Yes, the title is part sarcasm. But only part, because the worst part of adding an internal 2.5 inch SATA SSD to my PC was getting the computer to sit on the set of wheels I use to keep it off the carpet (to reduce dust ingress). I eventually gave up on the wheel and now the PC is elevated on a sturdy box.
But I missed that two opposing wheels were still locked (my bad), so I’ll probably go back to the wheels eventually.
As for the installation, I was smart enough to make sure I had all parts before proceeding, then gave the internals of the PC a good cleaning (minimal dust since the last time). Once ready for the work I gathered the needed tools and took the PC to the kitchen counter, where I could work in good light and at a sensible height. This helped so much that I did not use any colourful metaphors during the installation.
The drive was successfully installed and will now be (at least temporarily) the home for my Linux adventures. The reason for going internal is the external drive (an M2. SSD in an enclosure and connected via USB 3.0) would very occasionally lose connection to the system, which means the OS just kind of dies and could get corrupted, etc. So right now that drive is going to be more like phat temporary storage or something.
I’ll have another post about my Linux misadventures soon.™
Also, I’ve decided that when I eventually build my next PC, I’m going all out on internal connections on the motherboard, no matter the expense. What I want:
Probably 3 M.2 slots for SSDs. Yes, 3! I don’t want to run out of internal storage, and I don’t want to have to plug in external storage.
But if I do need to plug things, in I want USB-C and not just internal headers, but at least 1-2 external ports supporting a minimum of 20 GB transfer speed.
Maybe even Thunderbolt or USB 4 to go all the way to 40 GB.
And covered in RGB lighting! Just kidding. I do not want my PC to be a source of light.
First, the name is twee and annoying to type, so I give them some credit for so effortlessly mimicking one of the worst aspects of Apple. But it is a superficial aspect, so let’s move on.
Installation
I have a spare 1 TB M2 SSD (holy initialisms1Yes, I am finally learning to stop using ‘acronym’ when the letters don’t actually make a pronounceable word, like SCUBA or NASA, though I suppose there might be someone out there who pronounces SSD as ‘sssdee”, Batman) in an enclosure and attached to my PC via USB 3.0, so transfer speeds are not terrible. I chose Advanced options during install and was able to get the OS in place without consulting any documentation. Victory!
What I didn’t realize at the time is that Pop!_OS doesn’t install a boot manager when you install it alongside another OS, so every time I restart my PC, it automatically boots into Pop!_OS, which is nice for it, but bad for me, because my primary operating system on the PC is still Windows 11. The interim fix is to tap F8 while rebooting, then select the Windows drive. Windows 11 loads normally after this. There are methods of creating a boot manager with Pop!_OS, but none are exactly simple, so I’ll probably leave it for now.
This does mean that removing the OS later will be simpler, since all I’ll need to do is boot into Windows 11’s recovery mode and execute this command at the command prompt:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
As mentioned in a previous post, I kept getting pop-ups that the OS wasn’t working during install and had to keep dismissing them. This was annoying, but only added a bit of time to the install. Once done, it was simple enough to download my most-used apps from the Pop app store:
Thunderbird
Signal
Discord
Some apps I use are already included, most notably Firefox, but the list of apps I use that aren’t available at all in Linux remains a little too long:
Diarium (daily journal)
TickTick (to do list/reminders)
Affinity Designer (vector drawing)
Affinity Photo
Pixelmator Photo
Media Player (yes, I like it and use it!)
There are other apps I use, but haven’t installed yet. I used the Pop!_OS ISO with Nvidia drivers included, so this in theory means gaming should be simpler to set up. I’ll find out when I install Steam.
Built-in applications
Other than Firefox, you get the LibreOffice suite and a bunch of usual utilities like a calculator and such. I may tinker with LibreOffice to see how well it works with Word and Excel files (which I regrettably still use with others).
A lot of the included applications are more like applets–minimal, but functional. There is a built-in weather app, but it’s much simpler than the one in Windows 11 (though it doesn’t run ads, which the one in Windows 11 now does, to my noted chagrin). I may have more thoughts on these as I poke around.
