What is your main OS (operating system) at home?

[NiagaraPete]

I recently purchased Lenovo Mini Desktop that’s a refurb solely to run Linux on. Intent is to start using it as a daily driver to eventually transition to it from Mac OS. Any good distro recommendation besides Ubuntu or Mxlinux?

I like Mint. I also use Ubuntu server.

 

[alekksander]

I hesitate but curious to ask (it is NOT intended as a dig): How does your fanless mini-PC handle 4K video? @60fps?

It had originally cost me $100 for DDR4-2666 SODIMM (2x8GB) for the NUC10-i7.
Then, it cost me another $150 to upgrade/replace them to DDR4-3200 (2x16GB), since I was getting tearing and frame-drop issues @4K.

people do fanless wonders these days… personally using 2500U unit without any fireworks. heatsink can barely handle it, nonetheless it plays 4k vid okay from what i read, but never tried myself to actually confirm.

 

[terryforsythe]

Manjaro seems to filter out these issues with Arch. I've had one installment of this running for six years on my daily desktop.

I had an update in Manjaro bork that as well, probably around 6 years ago. It wasn’t my daily driver and had not been updated in months, which may have had something to do with the issue.

 

[pseudoid]

people do fanless wonders these days…

ASRock iBOX-1265UE Fanless Embedded BOX PC seems like one of those.

• Intel® 12th Gen (Alder Lake-P) Core™ Processors i7-1265UE
• 2 x 260-pin SO-DIMM up to 64GB DDR4 3200 MHz
• 6 x USB 3.2 Gen2, 2 x USB2.0, 1 x M.2 Key M, 1 x M.2 Key E, 1 x COM, 1 x SATA3
• 2 x Intel 2.5 Gigabit LAN
• Supports Quad display, 1 x HDMI 2.0b, 3 x DP 1.4a (2 from Type C)
• Supports Intel® vPro, AMT
• TPM 2.0 onboard IC
• 19V/90W Power Adapter
• 171.8 x 50.05 x 109.45 mm, Fanless Embedded BOX PC

I have two older gen (9/10) Intel NUCs, but they are not fanless.
ASRock has been making some good products of late (e.g. Taichi motherboards).

 

[bloodshoteyed]

I hesitate but curious to ask (it is NOT intended as a dig): How does your fanless mini-PC handle 4K video? @60fps?

It had originally cost me $100 for DDR4-2666 SODIMM (2x8GB) for the NUC10-i7.
Then, it cost me another $150 to upgrade/replace them to DDR4-3200 (2x16GB), since I was getting tearing and frame-drop issues @4K.

the hell? haven't had 4K video (even H265) replay issues on a celeron powered NUC with 8GB DDR3 which was so old it didn't even have native support for HDMI2.0 but had to have a dedicated chip just for that (about the only issue with replay was Youtube, it freaking sucked at VP9)

 

[pseudoid]

the hell? haven't had 4K video (even H265)...

Yeah, eggzaktly!
Those 2-words are close to my f-bombs when I finally figured out H.265 @60fps needed more oompah, via more RAM.

 

[alto]

Manjaro seems to filter out these issues with Arch. I've had one installment of this running for six years on my daily desktop.

Not really, Manjaro is quite widely known for having the mission statement of being a stable fork of Arch and failing at it spectacularly. The Manjaro team have managed to push out broken packages on numerous occasions which is in direct contradiction with what the purpose of Manjaro was - to lag behind on package releases for the benefit of stability.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Not really, Manjaro is quite widely known for having the mission statement of being a stable fork of Arch and failing at it spectacularly. The Manjaro team have managed to push out broken packages on numerous occasions which is in direct contradiction with what the purpose of Manjaro was - to lag behind on package releases for the benefit of stability.

Yet for several years I've run two or three machines on it at a time and not had issues with it. All OS's and distos have at one time or another had some issues. I've had about none with Manjaro that I can recall. I previously used PCLinux. It was pretty good too. I had more issues with Mint than those two, but none that were enough to stop one from using it. Windows has not even been bad since going to Win 10 though I've had the odd update break some drivers. MacOS which I use less in the same time period has had no issues. I suppose MacOS is the best one in that regard no doubt aided by limited hardware to support.

