Windows to Linux blurb

Cue a Windows 10 upgrade. Add some random hard drive failure. A bit of frustration mixed with a mild resentment towards some of the new Windows features. Like restarts without permisson. All ended with an interest in replacing Windows with Linux.

Popped in a refurbished drive with less capacity than the previous. Installed Ubuntu 16.04 minimal via USB. Then loaded up Gnome as the desktop.

First impressions. Very nice presentation. Quickly ran through some “first step” guidelines and started up a number of applications to get a feel for the environment. For this average user: Document editing (Libreoffice), email management (Evolution), graphic design (Gimp, Krita, Inkscape) and video editing tools (Lightworks , Openshot) work very well. The Gnome Nautilus file explorer felt a bit weird and would take some getting used to. Also noticed that the machine ran noticeably quiet during testing. A refreshing change.

Immediate problems. No black background color or wallpaper. Gnome does not appear to offer the option to customize background colors with system tools. One can select from an assortment of predefined pallets. One can also run a number of shell commands to resolve this. Regardless, black was not readily available. There are no icons on the desktop though there is this Irritating “pop out” tray located at the lower left. The immediate reaction was to switch to another desktop. A simple task at best. Instead the INTERNET was queried which resulted in an Ubuntu Tweak Tool implemented to some degree of success.

linux desktop pr0n

The repository version of the Eclipse programming IDE was uncooperative at best and the available solutions did not help. Lost a bit of time on this one. After a bit of research, a Neon package was downloaded and implemented instead.

Regarding audio editing, mixing and recording. The recommended solution is to install the Studio version of Ubuntu desktop.  Instead the INTERNET was queried. Long story short. Open source audio tools are not as “user friendly” as expected. This will require more time to resolve.

There are quite a number of native Linux games available. Services like Steam offer quality games that run on Linux. It may be possible get a number of modern triple A games to run. Older game titles are likely to find good support under Wine. That said, gaming on Linux is not good. Sony Six-axis controller support is frustrating. Having a crippled gaming rig really hurts. 

Linux as desktop environment so far is good. The average PC user should find it a productive operating system to work with. Media savvy and hardcore gamers will find it a challenge but there is always hope.

As for this fool. Struggling to love Linux. Challenge accepted for now.


EDIT

Better way to set gnome desktop background color via terminal

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background primary-color "#000000"