I wanted to switch for several months but needed to sort out some things first. I’m a .NET dev (on Linux, crazy, I know). We migrated to .NET 8 (I want to upgrade to .NET 10 which is nowhere near the complexity level of moving everything from .NET Framework) last year and because .NET is now cross-platform, I could finally switch to Linux full time because my full tech stack is available here. It’s not a 1:1 workflow, some things are done differently (for example I don’t use IIS with self-signed certificates, I use Caddy; I don’t use MSBuild, I run dotnet commands manually; SQL Server is running in a Podman container).

I chose openSUSE Tumbleweed because I live in the EU, there’s the whole Buy European movement caused by Trump which I support. I tested Fedora Workstation first, I really really like it, it gave me less issues than openSUSE, but it’s “American”, sponsored by Red Hat who does business with Palantir, so sorry :( I should have considered Debian, too, I think it would have been easier, but openSUSE has newer packages and has that super cool Snapper integration which is a godsend to newbies such as myself who can break their system by doing something stupid. So far so good, I can’t use OpenVPN 3 here, though, because the community package doesn’t work properly (it expects DBUS to be named dbus, but for some reason openSUSE devs decided that non-standard dbus-1 is better). GSConnect doesn’t work, either, the extension hasn’t been updated enough and references some old parts which are not available in the cutting edge GNOME 49 on Tumbleweed ;) I believe both OpenVPN 3 and GSConnect would have worked on Debian out of the box. I could have also gone for LMDE, but I wasn’t aware what it was and I only knew I didn’t want Ubuntu, so Linux Mint was not something I wanted, either (I know it’s not the same, but it’s based on Ubuntu).

I read many times that your choice of DE is more important than your choice of distro. And to stick to your choice for at least three months before you hop to another one. I can’t help but get a sort of buyer’s remorse . That’s when you make a choice, but other options are still available after. Makes you (me) think that maybe it was not the best choice, you know. But hopping too soon just teaches you to install Linux :D

I set up a 3-2-1 backup scheme for which I’m very happy now. I have Btrfs + Snapper on my system disk, then I have Restic (with resticprofile) to back up my user files (plus some configuration files from /etc) on a secondary disk and another backup in the cloud. Initially I wanted an image based backup of the system disk, because I’ve been using Macrium Reflect on Windows for many years. After some research it seems that Linux users have a different mindset and because programs keep their config in /etc (or sometimes ~/.config) you can just backup those files and in case your rootfs is so damaged you cringe when thinking of fixing it, you just quickly re-install the system, pull all packages (which list you can export into a .txt file) and then restore the configs.

I learned that everything in Linux is a file. Even CPU frequencies (/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq). And that everything in Bash is a stream. And that I love fish (I actually don’t like fish, but I love the shell of that name).

I learned that systemd services are plain text files with super easy syntax. That BLEW MY MIND because in my .NET project I have a tool to create Windows Scheduler tasks and it’s like some stone age tech in comparison. I have to re-compile to create a new service. In systemd I can type a new service in a text editor and make it run on a schedule with a CLI command.

I learned that many people hate systemd. I listened to a short history of how systemd came to be and apparently somebody was collecting Bitcoin in 2014 to hire a hitman to kill one of the creators of systemd. 🤯 I don’t have a baggage, a month ago I thought you still use cron in Linux, so I don’t have any feelings about that, I understand the concerns about centralization and complexity, but currently I’d say I like systemd. I barely know anything, though.

After first few days I actually reinstalled Tumbleweed to get systemd-boot instead of GRUB because I use LUKS encryption on all disks and I read that systemd + Secure Boot is better.

I use GNOME. KDE seems to too Windows-like in its UX and too complex (too many options and switches), but I would still like to give it a fair chance. I wish it was possible to switch between GNOME and KDE on the same machine without making the system garbage (mixed window types, settings, etc.). I know it’s technically possible, but as far as I know it leaves “trash” and the OS sometimes gets confused and tries to display KDE (Qt?) windows in GNOME or something. I think it’s better to reinstall, but let me know if I’m wrong.

I did not encounter any serious issues, the system is very stable, no crashes. I am able to work on it and do personal stuff.