Re: Before Dimdows 10 Goes EOL, I'm Testing Linux To Save My Laptop From The Landfill

On Sat, 6/28/2025 1:37 AM, rbowman wrote:

 
I realize choice can be daunting for a Windows user and discussions
between Linux users often focus on minutiae.
 

One example distro in the Tomshardware article, isn't even
on the Wikipedia Linux map :-/ Why Les included this, escapes me.

CachyOS     "Arch-based" but not on the Wikipedia map of distros

Linux Mint  A popular distro, that does not further the business interests of Canonical (SNAPs...).
            The LMDE variant, is based on Debian, and would be the "emergency distro"
            if Mint and Canonical had irreconcilable differences.

            There are .deb (what the Package Management uses), FlatPak (chatty subsystem, switch this off),
            AppImage, Snaps (Ubuntu specific way of packaging materials in a bandwidth wasting way).

ZorinOS     A derivative of Ubuntu, with a free tier and a commercial tier.

The Map gives an idea "how far removed" some distros are. Tools which work
with Debian materials, may not work well for fedora materials and vice versa.
And this can be generally reviewed by using the map (seeing the fiefdoms).

   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

Slackware is still going, Bev uses it. That's what you see first when opening the
scalable vector graphics image with your browser.

While Linux Mint shows one green line and is part of the Debian tree,
the download page looks like this.

These three, use the Ubuntu package tree for a lot of purposes. Each one
has a different DE (desktop software and menu scheme). Multiple DEs can be
loaded into an OS and selected via a login menu. They don't necessarily have
to be walled off, if someone spent the time to make meta-packages in the
Package Management for them. They should Just Work (tm).

   https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint/stable/22.1/

   linuxmint-22.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso                  10-Jan-2025 16:16      3G
   linuxmint-22.1-mate-64bit.iso                      10-Jan-2025 15:31      3G
   linuxmint-22.1-xfce-64bit.iso                      10-Jan-2025 14:57      3G

This part of Mint, derives straight from Debian, versus the previous
group fed by a Debian ---- Ubuntu --- LinuxMint path in the trees.
This also provides people with crusty old 32-bit hardware, with
an option (you might not have the RAM sticks onboard though, YMMV).

   https://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint/debian/

   lmde-6-cinnamon-32bit.iso                          22-Sep-2023 17:07      2G
   lmde-6-cinnamon-64bit.iso                          22-Sep-2023 16:26      3G

For the more obscure distros, some have web pages that only the regulars
would love, and finding where to download the damn thing is the first
part of your challenges. Generally, for the obscure ones, they have
mirrors and you don't want to download the materials from their
"main" site, as they are unlikely to be able to afford the bandwidth.
There should be at the very least, a SHA256SUM file, and you can
run a SHA256 checksum over the download you got, just to verify it
matches. Some distros have internal checksums as well, which authenticates
at a package or file level.

Distrowatch, and the download link listed, is another way to zero in on
a likely place to be downloading.

   https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=cachyos

  Paul