Bottom Line; Up Front After 10 years away, Linux feels like home again.
Returning After 10 Years It should come as no suprise that the Linux Desktop changed a lot in the last 10 years. When I left, distributions were debating whether to adopt systemd[1] as a SysVinit[2] replacement and pulseaudio[3] was still rough around the edges yet being adopted as the default sound server. Gaming on Linux was difficult and required a lot of manual effort.
Bottom Line; Up Front This post is a collection of advice and lessons learned from over 20 years of using Linux on desktops, servers, embedded systems, and IoT.
Before You Begin New users should have a clear reason for trying Linux before beginning. The reason can be as simple as wanting to try something new and different, or it could be to learn new skills to enhance your career or pivot to a new career.
Bottom Line; Up Front Deep diving into the source code of mount.cifs to understand cifs_mount return codes in dmesg led to a bug report and a fix coming in a future kernel update.
Scenario Today after applying updates, including a new kernel, I noticed files disappearing from Rhythmbox. My music collection is stored on a network share, and for some reason it wasn’t mounted. I have it set up using autofs[1] to mount on demand rather than making it persistent.
Bottom Line; Up Front If a game won’t launch using Lutris, use the -b command line argument to generate a bash script to run the game without the client.
The Scenario About a month ago I updated my laptop to Pop!_OS 22.04. With that came new quirks and rough edges to smooth out, as is always the case during major distribution upgrades. My day-to-day work wasn’t interrupted, so a problem lurking with a game I do not play frequently wasn’t caught immediately after the upgrade.
Bottom Line; Up Front Linux has improved a lot in the last 10 years. It is more polished, and has better hardware support, but there are still small problems that aren’t commonly seen with macOS or Windows.
Quirks I think among the defining characteristics of Linux desktops are the quirks one encounters during regular use. I define something as a quirk when there is an obvious, undesired behavior. It may or may not be consistent, but there is often a workaround or alternative.
Bottom Line; Up Front My Linux Daily Driver, an 8th generation Oryx Pro from System 76 running Pop!_OS, is the best computer I’ve ever owned.
A Little Backstory Prior to 2022 my daily driver was a 2019 iMac. I bought it in mid 2019 to replace an aging 2013 MacBook Pro. The MacBook served me well, but it was starting to show its age, especially when gaming. I went with an iMac as a replacement because, at the time, I planned on sticking with the Apple ecosystem.
Bottom Line; Up Front Digitally signing a PDF is a simple task; however, properly configuring Okular to sign documents can be challenging for new users.
Background The inspiration for this post comes from a Linus Tech Tips video[1]. The video is part three of a four part series where Linus and Luke use desktop Linux as their daily driver. In this video they were trying to accomplish a variety of day-to-day tasks using a Linux desktop.