DonTheDeveloper Podcast
DonTheDeveloper Podcast
I Switched to Linux Desktop (Live Streaming, Coding, Gaming)
I switched to Linux Desktop from Mac/Windows. I use it as a daily driver now. Here are the reasons why I finally made the switch. I shared a lot of the software I use for ALL of my needs. If you're a live streamer, developer, or gamer, and you're considering switching, hopefully this video will help with your decision to switch or not.
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So I've officially switched to Linux. I do a lot of dev stuff and I record videos and mentor junior developers and play video games, and I have been split between Mac and Windows for a long time. I've had Windows for my streaming PC and then I could play some Windows games and then Mac was for all my dev stuff and productivity, for my business, and for some reason I just never made the switch to Linux. But, believe it or not, pewdiepie convinced me to switch to Linux. I can't believe I'm saying that, but it's true. And to see someone who I think is pretty tech savvy but not a developer, gets so excited about Linux, it kind of just piqued my interest. Like maybe, just maybe, I could try to make it work with everything that I want to do, because I am tired of being split between two computers and officially I am using Linux for everything, everything I do running my business. I am using Linux for everything. Everything I do running my business just primarily focus on mentoring junior developers and a course and live streaming and doing dev stuff and playing games and anything I want to do I'm literally doing on Linux right now. So I kind of just want to go through essentially all the tools that I use and for the most part, I didn't really have to find a lot of alternatives, and so I'm just going to jump into it Now. You're going to see everything that I use working. But please understand that it took weeks to get a lot of this working just right. But once I got it set, I've been really happy with it.
Don Hansen:But let's go ahead and switch over. So I have my computer over here, or not my computer. I have my main screen over here with bars. I can open up any apps. I can control which monitors the apps are going to open to by default, which is really useful for streaming, so you don't leak anything but um, I'll kind of talk about my streaming software. I use obs and I use atem for multi-streaming really cool obs extension where you can where I just streamed to youtube and twitch, and if you want to add things, it can even have like vertical screens that you could stream as well to whatever source that you want. But you could set up a lot of customization with it and it's free, really useful tool. I highly recommend it if you don't like the horrible product that Restream is. But I would highly recommend you check out Atom and I have an extension for Stream, labs, alerts for follows, subs, anything like that Really useful. So that's all I need and what I do is I just open up individual chats on my other screen for YouTube and Twitch. I could probably use a tool to aggregate the chats, but I don't need that. I'm okay with that. So I have my OBS to record. I also have a GoXLR utility which actually works perfectly with my GoXLR. That was a big concern I had Transferring over. Goxlr doesn't have a native app for Linux and this is kind of just. It's just a web-based tool. I click it once and it automatically syncs with GoXLR and it loads my profile and I can change anything that I want. It looks and feels the exact same as the Windows GoXLR app and then I use. What do I use? I use Pulse Audio volume control for a bit of audio routing and then I use steam controller to be able to manage my stream deck. Really convenient, and it actually I realized the cool thing about linux is um, there's a lot of customization you could do, but when I was on Windows and Mac, I just did not care to customize anything.
Don Hansen:I don't know what it was about or I don't know why I didn't care about those environments. I didn't really care to customize even my editor. I code and I use it every single day and I didn't even care to customize it at all. And there's just something about setting all of this up on Linux that made customization with tech exciting again. I feel like it was so easy to get comfortable with Windows and Mac because the GUIs are always really user-friendly and there's no reason to customize it. So you don't really, I guess I didn't feel like a desire to go out of bounds from the defaults that they presented, and now I do. And that's one really cool thing about Linux is I just constantly just want to see what else I can do with it. It's just a feeling that I feel like I haven't had in a very long time. And I've been in tech even, like when I was really, really young and I had a compact computer and I think I had compu surf for my internet, I just started trying to build little things and dive deeper into what my computer could do and try to break it and create things that could break other computers. We're not going to get into that, but like it was just fun, I kept tinkering and tinkering and tinkering and I have not had tinkering and I have not had that feeling in a long time, and I think that's really cool about Linux.
Don Hansen:Now, if you are streaming with a GoXLR, if you have a wireless headset, the audio routing can be a little bit difficult to set up, and so what I've done is I essentially have an audio jack going into the headphones jack of my GoXLR and then I have a grounding thing that reduces a lot of the static noise and then I have a Bluetooth transmitter that then sends a Bluetooth signal to my headset. That was the easiest way I could set up the audio setup for streaming and that's pretty much my setup. I think the audio setup was one of the more complicated things to set up for streaming specifically, but, like, if you're just trying to set up basic audio for Linux, it pretty much works out of the box. Like Bluetooth was working really well. I just overcomplicated it with streaming. So the audio stuff is actually really simple if you're not streaming. But I set up all my dev stuff.
Don Hansen:You know I have Pop OS. I guess I probably should have mentioned that earlier. I use Pop OS. I'm starting with that. Maybe I'll switch down the road. I don't care about Arc Linux, I just don't care. I just want to be on Linux. I will maybe explore other distributions down the road. I am chilling with Pop OS. It's really good for DevStuff A lot of packages set up already. But yeah, devstuff just works so naturally on Linux and it probably took me maybe a couple hours to kind of set up a lot of what I needed to for my projects and I started exploring.
Don Hansen:What did I start exploring? Pg Admin. I think I used Postico, I think it was called a Mac before. But I'm just trying. It's kind of fun to just explore different software on a different OS for your dev tools, and so I'm trying to branch out of what I'm comfortable with, but Postman still I don't think I'm going to switch from Postman really useful for simulating a lot of requests, but a lot of the dev stuff it just transferred over pretty easily and I actually decided to switch from Notion to Obsidian.
Don Hansen:I feel like again, this is my fault, but I feel like Mac and Windows makes it so comfortable to just integrate into their system and forget that your data is worth something to them, to forget about your privacy. Like I've always had a password manager, I've always used a VPN and as a streamer. There are other steps that you should take to really secure your privacy, because it's easier for people to look up you and your address much easier than you think it is. But you know, I kind of cared about privacy, but not really and I'm really starting to lean on going for kind of localized apps that aren't connecting to some centralized source, using software that respects my privacy, that respects my willingness, or wanting to customize my local experience without them trying to brick it, like Nintendo Switch. You know that's an exaggeration, but I feel like I'm just getting a feeling of wanting to really isolate or protect and guard my data. Like I've had my social security leaked, I've had a bunch of stuff leaked and I feel like I've never had a system to be able to identify where those leaks are happening. And just switching to Linux and listening to other people that love Linux, I feel like I'm finally starting to adapt a little bit more of a privacy-oriented mindset that I have always wanted. That I didn't really know that I want, but it was just. Everything was so convenient, right. And now that I'm past the point of convenience and I'm willing to set all this up like it's just I don't know. It just feels like a game. It feels like how much can I really customize my experience? How much can I really protect myself? And the rabbit hole is so deep with this and it's fun to keep learning and learning and learning, and that's what Linux has done for me.
Don Hansen:Now I I installed Overwatch. I don't play a lot of games. If I play games it's usually on my Xbox, but I do play Overwatch once in a while and I love World of Warcraft. I hate retail, but I like classic and Overwatch was really easy to install with Steam and Proton. So if you like Steam games, it works really well. I tried a bunch of Steam games that were Windows-based and running them with Proton was just simple. It was just simple, it just worked and I was afraid of that that I couldn't play any games Like on Mac. It's way harder to play Windows games. I usually would use the Steam feature to tunnel into Windows Steam and there would be a ton of lag with it. It just works on Linux with Steam and with Steam really trying to push out their Steam Deck running on Linux, a lot of games are. I feel like a lot of game creators are becoming way more aware of the need to be able to build something that works on Linux as well. But with Proton I'm playing all my Windows games, so if you're a Steam fan, I wouldn't worry about that.
Don Hansen:Now I tried installing World of Warcraft and here is where things went sour. I used so many different so I think I used I'll point to it I've used Lutrix, that's what it's called. I've tried bottles. I could not get bottles to work, but I tried Lutrix. I could not get Lutrix to work, but I tried to Lutrix. I could not get Lutrix to work, but there's extra software to be able to install new runners and you could basically I'm going to mislabel things, but I think what you would call them is like like the runner In Lootrix, it's called a runner and one. You could choose the runner to be able to run it the game off of a different runner, which hopefully is patched for that game, and I kept exploring different runners and I had a really crappy selection. To begin with I had installed extra software to be able to set up runners for bottles. I tried it with bottles and I tried it with Lootrix. But there's extra software that allows you to get like up-to-date runners that will have a lot of like really up-to-date in the latest patches for updates of your games to make them work.
Don Hansen:Sometimes you have to experiment, is what I'm saying. That's essentially what you're going to encounter when you're trying to play like every possible game that you can that used to play on Windows. Now, if you have something that's like kernel level anti cheat, I think you're going to have a really rough time. I have not tried to install GTA five or anything like that and play that that, but those are really the main games where you probably just want maybe like toss windows on a separate extra hard drive that you have, or dual boot or something like that my motherboard.
Don Hansen:I spent like a day on this and realized that my motherboard doesn't allow dual booting very easily. So I spent a lot of time debugging that and my motherboard has kind of just a security feature that does not allow it. I've tweaked a lot of different settings. I at the very least had a disable safe boot, but my motherboard just does not allow me to dual boot easily. So I will just press press 11 and I'll load Windows or Linux by default. I just let it load Linux and I'm using it as my daily driver right now, so it just works. If I want to load Windows and play a specific game on there that I can't play on Linux which hasn't happened yet I could just do that. But if you're trying to set up like a dual boot situation, look at your motherboard, see if there are going to be any blockers with it.
Don Hansen:Um, but, as you can see, I have, like, all my software and you saw, uh, you know per from scrimba. I'm creating a course for scrimba right now. Um, I have slack for people that want to use Slack. My Discord works just fine. I have my VPN. Like I just have all the software that I used to have and everything just works. And most of the setup time came from dealing with the dual boot issue and figuring that out, trying to set up World of Warcraft, which I finally did do, by the way, it just took a very long time. And then the audio routing was actually a lot simpler than I thought it would be. I just had to do the Bluetooth transmitter and that solved everything. It made everything way easier.
