so long, windows

I've always had windows on my work computers, and have built up quite a bit of "muscle memory" over the (ahem) decades for how to use it; the hard part is what to analysis to do or image to look at, not how to do open the image. I didn't want to change my computer setup, but am unwilling to use windows 11, given all its privacy & AI intrusions and limitations. The last few months I've switched over to linux, and it's ... pretty much fine; everything is working more-or-less like it was before.

My hope is that this may smooth the path for other neuroscience folks considering a linux switch but hesitant or unsure how to go about it. For framing, I am most assuredly not a linux guru; I started with some experience using linux servers managed by others, but zero desire to switch my trusty mousepad for a command prompt or to spend days/weeks/months relearning how to do routine work tasks. But now you'd now have to look fairly closely to notice that the software changed on my work computer in the last six months, and I consider that a good thing.

os: zorin linux

There are a lot of "flavors" of linux, and choosing one is daunting. Since my goal was to keep my computers as windows-ish as possible (and not fiddle with settings) I chose Zorin 18 pro, and highly recommend it. I was wondering if hardware would be a hassle (my desktop computer has two monitors, two hard drives, a USB webcam, keyboard, and my beloved vintage Fingerworks iGesture mousepad), but everything just worked no problems whatsoever. (I've since also installed Zorin linux to dual-boot with windows on my laptop, also without hardware difficulty.)

My desktop computer has two drives: a smaller one for the operating system, and a larger for file storage. I had the zorin installation program reformat the smaller drive, but left the larger unchanged; it's still formatted NTFS as it was for windows. I was worried the mixed drive formats would cause trouble but haven't had any, nor any speed issues. 

Zorin comes with an array of menu/desktop appearance layouts: some mimic windows, others mac os or other linux versions. I picked a windows style, and then tweaked the start menu, colors, etc. to my preference. The oddest thing I changed from defaults was the "desktop environment", from wayland to x11, mostly because I wanted a picture gallery screensaver (screensavers are apparently a contentious topic in linux circles). Changing the start menu was non-intuitive: via the (installed) System Tools -> Main Menu program, not via settings or right-clicking on the start menu itself. 

software

Many programs have linux versions (R, zoom, etc.) and so are no problem (install from the Zorin Software collection directly or the programs' website; clicking the start menu and typing a program's name brings up an installer in many cases), but others present more of a challenge. 

The biggest hurdle for me was OneNote: LibreOffice (comes with Zorin) is fine, but doesn't have a OneNote equivalent. I first tried Logseq, but ended up going with Joplin. Which to use is definitely a matter of personal style and preference (e.g., my notes are organized hierarchically and I don't like tags); in my case some of the individual page layouts and formatting got scrambled in the conversion, but the critical text, images, and page organization all came through fine, and I can make new pages without difficulty:

I have a lot of Powerpoint and Word documents; LibreOffice has been managing them fine so far, but wanting Microsoft Office to be available "just in case" is the primary reason I installed Zorin linux on my laptop as dual-boot instead of removing windows entirely. 

In no particular order, here are some of the programs I used on windows and what I'm using instead on linux (I didn't list programs which are available for both, such as RStudio). Many came with Zorin, others I installed via its Software "store".  

• Notepad++ -> NotepadNext
• TigerVNC -> Remmina
• Snipping Tool -> Gradia
• Foxit & Sumatra (pdfs) -> qpdfview (has tabs; for knitr compiling), Document Viewer (for highlighting & notes), LibreOffice Draw (for complex editing)
• WinMerge -> Meld
• WinSCP -> FileZilla 
• File Manager -> Dolphin (for navigation), Files (GNOME Nautilus; for mounting smb and turtle git)
• tortoise git -> turtle git
• MS Office -> LibreOffice; MS OneNote -> Joplin
• 7-zip -> File Roller

remaining headaches

I'm still puzzled why some file operations (smb mounting, turtle git) work differently in Files and Dolphin. I prefer Dolphin's navigation-tree layout and right-click options, but can only access smb-mounted files from Rstudio if I login via Files.

MRIcron and mango work fine for nifti and dicom image viewing, but I start the programs by double-clicking on their executables; getting pretty desktop icons or start menu items for them is tricky (you can't just right-click on the executable and make a working shortcut). Programs installed from the Software store don't have this configuration problem, so I assume it's something related to how I did the installation.

FileZilla often seems slower than winscp, despite connecting to the same servers. I think FileZilla disconnects more completely, requiring it to pause and reconnect when I, e.g., double-click a text file for viewing. There may be a setting for this? I had to change several FileZilla defaults, including increasing the Timeout time and changing the Double-click action on files to View/Edit. Setting file associations is still tricky; it doesn't always "see" installed programs, despite messing with the Flatseal permissions.