I’ve some weeks ago moved my main computer from Windows 10 to Linux, specifically OpenSUSE Leap with the Plasma user environment, mainly because it doesn’t have the magic Windows 11 chip. I had never used Linux and have been a Windows user since I was six years old or somewhere around then (I’m in my late twenties now). I’d just like to share my likes and dislikes.
Things I like about Linux (my specific install, anyway):
- Not being a corporate environment. There aren’t any cheeky attempts at making money or advertisement anywhere, like the annoying fake widgets in Windows 11 and the half-filled start menu. I’ve gotten used to that on my laptop (which is running 11), but you do always have the feeling of ‘what are they trying now?’ That not being a thing is quite refreshing.
- In that veign, having actual widgets. I loved them in Windows 7; I’ve got a webpage widget on my second screen showing a Zoho sheet I made with an RSS feed. Just being able to be a bit creative like that is cool.
- The system seems quite a bit quicker than it was in Windows - though in all honesty this will also be because I’m still on a fairly fresh install.
- I’m positively surprised by how little I miss from Windows when it comes to programs. Steam having compatibility tools is great, for example. Otherwise there are often replacements for what I’m missing (eg. I’ve found one to allow general settings for my Logitech mouse).
- The general ability to change the way everything looks and feels. I feel technical people sometimes look down a bit on aesthetics, but I really care about the user interface I use day in day out looking and feeling nice. While I’m a fan of the Windows 11 look myself, I really like how much I’ve been able to get my UI to look how I want it to in Plasma. Though I’m a bit surprised that it’s so hard to change the appearance of the start menu and bottom panel. I’ve had to install a specific program to change their colouring.
- The little icon jumping next to your cursor when opening a program (I know, I’m easily amused).
Things I’ve found annoying:
- Not knowing where to find anything. Of course, coming from Windows I’m used to there being a program files folder with my programs’ folders, and a documents folder with (often) user settings for those programs. In Linux, everything just seems to be everywhere. What seems to be the ‘documents’ equivalent for the game Factorio is in my user folder in a hidden .factorio, but I’ve to no avail been trying to find out where my ‘documents’ for Workers and Resources are. I’ll find them eventually, I’m sure. In general, I’m looking around a lot, though.
- The lingering feeling of instability. This is my second install of OpenSUSE, after I messed up something leading to my computer having some files which it wanted to update, but using urls which didn’t exist. After this, I’ve been feeling a bit insecure and afraid of doing something that ruins my installation. I know there’s the saying that Linux ‘just works’, but I’ve never messed up a Windows installation...
- The capslock works differently, apparently. I’m used to writing every capital letter using the capslock key, meaning if I write a capital at the beginning of a word, I press capslock, then type the first letter, then quickly press capslock again and type the rest. In Linux, this often doesn’t work as it somehow takes a while for the capslock press to go into effect, so you often end up with ‘LInux’, for example. After lots of looking around, I have found some script that seems to fix this (‘Linux CapsLock Delay Fixer Master’), but it also randomly stops working and there are other ‘oddities’ I can’t really explain.
- Every once in a while, my desktop icons get rearranged. This seems to be a known issue, but it’s really annoying.
- It seems impossible to get Firefox to not restore sessions after shutting down the computer with it still open. I’ve tried several things, but I can’t get Firefox to just give me a fresh session on startup.
- The above all add to a bit of a general ‘stuck together with adhesive tape and love’ feeling.
- Not knowing how to install programs. This is more of a learning-curve thing, obviously. The software centre didn’t contain everything I could find online - for some programs, you could use ‘one click’ in OpenSUSE, but that seems to work more like a self-destruct button: I’ve tried those several times and have always had bad results >.>. I’ve found it’s easiest to install programs just using flatpaks.
All in all, I am quite happy. Though I am still afraid I’ll mess up my installation, and I’m now at a point where that’d hurt. I have installed Timeshift, but also with mixed results...
Most of your user's files will be in your home directory:
/home/username(or ~ for short).Inside of that, some more or less popular programs litter into the root of your directory (like
~/.mozilla), but the more behaved ones store config files in~/.config, and data in~/.local(mostly~/.local/share).Flatpak will place data of its apps in
~/.var.Other then your home directory,
/etccontains config files for programs across the system (but mostly for background services and admin tools). If you want to make changes, most of them supports putting comments to lines starting with#. Use that to keep notes on why you changed something, and to keep the previous version of the changed line so that you can more easily recover a bad change./usrcontains software, but in a very broad sense because manuals and default congigs often get placed here too. The doesn't have anything to do with users, it's an acronym for a different thing. All directories here are managed by your package manager (zypper on suse), if you edit or delete something zypper will probably undo it at some point. An exception is/usr/local, it's the same structure but for programs that you install without a package manager, perhaps you built it from source fode, sometimes that's useful too./runis in memory, subdird by user id, programs often put runtime data here. It's lost on reboot./tmpis for temporary files. if it's atmpfsfilesystem (check with runningdf -h) then it's also in memory (and thus very fast, but consumes RAM) and lost on reboot, but I think by default it's persistent on disk without auto cleanup on suse./varholds data for the system. like varoius logs are in/var/log. those are mostly text files, but systemd's journal is not./mntand/mediais where other filesystems are mounted. the former is for temporary mounts, but I also mount my other disks and partitions there, and the latter is for e.g. your USB connected portable storage.Portable storage mounting is often handled by the system, like KDE should show an icon on the taskbar when something is connected, but internal storage mounting is set up in
/etc/fstab. You can readman fstabif you want to learn how that file works, and feel free to try runningmanwith other technical keywords you find because chances are good it has a man page. Finally, don't attempt to mount filesystems that were being used by a currently hibernated windows.Mostly with zypper or YaST Software Management, which are different frontends for the same. If you don't find something, or want to have newer versions, there is Flatpak. Flatpak provides some level of permissions control, but there are leaks especially with an X11 session, so don't install something you don't trust.
If you don't find something in default repos, you can add new ones but be very careful with that, and set repo priorities sensibly, more important repos with a lower number. SUSE has some additional half-official repos on OBS, but there's also a bunch of community repositories managed by a random person on the internet. Be especially careful with the latter because no one officially test these or checks for malware.
OpenSUSE's package management uses RPM packages. Sometimes when a package is not on the main repos, your only choice is to download an .rpm file and install it with
rpm -i filename.Lastly, for statically built software, you may see that they are available in a tar.gz or tar.xz file (similar to a .zip but more modern). You can just unpack them wherever you see fit and run them, but it's better to have them longer term in subdirs of
/usr/local/lib/, with symlinks to the executables in/usr/local/bin/.I have been using suse for a few years now and I also find their oneclick .ymp files very confusing. Firefox cannot open them, you have to download it and open separately.
But then it will offer you to add 2 dozen repositories that you better not add to the system, but it also won't allow selecting one, it will want to add all or nothing.
At this point what I don't understand is what is its purpose, if not fucking up the system?