Been on linux for almost half a year now. Don’t miss a single bit of windows, thanks to steam proton. Also thanks to microsoft for pushing me over.
As much as people complain about electron (some valid, some not) Linux has benefited quite a bit to the cross platform availability of local applications.
I’m a very recent convert. I downloaded mint a couple months ago after seeing that my entire steam library was rated as highly compatible on protondb. At first I planned to dual boot but I didn’t have any reason at all to use windows and finally just took the plunge and made Mint my daily, and sole, driver
Jeez. Pathetic losers. On Linux for 15 years never thought of going back.
And u know what? It was harder back in the days nowadays all software is in the browser anyways so what are u even missing.This weekend I want to make a point to finally begin the transition to Linux…
Is it necessary though? Microsoft have already been campaigning pretty hard to get people to switch to Linux. Telling people their perfectly good PCs won’t work anymore because the operating system is expiring, and they can’t even “upgrade” to Windows 11 is a pretty powerful message.
Alright, I need to move my main desktop to linux. Help me decide which distribution. Note that I already run a desktop-less server on Debian, a raspi on their flavor of deb and have a laptop I rarely use on fedora (installed it to test the waters, but Mint would probably suit its use case more).
My main desktop PC is on windows and I wanna switch but im not sure which distro to switch to. The thing needs to be gaming ready for 2024 hardware. Debian is too slow to update for such a use case, I dont jive with Ubuntu philosophy, Arch is… im just not that kind of guy… so Im leaning on Fedora but I kinda dont like that it has 100 updates every time I boot it up. Is there any in between? Stable and quick with updates, but not when updates can crash the thing?
I know you said you’re not an Arch kinda guy…but I highly recommend Garuda.
Takes away most of the rough parts of running Arch, and comes in more flavours than you can shake a stick at. The forums are highly active, and Devs/admins/mods are very quick to respond to question/issue posts.
Edit: I’ve only had one single update related fuckery in the 3ish years I’ve been running it, and it was through personal error.
Peppermint is worth checking out. I don’t game but Debian and some extra on top. Lightweight
I’m going to be migrating to Linux and using Mint. I’m just paranoid about doing something wrong and accidentally walking into a security vulnerability. So I want to set aside time to properly learn things and understand what I’m doing but I’m just busy AF these days…
Basically don’t run random sudo(superuser do, root access) commands you find on the internet without reading what the command does from docs or asking ai.
Leaving windows makes you more secure.
Also don’t worry about turning secureboot off. It makes it a lot less annoying and gets rid of a lot of issues. Also also steam doesn’t like running on linux and having it’s library on windows filesystem you gotta format them both, if your games are on a separate drive.
There you go, the two hurdles i had with linux.
Agreed.
Had the same problem with the Steam library on a Windows filesystem and some annoyances with NTFS drives.
Other than that, pretty easy overall (you have to tinker around with some games and wineversions though)
Take it slow and do it the right way, don’t let Lemmy pressure you if you’re making slow but steady progress. It’s a learning curve for sure
I have four pieces of advice
- btrfs file system for easy backup and recovery
- Encrypt your drive
- use an ad blocker everywhere
- use virus total to scan anything you might be wary of, and if you really feel like you need an AV, they do exist for Linux.
I usually prefer Debian based systems, but when I finally ditched windows 3 weeks ago, I switched to Manjaro, and I’m loving it. You got this!
What’s wrong with EXT4 ?
If you are worried about disk space don’t use backup on btrfs though it fills up yr drive I never encrypt my drive but maybe you should Manjaro is great though!
Download a new OS // Download the operating system you want to install. Search for Linux distributions for beginners to get some suggestions.
I feel like it’s better to actually list/suggest a few beginner distros than to tell people to look it up.
I recommend Gentoo for a beginner.
What better way to understand your new OS than by compiling it from scratch?
Linux Mint (XFCE desktop) is the best for beginners coming from Windows, in my opinion. Linux enthusiasts will fawn over KDE because of customization, but they ignore that the vast majority of people don’t want to spend months tweaking pixels, widgets and animations, they just want to use the computer.
Mint looks pretty dated tho. I would go with Kubuntu because it looks pretty similar to Windows and is sleek and modern even without any customizations
Realistically, the best distro for a Windows user is one that runs all their existing Windows software (both applications and games) right out of the box.
Does any distro even come close to doing that?
Not that I’m aware of. Wine only goes so far before programs misbehave. It didn’t work well with heroes of might and magic 5 for me in 2022, for instance, terrible framerate
My point is that the site should be recommending a few newbie distros, instead of telling the newbie to search it. Specially because the choice of a distribution isn’t that meaningful in the long run, but newbies struggle picking one.