Don Hansen:Now I am officially using Linux for my daily driver. I think in the next couple of weeks I am. I'll go ahead and switch it at this point. There we go. So in the next couple weeks I think I'm just going to delete windows and I'm going to do a fresh installation on a separate hard drive. I want to use it, I can. I saved all my obs settings on linux, so if I need to transfer that over, I will. But I I just am going to be using linux for the foresee future.
Don Hansen:I see no reason to go back to Mac. I see no reason to go back to Microsoft. I don't like either of those companies. I mean, like, can you be honest, do you really love either of those companies? You don't love those companies. You like the software that they build. You like how easy it is to just use it. You like the user experience of it. And, by the way, you're seeing a little bit of a lag with my camera. That is just. It's on 30 frames per second. It's just a really crappy camera. I need to upgrade my camera. So that has nothing to do with Linux whatsoever, by the way.
Don Hansen:But you don't care about Microsoft. You don't care about Apple. You probably don't like them using your data. You probably haven't looked at how that can potentially affect you, how ads can manipulate you how it could literally kind of like subconsciously control your actions and how a lot of content is distributed towards you. People don't think about this stuff like Like a lot of your bad habits, a lot of your well-being, your mental health, or even just like. Have you ever just noticed that sometimes your mood just starts shifting during the day and you don't realize, like what's causing it? And it's hard to identify that sometimes. But you would be surprised by even just how subconsciously influenced by the videos delivered to you through youtube, based off of the data that has been provided to google because you so conveniently use it all the time, even just seeing thumbnails can affect your mood. Even just seeing, like videos suggested to you, especially news News is a big one A lot of controversial stuff that gets a lot of clicks and engagement push in front of you. That doesn't make you happy to see. Like being able to control every piece of content delivered to you, which is why I also switched to Brave but controlling what inputs you get is huge for your mental health. It really is. I would highly suggest to just go down the rabbit hole of figuring out how your data is used to manipulate you, and you could choose other words. If you feel like that's a conspiracy theory, I don't care. But at a subconscious level, we are being influenced for the worse every single day, single day, and once you start taking control of that and that usually starts with education then you can start taking steps to be able to control those inputs and be able to influence your moods, be able to influence your actions and your habits, to control your life. Maybe this doesn't and maybe this sounds ridiculous to you, but I'm telling you like a lot of your data is used to manipulate you in a way that is not in your best interest, and I think more people should take that seriously.
Don Hansen:Now, for me, it took PewDiePie talking about Linux to get me to even start thinking about this again. Right, to get past the conveniences that I built up for myself, I highly recommend that you try a dual boot and just try Linux. Like go with is it Mint, linux or Linux Mint? I think it's Linux Mint. Start with that first. It seems to be like that very popular transition over from windows into linux to just get you comfortable with it. I don't think jumping into arc linux is the way to go for most people I like. I think if you don't have a wife or girlfriend and never want to have one, you could try that first. Fine, you probably have more time to do that. But if you're just a normal person or even just a developer, right, we're a developer channel, so I bet a lot of developers are going to be listening to this. Even if you're just a developer, try Pop OS.
Don Hansen:I did quite a bit of research and I find that Pop OS kind of has a lot of stuff pre-installed and you could choose any distribution you want really. But Pop OS is a lot installed. That just made it convenient to just get started. And the Pop OS store is really convenient. A lot of my apps that I need are in the Pop OS store and so I think it just uses Flatpak by default to install a lot of that software. But you could choose any distribution and install the right packages. You can use a minimal distribution, install all the packages that you want to customize your experience without Microsoft and Apple having that control. It's really convenient.
Don Hansen:But I would suggest trying to, if you're going to dive into Linux dual boot, but use it as a daily driver and spend a couple weeks two to three weeks to get past that rough period, cause you're going to have a bit of a rough period. If you do like complicated stuff like you are a content creator, you are live streaming or you do want to play all of your windows games on Linux, um, if you want to basically do everything you did on the other your PC or your Mac on Linux, expect a setup. Give yourself two to three weeks to try it out and force yourself to make it a daily driver, I think you might be pleasantly surprised. I think most people are not going to go through a setup like I did. I think it's going to be really simple Start with Linux Mint and see if it works out for you and then, at the end of two to three weeks, if you really don't like it, maybe you chose the wrong distribution.
Don Hansen:I chose Pop OS because I like the what do they call it? The new cosmic desktop. I like the feel of using Pop OS, try a different distribution but then go back to Windows. You're going to lose literally nothing by trying Linux for two to three weeks. You are going to become more tech savvy with it and, if you are kind of looking for that curiosity in tech, if you are looking for fun again to customize your experience and to build and be forced to learn, because as devs, I think sometimes we can also get comfortable with our tools, especially in a professional environment. We can get very comfortable with our tools. And so if you are looking to just get excited again, like maybe Linux will bring that out in you, because I don't know about you, but I've gotten burned out in tech because I wasn't learning new things. I wasn't getting excited about learning new things and Linux sparked that curiosity for me. Maybe it'll do the same thing for you.