I'm a Linux Guy Now?

About 2 years ago, I threw in the towel on a fight I was continuously losing. That fight? Me simply wanting my 2012 MacBook Pro to get through a few basic functions. I wasn't asking for a lot... let me type up some blog posts, file my taxes, track some collections. Hell, if I was feeling really spicy, let me edit an image or stream a wrestling show. No sir, not happening. What was once my baby had become a useless paper weight. I fired it in the back of a nightstand, where it collected dust for 2+ years.

Then I got relocated to a new team at work. A small team, each of us with our own strengths + personalities. I won't get into every personality, but within the team I became friends with someone who was pretty tech-savvy. They were able to see how my brain worked with technology, and get a grasp on what I was capable of doing. At some point in conversation, Linux came up. I'd mentioned my familiarity with it, but that it was nothing I'd ever used or set up. The conversation got into how low demand some of its builds were, and that's when the light bulb started to glow. Low demand… you mean, like, launching an image editor wouldn't cause the whole operating system could crash? Maybe that old paper weight in my nightstand could be revived.

So I had a mission, and I theoretically had the tools… now what?

So Many Builds... Which One To Choose?

One thing I learned in all this is that there are so many different builds of Linux. It makes sense - open source, highly customizable, been around forever. But if you have no clue about the Linux world, how could you possibly make a choice? I was lucky enough to have someone to ask about the various builds, but in the end I based my decision on how things looked visually. I also, due to being an idiot, got to experience more than one build.

I went with Debian 12 build of Cinnamon. The image below is what sold me.

Familiar enough to windows, which is what I use daily for work, but customizable. That was something I wanted in all of this. We'll get into that later.

The Installation Process:

This was the biggest part of the learning experience thus far. Before I could even install I had to learn the ins and outs of Ventoy, belenaEtcher, and bootable USBs. I won't dwell on that, but it was important to learn as disk based media has become a bit of a relic and I needed some form of removable media to install things from.

Once I got into it, it was what I'd call a guided experience. Throughout the entire steps all it really needed from me was setting up my username, passwords, install location and of course... which build of Debian 12 I wanted. My first attempt had me breeze through this phase of the installation and choose GNOME instead of Cinnamon. Not what I wanted, but as a former macOS user, I was very impressed. If you want to get an idea of what GNOME is all about, there's a site for it: https://www.gnome.org/

Although it wasn't what I wanted, this is where the learning process began - the installation picked up nearly all the hardware in my laptop. Nearly all - it just missed on one critical piece... my Wi-Fi drivers. After hot spotting off my phone via Bluetooth, I eventually managed to find & install the drivers I needed. 

I'd made it - I had the MacBook booting up, connecting to Wi-Fi, and functioning smoothly while looking great. The next step? Obviously, to wipe the whole thing out and start over. I learn by repetition, and I didn't want this "GNOME" look - I wanted Cinnamon!

Getting Things Where I Wanted:

My second install was much smoother, by the end of it I had Cinnamon and the vision was starting to become reality.

The big difference, on top of learning my way on how to navigate the terminal, was the idea of setting up something called Flatpaks. There's probably a better way to explain this, but the way my brain registered this was it turned the standard software centre into a whole new word by opening it up to a new repository of applications. From here, I was able to get into the stuff I wanted. Below are a few applications I added for my own personal experience:

• Joplin - this is a note-taking app. By linking it to an old Dropbox account I wasn't using anymore, I can have it sync notes across my laptop, desktop, and phone. It has a bit of a OneNote feel to it, and I can also include images in my notes. I'm using this to track notes on navigating Linux, some ChatGPT stuff, tracking in MLB The Show, plus some other miscellaneous things!
• LocalSend - This is an awesome little application to send files between devices on a local network. I've set this up so that as any files come in, they placed in a "LocalSend Incoming" folder where I'll then go and move it to wherever it needs to go.
• GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) - I used a lot of Photoshop on my MacBook before it died. Having an image editor is a must for me, and this was one I had at least heard of. It's not exactly the same as Photoshop, but it's familiar enough that I know the concept around anything I'm trying to do.
• OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) - I'd like to eventually get back to streaming some non-PS5 stuff, so this was something I added for future use. I'll need to dig out some old capture hardware I used, as I'd like to see how smoothly this could run a stream. It did a fine job even when the MacBook was struggling before, so I would guess that it'd be even better now.
• Steam - This isn't something I'll explore much further until I do some additional upgrades. I added Steam to see how some games function on here, even though I know that's not the planned use for the laptop as of now. Maybe I'll do a blog post on this if I explore it more in the future.

Once I added my applications, I directed focus to making it look how I wanted. That was arguably the hardest part, but for me, it was also the funnest part. With the creation of some icons & other elements, this let me somewhat dip back into my graphic design brain at an introductory level.

The Final (So Far) Result:

I'm pretty proud of where I have things at so far from a functionality and visual perspective. 

(Desktop Environment)

(Joplin - Tracking For Team Affinity Jolt Program In MLB The Show)

(LocalSend)

(Multiple Desktop Environments - 1 = LocalSend, 2 = Standard Desktop Environment / Ctrl+up = selection screen and I can also use Ctrl+left/right to tab between them)

What I've done:

• I've used GIMP to create & replace all my panel (taskbar) applications with all white icons. I feel like it makes things less busy while also maintaining a sleek look
• Another thing I like about the white icons in their simplicity is that it lets the background be the star of the show. The one here is from wallhaven.cc - https://wallhaven.cc/w/5g22q5. I just ran a small change in GIMP to remove the moon as I found it a bit distracting
• I've added some icons that launch some web based media players - these would be the MLB (for MLB.tv) and Netflix icons
• I added a sidebar on the left that has shortcuts to media types, incoming files (from a program called LocalSend), a CPU monitor and my trash bin
• Both the bottom and sidebars hide when other items are full screen, but can still be accessed if I mouse to the applicable areas
• I added a keyboard shortcut, for some similarity to Windows, to cause Ctrl+Alt+Delete to launch the System Monitor/Task Manager
  

All around, I'd say it's been a success and a fun new venture. I mean, if it's any indication… I did compose and post this entry from the laptop - screenshots included.

Final Thoughts:

All done, yeah!? Probably not. I have an extra piece to the "look" I'd like to explore. I'd like it to be so if an application is open that the icon changes to its primary colour (example, if Spotify is open it switches from the white icon to its trademark green one) but that's something to learn down the road. Another area I'm definitely not done with is the hardware itself. Next steps will also be to do a couple upgrades:

• Hard Drive: This is currently using a 500GB HD. My plan is to upgrade things to a 1TB SSD
• RAM: As things stand, this is running 4GB of RAM, 2 sticks of 2GB. I'll be swapping those out to 2 sticks of 8GB for 16GB of RAM total
• When opening things up to swap these two items out, I also plan to do a refresh on the thermal paste within the MacBook

When I get to the hardware updates, I'll definitely do a blog post about it. Could be interesting!

----------------------------

** Disclaimer: I am still a newbie, so some of the fine details in this post may be outright wrong based on my own misunderstanding / newness to this wonderful world of Linux!