Category: Windows

i hope there is never a linux desktop year

whbeebe1 Comment
Pop!_OS desktop with window tiling enabled. I tried this, discovered I’m not a fan, so turned it off. But Pop!_OS enabled that choice to try it, and choice is good.

I don’t know how many years I’ve read the question “is this the year for the Linux Desktop?” And I’m tired of reading it. Microsoft answered the need for a corporate operating system that could be managed en masse from a central control point. Linux (and until recently, Apple’s macOS) not so much. That, and Microsoft’s Office tools. For those hard-core Linux evangelists, ssh is not the answer. ssh is little different than sitting directly in front of a Linux system. Please, don’t quote me all the wonderful tools in the comments. I’ve sampled the bigger known tools, and discovered that if it’s headless servers or VMs or containers then the tools are decent. A corporate fleet of Linux desktops, not so much.

To be brutally honest I hate the idea of a “year of the Linux Desktop.” I’m quite happy with the quality and choice presented by today’s Linux distributions. Moving towards the same corporate position currently occupied by Windows would make that Linux distribution no better than Windows, especially current Windows 10 and newish Windows 11.

Up to this point in time I was indifferent to Windows for work and personal use. I had no choice with work as that’s what the companies I worked for used corporate wide on their desktops. They had it all locked down to meet all their corporate and security needs, meaning I installed only what they deemed worthy, and only when they signed off on it. At home I ran an unlocked version of Windows 10 just so I could tinker and do some research that required Windows 10. But those days are long gone.

2022 marks my second year in retirement. During that period I’ve “detoxed” from using Windows. The one machine that came with Windos 10 Pro preinstalled, the Minis Forum UM250, now runs Pop!_OS Linux. I would have switched to Linux as soon as the UM250 arrived but I was busy such that it sat off to the side, which was a waste of resources. Now that Pop!_OS is running on it, it’s become a solid, dependable workhorse. And an absolute joy to use.

Is my choice of Pop!_OS some sort of ringing endorsement? No, not by a long shot. It should be considered a ringing endorsement of Linux. I exercised my ability to chose a Linux distribution to try because that’s the way the current Linux distribution system works. It’s not just technology, but choice, that is key to Linux. Choice of which distribution to use, and nearly infinite choice of what to do within that distribution. Linux enables choice, and that is why I never want to see Linux become the corporate tool for computing that Windows currently is. Windows can be tailored to the point where you have no choice. Even when I purchased my licensed copy on the UM250 for personal use, I discovered that there were certain actions, certain choices, that were still forbidden to me unless I performed some other rather ridiculous actions. Sorta like an iPhone and iOS. What I will (barely) begrudgingly put up with on my iPhone, I will not under any circumstances put up with on a computer I’ve purchased and own outright. Not even under macOS (and that’s also slowly getting annoying, which is another post for another time). Windows has the corporate market locked up, and those corporations that know what they’re doing use Windows to keep the drones locked down. I don’t ever want any Linux distribution to be that way. Not now or ever, or at least as long as I’m alive and capable of using an operating system.

So for all those who wish for a Linux “desktop year,” please go install Windows and leave the rest of us in peace with Linux.

installing pop!_os 21.10 on a minis forum um250

whbeebe

Today I pulled the Windows 10 Pro out of my UM250 computer and installed Pop!_OS 21.10. I’d ordered a 1T WD Blue 3D NAND SATA M.2 2280 (WDS100T2B0B) drive to replace the original existing Kingston 512 GB drive on which Windows 10 Pro came preinstalled. The 1T drive was cheap enough at around US$90 from Amazon; Amazon and Western Digital were running a special at the time. And I’d been wanting to do this ever since Microsoft through a Windows 10 update started to nag me about running Microsoft Edge in place of my other browsers of choice, among other annoyances. Microsoft had worn out its welcome with me yet again.

I downloaded the Pop!_OS image from System76 ( https://pop.system76.com/ ) and flashed an old 8GB USB drive. This is definitely old hat; there are more than enough tutorials on how to do this, so check elsewhere. After switching the two SSDs, I powered up the UM250 which almost immediately dropped me into the BIOS configuration screens. I tabbed over to the Boot section, and made sure to change the boot protocol from just UEFI to UEFI&Legacy, then saved the change. I plugged my 8GB USB drive into one of the two USB ports on the UM250’s front panel and then reset the UM250. The next boot was into Pop!_OS on the thumb drive. From that point I proceeded to install Pop!_OS.

It took about ten minutes to get the base system installed, then another ten or so minutes for me to tweak a few things to my liking. I’ve just gotten started but I already like the environment a whole lot better than Windows 10. More than likely I’ll need to go back into Windows 10 to pick up some development projects I was working on, but these are written in languages and with tools that are portable across operating systems. The only thing that won’t run on Pop!_OS are Microsoft Visual Studio projects (obviously). I don’t care. If I did care I wouldn’t have switched away from Windows 10.

I picked Pop!_OS primarily because it’s Ubuntu derived. I also picked it because it’s beating back the really bad bits of Gnome 4. I would have preferred to install Fedora 35 primarily because of Fedora’s up-to-date tooling, but I installed Fedora 35 on my big MBP as a Parallels VM and I came to intensely dislike their Gnome desktop. Pop!_OS has reasonably current tools. If I need bleeding edge on Pop!_OS I’m more than capable building and installing them if needed. Pop!_OS might not be perfect in your eyes, but for me it’s more than good enough and it’s not an constant annoyance like Windows 10 evolved into. It will more than do for me.