This is a 12 year dream. I have always run a Windows workstation along side a Debian laptop. I am no stranger to Debian. I have a 12 year association with it. I am not a Linux wizard yet but have been adept with it.
Why not use Debian daily then? My personal computing usage unfortunately centered around consumption rather than creation. I watched videos, listened to podcasts, read technical articles, and browsed social media. On top of this, inertia and great software like Visual Studio, Notepad++, Excel, OneDrive held me back.
Visual Studio is an absolute must-have for all .NET developers. I built small pieces of complex web projects only occasionally. VS Code on Linux is decent for .NET development but it is not the same. Though Jetbrains Rider existed along-side, it is unthinkable to drop Visual Studio. At least for dark matter developers.
Notepad++ is a fabulous software program that had no complete alternatives on Linux. I used it for scripting, text manipulation, note taking, dumping and editing thoughts. Scintilla-based equivalents Geany, SciTE exist, but do not come close.
MS-Office Excel is another remarkable software program with no real alternatives in other ecosystems. It is worth the 5K INR per year. Organizing data, life planning, and creating simple reports are a few of its greatest capabilities. Also, the formulas system is amazing. OneDrive is another great and a utilitarian software program from the Microsoft stable.
So, why now? I had the most fun and growth when I built things. I love the independence that comes with the experience of building things. As far as I can remember, I was always a tinkerer, thinker, builder, doer and explorer. After a decade or so of inaction, I needed a change. A few things fell into place recently.
- Windows is about to get a whole lot more annoying. An increase in ads, baked-in Copilot, and a suffocating push to outlook user-linked usage.
- Jetbrains Rider became formidable now for CLI and web app development.
- I learnt enough of apt-pinning, backports and makedeb repository.
- The last straw is from an unexpected experience. I set up a Win 11 VM recently using the KVM+QEMU route. I noticed that the VM’s performance was quite responsive. KVM+QEMU despite all the pain felt worthy. I cannot recommend it enough.
Immediately I decided to remove Windows, install Debian with a Windows VM inside. I will write about various experiments and experiences over the next year. These are some of the sub-projects on my mind in no particular order.
- Write about this setup
- Implement a nice 3-2-1 backup strategy
- Write about significant alternatives
- Write about significant issues
- Linking to phone
- Configure monitoring, notifications and alerts
- Configure auto dark mode
- Find a way to play an old strategy game on Linux
Really? No alternatives on Linux? Have you tried Emacs? I think Emacs with Org mode blows Notepad++ out of the water in all the uses you just mentioned.
Not free, but I love sublime text.
I always loved how super fast it was. I did use it for a year or so some years back. But I will try it out again in a while.
Another vote for sublime. I’m a full stack web developer and it’s all I need. The native features and extensibility blow me away. It has so many features I’ll never use them all. Multiple cursor editing saves so much time. Really give it a chance and you’ll fall in love.
Yeah, I have it in my list. As mentioned in few other comments. I am now willing to try Kate as well. But with Sublime, I do have prior experience. I will probably go for it soon. Do you use the paid version for web development?
Yes. Emacs/Vim is different than the traditional Notepad++ experience. For someone using Visual Studio daily, Notepad++ is relatively the same editing experience. I did use TextPad for a while before discovering Notepad++.
I did try Vim for few times on and off. I could not stick to it as I had to work on few different software areas like C#/ASP.NET, then Python, and some build scripts (windows) and more recently Terraform. I know if I could master one of Vim / Emacs I could do all this in one editor, but as I alluded to in another comment it could take a long time for this mastery.
That said, I do have a massive respect to devs who could do this.
If you want a similar editor on Linux, then I suggest Kate. If Vim and Emacs didn’t exist, I’d be using Kate.
Kate is so good, I switched to it once atom was discontinued and only stopped using it when I finally got around to setting up neovim to have all the things I need
Yes, thanks for the recommendation. I heard about Kate but have actually yet to try it out.
I use Kate daily, all the time. It has plugins, there is LSP support, I just dont know how it works, and you can write and download code snippets!
The UI is customizable and modern too.
You had me at LSP support :)
This is a second recommendation in this post, so I will have to try it sooner than Sublime. Firing up my apt…
Good luck and report on your LSP experiences? For me I had strange errors, using it on Fedora
Definitely, although it may take a while :).
You can grab Kate from the Windows Store right now. Get all of the KDE apps, they’re pretty much the only good stuff on there.
I am already on Linux so can’t try the Windows version any more :).
However, thanks for the idea, I will probably will try on my work laptop.
Old school Unix guy here…vi,awk and sed are all that you need.