Hasty Treat - Scott Goes Linux with Pop OS

Welcome to Syntax.

In this Monday, hasty treat. We're gonna be talking about Linux. Now I recently have acquired a Linux laptop as a code machine, and we're gonna be giving you a rundown of what it is, why I did it, and a little bit of information about some of the pros and cons of running Linux in these types of environments.

Now my name is Scott Talinski. I'm a developer from Denver, Colorado. And with me JS always is the Wes Bos. How you doing? I'm doing pretty good. How about you? Doing good. This episode is sponsored by Log Rocket. Now Log Rocket is the place where you can see your errors happen and watch in horror as your entire website gets flipped upside down, and you can actually figure out how to solve them because Log Rocket gives you a session replay, which is a scrubbable video that includes an error log, a network requests tab. It gives you your Redux store, and it works with just about every single platform you could possibly imagine. It's very cool and one of those things you're gonna want to see to believe. So head over to logrocket.comforward/syntax, and you will get 14 days for free. So thank you to LogRocket for sponsoring.

So let's get into it. What's up with the Linux? What's up with my laptop? Why did I get it? What is going on here? If you've been listening to the show for any given amount of time, you all have known my laptop seems to have a lot of issues. I've had a MacBook Pro 15 inch before this. You have had some bad luck. Bad luck. For instance, when I took it into the Apple Store, the Apple tech who JS, like, after it gotten shipped off, it broke my screen, apparently.

And then in an attempt to hide their Volley, just like put my computer on a shelf somewhere or something. Like, seriously, that's actually what happened. And, because of that, they had my laptop for, like, two and a half, 3 weeks, which eventually, led to me getting a couple of pairs of AirPods for free because Apple felt very bad about it, so they they hooked us up. And then when I finally got my computer back, there was, like, another issue. I took my computer in. I mentioned that I was apprehensive about shipping it off because of what happened last time.

Listen. Don't worry. Everything's gonna be fine. I get my computer back, and then, like, Vercel panics immediately only to find out they they installed the wrong logic board onto my machine. Node way. At that point, I said because they they were just like, okay. We'll we'll ship out again. I said, no. Give me a new computer. They they gave me a new computer, which was nice because there was a a newer Node, but I eventually I upgraded to the 16 inch and, gave that 15 inch to my dad. So I have 16 inch, and from day 1, it had light leak coming in from the bottom left. The left speaker was buzzing from day 1, and then, eventually, my keyboard stopped working. So at that point, I was like, okay. Well, you know, I'll I'll I'll get it shipped back, and I'll get those things taken care of. Yeah. Luckily, this time, they took care of it in 3 days. It was very nice. I got my computer back in 3 days. So I was just thinking, you know what? Maybe I'm a little too hard on my computers. Like, I'm taking this thing everywhere. People see it precariously placed on a piece of exercise machine in my gym or something.

I make people really nervous. So, you know, I I don't know if there's, like, sand or dust got under the keyboard or something. You know, that happens because we're we're kind of in, like, our pavers create a lot of dust. I Node a lot of dust in on the computer when I'm outside. So who knows? Maybe I'm just taking this thing, and I'm being a little too rough on it. But I you know, at the end of the day, it should be able to handle it. So I just decided, you know, I can't I can't have my entire business be on this machine and then not be able to take it places or or do things on it or code. Right? Yeah. I like to code in all sorts of places. Like, I was coding on the floor, and my dad was just like, why is your computer on the floor? You have kids.

I was just like, well, I'm I'm sitting on the floor and coding. Like, what am I supposed to do here? So I've decided that this expensive computer needs to stay on the desk, and I have purchased a System 70 6 laptop after numerous recommendations from people I trust about System 70 6. If you have never heard of them, they're a company out of Denver, Colorado, so that made me feel good to be able to purchase something locally. They make a lot of really interesting machines. Now I don't believe they design or create the shell of the laptop themselves, but they do assemble it. They do, you know, do a lot of really interesting things with their computer, including having your own OS, which is a version of Ubuntu called Pop!OS.

