Pop_OS!

'Unleash your potential!'

Pop_OS! is probably the distro I will return to the most in the future. It's the best combination of aesthetics and functionality for me. Pop (I can't be bothered to write the entire name every time) uses the GNOME DE, and I gotta say, first impressions are not always the best impressions.

In my inital research, I had dismissed GNOME as a restrictive DE. Everyone complained about the lack of total customization it had compared to KDE Plasma and how resource-hungry it was. GNOME is the most popular Linux DE, but I had already dismissed it before even trying it.

When I first switched to Pop, I was annoyed to learn that I had to install additional extensions to have basic features that KDE Plasma had out-of-the-box. 

Okay, side-tangent, I need to rant about something.

Is it just me, or does the gnome extensions store suck? Like it almost never works, You can never be truly sure if it will work or not. You click install, and nothing happens. I've completely given up relying on that thing. It might be some dumb problem on my end, but still, why?

Okay, rant over.

When I started using Gnome more, I understood more about it. The reason why Gnome limits so much features and keeps them as extensions is because this gives greater choices to users. This also allows users to create custom extensions and publish them on their storefront so they provide an outlet for users to provide additional features for themselves.

Another thing I HAVE to talk about is the Actvities Overview (AO) in Gnome. Oh my God. This thing is like the best thing to happen to desktop computing since the GUI.

AO is so amazing I have no idea how it's not the common standard for window management in desktops. It basicaly allows you to click one button and it shows you all the windows you have opened along with the different workspaces you have running.

Workspaces are like a neat little way to organize all your activites. If I had to explain it briefly using an example, I'd say: Imagine you have three different research-based assignments due next week. With workspaces, you can easily create three different work environments for each assignment and seamlessly transition from working on one assignment to another assignment. I usually open up a word document, a browser window and a note-taking app in all three workspaces and start from there.

That was a very messy example. But I'm sure you get the gist. Windows had a similar feature, but I never really used it since it wasn't as obvious what it could be used for there. In fact, it took me some time to actually realize that the feature existed on Windows 10 (Idk, maybe I"m just stupid or something). The workspace thing is a built-in part of GNOME, and it shows.

When you first start using GNOME, you will notice how the maximise and minimise buttons are missing from the window titlebars. You can enable them through the Gnome tweak tool, but as you use it more and more, you start to realize that they are unnecessary when the AO is present as it is a much more efficient way of switching windows.

I personally disabled the the AO button and solely relied on the Hot Corner to access AO. Hot Corner is a feature that allows you to slam your cursor into the top left edge of your screen and summon the AO. It's much faster and easier than clicking . Alternatively, you can also summon the AO by pressing the Windows key.

This entire post became a 'GNOME-Simp' post. Let's talk about the actual distro, Pop.

Pop OS was developed by this company called System76 that develops Linux-specific hardware like PCs and laptops. For years they just used Ubuntu as their software but then they realized they could create their own hardware-specific software. Pop OS runs great on most machines but it was primarily built for System76 hardware. Many people have described System76 as the 'Apple' of the Linux world.

It comes out-of-the-box with support for Nvidia graphics cards ( which is apparently a big hassle for Linux enthusiasts, Idk, I use AMD ) and is usually touted as a 'gaming distro' meaning it offers the best support for games. Linux gaming has come a long way and I suggest you check out LinusTechTips videos on Linux gaming for more info.

I'm personally not much of a hardcore gamer. I like to separate my processes from each other so I just buy consoles specifically for gaming.

One of the features I DID like that was specific to Pop OS was their new auto-tiling feature that was introduced in version 20.04. Auto-tiling makes life so much more easier. With the press of two keys, all the open windows in your current workspace organize themselves into neat little tiles. You can drag these tiles around and format them according to your needs. It makes multi-tasking on one screen that much more efficient.

That's pretty much it. My next idea was to move to an Arch-based distro. Arch is a bit too intimidating for me right now, so I decided to settle into Manjaro, which is a fork of Arch that's aimed towards beginners.