As others said, the fix will be easy. Reinstalling everything should never be something you have to do. In the very worst case scenario, chrooting should solve any situation. Contrary to other OS, even removing system files will not force you to do a fresh install from scratch.

My tiling WM journey was awesomewm, I3, dwm, and now bspwm.

I use a modified chrome.css to hide all the bars in Librewolf. Interestingly my tweak for the address bar doesn’t work anymore, so I’ll have to find a new working piece of code.

A related post that you may find interesting: https://lemmy.ml/post/23440879

I have gmail, exchange, and disroot accounts setup in neomutt. For gmail I had to generate an app specific password for neomutt because I use 2FA with gmail and neomutt doesn’t use Oauth2 as authentication method. Although, I was too lazy to try them, there are some options to use xoauth2. No surprise, exchange was the trickiest one to get working. I have to use Davmail for that. Behind an apparent complexity you just need your exchange email URL to get it running, and then you use the Davmail ports in neomutt.

Neomutt (with notmuch) is not easy when starting from scratch. Luckily there are some configurations online that get you up and running quickly. It still requires some efforts to get use to it and configured to your detailed and specific needs. I put sweat to build mine but it worth every single drop.
That being said that’s what makes its strength. It’s not an email client, it’s your email client. Once it’s configured, it’s good forever and using anything else feels like a pain.

While I’ve tried both, I am not sensitive to any of these trends. I’m just glad to see some alternatives that can fit anyone needs. That’s the power of the open-source.

Although I understand the reasoning beyond the language used in this post, I’m sad to read that hardened privacy is considered a power user thing.

You’ll soon join the dark side of minimalism where neither tabs nor stacks are an option. That’s where tiling WM push you eventually ;) I use librewolf (fork of Firefox) with no bars whatsoever so I can benefit of the entire screen space to show me what matters: the content. I’ve coupled it with the tridactyl extension for a lot of reasons, one being that it can show me the list of tabs with a keybinding (simply pressing “T” in my case).

Any more details? ;)

I can see that from a server maintenance point of view. After having read so many great things about NixOS, I may have exaggerated my expectation and I may be the problem for being a user with too limited needs to get the full benefits of NixOS.

For me this single config file doesn’t save that much additional files and most of them would be files you configure only once during installation. Nonetheless I can see how “easier” it would be to save one file instead of 3 to reproduce your system and I can only imagine how much better it is from a server point of view.

Right, I didn’t know updating firmware from the fwupd service was came pre-installed in Pop_OS.
So you only have one more task on your list: enjoying your new laptop! :)

Enjoy this little guy and Linux! You won’t regret your choice.
As I mentioned in the other thread, I’d advise to keep your firmware up to date with fwupd. Litterally one command line and your system will automatically update all firmware for you (including the bios). This is too often overlooked while very important and this tool makes the process so simple (no search, no manual download, no complex commands).

Wish someone would come with something like tut for mastodon.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Always interesting to hear how things are (not) working for others. The only negative side of Linux - which is at the same time a good thing in other aspects - is the behavior difference across distros. Arch is working smoothly on the XPS 13 and the Razer Book 13 which is a very similar machine.

I have no doubt Tuxedo is great. My friend was just not lucky with his laptop. Like any brands there’re various positive and negative stories about their machines. Just here we have different experiences with Dell and Tuxedo. That’s just frustrating when you’re trying to collect info to help you decide on a buy. Ending up with issues while you did your best to prevent them is really a killer to the excitement you should have with your new laptop.

What was your issue with the webcam? It may depend on the distro but mine works well even though I almost always use an external camera instead because most webcam quality sucks on any laptop and OS anyway.

Supporting Linux/open-source companies is certainly a plus. Not that there machines will work better but it makes more sense if you really want to adhere to the global philosophy of open-source. For the record I still didn’t go that route because either I couldn’t find the right machine or the price was significantly higher for similar products and I didn’t take the “risk” to spend more without enough certainty on the build quality. Experience varies and I’m sad to say that I convinced a friend to switch to Linux and he immediately jump on a Tuxedo machine but unfortunately it had a lot of issues out of the box. One remains but I will not blame the company for this one (compatibility with a hiDPI external monitor).

