 Tom here for more systems and it is the year of the Linux desktop where everyone's going to move away from Windows and over to something like pop OS, right? Well, okay I say that jokingly and very tongue-in-cheek, but honestly I want to talk about system 76 pop OS and why I think it's a great distribution and specifically the 2104 edition that has been recently released recently It's been out for a little while But I'm using it because I wanted to provide my review from a usage standpoint not just a hey I just loaded at standpoint now for those you don't know I've been running a bunch to on my desktop for a long time that I did switch a little bit to Katie neon But overall I settle on a few years ago pop OS and I've been happy ever since I've been doing in-place upgrades on my systems Now I wanted to bring this up because we're gonna talk about you know Using Linux full-time as I do and as I have been for years and my perspectives on that We'll also cover maybe why you may not want to use Linux But those are a few different details and I also want to talk a lot about pop OS and why if you're deciding Maybe you've had enough of all the well issues that may come from Windows And you want to take a look at getting into the Linux world and what distribution may be right for you This is a pretty solid choice. I believe and I'll make my case for that shortly Before we dive into those details if you'd like to learn more about me or my company head over to Lawrence systems Dot-com if you like to hire sure project There's a hires button right at the top if you want to support this channel other ways There's affiliate links down below to get you deals and discounts on products and services We talk about on a channel which do include some of these shirts with cats on them and fun things like that Well, that's linked down below now System 76 who are they and what is pop OS? So this is the version I'm running right now is pop OS 2104 and Let's talk about naming scheme real quick pop OS follows the Ubuntu naming scheme naming scheme And it is also based on Ubuntu 2104 now 21 represents the year 04 represents the month in the way Ubuntu names it System 76 is following Ubuntu's naming scheme But actually released it after April of 2021 but this makes it simple to understand what the base is when you're doing it That's an important thing because if you don't understand what the base is it could be a little bit harder to troubleshoot and Let me back up a little bit about what I mean by the base with it being based on Ubuntu That makes it a really solid platform And if you're asking why would you take something that's based on Ubuntu wouldn't you go to the original? Well, that's where system 76 comes in and puts a little bit more polish and more workflow options So Ubuntu has a great workflow and uses gnome System 76 takes gnome and really puts a lot of pizzazz on it to make it a more enhanced and more customizable experience and that's what the new as they refer to it cosmic desktop is Really a much more enhanced experience now system 76 is the company that builds the open-source pop OS They're a hardware vendor that sells laptops and desktops Specifically linux focused and when you buy their laptops or desktops One of the options is either to get them with Ubuntu or their system 76 and they make a really nice very high-end Linux systems that are really outstanding like the build quality and everything him is quite well I'll leave a link over to Jay from Linux TV. He's covered these before and done some in-depth reviews on some of their hardware I've also reviewed some of it that will all be linked down below back over to pop OS They wanted to provide a better experience then you get with stock Ubuntu and that's where pop OS comes in now Streamline your workflow Workflow customization is something I think is really important. I'm mixed on this particular feature called stacking Jay's a big fan of it from Learn Linux TV and he's reviewed it. I'm less a fan of it, but it's pretty cool It's once again one of the reasons that Linux can be troublesome for people coming from the windows world Before they move over to something like pop OS or Ubuntu going What do you mean? There's multiple ways to do things because in the way that Microsoft has always done it It's predefined in the major changes in your workflow or how you integrate with applications and how you use the system comes from major version changes and windows, but that version change in windows really kind of Brings you down only to that workflow and it's very the word I probably could use this homogenize across the whole Platform where everyone just kind of does it the same way Linux is a little bit more of a learning curve because they give you all these different customizations But that's also one of the reasons I enjoy it so much because I can customize things the way I want them to work and One thing that pop West does a nice job of is offering all these different like keyboard shortcuts for Managing your workflow and applications and how you interact with the system This sounds a little bit daunting it like when you see all these different keyboard shortcuts but they quickly become muscle memory once you're using them and You can do things like alt tab and jump between things and yes This is a cool-looking old retro terminal that yeah, I just thought it'd be kind of cool makes it look like a CRT I don't have any real practical use case other than it presents cool on the screen here now Back to talking how this works There are a few different keys like super key D that I have set up that will allow me to go between the different virtual workspaces This is another enhancement that you get with pop o s and the way they've implemented it is a really smooth Workflow for virtual workspaces. Yes, that does work in a bunch as well We're gonna focus on pop o s and how they have it implemented though This allows me to kind of choose between applications choose between things that I have open and switch between them and alt tab Like I said works fine So I can do this the downside is of course because I have multiple chrome windows open Do I want this one or that one? I like little previews it gives me but being able just to tab between things is Easy but fills old school