this post was submitted on 04 Jun 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 28 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

I think it is a stupid change myself, but as far as I (recent Linux convert) can tell, mint is considered the go to distro for people coming freshly over from windows, and decidedly caters to beginners. A default setting for maximum user protection makes sense for that.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Being unable to install 90% of the popular apps without diving into settings does not make sense for a beginner-focused distro whatsoever

[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 months ago

Well I agreed that it is an ultimately bad change, but I can see how the beginner mode mentality would lead to this conclusion. Provide the new user with the most stable and bug free experience possible, and after some time they will probably turn that setting off on their own to get all that popular software.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 10 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Yes but also these people are coming over from windows and this is their first experience with linux. They should have these apps available to them so they dont think oh linux has no apps.

[–] boredsquirrel 3 points 4 months ago

Especially as many Flatpaks are already working better than Ubuntu apps. I had this with SciDAVis, where the Ubuntu version was just broken and gave me tons of troubles.

Flatpak is a blessing

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Or oh linux has only sketchy unverified ones and I need to master the terminal to install official apps

[–] GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I've seen many articles, comments and videos praising mint for being friendly to users coming from windows. It looks nice and I've been impressed by the friendliness and helpfulness of their forums - if I switched on my laptop I would try mint first.

[–] Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 2 points 4 months ago

I like Mint so far after about 2 months. Ubuntu was seriously lacking.

[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I dont know, it is just the general consensus on every "I want to drop windows but i am scared of Linux" post ever made, and from my personal experience I found it actually too much like windows (made a live boot before I chose another distro).

[–] boredsquirrel 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Meanwhile, they have a Spotify Ubuntu repo... and will offer the installation of all these apps as .deb's which are able to do whatever they want

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The difference is that those apps are taken charge of by the mint team

[–] boredsquirrel 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

These are Ubuntu Packages. The external Spotify repo are binaries shipped by Spotify. I dont think there is any testing before users get that package, it is an external repo.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Oh, alright i was wrong, but it's still direct from Spotify isn't it? So no problem

[–] boredsquirrel 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It is proprierary Software, running as a pretty unrestricted app on your system.

The app could steal your Keys, read your photos, scan for pirated music or whatever.

Yeah, no problem XD

for sure you could do the Microsoft Way and trust random big tech, because otherwise you would just sue them... but no.

The spotify Flatpak has no Filesystem permissions afaik, and it thus pretty okay secure, even if you dont trust the upstream.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Ok yes it is proprietary, but at least it's from the main source and is confirmed to work well, which reduces risk, at the cost of sandboxing.

it's a tradeoff, and I think mint did the right thing.

[–] boredsquirrel 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The Flatpak meanwhile is transparently packaged, using the binary from the official Snap.

Canonical to my knowledge took forever for convincing Spotify to support Linux. Supporting Flatpak should be easy, but whatever.

[–] Blisterexe@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This isn't about just Spotify, it's about other apps too

[–] boredsquirrel 1 points 4 months ago

Yes but this was just an example of the hypocrisy of this action.

  1. Apps that are FOSS are possible to trust. Proprietary apps are simply liability, and proprietary software is constantly spying anyways. Flathub has --subset=floss for that
  2. "Verification" i.e. upstream support is not the case with a majority of Distro packages. Flathub has --subset=verified for this very nice ability (but this does not mean that unverified apps are worse than distro packages!)
  3. Flatpaks are isolated using Bubblewrap. Firejail, a common alternative for native app sandboxing, had a root binary and thus you need to trust it a lot. Bubblejail is a predecessor of it, but it is not easy to use at all and in early stages. So Flatpak offers stupid simple app isolation similar to Android, Distro packages dont have this.

Flatpak is really good. You can look at the permissions, any app with the "safe" rating is probably safe, even if it is malware.

Btw the safety rating would be a good filter, once they solve the false negatives of stuff like ProtonPro/pupGui.