Hey, I just felt like writing this today. Hopefully it’s at least a bit motivating for the developers in this community — and if my small bit of feedback helps too, then all the better!
My previous Linux experience:
I tried switching about 3 years ago but couldn’t keep with it — remote work during COVID took priority and I didn’t get my Citrix remote work portal working properly on Linux, so I went back to Windows.
From my previous Linux adventures I at least understood the basics: terminal basics, what a swap file is, etc.
For context: I’m running EndeavourOS + KDE Plasma 6 on a desktop PC (Ryzen 5 5600X + AMD Radeon 7900 XT).
This time already shaped up with a good start:
- Install was clean and without problems.
Sure, it was an easy bar to clear with a fresh SSD as a target, but still, smooth. - The EndeavourOS welcome page was good and well-rounded help, with one big caveat (Endeavour devs, that one’s for you:
The section about switching display managers felt like a suggestion that I should change it. After clicking through that I had to reboot 4 times just to find my KDE desktop again, because KDE/SDDM was the last option in the list — not very user-friendly.)
Very happy with the default settings.
I was able to find almost everything easily, thanks to the good and fast search function.
Global hotkeys — chef’s kiss!
Printer setup was easy, monitor off and sleep settings were sensibly configured out of the box and working properly — awesome.
Taskbar configurability:
At first it felt very clunky how the UX is designed, but that clunkiness is more than made up for by the options and flexibility.
Half a KDE feature:
Being able to easily write a script, then work it into KDE as a button on my taskbar to switch between 2 audio drivers — and then have it bound to a global hotkey too — very satisfying.
Had to do nothing to have my AMD CPU and GPU working (except maybe choosing the right version of Steam — there were a lot of options in pacman/yay).
Special shoutout:
Some language AI was a big help (or more accurately, a fast help), but of course I’m aware that all that info it has was scraped from user-filled forums and boards — so shoutout to all of you too!
I did let this text be checked over by that evil AI too, but just for spell and grammar check, the words are 100% my own. English is a close second to my native german.