About 2 months ago I got really annoyed with the performance of my laptop when working. Usually I work on my desktop which performs great, but this time I was away for 2 weeks and had the laptop with me.

My work requires me to have a lot of browser tabs open, sometimes one or more of those tabs have Figma files, and from time to time there is also VSCode open that will compile stuff for me. It got so laggy when switching between apps/windows that I started counting to 10 in my mind, to keep my sanity.

Every Windows 11 update feels like it chips away performance from my laptop.

My experience with Linux is limited to the terminal, running scripts in there, setting up config files, turning on/off services, etc. No GUI. I interact with Linux every day, almost every day, since a lot of the projects I work on are on VPS that use Ubuntu or Debian.

I also have a homelab where I test different things and try to learn more.

No reason to hide. I had a preconception about Linux distro GUI: that it is not as good as Windows and I’m going to miss something that I was used to for years. That it might suck as UX. This comes from the guy that never tested any Linux distro on his PC in the past 15 years.

But I was so pissed that a laptop with a decent CPU and 16 GB of memory is moving like crap, that I started to do a little research on potential Linux distributions that I can test. It didn’t take me long to be sold on Linux Mint.

I installed Linux Mint 22.1 with Cinnamon as the desktop environment.

I really wanted to give it a chance and I forced myself to work on the laptop exclusively. I paired it with one of my monitors and I was ready to fix any issue that might come my way in order to have the device work properly.

Only that it just… worked. Sounds stupid saying it, but I didn’t have any issues getting it up and running in the first few hours.

I got VSCode loaded with my gist settings, Postman, Firefox, Filezilla, Slack, Tidal, LocalWP, AnyDesk, all up and running smoothly.

No crazy customizations, no ricing. I just installed it and ran it as it is. I didn’t want to invest any time and effort into it until I’m convinced it’s worth it. The only changes that I made was the desktop background that loops through the images that I use on my other PC and the bottom bar to center the apps.

Linux Mint Motorhead desktop background.

I liked it so much that after 2 months I become a sponsor to Linux Mint.

At this point I still have the dual-boot with Windows 11. The main reasons I still keep it like that:

  • I didn’t bother yet to set OneDrive on Linux Mint
  • CaptureOne, that I use for photo editing, doesn’t have a Linux version. I didn’t get around to learn how to use Darktable.

Here are some key points after these 2 months:

  • It was very easy to install it
  • Everything works right out of the box. Wi-Fi, bluetooth, camera, brightness, keyboard brightness, function keys, sound drivers.
  • User friendly for someone coming from Windows
  • It has a Software Manager that allows you to search for apps to install making it easier to deal with this part if you’re not familiar with how things work on Linux.
  • The sound control is perfect. My laptop has a 3.5 output that is for both in and out. On Windows when I plugged my IE200 I wasn’t able to set it to use the mics from the laptop (those around the camera). Unless I removed the IEMs that didn’t have a mic, it would not work. On Linux Mint I didn’t have that problem, I was able to set the sound input as I pleased.
  • Another thing related to sound devices: all apps use the settings that I set on my device. No more Slack remembering some settings, Google Meet trying to use another mic, etc.
  • I started using multiple workspaces now. Somehow it feels more natural compared to using them on Windows. Helps keeping the work related items in one place and all the distraction (Tidal, WhatsApp, etc), on a second workspace.
  • Better memory management. Now that I use 2 virtual workspaces almost all the time and have tons of tabs open in Firefox, it’s still snappy and I do have memory left unused.
  • No issues with multiple displays. It remembers other display settings. The tiling manager is pretty good as well.
  • There are some compromises when it comes to specific apps. Teams and WhatsApp are PWAs. I replaced Outlook with Thunderbird.
  • I saw an improvement in battery life. Keep in mind that the laptop is 5 years old at the moment of writing this article. With Linux Mint I can get up to 4-5 hours of light work until reaching 15%. But I do mean light work, if I push it with video calls and other heavy loads it will probably be 2-2.5 hours.

All Linux distributions can be put on Live USB and boot them directly from the USB to try them out. No need to mess with your partitions. Give them a try!

Distributions that looks familiar coming from Windows:

  • Linux Mint
  • CachyOs
  • ZorinOS

Full Linux experience:

  • Debian
  • Ubuntu
  • Fedora

TL;DR How’s life with Linux Mint? It's a peaceful life using Linux Mint.

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