TuxLives! Episode 1- First Month Full Linux Pros/Cons + Responding To Top 10 Viewer Questions! 

As an experienced Linux user, I would recommend staying on one distro. The only main thing different between distros is the package manager. You can do anything and use any desktop environment/window manager on any distro. Focus on learning Linux and not distros.

"Hey, I'm the new one and I come from Windows. What should I try first?" Linux Trolls: "Tiling Window Manager...and Gentoo"

For people telling you that you were using windows wrong.... I see you are using Linux right. That's all that matters bro.

First, people into tiling window managers can be a bit "cult-y" for better or for worse. You seem to be pretty happy on Linux already. If you're just not all that interested or drawn to TLMs, that's okay! There are so many rabbit holes to go down in the Linux world. You don't have to go down them all at once, or at all! That said... Luke Smith's "Tiling Window Management" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GKviflL9XeI.html is decent I think, though I should say that although I'd like to I haven't gotten into tiling window managers myself, I just watch a bunch of Linux videos, haha! I've watched 17 minutes into DistroTube's "A Comprehensive Guide To Tiling Window Managers" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Obzf9ppODJU.html and I think does an even better job than Luke Smith, although it's longer and more detailed, but still noob-friendly enough I would say. You probably don't need to watch the whole thing. His shorter "Common Questions About Tiling Window Managers" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Qauypve7zbY.html is good too, but you should have a basic understanding of what a TLMs are first. In the above video, he recommends the Awesome Window Manger for beginners, which he has a video on, "Getting Started With Awesome Window Manager" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qKtit_B7Keo.html

Choice video & Your summary on Stallman is on point. You don't really need a tiling manager btw.

A tiling window manager is basically an alternative to a "desktop environment" instead of using a full environment, you get a simple desktop. Every program you open automatically takes up the entire desktop space, until you open another one, then they automatically split the desktop space. They are designed to keep the gui out of your way, often expecting the user to create user defined keyboard shortcuts and minimalize mouse usage for anything that's not required of your actual application use. Very powerful for developers. I'm glad to see you're enjoying your time in Linux.

People will always be like try this work flow its so much faster, thats really good after you have settled down, but right now settling in is probably better.

If you’re interested in learning about “minimalism”, look at Luke Smith’s RU-vid channel (his name is his channel)

a few important tips! 1. Keep It Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S). basic linux philosophy. 2. Stay in mint (or any one distro) and break it! But one! Keep it for years until you get bored. I got rid of it after I said "enough! I don't like ppas" (my opinion only). Then you'll be able to figure out what you actually need. You may not switch ever, who knows. 3. Don't use window managers yet BUT (and to the next point) 4. Use your keyboard! Go to mint settings and set up custom keyboard shortcuts to launch different stuff and do things such as changing virtual desktops or even issue commands (open word, browser, update, etc). Do it as a challenge to not use a mouse. You will become much more efficient in your work.

dude, this log you are making is just awesome, I mean like, I can't find a wrong! there isn't any!!! I'm a fedora user and I can totally understand what you mean and feel with "I will stick with mint for now" is a totally sage choose. a lot of people already point out what a tile manager is and I feel you could find it handy specially in your laptop for reading, but IMO you don't really need it, is more something to like, learn out of curiosity for most use cases, is powerful, NGL, but isn't usually a game changer PD: the only way one can use windows right is, not using it 🤭

Six months for me on Linux. I went immediately to Mint 19.3 and am totally happy with it. I am also a very lightweight computer user, have been using DOS/Windows since the beginning of personal computers, and use them mainly to write. I have never played a computer game other than solitaire, mahjong, and Scrabble. I also have not yet used Terminal, and have no intention of so doing. But I did buy a cheap old laptop to explore Linux. Distros like Arch, Fedora, and Manjaro are apparently perfect for coding nerds and geeks. Not for me. I really liked MX and Zorin, but not enough to switch from Mint. That laptop currently dual boots Zorin Core and Win 7 but only because I need some variant of Windows to run one tiny program that won't even function under Wine. Except for that need, I'd be 100% Linux.

