Magpiny

Mo Jun 19, 2023

My Linux 100% open source workflow (copy)

Using Linux is fun and enjoyable but you MUST be comfortable living with some of its caveats like having a fairly steep learning curve, the freedom of being able to access most system files means that at some point you'll break your system unknowingly, curse Linux and go back to Windows or Mac. And finally your favourite Office software (Ms Office), Media Manipulation software (Adobe suite) and most games do not work on Linux. Also there's printer incompatibility STRESS!! Although there alternatives to the above mentioned softwares, currently they're not up to par which might hinder most desktop users from crossing over to Linux.

All is not lost as there are a lot of good things to talk about when it comes to Linux. For example I have never spent a penny buying an antivirus software since I started using Linux, and 90% of windows users use or have used pirated softwares which poses security threats to their systems.

Here are the softwares I use as part of my daily drivers

Operating System

Manjaro Gnome(44), Kernel 6.2

Multimedia player

Audio - Strawberry

Video - VLC

Mixx - For my personal entertainment when I'm burnt out.

Office

Libre Office -> For creating and viewing word, spreadsheet and powerpoint documents

Document Viewer -> For viewing PDF files

Ariana -> for viewing ebooks(.epub files)

Calibre -> For viewing ebooks

Programming

Neovim -> My favourite Text Editor

Codeblocks -> My go to C++ code editor

KDevelop -> Nice to have, Makes working with Qt less painless

Lapce -> Whenever I need a GUI text editor

Android Studio -> For developing android apps

GHex -> Just to show my students the object code

Postman -> My backend api debugging payground

Glade -> For developing Gnome UI

Content Creation

Gimp -> Open Source Image

OBS -> My goto screen, audio and video capture software

Audacity -> My goto audio editting tool

Shortcut -> Video editing tool

Inkscape -> Creating graphics and video banners

OpenBoard -> I use it for illustrations together with Minder

Web browsers

Firefox developer edition (Google Search)

Brave Browser(Brave search)

Others Include

Gnome Terminal(zsh) -> The app I use the most in my machine (Of course Neovim runs in the terminal)

System Monitor -> To monitor which apps are taking up much of the memory

Word book -> My dictionary

Gedit -> My general purpose text editor

Virtual Box

Although Gnome Boxes works perfectly in Gnome , for my use case I still prefer Virtulabox. In there I have Kali Linux installed for my cyber security practice and Windows 10 running smoothly with office 2019. Sometimes when creating documents becomes a necessity I have to fire up my VM and use Office 2019 since it's the defacto office sotware in this corner of the world. Google docs and sheets also offer a better alteranative when on linux though one must be online to access them.

You cannot use all the softwares mentioned above but pick what works for you. Soon I'll write a blog on getting started with Linux as a Windows or Mac users. If you read this far I wish you a happy hacking, stay blessed champs!