The Agony and Ecstasy of Linux on the Desktop

It all started with an anonymous comment: why run Windows if all the software you're running is Linux flavored? I didn't have a particularly good answer.

Thing is, there used to be a time when I only ran Linux. Shira reminds me that back in the day I wouldn't even *allow* a Windows box under my roof (really? She says so). So how did I drift so far away from my roots?

Who cares. Let's fix this.

In theory, you can experiment with Linux before you install it as your primary OS. By default, Fedora comes with a (amazingly cool) Live version that lets you run Linux without messing with Windows. And then there's always the option to install Linux on old laptop or desktop, and play with it there. I've talked about doing those things for years.

However, the only way I know how to truly use Linux is to frigging Use Linux. That is, jump in the deep end of the pool and hope you can learn to swim in time. And so that's exactly what I did: I installed the latest version of Fedora on my brand new Dell laptop. Rolling back to Windows is possible, but it ain't easy.

My adventure started at 6:56am on January 26, 2015. I know this, because for the last 10 days I've been keeping a log of my trials and tribulations.

I'll spare you the details of reading the log (though, please, be my guest) and give you the Cliff Notes version. First, I was amazed at how easily Linux installed. It was effortless. And then I was amazed at the slick desktop that booted up. And then reality started setting in. First, stuff just didn't work. For example, I couldn't move windows around by clicking and dragging the mouse. I was left baffled: was something not configured properly, or was I just clueless as to how a modern version of Linux works?

And then I got more frustrated: what I was looking at was a slick user interface, which as far as I can tell, was trying to be a better version of Windows. But if I wanted Windows, I would have just continued to use the version of Windows I already had!

So, I turned off Gnome, that fancy Desktop Manager and turned on plain o'l X-Windows. Hello 1999! I was no closer to a functioning system, but at least I had that warm fuzzy feeling that comes from recreating the Good Old Days.

Next up, I installed ratpoison. This infamous Window Manager let's you manage your desktop by barely touching the mouse. It's crude and cryptic. Now this is a Linux box!

But still, the list of things that didn't work far outnumbered the list of things that did. Firefox menus didn't work. Selecting text didn't work. Copying between an X-term and Firefox didn't work. WiFi didn't work. Good Lord, what did work?

At this point, I wanted off this ride. My Windows + Cygwin + Emacs approach may have been klugy at times, but at least the friggin mouse worked!

Then I finally had a small bright spot. While working on a network hardware post, I realized that I could measure the strength of my wireless router by kicking off nmcli like so:

  while sleep 1; do nmcli dev wifi >> wifi.stats ; done

I could then walk around the house and collect data. When I was done, I used awk to pull out the WiFi signal strength and generated this graph. Could I have done this in Windows? Sure, but not with zero effort.

As I thought about this victory, I remembered that Windows has always been the OS where things Just Work, whereas Linux let's you be productive in ways you never even imagined. Sure, that's changed over the years: X used to require massive amounts to effort to configure (and you risked ruining your monitor!), now it Just Works. But as I was learning first hand, when it comes to a flawless system out of the box Windows still has Linux beat. But, as my little network script showed, Linux can run circles around a typical Windows configuration when it comes to actually getting things done.

So I pushed forward. And so far, I'm glad I did.

Over the last few days, I've figured out many an issue. My trackpad, for example, needed to be marked as a 'clickpad' to truly function (ahhh, now it works!). I got copy and paste working correctly, my phone to be detected, multiple monitors to work well with ratpoison and a slew of other victories.

Things are far from fully setup (I'm looking at you, 'SD Card'), but they're getting there.

More importantly, I've gotten a number of scripts in place to streamline tasks that used to be all manual. I can now type:

 s5 mount ; s5 grab ; s5 unmount

to grab all the images from my cell phone and have them archived in directory named with the date. Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash

##
## A script for working with our galaxy s5
##
S5_ROOT=$HOME/devices/s5
S5_PICTURES=$HOME/Pictures/s5
action=$1 ; shift

case $action in
  mount)
    simple-mtpfs $S5_ROOT ;;
  umount)
    fusermount -u $S5_ROOT ;;
  slurp)
    for img in $S5_ROOT/Card/DCIM/Camera/*.jpg ; do
      date=`imgcreated $img`
      echo "$img -> $date"
      mkdir -p $S5_PICTURES/$date
      mv -i $img $S5_PICTURES/$date
    done
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: `basename $0` {mount|umount|slurp}"
    exit
    ;;
esac

It's this sort of automation that makes me feel like this Linux experiment is more than just a walk down memory lane.

Expect to see more scripts and tales from the command line as I continue to refine my desktop Linux experience.