**Switching to Linux on the desktop in 2025**

Read it on my blog, it has a nicer image/text layout.

TL;DR

If you are seeking the answer to the question “Should I switch from Windows (10) to Linux on desktop” in this blog post, the answer is: Yes, definitely (for web browsing and web app usage, document/image/video editing).

Don’t mind the complaining of a middle aged guy (me) who has too much time to tinker with, what someone on Mastodon named, ‘edge scenarios’.

Intro

It’s 2025 and this is a diary of my … hmmm … 3rd? 5th? attempt of transition of my main working computer (laptop) to Linux. Also, a copy of my Mastodon thread. Also, a record of some strange obsession.

The triggers for the transition to desktop Linux were:

• soon-to-EOL Windows 10
• pushy Windows Recall – no, thank you, I don’t want an all-seeing eye watching my monitor and my dirty little secrets I watch.
• overall enshittification of Windows OS.

I’m stubbornly clicking ‘no, I don’t wanna upgrade to Windows 11’ button for over a year.

Just a small note about my work and why the switch to Linux was possible: I do most of my work in a web browser (collaborative document editing in Google Docs, Office356 or OnlyOffice) and I deal a lot with files in various distributed international teams. I run projects that produce various documents, learning content, research content, reports, e-learning platforms. I don’t program, sometimes I configure various web/FOSS systems. I communicate with my teams vie email, Signal, Element, Whatsapp. I wrote this to narrow the scenarios for whom the switch to Linux makes sense.

Short history of my attempts

You’re not interested in it, but I will write about it anyway. I will put aside my Linux on server installs(from ~2001), because they’re a different kind of animal.

My first serious attempt in using Linux on a desktop was in 2010. I installed Ubuntu on my HP550 (dual core, 2GB RAM), Compiz for fancy desktop effects- especially desktop cube rotation. I added Virtual Box, converted my previous Windows 7 installation to a virtual machine and ran it from Linux when needed. Mostly because of Microsoft Visio that I needed for some project for public administration. I still can’t forget faces of people on one meeting when I was switching virtual desktops (rotating cube – see an example here). My laptop didn’t have any special GPU but it managed desktop 3D effects without breaking a sweat. They asked: What kind of Mac is this?

Then I bought a new laptop in 2012 and stopped using Linux, I just went with preinstalled Windows. What went wrong, why didn’t I continue using Linux back then?

Honestly, I can’t remember. Probably I was too busy or dealing with other things to make my company afloat so I didn’t bother.

Fast forward to 2025.

Ubuntu attempt

The thread is 35 posts long.

I started on 13. March and my intention was to log paper-cuts along the way.

(1/)

Today’s ‘biting a green apple’ and a step towards my de-microsoftization:

I will work the whole day on Ubuntu/live edition from USB.
Just to force myself out of comfort zone and observe paper cuts along the way — in the thread (1/) –>

(2/)

First paper cut: my Logitech MX Anywhere 3 Bluetooth mouse doesn’t wake up from sleep mode. I had to disconnect/reconnect it.

**edit: looks like after switching to Wayland the problem is gone.

(3/)

Next paper cut: I have 2 monitors. Built-in (laptop), 60Hz and external (USB), 144Hz. Both work OK.
I observed a funny thing: laptop’s monitor sometimes reduces and increases brightness by itself (only in dark mode). Briefly, but noticeable.

**edit1: solved by disabling Automatic screen brightness (in Power settings)

**edit2: X11 said 144Hz on secondary monitor works but it didn’t. Dragging a window was choppy. In Wayland it really works (so smooth!)

(4/)

Next paper cut: Settings window does not float to the top.
I had ‘Settings’ window opened, but hidden behind some window.
When I tried to run it from the docker menu (several times), it didn’t float to the top. I thought it just won’t open. I needed some minutes to figure out it is already opened, but hidden.

That’s it for today. Overall, almost everything works. Firefox, Google Meet finds my headset and camera.

(5/)

Next paper cut: at the end of the day, I had to boot Windows.
It welcomed me with ‘Enter your Bitlocker passphrase’.
But why? Did Ubuntu live USB messed with the partition or what? Is this normal?
All I did in Ubuntu – I clicked on windows disk and it said it is encrypted.

(6/)

Day 2 (using Ubuntu Live USB).
– Firefox on Linux has a profile manager – nice!
– Oh, I can sync Firefox Multi-Account containers – nice!
– Large Text is not large enough for me. Fractional scaling (primary monitor – 125%, large one 150%) to the help and now everything is nice and large.
– I can move taskbar from the left side to the bottom.

