this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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libre
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Welcome to libre
A comm dedicated to the fight for free software with an anti-capitalist perspective.
The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.
Resources
- Free Software, Free Society provides an excellent primer in the origins and theory around free software and the GNU Project, the pioneers of the Free Software Movement.
- Switch to GNU/Linux! If you're still using Windows in
$CURRENT_YEAR, take Linux Mint for a spin. If you're ready to take the plunge, flock to Fedora! If you're a computer hobbyist and love DIY, use Arch, Gentoo, Guix or the many, many offerings out there.
- Those on Apple Silicon Macs can consult Asahi Linux for available options.
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- Avoid being confrontational: People are in different stages of liberating their computing, focus on informing rather than accusing. Debatebro nonsense is not tolerated.
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- Xenia was meant to be an alternative to Tux and was created (licensed under CC0) by Alan Mackey in 1996.
- Comm icon (of Xenia the Linux mascot) was originally created by @ioletsgo
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Generally speaking yes you wipe your partitions and start over and restore selectively from backups. I recommend backing up /home and /etc (and maybe /boot) and test your backups by stimulating a restore (e.g. to a dir at /home/restore, just see if it is the right size and has your files). If you don't have a regular backup system, this is a good opportunity to start using one. I like borg-based tools and filesystems that can do snapshots. Then you just make a backup right before you install the new distro, then restore from backup.
You can also start putting /home on its own partition in case you swap distributions often but I've never found this appealing. It's also not a replacement for proper backups. I do set up /home to be discretely snapshotable, though.
Why are you looking to change from Mint? Mint is pretty nice, though I prefer Debian for that kind of distro. I've been trying out guix and really like it, though it's definitely a power user / dev distro, as you have to configure your system using a dialect of Lisp (a programming language).
Mint is great! I'm just curious mostly.
I might even just like duel boot and decide I want to stick with mint lol
wait a minute... THERE A MULTIPLE WAYS OF SPELLING DUAL?!
WHAT IS ENGLISH?!
I like this one though because challenging someone to a duel is funny
Two operating systems fighting each other to see who gets to run
You've activated my terminal trap card!
Yeah that's basically what it comes down to.
Usually windows wins because Linux is too weak and doesn't dare to wreck other OSs boot images.
sometimes e and a are interchangeable
austrelia
Hehehe
now yuo see
Nice! You can also try out distributions with just a usb stick, though they will be slower than an SSD.