Nice. I've been waiting for this one since the last video. Didn't expect it to come so soon, though

There is a functionality on modern pcs called 'wake on lan' (wol) that let's you remotely wake your computer from hibernation or power it up completely. At least I thought you could power it up. Turns out you can't on Linux. You can wake it up from hibernation, but if the pc was completely shut down, then that's a no-go. I always found this weird since there was no problem booting up remotely on Windows, and now I know why. See, I didn't know that Windows didn't shut down completely when you turn it off, and it's kinda creepy to know that they have a backdoor to your pc even when it's turned off. So now you have taught me something I didn't know about Linux (and Windows), so thank you for that. Also I like your take on point 6, and I fully agree. :) I've been watching some of your videos about mythology and they're very good, keep it up!

Welcome home, FYI IMHO stay w/ Desktop Environment(DE) instead of Window Manager(WM) aka the backbone of any DE, in your time of needs you can explore different DE or even WM or even take the learning curve about WM. WMs are less RAM hungry and defined as many types and styles. If you really wanna give a try just first try OpenboxWM based distro like SparkyLinux/ MIYO Linux, ICEWM based antiX or JWM based Puppy Linux.

Just ignore everyone which tells you about GNU + Linux, it's a ridiculous thing. Your OS is made of many small but equally important software components. There's no way you can go about naming each of them just to refer to your OS. I thought the GNU + Linux thing was long gone already.

If you want to use a distro with gnome as the desktop environment ( the DE in fedora), I would suggest pop_os! Pop has an extension which you can toggle, making a normal desktop environment (gnome here) work like tiling window manager. So it could be an good place to start learning twm. Tiling window managers are useful for two reasons: 1. Use the screen efficiently 2. Driven by keyboard shortcuts. So for people who code, this might be relevant.

If I may offer my 2 cents here, don't distrohop too quickly, take the time to learn linux, to fix what goes wrong with your distro instead of jumping to another distro, because switching distro isn't a solution, you can do everything on 99% of distros, you just have to learn how to do it, it will be rewarding in time. Enjoy your journey in Linux and keep the fun.

It’s great to see you so enthused with your newfound passion of Linux. Keep these coming.

As a writer, let us know which 'office' product you prefer and why. I use Libre Office but there are many others

Tiling windows managers are great once you are experienced but they take a great amount of effort to set up and can be confusing for new users, so I wouldn't recommend

Tiling window managers are a massive jump, people will now also likely reccomend exwm, basically the power is every window is automatically organized so no screen space is lost and you have fully customised key bindings to move arround and do things. Its all about reducing the need for the mouse and speeding up the workflow

As someone who games on a Pentium laptop...The situation is very good. Considering the specs of the machine..Its capable of running graphics intensive games up to about 2008. Some of the old games I run on Linux in wine/proton, are easier to get working than on Win10, and others have alternative native engines such as Jedi Outcast/Academy, Morrowind, Ultima 7

Diggin it

Tiling Window Managers: *• principle/purpose* : - don't waste your screen space, use as much as possible - focus only on what you are doing, windows shouldn't overlap - do things faster (drop mouse usage, use lots of shortcuts) => squeeze as much productivity and efficiency as possible *• some features* : - multiple layouts: - vertical, horizontal, grid, spiral, etc... - highly configurable this is just what I have got from the top of my head, you can guys reply with other features and reasons btw I don't use tiling window managers, yet, but I can imagine myself doing so you might want to watch some videos from Luke Smith

You should read about Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson. They're the men who invented Unix and the C programming language (among many other things) which gave rise to many of the innovations that we have today in regards to computers. If it wasn't for Unix and the C programming language, Linux wouldn't exist.

You are so wholesome ♥️ upload notifications turned on!

I really like your other videos Tiling window managers A) need a pretty big screen or screens to be efficient B) Are for people that need to look at lots of different things at the same time C) All things that can be done with a tiling window managers can be done with natural window managers with a few short cuts and utilization of workspaces and workspace window switching but not vice versa.