User Interface and Design
The closest comparison to the GUI Pop!_OS uses is probably macOS. There is a dock, and also a bar that runs atop the display, reminiscent of the menu bar on Macs. It offers a decent amount of customization and in the end it didn’t feel like it was blatantly copying macOS. The “super” key (Windows key) defaults to a command line launcher, which is one of those handy things I now miss when it’s not available in any OS.
The system defaults to dark mode, but I’ve recently become a light mode convert, and switching over is easy. The title bars on windows still remain dark, which is a style choice I’m not sure if I agree with. I haven’t looked too much into customization here, so I’ll definitely have more thoughts on this later.
The system itself felt reasonably responsive, with moving windows, clicking and dragging all feeling zippy enough. My hardware was all configured automagically, including:
Bluetooth
Wi-Fi
Brother printer
Mouse (settings for this are minimal, we’ll see how that works out)
More to come
The fun par comes the next time I restart the PC and see if Pop!_OS loads smoothly or blows up. I’ll post more thoughts then, from within the OS itself (yes, I am being all ironic by writing this post on the Windows 11 side of things).
I got in a silly mood again and decided to mess around again with Linux. That can only lead to trouble!
This time I decided to swap out of Linux Mint and try Pop_OS, a distro made by System76, a company that sells PC hardware with the OS pre-installed, so you know they’re committed!
I made a boo boo when removing Mint. The proper order is:
Remove the GRUB bootloader that gives you a menu to choose Mint or Windows when restarting the PC
Remove or format the Linux partition (in this case, a separate SSD)
I did this in the reverse order, which meant I had to do a bunch of other stuff to fix things. Thank you, internet, for still being at least useful enough to provide the steps to take!
Once I had Linux Mint gone, I booted from the Pop_OS USB stick and the installation went fine-ish. I would keep getting “Pop_OS has stopped working” pop-ups during the process and would have to wait before I could click them away. They would often come back multiple times, but in the end it was annoying and didn’t kill the process or anything.
I’m typing on Pop_OS now!
Why did I switch? A few reasons, but mostly to try something different as a point of comparison, and also because Pop_OS is different. Mint follows a lot of Windows conventions, for better or for worse, where Pop_OS does things a little differently with its UI. It’s maybe a bit more Mac-like, but not really Mac-like. It’s more its own thing, and I like that they are trying something a little different.
Now, the scary part: I haven’t rebooted to see what happens. In theory, I should get a menu and be able to choose Windows or Pop_OS. If that doesn’t happen, I may need to do the old bootrec.exe /fixmbr again, or other trickery to get Windows to load, because as nice as Pop_OS might be (I perhaps have a few more reservations than initially), it ain’t gonna replace Windows. Not yet, anyway.
In my next Linux update, I’ll talk a bit about new apps I’m testing to replace some of the Windows and Mac apps I regularly use. Fun! Sort of!
Microsoft caught a lot of flack over its upcoming Recall “feature”, and the inevitable “Switch to Linux!” chorus started up again. Even though Microsoft is changing Recall in response to the immense backlash, a lot of people have decided they simply can’t trust Microsoft anymore.
I am somewhat on the fence, but it’s prompted me to update my Linux Mint install and maybe even get really nutty and try other distros. For the moment, I’m going to spend some more time in Mint and see how successfully I can work out some of the remaining kinks that have thwarted my previous efforts to embrace the penguin.
I am not secretly John Boone. Image from the Linux Mint website.
Tonight, I said to myself, “What should I do? I already had a shower, what else is there?” And then I noticed that Windows had an update available. It always does. I installed it and it needed to reboot. It always does.
I used the opportunity to jump back over to Linux Mint and girded myself for the billion updates I’d skipped last time. They completed, but it then required…a reboot. I guess Mint always does, too.
I rebooted.
