• GregorGizeh
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    6 months ago

    I think it is a stupid change myself, but as far as I (recent Linux convert) can tell, mint is considered the go to distro for people coming freshly over from windows, and decidedly caters to beginners. A default setting for maximum user protection makes sense for that.

    • GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml
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      6 months ago

      Being unable to install 90% of the popular apps without diving into settings does not make sense for a beginner-focused distro whatsoever

      • GregorGizeh
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        6 months ago

        Well I agreed that it is an ultimately bad change, but I can see how the beginner mode mentality would lead to this conclusion. Provide the new user with the most stable and bug free experience possible, and after some time they will probably turn that setting off on their own to get all that popular software.

    • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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      6 months ago

      Yes but also these people are coming over from windows and this is their first experience with linux. They should have these apps available to them so they dont think oh linux has no apps.

      • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        Especially as many Flatpaks are already working better than Ubuntu apps. I had this with SciDAVis, where the Ubuntu version was just broken and gave me tons of troubles.

        Flatpak is a blessing

      • plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org
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        6 months ago

        I’ve seen many articles, comments and videos praising mint for being friendly to users coming from windows. It looks nice and I’ve been impressed by the friendliness and helpfulness of their forums - if I switched on my laptop I would try mint first.

      • GregorGizeh
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        6 months ago

        I dont know, it is just the general consensus on every “I want to drop windows but i am scared of Linux” post ever made, and from my personal experience I found it actually too much like windows (made a live boot before I chose another distro).

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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      6 months ago

      Meanwhile, they have a Spotify Ubuntu repo… and will offer the installation of all these apps as .deb’s which are able to do whatever they want

      • Blisterexe
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        6 months ago

        The difference is that those apps are taken charge of by the mint team

        • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          These are Ubuntu Packages. The external Spotify repo are binaries shipped by Spotify. I dont think there is any testing before users get that package, it is an external repo.

          • Blisterexe
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            6 months ago

            Oh, alright i was wrong, but it’s still direct from Spotify isn’t it? So no problem

            • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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              6 months ago

              It is proprierary Software, running as a pretty unrestricted app on your system.

              The app could steal your Keys, read your photos, scan for pirated music or whatever.

              Yeah, no problem XD

              for sure you could do the Microsoft Way and trust random big tech, because otherwise you would just sue them… but no.

              The spotify Flatpak has no Filesystem permissions afaik, and it thus pretty okay secure, even if you dont trust the upstream.

              • Blisterexe
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                6 months ago

                Ok yes it is proprietary, but at least it’s from the main source and is confirmed to work well, which reduces risk, at the cost of sandboxing.

                it’s a tradeoff, and I think mint did the right thing.

                • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
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                  6 months ago

                  The Flatpak meanwhile is transparently packaged, using the binary from the official Snap.

                  Canonical to my knowledge took forever for convincing Spotify to support Linux. Supporting Flatpak should be easy, but whatever.

                  • Blisterexe
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                    6 months ago

                    This isn’t about just Spotify, it’s about other apps too