To be fair to macOS, it’s still Unix-based, which at least makes it less miserable for development than Windows.

I would still go for Linux any time, though.

You’re right in some ways; Windows is closer to a microkernel than Linux, though it doesn’t perfectly adhere to the philosophy of - there’s supposedly weird things like drawing calls in the Windows kernel that should be in microservice, I’ve heard

However, I wouldn’t necessarily call microkernels a detriment; in fact, Linux is a bit of an odd duck for going monolithic - modern Apple operating systems also run on a microkernel. Monolithic is an older architecture, and there are worries about the separation between components and system resilience e.g the webcam driver can’t crash the whole kernel.

In practice, it’s less of an issue, and there really aren’t any open source microkernel operating systems that are practical for production desktop and server use, which has a microkernel though there are certainly solutions for embedded systems.

QubesOS is built on Xen hypervisor, which uses a microkernel design, but Linux is then run in multiple VMs on top of it, which makes it more of a technicality in my eyes. RedoxOS also runs on a microkernel and is certainly intended as a desktop operating system, but its hardware support is limited; GNU Hurd is even more limited in that respect and not really usable.

Neat. I love Debian, but its documentation is crap! I hope this works out and I can see an improvement.

I mostly agree with you. However, I think there are some caveats to upscaling; there are so many lazy “4K AI UPSCALE BEST QUALITY” videos online that just don’t look good and were clearly put there just to get views.

However, I’ve also found they have their uses; for instance, I wanted to laser cut a TMBG Flood logo once, but there were very few good images online that traced well in Inkscape. I ended up doing an AI upscale of the least terrible one with a white background, and that traced pretty well in Inkscape.

I was messing around with HomeAssistant the other day, which uses the same speech recognition engine, and I found it to be decent.

I think including the word “OpenAI” in the post name is somewhat a misnomer that implies an encrapification not really happening to the FFMPEG project.

Yes, it is true OpenAI originally developed the Whisper model, and I hate OpenAI; however:

• Whisper is actually open source, unlike most OpenAI crap.
• FFmpeg isn’t even directly using the OpenAI version, written in Python - they’re using a port to C++ called Whisper.cpp
• We’ve been able to use speech recognition for decades, so unlike other AI models, I don’t think a speech recognition model that does it better is problem.
• You don’t even necessarily have to compile FFmpeg with Whisper support.

I get the dislike of AI, but the idea of association with OpenAI is overblown and not really reflective of reality. Now I can get not wanting to use open source projects whose developers don’t reflect your principles; however, I think this ethical issue is more indirect than may initially appear and is not a strong reason to quit using what is still the most effective media conversion tool.

No need to panic in this case. While I hate OpenAI, there’s two things to note here:

• Whisper is an open source library for speech recognition rather than generative AI, run entirely locally. It’s just using ML to do something we could already do with computers (speech recognition), but better.
• They aren’t even directly using the OpenAI version - they’re using whisper.cpp, a port of the model.

Maybe it’s because I only use stable on my laptop with Flatpaks, but honestly, Bookworm never got that crusty to me until recently - it feels like new software versions didn’t introduce a lot of must have features in the past two years. Only hiccup was I had to install the backports kernel to get Wi-Fi working.

I used to use this, but I always found it really janky - window boundaries not updating, weird graphical glitches, etcetera.

It was especially annoying to use with Photoshop and GPU acceleration (I do GPU passthrough to my VM).

In the end, I just abandoned it and just used the monitor the VM’s GPU is plugged into.

As a completely new user who’s self-described as “not very tech savvy”, Arch is probably a terrible idea, and you should switch distros.

I really like Debian, but something like Linux Mint or Fedora might be wiser for you; all three hold your hand more, which would be very important in your case. Fedora and Debian specifically are designed to work well with KDE, although Fedora will have newer versions.

You certainly seem willing to learn (you got through the Arch install process), and I think you still have a great opportunity to enjoy Linux, but considering you’re calling the terminal emulator “Konsole”, your self-description is probably apt. FYI Konsole is just one application to access the terminal, kind of like how Firefox and Chrome are both web browsers, but you don’t use “Chrome” to refer to web browsers.

I use this image, which mostly just works (other than the need to throw model info and a made-up serial into a config.plist.

https://github.com/thenickdude/KVM-Opencore

I can’t say for 15.6, but mine is currently running 15.2 just fine; I usually fall a bit behind on updates since these days, I only really use it to upload They Might Ne Giants rarities to my cloud library via Apple Music.

The only annoyance with the VM is iPhones can’t connect over USB easily.

