Ulu-Mulu-no-die

LMDE (Mint Cinnamon)

True, it’s the desktop manager that can make a difference but you can install any DE on any distro.

What are corporate users using?

Windows on PCs, Linux is used mostly only on servers (RedHat/SuSe), hardware brands are usually HP, Dell and Lenovo.

I think that is my standard

Why? Do you expect companies to ask you to use your own PC for work instead of providing the tools you need? Be wary of those who do, using whatever personal PC for company work can lead to data breaches and that’s a very serious problem.

You can argue that copyright law should be revised.

It already has been, there is a ruling that allows an exemption to copyright law for the specific use of preservation by libraries and museums.

Maybe they could do more about it but what’s already there is way way better than nothing.

she didn’t really want to switch to Win 11

On which computer? Her own?

Does not the company provide a PC with the tools needed? If yes, she has no right to decide what goes on it, the company does and she should respect that, doing what you want on a company PC can get you in serious trouble, way more serious than finding out you’re using a pirated version of Office.

If the company expects her to use her own PC, they should at least provide the needed software licenses, Office365 can be used on the web, no need to install anything and it can be used on Linux no problem.

BUT the serious problem remains of having company data on her own PC, the best thing to do in such a case would be creating a VM, encrypting the file system and keeping all company data contained inside the VM.

Tho in such a case I would change company, no serious company today would expect employees to keep company data freely on whatever personal PC, that could lead to data breaches, I would never want to be involved in case like that, tho I live in EU, we have very strict laws about data integrity and privacy, dunno about other countries.

I didn’t add which GPU I have but I saw you asking in other posts so: currently NVIDIA 4070 with proprietary drivers.

I’ve been using NVIDIA on my Linux desktop for over a decade, it always worked very well tho you have to install proprietary drivers (opensource ones are not good enough if you use software that requires performance), Linux MX has a script (menu item) to install them, very easy.

In all this time, only a couple of times I had serious problems with a kernel update (something that can happen with any distro), but Linux MX always keeps boot entries for the last 3 kernels so when it happened I just booted with a previous one and waited a few days for devs to fix it (no tinkering on my part required).

NVIDIA cards have problems on laptops, those I only buy Intel, but a dedicated card on desktop is good.

Yeah Lutris has fantastic scripts that do everything for you, also the Steam store is really good even if you don’t buy from them, checking that a game is verified for Steam Deck is a guarantee it will work on any other Linux PC.

Debain (alt Linux Mint DE) Pro: The most stable OS I’ve used, with a wide range of software support both officially in the distros package manager, or from developers own website. I am most familiar with this OS and APT Cons: Ancient packages which may cause issues with Davinci Resolve and Video Games

I don’t use Davinci Resolve but I do play videogames, I build my own desktop for it and I use Linux MX (Debian), it’s rock solid.

“Ancient packages” are not a problem with backports, there are also flatpacks if some backports are not enough for you, or DEB packages directly from software developers (I manually install a couple of those).

The only games you will have problems with are those implementing invasive DRM, but that’s not a “Debian” problem, Linux in general doesn’t support that kind of DRM (not yet at least), tho I personally don’t mind since I think DRM is stupid and I’ve always tried to avoid it.

only the “free” product was downloaded and their sales folks essentially accused us of lying about using it for corporate use

According to Virtualbox site:

This VirtualBox Extension Pack Personal Use and Evaluation License governs your access to and use of the VirtualBox Extension Pack. It does not apply to the VirtualBox base package and/or its source code, which are licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License “GPL”

Extension Packs are also free to download, are you sure a pack wasn’t downloaded as well? Oracle salesmen would have no ground otherwise (Virtualbox itself is GPL 2)

That was on the kernel 6.1.0-18, I had it too, fixed several days ago, but in OP picture the kernel is 6.1.0-17, that one wasn’t affected.

I use Linux MX on my gaming desktop and LMDE on my laptop. I also have an encrypted LMDE VM that I use for some working stuff, since I have to use Windows on my company PC (but we’re allowed to have Virtualbox on it).

The desktop is pretty new, I built it a month ago after almost 10 years, it’s i9 and rtx 4070. The laptop is several years old (HP spectre), but since the previous one gave me so many headaches with nvidia optimus, I decided to go full Intel, I’m happy I did because I had no problems with it whatsoever, Intel only on laptops for me going on.

This is about Windows, why did you post it here?

I never liked GNOME, too inflexible as you said. My favorite is XFCE and it couldn’t be easier, right click on the entry on the app menu and select add to desktop.

