This is a 12 year dream. I have always run a Windows workstation along side a Debian laptop. I am no stranger to Debian. I have a 12 year association with it. I am not a Linux wizard yet but have been adept with it.
Why not use Debian daily then? My personal computing usage unfortunately centered around consumption rather than creation. I watched videos, listened to podcasts, read technical articles, and browsed social media. On top of this, inertia and great software like Visual Studio, Notepad++, Excel, OneDrive held me back.
Visual Studio is an absolute must-have for all .NET developers. I built small pieces of complex web projects only occasionally. VS Code on Linux is decent for .NET development but it is not the same. Though Jetbrains Rider existed along-side, it is unthinkable to drop Visual Studio. At least for dark matter developers.
Notepad++ is a fabulous software program that had no complete alternatives on Linux. I used it for scripting, text manipulation, note taking, dumping and editing thoughts. Scintilla-based equivalents Geany, SciTE exist, but do not come close.
MS-Office Excel is another remarkable software program with no real alternatives in other ecosystems. It is worth the 5K INR per year. Organizing data, life planning, and creating simple reports are a few of its greatest capabilities. Also, the formulas system is amazing. OneDrive is another great and a utilitarian software program from the Microsoft stable.
So, why now? I had the most fun and growth when I built things. I love the independence that comes with the experience of building things. As far as I can remember, I was always a tinkerer, thinker, builder, doer and explorer. After a decade or so of inaction, I needed a change. A few things fell into place recently.
- Windows is about to get a whole lot more annoying. An increase in ads, baked-in Copilot, and a suffocating push to outlook user-linked usage.
- Jetbrains Rider became formidable now for CLI and web app development.
- I learnt enough of apt-pinning, backports and makedeb repository.
- The last straw is from an unexpected experience. I set up a Win 11 VM recently using the KVM+QEMU route. I noticed that the VM’s performance was quite responsive. KVM+QEMU despite all the pain felt worthy. I cannot recommend it enough.
Immediately I decided to remove Windows, install Debian with a Windows VM inside. I will write about various experiments and experiences over the next year. These are some of the sub-projects on my mind in no particular order.
- Write about this setup
- Implement a nice 3-2-1 backup strategy
- Write about significant alternatives
- Write about significant issues
- Linking to phone
- Configure monitoring, notifications and alerts
- Configure auto dark mode
- Find a way to play an old strategy game on Linux
I just don’t get the love for notepad++
I started using it as my main back in 2006ish, I then switched to sublime text about 2011, then about 5-6 years ago to VSCode. All the time using vim for any in-terminal quick edits.
Notepad++ is easily my least favourite editor of the lot, by several miles, it just seems so rigid and clunky without even going into how it’s windows only. Every editor I’ve used since has been a huge improvement over the one prior IMO
Agree on all counts about Notepad++ “oldness”
- slower when we have 100 files open
- clunky
- rigid
- old GUI paradigms ( settings modal, find modal etc)
- inflexible and less customizable UI chrome area
Few things I like about Notepad++ enough to actually keep on using it on work workstations:
- Plugins ecosystem. I am too entrenched into it.
- PoormansSqlFormatter
- Tidy2
- JSTool
- XML Tools
- ComparePlus
- TextFx2
- great built-in editing operations
Edit > EOL - great bookmarking operations
- Very active development
- Way faster than VS Code for text manipulation tasks
Geany with Plugins with is great but misses out on the above stuff
Sublime is the only one and I could use it for a serious amount of time. I only went back because I could not often get it installed in some enterprises.
Cheers for the response, I appreciate it!
I’m curious about the plugins as obviously I’m not gonna be familiar with the notepad++ plugin ecosystem now—what’s special about the ones you listed?
Assuming edit EOL is just changing the line termination characters, all editors have that don’t they? Or does this not do what I think?
Intrigued about VSCode being slow for text manipulation too—I remember this being a big reason I dropped notepad++ for sublime and IMO VSCode and sublime more or less have parity on that front, particularly with vim bindings
VS Code has gotten really fast recently but it is more of a combination of having the right plugin (TextFX in this case) and the general fastness. Someone should ideally just port that TextFX. I thought about doing that a lot of times, but it was a lack of time + lack of skill issue :)
Again I do use VS Code for the occasional frontend work. It is great but for all heavy duty manipulation sometime really is off in VS Code. It could be that I haven’t out of inertia tried too much.
