3 Years using Linux as My Desktop

a little over three years ago i received a comment about how you can't use linux as a daily driver especially because i was a windows power user of 20 plus years not only is this wrong but i've primarily switched to linux for all my day-to-day tasks there's still a couple things i use mac and windows for but it's very select i'd say 90 percent of what i do is in linux now and i absolutely love my workflow and i love my computers much more than i ever did before i started this long journey but i need to tell you it has not been easy a lot of people lied to me and there's been a lot of myths that we're going to debunk so these are the things i wish i knew before i started this journey because oh man there's so many bad things i still hear today in linux and you should know these things if you want to try this journey it's not for everybody and linux is definitely not great on certain hardware so let's debunk a lot of the stuff and get you into a spot where if you want to go this route here's how i did it so here are the things i wish i knew before i started this lovely adventure this desktop is my linux desktop and i will say hardware matters that's one thing that linux people just say hey linux works on anything and everything i mean you can find it everywhere and it's true it is all over the world it is amazing but when we look at the hardware i'm just going to say right now this is one of my favorite configurations the cpu doesn't matter as much i prefer intel over amd by a little bit for just stability and reliability but for the most part again it doesn't matter i use amd because you get the more performance better bang for buck so i give up a little bit of that you know stability and reliability of intel to get a little bit faster but for gpu that's where it really matters in linux right now maybe in a couple years this won't but right now amd is amazing for gpus if you have an nvidia one it'll work on most linux but just know when you start really changing things in linux things are going to break and it's not going to be pretty nvidia is not a great graphics card for linux users if you want to daily drive it i highly recommend him d the other thing is understanding that this is a lot different than windows coming from a windows power user to here i was familiar enough with it because of my professional career that when i jump into here and i just do like a ls of the root directory you might be like what the hell's ls it's just a listing of what's there instead of seeing c drive with like user folder and all like program files program data and what you see in windows this is what you see in linux and if you need a graphic representation of that here's the file browser the file browser i think's light years ahead of windows but it's different a lot of things in here are different just know that your knowledge of windows does not translate to your knowledge of linux so a power user in windows is going to be a noob in linux especially if they don't understand just the basic use cases of it and just learning like file system and i did a video on file systems and these types of things but you need to know things are different and the next thing speaking of things are different is how people mess things up you've probably heard linux is really stable and i would add a little caveat to that and that is linux server is really stable because once you set up a linux system you don't change anything on it and it sits just with like a standard cli or command line interface that's going to be good for years you don't even need to reboot it that's how awesome it is like what is my up time here on my linux about six or seven days and it's exactly the same as when i booted it where windows slows down after a couple days usually but i would say linux is not stable for a new user because when you have these types of things in linux a lot of times you don't know what you're doing and a lot of times like these graphic programs will break uh i've i can't tell you how many bugs i've run into over my last three years of messing around in different graphic elements in in linux these programs that are made are made by usually one or maybe a really small team so a lot of times there's more bugs than you'd find in a windows or mac counterpart so know that yes linux at its core is really stable linux desktop on the other hand is probably far less stable than a windows or mac counterpart especially starting out because you're just not going to know what you're doing i've seen this happen specifically with folders where people mess around in the root drive once you set up your system and everything's configured really you should never leave your home folder everything should go in here so if you're going to add a program to your thing you need to add it to like your dot local bin and and put it in here and that way you are installing it as your user and that's great you can still do system-wide installs but for most part for those single user systems out there i highly recommend just when you're on your user installing those programs for your user only otherwise you'll run into permissions issues and other things that can break your system that's kind of like a recurring theme is linux desktop is much easier to break when you don't know what you're doing and probably the next thing is the distributions oh the thing i hate most about new users in linux is they don't understand the difference between distributions and desktop environments these things are massive so here's the huge laundry list of distributions in linux and you'll notice most of them come off like forks or these root things because what ends up happening like to me there's really only three distributions in linux you have debian you have fedora and you have arch between these three they all do different things they fundamentally are the same but they use different package managers so like debian will use apt install fedora will use dnf install arch will use pacman dash s and then the program name i mean i don't know why arch is weird but whatever these are just the package manager