Anyone using Linux for their primary system?

[Hearse Pileup]

I think in the near future I want to pretty aggressively migrate to linux. My biggest worry is my dependency on the Adobe family of products.

Has anyone already made the jump? Any recommended software? Any major things they had to get used to? What distro are you using?

I've been using Debian on the server side for a long time, I'd be tempted to use Ubuntu because it 'Just Works', but the telemetry they included when they started embedding Amazon adverts in their platform has put me off somewhat.

 

[Saul Goodman]

I use Linux for a lot of stuff but using it as your primary OS would be like going back to Windows 3.1 days.
You could certainly get by with it but why would you want to punish yourself like that, were you cruel to kittens in a previous life?

 

[two sheds]

Have a dual boot system with Ubuntu which I love dearly and is pretty well rock solid. Using Windows 7 not linked to the web because I only use it for Word documents. Not noticed any Amazon ads (desktop) - although I may have disabled them right at the beginning.

Someone on here recommended Mint and I do actually prefer it - not dual booted though on my second system and (broken) lappy.

Don't really use Adobe though. I think there are alternatives but someone who knows more will indubitably come along.

I'm not hugely technical but I've even got used to Terminal - there's usually something you can find that gives you a list of commands you can just copy across to do what you want.

And I've always liked kittens

 

[souljacker]

I think in the near future I want to pretty aggressively migrate to linux. My biggest worry is my dependency on the Adobe family of products.

Has anyone already made the jump? Any recommended software? Any major things they had to get used to? What distro are you using?

I've been using Debian on the server side for a long time, I'd be tempted to use Ubuntu because it 'Just Works', but the telemetry they included when they started embedding Amazon adverts in their platform has put me off somewhat.

I don't use it as a primary system as it can't run Reason, Ableton, Traktor or any games (without some tinkering anyway). Currently using Debian but if I wanted a primary desktop I'd probably go with Mint.

 

[platinumsage]

I tried this in about 2001 and lasted about a day when I realised I couldn't play any games.

 

[Hearse Pileup]

I'm about to dump my mac (or quite likely to), and then will be left with a windows desktop (my gaming machine).

However I really don't want to code on Windows, and would much rather a fully functional linux machine as much as possible. Games are definitely a source of weakness for me! I guess I could always use my gaming machine as a media station, and then have a less powerful machine as my primary coding platform

 

[souljacker]

I'm about to dump my mac (or quite likely to), and then will be left with a windows desktop (my gaming machine).

However I really don't want to code on Windows, and would much rather a fully functional linux machine as much as possible. Games are definitely a source of weakness for me! I guess I could always use my gaming machine as a media station, and then have a less powerful machine as my primary coding platform

I have a Kali VM that I fire up on my work laptop mainly because I need things like openssl and nmap which I hate using on windows. I also do some python automation and API calls on it because I just find it easier. Mind you, cygwin also does that quite well without using a load of resources.

 

[Hearse Pileup]

Yeah I currently have debian running on my windows subsystem for linux, I'd just really love to be able to move fully OSS, or at least as much as possible. It's easy to do if you want to go full Stallman, but I don't necessarily want to limit myself like that. It seems like a frankenstien approach is likely what I'll have to accept eventually.

 

[Fez909]

I'm about to dump my mac (or quite likely to), and then will be left with a windows desktop (my gaming machine).

However I really don't want to code on Windows, and would much rather a fully functional linux machine as much as possible. Games are definitely a source of weakness for me! I guess I could always use my gaming machine as a media station, and then have a less powerful machine as my primary coding platform

I have a Kali VM that I fire up on my work laptop mainly because I need things like openssl and nmap which I hate using on windows. I also do some python automation and API calls on it because I just find it easier. Mind you, cygwin also does that quite well without using a load of resources.

WSL is worth checking out if you haven't already

 

[souljacker]

I struggled with the windows subsystem when they first did it. You couldn't play with any of the networking tools so it was useless to me working in networking. I've heard it's got better but I'm happy with my VM or cygwin at the moment.

 

[Fez909]

Yeah I currently have debian running on my windows subsystem for linux, I'd just really love to be able to move fully OSS, or at least as much as possible. It's easy to do if you want to go full Stallman, but I don't necessarily want to limit myself like that. It seems like a frankenstien approach is likely what I'll have to accept eventually.

