Linux distro hopping

Elementary OS

I already had a dual boot of Windows and Elementary OS that I occasionally used. I was convinced it looked so polished compared to any other distro at the time.

Farewell Windows

I made the decision to move away from Windows more than a year ago because all my games ran fine under Linux and I used a Macbook Pro at work.

Farewell #Windows pic.twitter.com/Ve8etbg4YA
— Sun 🇲🇺 (@__Sun__) February 15, 2019

The aesthetics of deepin was too good to resist. After reading some posts on reddit about how it didn't contain any spyware I gave it a go and it ran fine! The UX was really beautiful, prettier than macOS in fact. I didn't like the sidebar-only settings panel that much but it was ok.

Manjaro Linux GNOME

getting used to the GNOME "Sweet Dark" theme on my home machine#linux #gnome #unixporn pic.twitter.com/ycj66Y56Lm
— Sun 🇲🇺 (@__Sun__) April 26, 2019

I started with the GNOME version and I absolutely hated it because I was running it on a gaming PC with dedicated GPU, i7 CPU, SSD and the menu took half a second to open. It felt sluggish. Unacceptable.

AUR is so nice <3 #linux #JustWorks pic.twitter.com/bGrjA0d8Ai
— Sun 🇲🇺 (@__Sun__) May 1, 2019

Manjaro Linux KDE

Immediately after that I went for a Manjaro KDE and I've been hooked ever since. Big fan of KDE, how responsive and light it felt. Endless customization possibilities and most important of all, it took care of essential stuff out of the box. Brightness Controls and Volume Mixer just worked. What I loved the most with Majaro was AUR <3

I can finally control which application audio goes to which output device using pavucontrol on my home #Linux. Needed that for game sound on loudspeaker but discord audio on headset. That was the last thing i thought Windows handled better. #gg pic.twitter.com/2BsTFBJm6c
— Sun 🇲🇺 (@__Sun__) March 19, 2019

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

Then I switched to OpenSUSE tumbleweed because I wanted a rock solid distro that I could trust. I went for the KDE edition of course and I was pretty happy with it.

Sweet KDE Desktop

Although looking at YaST's UI makes me want to vomit, it was pretty easy to use and the way the software repos were managed was nice. zypper was ok. It worked fine but not everything was there. I missed AUR because it always found a way to get me what I want without much effort. I remember that time I had to install vlc 4 beta, and aur found it, compiled it, installed it for me. Trying to achieve the same on openSUSE was a nightmare.

I got tired of the daily updates after a while. Should probably have gone for Leap.

KDE Neon

I redid my whole setup and I left my job so there was no macbook pro for work anymore. I was going to live on Linux only and picking the distro that KDE makes was the natural choice.

Welcoming my new baby in the family!
Going for @kdeneon this time#Thinkpad #Linux pic.twitter.com/JK7OPaJbwp
— Sun 🇲🇺 (@__Sun__) March 9, 2020

I will admit at first I thought it was based on Debian, I came to know later that it's in fact based on Ubuntu LTS. Anyway. After using it for a couple of months it felt fine. I also started using Snap to quickly install apps that were not available in the default repositories, such as Figma Linux or Telegram Desktop. Not everything looked great with snap though.

me: take ages to customize #linux desktop to look dark & super cool
Snapstore: f*ck you! Imma be your light in the darkness@snapcraftio @kdecommunity pic.twitter.com/j96An1eYcI
— Sun 🇲🇺 (@__Sun__) November 30, 2019

I was able to customize KDE as much as I needed. I loved the "Steam" theme on KDE.

KDE Neon Steam Theme

I was interesed in tiling managers but didn't feel ready for i3, so I tried a couple of KWin scripts to have auto tiling inside KDE. Let's just say it was kind of a bumpy ride. Uninstalled the scripts after 15mins.

I found the announcement of Pop!_OS 20.04 by System 76 on twitter. It was always at the back of my head to try it, and since I came to know KDE was also based on Ubuntu, the shame I would have felt for using an Ubuntu based distro faded away.

Then I found this video.

I was sold. I had to decide if i would install it on my laptop or on my main PC, which already contains all my stuff about open source and work. I did some digging on reddit, and a lot of people were saying GNOME isn't as laggy as before. Ah yes. Pop!_OS uses GNOME, so this was goodbye KDE and everything that comes along. After thinking long and hard for 10minutes, i decided to scrap everything on my PC and install it. (I backed up my steam library before erasing the disk)

Pop!_OS

The install process was the best I've used in years. This time I finally decided to have a separate home partition in case I want to change distros again.

Pop!_OS Linux Desktop

The most noticeable difference was how freaking smooth GNOME felt. All the animations were top notch and it actually felt faster and lighter than KDE. I'm not sure if it's actually the case but it does feel this way.

Dota 2 would take around 10 seconds to launch in KDE Neon, here it launches in about 3 seconds with a smooth animation.

So far I've been on Pop!_OS for 2 days and I'm really satisfied with it. Apart from one minor inconvenience. I can't seem to find a way to adjust my monitor's brightness from the shell. I need to use the physical buttons for now.