Hi there,
So I'm currently using Windows 11 along with WSL. I'm a student in Informatics, and I actually really tried using Linux, but it never quite worked for me... Let me explain:
- The most important thing for me is using a setup that works for my use case. On a regular basis, I usually code and take (mostly) handwritten notes. While I can do most of those things on Linux (some being easier/better than on Windows), I couldn't find a single good note taking app for Linux. I'm currently using Samsung Notes (with Galaxy Book mask) because I NEED an app to write by hand AND add text boxes if I can't keep up with the pace of my teacher. I've tried Scrivano, but it doesn't support text boxes; Rnote, but I find it non-intuitive and buggy, and the file format might change in the future, which I can't risk; Xournal++, but it feels like I'm using a Windows 95 app and lacks on some basic features; Saber, which is really promising, but very buggy from what I could test. I've even tried Android apps via Waydroid, but I could never get it to work (even with fixes to allow ARM translation, the apps would crash when I tried to open them). So my first question is: did I miss a good note taking app or did I do something wrong with Waydroid? All the other I could find (nearly) didn't offer any support for handwriting.
- My laptop is a Lenovo Yoga 7 2-in-1 14ILL10. While testing things out, I quickly found out the touchscreen and stylus weren't working correctly. I'm guessing it's because the hardware is not listed in the libwacom library, because when I tried asking Claude to create the file for me, it kinda worked (no I didn't have the patience nor the time to find out how to write the file by myself). On top of that (I know I'm being picky), but Gnome's default on-screen keyboard is inconsistent. Sometimes it appears when I don't want it to, sometimes it doesn't appear at all, and it's overall way worse than the Window's one. (I have also tried a KDE distro, the on-screen keyboard was horrible.) I don't know if there exists solutions to my problems or if I have to figure things out by myself...
- The last thing that I found really annoying is the lack of design language. On macOS, all of the apps follow more or less the same design language. On Windows, it's a bit more random, but most of the elements are cohesive. On Linux... not so much. Some apps use Adwaita, some use Breeze, some use random other things... While I totally understand why things are the way they are, it's a bit annoying, but I can of course live with it. I was just wondering if there was something to "force" a theme on apps or something like that without breaking everything.
So yeah... to sum it up, I just wanted to know if it was possible to fix those issues (the most important ones being the first 2 as I can't fully switch to Linux otherwise), and which distributions you recommend me regarding what would work best for me. As of now, the only three distros I've really used for a few days/weeks were KDE Neon (touchscreen worked perfectly, but I've found the UI to be really ugly and the theming options were, again, inconsistent), Ubuntu (buggy touchscreen) and Fedora Workstation (for a very short time, but I'm not 100% sure if the touchscreen was working or not, but I don't think it was).
Sorry for this big chunk of text, I wanted to be as precise as possible regarding my impressions. I would be really glad if you folks could help me stop using MS stuff. And btw, I know I probably can't have all the things listed above fixed, I just would like to know what's possible and what isn't.
Thank you for reading <3 (also I'm not sure if this is the right subreddit, so sorry if it ain't)