You can also run many distros “live” from the install media without installing anything, to get a feel for them and to check that mosts things work (network, sound, movies etc.) You can make a bootable stick and choose the live option when it boots.
I just use Super+p to run commands. Awesome and custom keybidings are to easily move between tags, windows and monitors, not to launch programs. I use nvim for coding and this combined with awesome means I can do a lot without touching my mouse. At work I use Cinnamon and IntelliJ tools and it’s just less ergonomic. Not a huge difference but I definitely prefer my home setup. In general all Linux WM I used over the years were easy to configure and get good experience. The worst environment I had to ever use was OS X. I just hated all their weir solutions like the launch bar and the common menu bar on top. On Linux I never had any issues.
Last 25 years I have been using a couple of different tiling window managers. My main workstations usually have four monitors, accessed by AltGr+number.
I heavily base my workflow on virtual desktops, accessed by Ctrl+number.
Each virtual desktop have a specific type of programs on it:
Development
Terminals
Browsers
Communication / documentation
Multimedia
Graphics
SQL
Debugging
Email
Virtual machines / monitoring
So with this I can access nearly every program with AltGr+number, Ctrl+number which is quite quick. As long as I remember the monitor I placed it on, I always know which virtual desktop.
The chaining allows me to easier remember shortcuts with mnemonics, and they are fast enough, especially considering the amount of shortcuts I can scale it to.
Alt+T to start the chain, L for Layout, R for Resize.
Alt+T, R for Run, I for Inkscape.
Alt+T, A for Audio, N for Next.
There are some exceptions for the most used focus- and window moving operations, as well as for managing a clipboard buffer system. There are too many times when one goes back and forth to copy something, paste it somewhere else and going back for the previous one. So I can copy something, press Ctrl+Shift+3 to put in buffer 3. After a few other copy/pastes, I bring it into clipboard again with Ctrl+Alt+3. This also allows me to for example reload a page I’m working on and login with user/pass easily accessible in buffer 1 and 2, or login to four different network devices again and again without going to a text file and copying one of four passwords each and every time.
I wrote a special session manager via socket for i3 to be able to press Ctrl+number and go to a certain predefined desktop on the current monitor I’m at.
BSPWM user here: Desktops are 1-10 Super + Enter: Terminal on desktop 1 Super + F: Firefox on Desktop 2 Super + D: File manager on Desktop 3 (D for data) Super + Space: Rofi dmenu Super + Shift + Space: Rofi Run
Discord and Telegram (or any other messengers for that matter) are always Desktop 10 so they aren’t in the way of anything.
And any other desktop is whatever I need to use in that regard, sorted thematically amd depending on task
search usb in settings, set it to file transfer while its plugged into your pc. Alternatively you can install kde connect on both of the devices and transfer files wirelessly
Framasoft is good at coding but not so good at marketing, usability testing or philosophy.
I want Peertube to be a thing but Its just not build on a study organization. It would be better if piped or invidious started federating like peertube.
I mean, they can start federating, nothing but time and money is stopping them most likely. Maybe you could drive an effort in their respective developer communities to get the ball rolling?
I had two 5 screens and two columns. One screen was for terminal emulators, one was for writing code and software development, one was for my web browser, 2 others were for miscelaneous things, but most often were for working with files a GUI file browser like Nautilus or Thunar, or for reading PDF files in Evince, or reading PowerPoint or Excel documents in LibreOffice.
On each screen the tiles were always in 2 columns. The left for doing work, writing code, prose, drawing graphics and charts, interacting with the CLI, and so on. On the right was documentation: manual pages, PDF files, HTML documents, sometimes the MPV video player window when watching a tutorial that I was able to download from YouTube.
The right column usually had no more than 3 windows open, they started to get too narrow to be useful if more than that were open. I would occasionally horizontally split the left column as well, usually when going back and forth between two documents I was editing.
