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 In 2015 my MacBook Pro was in bad need of a replacement. However, I was not willing - and probably not able - to pay out what was needed to get a new Mac. And I had been through far too many Macs in too short a time. They just didn’t last long enough for me.
Instead I paid $600 and built my own desktop PC again like I used to do in my DOS/Windows days. But, this time I was determined that I would not be putting Windows on my computer. My main OS would be desktop Linux. And that is what has remained on it since 2015.
I started with Linux Mint Cinnamon edition in 2015. But, I didn’t stick with that. I instead ended up using Xubuntu (XFCE). I stuck with XFCE from 2015 to 2021. In 2021, I installed MATE as the base desktop, but installed Cinnamon on top of that and use Cinnamon as my default desktop with the Ubuntu MATE distribution as the base. Some of the main reasons for moving to Cinnamon are: 1) sound effects for common events that I miss from my Windows 95/98/XP days like minimize, maximize, open, close, shutdown and exit among others; 2) some visual animation effects. I have missed them and in XFCE you don’t get sound effects or visual effects by default. I was able to add sound effects to XFCE but since it’s not part of the actual desktop, it was not a consistent experience. And visual effects, I just gave up on that because it caused more problems than it was worth on a desktop not designed for it. However, I still love the XFCE desktop. It’s a great desktop, I just wanted a little more in terms of sound and visual effects. That is what I love about Linux. I have so many choices to find just the right fit for me. It is the ultimate in customization. I am in control and can truly own it.
In 2022 I switched to Q4OS TDE - a linux distrobution based on Debian 11 and Trinity Desktop Environment (aka a fork of KDE 3.5x). I loved it and was on it for the year, however, I had some glitches with it that I was not able to satisfactorily overcome due to limitations of the desktop environment and decided to jump back into a fully modernized version of Ubuntu, picking Kubuntu as my default starting in 2023. I like the control over window placement and size that KDE offers (as did Q4OS’s TDE). I’m enjoying things that modern KDE provides that TDE did not such as easy and complete thumbnail generation of all file types in the file manager, proper association with default applications and a more modern kernel and KDE Connect for my Android phone. Life remains extremely satisfying on Linux.
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