However, I have a preference for what I consider the rounder (and actually more Windows-like) user interface of Linux Mint. In fact, my machine didcome with Ubuntu pre-configured and it worked very nicely. Maybe they are useful for others interested in making the switch.īefore you start, be aware that you can make your life easier by buying the model I have with Linux Ubuntu 18.04 pre-installed. Here are some experiences and things I learned when configuring and installing Linux Mint 19.1 on my new Dell Precision 5530 (64 GB, 2TB SDD, 4K display, NVida P1000) with TB 16 Dock and an external 4K Dell Display. Therefore, it was time again to give a plain Linux install a new chance when my old Macbook Pro had to be replaced recently. At the same time, MacOS development has virtually stalled and on the Windows side, forced updates have wreaked havoc on the data of many users. But Linux development hasn’t stopped and today the situation is hugely improved.

This came from my frustration at the time about the many driver and periphery management issues I had encountered with the Linux versions that were around back then. Since 2012, however, I used a Mac, with Linux running in a virtual machine. I have now used Linux as my main driver since 2009. In Linux Mint that’s two mouse clicks in the software repos….) So, while setup may be a little more involved than with a Windows or Mac computer, you benefit from it later on, when installing and maintaining things gets a lot easier (If you’re an economist: ever tried to configure a Mac for using, e.g. Also, most Linux distributions have the most important open source scientific software ready to install in their repositories. Linux is also a great OS to run scientific software since it is lightweight in terms of resources. GNU/Linux operating systems are an open-source alternative where we can actually decide freely how much information about ourselves we share with others. That entails keeping a healthy distance to the closed eco-systems of commercial operating systems such as Windows or MacOS (not to speak of Android or iOS) which collect ever more data about everything we do on our computers and online. We should also make sure that the code we use, including the applications we run the code on, are free and transparent.Įqually, I believe that we as academics have a special responsibility to teach our students to become free and independent digital citizens. students or researchers in developing countries) to buy super-expensive software to reproduce research. I firmly believe that using open source software is an important prerequisite for reproducible and accessible research.

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