I think this article is a great analysis of what deep rooted flaws linux desktop distros have, but I think it is a bit disconnected from the average user (obligatory xkcd).

If the average linux user needs a programm they google what they need land on stack overflow telling them to use their package manager to install it.

If the average windows user needs a program/feature, they google it. They klick on the first link and install the first .exe they find. Has anyone you know used the microsoft store?

Or take gaming as another example. The default expirience for online multiplayer games requires kernel level anticheat on windows. This effectively circumvents windows carefully crafted security model for most tripple A online games.

So yes the average linux machine is probably not as secure as a MacOs or windows machine. But the way they are commonly used I highly doubt windows machines are more secure.

Yeah, i like nemo a lot, i use it on my main machine when i need a gui, because it has not as many dependencies as dolphin. And it does not feel as “bloated” as dolphin. It does one thing (be a file explorer) and does well. :)

Ah yeah okay, I see, that would be quite tedious to implement in bash. Everything looks pretty neat. :D

Buuut I just looked at KDE’s search framework filter options (used by dolphin if you press <crtl> + f ) and it seems it is indeed possible to search/filter by exposure time with dolphin or via directly in the cli.

Have you tried RTFM? :P

Jokes aside afaik you could do everything you mentioned with sort, find (with -type f, -printf and -mtime) and grep (filtering via regex with the -e flag).

Alternatively you could try KDE’s file explorer dolphin (or even just its search utility kfind) as a graphical alternative.

My point is switching to linux is not quick or easy, but there are few really impassable roadblocks (games with shitty kernel level anticheat for example) and there is a high likelyhood someone in this community has encountered your problems aswell and migjt even know a solution.

Went down the same route as you until coming to the same conclusion.

The only advice I can offer is to be consistent while configuring across your tools, find something that works for you and stick to it.

For example In my dwm+tmux+nvim dotfiles I use plain hjkl for cursor movement and if i want to move windows/panes i use <shift>, if i want to resize i use <crtl>, Mod keys in tmux and nvim are the function keys (if anyone knows how to get dwm to accept <F1> as modkey let me know lol), etc.

Edit: And oh yes, try to stick to KISS :P I threw away my first set of dotfiles because i used so may useless plugins/patches for nvim and dwm i could not keep trak of all the keybinds in my head.

exfat or fat32 is great for interoperability between linux and windows but has limited functionality under linux.

If you’re using your external drive only under linux, I suggest switching to a filesystem that works better with unix like permissions and special bits.

Also, like others, depending on your use-case I would suggest something with journaling like ext3 or ext4. If you happen to power of your system while writing something to that drive, the fs does not get corrupted/can automatically recover.

For backups with rollback maybe a FS with copy on write and automatic compression like btrfs or zfs would be better.

With btrfs borg backups allows you to create incremental backups of btrfs subvolumes. I use it to backup my home, etc and /subvolumes on my “backup server” (old pc with two raid1 hdds).

I have a friend who administeres backups for his company (afaik ~100-200GB delta per week) and he swears by zfs. I found btrfs simpler though.

We still here for you though. After all linux is love, linux is live. We’re definetly not a cult. Just give it a try. Linux Mint is super beginner friendly, trust me. Just once, you’ll feel better afterwards.

Jokes aside, learning or doing something new (can be, but doesnt have to be linux) won’t make anything better, but maybe make the drudgery of everyday more bearable, imo.

Also even though I hate it, talking about stuff that is on your mind with people irl is like super important and can be really cathartic.

You could also setup a git repo for your config files. That way you could revert changes, if you break something.

If you don’t want do open your pi up to the internet you could take a look at tailscale. I use this script on my laptop and home pc to share files with sshfs while having any other traffic go through mullvad. Set this up on your pi with it as an exit node and you basically have access from anywhere.

I’m using st with tmux. It’s in written in c, simple configuration can be done by editing the header file(s). More complex customization (such as visual bell or transparency) can be done via patch files.

Not the most beginner friendly terminal but super light weight and fast.

I was tinkering with ollama+deepseek and trying to integrate it into my bash functions, but gave up, because i could not supress that stupid “thinking…” prompt. Found it easyer to just have a browser window open (switching windows can become muscle memory in tiling wms like i3/sway or dwm).