For knowing what tiling windows managers are, you need some pictures: i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_tree The simplest explaintion of a 2d partion space tree is distinctly seperate from what it looks like, but it needs a picture. Consider running sxhkd with a dm, before taking the full leap.

Going head first with EMACS? You, dear sir, have all it takes.

Get comfortable with your distro and desktop first. Everyone gets super excited about newbies and often overwhelms them with options. Once you have something fall back to, then try new things since you have spare computers.

The point of a tiling window manager is to not have any windows overlapping other windows. You don't have to think about placing windows, you don't have to drag or resize windows. If you use them properly then you will also script on which virtual desktop and on which monitor to open which programs. It takes a lot of work to set it up properly but once you have done that it is easier.

Bold of you to go head-first into emacs! Good luck, I haven't made a good attempt to do that myself yet. I'm sure others have mentioned VIM already, but it's worth checking out. DistroTube has beginner tutorials on it. There's also something called "vimtutor" which Luke Smith has a video about.

Darn it, now I have "Aquatarkus" going through my head! (Actually, thanks; it's one of my favorite ELP albums.)

Quick protip about the mouse sensitivity - if it's too sensitive by default on Linux Mint then, you can just turn down the cursor speed / sensitivity in the preferences (should be found in something like Menu -> Preferences -> Mouse). Also choosing to not replace the wifi card on the HP 11 may be a wise choice as I know from experience that HP laptops employ what are known as "wifi card whitelists" whereby only specific wifi cards that have been certified by HP will function on boot-up. It's possible that simply using the new Linux Mint 20 (currently beta) rather than Linux Mint 19.3 would make it work, but it's also possible that wouldn't help at all. (wifi card whitelisting is purely artificial because I've in the past put an HP laptop to sleep / standby, no not hibernate, physically remove the certified wifi card and inserted a non-certified wifi card, and when waking the laptop back up the uncertified wifi card works perfectly fine - but if I then reboot it will complain at boot-up that the wifi card is uncertified or whatever and then gets force-disabled)

Windows is using your computer wrong.

Maybe the CAPSLOCK key was on. Perhaps that's the reason that you couldn't login to Fedora. Usually, there's a CAPSLOCK indicator next to the password field.

Check out your community discussion page. Left you some links you might want to see there. Congrats on TUXLIVES. Enjoy the journey.

My best terminal tip is to use 'topgrade' to update your system. You can do 'apt install topgrade' then type your password, and after that type 'topgrade' and watch what it does. My very favourite software/feature on Linux is 'easystroke' - you can teach your mouse to do anything. Then look at how to switch to zsh shell, and start entering 'alias' entries in your config to save lots of typing. I used apt-fast, but instead of typing 'sudo apt-fast update && apt-fast upgrade' I'd type 'up' because I had an alias to do that. I now use KDE, which looks like a Windows desktop. I can also enable a 'kwin' script to make it work as a tiling window2 manager. So if I open Firefox, it takes up the screen. If I then open something else (music maybe) it'll share the screen - I can pull the divider to make the browser bigger. If I open then a terminal, that'll split the music player to 1/4 and take the other 1/4. I can press a shortcut to make windows 'float' (like 'normal' windows...). I'd suggest you live with a Mint Cinnamon desktop for a month because it's safe, simple, and lets you do your thing. After that - no idea, I never really tried gnome -but I do love KDE now, and made it very simple and love the way I can put 'music' or 'torrents' into a separate activity.

