing within Linux. Embrace even the “crazy kids”, after all that’s where Linux came from.

So you’re saying diversity is a bad thing? That seems very anti-Linux. The very fact that you can choose not to change for so long instead of being forced to accept the next version is diversity itself.

Everyone has different needs and preferences. Finding something early on and being able to stick with it is great, but many don’t find that right away, or things change with their needs or the distro.

Plus it depends also on how long you stick around each time. I know I dipped in and out of dual booting for a long time, only now in the past year settling in well. And each time I tried Linux again, lots had changed so I couldn’t just go back to what I used before.

Isn’t part of being in the Linux culture to experiment with things, even if it’s just the window manager, settings, or particular apps?

The early ones were easier. The one I had needed to do some mess with a grounding screw and some other stuff that I forgot (there are websites dedicated to the procedure guidelines and which requires what), and like you say, it’s not going to be able to do much anyway. Such a contrast with throwing Kubuntu on an old MacBook, and 10 minutes later it was better than new.

It’s true that most people just want instant on functionality with no need for major changes beyond colors and backgrounds. Totally fine too, for many that’s all they need. But as a “power user”, which would mean anyone that needs more than a portable browser, I was very disappointed to find that’s all that ChromeOS is (twas a used one in the family). And then when I researched putting actual Linux on it so it could do more… good god they locked that shit down hard. Not even worth that rabbit hole. And that was the intent of Google.

It also means the OS is in total control of the things it’s running. This goes for running programs, shutting down, and crashing. The only crashes I have on my Linux are when I use up memory, and I’m still convinced that even though everything looks seized up, if I left it for hours or days it would probably end up resolving itself. I’ve had some cases where the OS saw the program wasn’t going in a good direction fast enough and killed it.