| Operating System | Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon |
| Cinnamon Version | 6.4.8 |
| Linux Kernel | 6.14.0-34-generic |
| Processor | Intel© Core™ i9-14900K × 24 |
| Memory | 125.5 GiB |
| Hard Drives | 34003.3 GB |
| Graphics Card | Intel Corporation Raptor Lake-S GT1 [UHD Graphics 770] |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA Corporation AD102 [GeForce RTX 4090] |
| Display Server | X11 |
I decided to switch my desktop to Linux. Here’s where I’m keeping notes. Most sites go over the same details on every distribution, however they leave off things like; can I install the software I use, will it recognize my printer, do I have to fight for control with the operating system, how much time will it take me to set it up after install just to use in a manner similar to what I was doing before I switched.
What I’m looking for is a distro that I can install and just use. I’m not saying I want all the software I’ll ever want pre installed, that would be insane. What I want is an OS I can install and use as an OS, not spend all my time maintaining it and not having to edit a text file for every damn thing I want it to do. Sure, I can type, sure I know how most of those files work and the syntax necessary, sure I’ve done it in the past to get linux running. However I don’t want to. Linux has been around long enough that these processes should be either automated or run through an IDE interface. Granted, being able to edit the text files that make your system work is fantastic, if risky, but I’m looking for an operating system, not a hobby.
So… here goes.
This is going to be very personalized to my hardware, peripherals, and needs. If I figure out how to make the system do something useful to me, I’ll note it so I can remember next time I install.
My plans for testing were Garuda, Catchy OS, Pop OS, and Mint. Final verdict is Mint
Short version:
Garuda: fast, stable, and cool looking. However does not support the software or hardware I need easily and has less options for software overall.
Catchy OS: Easy install, stable, quick. Fewer software options, fewer IDE’s for system configuration.
Endeavour OS: Still has some distance to travel before it’s ready for current hardware
Kubuntu: KDE plasma is a great UI, however this distro just seemed like they bolted on KDE to make someone in the Ubuntu mail room happy.
POP OS: Clean, stable, and intuitive. However really wants to grow up to be MAC OS in that it keeps getting in the way of you customizing your system. Curated apps are fewer even though it is a Ubuntu distro,
Mint: Slower boot, had a couple glitches, however makes customizing and software easy and just works. It’s also prone to doing what it’s told without arguing.
In more detail from notes taken while trying to get set up
Garuda:
Fast, stable, loads quickly.
Printer: Three hours of attempting to pull a driver offline and install it.Finally typed the model number into the store and got the driver, just typing the printer manufacturer (brother) didn’t work. still no scanner
Software availability: While it does work beautifully and looks great, it just doesn’t have or support the software I need to install. Arch has a historically toxic user base though (Garuda is fostering a better community) and this makes it less popular of a back end and therefor fewer programmers are building for Arch
You can build software for Arch and that works brilliantly, however I really don’t want to do that for everything. I really did want an Arch disto that worked well out of the box, but they are just not there yet.
Uninstalled after three days of frustration
Catchy OS: The OS installed easily, and the KDE front end was easy to use. However in the end it had all the same issues as Garuda without being as pretty. No driver for the printer, had to install a separate program to even find the printer and try to install, failed.
Endeavour OS: The live environment worked well, however upon install it was the slowest distro of the group. Drag the mouse, wait for the mouse pointer to move, repeat. I’m sure this was a hardware driver issue, but even after spending way to long for it to install the proper driver and rebooting, the problem persisted. For everything else, it’s Garuda with a head injury and a dumbed down interface.
Kubuntu: I’d think Ubuntu would be more polished. Kubuntu is just Ubuntu using KDE instead of Gnome as a desktop. However the install seems to have missed quite a few necessary files. It installed fine, looked okay, and booted fast enough (though slower than several on this list) it even added my damn printer automatically which seems to be a major challenge for many major distros. However it just kept popping up error messages, most of which were root user based. Want to change a setting in the IDE, nope, long pause and then an error. Want to attach a network drive, nope, long pause and then an error. Hell it even gave me an error for trying to change the theme. Yes, if you’re wondering I did try launching all these programs as root from the terminal. Same issue. It got so annoying I had to install a different Distro before I set the computer on fire and went back to hand drawn spreadsheets on graph paper.
Opensuse Tumbleweed: Tried three different flavors on three different usb drives, all failed to install and locked up the system. That’s a nope.
Pop OS:
Not as fast, seems stable, average load speed
Printer: Found and installed my network printer during install
Software base: Built on Ubuntu , the most supported distro available. However it curates a smaller number of programs and resists adding software outside its ecosystem.
Does not have a trash can icon, delete trash in settings/privacy/filehistoryandtrash
Can add trash by right clicking on desktop and selecting settings
Running software as root is complicated, not a right click command, appears to need to be launched from terminal as sudo
Have to create a password for root to use root commands. sudo passwd root
Major issues getting outside packages installed. No real way to add them to the launcher graphically.
