Linux why?

afasoas said:
Ubuntu desktop is nice and user friendly. If it plays nice with your hardware (and chances are it will) then you should be able to just get on and use it with no magic spells - it should be no more difficult then, for example, learning to use OS X.
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Yes. General use will be easy. But the post was about "automating loads of tasks easily". And I wanted to know an easy way.
 
Automater in OSX makes it seriously easy to guess what automate tasks :)
 
Seems that the audio issue is due to XFCE, rather than distro drivers. Tried LLOS 3.0 last night (comes with XFCE as default DE) and had exactly the same problem: output to headphone socket on front only (not switchable) and low-level crackling made worse by moving the mouse or typing. Tried Fedora 20 running live that I happened to have sat around and the problems went away, so installed that only to find that they're up to version 23 now, and there was no update path for a version that old. (n)

So it's time to play OS-shuffle. Have downloaded Mint Mate and LMDE Cinnamon, Fedora 23 workstation and wondering if there's anything else worth looking at. PCLOS offer a version that's 2 years old, and will be replaced soon, don't want a standard ?buntu and the pc isn't really quick enough to cope *well* with a KDE-based DE these days (even though W10 is OK, though off a SSD). Did look at Elementary a couple of days ago, but file management tools didn't seem that great (sometimes it's handy to access a system drive that's 'owned' by another installed OS, and it refused me access without even asking for admin rights). I might just go back to Mint Cinnamon 17.3, although I'm a little bored with it now and performance has been gradually deteriorating compared to a couple of years back when I first started using it, presumably due to app updates requiring more overhead.
 
So I downloaded and installed Fedora 23. Looks fabulous - I always did like Gnome 3 once they'd sorted the interface. It's a bit sluggish though, and even though V20 played fine with the sound card, V23 was playing silly beggars with the main output on the rear of the card.

Mint Mate is presently installing - let's see how that goes. Mate is nice and quick IIRC, but looks like it was designed in te 90s.
 
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Solved the speaker/audio output issue, but had to make changes to alsamixer through the command line. :p Works for Fedora, LMDE and Mint Mate. The sound card has switchable outputs to front and rear, and under windows the switching is automatic, but with Linux it requires a manual switch using the alsamixer command which then pops up a pseudo GUI that allows changes to be made that aren't available on the DE. I could hear the internal relay switching the output between front and rear sockets every time I manually toggled between the options.

I was also reminded why I'd not used Fedora more in the past - almost all useful codecs have to be installed from non-standard repositories, and it's a pain in the bum to sort out. Want to play back MP3 files - need a codec. Want to watch DVDs - need a codec. etc. It used to be worse, when using a dialup modem needed custom-written drivers, and although the OS was free, the drivers cost a small fortune.

LMDE is interesting, but the installer has been fiddled with since last time and it wanted me to set up partitions manually. It's been a while since I last did that and GParted didn't always behave as I'd remembered either, so that one is parked for now, though I really like the idea of a faster, lighter OS.

Mint Mate went in painlessly on the testing HDD. I'll keep it there for week or so to see how it does before replacing the questionable drive.
 
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