Once Windows got rid of the gorgeous Aero theme starting in Windows 8, plus the shitty UI/UX that Windows got again starting in Windows 8, pushed me to Linux.
Oh my, yes. The benefit is that one you figure it out it’s super easy to create widgets. I wrote from 0 or adapted my own widgets for apt, Spotify, notes, timer, weather alerts… Basic plugins (like system monitor, battery, volume) you can just find online but when you need something custom is real easy. For example I wanted something to alert me when my pihole is down. 30 minutes of scripting and it’s in my tray.
Give it a try. Lua is easy and the api has good documentation. There’s plenty of good widgets to use as examples. And if you have any questions just ask.
I’ve based my theme on sometimes I found but yes, I heavily adapted it. Theming is simple, awesome is flexible but not very pretty. It’s more about usbility. Easily define rules for specific windows, powerful keybindings and so one. For example my config defects if I’m using external monitor or not and changes the widgets accordingly. It’s just one if in the config. I don’t think it’s possible at all in gnome.
Have backups. Use something like Veeam Endpoint or a similar software that will image the entire system in a bootable state, and schedule it daily with incremental storage.
Every day stuff could potentially break something, updates out of your control could break something, hardware failures happen, etc…
Ey @linuxguys I might install a desktop distro on a notebook with Nvidia card I no longer really use to get used to it. I sometimes have to work with Debian servers but I have no more than basic knowledge about Linux. Any distro recommendations, regarding desktop use and gaming (if the notebook is supported at all…)?
If it has those hybrid graphics setups, pop os is made to support those by default. And their flavor of gnome is pretty good, they even have a fully custom DE coming eventually.
Tiling Window Managers. Now that I’ve been using them for some years I don’t understand how stacking is the standard, it’s such a waste of time to manage stuff.
I got into it when I started university and we started using Linux for a few programming classes. My dad helped me set up a dual boot as he had been a Linux user for a decade at this point, and I had used it for some time as well but had to switch to Windows for MS Office bullshit for school and games.
At this point it was kind of cool to use a different OS but I honestly wasn’t much impressed, mainly because of the UI which I later learned was Gnome 3 - Ubuntu had just ditched Unity, but of course I didn’t know anything about this yet.
Then I took my first internship where the first thing we did was install Linux on our computers, and the installer they gave us was Ubuntu 16.04 with the Unity desktop - which I LOVED, holy shit it was amazing, so much better than Gnome 3, and miles better than Windows. The first weeks of the internship were basically purely education, among other things an in-depth intro to Linux, command-line tools and such, and I think this was key - not being alone in the process was very important, and I’m not sure if or when I would have made the full switch without this. I started distro hopping in my free time and loved every moment of it.
This was also coincidentally when gaming on Linux really started taking off with Proton etc, so after experimenting with it, I finally ditched Windows completely and made the full switch in I think 2019, about a decade after my first encounter with Linux, and 2 years after I started using it regularly.
I wouldn’t consider myself an evangelist by any means, I won’t bring the topic up unless asked, but I will recommend taking a look and experimenting in a VM to anyone with an ounce of technical know-how. Furthermore, I think every programmer should be using Linux (yes, literally) unless it’s impossible or too painful in their case - which I think is not many cases.
Okay, I ended up typing a novel but fuck it I’m leaving it here because I loved writing this way too much.
While at university I did a lot of work on the SPARCs and this lead to Unix development as an early career for me. I moved into the windows world after that and I missed Unix so I picked up Linux around 98. I installed it on my work laptop of all things and made everything I needed work. Never looked back since although I run Windows VM for office and testing stuff.
I already wanted to switch since i disliked the privacy issues, and then once my laptop got too slow for windows (1 min in a call/video before i got sound), i replaced the hdd with an ssd and installed linux mint, which i still use.
It started as a dislike of Windows 98 for me, extremely unreliable and buggy OS. I didn’t switch immediately but that was what got me looking for the alternatives, having fully made the switch around the time of Windows XP. Windows only seems to have got worse since then, stories of advertising, forced updates, etc., I’m glad I never had to deal with that.
Windows XP Pro was the last Windows that you could install on as many of your machines as you wanted without contacting M$. When I found that out, I knew that XP would be my last Windows and that I would inevitably switch to Linux. When XP became totally obsolete, I permanently switched over to Linux Mint. I’ve never gone back to Windows and I have zero reason to ever do so. I promote Linux whenever I can.
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