Enough packages show up.

I avoid flatpaks, so I don’t mind.

Linux Mint, because I don’t like to tinker with the system, I like good defaults (and Mints has them).

Yeah, I don’t understand flatness either. Neither I understand the dark themes either. My eyes and brain simply can’t do the separation easily, I spend more time trying to process an image. Old style icons and UI colors are the best IMHO.

I’ve tried several distros to fit on my repurposed Chromebooks that came with 16 GB emmc storage. Debian was the smallest one, using by default about 5.5 GB of data, plus 1 GB for swap, plus the boot partition. I had about 9 GB left after installing, with XFCE. After I installed a few apps and games, I ended up with 6 GB free space. It works fine and it updates fine.

I don’t like flatpaks. Some builds don’t support printing, for example. Same for snaps. That’s why I always prefer appimage from these types of binaries, but my favorite always remains the repo versions.

Gimp 3 is scheduled to be released in May, around the time that Debian 13 is about to come out. Given that Gimp is never on time, and that Debian will only include stable software in their repo, you won’t see Gimp 3.x on Debian for another 2.5 years (the next major release).

However, don’t fret. There’s a way to run Gimp 3, even now, without overwriting the 2.10.x version of Gimp that comes with Debian: https://github.com/ivan-hc/GIMP-appimage/releases That’s how I run gimp 3 on my Debian too, I just download the 3.0-rc1 .appimage file, make it executable, and it’s up and running.

I’d say Linux Mint is your best bet. It’s easy to use and it works well. Update it after you install it, and then install a new menu applet for it, Cinnamenu (from the applets dialog). It’s much nicer than the default imho.

You are making a mistake. You are comparing an Android or iOS tablet, that have a user interface that makes sense for these devices, and you’re trying to shoehorn Linux in them, and expect the same “fine enough”. It won’t be, because while it might work, it won’t be ideal. Linux was optimized to be used as a desktop OS, with a mouse or touchpad. You’d have to install something like LineageOS to get it working properly, but then you will lose the cool abilities of a linux desktop for the most part. Conclusion: get a tablet if you want, but don’t throw away your laptop.

Edit: Also, this was posted just an hour ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H669Fwtv-3o

Can’t wait, it’s becoming really usable (I always needed adjustment layers, and it now mostly has them). I wish they offered an appimage though, I’m not big on flatpaks due to size.

Everyone is replying as if the OP is asking about normal live environments, but I think he’s asking about having Linux actually fully installed on a usb instead of the ssd. In that case, most of the replies don’t apply. However, Mint has a way to install itself properly on a usb drive. Boot with the burned iso, insert a second usb drive, unmount it, and then install on it (you choose it during installation). It has to be unmounted first.

It doesn’t matter if we “people use it in new projects”, but rather, we often have to compile stuff that use them. So they need to be around, regardless of how bad they are. Just last week my husband had to compile two emulators that used autotools.

Usually this is a problem of permissions on the mounted-folder. Even with the jellyfin server you need to change the permissions to get the server to see the mounted folder. I expect it’s similar with kodi.

The oldest I have is from 2009. It’s quite old. It came with 4 GB of RAM. That’s how I was buying computers back then, with enough ram. We have to go back to 2006 to find me buying a computer with 2 GB of RAM. I got my lesson in 1995, shortly after having bought my first PC, a 486DX/40 with 4 MB of RAM. 6 months later Windows95 came out, and I couldn’t run it, it needed a minimum of 8 MB. It was swapping like hell. So I got my lesson early on. Now, I buy new laptops or computers with minimum of 32 GB of RAM.

I’ve been running Mint and Debian on old hardware too. A Macbook Air 2011 and one from 2015, and a Mac Mini 2014. Mint works great on them AS LONG AS you have at least 4 GB of RAM, especially since it can install the broadcomm wifi driver. Lots of screenshots and images from them here: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/media

Not my experience here, especially if extensions are used on gnome, but I hear you. I find xfce to be lightest. Sure, there are other more light wms, but they’re not modern and suitable for daily use.

My sentence above explains it. The source is available, the distros provide binaries in their repos, but if you want the latest version, the creator only provides paid binaries. The GPL allows for that. Same for ZRythm.

