After being Linux exclusive on my personal laptop(s) for over a decade, I just went back to Windows + WSL 2.
With WSL 2, there's very little reason to use Linux desktop any more. The windows cleartype, touchpad driver and sleep work a lot better while giving you a regular Linux environment and you don't have to dual boot to get Office and creative software
> With WSL 2, there's very little reason to use Linux desktop any more.
My personal reasons to stick to Linux:
- my DE is fully keyboard-driven (Windows is mouse-centric to be point of being unusable to me)
- better support for complex networking (NAT, multiple route tables/VRFs/netnses, etc - just last week I had to run my entire network uplink through USB tethering, which was a breeze on Linux)
- system update when I want it, zero system-mandated reboots
- easy debuggability of software failures (Windows, when fails, is a black box and your only option to fix things is to enter black magic commands from random forum threads - without possibility of actually understanding what failed, looking at source code, etc)
- no feeling of always fighting against malicious, privacy-disrespecting software (it's not that I can't disable ads and tracking, but I really don't want to have to do that)
This thread is very timely, as I'm looking to switch from macOS to Linux, and I tried years ago, but was turned off by difficulties getting the keyboard setup the way I wanted it.
One of my favorite macOS applications is "ShortCat", which allows you to chord a shortcut (cmd-shift-space) and gives you a "GUI search" wherein any text that is on the screen (on any monitor) becomes selectable by typing it and choosing a selection...kind of like the way Vimium works in the browser, but for your multi-application context. I am comfortable with vim bindings generally but don't really care as long as there is consistency (pre-baked preferable, but configurable works). I've tried Linux years and years ago and my biggest gripe was that there was no unified "system" for handling setup of keyboard shortcuts / macros. "One system to rule them all" would be ideal, or at least "one system for each context layer, consistent between applications."
I am getting option paralysis since I know there will be a learning curve, and I don't want to spend a lot of time customizing just to find that the distro I picked is not going to meet my needs without a ton of deep customization. What Linux distro and/or window manager is going to get me multi-monitor HiDPI support with good keyboard-only navigation? From lurking HN i3 looks like it might be favored in my situation?
I want a workflow that allows me to easily jump from window-context to window-context, tab-to-tab, sub-window to sub-window, independent of monitor or applications.
I would consider something minimal like NixOS or Arch if someone could recommend a good playbook/setup for someone like me, and Manjaro and Pop_OS both look cool, but otherwise will probably default to Ubuntu for beginner google-fu.
I run both Manjaro on my laptop and PopOS on my workstation, and highly recommend both as great options to someone coming from MacOS like I did. PopOS on System76 hardware is very much like MacOS on Apple hardware in that things just work and you can get three years of great tech support. I've run Pop on other machines and it just works well. Manjaro is a blast because you always have the latest software and the installation is easy. While Ubuntu is perhaps an easy default, I can't really recommend 20.04 with the same enthusiasm as Pop 20.04 or the latest Manjaro release, as I have seen a lot of folks have problems. Try out PopOS - you really won't be disappointed, and will probably be delighted like I was.
I've recently installed Pop!_OS, mostly because I heard good things about its installer (setting up FDE on a secondary SSD is completely insane in Ubuntu).
But their tiling window manager extension is the real gem in my opinion. It's very clearly a v1.0, but I am still surprised by how much I enjoy it: https://github.com/pop-os/shell
Absolutely - I had been playing with i3 and other tiling window managers, but I always miss the full DE experience when using them. Pop-shell looks like it might fill the gap between Gnome and i3: tiling goodness with a full DE. I am looking forward to System76 developing the extension!
You can actually operate the entirety of Windows UI with just the keyboard. That's one reason why the great majority of handicapped users use Windows and not macOS or Linux.
Can you give some examples? I've found it to be pretty good with the basic stuff like switching applications or workspaces, snapping windows to the left or right half of the screen, opening and closing arbitrary things. I can think of some ways I'd like it to be better though, like making the left/right halves arbitrary sizes with the keyboard.
I have yet to figure out how I can quickly move one window to another workspace in windows. Under mint, I just do Ctrl+Alt+Sfit+H/L to move a window to the previous or next workspace. I also have Windows+T mapped to open a terminal, which I do everything in these days.
I very often use complex window layouts [1], not just side-by-side. The fact that I can ask my window manager to arrange them for me, in the way I want, without having to drag them, and without them ever overlapping, and without wasting screen space on useless window decorations, is something I'm just too used to to switch back to the way Windows would have me manually arrange and resize them.
Mandated, automatic updates have their downsides, especially for some of the HN crowd, but for 99% of the population I really appreciate that patching is automatic for the other 95%+ of users. Getting the vast majority of computers in world quickly up to current security patches protects users and creates something akin to "herd immunity" where exploits become fairly useless to bad actors.
That's not the problem, it's that the update can't be done in the background.
