Hi Kathleen,
I thought maybe a couple of follow-up comments would be helpful.
kathleenmarie wrote: ↑Fri Sep 03, 2021 10:00 pm
I tried 5.4 Beta on Mint awhile back and had more problems on Mint than Kubuntu.
Everything depends on your system resources. My previous desktop PC which I had for 7 years had a dedicated video card and worked well with Mint/Cinnamon. My current desktop, which I have had for a month, has a generic integrated video card. It works fine with Mint.
My problem with 18.04 is that the kernel was updated and frozen to a kernel that does not work on my laptop. I have a super cheap older mini desktop right now that appears well suited for 18.04. Ubuntu 18.04 and BA 5.2 were a good match.
After my previous system died due to motherboard failure, I went looking for a desktop replacement. At first, I bought a new Lenovo with Win10. I repartitioned the hard disk to dual boot, but had a very hard time installing Linux on it. Cinnamon worked, but not well; Mint worked better and I liked the look better. Installation was complicated by the fact that the PC did not have a DVD drive nor even a drive bay to add one. Yes, I was able to install Linux with a USB, but after a few days I decided that having a DVD drive was a requirement. I wiped the HDD and returned the unit in less than a week.
I discovered that Linux Mint has a
database of compatible hardware, which I could search before buying. I also visited here:
https://ubuntu.com/certified. Then I purchased a rebuilt Dell known to be compatible with Ubuntu and Mint. I got a much better, more powerful system for $320, much less than what I paid for the Lenovo. 16GB ram, 1 Terabyte SSD, R/W DVD, Intel i7 processor, 4 USB3 ports, good reviews. Amazon.com
link here. I reused the same two monitors I had before.
The day the machine arrived, I popped in a Linux install DVD, used
gparted to give 110 GB to Windows and 890 GB to Linux, and proceeded to install Linux Mint. Everything went smoothly.
Bible Analyzer and
GNU Emacs were the first external utilities that I added.
I think I have the older version of Libreoffice that still runs the Mendeley citation plug-in linked and working. I have my printer installed. I think I might have all my most critical paper writing apps working on the same machine.
Interesting. I'm a seminary graduate (MDiv), and when I was in seminary I used
Zotero for my citations (see
differences here).
I used Zotero to build this small
bibliography on religious movements, which is free to view, join, or edit (after joining). I've updated it only once or twice years since graduating. I used the standalone version of Zotero, since I did not like the idea of storing my data in
their cloud and being permanently subject to
their pricing. (I now realize that I could probably use the free standalone version and store my data in OneDrive or Dropbox or someone else's storage, without having to pay fees to Zotero.)
Since I was a poor seminary student and didn't have much money, my electronic Bible study tools leaned almost entirely towards Windows freeware: e-Sword, TheWord, Bible Analyzer, Blue Letter Bible, Online Bible, and things like that. The seminary had presentations from Logos, but they were out of my price range. I had to make decisions about the comparative benefit I would get from the free versions of Thayer's Greek Lexicon versus the non-free, expensive versions of the authoritative BDAG lexicon. How committed was I to paying the cost for a UBS4 or NA27 Greek text, versus the free (copyright-expired) Greek texts that I could get with the free tools? For the purposes of writing papers or doing Bible study at my church, what was the real difference? (That's a rhetorical question, not a real question, by the way . . .)
So believe me, I do have an appreciation for the difference of cost versus benefit in handling Bible software.