Almost every foray into linux on the desktop (when I was younger) for me started with seeing a cool video online with window effects (Compiz being the one I remember), installing linux on a new partition, spend the day getting most of my hardware working and playing with Compiz and other cool visualization utils (I can't remember the name of a tool that would add computers stats and whatnot to your desktop background, "nerd"/"geek"-something maybe?). Then after I spent a day getting it all working I'd be staring at my computer and it wouldn't take more than an hour or two to think "Ok, that's cool but I want to play a game" or something else that I couldn't do in linux.
You are likely thinking of conky. It was included on some distros with a basic layout, but you could spend hours just adding other stats to it and changing colors.
That sounds familiar, maybe the name I'm thinking of was the windows version/copy/port or something. All of those were neat and I'd spend countless hours (this was back in HS so I had tons of free time) configuring it and looking at screenshots that people posted to see what parts I want to recreate and then in the end I'd realize I never see my desktop background, like ever lol. Even now with 4 monitors you can't see my desktop background anywhere, I'm sure it's still the default macOS desktop because I never see it.
I still remember the hundred page thread started by the author of conky on ubuntuforums.org. Back when I'd volunteer time on that site to help new ubuntu users. Blast from the past.
> Then after I spent a day getting it all working I'd be staring at my computer and it wouldn't take more than an hour or two to think "Ok, that's cool but I want to play a game" or something else that I couldn't do in linux.
Hah, for me, this was when I started getting deep into WINE and also some of the games available for Linux (SuperTux, that one game where you shoot a ball and it sticks to other balls and if enough of them are the same color they disappear, and some DOOM port).
I did the same for sure, played every native linux game there was but at the time most of the game I played were rough under wine. CS: Source, TF2, L4D, and WoW were all pretty hard to get reliably running especially compared to their windows performance (note, this was 2007-2009 range). I still remember a youtube video showing WoW running on Wine and they had Compiz so you could see WoW running then they switched (using the rotating cube transition) to another desktop. The video claimed it was getting higher FPS on Linux+Wine vs Windows so I of course dropped everything to try it.... I did not have similar results.
Heh, my time with Linux was before then, I think - but only by a couple of years. I do recall having some fun experimenting with StarCraft and NFS: Hot Pursuit (the og 1998 version, not the 2010 remake) under Wine, though.