So... the distro thing... they are really just "flavors" of default software, package manager and a few more things that doesn't really change the end user's experience but change everything for advanced users and developers. Whatever difference you felt between distros probably comes from their default Desktop Environment (DE for short), each with its own feel, quirks and limitations. Like the one from Linux Mint's Cinnamon, other distros usually have their own default DEs, but a good amount of distros allow you changing between them and a lot come with alternative ISOs with those pre-installed. For example, I'm a Manjaro user, but because I code a lot, I use the Cinnamon DE as I want my DE to be mouse-driven so I can relax my hands from time to time but it's also open and simple enough that I get whatever I need from it with some scripting. Tiling Windows Managers transform the Linux experience into almost a keyboard-only deal. I do NOT recommend a TWM until you understand how your system works internally, and then can easily create your own scripts to supply your needs, because they often come bare-bones. Edit: I forgot, there's one big difference between distros: They use either "rolling releases" or "fixed releases". Manjaro, based on Arch, uses a rolling release, and as such, it will updated often, so it's great for gamers and/or people that live on the edge of hardware support so they can play and use the latest and greatest games/hardware. Some people think rolling releases make for an "unstable" installation that will break in no time, but I firmly believe that's a result of people just updating verything without paying attention to update changelogs and best practices. But most distros like Linux Mint and Fedora use a fixed release, which means whatever update happens it's only to fix bugs and improve security, but things remain largely unchanged. Fixed releases often mean you'll have to make a new clean install if you wanted the latest major version release, but each version is usually supported for 2-5 years in terms of patches and security and start from a clean state. This kind of release probably works the best for you, not dealing with the newest hardware and not gaming, so Linux Mint should supply your needs just fine.

Tiling windows is unusable and inefficient Tiling window managers use the whole screen, but the tiling sacrifices the proper size for applications. As soon as you have a image viewer, video editor, browser, It requires more work to just use them. Complete set of esoteric keys you have to memorize. Now please take a look at this. xahlee.info/linux/i/tiling_windows_dwm-spiral.png _That squished clock._

I loved your Windows and Linux rants, and those vids were part of a process of research that led me to leave MacOS behind for Linux. (Arch btw so the next vid in this series should be interesting...) I am happy to see the channel has grown since, congrats on passing 1K! I've had a similar experience with better hardware experiences on Linux; my Bluetooth headset sounds used to break up when I connected it together with my Bluetooth trackball, but now on Linux with the exact same hardware combination including the Macbook Air I get perfect reception on the heaphones even when the trackball is connected. Everything is so fast and responsive, the system is incredibly stable with no unexpected crashes, and things run at less than half the RAM load of the formal system. Life is good and I'm so glad I switched over.

Tiling window managers are good for maximizing use of screen space, which can be very beneficial on smaller/lower resolution screens. They also tend to have many keyboard shortcuts for doing things you would otherwise spend "excessive" amounts of time on (several seconds vs under half a second) trying to accomplish. They are effectively optimizations when multitasking - not necessary (you've managed to accomplish more than one thing at a time without them,) but they do make it that much faster. As a writer on your own time, you probably won't care too much, but as someone working against the clock (helpdesk), they help manage the 20 things across 3 monitors I may have open at once (not counting tabs).

Personally, I used to run i3 which treats every workspace as a screen. I wish more DEs did this actually, because this was extremely handy to un-dock my PC, go to a meeting, then re-plug the PC and all my workspaces were bam! smack back to how I left them in the first place, on their proper screens. I wish Gnome would have tiling features and treat every screen as a separate workspace. Then I'd have no complaints about it!

Tarkus could probably benefit from a quick trip to the settings manager, off the top of my head it's called "mouse settings or mouse manager/preferences", sorry don' t use Mint. Also excellent video/podcast! what are we calling these?.

Try Linux Mint at first, and learn to use terminal. The repositories have a ton of programs. It is of the Debian branch, and then go onto a bare bones system like Manjaro/Debian Vanilla/Arch when you have spent the time. Welcome to Linux!

A tiling window manager doesn't let windows overlap, so you don't have to rummage around looking for windows that are hidden beneath a pile of other windows. One that's been around for a long time is called "ratpoison" (joke name; rat poison kills off your mouse, you don't need it--at least not to manipulate or switch between windows). Another one is xmonad, which is tiling and written in a pure lazy functional programming language called Haskell. (You don't have to know Haskell to use it, but if you do know Haskell you can go to town modifying it.)

