I don’t know anything about what happened in the US in regards to Trump. However. I find it unlikely that any meme has ever had any play in him being a president, but I said, I don’t know anything about the US history, so I don’t have much to say about it.

Regarding the PC Master Race joke, you should read this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Master_Race#History

PS. Joking about things doesn’t make them true. We have made fun about various serious topics over multiple centuries now, none of them have come true so far.

No. It was a joke that made fun of the PC users as well.

You do know that the PC Master Race was originally intended to make fun of the pseudoscientific Nazi ideology “master race”?

It feels like we need this joke more than ever before.

Linux Mint!

It’s based on Ubuntu, which means broad support for basically everything, including niche things like the Mullvad VPN client.

Mint has been around for a long time and they have had plenty of time to prove their place as a stable and reliable alternative.

Their software center includes well integrated support for Flatpaks, which is a a must have for things like Steam.

Mint is polished both visually and technically speaking. It’s a great general purpose option for both beginners and experienced users.

However. I might not be as ‘cool’ as some other new shiny players, which seems to be important for some, but I don’t feel comfortable recommending something that most likely last for a few years.

Mint is not something that I use myself, but it’s what I generally recommend to most users. I hope that excludes me me as some Mint fanboy.

I’m not some old Unix hacker, but after 20 years with ‘Linux’, I can without any doubt say that Linux-based operating systems—that’s meant to be stable and reliable—is stable and reliable.

They’re light years ahead of Microsoft and their operating system. Even Microsoft knows that. That’s why they keep replacing Windows with Linux for their backend.

With that said. Linux is not perfect. And while I like Linux and believe it’s overall a really good option for a lot of people, especially beginners, I’m not in any way some sort of fanboy. I’m quite the opposite. I’m the first person to be vocal about everything that’s wrong with it. :D

In regards to intuitiveness, I believe the issue is you here. ;) It sounds like you’re an experienced Windows users, and therefore also set in your ways in regards how Windows work. However. Linux is not Windows. Different systems may work differently.

I had the same issue when I started using Linux. I previously only had experience with Windows, and I tried to use Linux like it was Windows. This didn’t work at all, and it made it into a quite frustrating and poor experience. :)

It’s hard to give any sort of help with no information. You should have tried to debut it at least. :)

What output to stdout do you get from the AppImages?

I don’t know of the issue is ZorinOS or you, but have you tried other options? I have no experience with Zorin, but I know that Linux Mint is a great option for a beginner (as well as experienced users).

Paying for software is an exception, not a rule.

And we only have proprietary software because there’s greedy people out there that take advantage of people who don’t know better.

With that said. I’m not saying that developers shouldn’t get paid for what they do. They absolutely should! And a lot of them do, even when the code is free as in free beer and free speech.