The Linux Setup I Actually Use Every Day

There are a number of reasons why people attempt to use Linux and give up. There's the complexity. There's too many options to choose from. But the one I hear the most often is people who set it up independent from their daily workstation. And what I mean by that is they set it up with the intentions of trying it out. So they either create some virtualization for it or even better they put it on a Raspberry Pi, plug it up in some place other than their main desk to some extra monitor they have, extra keyboard and mouse and think, "Huh, this is neat." but realize they have absolutely nothing they need to do normal daily work, find it cumbersome to switch between, and ultimately push it aside. Well, in this video, I want to help you set up a Linux workstation that you'll actually use. One that will, if needed, allow you to switch back to your daily PC or Mac in a click, but a Linux workstation that will exist on its own, independent machine, not some virtualization, and not in the cloud somewhere. So, here's the plan. We'll find a cheap mini PC. We'll pick an OS. We'll use a KVM switch. And I'll share some tips on configuration setup and management, dual booting options, using your keyboard more, being able to easily switch between computers using the same keyboard and mouse, and how to need your Mac or Windows machine less. Along the way, if you have any questions or comments, leave them below or jump into the Travis Media community for more conversation. And before we kick all this off, let me share a quick word about the sponsor of today's video. The rocksolid hosting company that does what Heroku used to do, but much, much better, Savala. Savala offers modern platform as a service features that makes it unbelievably simple to host web projects and static sites. And for devs like us that also want a bit more, it has all the developer centric tools that we love like easy git deploy, instant previews, deploy templates, docker file support, managed databases and object storage. It runs on Google Kubernetes engine in 25 regions and Savala integrates Cloudflare's 260 plus edge network for static sites. I actually just deployed my Astrobased static website here just now in less than 2 minutes. Just connect your GitHub, give Savala access to a repository where your code lives, and hit deploy. That's it. They have transparent usage-based pricing, which has become a problem with many of the similar solutions out there. With Savala, you only pay for what you use with free internal traffic between components. You also get $50 in credits to start off with, so it's completely risk-f free. Savala is a Kinsta product and thus has built-in enterprisegrade security, giving you a peace of mind that your apps are secure. You get everything you need under one roof, including fully managed databases and object storage, and they have real human support, which is very rare these days. Again, you can get started for free with a $50 credit. Link will be below in the description. Now, back to the video. Let's begin with something to run it on. Now, you can just find an old PC or laptop. That's fine. Or you can look on Facebook Marketplace for college kids who realize their souped-up gaming PC is not helping them in life and they unfortunately are desperate to sell with you eager to buy. Otherwise, just go and pick up a cheapo mini PC like this Beink here. This is what we'll be using. Sure, you won't be running any AI models with it, but it will run your everyday Linux browsing and dev tasks with no issue. Link to this particular model below. Feel free to grab something bigger, but this is a great start as well, and it's like 150 bucks. Second, let's talk dros and operating systems. And this is where everybody gets all opinionated and divisive on what you should run. This is also where technical people become complete monsters and berate you for your choices. Drown it out. Do what works for you at this stage. But here's my opinion or here's my thoughts on what you in this situation could do. And someone will of course comment criticizes people getting opinionated and then gives you his opinion. But note the word could. Here's what you could do. Of course, you could run Ubuntu desktop or Pop OS because it's easy and it works great. Here's the thing, though. Now's your chance to break from what you've been conditioned to expect for years. To me, Pop OS, Linux Mint, Zoron OS, P OS, all of these just look like lower quality versions of Windows and Mac. Little bloated kitty knockoffs that look to give you all the options you would ever need. In this case, just stay on Mac or Windows. They look better and are much less of a hassle. But if you're serious about Linux as your daily driver, now is your chance to change things up completely. And by the way, what I did recently was set up a dual boot so I could shoot back to Windows for video editing and essential things like that. I'll share how to do all of that here in a bit. But on the other side of things, I would not recommend a raw NYX or Arch Linux either. Most of us have work to do, things to get done, and