Linux - Karmi's Musings & Tech

Testing Zorin OS 18 Beta – Is This the Windows 10 Replacement You Need?

September 20, 2025September 20, 2025 by Karmi

Zorin OS 18 desktop interface showing activities menu and mountain wallpaper with beta announcement text

Bottom Line Up Front

Zorin OS 18 Beta delivers a polished, Windows-like experience that may ease the October 2025 Windows 10 end-of-life transition for millions of PCs. I’ve been testing Linux since 1996 — and Zorin since late 2009 — and this release shows real promise for Windows users who want familiar functionality without the steep Linux learning curve. As a daily Windows 11 user, I appreciate that Zorin doesn’t bash Windows, but instead tries to deliver an OS that feels familiar while staying true to Linux’s strengths.

CachyOS Linux Distribution Review and Installation Guide

September 12, 2025 by Karmi

CachyOS ranks #1 on DistroWatch page hit rankings for last 3 months with 4439 hits per day, ahead of Linux Mint, Debian, and Ubuntu

CachyOS is a new-ish Linux distribution, first released in July 2021, that has rapidly gained popularity due to its focus on performance and responsiveness. Built on the Arch Linux base, CachyOS implements optimizations like its custom BORE scheduler, CLANG compiler, and advanced optimization flags to provide a fast, polished, and stable experience, especially for gaming and desktop users.

It currently tops DistroWatch’s popularity rankings. If you’re eyeing it for gaming or high-performance setups, it’s matured into a solid, user-friendly option rather than a fresh experiment.

Rule of Law & Lawfare: Republican Hypocrisy & Political Weaponization

August 25, 2025 by Karmi

Bottom Line Up Front:

Republicans scream “lawfare” when the DOJ targets Trump, then cheer when FBI agents raid John Bolton’s home at 7 a.m. with boxes of classified documents. Democrats prosecute Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro for contempt, then cry foul when Trump promises retribution. Both parties weaponize the rule of law against opponents while claiming to defend it – the same hypocrisy that’s defined American justice for 150 years.

The tax code reveals the quieter lawfare: corporations pay 10.5% on offshore profits while small businesses pay 21% domestically. From FBI raids to IRS rules, both parties use law as a weapon, then act shocked when the weapon turns on them. The rule of law isn’t broken – it’s working exactly as designed, just not for you.

Year of the Linux Desktop: Linus Says Chromebooks and Android Are the Future

August 10, 2025August 10, 2025 by Karmi

Year of the Linux Desktop split image showing chaotic Linux desktop distributions on left versus clean Android and ChromeOS interfaces on right, with Linus Torvalds quote and timeline 1998-2025

Since at least 1998, the Linux community has been declaring “this will be the Year of the Linux Desktop.” Twenty-seven years later, we’re still waiting. Meanwhile, something interesting happened that the Linux evangelists missed entirely: The Year of the Linux Desktop became the decade of Google everything.

While Linux enthusiasts argued about systemd vs. init and whether GNOME or KDE was superior, Google quietly conquered the world with actual desktop Linux adoption through Android and Chromebooks. They just didn’t ask users to compile kernels or edit config files to make it work.

Even Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux itself, agrees: “Chromebooks and Android are the paths towards the desktop.”

What Linus Torvalds Really Said About Desktop Linux

Nobara Linux 39

August 12, 2025January 1, 2024 by Karmi

Nobara Linux was first released on 7/10/2022, obviously quite new, and it is being developed & maintained by Thomas Crider ‘GloriousEggroll’ – a “Software Maintenance Engineer @ Red Hat. Wine-Staging maintainer. Tinkerer.” Apparently, in his spare time he developed Proton-GE. 😉

I have followed it fairly closely – did two reviews – 11/7/2022 (Nobara Linux 36 – ‘New modified version of Fedora Linux’) & 1/15/2023 (Nobara Linux 37 – ‘Keep an Eye on this Up & Coming Linux OS!‘).

What is the Nobara Project?

‘The Nobara Project is a modified version of Fedora Linux with user-friendly fixes added to it. Some of the important things that are missing from Fedora, especially with regards to gaming include WINE dependencies, obs-studio, 3rd party codec packages such as those for gstreamer, 3rd party drivers such as NVIDIA drivers, and even small package fixes here and there.’
Less Terminal & more Mouse: ‘we want to be more point and click friendly, and avoid the basic user from having to open the terminal … for new users, point and click ease of use is usually expected.’