Curiosity pushed me to try Linux roughly 15 years ago. Today it’s simply the best option for me. But I approach it as a user, I don’t posses any deep knowledge about how it works.
There are several readily available key modifiers in Linux: Meta, Super and ISO-Level3-Shift. You can map them to keys and use them for various purposes.
What I do is map Meta to the left Windows key, Super to the right Windows key, and ISO-Level3-Shift to AltGr (that one might already be default). You can then use Super and Meta as modifiers to trigger all kinds of actions, like Super+T to open a terminal, Super+F to toggle fullscreen mode for current window, Super+Space to toggle music playback etc.
ISO-Level3-Shift will create diacritics when combined with normal keys, provided you choose the correct keyboard layout. This is useful for being able to type correctly in languages that use diacritics, but to also allow you to use a generic US keyboard so you can do programming for example.
To make these mappings you have to edit or create a file called .Xmodmap in your home dir. To bind a keycode to a physical key you say something like keycode 134 = Super_R, where 134 is a physical key code that you get from the tool xev and Super_R is the code for what you want it to do. Also, to make Super_R a modifier you have to say clear Mod4 and add Mod4 = Super_R. Most desktop environment will import .Xmodmap automatically on startup but if they don’t you can run xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap.
Once you got Super acting like a modifier and bind it to the key you want your desktop environment settings will probably let you define custom shortcuts for anything you want. Please note that there’s usually two different places for such shortcuts, one for generic shortcuts (for launching apps), usually in the keyboard section of preferences, and one where you can tie shortcuts to window functions (like minimize/maximize), usually found in the window section of preferences. Also in the window preferences you can do some cool stuff like use one of these modifiers to drag or resize windows.
Also see if your keyboard preferences let you pick a “compose key”. The Pause key is usually used for this, because it’s not useful for anything else on a graphical desktop. The compose key lets you create diacritics in an “intuitive” way, by combining two keys. If you press Pause then o then o you get °. Pause then 1 then 2 gives you ½. Pause then a then " gives you ä. You get the idea.
I uses to be a huge Apple fan pre-2010. Everything worked, was smooth, wasn’t Windows, and it was fun trying out the terminal despite it being pretty useless for most things on Mac.
At the new decade is when it felt like Apple was becoming what it is today: a walled garden with priority of mobile devices at the detriment of Macintosh. Started to really look at Linux as an alternative (only tried Ubuntu in a VM around the time of Unity coming out) early 2010s, but didn’t make the full leap until around 2013 when I installed Linux Mint and got a Raspberry Pi to begin to mess around with. Now I solely run a mix of Debian and Void on all my machines and I couldn’t be happier.
I was a broke college student, my pc broke, I had no money for a new one and my roommate gifted me a pc with OpenSUSE installed.
It took me an embarassingly long time to figure out how to install software on it.
My hard drive on my laptop died in college and I needed to get a paper written in a few days. I didn't money to get a new Windows license and Fedora was free and had a live disc I could burn to install off of in the school's computer lab without getting in trouble. I distro hopped a bit since then, but never went back to Windows. Things worked and it wasn't as hard as people made it sound.
Stopped evangelising when I realised people hate evangelists telling them what they should do. Started leading by example instead. Curious people approach you if they want to learn.
I was massively obsessed with all kinds of computer tech in the late 90s to early 2000s, and read about Linux at some point. I tried a few distros* and enjoyed playing around with them, but a combination of them being a bit rough, and needing to run Windows for games and to support people for my work meant that I couldn’t switch.
Over the years I tried out different distros, and even had home servers running before it was cool (obligatory 😎 ), but because I knew Windows inside out, the things that I was trying to do with Linux were much easier for me on Windows.
A few years ago I bought a few older laptops that ran like dogs even under Windows 7, so tried dual booting Mint. The laptops still struggled, so I had to switch my wife’s back, but I persevered with mine. I upgraded to new to us refurbished laptops and put Mint on mine again. I also switched our media server to Xubuntu at some point over the last few years.
Windows 10 was getting slower and slower, even though it was a 7th gen i5 with an SSD and 32GB RAM, so I bit the bullet and wiped the Windows partition. I upgraded the RAM and added an SSD to my kid’s laptop and did the same. My kid had to have Windows on their desktop because of the problems with Roblox, but the success of the laptops has lead to me dual booting my desktop and trying to switch full time. I’ve got a batch scanning job to finish under Windows because I can’t get the colours to match under Linux, and I’ve got a few thousand photos to process in Photoshop, and then I’m hoping to switch full time.
I’m not an evangelist by any means, but I do wish that Linux had got to this stage a few years earlier, while I was the go to geek for so many of my friends, because I know loads of people who would have loved using it back then :)
*Hoary Hedgehog as an OS name still makes me laugh :D
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