I don’t use Proxmox, but since it’s all libvirt anyway, I’ve frequently found someone doing something on it that helps me with my VMs.

For instance, my GPU passthrough Hackintosh VM is part based on some dude who made a tutorial for Proxmox that applies elsewhere.

No.

I usually just use Bash; there’s a certain level of complexity where it begins to be more reasonable to just use Python.

Yes and no. I think connotation is important here; “stable” means different things in different contexts even within computing, and they both denote different but important things - kind of like free of cost verses freedom.

In the distro case, people need/want a distribution where they know a new version won’t come and break their config when they update at 2 AM and miss it in the changelog, and “stable” has been agreed upon as the term in that context. Of course, that can change, as all language does, but that’s just the current convention.

Also, Debian tends to make sure software is not unusable before stable is shipped (the Nvidia thing is an anomaly I’ll explain below); while they sometimes fail, as you’ve hinted, I find it quite rare that it actually happens. Also, the “static” of Debian isn’t absolute; if something really has a breaking bug or a security vulnerability that affects overall system usability (basically something that can’t be fixed by installing a Flatpak), they will put out a fix, like with the Linux kernel or a web browser (via the security repo, included by default in all installs).

Additionally, looking at this changelog, while the Nvidia situation is objectively a bit embarrassing, it looks like they were working on getting them updated, but just didn’t have much luck - I’m guessing a breaking change in the software that made it harder to package. Also, it’s in the non-free repo, which is on the back burner compared to the rest of the distro - something in the main repo will usually only be at most a few months behind at time of distro release.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nvidia-graphics-drivers

I mean, I think static is stable.

I feel like stability in some contexts means more than just the software not crashing often (although that is the big part); it means being able to expect the behavior to stay the same until you’re ready to upgrade to the next release and confront the new behavior all at once, sort of like upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7.

There’s certainly a place for rolling release - I use Debian Testing on my desktop - but I certainly appreciate being able to go a month without opening my laptop without getting a daunting notification like “There are 1578 updates available “ (on my Debian 12 Thinkpad, it’s usually only double digit, very minor updates).

Unrelated thing - just found out something funny.

Apparently, Torvalds himself uses a 580.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Radeon-RX-590-Torvalds

Someone else brought up Virt Manager here, which is my preferred; if you’ve ever used VirtualBox, you’ll probably be fine on Virt Manager. I like Virt Manager for using GTK3, as I’m in XFCE. I wouldn’t be surprised if both applications have similar settings, as they’re both LibVirt front ends, it seems.

Also, DistroBox, while a different sort of thing, is great for the sort of thing OP mentioned in that last paragraph. I usually just use command line, but there seems to be an unofficial GUI out there.

I always just booted the old kernel when I ran into the issue, but it was less than ideal, which is why I would prefer to run a stable distro in this case.

Also, isn’t ElementaryOS a stable distro anyway due to being Ubuntu-based?

I’ve never run an installfest, but I’ve been to my university’s Linux Users Group installfests, and here’s what they did:

• Brought USBs with Fedora and OpenSUSE, which are their standard noob recommendations. Personally, I’ve used Debian for a long time, but I can get why Debian might not be something they want to recommend for noobs.
• Be there to help them
• If they’re a bit squeemish about it, have them install in a VM software like VirtualBox on Windows or something like UTM on macOS.

Also, I’d recommend you bring extra USB peripherals in case the internal devices need a little bit of work; bring some extra mice, keyboards, and ethernet adapters. You hopefully won’t need any of them, but they’ll certainly make life easier if you do.

As for time, I’d imagine doing the basic install and ironing out some (not all) of the kinks probably takes less than it takes for a group to stat D & D characters, if that’s a helpful comparison for you.

It’s pre-T2, so it should be very easy to install a Linux distro on it. The only bit of misery you’re going to encounter, as others have said, is the Broadcom drivers. Except for a select few distros, you’ll probably need a USB Ethernet adapter for installing the operating system and adding the drivers.

Also, I’d rather put my hand in the circle saw than try running a rolling release on this laptop because the driver uses DKMS, meaning that kernel updates sometimes break it.

I only know this because the desktop I’m typing this on has a Broadcom Wi-Fi card from when I used to bare metal Hackintosh this machine. I’ve since moved to a nice house with an Ethernet port in every room; also, I just use macOS in a VM these days anyways.

As others have said, OCLP is a thing and a well-oiled machine from what I hear, but also, the oath I have made to the Church of Linuxology demands that I at least recommend Linux.