Learning the Best Ways To Use Linux

Tagged with cinnamon, hibernation, kde plasma, linux, workspaces, zram on November 29, 2024

I’m in my sixties. In my mind, I feel like I’m 30 or younger. My body disagrees. 20 years of active military service took its toll on me more than 26 years ago. I haven’t been employed since 2006, and learning new things has been my main pastime since then. Learning the best ways to use Linux is just one piece of the puzzle I call life.

Linux Is All About Choices

I’m a Linux enthusiast, but not because it’s better than macOS or Windows. It’s because of all the choices I can make immediately after installation of the operating system. I can have a Linux distribution up and running with my preferred applications within an hour of finding the download. It takes more time than that just to download the latest Windows ISO file.

Once I have my system set up, I no longer have to make any changes at all. If I change something, it’s because I want to.

Desktop Environments

I’ve tested every desktop environment possible on multiple Linux distributions. What I’ve learned is that the desktop environment isn’t that important. People rave about KDE Plasma, but it isn’t any better than Cinnamon. As long as applications are easy to launch and the environment isn’t an eyesore, anything will do.

I use the Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint on my x86-64 desktop and laptop computers. With my Raspberry Pi 400, I use Raspberry Pi OS Lite and the Cinnamon desktop environment. All three computers are instantly familiar to me when I turn them on.

Workspaces or Virtual Desktops

It doesn’t matter what they’re called, they’re simply different screens to work on. They’re probably important to people who use them for work-related things. I understand how to use them effectively, but I don’t need them since I no longer work for a living. I use the first workspace and remove the rest.

Some people window their applications to fit two or more on the screen at the same time. I use all my applications maximized and simply switch between them. I rarely run more than two applications at a time anyway.

Session Startup and Session Restore

Some distributions support session restore and resuming from hibernation. The Cinnamon Edition of Linux Mint doesn’t support either one. Session startups can be controlled by the system startup applications settings as well as command line tools such as xdotool and wmctrl. The command line tools can even place specific applications on specific workspaces.

I set up my computer to resume from hibernation, even though I don’t need it. Just because I can is a good enough reason. The next time I reinstall the operating system, I won’t bother with a startup script or hibernation. Since most of my days are consumed by web browsing and multimedia, it’s simply overkill.

Wear and Tear on the Solid-State Drive

I’m no longer concerned about the causes of wear on the solid-state drive, and I don’t need to move the “/tmp” or “.cache” directories. New drives are cheap, and I don’t need more than a hundred gigabytes. Linux isn’t a storage hog like Windows. I can write a script to erase the contents of those directories immediately after the system starts up.

After months of using zram instead of a regular swap file, I’ll be going back to using a swap file. I’ve never worn out any kind of drive in over 20 years, and I doubt I’ll wear one out in the future.

Enabling Hibernation on Linux Mint 22

Image by [email protected] Larry Ewing and The GIMP, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

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