If someone, when 2024 started, told me I'd have switched back to Linux before August, I would've laughed at them, but it happened. And it happened in a very insidious way that I feel the need to share because, remember: If you use Linux is your duty to tell everyone, to try to force your OS into everyone else and use words like "freedom" and "micro$$$oft" and "window$" and the such.
Jokes aside, I didn't consider to move to Linux, at all. I was on Windows 10 (I think Windows 11 is horrible and slow and filled with so many trackers that it isnt even funny) and was considering to stay in it past its artificial "expiration date". However, as uncaring as I could be with my data privacy, there was a point where even I had to say "this is a bit too much". And that "a bit too much" was Microsoft Recall. A feature that would take a screenshot every 5 seconds, and would feed an AI who would store what were you doing.
It was then that I decided to try Linux on my laptop. Since my laptop is just a secondary system, I could just take the bug out of my head and remind myself that Linux is half baked and I would reinstall Windows on my laptop, in preparation to a trip I'll have now in August. And I installed Linux Mint 21.3.
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Before going on, I'm going to say something and be very straight about it: I do not think Linux is an OS ready for everyone. It has advanced LEAPS since the last time I had used it, but its still an OS that will require tinkering and finding out solutions that may not be easy to spot. This is my experience and it was a "succesful" one, but i do not want you think that if it worked for me, it will do for you. Linux has still some rocks and stones that may be a hurdle for non-tech-inclined peeps.
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I was shocked as everything worked out of the box. Everything. I installed MATE because honestly I prefer to use my computer in a more old-school-ish way. And it worked actually quite good. I had no issues with my laptop except for setting up my cintiq; while the tablet was recognized and worked out of the box, the corners were all wrong in addition to the mouse pointer moving through the entire desktop area when I tried to draw with the pencil. There is a command line tool, xsetwacom, but its not easy to use, I couldnt use it to map it to the tablet only (it told me HDMI-1 didnt exist, even tho that was the output when asked) and I had to enter coordinates that made no sense.
I decided to try KDE Plasma. I didnt originally want because when KDE 4 had been released (back when I was still using Linux back then), it had been buggy, bad and I really disliked it. But I bit the bullet.
Man, I should've done it earlier. Not only it was somehow *faster* than MATE, but it had an applet to configure the tablet, that worked flawlessly.
Could I use Clip Studio Paint? A year ago i had attempted to use CSP on Debian with a VM and failed miserably. This time? It ran out of the box. The only option i had to change was going to File > Preferences and in the Tablet section, turn on the "Use mouse mode in tablet driver settings". That was it.
Things worked, everything out of the box, and games also worked.
Eventually I decided to pull the plug and move my desktop. And I did. But I decided to try something else with my desktop. So far I had been using Mint 21.3 in my laptop, but everyone pointed me to try Ubuntu Studio, that was a distro specifically aimed to artists like me. So I did. I tried the liveDVD of US in my desktop, it ran flawlessly. I installed it.
Thats where the problems started.
First, I couldn't install wine. Even though I used dpkg --add-architecture and followed the steps rigurously. Nope. The i386 packages had been pulled off Ubuntu entirely. I thought I could use Steam to get them, nope. I installed Steam and in the moment it asked for the libraries, it shat itself and nope you cannot play here what the hell distro are you using.
After losing some hours setting up and failing at this crucial step, I decided ok nope. I'm going back to Mint. Or I'll try it before going back to Windows.
I installed Mint. Then I immediately installed KDE Plasma. Then the tablet applet. Then Wine.
I had no issues. Everything, every single thing worked out of the box, right away, without any need of additional setup.
I'm also thankful that Mint is still on x11 and hasn't moved on to Wayland, because apparently the wacom tablet setup doesnt work on Wayland, and I didn't see any plans to make it work anytime soon. Devs are worried about other more pressing incompatibilities, and thats fine. Anyways, everything worked fine. Most stuff worked even faster!
I decided to stay on Linux. I installed a few Windows virtual machines (MS-DOS, Windows 95, 2000, XP and 7) (with legit keys I own), and my main connection with Windows would be a Windows 7 machine. Everything going well, even though some software prevented me from using their newest versions. That's fine, I never liked Windows 8 or 10 anyways. I tolerated them, that is different. (I love Windows 7)
And right now I have my system all set up, configured, all working great. KDE Plasma is a great desktop whose philosophy I like ("We're adding this new feature, but don't worry, we'll put a switch somewhere to turn it on or off if you want").
So yeah thats my story with returning to Linux.
However, like I mentioned, it had some few rocks and I wanna talk about them.
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Clip Studio Paint.
It's my main tool and what I use for my work. I mentioned it ran right off the bat without additional setup, and thats true. However, it isnt perfect.
First, it takes around 25 minutes to start (no, I'm not joking, if you try to launch it from the command line, it doesnt crash, it just takes that long to start). The start takes even longer the more fonts (typographies) you have installed. And if by mistake you open the "Recent files" menu, it will crash, forcing you to reload it again. Besides that, though, it runs excellent. I wouldn't complain if it wasnt due to that.
And before you say, because I know someone will mention it, I dont like Krita. Never have. From crashes to desktop in the past to just I don't like it.
VRChat
I was surprised to discover that my VR Headset (HTC Vive) worked out of the box. However, vrchat needed some very annoying setup. It ran almost flawlessly, until I went to any world with video player. Nope, video player refused to work. I had to start scrambling upon non-official versions of proton until I found one, a very specific one that wouldnt crash vrchat and would let me use video. All good, and two days later vrchat updated itself and fuck me, now it crashed and had to do the "find version" thing again. And even now i cant play videos flawlessly, i need to go to the video player, hit "Stream" and *then* insert the video URL. That also means that 1. In worlds where I'm not the owner I cannot do so, and 2. Searching through a video is impossible.
At least its something.
Also, VR is extremely inefficient and slow; I get FPS drops fairly often and thats annoying. Its less of an issue when im doing my VR airdrum workouts with a friend, but its absolutely an issue when more peeps wanna join the fray. Also I have no idea if I'll be able to enjoy all the light effects and videos and all next year when Furality Online happens.
That's it for now. In spite of the couple bumps, my experience with Mint is great, I am very happy and I don't see myself returning to Windows anytime soon. I may renew my laptop, but if that's the case, I'll be installing Linux in it too xD Screw you, Microsoft. You've spied on me enough, and I'm *not* willing to keep using your online account even if you try to force it into me.
That's my experience. I know some peeps here are very Linux oriented and I know (based on my experiences with the Linux community pre-2010) that some will think I'm a moron for not knowing how to do things right off the bat or for not understanding the manual to install alternatives to steamvr or for not modifying wine myself to prevent CSP from crashing, or that I'm a sheeple for even needing to use wine in first place, but its fine lol
I hope you have a good day.
PS: OH YEAH I almost forgot. My desktop.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor (8 cores, 16 threads)
RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3200
Mobo: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX1080Ti
Kernel: Linux 5.15.0-117-generic (x86_64)
Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.24.7
QT Version: 5.15.3
Graphics platform: X11
