Pop-OS!

I’ve switched my one and only laptop over to Pop-OS! Not that there’s anything wrong with KDE, but because I want to get familiar with System76 and Pop-OS!. System76 makes hardware with free and open source software installed by default. I also want to learn how to use the command line, instead of all the fancy KDE GUIs.

I had already downloaded the ISO for Pop-OS! and several other operating systems. This morning, I used the Installing Linux story on this website to remind me how to get it properly installed onto a USB device and then, installing it on my laptop was easy. Just restart the computer with the USB inserted and follow the installation wizard.

I’ve been messing around with it for about an hour now and its not even noon yet. Linux is getting easier to install. Plus, I’ve done it so many times, I’m getting better at it.

I like that System76 is a hardware company building computers, really good computers too, with Linux installed by default. I’ll use the default Gnome desktop, in order to learn and to get in the habit of using the command line, instead of KDE’s beautiful and powerful GUIs.

I like this Tiling window setting. Its a little weird, getting used to the small tiled windows, instead of the larger overlapping ones. I’ll also have to get used to using the Gnome apps, instead of the KDE ones. Press Control + Windows + the up or down arrow to switch back and forth between the different desktop work spaces.

I still think that Kubuntu is a great introduction to Linux. I thought about switching to Manjaro, which is another easy to get started with, distribution of Arch Linux.

I’ve also seriously considered switching to BSD, because I like the BSD license better than the GNU/GPL. It looks like BSD is still fairly complicated to get installed and correctly configured. I’ll probably be looking into it from now on.

One of my ideas is to open a store selling System76 computers, along with Kubuntu Focus laptops, KDE Slimbook laptops, Linux smart phones and any other hardware built for free and open source software. I would also sell computer science literature and computer repair and consultation. Have a nice big meeting room and coffee bar, for Linux and Python meetups.

I don’t have the resources or the time to do anything like that right now, so, I encourage you to do it. There should be Linux stores all across America and the world. Not franchises though. In the spirit of improving our growing and evolving, free and open source ecosystem, each store should be individually owned and operated by the people who work there.

Cultivate your local development environment, just like you would, or perhaps you actually do, cultivate your garden. Develop the skills and habits necessary to be a very high performance computer scientist and free and open source entrepreneur. Create your own channel of entertaining education.

Be an artist. You can get started doing this fairly inexpensively. Linux is, after all, free and open source software. Get yourself an old laptop and get Kubuntu installed on it. I suppose that Ubuntu is just as easy to start out with as Kubuntu, I just preferred KDE.

Now, I’m switching to Pop-OS! and Gnome. Mainly, I want to get in the habit of using the command line as much as possible. I will build a cluster of websites using Python and Django and Flask. I want to get away from the PHP and start using Python instead.

PHP is more popular for web development, but Python is the most popular general purpose computer programming language. You can do a lot more than build websites with it.

Get familiar with the file system on your computer. Find out where your configuration files are and learn how to edit them properly.

Typically, you do not edit the config file directly. You create a new file with all your customizations and link it to the config file. That way, your customizations don’t get clobbered when your application is updated.

One of the hardest things to do is to not install every interesting looking application. Do not get your system full of software that you never use. Focus on getting Vim installed and configured. Decide whether you want to use the default Bash or upgrade to Zsh.

Once you get Vim and Zsh installed and properly configured. Then work on installing your development environment. I’m wondering whether I should use the basic LAMP stack, rather than installing Nginx and PostgreSQL. Get the latest Python installed. Get node.js on there. You’ll need Git and SSH.

I had Nginx and PostgreSQL installed in my previous setup. Once I started building this WordPress website I figured I would install PHP. Well, it wanted to install Apache2. I already had Nginx installed and could not figure out how to get PHP installed without Apache2.

So, I’ll be getting this all slowly set up, over the next several weeks. I’ll be describing the process here.