Pop!_OS - Linux for devs

What is Pop!_OS

Pop!_OS is an operating system for STEM and creative professionals who use their computer as a tool to discover and create. Unleash your potential on secure, reliable open-source software. Based on your exceptional curiosity, we sense you have a lot of it. - system76

Why use Pop!_OS over other distros

• Designed for fast navigation
• Fluid workspaces focused for convenient workflow
• Encourages you to make something new

I have been using Linux for last 2 to 3 years but I am yet to come across a distribution which has been a developer-centric operating system.

It claims that a number of dev toolkits work flawlessly

• Deep learning

  1. Tensorman
  2. Tensorflow
  3. PyTorch
  4. Cafe
  5. Jupyter
  6. Matlab

• Engineering

  1. VS code
  2. ROS
  3. KiCad
  4. Cafe
  5. Android Studio
  6. Arduino IDE

It also supports Media production and Bioinformatics, check here for more info

Some key features

1. Encrypted install by default with full-disk encryption out of the box
2. No forced updates
3. Privacy centric - Minimal OS and hardware data is used but not stored
4. Automatic firmware updates
5. Hybrid graphics
6. Preconfigured for gaming on Linux
7. System-wide dark mode

Personal thoughts

Although I have been using Arch for a while now when I saw Pop!_os it almost made me want to jump ships. I tried it out and it just worked perfectly. As mentioned earlier this feels very "productivity-focused" distribution. The workflow on this thing is amazing and to my surprise, they also have their own tiling manager called pop shell. It adds an extra layer to the environment and makes it a serious choice for power-users. This will surely boost your productivity once you get used to it.

Hope this helped 💖

Comments

[S R Gokul Krishnan]

Boy, I'm tempted. But I just recently moved onto clear Linux by Intel a few months ago. I'll try out pop! at some point again. I'm particularly impressed it supports i3 style tiling as well, without actually having to configure it.

[Sakshat]

Yes it's very tempting

[Michael Harding]

About a year ago, I got on this minimalist kick and tried to start my foray into Linux with Arch and Void on my old computer. Didn't go so well, and killed my productivity so bad that I went so far as buying a Surface Pro. However, after seeing the Lemur Pro and Pop!_OS, I'm tempted to get one of those for my next computer as I'm already somehow maxing out my 16 GB of ram on the Surface Pro.