{"id":525,"date":"2024-07-09T23:27:19","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T22:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/10.1.7.2:9701\/?p=525"},"modified":"2025-06-18T02:51:28","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T01:51:28","slug":"im-on-linux-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/525\/im-on-linux-now\/","title":{"rendered":"I’m on Linux now."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently I took the initiative to swap my new laptop’s OS from Windows 11 to Linux (Pop!_OS<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since having a laptop with Windows 11, I’ve struggled with RAM usage, and have been seeing long periods of buffering on apps such as Discord and Steam. I’d be on three chrome tabs and my computer would already be slowing down, and when I’d open Task Manager my RAM would be on full usage. This laptop has 8GB RAM, and all I really do on it is access the web and use Microsoft Word for school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why Pop!_OS?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For those that don’t know, Linux isn’t exactly an operating system produced by a single organization. It comes in the form of several distributions produced by varying organizations using the ‘Linux Kernel’ which is the very core of the operating system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I settled for Pop!_OS because it is a very streamline operating system, it is Ubuntu-based so many online guides are suitable for me to use if I ever need any help, and I just thought it feels nice. It is essentially just Ubuntu but with some added defaults and customization, such as the Pop!_Shop, which is just an integrated store on Pop!_OS with all the necessary apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
My Pop!_OS Home Screen<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My First Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

E-Mail<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The first thing I noticed when booting up into my fresh Pop!_OS install is that I was immediately prompted to setup my email by IMAP and SMTP, which I was fascinated by as I really liked the support for this on the OS level, something that wasn’t as easy on Windows 11. This meant that I could immediately link my self-hosted email server to my laptop from the get-go. There are also several good free mail clients on Linux with sleek designs, unlike those I’ve seen on Windows 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The default Pop!_OS mail client.<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Open-VPN<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The second thing I did as soon as I had installed Pop!_OS was setup Open-VPN. This is also a feature that is integrated into the operating system which caught my attention. This meant that without downloading any additional software, I was already able to VPN into my home-lab from anywhere, already able to access all my apps and my NAS, which is key because I’m always on my home network whilst in school as that is where my school files are stored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Overall the feel and look of the operating system is nice and clean, it is very quick, and every time I check resource monitor my RAM is at a nice low usage, and my CPU never goes above 20%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One other thing I liked <\/strong>was the Pop!_Shop… until…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Struggles I’ve overcome<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pop!_Shop<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Two days into using Pop!_Shop, I realised it was utterly useless. Whenever I’d try to search for an app on the Pop!_Shop it would just crash and give me a ‘not responding’ message. I ended up just removing it from my toolbar. I’ve been using flathub<\/a> as a substitute, which works very well for me. I just download a 4KB flatpak file onto my computer, and it runs all the commands for me and installs the software I need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apps I need<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

For school, I need to use Office 365 apps such as Word and PowerPoint for my note-taking. I thought that maybe I’d find a nice self-hosted software I can attach to a subdomain on dsla.co.uk<\/a>. I was specifically looking for something similar to Google Docs, as that could work as a good substitute for Word which looks and functions nicely, and everything would be stored on my home-lab server, however I couldn’t find any good software to host.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I settled for this local app I found on flatpak called ONLYOFFICE<\/a>, which is essentially an exact copy of Microsoft Word, except it just feels<\/em> older. The scrolling is a lot less smooth and the software itself just looks older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
How ONLYOFFICE looks. These are my notes from my politics class.<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How it’s been going<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Customization<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Something really important to me is customization. On my main desktop I run Windows 10 and I couldn’t go without my rainmeter<\/a> setup. I mean trust me when I tell you that my desktop on that computer looks absolutely beautiful. It gets harder on Linux for some reason, and I can’t find anyone else online that has the issue I’m having.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So essentially there’s this software which Linux people use as a substitute for Rainmeter<\/a> called Conky. It is meant to work similarly to Rainmeter; essentially you just find widgets online and you add them. The issue I’m having is that none of my themes look like what is advertised. They come with the same text, but not the same look. Let me show you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following is what is advertised on the widget website:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And the following is what my desktop looks like with the widget installed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I feel like I\u2019m on some episode of Punk\u2019d every time I get some stupid issue like that that just doesn\u2019t exist for anyone else. I am completely clueless as to what\u2019s going on here and why it\u2019s not working like it should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from that, I have actually managed to make a slight bit of progress on customization. I\u2019ve managed to change my app icons to look like some sleek windows ones, and I\u2019ve changed the theme of my shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
How my new customized icons look.<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wine<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I have gotten around to installing and starting to learn Wine. I managed to install Notepad++<\/a> with it, but that’s really all for now. I didn’t install Notepad++ as my first Wine install because I specifically wanted that app, I sorta just wanted to understand how you use Wine and Notepad++ was the example used in this Indian Guy’s YouTube tutorial video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flatpak<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Ever since ditching Pop!_Shop, I’ve been using flatpak by simply searching on the web UI and clicking install on any software I want. I also found this pretty cool software on Flatpak called ‘Warehouse’, which essentially just lets you manage all of your Flatpak-installed apps on one compact interface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far I’ve used Flatpak to install fifteen apps: including YouTube Music Desktop App, which I use on windows and was surprised to find on Linux so easily, Steam, VLC Media Player, ONLYOFFICE, Jellyfin Media Player, and Minecraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steam and other games<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I tried to install steam using Flatpak, and I’ve honestly got to say, I was pretty surprised to see that games worked straight out of the box. All I had to do was enable ProtonDB<\/a> in the steam settings and voila! Games just ran with ease. Well I say ‘games’, I only tried one game which was Brawlhalla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from Steam, I did use Flatpak to quickly install Minecraft and it works like a charm, and surprisingly smoothly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s it for now.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As of writing this, it has been three days since my Linux installation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m really stumped by the fact that Conky just doesn’t work. I really wanted some nice desktop widgets, so I’m gonna see if I can work on getting that fixed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far I am more encouraged than I am discouraged by using Linux, and hopefully things can only get better from here. Perhaps I’ll make a couple more posts in the future if I make any more advancements on my Linux journey, or if I decide to abandon it and switch to Windows 10. We’ll see how it goes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just three days ago, I took the initiative to swap my new laptop’s OS from Windows 11 to Linux (Pop!_OS). Here’s why, and how it went.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":856,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}