On iPad or iPhone, when I get an update, it installs overnight and my device is immediately available to use after restarting.
On every Windows device I've ever had since Windows 8, I have to sit there and wait for some reason. (I've already selected the 'use my sign-in information to speed up...' option)
Every single time that Windows updates, there is no way to get it to perform the entire process when I'm not using the device. As soon as I restart or log in, there is more lengthy 'configuration' or 'working on updates' to be done. It's unacceptable.
Apart from the fact Linux has total customisability, a working search function, doesn't spy on its users, has programs to run Windows apps, isn't anti-consumer, and of course is free.
Maybe you missed the part where I said I was Linux exclusive for a decade plus. For me the trade-offs aren't worth it anymore - I'm mainly interested in a Linux programming environment. I'm sure the trade-offs are different for others.
Maybe it's just your use case - but I've just switched someone over to Linux and it seems to be suiting them much better than Windows - granted they're running older hardware, but we would've had to throw that laptop away otherwise, as Windows 10 is absolute garbage when installed on an HDD.
The person in question was really quite attached to their Laptop and after a failed HDD, we just took another one we had lying around, tried to save Windows (but to no avail), and finally decided to put LinuxLite [1] on it.
People who mostly utilize a browser in their day-to-day computer usage don't have any advantage in using Windows whatsoever.
I haven't yet used Linux for that long, (only around two years as may daily driver) but I can't imagine ever going back to Windows, except for very few select games, which aren't yet supported natively or via Proton/Wine.
And I keep hearing about the touchpad driver issue, but I really can't find a single difference between my Windows and Linux boxes, maybe I'm not sensitive enough, or have much lower standards in that regard, I really can't tell.
Sure, Windows Office and some Adobe software isn't there yet when used via Wine, I'll give you that. I personally do just fine with Blender, Gimp and Inkscape on the graphics front. I can't speak for the usability of the Libre-office suite, but it's done the job for the few times I had to use it.
I've also used Linux on the desktop for over a decade, and I have to use Windows 10 at work every day. In my experience, Windows is still not Linux. I don't know what kind of laptops you've had to run Linux on, but my desktop experience has generally been much better than on Windows. Sure you have the occasional tussle with things that don't work at install (although it's getting better). But once things are set up you don't have to fiddle so much anymore and it's usually smooth sailing from then on. Things just work.
I don't want to get into details about what's missing, although I could go on for a while on that. I'll only share one small use-case.
Linux spoils you with the belief that you can just set up your work environment once and find everything exactly where you left it. So imagine that you have 8 desktops and you've spread and organized things nice and tidy: browsing on Desktop1, work environment for app1 (git, log, tests, editor, etc) on D2, work environment for app2 on D3, media on D4, email on D5, experimental stuff on D6, on and on, you catch the drift. That setup out of the way, you can just show up and work on whatever you want, each day, every day, for months.
Now the Windows experience. Everything works at install, but then you try to turn Windows into Linux, you tweak at it and you get maybe 80% of the way in. Not bad, you can get some work done. Then you're reminded of the Windows reality: the dreaded updates. You basically never stop updating. Firewall, antivirus, drivers, apps and rebooting.
That's just one thing, I could go on with others (someone else pointed, no pun intended, with Windows obsession's with the mouse).
> The windows cleartype, touchpad driver and sleep work a lot better
On my ThinkPad the official touchpad driver for Windows is worse than the default one on Linux. And sleep/suspend does not work reliably on Windows 10 since it may wake up your PC at any time and run a system update, closing your session in the process. I still find forced updates unacceptable and nothing will change that. There's not much I hate more than software that tries to act smart. It always backfires in some way.
What do you mean by "official touchpad driver"? Official = IBM / Lenovo?
You should look into if you have the official Microsoft touchpad driver aka Microsoft Precision Touchpad Driver as that is much better than any third party driver.
On Windows the middle mouse button on the TrackPoint will either work as middle mouse button or for scrolling. I have to change the config to switch between the two modes.
On Linux it just works™ like it should. Creates a middle mouse click when clicked, scrolls when I drag the TrackPoint.
I'm a Windows guy, but after switching my newer Lenovo Flex 5 laptop to Linux Mint, I am amazed how well it functions. Everything just worked, even my touchscreen. The battery lasts a good 20-30% longer and the fan isn't running nearly as much. I still dual boot into Windows occasionally to do updates, but so far I am impressed how far desktop Linux has come.
Went the same route with WSL2 as nearly everything i need for my daily programming tasks just works and having windows just an alt+tab away for games / office etc. makes it more pleasant to use.
Maybe i`m just getting old and dual booting etc. isn`t my thing anymore but i don`t see myself setting up another distro anytime soon after 20 years.
With WSL 2, there's very little reason to use Linux desktop any more. The windows cleartype, touchpad driver and sleep work a lot better while giving you a regular Linux environment and you don't have to dual boot to get Office and creative software