My understanding is that Resolve is not using ffmpeg on linux, it’s using its own codecs.

On the topic of audio production, here are your options:

Commercial DAW apps available on Linux: Traction Waveform Reaper BitWig Studio Presonus Studio One (beta) Harrison MixBus (based on Ardour) ReNoise (tracker/daw hybrid)

Available sources but commercial binaries: ZRythm (currently in beta) Ardour (can be found for free on the repos of most distros)

Completely free: LMMS (recording live instruments is available via the latest nightly build, but no vst3 support) QTractor Stargate MusE Rosegarden Traverso (active again this year) Ossia Score

Audacity (audio rec/editor) MilkyTracker (tracker) SoundTracker (tracker)

Hydrogen (drum machine) Cecilia (audio signal processing) Mixxx (live DJ)

To get these working, install pipewire-jack on your distro and enable some audio group privilliges, so you don’t get cracking sounds. There are tutorials on how to set that up. Also use the qwpgraph app to create audio connections (otherwise, you might not hear anything coming from your speakers on some plugins/apps). My favorite free daw on Linux is Ardour. Reaper if I want to get more involved.

There are a number of native Linux plugins that should be prefered, but if you want to run specifically Windows plugins, you will have to install Wine and then Yabridge. Yabridge acts as a bridge between the .dll plugin files in a Wine environment (that is setup as if it’s Windows), and serves .so Linux plugins that Linux DAWs can understand. This is obviously quite flaky. Different versions of wine will support different plugins. Sometimes, a plugin works, you upgrade wine, and it no longer works (but some other plugin now works, that didn’t used to be fore). Some people are happy though with yabrdige and wine. I find it a pain…

I’d suggest you go with Fedora, so Resolve works easier than it would on a Debian-based OS. Also, Yabrdige is currently broken on ubuntu. The dev said he might fix it by the end of the year, but who knows. I’m personally ubuntu-based and I’m still telling you to use fedora to get that stuff working for now. Although, you might want to try the UbuntuStudio flavor. It might have some of that stuff fixed.

For photography, use Darktable. For raster editing, use Gimp 3.0-alpha (the 2.10 version is not that good for people coming from photoshop/windows IMHO as it lacks adjustment layers), and Photopea on the web browser. For vectors, inkscape, or online, boxy-svg.com.

For an After Effects clone, there’s a brand new app, Friction: https://friction.graphics/

For a video compositor, if you’re not going to use Resolve’s Fusion, there’s Natron (Nuke clone ui-wise).

For digital painting, there’s Krita.

For 2D animation, there’s Krita & Friction above, but also Pencil2D and SynfigStudio (latest version .appimages on their respective sites).

I’m not familiar for apps regarding web design though. There’s Bluefish for html editing, and you can use sublime-edit for other code-writing.

For Office, LibreOffice comes by default in most distros, however, the highest compatibility rate with MS formats is via OnlyOffice. You can download an .appimage on their website for free. That app will let you create proper PDFs too (with forms etc). To run appimages, download them, right click to go to their file properties, and there make them executable. Then double click them to run.

For 2D CAD, use QCAD (you can download it from their site, and then remove the .so files it directs you to, to turn it from demo/evaluation to the completely free version (that’s missing some format support, but otherwise fully functional). For 3D CAD, there’s the RC2 version of FreeCAD.

And for 3D stuff, there’s Blender. Latest version available on their site in binary form.

Finally, if you’re not doing highly advanced color grading, or you don’t need your videos to be color managed, then both Kdenlive, and Shotcut are very good, hassle-free video editors. You can download their .appimage file for latest versions from their site.

I never understood those who buy on the hype of wireless-everything (that includes my own brother). Wireless is, and always will be flaky, even under a great OS implementation. Implementation is lacking on your kernel/distro, but even if it was done perfectly, you would still get the occasional problems, because, physics. This is is not seen as clearly with wifi or bt, but try to connect to a wireless monitor instead. There, you will see the problems 100x fold. It’s flaky. So it’s best to always be wired. Ethernet, usb etc.