leadore

You wouldn’t expect to be able to run Windows software on a Mac, why expect to be able to run Windows software on Linux?

Having said that, it’s true that you actually can run some windows software through Wine but it’s a hack and it’s not going to work as well as it would on the OS it was designed for.

But there are also things like Java and Electron applications that run natively on linux and just as well as on windows.
As for Minecraft Java edition, I just downloaded the Minecraft launcher .deb from minecraft.net and installed it, and it runs perfectly. You can’t really complain that your pirated stuff isn’t work right, lol.

edit to add: An easier way for your friend to try out Linux would be to either run it on a virtual machine within Windows, or boot from a live USB (that’s slower though).

deleted by creator

The only thing to be careful with about building a brand new computer is sometimes the linux kernel takes a little while to catch up and support the latest hardware for some things. So maybe if any components you’re planning to use are very new, look them up and see if they are supported yet.
As for a distro I always recommend Mint. Your plan to try out a bunch of them on a VM is a great idea.

I think the idea is that you won’t even leave the Google page at all, they want to keep you on their site and serve you their ads instead of sending you to someone else’s site and giving someone else that sweet sweet ad revenue.

water tots

Now that you have Mint, next time you want to make a thumb drive for installing a distro all you have to do is plug in a thumb drive, right-click the .iso file, and select Make Bootable USB Stick. (or from the Menu choose Accessories ‣ USB Image Writer)

And here’s a nice intro to Mint for you. That site has lots of other helpful stuff too. Enjoy!

I prefer to watch videos via peertube, not youtube, whenever possible. She has a peertube channel so here is the same video there: https://tinkerbetter.tube/w/g8K2zBgwwwE1xukkT6EmSo

I gave up Ubuntu when they switched to the Unity desktop. ugh!

I have a set of stretches I’ve been doing every morning (or 95% of mornings) upon getting out of bed, for over 30 years. The only thing that’s different these days is that I have to go pee first.

Just like Debian which it is based on, you can get AntiX in either 64 or 32 bit, whichever you need for your processor. It’s a very good lightweight distro. I’d recommend it, as well as Crunchbang++ for something like this. (edit to add that Crunchbang++ uses Openbox window manager, very lightweight but easy to use–something to consider for whichever distro you decide on).

My Brother laser printer + scanner was plug and play on Linux Mint, but I saw that Brother also has their own drivers for Linux that you can download if you want.

I’ve always said (jokingly since I’m an atheist) that Christians got it mixed up and thought Satan was God, so they’ve really been worshiping Satan all this time. They don’t want to admit they’re wrong about him being good, so they make up all kinds of excuses for all the horrible things he does. That’s why they were totally conditioned and ready to do the same with trump.

Personally I hope they never do, though it does look likely. Like many pre-November '22 old-time Mastodon et.al. fedizens, I came to the fediverse specifically because I didn’t want to have anything with FB/Meta/Twitter or the other commercial, “engagement”-based, enshittified social media.

It feels like the fediverse is being gentrified, with half of it eagerly welcoming their new overlords (why don’t they just join Threads?) and the other half resisting. The half that doesn’t federate with Meta will move on, like people priced out of their own neighborhoods by gentrification, and become the new “real fediverse” where people can go to live free from corporate interference.

I don’t consider being on Threads as being “on the fediverse”. My definition of the fediverse is servers that follow the Activity Pub protocol to interact with each other. You might disagree with that definition, but Threads only lets us “follow” (view-only) certain of their accounts (only about 2000 out of millions) from Mastodon. Those accounts do not see any replies to their post from the fediverse, or any fediverse posts at all for that matter–we are invisible to them. So no, he’s not “on the fediverse”, he’s on Threads. I doubt he knows the fediverse even exists.

You could go for the best of both worlds and use Mint LMDE (Debian Edition). But if only using it as a server, plain Debian should be all you need.

Our useless justice system: “And if you do it again, I’ll issue another gag order! And then if you do it yet again, I’ll issue yet another gag order!” etc. etc.

I use the Menu key for my compose key, since I never used it for anything and it’s conveniently right next to the right Ctrl key.
BTW if you want to see the combos that are possible with the Compose key, look in /usr/share/X11/locale/en_US.UTF-8/Compose

Fortunately Linux Mint will continue to package it as a deb.

I think MATE is the best balance between lighter weight and ease of use.

“I think we have really reached the year of the Linux desktop with Linux Mint 21.3 – Virginia.”

And just in time, too–we’re almost at the end of the alphabet! ;-) (I’m also a Mint user, since 2014)