I don’ think I really used Skype in the last 2 years. Thankfully it also works as a Chrome web app, so I don’t even have to deal with installation. Unfortunately I need it for some work related communication, so I have to tolerate it. The user interface is a mess and it is also quite unstable on Linux. Teams is on the other end of the spectrum. It is the main channel for communication at the company where I work and I am very satisfied with it. I don’t think that Viber needs an introduction or a screenshot.
It is also cross-platform, so if I ever need to work on a Windows machine or a Mac I’ll be sure to install it. I like however the aesthetics and options for customization. Mailspring is a modern e-mail client with a lot of advanced features that I frankly do not use. Even when I’m using other distributions, Nemo is the first thing I install. It is a fork of Nautilus, but has way better functionality like two-panel navigation, which is a must for me. Nemo has been the default file manager for Linux Mint forever. I use Youtube for background music during work, while the web version of Spotify is used as it is way faster and more stable than the native app. I use web shortcuts for a few websites, so I can pin them in my taskbar and run them in their separate windows as if they were native apps. The built-in sync is also very dependable, only have to log in to have everything ready for work in a few minutes on a new computer. Might not be the safest or the fastest anymore, but with the many extensions Chrome is the best possible browser for me. When I used the Flatpak versions of all these apps, my root partition in Zorin was almost full. deb sources as Flatpak uses too much disk space on my root partition, which I set to be 20 GBs years ago. (Interesting to note is that the official amdgpu-driver worked with this distribution flawlessly, while the solution described in the post mentioned above didn’t.) My essential software listĪs a note, even though Flatpak might be the future of software distribution, I tried to use.
This time I opted for the Cinnamon Edge 64 bit edition. As many times before, I ended up with Linux Mint. It is plagued by stability and speed issues and I am unsure what the root of the problem was after the AMD problem was sorted out.
Reinstalled it like three times after bad crashes until I remembered my older post about how to set up the amdgpu-pro driver in Ubuntu 20.04.Īlas, Zorin on the desktop was not a good experience after all. However on my desktop, it suffered from the same GPU issues I had with all 20.04 based distributions and the official AMD drivers could not be installed either. Zorin seemed a good choice as it works flawlessly with my Lenovo Thinkpad E580 laptop. There are no official drivers for 21.04 yet, so I tried to make Zorin OS 15.3 my daily driver. My AMD R9 390X produces graphical anomalies without the amdgpu-pro drivers and the system also randomly crashes. Unfortunately Ubuntu 21.04 didn’t work out.