After a couple hours trying to get it to install and launch bitfocus companion, and auto mount network drives (fstab would have probably worked but I don’t believe editing a text conf document should be a thing in 2025) I gave up on Pop OS
Linux Mint
Slow boot speed (about 60 seconds)
Installed printer automatically
File manager: Right click, open as root, open in terminal. FFS what’s the logic of other distros blocking these commands. Mint wins this round.
Ethernet settings defaulted to 100mb just toggle to 1k in settings
Emby and vivaldi installs were as easy as downloading a .deb file
Proton VPN installed by running scripts on this page: https://protonvpn.com/support/official-linux-vpn-ubuntu/
Proton VPN has issues with wireguard for some reason. Openvpn works, just change it in protonvpn settings.
Audio pop on activation: this is an issue across the distros that use pipewire. Appears to be due to the system “sleeping” the audio hardware when it is not in use. The fix is to turn off that sleep feature.
Fix:
sudo sed -i 's/--\["session.suspend-timeout-seconds"\] = 5/\["session.suspend-timeout-seconds"\] = 0/' /usr/share/wireplumber/main.lua.d/50-alsa-config.lua
Then
systemctl restart --user pipewire.service
Drives: Some Drives not mounting on startup, use the “Disks” program in system settings, gear, edit mount options, to set mount on startup. Drives going to sleep (borks programs that are storing automatically on that drive ie. google drive) Use the below command to turn that off, change the drive to the device id that’s shown in disks. For instance if the drives app shows the device to be /dev/sda2 change the /dev/sda to /dev/sda2
sudo hdparm -s 0 /dev/sda
Mounting a network drive: Getting my NAS drive mounted on boot took some time in the terminal. Setup: Media folder on my NAS (ip: 192.168.1.10 named Hades) mounted to the folder /mnt/HadesMedia on the local computer. User names and passwords changed to protect the guilty.
Step One: Install cifs-utils
Step Two: Create the mount point sudo mkdir -p /mnt/HadesMedia
Step Three: Create the credentials file that will supply the user name and password to FSTAB later. sudo nano /etc/samba/creds.HadesMedia
This will open the terminal text editor nano. Write two lines replacing the myuser and mypassword with the actual user and password:
username=myuser
password=mypassword
Press CTRL and O to write the file, confirm the file name and press CTRL and X to exit
Secure the file with: sudo chmod 600 /etc/samba/creds.HadesMedia
Now for the scary part, editing FSTAB. Best practice is to back up this file before editing it.
You can edit FSTAB with either nano or just surfing in the file browser as root to /ETC and opening fstab in a text editor. To the bottom, add something like this:
//192.168.1.10/Media /mnt/HadesMedia cifs credentials=/etc/samba/creds.HadesMedia,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
Back in terminal, you can test it before rebooting (rebooting with a bad fstab will cause boot issues and possibly make you boot from the usb key again to restore that backup you probably should have made)
reload systemctl: sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Send mount command : sudo mount -a
If everything works, it will say nothing at all. If something is wrong, you’ll get an error message
I used the same .credentials file for mounting the music folder on the same server at /mnt/HadesMusic
So it didn’t mount the network drives on reboot. Maybe Mint is using a different disk manager than FSTAB, though if that’s the case, why does it still have an fstab file? Anyway I added
sudo mount -a
to the start up applications (in the system settings app) and it worked just fine or reboot.
Bitfocus companion has an install script,
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bitfocus/companion-pi/main/install.sh | bash
If Companion loses connection to the streamdeck
error: linux surface/Controller: Found “elgato-streamdeck” device, but no access. Please quit any other applications using the device, and try again.
run the rules file here: https://github.com/bitfocus/companion-pi/blob/main/50-companion.rules
by downloading the script (download raw)
and running with : sudo cp 50-companion.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/50-companion.rules
You can start companion with “sudo systemctl start companion” or “sudo companion-update”
After this it starts on boot. I did have to restart the computer to get bitfocus to see my stream deck the first time.
NAPS2, my favorite scanner software as it has features that get left out of other software (crop, rotate, exporting a subset of scanned images as pdf, etc) installs for scanner with a download of the deb file. Works well. https://www.naps2.com
Google Drive: Apparently Google no longer offers a linux program to keep your local folder synced with google drive. However Celeste works and can be found in the software manager. Celest does communicate on port 8000, the same port that bitfocus companion works on, so I just switched to the not headless version of bitfocus and changed the in the launch software. Otherwise, Celest works slowly but fine. Just do the setup, add it to the startup programs and it chugs along. I currently have both google drive and nextcloud using the same folder on my hard drive just to keep things simple.
Davinci Resolve
The Linux download looks for packages on the system that are outdated. Can get the install to run with
this file: mrbrown.us/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/resolve install.sh.tar.gz
Extract to unzipped davinci download directory, make executable, run.
Resolve will often show up with menus too small to read. Click the menu titled “davinci resolve” then click the “user” header Then “ui settings” then go to “display scale” and set to a higher number.
Side note so I remember it later: For transparent background (lower third videos) the export video command that worked was Format: Quicktime Codec: Grass valley Type: HQ 1920×1080 I’ll probably put this in a separate Davinci Resolve post later.
