My Setup
Currently, I am using a Lenovo Ideapad 330. It’s a modest laptop which is powered by Intel i5-8250U & Radeon 530. The system runs on 8 gigs of RAM & 2TB HDD. On Display front, it has 1366×768 (720p) LCD Display.
In future Posts, I will do most of the testing and reviewing on this machine unless stated otherwise.
On the Software front, I have set it up for dual boot. The OS in dual Boot are:
- KDE Neon – It’s configured to use xanmod linux ltsc kernel & uses x11 session.
- Windows 10 LTSC – 21H2
On Filesystem part, Windows 10 uses NTFS while KDE Neon uses XFS for home partition & ext4 on boot & root. A 8 Gig swap space is present on Windows whilst a 16 GiB swap partition is present in KDE Neon.
On Browser front, I use Firefox as my daily driver on both Linux & Windows. I have installed a bunch of addons like uBlock Origin, Dark Reader & etc on it. For secondary browser, I use Vivaldi on Linux and Chrome on Windows.
Now, For Some Questions that may come up in your mind.
Q.1) Why Windows?
Ans. For starters, despite being 2x-3x size after installation, my Windows 10 boots way faster than my KDE Neon installation. Next, I have Qualcomm Atheros WiFi Adapter, and for some weird reasons, I get very low signal on Linux compared to Windows. I tried some known workarounds for this issue but sadly they didn’t work.
Last, some core apps like Adobe Acrobat PDF for Editing PDFs, MS Office & etc are essential for my uni & other purpose. Otherwise I would end up making some files in LibreOffice that looks way to different on my professor’s machine.
Q.2) Okay. Cool. BTW, What is Windows 10 LTSC?
Ans. Windows 10 LTSC is Long Term Service Channel of Windows 10. It’s rock solid version of Win10 which gets feature updates every 3 years and has security patches for 5 years(?).
Most significant feature is that it’s already bloatware free. There is no MS Store, Cortana & UWP Apps like Groove Music, Alarms, Clock & etc. his is by default so no usage of scripts & etc to remove them which might corrupt the OS & other issues. Plus, it has less telemetry which can also be turned off resulting in better privacy overall than your standard W10/W11 Installation. This results in a lower memory footprint too.
LTSC system thus enjoy more stability & smoothness as they don’t get feature updates every year.
Q.3) Why KDE Neon/Ubuntu based Distro? Arch is better & etc.
Ans. Well, I used to use Arch on my previous machine & I really like it. But I didn’t go to arch way on this machine as I was afraid of tripping over something whilst installing loose access to my data. Major reason for Ubuntu LTSC based KDE Neon was for stability whilst getting latest KDE packages. I recommend KDE to beginners in GNU/Linux as it most complete DE while providing Windows like UI for new users. Additionally, it’s also fun to experiment as it has so many options to tweak it. I even read latest Nate’s post on his This Week on KDE series, so I’m always pumped to get the latest packages asap and try it out.
Q.4) Why XFS?
Ans. No reason in particular. I could have chosen BTRFS/ZFS but I felt XFS is better after looking at synthetic benchmarks. I really liked the features of snapshots and CoW & etc of BTRFS. Maybe down the line, I will change distro & then may try out above two. Encase of ext4 on root because its much battle tested ensuring the system will always be up.
Q.5) Why not Wayland Session?
Ans. Well, I still think that Wayland needs a lot more work as of now. I will probably switch to Wayland by end of 2023, if I find it desirable enough then.
