There was a major meltdown of my laptop yesterday. My trusty machine was running Linux Mint since the end of January. It has been a decent experience, with a few exceptions.
Recently I posted about my nightly crashing issue. My fix was to shut the machine down each night. Give it the rest it deserves. This certainly fixed the issue.
I also mentioned in that post how I desperately miss my tiling window manager. The solution was to install a tiling window manager on Linux Mint and get my groove back. Well, this was a disaster.
I tried several different tiling window managers and each one had an issue with my multi-monitor setup. In one instance, the setup to get multi-monitors working was so script-intensive, I bailed after tinkering for an hour or so.
Another issue I had was with the window managers that did seem to support multi-monitors; the external monitor was recognized but I couldn’t get the resolutions to display correctly on both monitors. The visual experience was awful.
There was a third issue that manifested itself. My mouse would randomly disappear. I would mouse over certain portions of the screen and poof! The mouse was gone. I had to shake the poor device around like a Roomba gone mad. Eventually, the cursor would just materialize out of digital air. Super annoying!
So, I did what any self-identified professional technologist would do: I backed up my files, nuked my drive, and installed a new distro. After some trial and error, I settled on Fedora Workstation 43.
Now, it does not have a tiling window manager, but the desktop environment is user-friendly. It has some basic tiling built in. Though the real power is in the extension system the desktop environment has. There are a ton of extensions I can install, much like browser extensions.
The one I will install first, called gtile, adds a richer tiling experience. Why haven’t I installed it yet? Because the default experience, thus far, has been top-notch. No mouse issues, no random shutdowns, and both of my screens work as intended. Perfect!
As for writing, I’ve decided to stick with Obsidian. It’s a great application. And my research led me to a plugin called Harper that works like Grammarly but I can use it in Obsidian.
Grammarly costs a pretty penny for the pro version. There is also no official Obsidian plugin for Grammarly. This means I have to write my articles in Obsidian, copy them to a Grammarly browser session, make all the corrections, then paste everything back into Obsidian. A process I was not happy with.
Harper lets me do the basics right in Obsidian. Once I have everything to my liking, I can copy/paste from Obsidian to my Substack editor and away I go! Instant efficiency increase! This makes my writing workflow feel more fluid than using Grammarly. Plus, I can cancel my Grammarly subscription and save myself some money. A win-win!
Now that I have my OS and writing workflow dialed in, I can concentrate on the writing. What a concept, huh? Remember that starting tomorrow, my daily posts will not be happening while I finalize and implement my Substack changes.
I’ll be back though, in a week, with better content for your entertainment and learning. And don’t worry, I’ll still be writing, but not posting articles daily. Do keep an eye on the Notes, though—you might see me check in with some random thoughts.
Thanks again for your time and attention. See you in a week.
—Daniel