– Only one paper cut today – I can’t use google drive account in gnome, probably because I use live USB.

(7/)

Next paper cut: first mouse scroll tick is ignored when changing direction of scrolling in Firefox.
This is quite annoying.

*edit: changing to Wayland solved the issue.

(8/)

Day 3 (using Ubuntu Live USB).
Can you believe it? No paper cuts today. I really like the overall feeling and smoothness of the desktop.
And here is solaar: fine grained settings for Logitech mice and similar

(9/)

Day 4 (using Ubuntu Live USB).
Firefox crashed for the first time today.
But fear not – when it recovered, also my unsaved WP post was there (because of WP, not FF).

I started to wonder – do I even need to install Ubuntu on my computer? After several days running live USB, I don’t miss native installation (yet).

(10/)

Day 5. Enough of this live USB nonsense. Let’s install it.
(actually, the system froze for the first time today and I’m blaming live USB).

• Bitlocker off
• Space freed (550GB for Ubuntu, 450 for Windows)
• Backup made

(no, I lie)
Posting this and live recording screen cast WHILE INSTALLING

(11/)

Not sure what I was afraid of. Install took only several minutes. There is a no-brainier install option ‘install along windows’. Yeah, now I know why I was nervous. Partitioning. It looks like they made the installation more human than the last time I did it (10+years ago).

Dual boot works.
Not sure what is this ‘Ubuntu Pro’ good for.

(12/)

Accessing google drive from file explorer.
I tried Gnome Online Accounts and connected to my gdrive.
All I can say it didn’t improve much from the last time I used it several years ago. I can browse folders and files in Nautilus, but can’t edit them.

Will try out #ocamlfuse and #rclone. Which one do you use?

(13/)

Moar paper cuts.
– rclone installation to access gdrive was successful, but PITA (especially obtaining google ID from google apps). Absolutely not for ‘normal’ users.

– could not not open files from mounted folder with LibreOffice. (fix: adding “–vfs-cache-mode full” to rclone mount command)

– don’t see ‘shared with me’ in gdrive

– Dropbox mount with rclone was seamless.

I’m almost at the point I can say my workspace is ready to do the work, not to tinker with the OS.

Sigh.

(14/)

Yes, I will bother you some more with paper cuts from Win->Ubuntu transition. It’s the year of the desktop Linux, right?

– tried 3 file managers (Nautilus, Dolphin, Thunar). Each has something that annoys me.

– Nautilus: No tree view in left pane (in combination with right content pane).

– Thunar: won’t open my LibreOffice files from mounted folders

– Dolphin: similar annoyances as Nautilus.

Tree view worked 30 years ago, not sure why is so hard to keep UX patterns that work.

(15/)

… contd:
– opening files from gdrive mounted folder (streamed via rclone) is painfully slow. 10 seconds or more. GDrive app on Win streams too, but it is significantly faster.

– SORTING! My folder structure uses _ and __ prefixes to sort these folders to the top for the last 30 years. This worked in DOS, Windows (win explorer, cmd). Except here in Linux. CLI and Nautilus try to be smart and skip prefixes when sorting folders and files. Please don’t do that!

Sigh².

(16/)

Intermezzo.
My complaints doesn’t mean I don’t like Linux/Ubuntu.
I just describe my journey, a transition from windows 10, from installation to usable workspace/desktop.
I want it to work out.

That’s why I use the term ‘paper cuts’: they hurt, but aren’t life threatening.

(17/)

Paper cut called Thorium reader.

– installed Thorium reader via .deb package: won’t start

– installed (‘unofficial’)snap package: starts, but won’t accept my library passphrase

– installed AppImage: can’t run, something something FUSE. OK, extracted it, messed with access rights of a sandbox, it runs and it accepts my library passphrase to read DRM protected books.

(18/)

What is this s**t? Am I totally incompetent or what?
Ubuntu made recursive links (Desktop, Documents, Templates, Pictures) after a fresh installation?

(solved by suggestion: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1483018/home-user-desktop-and-public-folders-show-as-type-link-broken-inode-symlink)

(19/)

Day 6 and I broke Ubuntu for the first time. Why? I wanted to run Ultimaker Cura AppImage, it said it needed Fuse, I was stupid to just sudo apt install fuse, Y of course. It removed some gnome packages.

No login screen anymore.

