It’s been almost a month since I switched from Windows 10 (2H21) and to Pop!_OS 21.10 (see /2022/01/17/installing-pop_os-21-10-on-a-minis-forum-um250/ ). I moved all my work from Windows to Pop!_OS and set up the same tools I was using on Windows, with one notable exception; Visual Studio 2019. So far I’ve not missed Visual Studio, and have instead used Visual Studio Code to fill in any gaps created by the move.

I’ve also been running System76’s Rust-based scheduler on my distribution as well. It came in as an update, and it appears to be living up to its advanced billing of making the desktop highly responsive.

You can see it running in btop’s process list (lower left quadrant, highlighted). If you want to read a bit more about the System76 scheduler, see https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=System76-Scheduler-1.0 . The article has a link to the source on Github if you want to dig even farther.

That buttery smooth desktop performance combined with the overall look-and-feel of the desktop makes for a pleasant and productive computing environment for a very small machine. I would even go so far as to rate the experience just a smidge better than the latest macOS, especially when it comes to working down at the kernel level. And you should know what a macOS fanatic I am at times.

My Windows experiences I put a distant third. I’ll use Windows if I have to, but if I don’t, I won’t. Not anymore.