Not sure if it helps, but traditionally the max was 80 columns by 25 rows on old computers, and that became a standard.

Nowadays we can be much bigger with a terminal emulator window, but 80x25 is still the “standard” and most terminal emulators default to that size when you open their window.

It’s not the max size possible, but if you’re making software for terminal, that really should be your target size imo

Wheezy was the first version I used

Nah download AppImage and put in ~/Applicaitons

I like thunar with Arc theme but it’s Gtk based, and you really need to install thunar and its plugins (volman, archive manager, etc)

I never tried

I believe I even got the reverse, pacman working on Nix (I’ve also gotten it and archiso working on Fedora)

Pros:

• Better UX for system. On Windows and Mac you’re stuck with the old-style window movement desktops which suck and are chaos with lots of effort to maintain when trying to do anything productive. Even with third-party tools it’s nothing like being able to have something like Niri. It’s just better on the Linux world.
• It actually meets your needs instead of making your change your needs. The customization is insane, but usually you don’t even have to go very far to be happy.
• No bloat, no forced features like AI (tho you can get your own AI stuff if you want), less privacy concerns, better tools generally

Microsoft Windows is actually a complete piece of crap

Unfortunately, cons of switching:

• Have to use non-standard apps for certain things like office files or DAWs for audio production
  • Tho, these are less bad these days. In fact, some are better like I’ll take Blender over Maya any day, and I use OnlyOffice even on Windows, bc why pay for the “Copilot App” (formerly MS Office) when OnlyOffice is just as good and is fully compatible?
• Some games don’t work (esp multiplayer), and sometimes for no good reason other than the devs don’t like Linux users, e.g. Bungie.
  • Also far better than it used to be. Very few things I miss out on
• MacOS clearly has the better app distribution system. A single folder with all necessary deps save a couple core libraries. Simple, effective, can still be put in a store. Instead we have an obsession with sandboxing or overcomplicated packages. AppImages were so close to being right. But nope. We can’t have nice things sometimes

I’ve been using Linux-only since around 2019 (having used it alongside Windows for gaming before then) when Proton finally started getting good. I’m also an engineer, artist, writer, gamer, musician, maker, and more, so I feel like I have touched a lot of the different ways in which computers are used. I’ve used several distros for extended periods, and my fav is Arch (tho Nix is a close second; it’s just not quite ready for primetime)

Linux is absolutely a viable alternative, but you have to know what you want from your PC. How do you want it to function? Pick that choice. It’s not ice-cream flavors where all are equal and you have to decide; form follows function here. Decide what you need and then build your own system from that - bc Linux is yours. Refuse to be spoonfed slop no matter if the slop is from Microsoft or from a Linux distro. Slop is slop. Cook your own meal. It tastes better. If you don’t like mushrooms, don’t get mushrooms.

FreeBSD is not Linux, it is Unix.

See the “BSD?” That stands for “Berkley Software Distribution” which was the Unix that was used at UC Berkley back in the day. It uses a Unix kernel not the Linux kernel.

There is certainly overlap between the worlds of modern Unix and Linux, since much of the Unix world benefits from the popularity of Linux and FOSS as a whole, but it still is its own thing.

Namely, the biggest difference is that FreeBSD is a complete OS. All components other than a user’s personally installed apps are made by (or at least integrated and maintained by) the FreeBSD team itself. Linux is technically just a kernel, and a Linux distribution, while similar to a Unix distribution, is made up of many many many moving parts made by lots of different people, each piece with its own goals then steered into working together.

Now, there are some exceptions. There is a bit of a blur now. These days, the BSDs have more 3rd-party parts and the Linux world has become more governed and polished, but they are ultimately different things with different goals.

There are plenty of other BSD descendents including OpenBSD and to a lesser extent Darwin (aka the macOS core, which runs an XNU kernel based on the Mach microkernel with a BSD subsystem beside it)

I always use Breeze Dark (even tho I don’t use Plasma)