linux

(Also extends to people who refuse to use Linux too!)

Every unique Linux Desktop setup tells a story, about the user’s journey and their trials. I feel like every decision, ranging from theming to functional choices, is a direct reflection of who we are on the inside.

An open-ended question for the Linux users here: Why do you use what you do? What are the choices you’ve had to make when planning it out?

I’ll go first:I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with the Niri Scrolling Compositor(Rofi, Alacritty and Waybar), recently switched from CosmicDE

I run this setup because I keep coming back to use shiny new-ish software on a daily basis.

I prefer this over arch(which I used for 2 years in the covid arc), because it’s quite a bit more stable despite being a rolling release distro.

I chose niri because I miss having a dual monitor on the go, and tiling windows isn’t good enough for me. Scrolling feels smooth, fancy and just right. The overview menu is very addicting, and I may not be able to go back to Windows after this!

This was my first standalone WM/Compositor setup, so there were many little pains, but no regrets.

Would love to hear more thoughts, perspectives and experiences!

The final issue of Linux Format, the UK’s best selling monthly Linux magazine, has gone on sale. The first issue launched in May 2000.

Personally I think that azerty was meant made by drunk students trying to troll people but it somehow caught on.

Hey, qwerty is kinda bad… You think we could try to make one that’s even worse to mock it?
Oooh that’d be hilarious! Let’s make a French version of qwerty but a lot worse!
I know, lets put dead keys for all accents except for the accent aigu so that when you need it on an uppercase letter you CAN’T type it!
Ahah good one! Let’s also not add anyway to type an uppercase cedilla! Imagine, a French keyboard that can’t type uppercase é and ç !
And what if we rearrange all the punctuation and symbols so that the open and closed parenthesis are no longer next to each other? It’d be sooo funny!
Right right! Let’s do it too for the brackets and curly braces too!
Good one! How about we don’t add guillemets which are used in French instead of english double quotes, so that people will be forced to type double quotes and their advanced text editors will have to automatically replace them by guillemets so that the text uses correct punctuation for French?
That’s so sneaky! Let’s also add § so you can cite your sources with the correct paragraph symbol, but not use real quotations marks for the quotes!
What else would be really stupid?
Let’s use one key for a random greek letter!
What?
You know, like α and β?
Ermm… okay… which one? α or β?
Neither, people might actually use those once every 2 years. Let’s just pick one at random!
µ it is! Has anyone even seen that letter used in a French text?
Nope, never, so it’s perfect!
How about also adding ¤?
What the hell is ¤?
I haven’t the faintest clue! And neither do you or most people! That why it’s funny!
Sure, why not, let’s cram pointless characters and not add actually useful ones like guillemets! Any other ideas?
Let’s put the hyphen on the one most unreachable key!
Oh that’s a good one!
I got better! Let’s put the period on the same key as the semicolon, but with the semicolon as the default character, and periods will be Shift+semicolon! That way we can say that it’s canonically why French phases are long-winded: it’s easier to type a comma or semicolon than a period!
Man you’re hilarious!

When I was still on Windows I put qwerty as my keyboard layout and used the Alt+number shortcuts for accents because that was less painful than using azerty… Those shortcuts didn’t work anymore when I switched to linux so I had to find a real solution, which ended up being a colemak base which I modified to add accented letters. I don’t like bepo, it moves z x c v and I like them being in the same place as in qwerty for the shortcuts I’m used to, and I didn’t know qwerty-fr existed at the time 😅

Do you have worse for your language?

How did you partition your disk before installing Linux?Do you regret how you set it up?

I’m looking for some real users experiences about this and I’m trying to find the best approach for my setup.

Thank you for sharing!

I feel like I remember seeing something like this get posted and celebrated in this or some other techie community, and I’m interested in screwing around with other OSes but I can’t remember which one it might be. What’s your favorite 90s-flavored Linux desktop environment / distribution?

I’ve seen people advocating for both options, but since I’m still new to Linux I’m not sure what to do. I’m currently installing Mint on my laptop to try it out, and I’m not sure if I should enable secure boot or not.

A few years ago my wife and I built a computer out of old parts for her friend’s then 10 years old son. Last month we were visiting them, and I heard the wife’s friend say something funny that I thought I’d share with you.

They live on the other side of the city, this was the kid’s first computer, and his mom doesn’t have much computer experience either, so our goal was to build something that was easy to use and hard to break from the beginning. Originally I choose ElementaryOS since it seemed to fit the bill, but after a year or two it turned out that it couldn’t be upgraded to a new major version without a full reinstall so it got stuck with an older version. We didn’t visit that often, and the kid’s games still worked so it wasn’t a major issue until Factorio broke due to glibc incompatibility.

When his birthday was coming up last month we bought him a SSD to make the computer a little bit zippier without a major upgrade, and I thought I’d give him a brand new Linux experience too, so I asked for advice here and in the end chose Bazzite. While I was helping the kid with the installation, I overheard his mom saying in the other room:

This Linux thing… We’ve never had any problems with it, he just clicks something to install it and it works. Unlike normal computers, where you always have to do things and fix them.

Perhaps not the most eloquent, but I consider it a very good review.