I'm giving Linux another shot. It's been about 4 years since I last tried it and I thought I'd catalogue my experiences here for shits and giggles. I went with Manjaro because the last distro that I really liked was Arch via the Achitect Linux installer, which is now defunct.
Installation: Installation was kind of a pain, but this is mostly my fault. I didn't want to choose the easy option and let the installer use free space to partition automatically because I knew I wouldn't like the default settings. I wanted to use F2FS instead of ext4 and I didn't need /home to be a separate partition because I store all of my files on a secondary SSD or my NAS.
First I tried using the partition tool in the installer to take some of my free space and make an F2FS partition mounted as /. I then used the 6gb I had left for swap (probably overkill. I'm not even sure I need a swap partition with 16gb of ram as I have literally never run out of memory but oh well). The installer told me I needed to make a /boot/eufi partition with some feature or other checked so I went back and did that. This time the installation proceeded.
Unfortunately when it got to the end it spat out some error and failed to install. I decided to say F this and try a different method. This time I tried using G Parted and some different settings. I ended up having to reboot first because it wouldn't let me unmount and delete the F2FS partition I had made but after a reboot everything was fine.
This time I was able to get things the way I wanted by deleting all of the partitions I made and turning all of the freespace into a single F2FS partition and then telling Manjaro to install to that partition in the installer. This time everything worked and the system booted up. I don't know if it turned some of that partition into a swap partition, is using a swap file instead, or if I'm just running without swap right now. Whatever.
First impressions: After a reboot the first thing that I noticed was that the date was incorrect and displaying in military time. I found settings to change how the time was displayed by right clicking on the time but I couldn't figure out how to set the correct time. If I left clicked and went to the date and time settings there was a knob for turning on server sync for the time but every time I turned it on it would be off again after closing the window and the time would never update.
I ended up having to google how to change the date and time which is stupid. It should be in a less obscure location. Googling how to change it brought me to the Manjaro settings manager where I was able to get it fixed. Exploring the settings brought me to where I needed to go to install my video card drivers which was the most painless experience I've ever had doing that on Linux. Big improvement over all my past experiences. The only thing I don't like is that if they aren't coming direct from Nvidia I have no idea if I'm using the latest version and I feel like I'm at the mercy of someone else when it comes to when I get the updates.
Gaming: Steam wasn't installed by default in the Cinnamon version of Manjaro but google found the command line entries to install it quickly. Sadly most of my steam library doesn't seem to work in Linux even with Proton. At least not anything I currently want to play. The biggest disappointment was that Street Fighter V doesn't seem to work.
I will say that I was impressed that my PS4 gamepad did seem to be working within a minute or three of pluging it in. That's a huge improvement from 4 years ago when I couldn't seem to get my DS3 to work. I haven't tried to make it work over bluetooth yet though.
That's all I have for now. I'll post more in this thread after I try playing a game or something.
Installation: Installation was kind of a pain, but this is mostly my fault. I didn't want to choose the easy option and let the installer use free space to partition automatically because I knew I wouldn't like the default settings. I wanted to use F2FS instead of ext4 and I didn't need /home to be a separate partition because I store all of my files on a secondary SSD or my NAS.
First I tried using the partition tool in the installer to take some of my free space and make an F2FS partition mounted as /. I then used the 6gb I had left for swap (probably overkill. I'm not even sure I need a swap partition with 16gb of ram as I have literally never run out of memory but oh well). The installer told me I needed to make a /boot/eufi partition with some feature or other checked so I went back and did that. This time the installation proceeded.
Unfortunately when it got to the end it spat out some error and failed to install. I decided to say F this and try a different method. This time I tried using G Parted and some different settings. I ended up having to reboot first because it wouldn't let me unmount and delete the F2FS partition I had made but after a reboot everything was fine.
This time I was able to get things the way I wanted by deleting all of the partitions I made and turning all of the freespace into a single F2FS partition and then telling Manjaro to install to that partition in the installer. This time everything worked and the system booted up. I don't know if it turned some of that partition into a swap partition, is using a swap file instead, or if I'm just running without swap right now. Whatever.
First impressions: After a reboot the first thing that I noticed was that the date was incorrect and displaying in military time. I found settings to change how the time was displayed by right clicking on the time but I couldn't figure out how to set the correct time. If I left clicked and went to the date and time settings there was a knob for turning on server sync for the time but every time I turned it on it would be off again after closing the window and the time would never update.
I ended up having to google how to change the date and time which is stupid. It should be in a less obscure location. Googling how to change it brought me to the Manjaro settings manager where I was able to get it fixed. Exploring the settings brought me to where I needed to go to install my video card drivers which was the most painless experience I've ever had doing that on Linux. Big improvement over all my past experiences. The only thing I don't like is that if they aren't coming direct from Nvidia I have no idea if I'm using the latest version and I feel like I'm at the mercy of someone else when it comes to when I get the updates.
Gaming: Steam wasn't installed by default in the Cinnamon version of Manjaro but google found the command line entries to install it quickly. Sadly most of my steam library doesn't seem to work in Linux even with Proton. At least not anything I currently want to play. The biggest disappointment was that Street Fighter V doesn't seem to work.
I will say that I was impressed that my PS4 gamepad did seem to be working within a minute or three of pluging it in. That's a huge improvement from 4 years ago when I couldn't seem to get my DS3 to work. I haven't tried to make it work over bluetooth yet though.
That's all I have for now. I'll post more in this thread after I try playing a game or something.