So I'm running Pop!OS 20.04, and I purchased the Lemur Pro, which is an ultra portable.

So it's a bit smaller. It's a 14 inch screen, and it weighs just about nothing. Like, it's MacBook Air territory, but maybe even lighter because it's the materials are not as heavy overall. Is it like plastic or or what? Like a a polycarbonate? Yeah. I don't know if it is a plastic because it feels parts of it do feel like metal. Let me see. It says it's at £2.2, so it weighs just about nothing.

I don't know what exactly what it's made out of, but it does feel not like plastic. It doesn't feel cheap plastic. It feels definitely like a harder. It's probably like a really sturdy polycarbonate.

Yeah. Probably something like that. I should I should definitely look that up. So this thing is is pretty neat. One of the cool things is that the screen actually folds all the way down instead of stopping in a whatever angle that Apple determines that you would like to have it at because, you know, I like to have the hinge at a 180 degrees sometimes, and it actually has been very nice to be able to have that hinge. I miss that feature when I open up my MacBook Pro.

That seems really cool. It is. Like I said, it's a 14 inch. The screen is matte, which is nice for coding outside. It has HDMI, USB 3, USB c, another USB 3 port, micro Wes card or the headphone. It has all the ports that Apple doesn't wanna give you. And for the most part How much was this thing? After I loaded it up, it was probably, like, just about under $2. It could have been like, base specs, it's, like, starts at, like, $900 maybe. Okay. It starts pretty cheap. You know, I'm using this as my Node code machine. You know, it wasn't gonna be like a backup computer. It's not just gonna sit on the shelf. In fact, I I I've been primarily coding on this thing for a little bit now. I wanted to get used to it. I wanna, you know, get the feel for it. So I've definitely been been working full time on it. I think I upgraded the CPU, so it's got a 4.9 gigahertz I seven processor with 8, you know, 4 cores.

I only went 16 gigs of RAM, which might have been a bad decision, but unlike an Apple computer, you could actually upgrade the RAM yourself, which is a nice thing. Beautiful.

Yeah. I got a faster right hard drive on it, so I definitely upped it a little bit to get some of the higher up specs, and I also purchased the 3 year warranty. So it could have been it could have been much cheaper than I made it. But you know what? It's a code machine. I'm gonna be working hard on it, so it's definitely worth it for me to have something like this. Yeah. If we know anything about

laptops, you probably will have 6 of these things by the time that 3 year warranty is up. And it's crazy because it's not like I I'm not doing anything

explicitly hard on the computer. Like, I'm not I'm not tossing it around. I'm I'm very kind to my hardware, but I do take it places. You know, I it moves around with me, and I move around a lot. So in that respect, I Wes, it does get jostled and whatever if I'm working at a coffee shop or something like that, but I'm not I'm not explicit. I'm not I'm not spilling on it. I'm not dropping it. I'm not doing those kind of things, so who Node? Did you look at just buying, like, a really high end Dell laptop and throwing Linux on that, or did you did you hear such nice things about these System 70 6 ones that you just went for that? I heard a lot of nice things, and, again, it's local. I have some people that I trust a lot who've just been saying really nice things that they're just like a boutique smaller shop. You know, they they really put a lot of effort into it. And not only that, but they're, like, distro with Pop!OS is a little bit more geared towards my sensibilities. Now granted, obviously, you can put a distro on any Dell laptop, but, no, I I just wanted to support this company. I thought they're really they do really nice stuff, and for the most part, these computers are are really nicely made. So, yeah, I've I've just heard nothing but good things. And they they do a lot of they have a whole bunch of different computers for different sensibilities. So I picked the smallest, cheapest one and, went from there.