I don’t know if I can qualifiedly explain what it is about the plugins, they work well and have sane defaults. Notepad++ with all its custom panels, that plugins create a quite a clunkiness in there, but having those separate panels sometimes gives it a unique and flexible usage experience.
About the edit thing, there are just so many options that sometimes I forget that TextFx plugin exists. There are 100 or so options in that edit menu neatly categorized into sub menus like Insert, Copy, Indent, Line Operations, Blank Operations, Auto-completion, Paste Special, On Selection, Multi-select All, etc each having 5 to 7 operations.
Line Operations for example has these:
Duplicate Current Line
Remove Duplicate Lines
Remove Consecutives Duplicate Lines
Split Lines
Join Lines
...
Reverse Lines
Randomize Lines
...
Sort Lines Lexicographically Ascendlng
and 10 or more
Another great thing is the whole design and the options around managing bookmarks while searching. I should write a blog post on it :)
I couldn’t agree more. I had a foot in both the MacOS and Microsoft Windows worlds at the time and can appreciate what a game changer notepad++ became. Having used BBEdit on the Mac since around the mid 90s, it was kinda more like “it’s about time” a decade later when notepad++ was released. I’m not necessarily comparing them feature to feature, but it was a much needed piece of software for Windows. I still have memories of opening up text files and being like … damn someone f’d this txt file up on a windows machine… again.
Many many years ago I switched from OS X back to Linux and had to find alternatives: https://jeena.net/why-i-switchedfrom-osx-to-linux
For the three software you point as a must have there are alternatives, even those you’d not think of:
- Visual Studio - Stop writing .NET web applications, there are so many other web frameworks around you don’t really need .NET
- Notepad++ - It’s a steep learning curve but Vim and Emacs give you all and more freedom than Notepad++
- Excel - You can use the 365 version in the browser, that is what I do at work
- OneDrive works through the browser again, but there are alternatives like Nextcloud, Syncthing, Seafile
Thank you for your comment.
- .NET is my bread and butter and the C# language is great now. Can’t let go. I do have my eyes, and some proficiency, on Go and Python.
- I planned to use online Excel for a while, but installed LibreOffice Calc as of now.
- For backups, I am trying OneDrive-For-Linux, but eventually plan to have a syncthing based setup.
Regarding the editor, having a similar experience like Notepad++ is not a must, and I used vim on and off but could never stick due to various editing requirements over the years as mentioned in other comment.
.NET is such a second-class citizen (Mono situation looks shaky now) on non-Microsoft Windows. I mean don’t give it up cold turkey perhaps, but adding new languages to your belt will help you get unshackled from Microsoft.
Absolutely yes, I definitely have my eye on becoming a polyglot dev in the next 5 years. So it is quite the journey, but I am in it for the long run. Switching to Linux was also the easiest way to do this as I realized.
How would you use Syncthing for backup? Usually syncing is not considered a backup since if you delete something at source it will also be deleted at target. Or would you do one-way-sync?
You can set folders as send-only so delete events wouldnt be caught I think
As mentioned in my potential sub-projects I will shortly attempt an implementation a 3-2-1 backup strategy. I have Syncthing in mind to do the syncing to one of more of OneDrive / BackBlaze / Borg backup services etc. I don’t have all the final details yet on the services and pieces needed yet.
I’ve also recently switched to Linux Mint as my daily driver. Linux + Open-Source is finally in a really good spot. I tell people that switching OSes always takes new learning, but a step-by-step approach is a sustainable one.
Whenever I go back to Windows and see news and ads popping up in my Start Menu, etc, I realize how much shit we were putting up with even pre-Copilot. That’s not even including Microsoft Edge forcing itself back as a default program with each major update. It’s like the word “consent” doesn’t exist to those people.
This has been a dream of mine and one of my friend’s as well. There’s a small handful of blockers that I’ve slowly been transitioning but the upcoming windows pain points you mentioned are definitely recent motivators for me. I’m glad you made it and I hope the rest of us can too! I look forward to reading more about your experience.
Hello there!
It’s funny, I just made the switch this Monday. I got fed up with Microsoft’s bullshit being shoved down my throat. I was going to keep Windows 10 for as long as possible, but a recent update that installed Copilot on my machine was the last straw. I have been a Linux user since 2000 and have been using Ubuntu (and switching flavours) since 2004.
