1 year into the linux comeback

It’s been about a year into my linux comeback utilizing Pop OS on my Thinkpad x220. I was using Windows 10 for a little while and I have experience with distrohopping way back during the pandemic years. Mainly, I was prompted with the death of Windows 10 (LTSC is still fine) last year to get back into daily driving a linux distribution. So how’s that been going this year? Swimmingly I’d say. I don’t do any sort of intensive video editing or video gaming so I’ve been able to make peace with using less in my day-to-day experience.

Pop OS has a record of being pretty stable and reliable for most users. I’ve seen varying levels of elitism regarding whether Pop OS is a good distro to use. Whether arguing for privacy reasons or package managers, it all comes down to preferences. For me, I’ve little interest in ricing the desktop and prefer to utilize package managers that make things as simple as possible. Using Flatpaks isn’t super ideal but for me it usually gets the job done, if I’m not using an AppImage file or building from source straight out. I’ve heard lots of controversy coming from the release of the Cosmic desktop environment and it being littered with bugs and breaking features. Luckily, I’m not using it and I prefer instead to stay on to 22.04 LTS for now. Most of my software needs are super simple and covered by most things on POP OS. I mainly use LibreWriter for all of my posts and FireDragon as my web browser. I’ve never really had any issues with crashes or slow performance.

The Thinkpad X220 works surprisingly well in 2026. One main issue that crops up is the inability for the computer to fall asleep without powering off, which I think could be attributed to the need to apply thermal paste? It’s dubious whether I need to alter any power settings or go into the terminal to troubleshoot it. Either way it works fine for all of my needs. I mainly use it to do torrenting or just general web browsing.

Gaming is always an issue when it comes to Linux distros. For me, I honestly don’t play any online games that require stupid anticheat spyware so I’m happy with what I have. I think ultimately that anything worth playing will also work on Linux. I’m not going out of my way to purchase new hardware for the sole purpose of playing the latest games. I’m pretty happy with this aspect of the experience overall.

So what does the future hold for me using Linux? I’ll probably just keep trucking along. Linux is the way to go as far as I’m concerned for using a desktop PC. I have zero intention of using Windows or Mac OS for any sort of personal use.