this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Linux

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179
Finally using Linux as my desktop (self.linux)
submitted 1 week ago by GreatBlueHeron to c/[email protected]
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I'm a retired Unix admin. I've been using Linux since I installed Slackware 3.1 from several boxes of 1.44MB diskettes. But, working in a corporate environment with lots of M$ Office requirements meant that my work desktop has always been Windows. I know it sounds crazy, but I was really hesitant to switch to away from Windows - I guess after 30+ years I'd developed a bit of Stockholm syndrome. But, Copilot and the looming Recall were enough to push me over the edge.

Anyway - I spent a while making sure I got all my data off OneDrive etc. and then installed Debian 12 with LXDE - my laptop is an older i7 with 16GB of RAM, but lightweight and minimal really appeals to me. Everything just worked and I was happy for a day or two. Then I started noticing video tearing - especially on my 2nd monitor. I did a bit of research and found a suggestion to enable TearFree in the X11 configuration - X wouldn't even start when I did that. So, I did some more reading and now think I understand that the lightweight window managers don't have vsync and this causes the tearing. Apparently the real solution is to use a compositing window manager (I don't understand what that means..) with OpenGL. Oh well, I can't have minimal lightweight - so, I installed KDE. It's very clean and no video tearing. I still don't have it doing power management for my monitors the way I want, but other than that - I'm very happy. It was noticeably sluggish compared to LXDE, but I'm used to that already after only a day.

It's only been a few days, but I have not regretted the switch for one second.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thats great! KDE is a cool desktop environment, I love how customisable it is.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago

KDE is a ~~cool~~ kool desktop environment

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (3 children)

OneDrive works pretty well on Linux actually. Takes a few lines of config and there’s no GUI but it’ll sync a folder nicely and run as a service.

[–] GreatBlueHeron 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I thought about that, and we have space available because my wife is still paying for office for her machine, but I just want nothing to do with Microsoft any more.

[–] ragepaw 3 points 1 week ago

OnlyOffice works with MSOffice files (100% compatibility is a stated goal), and it looks like MSOffice in terms of UI.

I even replaced MSOffice with it in Windows.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

I've found 2 GUI's, one better than other. First one is OneDrive_Tray. Minimalistic and you have to compile it yourself. The other is OneDriveGUI which you either compile yourself or download the appimage.
They both use abraunegg's onedrive CLI, so it's a given one installs that.
Anyway, OneDriveGUI has a nice account login feature, which makes it a bit easier to setup than having to set up the config file yourself as with OneDrive_Tray.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Heresy! Get the torches and pitchforks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I know but it’s cheap.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Never too late to switch. Welcome to the club.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

@melroy @GreatBlueHeron Totally agree. Enjoy it!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Glad for you. It is not as easy as they paint it, specially here, but moving to Linux still good in so many aspects and I applaud you for doing so. Hold on tight on the ride, it is frustrating sometimes but worth it overall.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The ease of switching really just depends. Myself, I've had several stumbles switching, but I'm still so happy I did and I'm not going back. My wife on the other hand, has had no issues switching from her Chromebook, because she's a super basic user who spends all her time in the browser.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

True... we should identify those users using just the browser and basic word processor operations. Make sure their printers are well connected and they will notice barely any changes at all... Us, power users, are who actually struggle with the conversion so we tend not to persuade non power users because we think we will bring them similar headaches.

If the user uses just browser and a word editor, he/she is ready since 8 years ago without any mayor hiccup.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Why not slackware again?

Also welcome back!

[–] GreatBlueHeron 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Because I only used it for a few months and it was a while ago! It was ony mentioned to age me. Not long after I installed it we got nice new RS/6000 860 laptops and I ran an AIX desktop for a couple of years. Then we got Intel laptops and Windows.

I went with Debian because I've been running Ubuntu servers at home for years (since zfs on Linux became solid enough that I could switch from FreeBSD) so I'm comfortable with apt package management and wanted to stick with that. I didn't want to stay with Ubuntu because of the commercialisation creeping in.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's fair man! Debian is pretty nice. I haven't daily driven it but you do tend to get stuck on older versions of things unless you're on sid (similar with slackware unless you're on current) Oh damn what were your reasons for moving from freebsd back to Linux?

Also feel free to stop by the Slackware community!

[–] GreatBlueHeron 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh damn what were your reasons for moving from freebsd back to Linux?

My work was AIX, HP/UX and a bit of Solaris. Linux development was starting to get to the stage where our customers were looking at using it for "real" workloads and I figured I should get comfortable with it again so I'd be in a position to take on production servers at work.

I don't think I'm concerned about being on older (stable) stuff - I really only use Firefox (I dumped the Debian release and added the Firefox repository) and a few utilities like a music player etc.

I was also considering openSUSE Tumbleweed and didn't really decide not to do it - it's just that a USB with Debian was sitting on my desk when I decided to do it, so that's what I used. A big part of my anxiety about switching from Windows was getting my data under control - now that I've done that it won't be an issue to switch distros so I might give it a go. I may even try Slackware again now that you've got me thinking about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

That makes sense. The world runs on Linux, freebsd and then somewhere down the line macs and windows servers.

Thats fair. That problem only comes into play when you're dealing with really new hardware like things with NPUs or the amd ai processors.

Hahaha love it! And the anxiety is legit I used to have an NTFS partition for the longest time till I found a way to consolidate things to my Linux partition.

Woo hoo!! Fair warning while somethings have become easier, Slackware is still Slackware tho but better build processes thru slackbuild etc. The rest of the Linux space has kind of crustaceaned with how they do things due to systemd.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Very solid choice in distro

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

All that's missing is a fetch screenshot to celebrate

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

KDE was a horrible crashy memory fucking mess not that long ago. It has improved dramatically and is considerably more efficient than it once was. It’s a great desktop environment to start out with. If you are curious about other, similar options, check out cinnamon or cosmic.

[–] GreatBlueHeron 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I'm not sure how long ago "not that long ago" is for you - I just had a look through the history of KDE and, based on my familiarity with the various screen images posted there, I think is about 20 years since I last tried it :-)

I'll have a look at cinnamon and cosmic - thanks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

plasma 4 i think it was was a disaster at first

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I too, was a Slackware floppy fan.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (2 children)

If you like screen or tmux, you might like a tiling window manager like i3 or sway, or GNOME with paperwm extension. It can have real advantages for older folks (like me) which don't have perfect vision any more, because it is much more conservative with screen space. After a few days learning, it becomes also really fast to switch windows and desktops. This is not black-or-white: The desktop WMs do have keyboard shortcuts and windows layouts which mimick tiling WMs, and tiling WMs may have a few desktop features. The former are a bit more convenient and easy for beginners, while the latter are blazingly fast.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Every since i got introduced to tiling WM's i literally cannot use anything else. Its does take a bit of time to understand it and learn how to configure it, but i've learned so much about linux in general because of it.

[–] GreatBlueHeron 2 points 1 week ago

I've thought about trying a tiling window manager, but I don't think I'd get the benefit. I don't really do a lot these days and normally just have one or two things going concurrently and with two screens that's trivial to layout.

The main thing I struggle with (with my old eyes) is things like Firefox that override the normal window manager decorations - I find the edges get lost and they blend into each other. A tiling window manager would help with this, but I just turned off Firefox's ability to do that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Glad to have you with us. I daresay a retired Unix admin might be able to make more than a few good suggestions for improvements, which ultimately benefits everybody. God, I love open source.