I had a big conversation on the Linux Gaming community about choosing a new distribution as a daily driver. You can see it here.
I wanted to get people’s opinion and it started a big thread with lots of responses. It led me to try many distributions to see which ones would be the best fit and read a lot about people’s experiences with them as well. In the end, I decided to stick with Kubuntu which was already installed as a dual boot on my system even though I didn’t use it much except to tinker from time to time and it was doing a great job. Gaming on it was also working fantastically well. And I knew that every time I booted into it it would always work unless I really started messing with system files and didn’t know what I was doing.
So Monday I had a day off and did the jump. Backed up my system, downloaded Kubuntu 24.04.1, booted off the USB stick and wiped the whole system clean.
But I learned something about Kubuntu (and Ubuntu in general) during that experience that made me regret keeping that distro. I knew that Canonical had developed their own sandboxed package system like Flatpak: Snaps. They were already available in 22.04, which I was running, but I didn’t really pay attention. Upon installing Kubuntu 24.04, I realized just how much Canonical insisted that Snaps be used. Some software is now exclusively available as Snaps and nothing else. This unacceptable for me.
To be fair, Snaps aren’t THAT bad. It’s pretty comparable to Flatpak in general in terms of features except for the fact that they are stored locally in their compressed form while Flatpaks are uncompressed. So the startup time of Snaps is slower. But they both offer sandboxing and therefore an added layer of security. This is great for apps like internet clients (browsers, email, etc.) or even servers or any kind of software, especially in an immutable system meant for IoT. Baeldung’s website explains the differences pretty well.
I’d probably use snaps for certain scenarios, but I think Canonical is pushing the limit by forcing people to use them. And also they’ve said they wouldn’t support Flatpak in future releases, even though it has become very popular and is being adopted much more than Snaps by third party software providers. I’m fairly certain Snaps are going to go the same way as Bazaar and Unity over time. In any case, I’ve been able to get around Snaps enough that it’s tolerable for the moment.
So now I’ve been considering starting over with Debian stable instead. I’m already used to Apt and .deb packages and the Debian way of doing things. I’m looking for stability over having the latest and greatest software and honestly, a 2 year release cycle is not that bad. Plus there’s backports as well. Almost everyone is saying “Debian is too far behind! Packages are too old!” but what’s “old” anyway? 6 months??? Honestly that’s not a big deal for me. I just want my system to boot and be very confident that it’ll work and won’t break during my next apt-get upgrade. Debian offers this peace of mind. But, after using Ubuntu for so long with all its quality of life improvements, Debian looks pretty rough around the edges in comparison.
I think I’ll stick with my Kubuntu for a bit and see how it goes and if I really get frustrated at Snaps, I’ll switch to Debian. But, right now I’ve spent enough time setting up my system that I feel too lazy to switch.
“Debian is too far behind! Packages are too old!”
The best rule of thumb I’ve ever heard regarding Debian Stable is that if the kernel in stable’s default repo fully supports ALL your hardware, and the software in stable’s default repos fully support your workflows, it’s fine.
If those are NOT true, then you probably don’t want to use Stable, because you’ll either end up fighting it via manually compiled and installed software, or you’ll venture into so many 3rd party repos for updated packages that updating it later becomes problematic and prone to making the whole system catch fire and burn down.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I never distro-hopped much, but still got to try Ubuntu a few times while always using Debian Testing. After a point, I had all the things I needed on Debian Stable and the few that I needed, I learnt how to use backports or makedeb etc. Kubuntu is pretty great. My own Debian journey was probably like Lubuntu > Mint > Debian Testing for a long time > Debian Stable rest of the life. If it works for you Kubuntu is still great. No need to switch to Debian unless there is a strong reason.
As for flatpak and snap, I have my reservations. I go out of my way to avoid them and find either packaged version or try the source install. However, I am not completely averse to them. I still think if someday I need flatpak only software in my workflow, I would have no qualms to use it.
I felt the same way about the flatpaks and snap. But having used flatpaks a bit I realized how great it is for desktop apps.
What I like the most is that you don’t have to pull in a ton of dependencies for them to run. For example, when using a Gnome app in KDE.
I also appreciate the sandboxing. Especially for web clients like Firefox and Discord for example. I’m using Flatseal to configure the app permissions like you would Android apps. And the Flathub acts like an app store. The software there is often more recent than what’s in the repo.
I highly recommend it.
