I guess I just don’t trust myself (or the system) to keep stuff organized unless I do it meticulously myself from the start in a neat hierarchy. I’ll try to use search more often since it does seem fast and sleek and see how it works out. The only annoying part about it is that it always defaults to my primary display for search even if im focused on the second monitor

Do you know of a good guide on how to use search better, like can I narrow so it only shows files and folders, or maybe match to a regex like *.js? it doesn’t really find specific files when i search for them, is it supposed to work with other mounted drives as well?

gnome-shell-pano looks great but is it abandoned? It says my current (newest i assume) gnome shell version is not supported by the extension. Does it open the paste window where your mouse focus is (and on the correct monitor if you have more than one)? CH always opens it on the main display even if i’m focused on the secondary, its horrible…

I found I already have an installed gnome extension ‘hot edge’ that is supposed to do dock opening when hitting the edge, although i do have issues with it sometimes not triggering, it seems very focus sensitive but it’s definitely better than nothing.

It’s definitely an interesting experience and I don’t want it to replicate windows, but i guess i need to come to terms with some design decisions that will feel unnatural after using windows for almost 20 years now.

VScodium

I tried this but it seems that VSCodium is missing many of the extensions that are available on VSCode, it has something to do with them using different extension registries?

In any case thanks for the advice but they don’t seem to be completely equal in terms of features

It’s been a while since I used ubuntu and popOS was only for a few days so maybe I was just mistaken, I remember it being somewhat comparable to a classic desktop at the time but it could have been that cosmic shell thing. And tbh until so far I thought cinnamon is gnome so it seems like I was just outright wrong about that one, thanks for clarifying

I’m definitely willing to try bazzite’s gnome3 for a while, i just wasn’t sure what’s the default anymore and if it’s bazzite doing something out of the norm or if the ubuntu based distros did.

tl;dr KB+M and no touchpad here so that might have something to do with it, I prefer more compact and colorful UIs, and different behavior between LMB and RMB.

I’m not a big fan of the Nautilus file manager, all the rows seem too big and too padded. There is no compact mode and from what I’ve read changing the default file manager is a big no-no in linux since the OS depends on it (and I did try to install Dolphin just to compare but the theme was unusable with bazzite). I can’t even pin other drives to the left navigation pane, only folders? The monochromatic theme is neat but just makes it more difficult to tell things apart, gimme some color please yellow folders.

I know the no desktop decision is “since they always get cluttered anyways”, but making me use a folder instead will just force me to use a cluttered folder instead, or more likely keep stuff in Downloads. At least with the desktop I can visually arrange it.

I miss the taskbar for switching apps. I do agree pressing the win/command button is neat and practical but sometimes I just want to switch to a different app on my second monitor using mouse only (or see notifications from it) without moving my keyboard hand.

Then it’s the small things - I did install the clipboard manager gnome extension (because copyq doesn’t work with wayland apparently) but it always opens it in a corner, not on my mouse location.

Systray - left and right mouse buttons do the same thing and doubleclicking does nothing? For example to open the steam window from it I always have to click it, go down to library and click again, this is the default behavior of RMB in other OSes and here it’s the only behavior.

Minimizing something and then immediately alt-tabbing doesn’t bring that window back up, some focus issue? Two monitors issue? Dunno but annoying.

Is gnome 3 the one without a desktop? The only thing I can figure out with gnome-shell --version is that bazzite uses 46.4

There is a KDE variant of bazzite I might try but I dont know what can of worms is that going to open

How will manually retyping git pull or checkout 30+ times a day, or using the terminal log instead of a nice GUI with VSCode integration, teach me to solve other complicated issues? I just don’t really see the benefit of struggling for most of the time for something that might or might not happen later

When you need more advanced stuff then GUIs tend to become more of a sticking point I find

What’s stopping you just opening the terminal in those rare cases? For 99% of my daily needs I’m good with a good GUI

I’ll give it a try, thanks. Maybe I was just messing around with domains too much, could be that part is more strictly defined here compared to win

I can’t access my router due to ISP policy. Some tools do allow connecting to the name.local format (Vinagre did for example, but that one has other bugs so I gave up on it) so I’m starting to think that’s actually just a problem with Remmina, not a general Linux issue.

Not sure what you mean by the domain question, I do have a domain specified if i check the windows machine pc properties so I’m guessing I am actually in one?

Ok, I’ll just default to flathub for app search instead, thanks.

Wish I wasn’t already running into bugs with it though - I started installing vscode and logseq with flatpak, it opened them in Mint’s Software Manager and there’s a spinny thing now indicating work is being done, but when I click on it it just says “Currently working on the following packages” and then… nothing, blank screen. No idea if it’s stuck or actually doing something in the background, but it’s been a while (way longer than those would usually require to be installed).

