Finally, after some time I made the switch to #Linux !
🧵1/2
Here is my experience and the hiccups I found :
- It was hell to find how to boot on the USB drive. You needed to disable secure boot and it didn’t tell you that anywhere, as far as I can tell
- It was easy enough to set up, connect to wifi etc
- Strangely Firefox has a bigger top app bar, instead of all the icons and tabs being on a single row, there are 2 rows (one with the tab name, and another one with the actual tabs
- The fingerprint reader could be set up, but when trying to log in it always says fingerprint not recognized
- Keyboard shortcuts changed, for example screenshots can’t be done using Win Shift S, the clipboard history doesn’t work by default etc
- The key to mute my mic doesn’t work, and is not recognized as a key. The other keys like disabling the trackpad work fine.
- I like how typing the name of software from windows like paint and notepad gives the linux equivalent
@linux
Welcome!
Mint is an awesome choice to start. It’s got a nice balance between slim and enough features to get you going.
Keep in mind at all times: at some point you’re gonna need that one piece of external hardware to play nice with Linux or maybe that one piece of software ain’t doing it like you’re used to.=> there is a way or an alternative. Always keep calm, research the topic, and follow instructions carefully and thoughtfully when you find a tutorial.
That aside enjoy it, a little slice of freedom away from big tech awaits.
You can remove the bar for Firefox: Right click on the toolbar -> “Customize Toolbar…” (or Burger menu -> “More Tools” -> “Customize Toolbar…”), then in the bottom left uncheck “Title Bar” (This works in KDE, at least)
Congrats, Mint is a great choice if you needs the job to be done.
You can open “Keyboard Shortcuts” in the menu and change them to whatever you want.
@cmnybo I figured it out, but I think it’s still not very intuitive when you’re used to it working by default!
Many distros have screenshots bound to a shortcut by default. So it’s working by default, just not the default you know. Even Windows only introduced that shortcut a few years ago. The real shortcut (working without any program even in Windows) is the dedicated PrtScr button. If you hold alt, it’ll only capture the current window. It won’t be saved but put in the clipboard.
On KDE Ctrl+shift+s worked by default for me, but I don’t didn’t know if that comes from my distro or from KDE.
@Creat My laptop is weird, because it has a media key for screenshoting an area (which is basically a key that doed Windows Shift S which isn’t recognized by default on Mint), and a print screen key which works fine. And to screenshot an area, on Mint it’s ctrl+print screen
i have to recommend flameshot. you can edit the captured shot with arrows, circles, numbers, text, and then copy/save/pin it. make a custom shortcut where command is
flameshot guiand make it win+shift+s. I can’t live without it anymore.
Does anyone know a way to get the clipboard history on Linux?
I use a program called cliphist that stores it for you, but as you can see there are many options
@eatCasserole I have found a software called Diodon, and seems to work fine!
You need to set a custom shortcut in your settings but besides that it does the jobI see this one got a couple of mentions, I’ll have to check it out!
I am thinking I might try Linux Mint on the laptop but I’m kind of terrified of blowing it up or wiping data. My laptop is getting old and I will likely be building a replacement desktop soon.
But it is a gaming laptop and has strange interactions with heat and fan speed and glowy keyboard lights and I’m afraid I’ll disable some safety feature or accidentally break wifi compatibility irreversibily if I tinker too much.
Backup everything you need to keep and do a fresh install
@EtnaAtsume Mint install or not, you should regularly back up your data in an external drive!
Yes, installing mint on the Windows partition deletes Windows and all your files so make a backup or put them on another partition!
But without deleting your data, you can always boot from an USB stick and try thingd around in this environnement!
You don’t have to install anything on your laptop if you just want to try Linux and see if it would work for you. You can just prepare a Linux Mint USB (or any other distribution really) plug it to your laptop and boot from it. This will boot into the live desktop from the USB and will not touch your drives. There you can try Linux and get a feel for it before you commit.
out of curiousity what’s the script in the post image? i always see it and i’m curious how to generate it. :3
i installed linux in march and havent regreted it <3
If you’d like the same functionality but using pride flags to color in the distro logo, check out
hyfetch.this is incredibly relevant to my interests (the only thing more relevant would be nyancat and pride flags) :3
Terrible post title.
@scott It’s a mastodon post, lemmy federates it and takes the start of the post as a title. Can’t do much about that :blobcatcoffee:
