Another Dip In To Linux... Could It Be For Good?

I have had an on-off relationship with Linux over the years, dipping my toe in to various distros and then back to my Mac and macOS. In 2018 I even gave Linux a good run for six weeks (leaving my Mac aside), but eventually I caved and went back to macOS.

My distro of choice is LinuxMint, a superb sleak, cleaning looking version of Linux that is gorgeous to look at and easy to use - as well as being superb stable.

I have used a Mac for over 20 years and once a hardcore Apple fan, but over the past few years I have become a user rather than a fan and even ditched iOS a few years back.

With the announcement of BigSur - the forthcoming new release of macOS - and the fact that my beloved MacBook Air wont be receiving it, it has started to put the nail in my Macs coffin. While it will be good for a while just yet, it does make me wonder what my next computer will be.

It certainly won’t be a Windows machine as I detest Windows. A ChromeBook doesn’t fit my needs and I cannot justify spending a fortune on another Mac. So I have two choices, I stick with my current 8 year old Mac or I start seriously looking in to my interest in Linux.

I installed LinuxMint 20 ‘Cinnamon’ in a VM on my Mac this evening and instantly I felt at home. I remembered why I loved LinuxMint so much. It feels like a Mac/Windows hybrid in terms of look. Start menu and task bars being reminiscent of Windows, but with the window handling of macOS.

The thing that has stopped me moving away from my Mac to Linux is software. While software has come a long way and I do use a lot of free, open source, cross platform packages which are easily found on Linux, there are some mainstream packages which I have struggled to find good alternative for.

Being a Mac user you fall in to the habit of adopting Apple ways and I have used iTunes for music management - such as MP3 converting, album organising and ID3 tag editing. This is something I would have to switch from.

Other than that it is pure habit that has kept with macOS. After so long, I know it inside out and what to do if - on the rare occasion - it goes wrong. While I am fairly up to speed with Linux it is still a little daunting delving in to the nix world and if a problem was to arise I would be out of my comfort zone - and I don’t like that.

But with my MacBook Airs life running out, this could be the push I need to further develop my Linux skills and perhaps start a new chapter in my computing life.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

A Month With Linux Mint… On A 2012 MacBook Air

This is a follow up article to my ‘7 Days With Mint’. A month in and I am still running Linux Mint 17.3 ‘Cinnamon’ on my MacBook Air 2012. It is dual booted with macOS Sierra, but in a month I haven’t used macOS.

I had a few teething troubles which seemed specific to Apple hardware, some of which I have ironed out.

The heat issue seemed to calm down shortly after writing the previous article. I am not sure if it was settling in or drive indexing but I now have a quiet cool MacBook Air again.

The poor battery life has been improved, by installing PowerTop and turning everything labelled ‘bad’ to ‘good’. Battery is still not as good as under macOS, but it has drastically improved.

I discovered a problem watching online videos - from various sites - with the video flickering constantly. This was resolved by installing the Intel video drivers, which were in the Driver Manager tool rather than the default ones.

Two issues I still haven’t resolved and may never is the very sensitive mouse tap, which still causes me to accidentally send my mouse pointer to places I don’t want and it still doesn’t always wake from sleep with I lift of the lid, although this has also improved since tweaking PowerTop.

I am getting used to the feel of Mint, slowly the new keyboard shortcuts are becoming more natural rather than having to think for a second before remembering I am not in macOS. The same with general navigation, I now look to the bottom right automatically for the clock rather than top right.

I have ventured a little further in to apps, slowly installing items that I would use everyday in macOS. I have installed software so I can edit the websites I maintain (gedit, gFTP and GIMP) which I managed to do and upload successfully.

I need to dig deeper into tools for music management and video conversion for me to feel totally happy.

I am pleased how the journey is going. Day by day I am learning more and feeling more comfortable, but there is still so much to learn - especially if something goes wrong.

However it has certainly opened my eyes to the possibility of leaving the Apple world behind and when it comes to the end of life for my MacBook Air, it would be a non-Apple laptop I look for next.

Written by Simon Royal. Follow me at twitter.com/simonroyal

How to add Gmusicbrowser to the Media Menu in Cinnamon/Gnome desktops

My favourite music player for a long time has been Gmusicbrowser as it's lightweight and can handle extremely large music collections with ease, taking only a short time to scan my 50,000+ track collection. However for awhile now, it's tray icon never shows in Cinnamon or Gnome desktops, which has it's own Media Menu with playback buttons and volume controls. Without a fix it usually just shows only 'Gmusicbrowser' clickable that just opens the player, and no controls. I found a work around sometime back that I just rediscovered after a reinstall of Mint 17 Cinnamon on my main desktop.

Essentially you need to use your favourite text editor to add 'cinnamon' to the list of players in  /usr/share/cinnamon/applets/sound@cinnamon.org/applet.js in the "compatible_players variable" section, save the file, then restart Cinnamon (Ctrl+F2 then enter a single letter 'r' and press enter) or just logout and log in. Now start Gmusicbrowser and it should now have a proper entry in the Media Menu with playback controls and we're done. I've also rediscovered Gmusicbrowser's built in desktop widgets.