Well, I’ve certainly went down a rabbit hole.
Gonna not really sugar coat it, I’ve pretty much switched to Linux, more specifically EndeavourOS. This isn’t really the first time I’ve switched to Linux, and honestly I don’t know if this whole thing is permanent or not, but at the current moment, I am enjoying my time with the thing that isn’t Windows, which is really funny because DataQuest is still set in Windows.
I should type again that this isn’t my first time with Linux, I’ve used it a lot over the years, most of it being on a Raspberry PI. I’ve tried out Ubuntu a few years ago on a VM, but until recently, that was the extent of that. When I got said Raspberry PI, I experimented with it, from making an emulation machine that no one used, to making a shitty Twitter bot, and one time a terrible Minecraft Server because it’s a 3B and not a 4.
As for the actual reason I switched, it’s more of a simple matter of just simply going “Man, I’ve really been watching a lot of YouTube videos about Linux, more specifically videos about tiling window managers, maybe I should have a Linux distro so I can mess around with it.” Before remembering that I already installed Manjaro on my computer and have only been using it as a bootloader, so I finally had an actual reason to use it, even if it was just to have a thing to customize the fuck out of.
About 1 year and 3 months ago, I used another Manjaro distro as my daily driver, it wasn’t much, but for that one month I was using it, I loved it, but, going back to Windows was a weird wake up call for one reason, shit just kinda worked. Like, I could just do a thing and not have to worry about compatibility.
Fast forward to about a month ago and the whole customizing thing really brought out why I loved linux, I was just able to do whatever the fuck I wanted with it. I started just casually using the tiling window manager that I was customizing, Awesome, and honestly, it just felt better to use compared to Windows, like, yeah I had a major learning curve with it, but I still had a good time using it. I did try other window managers like Openbox and i3, but awesome was at that point where it was understandable for me to customize and built enough to not need it to be programmed to work that I was able to get a basic theme going on with it.
Of course, there still was the Manjaro installation thing, but I circumvented that by just… switching to Endeavour. Surprisingly, things just worked even better after that. Like, there were still some kinks to iron out like my USB ports being turned off due to a power-saving package, and Pipewire being very fucky with Cadmus, but once I removed the power-saving package and ditched Cadmus for EasyEffects, shit just kinda… worked. I surprisingly haven’t had a real problem with my software ever since I ironed out the kinks, and honestly, I’m really happy about that. For the first time in a long time, doing things on my computer just feels fun to do.
I still have my Windows install incase I need it for some reason, like a borked game or software that I need that I can’t emulate with WINE, but other than that, Linux has been my daily driver for about a month again and I’m really happy.
It’s also kind of forced me to try out Vim, which I’m fine with, there’s a lot of things I still don’t know about this thing, but I’m getting pretty decent with it. That’s why if you look in the source code for this site, I reformatted it to be a bit more readable for myself in vim. Not everything was touched, but some things were changed to fit the whole 80 columns thing.
(UPDATE 8/21/22: With the whole porting this site to HUGO thing, that doesn’t apply anymore, also, I kinda don’t like vim anymore, the more I used it the more bleh it felt compared to just, typing in something like vscode.)
But yeah, I think that’s it, just wanted to talk about my switch to Linux and how that’s going, overall, having a good time, Proton’s good, do I recommend this for everyone? Probably not everyone, especially those who don’t sit on their computer 24/7 and like to code. But it definitely fits me, so I think I’ll be fine with what I have. I did hear the steam deck is really good, so if you do want to do linux stuff without needing the technical know how, that’s probably a good start.
I know people joke about saying how Arch is a good start for beginners, but from experience, nah. It’s very customization, which is why I’m using it, but something like Linux Mint is probably a better starter. I only switched because I like to program, the existence of this site being an indicator of that.
Hey Discord, can you please make your program actually good on Linux and allow screen sharing with audio, literally the only downside for me right now.