Ah, you already have...sorry didn't see this before my last reply

 

[two sheds]

Ah yes I don't do games. I had a couple installed ooo 20+ years ago but decided they'd just vacuum up my time so I deleted them.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I run Ubuntu 20.04 on my work laptop, not dual-booting, and it's actually very good - in some ways I prefer it to macOS, and it's very snappy. I don't play that many games (certainly not big box stuff) and a lot of things on Steam are for Linux now too, plus I have a Switch anyway. If my main activities were web bullshit and software development, and actually that's quite a lot of what I do even outside of work, I'd be fine with it as my main machine, and I'd certainly say it was fine for most people.

OTOH I have really grown to value the integration of macOS with my phone, particularly for photography, which I do a lot of. It's less of an issue these days as mobile stuff just isn't as significant when you spend 23h a day inside, but before and hopefully after, it makes a lot of difference to be able to edit photos seamlessly on the go and with a laptop, as well as write, manage tasks etc. Plus when I do use apps apart from browsers and PHPStorm, macOS has way more choice and better options, particularly for creative software. So I don't really see the need to change. I could, and if I moved away from Macs for some reason I would go to Linux rather than Windows, but why bother right now? I mean the reason that I started using Macs in the first place was that they were pleasant to use yet I could also open a terminal.

 

[Hearse Pileup]

Ah yes I don't do games. I had a couple installed ooo 20+ years ago but decided they'd just vacuum up my time so I deleted them.

Yeah, I'm too much of a starry eyed creative type; I play games for the same reason I watch movies.

MacOS has it's hooks into me for precisely the reason that they've got good creative tools. I think if I was to fully jump over I'd have to accept some software would just need to run under wine, or something like that. And I'd still need a gaming rig likely.

I'm thinking maybe the way I look at it is I have a beefy PC for multimedia, and then a snappy hacking/coding laptop on the side of some kind.

I keep seeing things like this and get very interested in them

 

[2hats]

For almost 30 years now (since MCC Interim); the Mac is really just, largely, a spiffy looking thin client.

 

[Hearse Pileup]

For almost 30 years now (since MCC Interim); the Mac is really just, largely, a spiffy looking thin client.

I wish this was truer than it is - I'm constantly surprised by how much harder it is to get darwin software to run on linux than it is to get windows software to. In terms of the big applications.

However I really appreciate the similarity of the systems. It's the reason I prefer mac.

 

[lazythursday]

I use Ubuntu as my main system (the standard gnome version) and massively prefer it to Windows. However, Adobe products, which I do use, are a pain in the ass.

I used to run them in a Windows virtual machine which worked well and is not that hard to set up. But you do need plenty of memory, which I am lacking on my current laptop, and I just can't run Adobe products on Windows 10 in a virtual machine without everything staggering to a halt. So what I have done is switch to open source products for some things (I use Gimp rather than photoshop, and Inkscape instead of Illustrator) and I just have to dual boot to Windows when I need to run Indesign. I have a google drive syncing folders across both Windows and Ubuntu to enable it to be as seamless as possible but it's not ideal.

 

[two sheds]

I fucking hate Adobe - I needed to subscribe so I did it for a month and the arseholes kept taking money from my account until I noticed 3-4 months later.

 

[JimW]

I had a few years of using it as my main system as my work's text processing but theres a few translation tools not available and generally found language switching a bit patchier so have drifted back to Windows.
Should give it another look sometime, been a few years and expect things have improved.

 

[Hearse Pileup]

I use Linux for a lot of stuff but using it as your primary OS would be like going back to Windows 3.1 days.
You could certainly get by with it but why would you want to punish yourself like that, were you cruel to kittens in a previous life?

Haha I missed this before.

I've just fallen out of love with the apple attitude to hardware. I also like to know what my machine is doing, and there's a greater chance of that with linux.

 

[editor]

I think in the near future I want to pretty aggressively migrate to linux. My biggest worry is my dependency on the Adobe family of products.

Has anyone already made the jump? Any recommended software? Any major things they had to get used to? What distro are you using?

