Heyheyhey from the south of England.
Another new tester here. I’m just a regular guy tired of software projects not focusing on their core goals – or moving their core goals until they’re no longer technical in nature. I find it deeply concerning to see Fedora, Mozilla, etc. prioritising ideology over code because I can’t see how that won’t lead to a decline in the overall quality of the end product. And the end of browser engine competition will be a disaster. So I need to take back some control!
I’m looking to switch my workhorse modded Thinkpad T440p over to OM. I’ve been using Fedora most recently and, honestly, it sucks. Even before all the nonsense of the past year, it sucked. I’ll be running a web browser, an IDE, and a few Electron apps (ew) on 16GB of RAM, and the OS is still killing processes at random saying it needs the memory (there wasn’t even any slowdown!). Every few hours, it seems to pick a process based on pRNG or some kind of round robin system and then kill it without warning, losing all my data at the same time. It’s been a common problem for several release cycles now apparently. I’m not a Linux expert but I’m an experienced developer and I can only guess that there’s some kind of memory leak in their distro software or implementation (perhaps the DE, but I haven’t had problems with the DE elsewhere).
Before Fedora, I was using Manjaro happily for many years on some of my devices. But I began to find that if I didn’t use one for several months because I was too ill or whatever, the update dependency web quickly became unsolvable and the only solution - in the words of Manjaro’s own support - was to reinstall the entire OS. So I’ll be looking at Rock – no more rolling releases for me!
I’ve been a reluctant MS defender for most of my life. VS was fantastic c. 2005-2012. I still think Win 2000 and 7 are two of the finest OSs ever made. And sticking with Win7 until 2023 bought me a lot of extra time without what has effectively become spyware (MS is, of course, every bit as bad as the recent implosion in OSS, but they have to maintain a facade of professionalism for their corporate clients). MS could create great software when they wanted to. But we’re coming up on two decades since they last did that. I’m disabled and have limited energy, so I’ve been lazy in transitioning fully to Linux.
There’s also a sunk cost involved: I know the Win32 API and I know its ins and outs – I’m comfortable with its weirdness. Regaining that level of mastery over an entirely new system is daunting. Controversial opinion, perhaps, but Linux is not greatly easier to master than Windows, as is sometimes advertised, IMO. In the end, CoPilot and Recall have been the push I needed. Screw the learning curve: at this point, Linux is the only alternative to becoming a Ted Kaczynski tier luddite. In the space of approximately ten years, I’ve gone from starry-eyed optimism about the huge potential benefits of computing for mankind to experiencing a vague sense of terror at our technocratic future. Linux is the last stop before living in a cave. But I’d rather it be a flavour of Linux that didn’t tell me that it hates me.
I assume that a T440p probably won’t run into any issues. I mean, it’s a classic laptop often chosen for its specs (in many cases because it’s arguably the best device that can still run me_cleaner to completion and use Coreboot), upgradability, and excellent compatibility with Linux. I’m also delighted to see that you have an ARM version since I’m getting into ARM hardware in order to avoid the whole mess of current x86. I don’t trust Intel for shit but sadly, 4th Gen i7Ms aren’t going to cut it forever.
Sorry for the long intro but I’m excited to try out OM. It seems like an great project with admirable values. The fake shell showcased on the Lunduke video had me rolling. It’s cool to have a support forum where I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not in order to get a little help.
Best wishes, all!