when you can just do the application switching such as this right here Like if I wanted to jump over to you slack right here And this is once again hitting the super key now Let's actually jump into the settings menu here won't go here to system settings And this is where you can change what that does so right now the super key does the launcher or I can say Hey, do the workspaces, but I like it as super key D So we leave it like that or we can actually have it so it brings up all the applications to launch now One thing that I'll say is a little Weird to me instead of your normal like you may be used to a start bar at the bottom in the windows world when you launch applications They go like this and kind of show up as these large icons, but of course they're searchable here So if I wanted to launch something like virtual box, I can then find it and it will find other Subsets there or just go like this and open up virtual box. So it's pretty Easy enough to kind of get started with it when you're coming from a windows world I also have this set to hide at the bottom, which is the Which is the dock at the bottom here you I have the dock enabled and once again You can customize, you know always visible or they have what they refer to as intelligent high But I could also say always make that dock visible and be down there at the bottom Now you can switch from applications around on the dock So you notice that are all launched here so I can go like to the calculator I can pull slack back up I can go here to the terminal window that I have open or the cool retro terminal that I have here So it does work in a similar way and of course this shows all the applications This shows all the workspaces and that shows the launcher So there's different ways to get to things but I kind of like the auto hide and once you learn the keyboard shortcuts makes it a lot easier now Doing this and let me jump back over and show you the workspaces They seem a little complex because you maybe you're not used to using multiple workspaces But they actually make this relatively easy. So let's go ahead and take our calculator And where'd my calculator go? Well, I can just search for it like this. So we'll pull up calculator There it is. One of the things I really like is when I did that it also Moved the window focus to be the calculator. So I dragged it to a new workspace. It's all by its lonesome here Let's go back to the Firefox one and we'll hit the super key and type calc again It brings me right to focus on the application I wanted and puts me so the cursor is in there I know it sounds simple like you see this alt tab But when you have a lot of windows open This is where I mentioned that workflow and one of the things that you can run is so many different applications at the same time You kind of can get lost in that I think they've done a great job of making it so you can find it just how Chrome has finally added, you know, easy way to search all the different Chrome tabs that you have open To be able to find them when you're one of those people which I occasionally am who have many many tabs open Yes, you can now search for all the different applications you have open and be able to just jump between them Either this way or have a virtual workspace environment now The nice thing also about the virtual workspace environments is we can build one kind of as needed and As so much happens in the tech world you get disrupted or someone has a question and you need to kind of move somewhere clean to start doing some type of Dive into whatever someone interrupts you on but you don't want to break the workflow you had for everything else You had open. This is one of the other advantages. I really feel is with the Multiple workspaces is being able to go. All right, let me just get this other workspace. Let me open up We'll put the Libre writer right here and let's Dive into that so we can all right now we can start this document here. All right, and then when the person's done bothering me We're gonna go hit Over here or back over here what we're talking about with these shortcuts and it's this window I want on top so it's not just searching to the workspace Bring this back on top bring me back to what I was doing and the same thing works for when I'm doing my workflows for things like Caden live, so let's go ahead and do this go down here and then Choose that workspace Caden live, which is actually with the video editor I use for this and Pull it up in this particular space. So it's gonna launch. It's gonna be right here And then we can see Caden live video editing going on here. This is here There's my document. I was writing there's this and let's talk about these system 76 back over here And once you get used to this, it's really nice Now I've been using Papa West for a long time and the cosmic desktop brings forth that a little bit more polish on there Now one thing I haven't really taken the time to learn is all the gesture commands This is one of those things that Papa West has as well as be able to use touchpad and gesture I I've figured a few of them out. It's kind of a nice way. They've integrated this It's where I want to learn even more for people It's gonna be helpful that are using not just a trackpad here But if you want to get a trackpad add-on in addition to your mouse Yes, you can use both at the same time so you can reach over your trackpad make gestures to move these windows around a certain way I'm so partial to the keyboard shortcuts But once again, this goes back to the flexibility that you're gonna get with some of the Linux desktop now Displays and multi monitor. This is something really clever that I like the way Papa West handles this really really well Now pretty much even my laptop desktop my desktop Where I do most editing is a triple monitor setup, but the system here is going to be and we'll go to settings again Settings menu. Let's go in my displays and by the way, you can search your settings like any control panel So go here and we'll just jump to displays because you know as there's a lot of options in here You want to get to the right one? It's set to mirror now I have it set to mirror when it plugs into the recording studio here when it plugs into my secondary monitor when It's at home. It recognizes and