I’ve been using Linux for years, but as the proprietary alternatives get more aggressive with telemetry and adverts, I wanted to document the choices that actually keep my desktop predictable.
This isn’t a manual, but a practical overview of my setup. From why I’ve settled on CachyOS and KDE Plasma for my main rig, to the reality of dealing with proprietary software and app compatibility in 2026. It’s just an honest look at the transition and why I’m done with the corporate defaults.
Why ‘still’? Linux is only getting better and other options are getting worse.
Maybe a “Youtube-like title” for the fun (or dare I say, habit) of it?
I would explain why I still use my butt to poop in 2026, butt I assume you already know the most likely explanation …
The linked blog has a normal title.
Bro still buttin’, ohio hand-squish rizz fr rn
This just in: Why I’m staying with my husband that doesn’t beat me, doesn’t gaslight me, doesn’t rape children or explain daily why rapists should run our country. He helps with chores too. The reason will shock you.
It’s his dick, obviously
Alright, I’m lost in the analogy now. What’s the dick in Linux?
Cool desktop customisations, obviously.
That sense of superiority for using Linux? The ‘btw’ those arch folks use?
btw I use arch is what you say when you show your partner your ikea shark and stripey socks
Why I still drive a Ferrari instead of the poop smelling ice cream truck.
What surprises me more is that someone feels the need to justify staying on Linux at all. That’s a conversation that shouldn’t even exist.
The question has almost always been the other way around: why use anything else?
I’ve said some negative things about KDE Plasma feeling like three desktop oses taped together, but the latest version the fixed all that and it’s pretty good.
I still want to destroy all the hotksys and window decorations, but it just works, and it works well, and it works for edge cases where Gnome and Cosmic crash or fail silently.
KDE is pretty good, and I say that about a very small amount of software.
Also: I just switched to Nixos and now I can actually setup systemd units without wanting to shoot myself in the face. So that’s nice.
You know you can change the hotkeys and window decorations right? That’s the great thing about KDE. You have choices.
Sure, but being good out of the box is very important for normal users. Power users love the crazy customization. Normal people don’t really care.
Fair point, but out of the box KDE has pretty sane defaults these days. It’s a very inoffensive desktop.
I have just a couple customizations that I do immediately on a fresh install, but it certainly wouldn’t kill me to use it as it comes.
I know but I don’t really care whether my OS is good for normal users. In fact the more it is the less I’ll like it.
Normal users love someone taking control and all their data and telling them what’s what. A “Linux for the masses” will be inevitably pure trash, something akin to ChromeOS now (which is kinda already linux for the masses). They literally want all the things we hate. For a company to know everything about them, to take all their data, to tell them what they can do and they can’t so they feel ‘safe’.
As soon as Linux becomes a masses thing, it means lots of money can be made off it, and companies will jump on it to enshittify it as much as they can. So I’m really hoping that “the year of Linux on the desktop” will never happen.
And yet you use & support systemd…
Omg shut up. Nobody controls Systemd, it’s open source.
Uh, the systemd devs do.
The “systemd devs” are anyone with the cashe to contribute to it. Yes, you need to be competent dev for your merges to be accepted, unlike in the virus-infested AUR.
But systemd can be forked if you don’t trust said devs. You’d be in the minority though because the majority of distros out there chose to adopt systemd, because it is that good.
The “systemd devs” are anyone with the cashe to contribute to it.
Not really, unless you’re employed by one of the big tech companies contributing to it, your pull requests are piped directly to the shredder, same with xorg, gnome, etc.
You can fork them, but why bother when it’s a mess designed to ensure the employment of its contributors, ‘WallyWare’ if you will.
Do you have any actual problems with systemd, or do you just want SysV init scripts to stick around forever?
Maybe systemd isn’t the best, but it’s way better than a bunch of mostly unstructured shell scripts, and more secure (it’s pretty easy to reduce privileges, sandbox the filesystem, restrict syscalls, etc per service just by editing the unit file)