However…
I did not use this workflow once I started using Tmux, and then I continued not using this workflow when I switched to Emacs. The reason is of course because Tmux and Emacs both provide their own tiling windowing system that operate within a single application window. So my main workflow was always in a single maximized terminal window, or a single maximized Emacs window, or a single maximized GIMP window. Only occasionally would I un-maximize these windows, but then to keep it from getting too small, I would set it in “floating window” mode. Also my web browser, PDF reader, GIMP, LibreOffice, all worked better in full-screen (maximized window) mode. Even Thunar (GUI file browser) has multiple tabs, and a multi-column mode which was useful for the very few times I ever needed a GUI file browser.
At one point, I actually changed my tiling window manager configuration to always open windows maximized, except for Thnuar (GUI file browser) which would open in floating mode, not tiling mode. At that point I finally realized that I don’t really using a tiling window manager at all, it is just there managing windows the same as a non-tiling window manager would do.
I switched back to the Xfce default window manager, and quit worrying about window managers all together.
To break from the trend (because I recommend Mint as well),
Check out the options on distrowatch.com, test out any live distros you can. When you have some understanding of GRUB then dual boot, and then triple.
Inevitably, you’re going to end up using Arch because it’s so easily managed and you get to choose each component. But it’s better if you have experience with the different components first. I completely missed out on learning RPM (package manager), I went from Mint (apt) to Arch (pacman). I did resurrect a lot of old laptops and desktops with various different distros though, and I learned Gnome and xfce, LXDE, MATE, and i3, xmonad…
There’s a lot to learn but it’s all fun, and it’s all different. When you go to a tiling window manager, you’ll understand why Windows adopted (albeit shittily) tiling in it’s latest version.
There is just one feature that Kate has that I really use a lot, but it is not on a convenient key binding, and that is the ability to filter the active text selection through a shell utility, or to capture the output of running a shell command. When I use Emacs, I use these commands a countless number of times every day, and they are both on default key bindings that are very easy to type.
I wish Kate would take this feature more seriously.
It doesn’t really matter much which distro you choose.
Use flatpaks - flatpaks sandbox your apps more than traditional packages. As a side effect, the package manager of the distro won’t matter anymore.
There are thousand of distros, stick to a popular one.
Install packages on distrobox instead of directly onto your system if you use the terminal. Stay as close to the base image as possible. If you want to have access to all packages, install arch/endeavouros on distrobox and use the aur. If a package is not on aur, it’s not published yet. With distrobox there’s no reason to switch to another distribution because of package availability.
Use a distro with which you can roll back to a previous state easily. If things go downhill, youcan always fall back. There are many distros that provide a very easy out of the box experience for that. If you can’t fall back easily, ignore the distro or be prepared for the worst case
Arch is for advanced people because you may set up your system as you like. There are many great distros that choose the base packages for you. You will have a great experience on most big distros. Most of them use GNOME. GNOME is great. KDE is awesome. Tough decision. Watch youtube vidoes about both. Install the other one in a VM to check it out. You may use an immutable distro like fedora silverblue/kinoite. You can switch back and forth by rebasing to the respective desktop environment.
Following is a good source for anyone looking into desktops www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/ they focus on an educated distro choice.
Read the arch wiki whenever you want to do something or want to know something. wiki.archlinux.org you want to know more abiut piewire? aw! You want to know about GNOME? KDE? Type !aw KDE into ddg, qwant or brave. Read the respecting documentation of your distro. Follow them on mastodon. Register to the forum. Join a matrix community.
Watch great channels like “the linux experiment” on peertube. Yes peertube, why should you watch it on youtube if it’s on peertube?
The thing with arch is that you have to know a lot of stuff. You have to take care of selinux yourself etc. If you know what you do, everything is fine. At the same time you can be on tumbleweed, kinoite or any other distro and install aur packages with distrobox. For me, there’s no reason to use arch. If you want to tinker with your system, go for arch.
If you kind of know what you do as a beginner, you can go for it as well, steep learning curve but you’ll be more advanced than others in the same time.
I haven’t actually touched selinux at all… It’s not ‘officially supported’ in Arch yet, although there are compatible packages available. I only recently discovered PAM which I have yet to learn too.
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