more Linux notes: miscellany
A coda to my previous post, two weeks into living the full-time Linux life, and still loving it. These are mostly notes that I took for my own future reference whenever I next have to do a fresh Linux install, so they are very particular to my own use cases, but I thought it’d be useful to assemble them all together in one place like this in case they help anyone else.
Keyboard layouts
I noted in my last post that my biggest challenge by far was retraining my muscle memory to use a Windows layout, as I couldn’t find a way to remap the Cmd/Opt(Alt) buttons to where I’m used to them being on a Mac keyboard. Happily, I found that the answer is actually so much simpler than I realised. GNOME Tweaks, which is pretty much a necessary install anyway, contains an “Additional Layout Options” item under Keyboard, and toggling on the following got the keys remapped pretty much where I want them:
- Alt and Win behaviour → Alt is mapped to Right Win, Super to Menu
- Ctrl position: Left Alt as Ctrl, Left Ctrl as Win, Left Win as Left Alt + Right Alt as Right Control
That’s it. Biggest pain point solved!
Keyboard macros
Something else I also mentioned briefly last time was the lack of a Keyboard Maestro-like app to create macros. Once again—while it isn’t a 1:1 replacement for what KM did—I discovered that there was a much simpler solution baked right into the OS already in the form of custom keyboard shortcuts, which can trigger terminal commands, and you can do just about anything in the terminal. For example, something I used KM to do was to program a list of URLs that would open if I pressed F1. You can do this by mapping F1 to: gio open https://yoururlhere https://yoursecondurlhere
1Password integration
I’ve used 1Password to store all my stuff for years and years, and it’s the one Mac-native app I have no desire to leave ever. Predictably, it doesn’t behave like a good Linux citizen. I struggled a few days with it before discovering that the 1Password folks have provided some helpful guides for keyboard shortcuts and browser integration, which together saved me endless hours of frustration.
Sandboxed apps
Coming from the Apple ecosystem, I am used to thinking of app storefronts as the preferred way to get programs onto my computer, and so I used Flathub chiefly for most things I wanted. These distribution methods, however, sandbox your apps so they cannot access the rest of your system, and while this is more secure I quickly realised that it creates annoying headaches. Browsers will not integrate with 1Password, for example. Some apps will not switch to dark mode because they can’t access the dark theme folders. My Discord client refused to let me drag and drop an image attachment. While some permissions can be tweaked, eventually I found it easier to simply let go of a centralised app store and prioritise official (or reliable unofficial) repositories for these programs, which allow me to directly install them and bypass all sandboxing issues.
Monitor and display
I started off using an old Samsung monitor that we had lying around. It was alright. The colours were kind of washed out and the display wasn’t as sharp as it could be. I replaced it with this extremely affordable Dell 27 Plus 4K monitor and I am pretty blown away by how good the display is for something so cheap. With the system fonts set to Inter and hinting to full, it’s almost as pretty as my Mac was. I still think MacOS has the nicest font rendering I’ve ever seen on any OS, but this setup isn’t bad at all.
More distro-hopping
Because I apparently enjoy creating more tech tinkering opportunities for myself even if they mean substantially more work, I got everything in Ubuntu set up just how I like it, saw news of elementaryOS 8.1’s release, and promptly decided to wipe Ubuntu to try it out. It is really, really good-looking. It feels good to use. Unfortunately, similar to my experience with Pop!_OS, there were too many things that simply did not work. I had display scaling issues that made some apps look very blurry, some window decorations were inexplicably missing the minimise and full screen buttons, audio was janky on Discord. So sadly, I had to write it off. I then popped in Linux Mint briefly off a USB stick just to see what it’d be like, but quickly decided the interface wasn’t for me, so I returned to the familiar fold of Ubuntu where everything just works (and did so once again upon a clean install, reliably and admirably).
Extension magic
A surprising number of things can be done via extensions rather than standalone apps. Again, as a Mac user, my first instinct was to go looking for an app to do clipboard history and emoji shortcuts, but both of those things can be easily done through GNOME Extensions (I am using Clipboard Indicator and Emoji Copy, both of which work very well). There’s also an extension for Tailscale, and a whole load of other things. I didn’t want to go too crazy installing loads of extensions (because I tried that on my first install and borked something), but judiciously used, these are really very handy.
Next time I will compile a list of apps I’m using, again mostly for my own reference but also in case it is useful for fellow Mac refugees.