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|
+++
date = 2022-06-24
title = "Rebooting My Love Affair with Linux"
description = "A quick recap on my migration from macOS to Fedora i3."
draft = false
+++
## Leaving macOS
As I noted [in a recent post](/blog/foss-macos-apps), I have been planning on
migrating from macOS back to a Linux-based OS. I am happy to say that I have
finally completed my migration and am now stuck in the wonderful world of Linux
again.
My decision to leave macOS really came down to just a few important things:
- Apple Security (Gatekeeper) restricting me from running any software I want.
Even if you disable Gatekeeper and allow software to bypass the rest of the
device installation security, you still have to repeat that process every time
the allowed software is updated.
- macOS sends out nearly constant connections, pings, telemetry, etc. to a
myriad of mysterious Apple services. I'm not even going to dive into how many
macOS apps have constant telemetry on, as well.
- Lastly, I just *really* missed the customization and freedom that comes with
Linux. Being able to switch to entirely new kernel, OS, or desktop within
minutes is a freedom I took for granted when I switched to macOS.
Now that I've covered macOS, I'm going to move on to more exciting topics: my
personal choice of OS, DE, and various customizations I'm using.
## Fedora
After trying a ton of distros (I think I booted and tested around 20-25
distros), I finally landed on [Fedora Linux](https://getfedora.org/). I have
quite a bit of experience with Fedora and enjoy the `dnf` package manager.
Fedora allows me to keep up-to-date with recent software (I'm looking at you,
Debian), but still provides a level of stability you don't find in every distro.
In a very close second place was Arch Linux, as well as its spin-off: Garuda
Linux (Garuda w/ sway is *beautiful*). Arch is great for compatibility and the
massive community it has, but I have just never had the time to properly sit
down and learn the methodology behind their packaging systems.
Basically, everything else I tested was unacceptable in at least one way or
another.
Void (`glibc`) was great, but doesn't support all the software I need.
Slackware worked well as a tui, but I wasn't skilled enough to get a tiling
window manager (WM) working on it.
### i3
One of the reasons I settled on Fedora is that it comes with an official i3
spin. Being able to use a tiling WM, such as i3 or sway, is one of the biggest
things I wanted to do as soon as I adopted Linux again.
I will probably set up a dotfile repository soon, so that I don't lose any
of my configurations, but nothing big has been configured thus far.
The two main things I have updated in i3wm are natural scrolling and binding my
brightness keys to the `brightnessctl` program.
#### Natural Scrolling
You can enable natural scrolling by opening the following file:
```sh
sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf
```
Within the `40-libinput.conf` file, find the following input sections and enable
the natural scrolling option.
This is the `pointer` section:
```conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "libinput pointer catchall"
MatchIsPointer "on"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Driver "libinput"
Option "NaturalScrolling" "True"
EndSection
```
This is the `touchpad` section:
```conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
Driver "libinput"
Option "NaturalScrolling" "True"
EndSection
```
#### Enabling Brightness Keys
Likewise, enabling brightness key functionality is as simple as binding the keys
to the `brightnessctl` program.
To do this, open up your i3 config file. Mine is located here:
```sh
nano /home/<my-user>/.config/i3/config
```
```conf
# Use brightnessctl to adjust brightness.
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec --no-startup-id brightnessctl --min-val=2 -q set 3%-
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec --no-startup-id brightnessctl -q set 3%+
```
#### `polybar`
Instead of using the default `i3status` bar, I have opted to use `polybar`
instead (as you can also see in the screenshot above).
My config for this menu bar is basically just the default settings with modified
colors and an added battery block to quickly show me the machine's battery info.
#### `alacritty`
Not much to say on this part yet, as I haven't configured it much, but I
installed `alacritty` as my default terminal, and I am using `zsh` and the
shell.
## Software Choices
Again, I'm not going to say much that I haven't said yet in other blog
posts, so I'll just do a quick rundown of the apps I installed immediately after
I set up the environment.
Flatpak Apps:
- Cryptomator
- pCloud
- Signal
Fedora Packages:
- gomuks
- neomutt
- neofetch
- Firefox
- uBlock Origin
- Bitwarden
- Stylus
- Privacy Redirect
Other:
- exiftool
|
