Writing about my first week using Linux
As promised in my earlier post, I decided to write a diary of my experience with Linux on these first few days. So here it is along some of my considerations!
Why did I want to install Linux?
The enshittification of Windows is something that bothers me a lot but by itself it wasn't enough for me to drop it. There was both me being too comfortable to try something different and being dependent on programs that I knew weren't on Linux or were better on Windows, so I stuck with it.
The moment Furnace 0.6 released I realized I had pretty much nothing keeping me tied to Windows anymore so the thought started cooking in my head, fed by other factors such as:
- Having a bunch of Linux nerds in my friend circles
- Been using mostly FOSS programs in my daily life
- Not really playing non-emulator games on PC anymore
- I had been using WSL more and more for running some command line programs or writing docs like the MML Guide
So it's really a me thing, being sure it would probably be fine when I switched. I don't intend this post as a manifesto urging people to try it, just a documentation of my experiences and thoughts on it.
Day 1:
Installed a new SSD on my PC, surprisingly, this was the hardest part of this whole day. Installed Windows on the new SSD for having a safe haven if anything goes wrong, Installed Pop!OS on the old one.
Setup was very simple and easy. I had a problem that the system wouldn't boot after rebooting a couple times as I went on. A friend helped me troubleshoot it and it was a problem with the SSD it's installed on. Maybe it's because it's an old one? I was afraid I'd have to reinstall but I was able to fix it on the kernel with his help.
Using the OS is pretty fun! I feel there are some quirks with the Desktop Environment I'll have to get used to, but I don't think are bad. Friend helped me with a couple things I couldn't figure out or had to do through the terminal and it worked out well. Everything else was mostly fine.
So far the only 2 problems I have are:
- Having to use another client for Discord if I want to stream with audio is kinda suck-y, as I like my push-to-talk and the alt client I was recommended can't fully used it.
- I'm having a crash with Anki whenever I log in. No idea why, but it was late when I tried it so gotta look into that tomorrow.
Day 2:
Tried to do Anki in the morning, booted into Windows and it turns out the crash wasn't a Linux-only problem. Brute forcing by pressing enter repeated times before it crashed somehow worked??
Watched the second season of She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat's live action with a friend. MPV had an issue with colors so I switched to VLC and watching and streaming it to discord was fine for the most part.
Tested some emulators and using Agent. First time figuring out myself how to run a program since it's not in any package manager. This one acts on other processes too so it as a bit tough but I managed to hook and I can go back to reading Higurashi in japanese with no troubles... or so I thought before I realized I hadn't backed up the save at all... oof.
For the rest of the day I just played modded Minecraft, had my first problem with audio but another friend also had it before and helped me solve. And was surprised to not have it crash on me even once, considering how often it was happening on Windows.
Google Drive integration of the OS isn't a proper client... this is a bummer since Furnace can't load from it... Gotta look into an alternative later.
Day 3:
Internet connection not working because of my ISP. But the OS doesn't recognize it as "no internet connection" so a bunch of apps keep trying to connect until giving up... this is a bummer. Also I realized now that I haven't backed a few of the offline tools I use for Japanese learning... ughhh...
Since I don't have a connection anyways, I started exploring some of the system tools and the disk manager is really good. Managed to free some space on my old HDD I didn't even know was possible! There are probably 3rd party programs like this for Windows but having it by default instead of the generic "photos" "applications" etc that Windows displays.
Set up Japanese input and I'm actually surprised that's better than Windows in my use case. The Japanese IME on Windows changes the keyboard layout to fit the Japanese one, which is very close to the American one, this is messy for me speaking multiple languages because the symbols keep switching places so I often type a ` when I was supposed to write a '. This often made markdown cumbersome, and things like this doesn't happen at all in Linux and I'm very pleased!
I saw a video about the recompilation of Majora's Mask and tried to run it, but it didn't work at all. Apparently it's a known problem that's solved by building it yourself but there are no building instructions yet. I tried running the Windows version through Steam, but it didn't work, so I guess I'll wait for a Flatpak or the build instructions.
Started having trouble with apps having full access and/or permissions to my old HDD. A friend helped me test through various things to fix but it turns out there seems to be some kind of corruption in the file system. A possible solution apparently involves trying to do a few things on Windows but it got late so saving it for another day.
Day 4:
Somehow launching Majora's Mask through Steam worked now. Before it didn't even download the Proton runtime so uh idk, now it works I guess. It's cool! Feels wrong to play OG Majora's Mask at this smooth of a frame rate but it's also refreshing. I'm thorn if I'll try to finish it, not having support for the japanese version is a huge downer since I want to get some immersion in while I game...
Finally set up a cloud sync. One Drive's integration with onedriver is pretty good and fits all my needs for work. Also I realize now I didn't talk much about Furnace but yeah I've been working with it and it's pretty much seamless as I had the hindsight of backing up my settings when I was on Windows. It's my main music-making program for my current projects, so I'm really glad! And now I got Cloud backup to be safe.
I learned how to use Bottles to install and run windows games. Couldn't figure out much for my own but a friend walked me through it and I installed The Sims 2. And it runs better than it did on Windows 10! With a smoother framerate and no visual glitches, gotta love!
Finally tried MuseScore 4 with Muse Sounds! And god did this make me want to go back to writing sheet music again...
Day 5:
Just a normal workday, nothing happened and it was a seamless experience ´v`
Day 6:
Finished fixing the corruption problem problem with my HDD. Needed to boot into Windows since it was because of its NTFS system, so after a chkdsk and waiting a few hours it started working like I expected it to. Really thankful I didn't need to lose my data for this.
Did my taxes, income from outside of the country can only be registered through the app. Was ready to have boot into Windows again but thankfully they provided a linux build (it's just java so I shouldn't have been surprised).
Day 7:
Remembered Inochi2d and tried to set it up and it was very straightforward. The session app glitched with post-processing on but I've never used that in my model, so just turning that off will do until there's an update. In many ways the face capture feels better and smoother than it was on Windows? Not by much though, still wish I had an iphone for this.
Final Veredict:
Yeah I'm keeping Linux, for now at least. It's been a refreshing experience and I've already felt like I've learned a lot about computers in the process. As I reread what I've wrote it's clear that is an experience that comes with a lot of "figuring out" like I heard many times about it, but it's not that different from the figuring out I was already doing on Windows with how much I use FOSS programs.
The downsides stick out in the diary, but it's because everything else was too seamless to notice. Navigating the internet and using webapps works well, listening to music works well (Lollypop is pretty good!), Aseprite works well, most games I played ran well (emulators and indies), music hardware and drawing tablet were just plug-and-play, etc. etc.
I'll still keep the dual boot about for non-chiptune work or other cases I might need Windows for, but yeah.
Honestly I'm surprised that the only real issues I had so far were related to hardware more than the OS itself.
The only complaint I have, if any is that by Pop!OS being based on Ubuntu 22.04 it means the apps I can get from the distro are often outdated. This problem is solved by Flatpak, but I'm working off a 256GB SSD so it would be good to save some space... but it's no biggie for now.
I might switch distros but I'll wait for the new version of the Cosmic DE to be released, as it seems to be really good, if it delivers I'll stick with it or if not I'll just look into another one.
Overall, it's been pretty fun!