Beta testing Nothing OS 1.5.1.

I've been testing Nothing OS 1.5.1, which is based on Android 13, since it was released on December 2022. Since then, it has seen a couple of updates and only has improved.

To be honest, so far I haven't seen any bug that has been a deal breaker for me in my daily usage. So, I only expect to be better when the stable version is released, or at least stay as good as it has been so far.

I was somewhat hesitant to sign-up to the beta testing, but when I read what was expected from it when it rolled out I decided to jump in since there was nothing that would break the user experience in my daily use. So far, I've been proven right and it has been better that I was expecting.

Does that means that I'd recommend everyone to beta test? No, since beta testing might brake things for you that you need on the device you use. You need to read what is expected from the software release, and from that decide if you can help with the beta testing.

At this point, if you are looking for a good mid-range Android smartphone, the Nothing Phone (1) is one of the best options out there so far in 2023.

Linux Mint: my Linux distro of choice.

I've been using Linux Mint continuously since 2019, and it only has been getting better with time. Linux Mint was one of the Linux distros I tried when I was choosing a distro to jump to when I was making the jump to Linux back in 2012, which at the time I choose Ubuntu.

Yet, when Canonical decided to drop Unity as its user interface, I decided to make the jump to Linux Mint. I simply like Cinnamon as an user interface rather than GNOME, even if Ubuntu ships with a customized version of it.

To be honest, when GNOME 3 was released I was looking an alternative for it. At the time, I tried both Ubuntu's Unity and Linux Mint's Cinnamon. Unity won because at the time Cinnamon was a bit too buggy for my use, even though I preferred Cinnamon workflow.

As such, when Canonical dropped Unity for the main release of Ubuntu I made the jump to Linux Mint. The Linux Mint team had developed Cinnamon to the point on which all the bugs of the early versions of the user interface had been fixed, and added features that made it more useful for my use. Not only that, by the time I came back to Linux Mint, the decision to base it on the LTS version of Ubuntu made it all that much appealing to me. Specially since I've come to prefer stability over cutting edge technology on my daily driver.

Linux Mint has become my preferred OS by far, since its stable and just works for me.