I then spent time tweaking the whole system, installing extensions and applets, slapping on a new dynamic wallpaper so it doesn’t look like a clone of my Windows desktop. It looks fairly snazzy now. I get weirdly hung up on visuals, so this is important to me.
I copied over my music library to the dedicated SSD for Mint, so I could listen to (non-streaming) music. I am doing so as I type this.
The best part, though, is I don’t have any version of Bejewled available on Mint. This increases my productivity by about 1000%. I may have a bit of a Bejeweled problem.
Anyway, things are working, and the system feels a lot more solid now. Will I stick with it and use it more than my previous attempt? Maybe!
I decided to peek in at Linux Mint again and this meant there were a plethora of updates ready to be installed. After doing so, I had to reboot, then fix the updates that didn’t install properly, and so on.
I mean, it was no better or worse than doing the same in Windows 11. I mean, it was a little worse in that Linux-y way, but not overly so.
But I never gain any traction with Linux because I just don’t spend enough time with it. And I don’t spend enough time with it because there are so many niggles that irk me. Not a lot, but enough.
But still, I try, because I am a dope and a sucker for new things or different things.
And it is different.
Now that I’m (mostly) updated, I’ll stick with it for a bit and see how it goes.
After re-installing Linux Mint on its own separate drive back in September, I pretty much ignored it. Whoops! As a result, when I do log into it, there’s usually a pile of updates awaiting. Some updates on using Mint itself:
Update Manager: This is currently not responding when launched. It shows updates, but everything is greyed out. I’ll probably have to reboot, or recompile the kernel or whatever it is you do in Linux when these things happen.
TickTick: There was a version of TickTick in the Software Manager, so I don’t need to use the web version. Yay! The window widgets are the same as the Windows version, because this is apparently a wrapper based on the Windows version. I’m okay with that.
Diarium: Still no progress here.
Overall, I have to say, I’m just not feeling it this time. If everything I did was inside a web browser, it might be decent, since Mint comes with Firefox, which is my preferred browser. But there’s just too much other software I use to give up both Windows and Mac right now.
I will check back again sooner, though, mostly to avoid a giant pile of updates again. Assuming the Update Manager works again in the future.
Why? I can’t say, precisely. I feel I didn’t fully test it out last time. This time I want to try to meet some of the challenges I encountered and find ways to work around them. Or something like that.
Also, I may be a bit of an idiot.
But this time it’s installed on its own separate drive., so reverting to Windows-only in the future should be easier, if I decide to do so.
Am I going a little loopy? Have I been bribed by the Linux penguin? Do I like mint so much that I want an OS named Mint, too?
The answer is: I’m not sure!
After my PC experienced a near-death experience on Saturday (August 20, 2023, for people or bots reading this in the far future) I had time to think about my options while waiting for its miraculous recovery:
I currently can’t afford a new PC, so I was hoping I’d only have to replace some of it to get it going again (fortunately the miracle recovery meant I didn’t need anything)
It made me wonder how much some aspect of Windows, specifically, was responsible for The Incident
It made me further wonder if I had been running, say, some version of Linux, if The Incident would have happened at all.
The answer to the latter is I just don’t know. My theory, that some app or process pegged the CPU at 100%, causing the system to overheat and the fans to spin up and roar like supersonic jets, is just that, a theory. I will probably never know precisely what happened. But it really has me thinking more about ditching Windows for good, and how to best address the deficiencies I previously found in Linux Mint.
Ars Technica has a story on how Linux has now surpassed the Mac on Steam, thanks to the popularity of the Steam Deck, which uses Linux as its OS. The race between Linux and Mac is close, but compared to Windows, it’s like a 100-meter dash where the first runner finishes in 10 seconds and the other two cross the finish line an hour later1Windows:: 96.21%, Linux: 1.96%, Mac: 1.84%.