while it's fun to tinker around with these, really fun. I have work to do during the day and a family outside of that who are much more important than troubleshooting. why ALSA_output.pci-0000 whatever still will not work. So here's the happy medium. I want a lightweight fast OS. I also want opinion. Many of you don't like opinion. I'm a fan. In fact, that's why I've always found something like Laravel much more pleasant to use than say ExpressJS or Flask. I want to be told the best way to do something instead of having to ask around at what's the standard way people are doing something that can be done 30 different ways. So the opinion I want and I think would be good for you too is to have a fast distro but one that already has many of the apps we use installed like Obsidian, One Password, Docker, a browser, Chad GBT, etc. so you can hit the ground running. In addition, while we're breaking from tradition here, why not adopt a tiling manager like Hyperland? And let's force ourselves to use the keyboard more instead of always reaching for the mouse. And it may be a good time to try and learn Vim and use Vimeium for browsing, but I'm still in that journey myself. So, enough said about that. And when we put all of these things together and pull the slots and the three symbols come up, we're staring at something like Omarie. Again, I like opinion, which is an opinion, and which also means that I have opinions on the opinions. And in my opinion, Omarie really resonates with what I've been looking for, what many of you have been looking for, and I think is a great middle ground for many of you out there. It's designed with productivity and aesthetics in mind by a well-known programmer with the goal of being more beautiful, different, yet better than Mac OS and Windows for devs and techy people like me and you. We'll discuss the features and more about why as we continue, but let's get set up to install this thing. For this, you'll need a USB drive. You'll need an OS image flasher. So, just go and download Balina Etcher. Next, download the ISO from the Omari website. Open Etcher. Select the ISO image. Select the USB drive and flash. Next, eject the USB when done. Plug it into the Beink Mini PC. Find a mouse and keyboard. Plug it into a monitor. And don't worry, we'll set up a KVM to switch back and forth later. Turn the Beink on and use the delete key or F2 key to enter the BIOS. Change your boot order so that it first checks the USB drive. Boot your computer. And here you'll install Omari. Now, Omari wants the whole disc and will wipe the whole thing. There is no choosing how much of a partition to take up. If you want to create a partition to run it on, you'll need to set up Omari manually. So, another side note, on my main computer, I have two NVME drives. One is 1 TB and runs Windows. The other is 2 TB. 500 GB of that is partitioned to run Omari, and the rest is partitioned as an NTFS share drive that I can share between my Windows and Omari setup. That way I can jump over to Windows when I'm editing videos or need more of the creator tooling workflow that doesn't play great on Linux, but the rest of the time I'm on Linux. If you want to know exactly how to set this kind of thing up manually, I wrote up an article explaining the whole thing. I'll put a link below to it. So after the install is complete, reboot. Go ahead and log in. And here you are. Now, as a developer or IT person, you have everything you need already here. Let me give you a quick overview. So you have Arch Linux and you have the opinionated Omari distribution installed on it which includes some core packages. Here's the big picture that will make everything make sense from the outset. Instead of floating windows, a tiling manager called Hyperland is installed. Hyperland is a compositor built on a protocol called Wayland that manages your windows with dynamic tiling and effects like blur and animations. So instead of floating windows like you're used to, when you open a window, it tiles full screen. Open another and it splits it in half. Open another while active and it splits that in half and so forth. And when you close them, it expands back out the others. The point here is to help you stay off the mouse and on the keyboard more and to make you more productive in managing Windows. Now, to see all of your shortcuts, hit your super key and K. And for this application launcher, they use Walker. Here you can see all your shortcuts like opening a browser, opening a terminal which is ghosty by default, tiling vertical and horizontal, screenshotting to the clipboard, etc. So take time to look at these. Holding super in a number allows you to jump between workspaces or screens to arrange things better. So I can hit super and space to show my apps. I can open my code editor and terminal here and then jump to workspace 2 and open up a browser and use super tab to cycle between them. Everything is lightweight and fast. So again, take some time to learn these commands and slowly wean yourself off the mouse. Now's your chance. And all of this is customizable. Open a terminal, go toconfig/hyper without the e, and you'll