I thought it is catastrophe.
But no.
ctrl-alt-f3 to the rescue, reinstall fuse3, gnome, desktop, shell and I’m back in the saddle after 5 minutes.

Easy to break, easy to fix. But not for the faint-hearted.

(20/)

yes, I’m still still here, fighting the windmills.
Today I installed sw from/via .deb, apt get, snap, appimage, flatpak.

1. Thorium reader and Cura Slicer via appimage. A lot of cli gymnastics because of fuse3 and fuse2 lib mixing

2. Davinci Resolve via install script which was appimage in disguise. Damn, this was hard, because Davinci didn’t detect my graphic card and OpenCL didn’t work. Installed AMD drivers. No luck. Added myself to video group. Success.

Sigh^3

(21/)

Something positive for a change.
#Nautilus TABS! What a useful functionality!
I didn’t even know what I was missing.
Scenario: once per year I dump photos from my phone to NAS folder called ‘uncategorized’. Then I categorize photos manually – moving to appropriate folders (e. g. 2025-03-27-EventName).
I create new photo sub-folders and open them in separate Nautilus tabs, then I can categorize them quickly.

And no, I’m not looking for a tool that does that for me.

(22/)

… aaaaand another paper cut. Sometimes my mouse cursor freezes for 10 seconds.
Not sure why.
I suspect when something wants to access samba share (my NAS is pretty slow).
Nevertheless: Last time I experienced freezing mouse cursor, was in … windows 3.1.
I remember my Amiga friends always made jokes about it.
Multitasking OSes shouldn’t do this.

(23/)

it’s not samba share, it’s my external monitor that causes freezes. When mouse cursor freezes, I unplug monitor’s USB from my laptop and re-plug it, and it starts to work immediately.
Yeah, graphic card drivers, Wayland, whatever.

Another paper cut: file drag&drop from my mounted GDrive folder to a web page upload widget doesn’t work.

(24/)

But AGAIN not everything is grim.
Today I’d like to praise old humble symbolic links.
I just made some links to some of my deep-nested folders in Nautilus. Quick access is one of those little things that make life brighter.

(25/)

More silver lining:
NoMachine remote access application installed (.deb) and works without any major fuckery.

– paper cut: It detected servers on my network, but wanted to connect to them via 172….. by default. BUT I can quickly change the IP of the server in the NoMachine dropdown, it offers all addresses (ipv4, ipv6 and 172???? why?) the server is reachable by.

(26/)

New day, new paper cut.
Davinci Resolve does not support mp4 (h.264) on Linux (but on Windows it does). Besides, the installation on Ubuntu is p.i.t.a., UI scaling/fonts is/are way too small (I can fix it by desktop scaling but anyway), and the window doesn’t behave at all. No top-bar handle to move it around or full-screen it.
Moreover, it supports only 100 or 200% scaling. If I use 125%, it crashes the machine.
OpenShot then. It installs and works smooth and ok for basic video editing.

(27/)

Desktop crashes at least 2 times per day. Sometimes it freezes for 10 seconds. I connected my external monitor via HDMI instead of USB-DP and was a bit better.

Everything feels wonky and unstable.
That’s why I switched from Wayland to x11 and it feels more stable.
For now.

Mint era

(28/) – 2. April 2025

Nope, x11 has different problems. After waking up and re-login, it crashes all apps.
#Ubuntu – I gave you a chance, but you didn’t want to play nice. So long and bye.

Mint live USB booted, runs solid for now.
So far everything works out of the box. Even AppImages have icons Yeah, small things.

Am I on the path of distro hopping?

(29/)

Mint installed. I’m a simple man, looks like Mint will be OK.
It survived the night and woke up without a crash. All N browser tabs are still open.

But it’s not without it’s own paper cuts.

I liked rclone-manager (ubuntu/gnome extension), but there are no gnome-extensions in Mint.

Whatever. A bit pissed off and wrote mount scripts to my dropboxes and google drives by hand and let’s go.

I’m scared (of myself?), what is the next step? Ditching GUI altogether and working only in CLI?

(30/)

Next (#Mint) paper cut:
In Ubuntu, when clicking Firefox icon I could launch profile manager. This option is missing in Mint.

Whatever. This is Linux, I can probably add it by myself.

Edited Firefox desktop launcher (firefox.desktop):

[Desktop Action ProfileManager]
Name=Open Profile Manager
Exec=firefox –no-remote -P
Icon=firefox

and

Actions=….;ProfileManager;

This should be a blog, because I will forget everything until next installation.

