Linux Mint

I have decided to try Linux Mint 20.3 as my desktop OS. Although it is unlikely that Linux will completely replace my macOS environment, I’ve been pleasantly suprised that Linux and available software have evolved in the recent couple of years.

Will probably turn this into a separate Unix Tutorial project

Linux Mint Improvements

• Bluetooth devices battery support - standard Linux Mint taskbar widgets now report my Logitech mouse and keyboard batteries correctly. Sweet!
• HiDPI mode - at last, things are fully supported with 4K resolutions - nice scaling, etc. I no longer use LG 5K monitor so not sure if it would have worked out of the box.
• Audio/video drivers and codecs - pretty awesome to see that most of my recent enough Z390 chipset based montherboard features are supported out of the box!

Things That Work Just Fine Now

• Telegram messenger - the desktop app is solid, the tray icon is great
• Sublime Text 4 - think there were stability and GUI issues, now looks great

Things I Didn’t Expect To Be Available

Apparently, the following things are now available as proper desktop apps in Linux:

• 1Password - not just the browser extension, but a proper app - am really excited about it
• ProtonVPN client - I’m using VPN on all the devices, and have relied on custom OpenVPN setups previously. It’s great to see ProtonVPN supplying a nice app now - looks and works just like it did on macOS and Windows

See Also

• Ubuntu Releases
• Ubuntu 21.04 - Hirsute Hippo