I did at one time use Pacman for updates in Manjaro, and it failed. I used sudo in the command line to straighten that out and switched to Pamac. That seems more of a failure of Pacman to me as it wasn't being maintained. That is the worst problem I recall having with Manjaro in six years.

 

[Koeitje]

I use Windows exclusively, the software I use is simply not available on OSX or Linux.

 

[terryforsythe]

Yet for several years I've run two or three machines on it at a time and not had issues with it.

Manjaro is a rolling release distribution, meaning that package updates get pushed out pretty quickly after being released and without much beta testing by the Manjaro's developers. Some users report never having had problems with Manjaro, while some users report severe problems. I suspect the difference comes down to which packages users install. Widely used packages such as LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. probably go through significant beta testing by their own developers before being released. Thus, if a user only uses such packages, they probably will be fine most of the time. Packages with a small developer base probably go through a lot less beta testing, and thus the risk of issues popping up is higher on a rolling release. I encounter this in Arch, on which Manjaro is based.

Although Manjaro supposedly holds packages back after being released by Arch, my experience has been that it is not very long. Some years ago I was testing 12 different distributions on the same computer (large SSD with a lot of partitions, but one Grub installation). One day, an update for Network Manager came through on Arch that broke WiFi connectivity to my WLAN. Two or three days later that same update came through on Manjaro and broke WiFi connectivity on that distribution as well. The same bug also hit my Solus installation soon thereafter, and broke WiFi on that system as well. None of the fixed release distributions I was testing, however, were affected by that bug and WiFi continued working fine on those distributions without any issues.

On my current computer I have Arch and Linux Mint installed, along with some other distributions I use for testing. I use virtually the same desktop configuration in Mint and Arch (as close as I can considering I have Cinnamon on Mint and KDE on Arch). I also have the same applications installed and virtually the same customizations applied to both systems. I encounter far more issues on my Arch system than I do my Mint system. So much so that I primarily use Mint as my daily driver. I now mostly just use Arch for testing (e.g., testing script code I maintain on Github).

 

[Peterinvan]

I bought a new 27" Dell all-in-one last year. It took me about a week to set it up to my liking and recover all my files and programs from backups. I am now happy with Windows 11. With its solid state main drive, speed is impressive. I miss my iMAC 4K screen, but the overheating video driver failed on too many times, so I gave up.

Other than my PC we have five iOS devices.

 

[pseudoid]

Other than my PC we have five iOS devices.

Do you use any types of apps to sync/share/message/transfer between Win11OS and iOS?

 

[Peterinvan]

Do you use any types of apps to sync/share/message/transfer between Win11OS and iOS?

Not much experience with that use case. I am able to see/download iOS photo files with Windows Explorer.

 

[pseudoid]

Not much experience with that use case. I am able to see/download iOS photo files with Windows Explorer.

Without using iTunes in WinOS?

 

[BlackTalon]

Finally bit the bullet and 'upgraded' my home PC from Win10 to Win11 this morning. All ran fine when i logged back in once I got home from work. The computer I bought for my son 11 months ago has Win11, so I had a little exposure to it. The dang right-click menus are a bit annoying since 'copy' is an odd-looking icon, etc., but it is easy enough to 'learn'. The main reason for allowing the update was to get more experience with it, as we'll be building new PCs for work in a few months and they will be Win11 pro boxes.

 

[sarumbear]

Without using iTunes in WinOS?

There seems to be a misunderstanding on how to access iOS files on a Windows PC.

an iOS device presents the 'camera roll' folder (now called 'recents' as a USB drive when the i-device is connected via n USB. Just like a digital camera or a USB drive.

The media files which are not on the device and on 'shared folders' are in the cloud. If you have iCloud enabled then various files created by various apps which are accessed via the iOS or iPadOS 'Files' app are on iCloud. Both of those can be integrated to Windows via the Apple iCloud extension for Windows. It is available on the Microsoft Store and directly at Apple.

You do not need iTunes for either of the above, nor iTunes can see your iCloud files.

 

[pseudoid]

There seems to be a misunderstanding on how to access iOS files on a Windows PC.