XPS13 has very highly positive reviews from several sources. I’ve had the same dilemma as you 3 years ago and went with the XPS13 9310 and I’m extremely happy with it. So much that I bought an on sale Razer Book 13 for my wife since it’s almost an XPS 13 with a different name.
Note that I don’t have the “developer” version of the XPS but it runs with no issues at all. I can install Linux myself, don’t need someone to do that for me and I’m not using Ubuntu anyway. Also, the delivery delay were insane when I bought it and I was extremely lucky to find a “regular” version in one of my local stores.

I’ve tried a lot of laptops over 30 years and no brand was convincing enough to get me returning to them every time. I just go where I can find the hardware I need enclosed in a well-enough robust case and I’m done. All the parts are sold by the same manufacturers anyway. The difference between brands is just which parts are assembled together and how well it’s done.

As a bonus, it’s also nice that the firmware of the XPS 13 (including the bios) can be updated with fwupd.

If you’re using only one monitor, simply duplicate and scale your laptop screen instead of using the extended approach.
To give you a rough idea, this will look to something like this:
xrandr --output eDP1 --mode 1366x768 --scale 1x1 --output HDMI1 --same-as eDP1 --mode 1920x1080 --scale 0.711x0.711
Use xrandr to find the monitors names and resolution. The scale option is simply the ratio between your 2 resolutions.

The behavior you are requesting of bspwm is counter-intuitive to this rule you specifically wrote. Nonetheless, if VS Code popup windows have a different instance name, you could have a script running in the background which checks instance name of any new window and execute the command bspc desktop -f last when a VS Code popup appears.
If the instance name is the same for VS Code main app and its popup windows, you may listen to the state of VS Code windows (using bspc subscribe; see the manpage) and execute the previous command on VS Code floating windows (because popups will be floating).
For example, apply this to all VS Code windows:

while bspc subscribe -c 1 node_focus node_state > /dev/null; do
    bspc query -N -n "focused.floating" | while read -r wid; do
    bspc desktop -n $wid -f last
done

For your second question, if I understand correctly you’re trying to have a given workspace moving to your external monitor when available and returning to your primary monitor if no other monitor is connected. You can look at the archwiki to learn how to setup bspwm for multi monitors. Using the same if conditions as explained in this wiki you could also have for example a rule bspc rule -a Code follow=on desktop='^4' when only one monitor is connected, and bspc rule -a Code follow=on desktop='^7' when an external monitor is connected (and workspace 7 will be defined to be shown on your external monitor).

Any headphones should work (if your hardware supports it if using bluetooth). I’ve connected at least 4 different brands from no name to Aftershokz with no issues. Even tried airpods for a friend.

Terminal is faster when you’re used to it and sometimes offer more customization options to some apps that has both a GUI and TUI/CLI version.

I use the terminal (st with zsh and tmux) for:

• file management (advcpmv, fd, trash-cli, fzf …)
• emails (neomutt)
• text editing/coding (neovim)
• project management (taskjuggler)
• image viewing/organization (ucolla,ge)
• online video browsing (ytfzf)
• calendar (khal)
• ssh
• vpn
• news aggregator (newsboat)
• web, bookmarks manager (buku)
• passwords manager (pass)
• dotfiles manager (stow)
• not in the terminal but I also have a lot of scripts used in rofi to control my audio input/outputs, launch a web search, access my bookmarks, autocomplete username and password fields

I’m sure I’m missing some obvious tools I use daily. It’s hard remember everything when it becomes so natural.

I have shared my experience with some of these tools here.

Thanks for the information. I’m always happy to hear from others because that’s how I make progress. Also with my workflow in constant evolution it’s good to know neovim’s limitations so I can be prepared. Being curious by nature I will try other apps with no doubts anyway. I’ve tried vi, neovim, emacs, but only heard of VS so who knows…