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Linux Mint 18.1 'Serena' BETA Ubuntu-based Operating System Now Available For Download (betanews.com)
BrianFagioli shares his story on Beta News: Feeling fatigued by Windows 10 and its constant updates and privacy concerns? Can't afford one of those beautiful new MacBook Pro laptops? Don't forget, Linux-based desktop operating systems are just a free download away, folks!
If you do decide to jump on the open source bandwagon, a good place to start is Linux Mint. Both the Mate and Cinnamon desktop environments should prove familiar to Windows converts, and since it is based on Ubuntu, there is a ton of compatible packages. Today, the first beta of Linux Mint 18.1 'Serena' becomes available for download.
Here's the release notes for both Cinammon and MATE.
If you do decide to jump on the open source bandwagon, a good place to start is Linux Mint. Both the Mate and Cinnamon desktop environments should prove familiar to Windows converts, and since it is based on Ubuntu, there is a ton of compatible packages. Today, the first beta of Linux Mint 18.1 'Serena' becomes available for download.
Here's the release notes for both Cinammon and MATE.
I develop C++ applications mainly for Linux. I use Visual C++ and Xcode (I got accustomed to it after some time) to develop, then I log on Linux to "port" the code with vi, GCC, etc, and add Linux specific features.
Is there a decent GUI for developing on Linux now?
You can use VS on a Windows machine to build/debug on Linux now. You can also run a light version, "VS Code," natively on Linux - it's free and open source, but I don't know how full-featured it is.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
speak for yourself but no one else. My laptop runs Linux Mint 17.3, all devices work because it takes 5 minutes of research to find laptops that will work. I don't do games. OpenShot and gimp are good enough media apps for me, vlc for viewing. SageMath works well, it was made for Linux. Spreadsheets with LIbreOffice are fine.
I'm not sure I follow. Ubuntu will let you install the proprietary drivers and will let you file bug reports for issues, but if the close-sourced driver is found to be the culprit, they'll refer you to AMD... because AMD is the only one with the source code, and thus the only ones able to help you fix the bug. That's about as much support as one could ask for.
The open source drivers are the default install, but you certainly can replace them with the proprietary closed source drivers.
Here's the How To from Ubuntu for the most recent 16.04 LTS:
https://help.ubuntu.com/commun...
As for the open vs closed source quality, recent benchmarks show that the MESA 13 drivers are pretty close to the closed source ones for most chipsets, but it's still a tiny bit high on the latency. I doubt you'll ever get parity until/unless AMD phased out the closed source drivers by fully opening the source code. There's probably some things in there they license and/or don't care to share with competitors, though.