Mixer app: Installed via the software manager allows individual control of any program outputting audio. Use case, making the game audio lower than the movie I’m playing on another screen. The program “pulse effects” does the same with extra bells and whistles, however the simpler “mixer” app works well as an icon in the panel.
Music player: Strawberry
Notepad: Notepad Next is a fair replacement for Notepad++
Webcam: Because unnecessary meetings are better when they can see your face or the faces you’re making. I use a Logitech brio and the software webcamcontrol from the software manager replaces most of the features of the dedicated logitech software which isn’t available for linux.
MKV tag editor: jmkvpropedit Java app.
Episode rename: RenameMyTVSeries
Sound record and edit: Reaper has a native linux install. Haven’t had a chance to try it yet.
Menu applet: the default menu is ….fine but cinnamenu installed via the applets in the panel lets me make things work the way I want. Right click on the panel, click applets, search and install. I added a “favorites” menu (settings, open menu editor) and drug it to the top. Then under “behavior” selected “favorites” under “open menu on category” this lets me open the menu to the apps I use most on the first click instead of searching or digging for them every time.
Sound: Had issues with the sound muting at 50%. Downloaded pwvucontrol that helped with various settings, however to set the base line I had to use the terminal command alsamixer. Alsamixer pops up a program that lives in the terminal. Settings here seem to stay after a reboot. Probably could have just used the alsamixer command but for all the other settings (balance, etc) I like having a GUI one click away. . Mint runs on pipeware and wireplumber but most software offered is based on pulseaudio, which is a different driver entirely. These two programs did the trick. Though with alsamixer, remember to press F6 and select the sound care in use. Latest fix: Open terminal, type alsamixer , F6 to select sound card, double click on correct sound card, crank it to 100%. I’m not sure but it seems when switching audio outputs (speakers to headset) it sets the master volume for the current device to the level it is currently set. For instance, if I currently have the speakers set to 50%, it sets its max volume to 50%.
Another program from the software manager just named Mixer, has a trick that earned it a place on my panel. what it does is let you set individual levels for any program running that produces sound. So for instance I can turn the sound to low on my game so I can hear the video I’m watching while i play. Yes, this feature is in the sound applet under the little music note on the panel, however I like having it one click away.
Timer applet: Every morning I wake up, grind some beans, put them in a plunger pot and set the timer on my phone to remember to push the plunger down and drink my coffee. Mint has a panel applet that provides a handy timer on the panel. It doesn’t even have to make noise, just pop up and tell me to finish waking up.
Nextcloud: Mint has a built in “online accounts” selection in the control panel plus you can download the Nextcloud app from the software manager, as an added bonus Nemo (the file manager) has a nextcloud plugin for easy access. Nextcloud is a self hosted cloud server, it comes with a drive, notes, calendar, even a cookbook, and a bunch of other stuff that I’ll probably never use.
With the number of video edits I have to do, and share, lately google drive is asking for about $300 a month to store all my stuff. I could backup things locally and remove older clips from google drive, but that would make accessing those files for b roll, and quickly giving a client a link do re-download impossible. Also, while Google claims to respect your privacy, when I write the words “making sushi with a hammer” into a document saved on my google drive and within a day my phone starts offering suggested content about making sushi (no hammer, assholes) privacy becomes questionable.
So self hosting with a program that allows all, or at least most, of the features I use in google seems the best answer. Enter nextcloud, which is an entirely different adventure that I’ll put on another page here:
Games:
7 days to die: and most others, works well using the Proton 10.0.2 compatibility tool. Had to switch from the default as the video had issues and things were not loading in.
Minecraft: Using prism launcher from the software manager. Did all the work for me.
Peripherals:
Speakers: I got tired of my studio monitors eating up all my desk space so I tried a few.
KRK Rokits: Fuck these things. Sound okay but have a power save that you can not turn off. You miss the first 30 seconds of anything you play after a few moments of silence. hese do not have a USB dac so the amp also takes up space to convert computer to XLR
PreSonus Eris: Sound good, work great. HUGE. These do not have a USB dac so the amp also takes up space to convert computer to XLR
Edifier G2000 Pro: Smaller, pretty lights, suck. Advertised as a 64w sound system. These are actually 2 16w speakers. Sounds a lot like listening to the speaker on your phone, from the other side of the desk. Still pretty, but junk. Linux gives two options via the usb connection. Analogue and digital. Analog works better.
Kanto ORA4 140W: Keeping these. Sound great, smaller than the KRKs, larger than the Edifier, clean look. My only problem is that you sometimes have to turn them on (say after a power failure) as the power switch is not a physical switch. Also about that power button: push once for on, starts in Bluetooth mode, push again for usb (yellow light) , and once again for aux. Push and hold to turn off. Linux gives two options via the usb connection. Analogue and digital. Analog works better.
Sound Blaster Katana X sound bar: Had one of these laying about, it’s a cool little sound bar on windows. Didn’t work at all on linux mint. There’s probably a driver or something (though not from the manufacturer) but it’s really not worth the time to dig around. My Kanto’s work fine.