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.
