After reading through a thread here on how butthurt MS is that no one is using Windows 11 and the fuckery they're pulling with telemetry and ads possibly coming to File Explorer I said fuck it and made the switch.
My husband is a big Linux nerd and has been running it as his desktop for a decade, so he's doing all the heavy shit. I used to be a Linux sysadmin, but that was twenty-three years ago. It's changed a lot. Even since the last time I tried it as my desktop five years ago. I'm really impressed.
I'm using Ubuntu and KDE plasma as my window manager. I'm using KDE because that's what the SteamDeck uses and I'd like the interface to be as similar as possible between my devices because I'm a retard sometimes.
I use a couple Logitech devices for gaming, the G600 MMO mouse and a G13 gaming keyboard. He spent an entire weekend hacking stuff together to get my G13 working (mostly). Piper let me set most of my G600 keys, but he's going to work on improving it, specifically switching between profiles for different games. There were some very annoying quirks about the G software on Windows that we can solve using scripts that wrap around my game executables. I'm super excited about that.
My printer/scanner that had a generic Canon driver in Windows works perfectly with a proper driver and I'm no longer forced to use a pirated scanner program. KDE connect lets me use my iPhone. Getting pictures off it in Windows never did work very well, it's painless on Linux as long as you know your way around Dolph. The program I use for designing knitting patterns has a native Linux version.
GIMP and Libre Office have drastically improved although I'll have to relearn the interfaces, and while Darktable is not Lightroom it will do what I need - and save me $10/month. When I canceled my Adobe subscription I told them it was because it doesn't work on Linux. Will that do any good? Lol, no. But still. I hated paying for a subscription, but my pirated copies quit working a few years ago. SaaS is the devil. I'm glad to get away from it.
The only thing I haven't gotten working is my Silhouette Cameo. My husband will probably hack on the Inkscape plugin for that more later, but if I have to reboot into windows for that that's fine.
I also can't use korganizer with my iPhone calendars. I can use Thunderbird just fine, but I think I need a newer version of kdev to get korganizer working.
I really do like having kshisen back. I've always loved that game and never found a good version for Windows.
And virtual desktops! So handy.
It's taken a couple weeks to get to where things just work the way I want, but I like the end results.
boilingsteam.com
