Top Tips For Migrating from Windows to Linux

I use Fedora at home, support wife’s laptop with ubuntu and have 2 ubuntu boxen at work (running Gnome shell not unity).

So for me it’s linux all day every day.

But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - it ain’t as easy as people would have you believe. I see the world through my wife’s eyes as she tries to grok ubuntu even after being on it for about a year. She still has trouble really “getting it”. And she absolutely refuses to have anything to do with the command line. She does “get” libreoffice, browsing, and running windoze inside of VirtualBox. That is - unless something unexpected happens or she needs to do something a bit out of the ordinary. She really doesn’t understand the File Manager (i.e. Nautilus). Just doesn’t get it. So if you’re a linux junkie (like me) sure it’s easy. In fact it’s easier than windoze. But if you’re not - it’s not.

Finally the idea of “trying it out” from a thumb drive - this has never made any sense to me. People say they do that but I think what they really do is get the windowing interface working, open a program or two and call it done. That’s not “living with” a system. In fact it’s the farthest thing from it.

I’m not trying to pee on anyone’s cornflakes, really I’m not, but I do think a reality check adds value.

Yet the both the Run command in Windows and the command prompt are sometimes quicker or necessary. And the more your learn what you can do with Windows, including with the wealth of freeware, then the less attractive Linux is for me.

Yet i want Linux to be a more attractive alternative to Linux, but as one that like to tweak and customize, I find Linux less customizable, partly due to lack of comparable software or hardware support, or glitches and stability. Details at request.

My last attempt at making Linux my main OS failed due to find to find a successful way (despite many varied "try this" suggestions) to remap certain combo keys which i do thru AutoHotKey in Windows, though recently I found Debian enables the main two. Then there is the legal multitude codecs issue.

The usual complains about security in Windows has not been a reality for me, thanks be to God, only having received 2 viruses in over 15 years of heavy Internet usage daily, and having to sudo this and sudo that (unless I use Puppy) so i can do simply things like edit files it drawback.

She really doesn’t understand the File Manager

Using Ubuntu Tweak to set the location/address bar as the default may help, or use Dolphin to do so, plus i make Details and "show hidden files" the default.

Your post makes me think that on the whole, we have a rather personal relationship with our OS’s! I know I adore linux, hate windoze and macs - well I’m just not part of that cult.

It’s a relationship that is not just emotionally based (although that is a big part of it) but also intellectually based - we all know how to get stuff done in our OS of choice typically.

I have custom keyboard shortcuts in linux and such a thing is actually trivial to do. The codecs issue is more substantive and you do have to tweak those things but by and large I can watch and listen to what I want to on linux but as I said on another post I once spent a long time getting Pipelight to work (a linux alternative to Silverlight).

Ultimately we invest emotion, time and effort into our OS of choice and if we move to some other OS those investments most often have to be remade and that triggers all sorts of other emotions.

And it’s no use telling others - look you have to love MY OS - because they probably won’t and think you stupid.

That’s the world in which we live and operate.

It’s a relationship that is not just emotionally based (although that is a big part of it) but also intellectually based - we all know how to get stuff done in our OS of choice typically.

Like a car, it becomes somewhat of an extension of yourself, as long as it does what you want, and does not do what you do not.

I have custom keyboard shortcuts in linux and such a thing is actually trivial to do.

Must be a secret! It can depend on which flavor you have, but can you remap CapsLock to ctrl+c, and Esc to ctrl+v, and then NumLock to Esc, and make it remain thru sessions? I did done a lot of search but could not get CapsLock remap in Linux Mint.

The codecs issue is more substantive and you do have to tweak those things

I was referring to the legal issues for restricted proprietary types . I can convert files to non-proprietary, or purchase the proprietary licenses.

But i hope Linux will get better, God willing.

Remapping individual keys would be done with Xmodmap or at least that’s how I’ve done it. That’s a language unto itself and you need to google a bit and experiment a bit. You won’t get yourself into too much trouble doing it. It can be made to work trust me.

For shortcuts the DE typically provides hooks - like most DE’s will come shipped with CTRL-ALT-T launching the terminal but for example you could do CTRL-ALT-F to launch Firefox or I have combos that move me around amongst my desktops etc.

Yeah the notion of purchasing licenses to run certain software on linux is often quite a foreign one. In a corporate setting it probably happens a lot. For home users - hmmm - not so much.

Remapping individual keys would be done with Xmodmap or at least that’s how I’ve done it.

But Ubuntu no longer uses xmodmap as instead uses xkb, which despite trying I could not find a way to remap the CapsLock combo (for one), not find anyone claiming to do so.

As my fingers are stiff, so that i must life up my hands to hit each keys, and land on the wrong one every other word, and as i usually do a lot of copy and paste, thus this is very important.

But I was able to partly get Debian to do this thru the GUI keyboard customization for at least Kwrite or similar, but have not gone back to try it on other apps across sessions. But I have been unable to do so for Xubuntu on an older laptop.

With about 12 docs open and 160 tabs, I do not shutdown often, but just sleep, but when to do reboot and load Linux i will give you a report, God willing.

It can be made to work trust me.

I suppose it may using that method in some distros, or another in another flavor, but i found none for Linux Mint/Xubuntu .

But why do some distros not even provide the location via right click menu on an icon in the start menu, or a create shortcut and Send to desktop option from within folders, with the ability to assign keyboard keys to launch it right there, as under Windows?

Yeah the notion of purchasing licenses to run certain software on linux is often quite a foreign one. In a corporate setting it probably happens a lot. For home users - hmmm - not so much.

Indeed. Its the legal issue for me. You can get the Fluendo ONEPLAY Player for 35.00 though. But its license is only good for one OS.