And if you want a custom one, right-click on desktop, create launcher, give it a name and click browse to select the file you want to run, that’s it. Create link if you want to link to a folder.

If I use ubuntu I’m somehow forced to use them.

Yes, that’s why I stopped using it years ago (among other reasons).

Users are not out of options, they don’t need to check the origin of the apps themselves, it’s enough to ask other users what distros don’t do the things they don’t like and use those.

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The solution is using a distro that has support for containers (flatpaks preferably) but doesn’t force them on you, so far I haven’t found a single use case in which they’re truly needed on desktop so apt update still does everything for me.

There’s some software that I compile myself (emulators), it cannot be upgraded with a packet manager but that has always been the case.

I use Linux MX but there are other distros with the same approach. It also makes it really easy to see if you’re installing them because flatpak is a separated repository from non-container apps (I think it’s also updated by the package manager but I haven’t tried so far).

Yes I was referring to snaps.

distribution hopping will add lots of unnecessary frustration for me.

That’s a fair point. Cinnamon is the desktop manager and it’s been the only one available on LMDE so far, in any case, it’s perfectly fine to use Mint, just know that if they ever decide to make LMDE their primary, you have nothing to worry about, being already used to Cinnamon we’ll make it so you won’t notice the difference at all, LMDE is still Mint after all.

It’s been a while since I installed Debian directly, anyway I believe it’s a godsend as a base and amazing as a server, but for desktop usage I prefer derivatives because I find them more user friendly.

LMDE vs MX: they’re both really good, MX is a bit more “nerdy”, LMDE is beautiful out of the box and has the total friendliness of Mint, MX (XFCE) is a little more barebones when it comes to user apps/GUIs but it has some fantastic tools to get into its customization, more flexible than LMDE from that point of view.

Ubuntu is based on Debian. LMDE have existed as a backup plan in case something wrong happened to Ubuntu, Mint could still go on without problems.

Using LMDE is like just removing a “middle-man”: Debian --> Ubuntu --> Mint, Debian --> LMDE. (I’ve been using LMDE for a few years on my notebook while on my gaming desktop I use Linux MX, also based directly on Debian).

I understand some people don’t want Ubuntu to avoid commercial distributions but for me the reasons are different.

Ubuntu LTS is base on the testing branch of Debian, while non-LTS are based on Debian sid, that is the development branch, in both cases you lose - in my opinion - one of the biggest advantages of using Debian that is rock-solid stability, sid packages are not controlled by Debian security team so in that case you also lose out on security.

Another reason is Ubuntu have been trying to push their own sort of “proprietary” version of containers that have been proven times and again to have serious security flaws. They also use them everywhere and I don’t like that, I want to be free to decide if/when to use them, not being forced to do so for everything.

Sometimes they make very questionable decisions, like when they wanted to discontinue libraries for 32bit compatibility (while Debian does not), ignoring there’s still a huge amount of 32bit software that cannot be recompiled to 64bit (mostly Windows games), that made me question they know what they’re doing.

I think you would get more suitable recommendations if you told us what your use cases are. Did someone else give you those requirements? Are you new to Linux?

Arch, Slackware current (KDE), Suse tumbleweed, Debian sid and Fedora tick all the boxes but I wouldn’t recommend Arch nor Slackware to someone who never used Linux before, nor I would recommend Debian sid for desktop usage (unless you know what you’re doing) because its packages are not controlled by their security team.

Free and open-source. Receives regular software and kernel updates.

All of them (desktop). The difference in updates is between a rolling release or non-rolling one.
Rolling means they receive updates to software and kernels continuously as soon as they are released, you always have the latest versions but that could lead to instabilities, non-rolling (or stable) are updated less frequently so are more stable, which one to choose depends on what you need to do with it.

Avoids X11.

Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu, Slackware current, Debian, Arch, if you choose GNOME or KDE you’ll have Wayland as default AFAIK, probably others.

Supports full-disk encryption during installation. Doesn’t freeze regular releases for more than 1 year.

All of the above.

We recommend against “Long Term Support” or “stable” distro releases for desktop usage.

LTS is a version, not a distro. Distros that offer LTS versions also have a non-LTS ones, get those and you’re fine. Tho not wanting a stable is weird, they can be the best for desktop usage depending on what you need to do.

Supports a wide variety of hardware.

That depends on the kernel, all kernels support a wide variety of hardware, non-LTS versions are best for more modern hardware.

Preference towards larger projects.

All distros mentioned are large projects, Debian is probably the biggest, it also supports several different architectures.