Yeah had the same problem with Manjaro XFCE, no tap/scroll out of the box. Stuff that worked with Manjaro Gnome. So I'm using Manjaro Gnome.

You should use the flavor of Linux that makes you feel most comfortable. Linux Mint has been a reliable friend for many years, and if you like a traditional desktop environment XFCE or MATE will probably fit your needs all day. As far as hardware an SSD is maybe the best money spent. I cant think of any one single piece of hardware that you can upgrade that you see the most return on for doing everyday day tasks on a computer, it just speeds up your work.

20:50 you may use Linux wrong but you will never use windows wrong. Windows is what it is: Garbage! I'd prefer to run XP on virtual machine than using 10 on actual hardware.

Just found your channel, I am a new linux user myself and I love watching someone go through the same learning experiences. I landed on Manjaro KDE and absolutely love it.

I like how he says that he doesn't need the Internet on one laptop ("The internet. There's not much there, to be honest"). That resonates with me. I'm starting going low tech slowly. And its amazing to hear about Linux from not a technical nerd but a regular user. Its so nice not to hear fan spinning when you don't do anything on your computer. Your OS just waits there for you to do something. Its calming experience.

You said you learning teminal and its applications like mutt for mail. Tailing window managers are helpful if you using a lot of terminal applications. Here is best explanation I could find of TWM named i3wm: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GKviflL9XeI.html

I'm not sure if this has been suggested yet, but I think you would get a kick out of the Linux documentary named 'Revolution OS'. You can find it here on RU-vid. It's a fascinating look into how Linux came to be.

You're not a capitalist, LOL :) Private property and entrepreneurship is not exclusive to that ideology.

Manjaro is the reason I stayed with Linux I kept hopping back and forth but once I took a sip of the goodness that is the aur nectar I never looked back. Its not the most stable distro especially if you dont know what you are doing, however for me its been rock solid, even more so than other debian based distros. I have the kde edition of manjaro and have heavily customized it for my use case. Once Manjaro felt like home once it became what it is now for me its been a complete pleasure to use. Its so powerful, so versatile so lightweight and so capable of doing what I need it to do. That being said it is a very extensive os by that I mean it does not ship as a minimal Linux install. Manjaro can be very daunting for newcomers. Eventually after you've learned more about linux and feel more comfortable and confident do give manjaro a try. Mint however is also a very impressive os, I very much admire mint for what it is and what it can do, so dont let anyone tell you that mint is a basic vanilla os, I dont believe that to be true.

To the terminal shortcuts: Add this to the file .inputrc to make arrow up to only search for commands that have the same characters at the start as you already typed: "\e[A": history-search-backward # arrow up "\e[B": history-search-forward # arrow down . It is not a shortcut but still very useful.

As a Fedora/Manjaro user I totally understand your observation of being not quite ready for it. Very nice to see that you didn't dismiss those distros but choose to re-visit them when your ready for it. Well done! I think this kind of feedback is invaluable for distro maintainers and the devs behind the various desktop environments.

Welcome to the rabbit hole man, hope you find it as cosy as I did, 1 distro I would recommend for trying out is Solus 4.1, its a weird mix of manjaro and linux mint (it being super stable and having new software) in my opinion but its a thing of its own, not based on any other major distribution, haven't had any issues with it and some new users i pointed to linux found it nice as well. Tiling window managers are cool but you don't generally need them and since you said you are looking to browse the web through a terminal emacs and terminator will probably be more than enough for your use case since window managers take some time getting used to.

Since you are already walking the emacs path you really want to check out org-mode. Just search it I'm sure you would love it.