Guilty, as charged!
Thank you.

Way back, I had put my mate inside the walled-garden... before it was called that.
In those days, the "best" way to access an iPhone 'data' was to install iTunes for Windows.

I probably have never installed (and then attempted to uninstall) a piece (@#$%) of software more than my vain attempts with many versions of iTunes - x86/32bit.
Last attempt was with Windows7 and 32bit iTunes installer Version 10.1.

As I recall, there were 6 separate uninstall procedures just to purge all traces of iTunes from Win7.
As I also recall well (from repetition) that the install-attempt process took over 24 minutes.
It would always error-out with some prompt about "installer...not 32bit software".
My UC-B CS graduate nephew was going to show me "how to install it"
It turned out that I ended up shaming even the GeniusBar gurus: For 6 weeks, we were told "We are aware of the problem!"

We took her out of the 'iPhone boarding school' and put her on the Android diet... only to return her back to the 'walled garden' again, when android became too invasive for a non-techie like her.
I fulfill all her Apple hardware needs but refuse to engage in being fully involved in the administrative tasks that may or may not be involved in such hardware ownership.
Not my gig!

 

[sarumbear]

Guilty, as charged!
Thank you.

Way back, I had put my mate inside the walled-garden... before it was called that.
In those days, the "best" way to access an iPhone 'data' was to install iTunes for Windows.

I probably have never installed (and then attempted to uninstall) a piece (@#$%) of software more than my vain attempts with many versions of iTunes - x86/32bit.
Last attempt was with Windows7 and 32bit iTunes installer Version 10.1.
View attachment 256775
As I recall, there were 6 separate uninstall procedures just to purge all traces of iTunes from Win7.
As I also recall well (from repetition) that the install-attempt process took over 24 minutes.
It would always error-out with some prompt about "installer...not 32bit software".
My UC-B CS graduate nephew was going to show me "how to install it"
It turned out that I ended up shaming even the GeniusBar gurus: For 6 weeks, we were told "We are aware of the problem!"

We took her out of the 'iPhone boarding school' and put her on the Android diet... only to return her back to the 'walled garden' again, when android became too invasive for a non-techie like her.
I fulfill all her Apple hardware needs but refuse to engage in being fully involved in the administrative tasks that may or may not be involved in such hardware ownership.
Not my gig!

The short comment is: if you are going to use an IT device, be it a computer, smartphone or smart TV then you need to be updating the software and if the device is no longer supported by the manufacturer (entered EoL) then you need to upgrade the hardware as well. This is how the industry operates. Do anything else will always create you agro.

However, if you know what you are doing then you are on your own and maybe you are fine too but don't expect support and/or things to work smoothly.

Look at the property screen. It is 13 years old. How do you expect it to work? It is not even 64-bit that is suitable for modern CPUs. You also seem to be running Windows 7, which is also EoL.

Yes, Apple's Windows software is not good. Then again why should it be? They are a competitor to Windows. However, this is changing; the iPhone market reached saturation point and their sales are plateauing. This forced them to concentrate on services, which often requires better integration with computers. Windows runs on almost 90% of the computers globally, hence they have to pay attention to Windows integration, which they had been the last few years. The latest step is to release better software for Windows and via a regular channel, Microsoft Store.

 

[pseudoid]

...Look at the property screen. It is 13 years old. How do you expect it to work? It is not even 64-bit that is suitable for modern CPUs. You also seem to be running Windows 7...

I think I may have wrongly worded my historical iTunes challenges.
That (Windows7 installer - Properties>>Details) screen-capture was for the last version of iTunes installation attempts, circa 2010 (not 2023).
No doubt that Apple has the best software minds in the industry.
Yet (imo) it is unforgivable of intentionally releasing such inexcusable software, while snarkily admitting that they "were aware of the problem".
At that time (circa 2010), I was fully aware that many other Windows users were having the same exact problem, as I was witnessing, for at least 18 months (w/o exaggeration).
Intentional? Conspiracy? Paranoia?

I hope now you can fully understand the background of my original question in post #354.

 

[somebodyelse]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...that-will-finally-replace-itunes-for-windows/