This is a 12 year dream. I have always run a Windows workstation along side a Debian laptop. I am no stranger to Debian. I have a 12 year association with it. I am not a Linux wizard yet but have been adept with it.
Why not use Debian daily then? My personal computing usage unfortunately centered around consumption rather than creation. I watched videos, listened to podcasts, read technical articles, and browsed social media. On top of this, inertia and great software like Visual Studio, Notepad++, Excel, OneDrive held me back.
Visual Studio is an absolute must-have for all .NET developers. I built small pieces of complex web projects only occasionally. VS Code on Linux is decent for .NET development but it is not the same. Though Jetbrains Rider existed along-side, it is unthinkable to drop Visual Studio. At least for dark matter developers.
Notepad++ is a fabulous software program that had no complete alternatives on Linux. I used it for scripting, text manipulation, note taking, dumping and editing thoughts. Scintilla-based equivalents Geany, SciTE exist, but do not come close.
MS-Office Excel is another remarkable software program with no real alternatives in other ecosystems. It is worth the 5K INR per year. Organizing data, life planning, and creating simple reports are a few of its greatest capabilities. Also, the formulas system is amazing. OneDrive is another great and a utilitarian software program from the Microsoft stable.
So, why now? I had the most fun and growth when I built things. I love the independence that comes with the experience of building things. As far as I can remember, I was always a tinkerer, thinker, builder, doer and explorer. After a decade or so of inaction, I needed a change. A few things fell into place recently.
- Windows is about to get a whole lot more annoying. An increase in ads, baked-in Copilot, and a suffocating push to outlook user-linked usage.
- Jetbrains Rider became formidable now for CLI and web app development.
- I learnt enough of apt-pinning, backports and makedeb repository.
- The last straw is from an unexpected experience. I set up a Win 11 VM recently using the KVM+QEMU route. I noticed that the VM’s performance was quite responsive. KVM+QEMU despite all the pain felt worthy. I cannot recommend it enough.
Immediately I decided to remove Windows, install Debian with a Windows VM inside. I will write about various experiments and experiences over the next year. These are some of the sub-projects on my mind in no particular order.
- Write about this setup
- Implement a nice 3-2-1 backup strategy
- Write about significant alternatives
- Write about significant issues
- Linking to phone
- Configure monitoring, notifications and alerts
- Configure auto dark mode
- Find a way to play an old strategy game on Linux
im kinda stuck with a windows workstation for work also, for the exact same reasons. ive used the discrepancy in environments to completely air-gap my home and work life. linux for all things personal, and windows for the BS at the office… never the twain shall meet
notepad++ really bothers me… if theres one freakin app that linux should have a mastery of its text editing… and yet.
e. for the vim/emacs/nano peeps: no. just no. its not me who is wrong here because i dont want to learn 400 obscure keystrokes among other nonsense. we dont need to hear about your text editing stockholm-syndrome.
What you said about resonates with me. Though I used vim over the years a few times and understand it’s philosophy, I feel that experience is not for many. Given how many things we handle professionally dev, ops, iac etc, the master-one-editor principle doesn’t hold for people stuck in traditional corporate / enterprise dev envs.
This reads like projected insecurity. Or maybe even… jealousy.
weird, thats exactly what patty hearst said
You know, the older I get the more I respect the people who come out and say ‘I’m not going to learn that, and I don’t want to.’
It’s a LOT better than dealing with someone who half-asses and kinda wishy-washes around and says they’ll maybe do something but then doesn’t and well, wasn’t ever going to.
If you’re not interested and won’t, say so up front so you don’t waste your or my time trying to get you to do something.
Yes, because it would be crazy to learn keyboard skills for text editing. Such a super great point.
The thing about the vi keystrokes is that almost all programming editors support them. There are few skills that will save you more time and retraining than vi movements as you inevitably move from editor to editor.
Vim, IntelliJ / Rider, and VS Code. If you know the vi movements, you are productive in any of them right away.
For text editing, kate is really good and has like zero learning curve and it has tons of features like really good lsp integration but can also just be a normal text editor if you don’t want all the fancy stuff.
(But also I promise learning vim isn’t as hard as you think it is, you can learn the basics in like an hour or two and there are so many things it makes so much easier than other editors)