Hi all
So I am looking to rebuild my workstation this week, reinstall everything, consolidate the way I handle things on the system (going for more automation likely with chef to learn it) and looking at adding and removing applications.
This includes the distro
So first of course is distro, I’m thinking either fedora or ubuntu 18.04, I want stability with semi recent package updates, I know in ubuntu egpu over tb3 works well not sure about fedora I would imagine it would.
Any thoughts? And would you recommend something other that ext4 for the file system? Something more reliable in backups and newer or stick with the default?
Backups - not sure who to use here, if I would like encryption from a service also, so Dropbox would require cryptomator, was thinking backblaze maybe?
Email - looking at ditching outlook and maybe switching to proton, know if an email client will work with it locally like thunderbird or evolution.
Desktop environment - I have a 3200 x 1800 display and I’m thinking of switching to i3wm, or should I look at something else? Gnome is getting a bit boring, I do want to use keyboard as primary controls and mouse in browser.
Music system - I use Spotify at the moment but am willing to switch if it has a way of being used in linux, Spotify has a gui but there is a terminal app I’ve heard about that can control services like Spotify.
Code editor - looking at switching to vim, thoughts? Am I mad?
These are thoughts but would like to hear what you think, I know it’s all subjective to the person but suggestions never hurt.
Can’t comment on all your questions due to lack of knowledge, but here’s a few thoughts:
I’m fond of Fedora but I also use Ubuntu LTS. It depends on my use case. If you use Ubuntu LTS don’t forget to keep an eye out for HWE - essentially kernel and firmware updates backported to the LTS.
Backups - deja-dup is nice and supports encryption and a variety of network services. Google, S3, Nextcloud, and so on.
Email - if proton runs IMAP than just about anything can read it - Thunderbird, Evolution, claws, pine…
DE - I love tiling window managers. But no one can answer this for you, you have to try them and find out if you like it or not.
Code - vim for code? Great choice - with the caveat that it depends on your language. I’m not sure I’d use vim for languages where an IDE is a more suitable choice, like Java. But for a large amount of languages, I really like it. Check out plugins like syntastic. Be sure to ‘grok’ vim and learn its modes and motions. If you go into Insert mode and treat it like nano you are not getting any benefit from it.
On ubuntu I generally upgrade to 4.18, I dont tend to make a habit of upgrading kernels often. Ukuu is rather useful I find, I wish fedora had something like this.
Never used Deja-dup, ill look into this, may save me time instead of automating cryptomator using rsync.
I investigated proton, you need a tool called proton bridge which is not out for Linux yet, so local proton is out of the question for now well without using the beta.
For DE I did use i3 at a time and got to the point where when at work using windows I was using the key maps trying to open things with my bindings lol, I just want to replicate that in gnome if possible, maybe a day of tinkering with gnome keybindings is required before I go full i3, its just getting back up to speed.
I also want to use vim not just for coding, but to learn it to use system wide, I don’t like using IDEs unless I have to as I find them too bloated, VS Code with addon’s is about as far as I go, and to be honest I don’t like the fact Microsoft write VSC, so if I can move away from it great
Fedora tends to stay pretty up to date with the kernel… unlike Ubuntu, I’ve never found myself needing to find a way to install a more up to date kernel in Fedora because I already have it.
As for IDE, like I said, it’s mostly language dependent (IMO). I might want VS Code (or something similar) for a large C# project. But I’m good with Vim for golang, Perl, bash and a variety of other languages. Python I’d probably also use vim, but if I’m doing a large-scale project I might give PyCharm a shot to see if it provides tangible benefits.
Vim as a generic editor for sysadmin work is also a great choice. Especially if you get comfortable with its inbuilt grep tool, block editing, and other things that really speed up common tasks.
well without using the beta.