@kokolegorille Absolutely, I have encountered and used only basic browsing options, haven’t gone deep with it. When I get time I’ll definitely force myself into adpating to it. Thanks for suggesting that!
2 Likes
Oh this the distrohopper support group thread, right?
I used many distros, although mostly Ubuntu based: Ubuntu with Gnome 2, Ubuntu with Unity, Xubuntu, Antergos with xfce, Arch with i3, Elementary OS, Ubuntu with Gnome 3 and now Ubuntu Budgie.
I switched away from xfce because of buggy multi-monitor experience (with a portable laptop, worked fine on a desktop where configuration didn’t change).
Arch with i3 was nice but I was tinkering with it too much and I never was satisfied.
Elementary OS looks pretty and has some nice features like Picture-in-Picture but also has a few annoyances, like lsb_release not returning ubuntu base codename, or login screen sometimes getting stuck for minutes.
I like Ubuntu Budgie because it gives me a light, fast Gnome3-like experience and I didn’t encounter any bugs yet. Confuguration GUI is a bit clunky, especially around plugins (or are they called widgets?), to change login sceen image I had to dig through text-based config files… But overall it feels great!
4 Likes
Vi(m)'s command mode has ed in full, you can pipe ed commands into a vi session. ^.^
vi really is just ed with some more commands and an edit mode, lol.
I love KDE though!
3 Likes
I prefer gnome, and debian based distros, but that’s the diversity of Linux I guess.
Not to mention BSD flavors…
1 Like
Yep! I can’t stand gnome, it eats more memory, slower, and significantly less configureable, but to each their own indeed. ^.^
A standard KDE install is way more configureable, faster, less memory usage, etc… I mostly like it for the speed and configurability. Though I have like 8 ‘desktop’ interfaces installed that I can swap between when I log in. ^.^;
DragonFly is the main ‘desktop’ BSD I think?
FreeBSD is a good experience too
1 Like
FreeBSD I ran as servers for years from it’s version 3.5 up to 5.x. ^.^
It works as a desktop, but it’s more “build it yourself”. ^.^
1 Like
Oh yes, gentoo style, I like ports…
make install clean
IPF, IPFW, PF as firewall.
CHROOT included 
1 Like
You should take a loot at Solaris/Illumos/WhateverItsCalledNow, it’s basically BSD done right.
Although the FreeBSD Ports system is unmatched in my opinion. ^.^
Solaris Zones is like BSD Jails, but actually better and kernel enforced.
1 Like
There were some more quote I’m going to refer to, but I don’t want to quote them all. Twenty, fifteen years ago I could spend hours, maybe days customizing desktop environment, but that times are all long gone. Now it’s just installing distro you want to, and you’re probably just need to install some additional stuff you need like IDE/Editor or video/music player of your choice, browser etc. But that is stuff you really do with any OS. I probably spend more time on new machine setting up SSH keys/config and installing zsh + plugins and config then installing OS itself. I usually roll with Plasma (KDE) because it’s what I’m used to.
Last time I was installing Linux was December when I bought new laptop. All it took me one evening to install everything, and set everything up to my liking.
The thing with Linux is that it let you do whatever you want. OSX may have sane defaults (for some), but changing them is sometimes borderline impossible. You can’t change keyboard layout without some heavy hacks on OSX, in Linux, it’s very simple. You can’t have NTFS write support without doing some crazy stuff in recovery mode, in Linux you run one command that install proper package. There is more of that. Surprisingly, Windows let you manage your OS to your liking on the same way as Linux does, but maybe not as easily. OSX try to tell you that it’s way is the best way and it’s the only way, to do lot of stuff, and some people are OK with that. Nowadays Linux give you great experience out of the box, without limiting you in any way what you can do with your machine.
4 Likes
Which distro is the most like OS X? I can’t see myself moving in the near future, but I’d like to give Linux (on desktop) a go again one day 
1 Like
If you just want a OSX look and feel I think Deepin Linux and elementary OS were heavily inspired by OSX look and feel. Down below the UI every Linux will behave in a Linux and not OSX way, but that’s a plus.
1 Like
Or something like Kubuntu with Latte Dock and some theming. ^.^
You can get the top menu bar as on mac, the dock comes via latte dock, etc…
I’ve not tried deepin or elementary OS’s though I’ve heard of (sociatal? political? something) issues around deepin before. Quick googling shows that deepin uses an old version of KDE with lots of custom stuff (apparently people remark about how much better latte dock is), and elementary uses Gnome with hacks.
I’d just use Kubuntu with Latte Dock, I can walk you through how to change up the theme as you want, but these articles from a quick google search seem to do it too:
This one uses Cairo Dock instead of Latte Dock, never touched that one so don’t know anything about it (pictures of it look less configureable than latte dock though?):
Here’s how to get a lot of desktop interfaces to look mac’ish (though not as in-depth as the above ones):
2 Likes
elementary uses Gnome with hacks
I don’t think it has much in common with Gnome, they have their own window manager (Gala), own “sdk” tools and libraries in Vala, own design and widgets… Yes underneath all apps are using GTK and some apps use gsettings but I think that’s it
1 Like
It’s a nice coincidence that you created this thread, as I’m just in the middle of setting up my new Linux machine. It’s been 10 years since I got my first mac, and 7 years since I moved completely to macs, and I’m curious to see how will my return to the linux world look like
4 Likes
Looks like their Tuxedo OS is just rebranded Ubuntu Budgie. Did you go with that or another option?
Yeah, I went with that one.
Ever consider using Suse Linux / OpenSuse Leap 15?
I know is not as popular as Ubuntu but I selected it because of the way they test and deploy the hole OS using OpenQA (https://openqa.opensuse.org/)
In one line: a better tested OS in my laptop.
Well it’s just how I see it. I might be wrong and I am not saying Ubuntu is bad.
I’d love if you did a review of that one once you use it for a bit! I’ve not used that one before either. 
I used to use Suse way back in the day, it was very well managed. Plus it uses KDE if I recall correctly, lol.
1 Like
It’s been about a month since I switched back to Linux. I summarized a few impressions in this Twitter thread.
8 Likes