Oh! Some of my favorite command line shortcuts: I've found a lot of people don't know that 'cd' without an argument brings you back to your home directory as if you typed 'cd ~'. Handy since I find myself doing that a lot anyway. You can also use 'cd -' (a single dash), to go back to the previous directory you were in like a back button. (Doesn't work recursively though, pushd/popd do, but... meh. Requires too much forethought) The command 'xdg-open ' is very handy to make the command line play nice with the GUI. It basically acts like double clicking on things in any XDG compatible desktop environment (basically all of them). Without an argument it opens up the current directory in whatever file browser you are using. I made an alias for it so I can just type 'open'. The Fish shell. Assuming you are familiar with the Bash shell, since that seems to be the most common. Fish is ~90% compatible with Bash, and you'll start accidentally discovering it's best features within seconds of using it whenever you try to autocomplete something. Assuming you already know about autocomplete, but if not, here's a link -> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_completion This applies to Mint: I wondered for a long time why there is the 'apt' command, and also comands like 'apt-get', 'apt-cache', etc. After finally looking it up, 'apt' is supposed to be a basic, simplified, human interface to the Apt package manager and all the other commands are more aimed at scripting. Use 'apt' if you want to save a little typing basically. The calendar program that ships with pretty much all Unixes has a bunch of silly calendars. ex: 'cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr' Cheers!

I am using Manjaro Bspwm (Tiling wm) for now. I had installed Manjaro KDE on my laptop, and I think I had the same problem as yours. It kept crashing randomly and checking logs didn't help me much. I knew I could have asked the community but I'd rather change distro since I was going through a distro delve myself. I didn't try Fedora but I tried many other distros KDE Neon, Peppermint... At last I stuck with Manjaro since I wanted an upgrade to my learning of Linux after using Ubuntu 19.10 I know people may be pressuring you to use a WM. Think of it as using no mouse and very little ram on your PC(My whole distro just uses 300mb ram, whereas windows was using 2.25gb). I know window managers have support for mouse but it just is more efficient to switch windows without using a mouse. My suggestion would be to try using a window manager (preferably i3) in a VM to get a feel for it. Nah bro using Windows wrong may be the most typical response when I went away from Windows. Even if you juice out every bit of optimisation from Windows it still takes up a lot of ram and memory.

Windows 10 just updated and the browser is now spamming me for shit fucksake im out show me the way.

It's refreshing to hear a Linux newbie talk about Linux, its history and culture. There's no pretentiousness. :) Pretty cool. Keep it up. P.S. Nothing wrong with staying with Linux Mint. It's a great distro that doesn't stand in your way.

So you had to try 3 times to get Manjaro installed? I tried twice and then gave up.. I wonder what'd happen I I tried one more time 🤔

I'm a recent subscriber and would like to see you continue the channel with the dual format as long as it works for you.

Have you tried running your transcription application with Wine, Play On Linux or one of its derivatives? Also, it is possible to adjust the mouse sensitivity in Mint. It may be necessary to install a program Mousetweaks.

try not to distro hop just change desktop environments and window managers on a distro u like

June 19 will be 6 months since I've used Windows. Happy early birthday to me. I agree with everything you say, here, except I've only used Linux Mint, as I am too lazy to try any others when Mint works so well.

A few benefits of using tiling window manager are as follows: 1. You're using maximum amount of screen space all the time. (without having to reorganize/move windows all the time) 2. You can control your windows from your keyboard really quickly 3. They are usually very light weight and don't use a lot of system resources making your (low spec) laptop work faster. (edit) 4. They look cool. Question: What terminal browser do you use? I've personally tried links2 and, elinks but didn't find them adequate. Advice: If you do your writing work in plain text format I really recommend that you take a look at how to use git. It's a version control software. See if it works well with your workflow.

Do you donate to open source projects or contribute as a writer?

Try PopOS. They have a tiling window manager plugin. You can click an icon on the top status bar to enable or disable it. I hear that the plugin is also available for other distributions.

I will chime in on gaming on Linux given that I am a gamer and I have been using Linux for over 4 years. Most games run fine or great on Linux, some games don't. For the games that run fine or great you might need to do some tweaking, see whether the game runs better natively (often for new games) or via Proton (wine, Proton), enable Valve its aco-compilers, experiment with esync... It is not difficult but it takes some works to figure it out. Some of the recent multiplayer games are actively blocked, games like PUBG, Fortnite, Rocket League. Why? Because the developers use ring-0 anti-cheat or DRM. Ring 0 is as close to the hardware as the OS lets you get, it is where the kernel resides. If you want to know what can go wrong, look up the consequences of the DRM from Sony (music CD's) 1-2 decades ago. It is bad and I don't mind not being able to play those games, I do not support this practice.