But this post is about that old internet maxim, “Never read the comments.” On Ars, you can vote a post up or down. Too many down votes and the post gets hidden (though you can always click to see it). You know you’re in for a fun ride when the first four posts in a comment thread are hidden:
The first post was a benign but contentless “Ok…”, the second post a comic that Wheels of Confusion points out may have gotten the order of the panels wrong (and for proper comic effect/ting, he is right). The third post was the word “green” (presumably a suggestion for the colour of the dragon, another content-free contribution), while the fourth was the following insightful reflection on the first post: “Sensing pissy Mac fan boy. Could be wrong, could be right.”
It’s actually not nearly as bad as I would have guessed!
For context, here is WoC’s post, which includes the comic in question, in case you are lazy, like me, and don’t want to click links and stuff:
I have to admit, when I started this post, I hadn’t looked at the comments and thought they’d be particularly dumb/juicy. Instead, they’re just kind of lame. This will teach me to look for blog gold in a pile of…stuff that isn’t gold.
Tonight I pulled the plug on my Linux Mint installation, fixed the boot launcher to boot straight into Windows (farewell, grub!) and reclaimed the space on my main drive that had been reserved for Linux, allowing Windows to once again hog all of it.
I may try Linux Mint (or another distro) in the future because I’m still interested in messing around with it, but if I do, I will put it onto its own drive. I’ll still need to dual boot, but won’t have two OSes sharing space on the same physical drive, which puts constraints on both.
The main reasons for nuking Linux Mint for now is related to something I saw (that I cannot find now) stating that Linux is 98% there for most people–which seems excellent! But that last 2% may include a vital piece of software that isn’t available, and becomes a dealbreaker. Linux Mint is free, which is great, but once you eliminate the price and just look at what it offers vs. Windows 11, it comes very close in most regards, but ultimately falls a bit short–for the average computer user. And for me.
I could use Firefox, Discord, Signal and Obsidian. This was nice. But I could only use the online version of Word. OneDrive likewise is reduced to the web version without using third party solutions that aren’t officially supported (and may come with subscriptions). The photo-editing software is not what I want, and just getting photos into the OS is more of a hassle. The game support is actually decent, but imperfect. Again, that 2% is the killer.
In the end, Linux Mint was fun to play around with, to experiment in, but just didn’t have quite what I needed to be a primary OS. In terms of how I’d rate them in overall functionality for my own use:
Windows 11 10/10 – does everything, though not equally well
macOS 8/10 – comes close, but falls down on gaming and third party peripheral support remains spotty for me.
Linux Mint 7/10 – falls down on photo-editing, some specific apps it lacks, cloud storage and gaming (to a smaller extent)
After some more time using Linux Mint, which I’ve done more often the past few days as Windows 11 is perpetually applying updates that require a reboot (thus making it easy to select Mint from the boot menu), I’ve encountered a few things that have made the experience a little less smooth vs. the Mac or Windows:
Music: My music library is a local folder on the PC and while I might be able to find a way to access the files remotely, right now the music player in Mint wants to just redownload everything, which is not an idea solution (though it works fine if you let it do its thing)
OneDrive: There is a paid solution (InSync) and while I can access my OneDrive folder on the PC through the Mint file manager, it obviously does not actually sync changes or anything. For that, I need to use the web version, barring setting up an open source/free alternative.
Microsoft Office: While I generally only use MS Word when I have to, Office is not available on Linux, requiring me to use workarounds like saving in .docx format in LibreOffice, or using the web versions, where it’s surprisingly easy to come across something the web version doesn’t do.
Journaling: My go-to journaling app, the unfortunately named Diarium, is available on every platform–except Linux. And there’s no web version.
TickTick: My to-do app of choice also has no Linux version, though the web version works decently, at least.
Pixelmator Pro: This is my primary photo editing app and is Mac-only.
On the plus side, it still feels snappier and more solid than my current Windows 11 install. I’ve actually toyed with the idea of completely nuking all 3 terabytes of storage I have on the PC and just starting over. I don’t know if that would actually fix or improve anything, but it appeals to my urge to cull cull cull.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to juggle between all the OSes like a big dum dum.