moves all the applications to that secondary monitor by Extending the display to it But when it senses that it's plugged into the display essentially that it detects for the recording It then says nope that one is set to mirror It remembers everything on a per device you plugged it into setting So the last setting I use which being near for this one and being extend on my external monitor Works perfectly fine. It understands and and it remembers what applications were on which windows So I can quickly take this plug this into my second screen when I get back home And it goes back into being a dual display and it says, you know You had this window over here and this window over here and remembers the settings that it was extended not that not a Mere display. This is one of those things that becomes really nice about the way Linux handles all that and It really shows how mature and how the product has really come along because earlier in the days when I did switch to Linux These things were just really difficult to do and you've spent a lot of time messing with it now It's really so easy. There's not any command lines. I had to do to do that This is an out-of-the-box way the system works now Let's talk about applications and this is where I think the pop shop is Really making it a lot easier for people to adopt into Linux and it just keeps getting better with each version picture Very much like the application stores that you have for modern phones, whether it's a Google Play store the Apple store or you know insert Store that you may be using it's not on those specifically But you get the concept being able to have all the applications here and if I wanted to load something either a game Graphics There's a lot of different options on here now It's becoming a very popular platform for developers because we have things like Android studio available in here And you may notice just a couple different ways to load things and this one particular comes as a flat pack Flat packs are instead of trying to load the application With all of its dependencies that are needed flat packs kind of wrap all the things that an application needs into a single file. It's actually very Interesting way to handle it. I actually am a big fan of this because it allows you not to have to worry about Collision so to speak between some incompatible apps This is specifically a problem in the video editing world and one of the reasons I use Kaden live for my video editing And I use it as a flat pack because it's not going to interfere with maybe another tool I might be using it has a different dependency on one of the Different codecs that are needed so don't get too deep into that. We'll just say it's a good thing but all these different editors and Audio communication development and as I mentioned earlier with slack being open slack being one of the popular business tools I don't have any problems from a business standpoint using this from a day-to-day usage But and as much as we know steam is in there I know games are gonna be one of the first hang-ups for the average end user and this is where I'll say maybe this is Not always the time to run Linux I bring this up because someone may call me out on it in the comments and they would be correct to say Tom Don't you have a Windows computer at home? Yes, and I will admit yes for games It's just runs better because the games I like aren't quite good yet on Linux And that's what it comes down to and the same thing with I'm a huge open-source advocate I'm a massive fan of the Linux desktop and I was there during the painful days And now I would say it's pretty you know easy to switch to but switching business clients over to it not quite as easy because yes, there's a lot of pain with them because a line of business applications and user training and Yeah, and Microsoft it's what people are used to using so it's gonna take a while before we really get to the year of the Linux desktop Before we really see Microsoft replace but with more and more things being web-based applications the operating system matters a little bit less But don't say that too much around really diehard Linux enthusiasts I mean I am one but I'm also someone who realistically manages Windows computers So I know it's gonna be a long time for we really see on desktop But overall my thoughts are if you are starting out and you would like to get into using Linux I think the pop OS is a wonderful choice. I'm running it right now in my think pad l480 So even though it's supported and will ship on a system 76 system It does work on a multitude of hardware pretty much any hardware that Ubuntu will support Also being based on Ubuntu if you're having any trouble figuring something out in the learning curve of maybe you're new To Linux system 76 pop OS gives you that extra polish on the desktop But maintains that compatibility that well 99% of the time you can search for Ubuntu 2104 and how to do something and no same instructions will apply to pop OS You don't necessarily need to search for how to do something in pop OS unless you're doing something very Interface specific for the changes that pop OS put on top of known kind of skinned it But my overall if you want to get started in Linux, I think it's a great distribution I think this latest version of it is pretty outstanding and allows a lot of flexibility for how you want to use it And so those are my thoughts on pop OS. I loaded it is today. It came out all my desktops Laptops every one of them whether they're the office ones or even you know like this older. I forget model this one was This is a little x250 that you sometimes see in some of the videos I've loaded on this and a few others in the office here and we love it We think it's been great. The update does take a little while to do But it's actually been kind of impressive to think that I've been running it for years Which is in place upgrades for each time a matter of fact I've even swapped hardware where I take the hard drive out put it in a different laptop and yeah Now I have a new laptop and it doesn't it doesn't complain much about hardware switching. All right I'll leave links to Jay who also did a review from learning TV on pop OS and his thoughts as well. 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