So Linux, Pop!OS. Now Pop!OS is is Ubuntu based distribution. I'd to be honest, I've been watching all sorts of videos on YouTube about Linux distributions because people, like, you know, talk about the distros and what what is this Bos you Node, and I I don't really know that much. I've ran Mint before, which is another Ubuntu based one that's also a little bit nicer. I like this Pop!OS, specifically. You have the option to get it was just straight up Ubuntu because it gives you a bunch of sensible defaults that make the Linux life a little bit easier. It's funny because sometimes people talk about, like, oh, yeah. You know, like, anybody could run Tolinski, but let me tell you. After having this thing for a couple weeks now, no. No. There's just so many things I have to do on the command line still that if I didn't know how to use the command line, like, I would be dead in the water with this machine. I'll tell you that right Node, specifically just because Linux is just not a polished experience the way that Mac OS JS, and Linux people might not agree with that, but it's missing a lot of things and and, you know, needing to run command ESLint. Man, JS technical as Courtney is. Man, if she had this computer, she'd be she'd be toast. I'll tell you that.

So Linux is still definitely not the same, but I was very happy to see them. Just about everything I use in my daily life, I could use on this thing. For instance, I run Figma, and Figma works perfect down here. In fact, what I did is I logged into Figma via the web, and then I saved it to the dock because I I have a Mac OS style dock on here. I saved it to the dock as a progressive web app, pop it open, and it feels and looks exactly like the desktop version of Figma on my MacBook Pro. So that's been really nice. It's amazing.

Same thing with Versus Node. Versus Code feels amazing on here. DaVinci Resolve for video editing.

Zoom, Brave, I use Brave, Firefox. That all all feels, like, exactly normal.

I, unfortunately, can't run ScreenFlow, which, if I'm being entirely honest, hardly runs on my MacBook Pro because it crashes every day. Like, seriously, that app crashes more than any other hard up time with, these apps. No. Okay. So, like, ScreenFlow is, like, the only app on my computer that crashes. And just about every single time I open it, it's like, we recovered your project. I'm like, okay. Thanks. And I don't know if it's because I'm recording, like, multiple video streams at once and and doing a little bit more intense stuff, but it like, we can do this experiment after the show, but I have a guaranteed method to make screen flip crash every time. If you have the time line running and while the time line is running, you click more than once along a different spot in the playhead, it will crash guaranteed every time. And I I promise you yours will too.

I definitely have my gripes about ScreenFlow. Like, if I have my 4 k video and a video coming off my webcam and then I'm trying to play that back at 2 x, it, like, gets out of sync. Oh, yeah. Gets out of sync. Yeah. Lags behind. And then if you're, like, 6 minutes in, it's, like, a full 3 or 4 seconds behind, which is really frustrating. I really hope someone makes something better than ScreenFlow. I know there's tons of other options out there. I've I've definitely looked at them. Deno Node to tell me what they are. Yeah. Right. Not terrible. Seem that, like, ScreenFlow, the company behind it, really cares all that much. It seems like they're they're more catering. If you look at a lot of their training material, it seems like they're more catering towards, like, newbies and, like, people who are making slideshows and things like that rather than actual screencasters.

Totally.

In fact, like, I wouldn't even run ScreenFlow, but it is probably the fastest video editing platform in terms of, like, alright. You record multiple streams. You can set up these actions to animate between states, and it it is very easy for doing something, like, really advanced stuff that would be definitely a pain in the butt in in DaVinci or something like that. But DaVinci is a better editing experience, but not necessarily as turnkey and as easy to edit fast.

So a lot of the apps I've been able to run, somebody asked me if I was bummed out about not being able to run Sketch, and the answer is, no. I don't care about memorizing the Sketch because I use Figma now and, big fan. That's the dream that it's built on web technologies so that you, like, that's that's a silly thing about Sketch JS that you can't even use it on Windows, let alone Linux. Right? Right. Yeah. Totally. And it's amazing that you can just you can use a lot of these apps cross platform, and the experience is still the same. What's crazy is that they haven't even I mean, it's however many years later, and they still haven't, like, budged on that. As far as I know, they haven't moved into, like, okay, well No. They're just like, Node. Now we're we're cool. No. I don't think they care. Yeah. Which is okay. You do you, but I think Framer and Figma Yarn going to eat their lunch. So, we'll we'll see where they're at in a couple years.