differences but at the root they're pretty much the same and then there's all these distributions that fork off of them and then just go and splinter out into a whole bunch of different areas of different flavors so people are always like hey i want you to review this distro on linux i'm like i really don't care it just looks pretty much more of the same to me so a lot of times when you think of distributions think of it as these root distribution like what i just laid out with just extra programs and different desktop environment options and what desktop environments are like this is what gnome looks like and when i say desktop you can install gnome on any of these i just labeled any linux distribution can add different multiple desktop environments kde is very windows ask and you got that and then you have like mate which is like an earlier version of nombo that is more of a linuxi old school feel and then you have all these more newer age ones that are out there you have more slimmed down ones like xfce you have pantheon and elementary and all these other uh desktop environments that have different looks and feels and different control centers and just know that this is just a surface level and that's why people get confused because there's so much to absorb here but this is one fundamental thing that you need to know distribution is doesn't really matter so much it's just a package manager at the end of the day with some extra options on it and the desktop environment is really what affects the look and feel and you don't need to reinstall your system to change that entire desktop environment so just know that probably one of the last things i want to touch on is linux is not windows i have to say this again but more so in the realm of programs if you're coming from windows and you want to use photoshop don't use linux if you're coming from windows and you have some weird proprietary line of business app don't use linux a lot of times these apps will not run properly sometimes gaming like these are games that actually run pretty good on linux but know that not every game does and that's one thing that i've kind of harped on and a lot of times i set up like a windows box to stream to my linux which is kind of silly i know some people like you have two computers why not just have windows then and to me it's because i love the linux desktop experience i'm here 90 of the time i'm much more efficient i can switch between all my stuff i can outline my things i can absorb my youtube comments i can come over to here and chat i can just there's just so much got going on and i can do it so quickly so it makes me a more functional user more productive and it's something that i highly encourage people to try but know that it's not easy it's not something that i recommend for all users but if you are willing to learn and also change to fit into this linux box it can be life changing and honestly it's reigniting my love of technology so when i look at some things just to give you an example of that i used to be a big photoshop user but i switched to like and this is what i use to make all my thumbnails and i do it really quick and i actually prefer now but it's way different than photoshop it's free but at the same time it's not nearly as polished as a photoshop i've just learned to love it and i've learned to switch from some of my things now some things i don't make compromises on like when i do my video edits this is actually done on a mac i edit on a mac using final cut pro i used to use caden live on linux but it's an inferior product there's there's so much that's missing from caden live that final cut pro gives me and there's other programs out there that do work on linux that i tried like davinci resolve and these other ones just to give you an example i just found that final cut pro is the best for me and i'm not going to sacrifice it to stay on linux 100 and this is where people have problems with me is because i pick whatever operating system i need for the tool i think is best sometimes that tool doesn't matter as much and i can just use the links counterpart other times that tool is vital and i'm sacrificing productivity if i use linux and its tool instead so just know this is one of those things that can happen and it's okay so learn that the stuff that you would like to change try the linux counterparts because i definitely gave uh caden live a good shake which was a video editor i gave 500 videos on youtube was made with kaden live and it was amazing but it's not always so black and white so try it all figure out what works for you some things won't work really well in linux some things will figure out the things you like and just adjust to suit your needs but just know don't try to make linux work like mac or windows it's just its own thing and you need to expand your knowledge to use it if you're not willing to do that then i don't see a point in linux and that's the thing that has taken me three years to really vocalize and i still don't think i do a very good job of it but it's something that i try to be the voice of reason i don't want to just be another linux fanboy than saying everyone should use linux that's silly all you're going to do is install it you know on your grandpa's computer and piss him off when he can't use his printer or his scanner or some other program that's needed so that's where i'm at in my journey and these have been my last three years and the things i've learned and i'm going to try and do more tutorials but i wanted to give an update on linux because i haven't really talked about it in any kind of depth on this channel in a little bit and i was just me just kind of taking a break so with that let me know your thoughts down in the comments section like the video if you like it dislike it if you disliked it i know there's some linux fanboys that already clicked the thumbs down i i see you i'm okay with that over that i'll see you in the next one

Channel: Chris Titus Tech

Views: 148,824

Keywords: chris titus tech

Id: kZMoxUyumx0

Length: 13min 18sec (798 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 11 2022