I used to be a Manjaro Linux user. However, since I bought my new MSI Prestige 15 laptop as well as left my software engineer job about 2 years ago, my journey as a daily Linux user paused.

Few months after I bought my new laptop, I actually tried to install Manjaro in an external harddisk to get a taste, but the experience was not very good: I found many optimizations provided by MSI to this Windows laptop don’t have a good and simple alternative on Linux. For example, the audio optimization powered by Nahimic, optimized color profiles by True Color, power and battery management in Creator Center. Especially the last one allow me to set battery charging limit and CPU power throttle in just a few clicks, which is so handy, keeping my battery health and usage time very well. Some hardware couldn’t work either in that Manjaro installation, like the micro SD card reader and the fingerprint sensor. Even the wireless module couldn’t always be detected. Since then, I chose to stick back with Windows and WSL.

Even so, I can’t stop thinking about using Linux as my daily system. The smooth and elegant UI/UX that Gnome DE gave is unforgettable. (Especially I can never get comfortable with the dull taskbar and the non-tabbed file explorer in Windows 10) Furthermore, while Linux should be one of my major career skills, I have a feeling that my experience with it is fading. I know that even if I don’t have the energy to dive into a serious Linux project at the moment, I should still work with Linux more often, passively refresh my knowledge. So, even if I expect that installing Linux on my laptop may not give me the best all-rounded user experience, and I may encounter system problems from time to time, spending extra time to resolve them (in some sense it is what I want now), I still want to give it a try again.