So how has Linux been really for me? Well, I'm missing a couple things. I'm missing trackpad gestures. Man, I love my big trackpad. I so much so that I have the magic trackpad. I love that big trackpad being able to do multi finger gestures and stuff. So I'm definitely missing that on Linux.

The trackpad is nice on this thing, and not to say that it isn't Node. The 2 finger scrolling, all that stuff works very well. I don't get any of the gestures that I have. Somebody linked me to a package that allows you to do that kind of stuff, but I I have a hard time believing it's going to be as good as the Mac iteration of it. In addition, you know, there there is some instability things with some weird UI stuff. Like, for instance, I went to open up the fonts panel, and the fonts panel just, like, wouldn't open up. And I was just like, okay. Well, I guess I'm not working with my fonts today. So, you know, at the end of the day, it's it's still not as a polished of experience. But coding wise, okay, I got up and running. I got my stuff installed. I I got my Versus Node going, and I did a little settings sync between Versus Code Mac and Versus Code Linux. And I tweak some of the keyboard shortcuts. And after some time to set it up, I could pop open 1 computer, pop open the other computer, go back and forth between Linux and Macs. Yes, Linux and Mac, and and just really, like and really feel comfortable even with the keyboard shortcuts and everything going from 1 to the other, and everything feels very nice. So in that aspect of things, coding wise, it's a fantastic machine, and I I've been really happy with it. Now the battery of this thing is killer too. I've gotten up to, like, 20 hours of battery and as few as, like, 8 hours, but it's really amazing to see that your battery's at 50% and click that little battery Scott, and it says, you still have 8 hours of battery. Oh. Oh, okay. Cool.

Have you tried running, like, node processes and seeing what the the battery is? Because, like, my Mac my MacBook will will run for, like, 7 days if I'm not actually doing any work. And then as soon as I spin up a a node process, it's the file watchers is what really drains it. Then I've I got, like, an hour, an hour and a half, pretty much almost nothing.

So, yes, I have, for the most part, found it to be much longer of a battery life Great. Running the same things, but I think it's just because of the system itself or the battery itself. I'm not exactly sure. But, no, I am I'm running I'm running a a Node process meteor on it right now. Same thing I run on my other one, and it worked. The battery is still really good.

So some really nice things about this well, okay. With command line experience, I've been able to get a dock that looks the exact same as the Mac dock. I've been able to Wes, essentially, Alfred, which is exactly Alfred, to navigate through my system. Same keyboard shortcut. So I have a dock. I have Alfred. I have my code, and I have my browsers. So between all of that, once your keyboard shortcuts are there, which, trust me, is a bit of an adjustment period. I hate using control for everything. So, also, like, Chrome doesn't let you change keyboard shortcuts for some reason. Like, come on.

Firefox has an extension. They'll let you do it. And I'm just sort of I'm gonna set up, like, a system wide one to make the alt key basically control on Linux because that way, it's in the same place as the command key and whatever. Yeah. That's been the biggest thing JS the keyboard shortcuts for me have not been a lot of fun to use. But for the most part, once things are set up with, like I said, the dock and Alfred and getting a feel for customizing things, having a nice little clipboard manager, It's all been very nice in terms of, like, having a shared experience between the 2. I know some people said that they just bought a a MacBook or a MacBook Air for the same purpose because they can't handle the context switching, and I get that. But, like, once everything's all set up, the context switching is pretty minimal. And, again, I'm only using this thing for for code, so I don't have to worry about too many of the other multimedia things on here.

What about, like, syncing your Versus Code plug ins and everything? That's something I've I've never looked into because I only have 1 machine. Yeah. Does Versus Code do that, or do you have something?

So Versus Code just launched. I don't know if it's in the normal version, but it's in the Nightlys. They launched a setting sync, and the setting sync is built into Versus Code now, and that works really well. But what I started using is a that doesn't sync extensions, which is, like, obviously, the one of the big things you'd want it to. Right? So I set up a extension package.