I've been using Debian on the server side for a long time, I'd be tempted to use Ubuntu because it 'Just Works', but the telemetry they included when they started embedding Amazon adverts in their platform has put me off somewhat.

How do you 'aggressively migrate' to a different OS? Do you swear as it's downloading? Kick the PC box about a bit?

I've tried Linux many times and never got on with it. I know fans think it's super easy but I just got fed up having to tinker about with things. The only OS I really like is Chrome OS, which I know is Linux-based, but is incredibly easy to use.

 

[Hearse Pileup]

How do you 'aggressively migrate' to a different OS? Do you swear as it's downloading? Kick the PC box about a bit?

You lose access to your previous machine and need to quickly decide what platform you're going to work from for your career. I'd call that pretty aggessive if you're going to go all in on a new system.

In reality I'll probably have other options available; but if I can just decide not to buy another mac I'd rather just do that. Like, I really don't like what they've become.

I've never really explored chrome books; if anything I'm trying to distance myself more from apple and Google, so I'm not sure it's something really worth me exploring. We've already had discussions about privacy etc. in the facebook thread

E2A: Worth exploring for me that is, I fully acknowladge that they may be good, usable machines

 

[lazythursday]

How do you 'aggressively migrate' to a different OS? Do you swear as it's downloading? Kick the PC box about a bit?

I've tried Linux many times and never got on with it. I know fans think it's super easy but I just got fed up having to tinker about with things. The only OS I really like is Chrome OS, which I know is Linux-based, but is incredibly easy to use.

I used to do lots of tinkering, both because I needed to and because I quite liked tinkering - but I really don't any more. Unless you've got some really new technology, its rare for something like Ubuntu to not 'just work' these days.

 

[editor]

I used to do lots of tinkering, both because I needed to and because I quite liked tinkering - but I really don't any more. Unless you've got some really new technology, its rare for something like Ubuntu to not 'just work' these days.

Well, it won't 'just work' with some of the software I want to run, for starters!

 

[Argonia]

I use Linux and I love it!

 

[Saul Goodman]

I used to do lots of tinkering, both because I needed to and because I quite liked tinkering - but I really don't any more. Unless you've got some really new technology, its rare for something like Ubuntu to not 'just work' these days.

Ubuntu itself will likely 'just work' but most people like to use software that isn't part of the OS, and that's where the problems start.

 

[lazythursday]

Well, it won't 'just work' with some of the software I want to run, for starters!

well that's a different problem, and one you'd also likely find on Chrome OS and depending on the software, Mac too. With more and more done in the browser now I find it less and less of a problem but yes, will always hold linux back.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I could probably do game dev just on Linux. Unity runs natively on it, as does Blender, and the GIMP certainly good enough for game graphics (or almost all graphics work tbh). Obviously if you want to do something like write browser games you are fine there too - all the tools for developing JS applications are there or an apt-get away.

If I only edited photos on a laptop/desktop and didn't care about the phone sync I'd be fine as well I imagine. I'd have to sort out some sort of storage for them but that's the case regardless of platform... iCloud and Photos just makes it really easy to do cross-device. (I have, for example, taken photos at a protest, put them on my phone with a card reader, edited some particularly good ones and put them straight on social, then got my laptop out later to look at the rest and they were all in my library ready for me. No messing about importing again or losing edits I'd already done. In fact if I'm bored I'll go through adding descriptions to photos on my phone and touching up old pics, which I know will sync back to the macbook without me having to do anything.)

 

[dervish]

I have been using linux in various incarnations as my main os for many years now. I'm currently trying Manjaro which is very good in some ways but quite annoying in others. The easiest variant I have found for simply pick up and playability is PopOS from System 76. They have used a base of Ubuntu but added most of the stuff that you would need, including Steam and the correct Nvidia drivers. It required very little fiddling to get a decent experience.

I also run an ubuntu server which I am slowly migrating to debian on new hardware.

I'm probably going to go back to PopOS fairly soon, Manjaro is great but pop is easier.

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

Been using mint for the last few month, perfectly usable out of the box.
I don't need to use any adobe software so can't comment on that; some of the microsoft office stuff suffers when opened in libre/open office though and doesn't quite display correctly but less so as time moves on.