As a part of my security journey I have made multiple attempts over the years to convert to Linux, however it has always been so far behind windows I have always had to revert back after a short period of using it.
With the advent of windows 11 having been shown to call home periodically with no option to opt out I decided to make another attempt at converting to Linux. While Linux has improved, the process is still extremely painful for anyone other than a basic web browsing type user.
Here are some of my major pain points.
Brave Web Browser - works beautifully
OneDrive Sync
Rather painful to setup because Microsoft does not support linux. I use this as my primary backup solution, i'm sure there are other backup solutions that could be used to overcome this pain point.
VeraCrypt
Rather painful to setup, and the linux version does not have the feature to dismount the drive automatically. It definitely has fewer features than the windows version of it. I was able to get around the dismount issue by adding a root level cron job using the following:
sudo crontab -e
12,16,20,22 * * * /usr/bin/veracrypt --dismount --force
( Edit: that auto dismount created instability in the Ubuntu OS, so I had to disable it )
Synergy
Very painful to get working unless your linux box is your "server". The biggest pain point is that the synergy software does not start before login, and cannot run when attempting to logout.
For now I have installed Synergy 3 beta, and have a bug ticket in to the team.
In order to get Synergy to run at login you have to switch to wayland as instructed in their setup documentation. This is done on the login screen the icon in the lower right corner. However, there's one other piece that has to be done for those who have authentication enabled.
modify this file
sudo nano /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
navigate to #WaylandEnable=false and remove the # to uncomment the line.
Signal - works beautifully
0AD - works beautifully
Open Office - works beautifully, fortunately I was already leaving Microsoft Office behind in favor of Open Office / Libre Office. While they are not as nice as Microsoft Office, they are good enough for what I do.
ProtonVPN - works beautifully, although it was a manual command line install based on the directions on proton's website. That said, the windows app is far more polished and has better and clearer configuration features.
ProtonVPN does not yet have the ability to auto start on Linux. So I added the app to the list of applications to auto start, and for now i'll just manually click the connect button. The auto connect feature is a bit unintuitive and requires you to type in the name of the connection you wish to auto start; in my case I typed in "Fastest" as suggested by their support team and it worked perfectly.
Desktop Customizations
I did have to customize things a little to get rid of somethings that were annoying me.
Minimize windows on taskbar icon click
https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/07/enable-minimize-click-ubuntu-dock
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock click-action 'minimize'
Disable snapping the mouse to the edge of the screen when moving between monitors
https://askubuntu.com/questions/462629/how-to-disable-sticky-edges-in-ubuntu-14-04-ubuntu-13-10-and-earlier-had-a-opti
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager
open ccsm from terminal
Go to Snapping Window Managment > Snapping Windows > Behavior > Snap Type and uncheck Edge resistance and Edge attraction
Install a decent screenshot tool that allows for easy partial screen screenshots to be taken.
sudo apt-get install flameshot
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