Switching to Linux (again)

Every time I use Windows, I find myself annoyed by something about it. Whether its the bloat, the ads, or the AI features. Every time this happens, I make a plan to migrate over to Linux as my main operating system. I mean it makes sense, I’m a developer so it shouldn’t be difficult… right?

Apologies for no sub-headings in this post. It’s just something I wanted to quickly write about.

About 3 weeks ago, I ran into the exact same frustration of using Windows as I’ve previously ran into countless times. It’s arguably worse with Windows 11, especially with all the AI hype, and Microsoft being one of the biggest companies shoving it into everything.

With this, I decided I should switch over to Linux… again. It’s not the first time this has happened to me, but something always ended up going wrong with my Linux installation, or some installation within Linux, that I end up going back to Windows.

However, this time I decided to change some stuff up. Whenever I previously installed Linux, I set up a dual-boot alongside Windows because there’s some stuff that I just cannot do on Linux (like gaming, and using Adobe apps - also something I plan to move away from). Dual-booting in itself isn’t an issue, so I planned to do it again. However, every other time I partitioned my main drive to make space for Linux. This would always backfire.

I clearly remember a Windows update messing with the way I booted into Linux. I’m not exactly sure about the technicalities here, but I have a feeling it had something to do with Windows messing with the boot loader. This meant that on some occasions, I could not log back into my Linux installation, which led me to just move away from it.

Other times, I kept shooting myself in the foot when it came to updating drivers. On some occasions my audio drivers wouldn’t work, and on others my graphic drivers would mess up. I’m pretty sure most of this was user error on my part, but all this frustration pushed me away from fully migrating over to Linux.

This time, however, I got myself another drive to install Linux on instead of partitioning the one where Windows was installed. In addition, I decided to install Linux Mint (Cinnamon). I only ever tried this once previously when I ran into a weird audio driver issue that got rid of my whole desktop environment (lol). Most of the other times, I tried Ubuntu, which I know Mint is based off of, so I assumed it wouldn’t be much different.

The way I went about the installation was pretty simple. I physically removed my Windows drive from my PC, and only left the new drive in there. With this, I went through the installation as usual with a bootable usb drive, and it went pretty smooth. There was nothing on the new drive, so I gave the whole disk space to my new Linux Mint installation.

Once I was certain I could properly boot into Mint and the desktop environment worked, it was now time to setup the dual boot, which was surprisingly easy.

I reinstalled my windows drive into the PC, and during startup I changed the BIOS settings to give priority to the drive with Linux Mint on it. Once I was in my desktop environment, I just had to run the sudo update-grub command in the terminal and I was good to go.

The next time I boot up my PC, I was greeted with a grub menu that asked what I wanted to boot into with Mint as the primary operating system.

Okay, installation out of the way, but how’s the day-to-day usage. Well, initially I couldn’t get that far because I already ran into my first issue. I have a 165hz monitor, and I couldn’t actually change any display settings. At first the issue seemed quite obvious to me, update all the drivers (mainly graphic drivers).

So I did that, restarted my PC, and I still can’t update my display settings. Since I have an Nvidia graphics card, I knew that I had to install their proprietary drivers which you can get from the driver manager. By default the open-source drivers are installed.

So I installed every driver available one-by-one, and none allowed me to update my display settings. At this point I assumed this was going to lead me down a rabbit hole which was going to eventually lead me to mess up this installation as well, and go back to Windows. So I started simple.

I tried troubleshooting with ChatGPT, but that didn’t help. So I kept digging, until I found a thread on the Linux Mint forums mentioning secure boot. At this point I was almost certain this was the issue since I remember turning it on for a game that required it on Windows to run its anti-cheat.

Back to the BIOS. I checked, and sure enough, secure boot was turned on. So I went ahead and turned it off, and that turned out to be the issue. Finally, I could experience a Linux desktop environment at high refresh rate. It’s one of those things that’s not necessary for me on a day-to-day basis because I don’t game on Linux anyway, but the fluidity of the operating system makes it appealing to choose it over Windows everytime I’m greeted with the grub window on startup.

All this was 3 weeks ago, and I’m still on Linux Mint. This is the longest I’ve used a Linux distro as my main operating system. So far, I haven’t run into any major problem. I did try to install Davinci Resolve once so I could break free from Adobe, but Davinci Resolve just wouldn’t open, and I haven’t had time to try that again. Maybe I’ll give it another shot later down the line.

I have also set up system snapshots with Timeshift so I can at least make the attempt to fix my operating system in case something bad happens this time.

I still use Windows for gaming, but nothing more than that. I know gaming has gotten significantly better with Steam’s contributions to the Linux ecosystem, but I mainly play Assetto Corsa with mods, which, from what I’ve heard, doesn’t play too well with Linux. So for now, I’ve decided to keep my Linux installation for everything outside of gaming.

In addition to all that, I thought it might be nice to share most of the apps/utilities I’ve been using on Linux (stuff that’s not available on Windows, or I just didn’t use it there due to more common alternatives):

GIMP - Currently using it for quick photo editing, but I’m not very good at it at the moment (I’m quite used to Photoshop).
DDC/CI Monitor Brightness (applet) - Use it to quickly configure basic monitor settings (brightness + contrast) without using the physical button on the monitor. It’s a simple alternative to Twinkle Tray on Windows.
logiops - Since I have the MX Master 3s mouse, I used this to update my side buttons to switch between workspaces. I tried solaar before this, but it didn’t work the way I hoped it would. I should mention that solaar has a GUI, while logiops is mainly based on a config file.
Obsidian - simple alternative to Notion. It’s what I’m using to currently write this. It’s free for offline use, but I believe you have to pay for it to sync between devices. I don’t care though because I just use it for quick writing. If I want to use Notion, I’ll just use it in the browser.
Easy Effects - simple and easy to use audio equalizer.
Plank - gives a MacOS-like dock.
Cinnamenu (applet) - a simple menu (for when you click the windows/super key).
Ulauncher - provides a search bar like MacOS’ spotlight search.

If there’s anything I think that might be worth sharing, or if I continue using this for a few months, I’ll be sure to share any updates/experiences here.

If you’d like to share anything in regards to this post with me, you can join my Discord community.

Until next time 👋