I was waiting for someone to say that.

I like that Mate is a thing, but like I said, I’m looking for something thats based on it but as if its had the same 20 years of enhancements everything else got.

The closest thing to that I’ve found is quite literally KDE. So I use KDE.

I miss old Gnome. I wish they’d stuck with the old Gnome 2 design philosophy but breathed new modern design principals into it, instead of trying to go the Ubuntu Unity route. Maybe something like Cinnamon but even more flexible and feature-rich.

For those of us that expect room to breathe and make our machine work for us rather than the other way around, we feel like Gnome takes a lot of liberties away for the sake of “simplicity.” There is so much missing from Gnome that is present in most other DEs and even custom WM setups.

The primary contributors who work under The Gnome Foundation also come off as controlling and arrogant in a lot of cases, and refuse to take community feedback to heart, whereas KDE has literal summits to get user feedback on major core features we want to see which then later get added to their backlogs and sprints as Epics. Gnome acts a lot like Apple in the sense that they’re very much “we know what’s best for you better than you do.”

Now, the singular area I can give Gnome true props in is their accessibility functionality, but that’s primarily it. KDE’s accessibility is fairly behind by about a decade in comparison.

That’s just my take, take it as you will.

Kmail is simple and to the point, and at least in my experience is easier to set up. Bonus, if youre on KDE, it integrates very nicely.

It’s also more performant than Thunderbird.

• AMD drivers: use the built-in MESA drivers that include the official AMD support.

• Gmail: ProtonMail for the service, Kmail for the desktop client.

• Chrome: Firefox, or Librewolf if you care about privacy.

• Office365: LibreOffice for full FOSS or OnlyOfficr for less freedom but more comfort.

• iTunes: depends entirely on what you use it for, but I buy my music mostly off of BandCamp these days.

• MuseScore: MuseScore

• Norton: Why were you using Norton in the first place? It’s practically a virus itself. If you need an antivirus on Linux, you might want ClamAV/ClamTK for something that runs locally only, or Microsoft Defender for Linux.

• Py-Charm: Py-Charm, VSCode, Vim, Kate/KWrite

• Remote Desktop to iOS: I got nothin’

• Star Citizen: Star Citizen

• Steam: Steam

• VPN: Wireguard

• Windows Games: install locally using Wine and then add to Steam as a non-Steam game to use Proton for better support.

Windows 10: run it in a VM if you still need it, or keep it on a separate SSD and dual boot into that.

Gnomelets BTFO by chad KDE screenshots

I like it

After completing the challenge and making sure your system is usable and can survive a reboot:

If you’ve kept the old package manager, search for installed packages and make sure that the package manager itself is the only thing left. Then delete it.

The beauty of this exercise is you can make it as easy or challenging as you want just by changing the targets, and finding different combinations can keep things interesting.

As other commenters have said, its about as strenuous as doing two normal installs.

However, if you want to do this challenge but feel guilty about the consumed resources, consider donating to the two distros you are performing this with to cover any additional service costs. In all likelihood it’ll only cost them fractions of pennies, but any reason to donate to FOSS is always appreciated.

Oh I totally believe that. I can imagine how stressful that is.

This goes against the spirit of the challenge, but as its a singleplayer game (unless you bring friends and SSH!) you can definitely choose to allow dd, chroot, and similar tools

Removed by mod

I wasn’t sure if Hector was gonna quit vtubing too after the Rust thing. Kind of a delayed response as his alter ego but it makes sense.

I really really don’t. As soon as he does, corporate vultures (such as MBA degree holders) and people who “want to change what ‘open source’ means” will swoop in. If we replace Linus, I hope its someone very similar to him who isn’t afraid to be a hardass where it’s needed and will keep the current vision of Linux alive.

Part of being a good developer is the “working well with other human beings” part. Linus himself took a hiatus to improve himself in this area.

Another part of being a good developer is to work within and adapting to the frameworks of an existing project, especially if you are joining at a later point. In this context, it would be the R4L folks joining the project known as “the Linux kernel.”

Hector failed on both counts. He has programming skills, but that’s not all that’s required.

I am so glad Linus just came out and said it. I was pretty upset at Hector too in the other thread the other day, and I especially didn’t appreciate a call to remove a major developer from the kernel because Hector wasn’t getting his way. Very militant action on Hector’s part where it just wasn’t necessary.

Hector, if you’re reading this, communication skills are just as if not more important than your Rust development skills, and frankly your communication skills lack.

I’ve always been a fan of for-ged-joe (like forget Joe, but with a d instead of a t)