That said I agree Mint would be a good choice. Not sure on Xfce; I’d probably recommend Cinnamon instead, as it looks a bit more modern (even if myself would rather use MATE or Xfce than Cinnamon).
Windows user: I’m thinking about switching to Linux, mind helping me out Linux User?
Linux user: ok, so what you want to do is just figure it out yourself.
Windows user: finds debian and fucks everything up wow Linux is terrible, I’ll stick to using Windows 11.
Speaking on that: a lot of people act as if promoting Linux means simply “to get others to install it”. And they ignore that the newbie will need help the first days, weeks, even months. Then the newbie gets burned out and switches back to Windows.
That probably explains why some people manage to retain even tech illiterate people using Linux, while others struggle to convince even tech literate ones to switch.
I like https://distrochooser.de/
Why do you suggest Mint over Ubuntu?
Ubuntu is developed and controlled by a corporation (canonical) and they have some non ideal practices (like pushing snaps heavily instead of the more open flatpaks or native apps). Mint takes what’s good in Ubuntu and cleans it up a lot.
Mint in any of its default offerings feels significantly more familiar to a Windows environment than default Ubuntu, Lubuntu (LXDE desktop) or Xubuntu (XFCE desktop), making the migration “less painful”;
The ISO image is ~1GB smaller \Snaps probably 😆
Because fuck snaps
As a newer Linux user I think the priority in communication should be use Mint and then have some general information about how Linux isn’t Windows, with some key differences and how to do things. I know that’s more complicated than just saying it, but a “simple” get started guide would ease transition a lot.
Yeah, I agree. Especially since there’s SO much information out there that’ll come up if they try to search, and lots of it isn’t good, and tons of it is conflicting with each other. It’s best to make it as easy and simple as possible. Like just suggest Mint or something.
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Zorin OS is going to be the best for windows refugees. It is so far ahead in this area that it isn’t even remotely close.
I don’t know why people keep trotting out mint. Mint has far too many issues to be a serious suggestion.
I was just on Zorin OS web page and I like what I am seeing.
Have to set some time aside this weekend to seeing dual booting it
Mint has a common issue of destroying itself on updates. It happened again to a coworker of mine a week ago when he decided to give nix a go (we are both systems engineers/network engineers).
That and mint’s GUI elements are a thin veneer. There is still a lot of legacy garbage. It isn’t made with the premise of “this GUI needs to be rock solid”. It seems to be built upon the old tired bullshit that nix users always trot out e.g. “most users only log into x y z site and make a document once in a while” or some shit. It simply isn’t true.
Most users do a variety of things. Some may be complicated, some may not be. The reason I tell people that Zorin is the distro of choice for refugees is that Zorin understood the assignment (although there are some very specific areas where it offers too much choice to the user, but those are exceedingly minor) and realized that the GUI and UX centered around that GUI is everything. Especially when you are trying to court windows users.
It should be noted that I am quite familiar with *nix, and he is to some degree familiar with it. Another guy we work with switched to popos on a whim a little over a week ago. He said he’s really enjoying it.
Thank you for the answer! Much appreciated.
Mint has a common issue of destroying itself on updates.
Could you be more explicit? Like, I don’t think it literally deletes itself from your drive. Right? So, what is it then?
I feel like eveyone should reccomend Fedora KDE edition, its close enough to Windows for new users and modern enough to not push people away.
People have their gripes over the “big corporation” side of this but I also daily drive fedora KDE and I love it. My only complaint is 2 things.
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Wireless shuts off after long periods of sleep. Suck if I’m torrenting my Linux isos.
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Very rarely it’ll freeze up and I need to hard restart.
Both of which could be a me issue. But besides that it’s a beautiful, easily and highly customizable system. Highly reccomend as well.
I also have issue number 2 with fedora KDE (kinoite). It’s happened like 3 times in the past several months
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How can I convince the GF to switch? She only plays The Sims and the occasional hentai game; her Skylake i5 and 1050ti are more than adequate for those tasks. Yet she refuses to try Linux; won’t even let me install LTSC to buy some time.
I think she just wants an excuse to buy a new laptop. She’s the kind of person who replaces her shower curtain every six months, rather than do the sane thing and simply wash it. I’ll never understand such a wasteful mentality.
My gf is on win 11 and doesn’t uses it mainly for very light gaming and work. I offered it to her once and she doesn’t care.
Her windows is already having fun problems people think only linux has like her not being able to pay except using edge and other small annoyances. I just say “weird, if it works flawless on linux why doesn’t it on windows” every once in a while.