see a number of files to customize hyperland. Open up bindings. And here you can customize many of the shortcuts to quickly open apps. And you'll see a number of other hyperland config files here to configure inputs, the look and feel. And Omari comes with hyper idle for idle management, hyperlock for screen lock, and things like this. And you can check the Hyperland wiki for all of the config options you have available. Also in theconfig folder, you'll find the ghosty config, Omari config, invim config. You can set which terminal is default and other ways to infinitely configure your machine if you want to. Though Omari has set up a pretty sweet theming capability that changes your entire system and its apps to match the themes you can cycle through. Next, another reason I suggested this OS is that it has by default many of the apps you use on a daily. Just hit super space and you can see these knee chat gpb one password docker obsidian x zoom it's all there ready to go. Just choose it from the list. Next with super alt space or super command space you can open the omari menu. Here you can set your theme backgrounds. You can set up audio, Wi-Fi, keyboards, DNS, install packages, add web apps, install different editors, AI tools, gaming services, and more. So instead of having to configure everything from the terminal, it can all be easily managed here from this launcher. You'll also hear people talk about Way Bar, which is a highly customizable status bar that Omar uses. Mine is the default, but there are some great customizations out there if you want to go down that rabbit hole. So ditch the mouse, embrace the tiling, learn the shortcuts to get around quickly, customize it as you like. There are a bunch of pre-installed themes also and tweak this baby how you like it within the opinions that this OS has set for you which I think are great opinions. And here's a few final tips. First, read through the manual. You can find it by going to learn in Omari. It's brief and it's very, very helpful. Second, let's talk about the keyboard layout. It's complicated coming to Linux for Mac. The super key is the Windows, not the command location. I have a new keyboard that can switch to a Mac layout, and the super key becomes command. But it doesn't really help within applications. You still get control C to copy and controlV to paste and other Windows-like commands. You see, the super key on Linux is special, while control is your worker. And then there's universal copy and paste with Hyperland with your super key when flipping between active windows. But again, within applications, we're back to using control. So I tried setting my Hyperland keyboard config to Mac. I toyed around with the keyed or keyd package, whatever you call that. tried some other Linux Mac packages and finally just resorted to using the Windows Linux default. I swapped some keys on my keyboard to make it easier and it only took a couple days of pain and all is well now. I think this is going to be the biggest hurdle if any for you and would love to hear your thoughts on how you handle this. I also dual boot Windows now so it makes sense to have the same commands between the two. That's where I'm at now, but let me know below the best way to handle this. Finally, and this is important, once you start creating your own custom configs for your terminal for Hyperland and for key bindings and ZSH and all of that, you'll want to version control them for future reference so that you can use them again. So, people normally create a folder called dot files that holds all of these configurations and then those files are sim linked to the actual locations. That way, you don't have to jump around everywhere to customize. It can all be managed in one location. Sounds complicated, but there's a package called Stow that will make this super easy for you. I have a blog post explaining exactly how to set this up. I'll link it below. I also have a Bootstrap script that will do all of this for you. Well, for my dot files, but you could swap out your dot files folder, update the package names in the Bootstrap script, and you'll have a fully automated install update. Feel free to steal it. It will be below as well. Now, before we set up the ability to switch between machines easily, here are a couple of rapidfire neat findings that you might like. Seven to be exact. Number one, open the Omari config install in web apps. Here you can add any web apps that you want to open in a tile as opposed to a Windows browser and it will show up in the application launcher menu. Second, I build a lot of personal desktop apps and I want them to show up in the launcher. To do this, choose install TUI app. Add the command to start and an icon and save. But it's not a TUI app. So go to local/share/applications. Open the config for this TUI app you just built and remove the XDG- terminal-exec part of the command because again, it's not a TUI app. It's a desktop app. Remove TUI.tile and you'll be able to open up desktop apps that you build nice and neatly. Just build it as an app image and point your exec command to it. Third, to set up a default