I use Arch and a tiling window manager (i3) and the people who tell you you need to use Arch or Manjaro or a TWM or whatever are full of shit. With good intentions no doubt, but the idea that there's some one true way of doing things for everyone is still bs. Do what works for you. If your distro or desktop or whatever starts to feel limiting you can look around for alternatives and advice, and God knows there's plenty of either to go around, but you can have a perfectly pleasant and productive working life on Linux using Mint and any of its desktop environments and anyone who tells you otherwise is a self-important fool.

"The internet. There's not much there, to be honest" bruh

The best distro is the one you are using right now, don't get caught up with distro hopping as the rest of us.

I haven't checked any of your mythology videos out yet, but I am quite interested in mythology so I surely will soon! It's pretty cool that I can subscribe to a channel with Linux videos, AND mythology videos. A silly contrast, but a welcome one. I'm in the middle of reading The Lord of the Rings right now. I've made a few attempts at reading it in the past, but I believe I'm further into than my last attempts, and I'm definitely going to finish it this time. (Edit: and yes I have read The Hobbit, some years ago :)

HaHaHa your comparison of Manjaro to Alice in Wonderland made my day I am an experienced technically inclined Linux user and even I feel that way about it this is true even when trying the cinnamon variant cinnamon is my favorite desktop environment when a distro is that different even when using an environment one is otherwise familiar with well it is certainly a strange experience. (Please do not roast me Manjaro users) Regarding transcription software you are not the only one looking for that I haven't had much luck either be it with audio files or flat out speech to text if you do find something perhaps posting a video tutorial on how to set it up would be a good idea I for one would welcome it. A little noticed feature that may or may not be helpful to you in cinnamon under the mouse and touchpad settings there is a switch for a setting to show the location of the pointer when the control key is pressed given the sensitivity of your mouse having this can help a lot if the pointer jumps somewhere and you cannot find it. Glad to see you're enjoying yourself

Congratulations on sticking with Linux. A lot give up. I wish I could help you out with transcription software but it is not something that I know anything about. Sorry. Good luck with your Linux adventure!

For your computer you shouldnt use manjaro as manjaro is a rolling release modle so its more happy when it gets alot of updates. Also try eww the emacs web browser

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about LucasArts games!

I recommend not trying all terminal commands you are given, and instead type "man" before the command, to open up a manual page for the command, you know, so you know what it will do, and therefore don't accidentally delete things you care about. Also, perhaps look up "man pages" online to confirm "man" isn't some obscure command I'm trying to tricks you with. Scrutinise everything.

Looking forward to seeing how you progress :)

I love FOSS. I don't believe that everything should be FOSS, but it's great for certain things like education. Just thing that a part of your taxes goes to Bill Gates for all the public institutions in need of computers and how great it would be if they instead used Linux not only that but all the free of compromises software that schools and other education centers can use without having to worrying about getting a licence for. Also Open source software allows you to learn from it. I'm learning programming and it's great how I can just search for the software I use and read the source code to learn how it works.

Use ethernet directly wired into your machine. Wireless sucks comparatively. You get 3x higher internet speeds being hardwired.

Internet-free days, that sounds great! Enjoy being disconnected. :)

1000th sub :)

For tiling window manager, if you have time you can watch this video : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Api6dFMlxAA.html It's quite complete on what it is, and this is this video which makes me understand it completely. Since then I switched to it, but not for all my work. When I'm working on 3D (with Maya) for exemple I need floating windows otherwise it's crap.

I don't recommend you use a tiling manager. It is for a very niche type of user. If you want to check it out anyway: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xnREqY-oyzM.html

checkout distrotube's channel, he has some good videos on tiling window managers