Yet even now in Windows 10 the is no more Windows Media Center by default or license for DVDs. Microsoft now charges users $14.99 to download for the Windows DVD Player, though for a limited time it is free to all Windows 10 users upgrading from Windows 7 Home Premium, Ultimate and Professional, or Windows 8.1 with a Media Center.

I doubt that it matters if a distro “uses” xmodmap or not.

Nothing prevents you from using it.

At the end of the day you’re modifying X’s mod map (hence the name) and unless and until they do away with X (that’s coming but it’s not here yet) it should absolutely work.

It can be a bit tricky but not too tricky if you google it and try things out. You can run it when you log into your X session and it should do whatever you need it to do.

“But why do some distros not even provide the location via right click menu on an icon in the start menu, or a create shortcut and Send to desktop option from within folders, with the ability to assign keyboard keys to launch it right there, as under Windows?”

Well that’s like saying why isn’t such and such like something else. At some point you have to be good with the fact that things won’t be like windoze.

Some things are must haves - you need to be able to see and manipulate files, processes, configurations, listen to audio, see video etc. etc. etc.

How you do certain things - those things shouldn’t be precisely the same - or in linux you have the maximum freedom to change things round to suit your likes. But it ain’t always easy - you to a) love it and b) be somewhat good at it.

I doubt that it matters if a distro “uses” xmodmap or not. Nothing prevents you from using it. At the end of the day you’re modifying X’s mod map (hence the name) and unless and until they do away with X (that’s coming but it’s not here yet) it should absolutely work.

I have been down the should work, or may work routine before, but as seen by others i founds nothing that did work with CapsLock to ctrl+c at least.

You may see some of the responses to my requests here .

I asked Ask Ubuntu here a while back, but no replies.

This reply says,

The solution to the xmodmap slowness (and bugginess, since its remappings are glitchy and non-persistent in desktop environments that use layout switching) would be to define an entirely new keyboard layout based off of whatever layout you were previously using, rather than applying runtime modifications. On X startup, you'd load that new, remapped layout instead of whatever you're using now. (It seems this is now the only way to reliably modify the keyboard layout in recent Ubuntus — and possibly other distros — as their xmodmap is no longer useful.)

< Another says,

There isn't a way to produce a keypress event based on the state of a locked key like that. There are a few reasons for that, but as a counter example, what happens if you copy something, then later want to copy something else without pasting? You select something in your editor, press Caps Lock, and rather than copying, which is your intent, it pastes the previously copied buffer, deleting your selected text. Hope you can undo!

I believe there's also no way in XKB to have a single keypress produce Ctrl-C, but there are a few tools to do just that. Generally speaking, XKB works really well and is very versatile, but if you want something more custom than what it provides, it tends to make your life difficult. Or at least it used to, last time I tried.. - http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/39497/how-do-i-remap-my-caps-lock-key-to-ctrlx-within-x-org

There are more possible solutions, but learning how and trying each varied suggestion is something that need to be put on the backburner for now.

Thanks for taking an interest.

OIC - you want a COPY key and a PASTE key - not a key combo but you want one key press to take the place of CTRL-C, CTRL-V.

Well that is a bit shall we say non-standard. Also I do tend to agree that Ubuntu and its evil twin Unity tends to be rather restrictive which is why on the two Ubuntu boxen I’m using on a day to day basis I use Gnome shell.

So my takes would be these:

1. Ubuntu as I said tends to be rather dictatorial - I prefer Fedora - Ubuntu feels like they know better than you do about what your computing environment should be like. Which doesn’t defeat the whole purpose of linux but some of it.

2. Having some one key emit CTRL-C is not something I’ve ever thought of doing in linux. Not saying that it categorically can’t be done but it does sound like one’s going against the grain just a bit. If it were me I’d google it as you’ve done, ask questions as you’ve done and experiment a lot. But at the end of the day it may or may not be possible.

3. In linux things like terminal settings and keyboard settings are really low level, really confusing and go back to basically the 1970s and the early early days of Unix. They say understanding things like termcaps and the like is a very hard thing to do - X programs that emulate the old physical terminals. There’s a lot of old time unix magic in that stuff.

I guess to sum up there’s that old saying “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”. Some of this linux stuff is like that. It just may be that you need the serenity to accept this limitation and the wisdom to not go chasing this elusive goal. Personally, I don’t mind pressing Ctrl-C since I’m used to Emacs where you have to press all kinds of weirdo key combos - many much worse than that. :)

OIC - you want a COPY key and a PASTE key - not a key combo but you want one key press to take the place of CTRL-C, CTRL-V.

Yes, that works well for my stiff fingers. POus FF extensiona like BBCodeXtra,, https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bbcodextra/ An extension which adds to the context menu new commands to insert BBCode/Html/XHtml codes in an easy and fast way... Very useful for FR.

Ubuntu as I said tends to be rather dictatorial - I prefer Fedora - Ubuntu feels like they know better than you do about what your computing environment should be like. Which doesn’t defeat the whole purpose of linux but some of it.

Understood.

Having some one key emit CTRL-C is not something I’ve ever thought of doing in linux. Not saying that it categorically can’t be done but it does sound like one’s going against the grain just a bit. If it were me I’d google it as you’ve done, ask questions as you’ve done and experiment a lot. But at the end of the day it may or may not be possible.

But using autohotkey, you just add the lines

CapsLock::^c

Esc::^v

mbutton::^x

to a script which you load, and its good to go. Although W/10 has decreed it is not to be loaded from either start folder, so i must do so manually.

It just may be that you need the serenity to accept this limitation and the wisdom to not go chasing this elusive goal.

But that is critical for me if i was going to use Linux as the default OS. Plus my PhoneTrayFree app (records Caller ID numbers for the landline phone thru the modem) is very useful (no cell) and will not work under Linux.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”.

Right.

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