(31/)

Already 31? I should be muted at least, if not blocked. And my devices should be taken away.

Anyways.
Remember the last time I was crying there is no tree view in Nautilus?

Well, Nemo in Mint has it. Nice. No tabs for the right side content view (like Nautilus), but I can split content pane in 2.
Almost perfect.
I’m old and my first file manager was PC commander (something older than Norton Commander) which had a tree view.
I will probably demand a tree view on my tombstone.

(32/)

I was a bit nervous today.
I had a video conference via Teams that I forgot about it until this morning.

During my breakfast I remembered I didn’t test my cam, mic and screen sharing on newly installed Mint.

But everything went smoothly. Teams (via Firefox) worked just fine for an hour.
#Mint recognized my 2 cams and I could switch among them, also my headset. Sharing on 2 monitors also worked.

(33/)

Cont. setting up my work-related starter pack on #Mint:
– Element (works, install went smoothly after initial hang on ‘verifying this device’, just copy-paste install script in CLI).
– Signal (ditto, all good)
– ProtonVPN (it says it supports Ubuntu/gnome, but also installs and works on mint/cinnamon)
– OpenShot/Shotcut for light video editing – both work faster than on Ubuntu. Especially Shotcut.

(34/)

I used Hello on Windows to login with my face. I wanted to do the same on Linux.

I found a nice project (#Howdy), but I didn’t succeed to make it work. Mint 22 (and others) are picky about Python and installing things in externally managed environment (https://peps.python.org/pep-0668/). Tried with venv, but failed.
I came to the point I could add my faces to the Howdy and it recognized them, but couldn’t add it to login screen.

Dismissed, next time.

Goes to the list of paper cuts.

(35/)

3 weeks from the beginning of the transition to Linux (on my main working laptop) and 1 week of Mint.

I’m glad to finally say that I can already perform my work 100% without resorting to tinkering with OS.

This doesn’t mean I won’t tinker in every spare minute I have

I should have installed Mint at the start.

Conclusion

Guess how many times I booted Windows after I started with Linux?

1x. Just to check if dual boot works and that was it. I didn’t need to move any data, because all my data is synced to some NAS or some cloud storage. This made my transition easier.

I will stop this thread for now. Everything works, I learned quite some new things about Linux and most importantly, I got rid of Microsoft tentacles.

Summary of my current sw setup:

• Mint+Cinnamon, X11, dual monitors, 125% fractional scaling
• Nemo file browser with various mounted NAS drives and rclone mounts. I was most afraid how will I manage without official Google Drive and Dropbox apps. Rclone works just fine. I miss rclone-manager (from Ubuntu). Anyways, I did some mount scripts and I run them at startup. It’s even better, because I can mount cloud storages only when needed.
• Firefox with multiple profiles and Multi-Account containers. I did the transfer to FF some months ago, so this was no issue. Everything synced well. I can do most of my work in FF and web apps.
• Gimp/Inkscape for light graphics editing – again, I did the transfer to Gimp /Inkscape(under Windows) some months ago so this was no issue.
• OpenShot/Shotcut – light video editing, same scenario as above.
• Cura Slicer (transitioned from Sovol Cura) for 3D print slicing. It works even better than Sovol branch of Cura. I can connect to Octoprint directly.
• LibreOffice – again, I occasionally used Open- and then LibreOffice, so I just needed to take a jump. I’m still getting used, but it’s fine.
• Gigolo – to auto-mount my NAS samba shares. I expected auto-mount will work out of the box. It didn’t, so I installed Gigolo.
  • Signal and Element for messaging. Both Linux apps install and work OK.

During the transition I realized I’m not so dependent of Microsoft Office as I thought. I do the majority of (collaborative) document editing in Google Docs anyway. Some documents, that were designed in Word, I edited in Libre Office or GDocs/Presentations. Yeah, it broke the layout, but I swallowed the bitter pill and redesigned some document templates in a way that can be seamlessly transferred between GDocs, Word, Libre Office Writer. I’m also sending documents to my team strictly in .odt format. Nobody complained till now.

P. S. Thanks for all supportive comments (in Mastodon thread) I received during writing this long thread. Especially for those I should try Arch btw. I did (Endavour OS), but that’s another thread.

Tags: #linux #mint #windows10 #transition #switch #papercuts

https://blog.rozman.info/switching-to-linux-on-the-desktop-in-2025/