It's a ESLint JS a sync, which has 1,600,000 downloads. And what it does is that Oh, wow. You log in to GitHub, and it creates a, gist of your settings and your extensions. And then on the other machine, you just pull from that like, you just well, I mean, you just run a command palette thing to say, alright, sing my settings, and then it brings it all in. You can say, like, pull down or push up or whatever.

And so if I install a plug in on my Mac and I want it on my Linux, all I have to say is push up, then pull down, and it's all synced. So it it wasn't too bad. The only thing I don't wanna sync is keyboard shortcuts because the keys are different on this thing.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's that's the really frustrating thing is the keyboard switching. I find that, like, I was on Windows for a while, and I finally just switched them to be, like, what I'm I'm used to. Yeah. It's a silly thing, but if you have to stop and think about copy paste Oh, yeah. Every time Yeah. That's enough to make someone stop.

That was a big thing for me Wes being able to get the keyboard shortcuts to be the same. Once the keyboard shortcuts were the same, I started feeling way more comfortable on this thing. The only Node, like I said, that isn't the same JS Chrome, which is killing me that I have to use control the copy on Brave. But I guess it's, you know, Chromium based.

Like,

why can't you change the keyboard shortcuts on that app? Like, why not? Wait. Chrome has their own keyboard shortcuts. Like, it's not a system wide

thing. I think they use the system wide once, but, like, in every other app, like, in Versus Code, you can change copy and paste in Versus Code. Oh,

but you can't change it, like, at a OS level?

I think there's, like, a keyboard remapper that you can do here. And I have changed it at a OS level, but I think Chrome is, like, overriding it or something. I I don't know. I I I started to look into it, and somebody said, well, you have to use this keyboard remapper. Oh, okay. Scott use a keyboard remapper? Oh, okay. You know, I'm not excited about that, but that's just how it JS. I think there there are definitely some things, and it's it's not a polished as a polished of experience, but I think Pop!OS is the most polished version of Linux that I've used. There's this Pop!OS store, which is sort of like the Mac App Store where everything's free. You click to install things. It's a nicer experience than than most things. Like Versus Code, you install it through the pnpm store or whatever, and it just works. So it's very Node. You click a button, click install. It's not all done through the command line the way you have to do the app kit, whatever.

You know, I'm not a I'm not a command line newbie here. I'm great at the command line, and I think if if I wasn't, I would be dead in the water. I I can't say that enough. But for the most part, the laptop is nice. The, OS is nice, and I've had a great experience with it. So I'm a big fan. I'm gonna continue to use this as a code machine. Happy with the purchase. Happy that I have this thing to take to the gym and precariously set on my a glued hand developer and,

continue to do that. Awesome. You need to get one of those Toshiba Toughbooks, which, Yes. Like, the cops have in their Yarn. Yes. Right. Yeah. The things that weigh a a £1,000, and they're Yeah. Lined with Kevlar and whatever. I think this one looks really nice for exactly what you're talking about. It's it's super light. It seems really durable. You can bring it wherever you want.

It's a nice Vercel machine. It's pretty cool. I I think if I ever came across a a laptop like that, I'd throw Linux on it just to to see what it's like. You've got me interested now. It's nice to run Linux too in the way that, you know, all your servers are on Linux. You're used to it. It's

good to get experience with Linux. It makes me feel like a lead hacker. You know, they the people say that. Yeah. For the most Yarn, yeah, I Node. It's it's been cool. It's been fun. It's been a a nice little nerdy tech experience for me, so I'm feeling good about it. Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. If you've got any tips of your own, make sure you tweet us at syntaxfm.

I would love to hear what if you use Linux full time and and what machine you ended up going with. Again, if I said something stupid, please let us know. We'll retweet you and, let our audience know that I said something stupid. Thanks for tuning in, and we will catch you on Wednesday.

Peace.

Peace.

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