terminal that isn't ghosty kitty or elacrity. Just install it and add it to this.config/xdg-terminals.list. I have a link below walking you through how to do that as well. Number four, bigger monitors will make the text tiny. You'll need to add a bigger scale to the hyperland input.config file. This is what I have set. Number five, check out Vime. It's a way to navigate web pages without a mouse. Just hit F and choose whatever corresponding link on the page you want to go to. And you can use Vim commands to scroll up and down, etc. Six, go to local/share/omarie/bin, and check out the scripts that Omar uses to do many of its tasks like launch web app, toggle way, update, set, reboot, etc. Just cat some of these, and it'll give you a better understanding as to how this package or OS runs. And then finally, number seven, run BTOP because that's what everybody does. Okay, lastly, let's talk about switching between computers. So, if you run this on a BLink like we mentioned or another computer, you'll want to be able to easily switch between that and say your MacBook and ideally share the same mouse and keyboard for each. And to do this, you'll need a KVM switch like this UG Green USB 3.0 switch selector. It's like a $30 purchase. And how this works is you have four USB inputs in the front. There you attach the peripherals you want to share across devices. For me, this is my keyboard, mouse, and speakers. Then there are two USB ports in the back that go to each machine, say the Blink, and to your MacBook or USB hub. And once that's set up, you just click this button to switch your peripherals between devices. You'll also need to be able to, if you use a single monitor like I do, to switch between monitor inputs as well. I have a Ben Q monitor that has a KVM solution built in. And this puck that comes with it allows me to just click a button to switch between the two. If you don't have this, you may just have to manually go and change the input to switch over to the other computer. And there are more elaborate KVM options out there where you can plug your monitor in there and not have to worry about this. But my monitor has a simple solution. I didn't need it. But for me, it's two clicks. Hit the button on the KVM switch for peripherals and then on the puck for visuals. and I'm back and forth between my Linux setup and my Mac in seconds. However, as I mentioned before, I just picked up some used computer stuff on Facebook Marketplace and now have an Omari Windows dual boot setup with a shared drive between them. If you're interested in how that's put together, just let me know below and I'll do a video on it or join us in the Travis Media community and we can chat more about it there. So, what do you think about this Linux setup? It has me excited once again and has pushed me to Linux as my main driver in a way that has stuck for some time now. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below. If you found this video helpful, give it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, consider doing so. And I'll see you in the next video.

Try Sevalla (sponsor) and get $50 free credit: https://geni.us/hwF05 Most people “try” Linux and then abandon it. In this video, I walk through how to set up a Linux machine you’ll actually use as a daily workstation. Not a VM. Not virtualization. Not a Raspberry Pi. A real, independent Linux setup that can replace your existing Mac or Windows workflow. We’ll cover hardware, OS choice, tiling window managers, keyboard-first workflows, KVM switching, dual booting, and how to stop fighting Linux so it actually sticks. Links, configs, and guides mentioned are below 👇 * Thank you Sevalla for sponsoring this video. Join the Travis Media Community - https://travis.media/community 🕒 Timestamps 00:00 Intro 00:50 The plan 01:27 Sponsor 02:46 What to run it on? 03:20 What OS to run? 06:23 Installing Omarchy 07:09 On a partition? 07:50 Understanding Omarchy (overview) 13:11 7 rapid fire tips & tricks 15:06 Easily switch between computers 16:44 Outro 📢 Video mentions - Beelink Mini-PC - https://amzn.to/4pVmp1o - UGreen KVM switch - https://amzn.to/3KHvKdR - How to manage dotfiles with GNU Stow - https://travis.media/blog/manage-dotfiles-with-gnu-stow/ - How to install Omarchy on partition and dual boot - https://travis.media/blog/install-omarchy-partition-dual-boot-windows/ - My dotfiles - https://github.com/rodgtr1/dotfiles 🎥 Watch These Next 🎥 https://youtu.be/995-SYn6960 https://youtu.be/EMWNZtCYg5s https://youtu.be/LnKoncbQBsM FOLLOW ME ON Twitter - https://x.com/travisdotmedia LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/travisdotmedia FAVORITE TOOLS AND APPS: Udemy deals, updated regularly - https://travis.media/udemy ZeroToMastery - https://geni.us/AbMxjrX Camera - https://amzn.to/3LOUFZV Lens - https://amzn.to/4fyadP0 Microphone - https://amzn.to/3sAwyrH ** My Coding Blueprints ** Learn to Code Web Developer Blueprint - https://geni.us/HoswN2 AWS/Python Blueprint - https://geni.us/yGlFaRe - FREE Both FREE in the Travis Media Community - https://imposterdevs.com FREE EBOOKS 📘 https://travis.media/ebooks #omarchy #linux #linuxsetup