Not a good first impression for sure

So what do I do if I want to install VSCode? The official installation guide on their website says to download the deb file, why is such a big and popular tool not in the repository right away? Or better yet, if this is the officially endorsed why how are we to figure out the proper alternative?

Git Fork is absolutely amazing. It has a good (unlimited) free trial but it is well worth the one time purchase too.

I wonder what kind of support for development do you get? Honestly I’ve only had obstacles when I switched, for example the docker installation was much more complicated on linux than on windows+wsl. Even installing python was problematic because apparently ‘upgrading it yourself can brick the system’, at least if an older version comes with the OS?

And lastly it’s the simple thing that pretty much all tools work on windows natively but on linux you have to find workarounds, which is definitely a problem when it comes to productivity.

So what are the benefits, what does linux have that windows doesn’t in this context?

Thank you very much for such a detailed answer! This is exactly the type of stuff I wanted to learn in advance from some generalist tutorial because honestly, I feel bad constantly asking such basic questions and there’s no guarantee there will always be someone like you to answer them. In retrospect it’s probably the smarter and simpler option to just google the command docs online, I just wanted to do it “right” since I heard all the praise about man command and you never know if you’re working offline.

I’ll check out nala, could be a good learning tool, thanks!

That gives me a list of over 2000 rows inside of the terminal that i cant apparently search or sort -.-

Then I tried to be smart and do man dpkg -l to see if that has any options on how to use it better, and instead i got another huge text file that i cant search or navigate through properly

So then i googled how to open it in an editor and tried man dpkg -l | nano, which does open it for a second and then crashes, i just get “too many errors from stdin, buffer written to nano.12608.save” in the terminal

ofc something as simple as map dpkg -l | vscode doesnt work either

I’m just tired

I dunno if I agree with this. Using windows and the office suite is taught in schools, at least in europe, and has been even when I was in school around 2 decades ago. Regardless of that, it is very user-friendly with intuitive simple UI and various wizards that guide you through every process step by step and generally speaking you dont have to do much, if any, manual configuration or tinkering if you dont want to.

I’m not saying linux should be the same and its obvious the priorities are different as you say, but I disagree that all OSes are about “detective work and figuring it out”. I dont think bashing your head against the wall is a good way of learning anymore. I dont think even asking questions every time on various forums is a good solution since there is no guarantee you will get a correct answer, especially with linux - chances are much higher in my experience you will get an opinionated and possibly wrong or outdated answer.

As mentioned in another post I’m more of a reading than video-watching person but I’ll take any resource I can get. I saw in another thread that someone recommended this video but it is 6 hours long so i haven’t really delved into it yet

I want to use the terminal and I’d prefer the simplicity and reliability of a single command over various GUIs, but it doesn’t feel like it’s consistent or simple with the terminal either. For example with VSCode, it doesn’t have apt-get install vscode command (at least not listed on its installation pages) - it recommends manually downloading the deb file and then apt installing it.

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/setup/linux

I just don’t know whats the proper / good way of doing it anymore. The popOS shop is horrible, you cant stop running installations cuz it freezes and stops giving any feedback, sometimes it breaks and doesn’t open fully, the UX is bad, but i dont know what else to do. At least with the shop I have a clear list of installed apps and a place to uninstall them, if i do it with the terminal I have no idea where they end up living.

Haha no worries, that’s also a common linux experience :P

I’m trying out popOS and even the native package manager (popOS shop?) installs most applications as flatpaks afaik? I have no idea where they end up being compared to windows’ program files or what kind of defaults they install with. I started putting my custom downloaded AppImages into the ~/Applications folder and then used AppImageLauncher to actually have them show up in search.

Then I will run into something like docker which is not in the shop and has a ton of commands you have to run in order to get it to work, like uninstalling conflicting packages, installing some certificates and keyrings and i dont even know what - it was supposed to work better than on windows but it is nowhere near as neat as there!

Then I install samba (again, not available in the popOS shop) and I have it running but i have no idea whether it’s set to automatically run or not. Searching for it with GUI tools doesn’t show it as installed anywhere so in this case i have to rely on the terminal. The popOS store does have a list of installed apps but the search field gets disabled when you go into this screen because it’s only used for browsing the shop, not through your installed apps?

I’d say that the best learning resource you can have is a spare computer specifically dedicated to exploring Linux, with which you can install and break and configure and break again without worry. Learning Linux can be like playing a roguelite, and I mean that also in the sense that it can be fun.

This is what I do but the issue is that I have no feedback on whether Im doing the right thing or if im making the life unnecessarily difficult for me. Games will slap you and make you redo something if you fuck it up, linux just makes you live in agony until sometimes breaks and you dont know why.