Bazzite and don’t tell her it’s Linux?
She’s not stupid
Then she can run Linux.
This isn’t helpful at all.
She uses windows.
As do I. Sorry, but KDE’s HDR support is trash; half implemented at best (and it doesn’t even support AutoHDR nor RTX HDR). Until that changes, I will continue to dual-boot Win11 and Arch.
Linux makes more sense for the GF than me, because her laptop has a basic 60Hz SDR display. It’s the perfect OS if you don’t have modern hardware.
Hdr? I barely know her!
There is nothing wrong if someone doesn’t want to switch to a new OS. That being said, isn’t her buying a new computer better? Old one becomes unused then.
Putting lightweight linux on an unused old computer and seeing it become better is like the standard procedure. You could even make a custom rice for her.
My laptop is about 7 years old now, I think I will do this actually, thanks for the tip comrade
Dabbled with Linux over the years but have finally made the jump to using it as my primary OS. I tried a bunch of distros and settled on the elegant simplicity of Mint. Every game has worked just… fine.
It feels genuinely refreshing to know nothing will change without my consent, I know I will not login one day to find a surprise cortana/copilot/clippy icon in the taskbar or an ad for Avowed waiting for me. I can’t believe that is even considered a ‘pro’, but here we are.
AMD or NVIDIA user?
AMD. I think if I had nvidia I might’ve gone for Pop OS, I heard that has good support for them out the box.
Good to know. I’m NVIDIA myself
I’m running pop on 3 machines. One is an old Dell core 2 duo, and I’m amazed how quick it runs and never freezes (10g ram, 120gb ssd). Only issue issue have is the pop shop freezes up sometimes, even on my higher power machine. Otherwise, solid.
As a 15 years old pc user who likes to play games with a 15 years old nvidia graphics card. The only thing that’s preventing me from fully migrating to linux is the fact that nvidia doesn’t support my gpu anymore, so no proprietary driver, unless, I use a 6 years old kernel version.
The only choice I have for modren distros is the nouveau drivers, which lacks behind alot specially when it comes to gaming. I now have a dual boot setup running Popos and windows, but still I can’t be fully free from Windows, having to reboot every time I feel like playing something. I hope in the near future I get less broke to buy a new computer or maybe the new nvk drivers will supports my gpu which is unlikely.Dualbooting is great. Whole idea of linux is “you can tinker in any way you see fit” and putting multiple OS on a single computer is one example.
Fact that you did this at 15 is impressive btw. Willing to mess around with computers is a real skill. Half the CS students in my college had hard time setting up a fedora VM by themselves for UNIX class.
You are already ahead of actual college students in this field lol. You learnt more about computers thanks to old GPU.
Which graphics card?
Quadro 2000M, it’s a miracle that it support dx12 games.
That’s a workstation card, significantly higher grade than the consumer cards at the time. How did you even get your hands on it?
I have a 8570w hp elitebook laptop which i bought back in 2016 from an aftermarket sales shop, you rarely see a new laptop in stock here in Iraq and if there’s any they would be ridiculously over priced.
I’m used to saying pc as a general term, that might created som sort of confusion? Sorry if that’s the case.Ok that’s even crazier, I had no idea they made the quattro in a mobile format. Yeah the HP website calls it a ‘portable workstation’.
I mean compared to modern cards it’s a little old but back in the day that was mainly used by data scientists and field statisticians that needed ridiculous amount of simulation math
Also, the designator ‘workstation’ back then was more than just ‘A place to work’, but a specific class of PC that was designed for high end tasks like rendering video or CAD, and they were ridiculously expensive. Fitting all that power in a laptop is really mind blowing to me
You found a treasure there
🤔
the copilot nonsense really irked me, but it was then they had the gumption to force this absurd recall bullshit on everyone–that’s when i said i’m done, no more windows, no more M$
it’s obviously a “feature” they sold to senior executive board members so that middle managers could spy on their cubicle drones, but to have the gumption to try and convince the world that this was something we wanted? get fucked microsoft
That’s what free software advocates have been telling everyone for decades. When you use proprietary software licensed to you, you have no agency in what becomes of it, they can force you to accept changes that you don’t agree with, violate your privacy, take what you thought you owned from you.
People give up freedom for convenience and treat those that don’t as crazy misguided idealists, thinking they’re fools for using less convenient and sometimes powerful fools for pointless principles only they care about… Meanwhile, if everyone was just a tiny bit like the crazy idealists, these companies wouldn’t be able to abuse their position because a modicum of resistance from everyone would be an overwhelming force for them.
Some will say it’s dumb being idealist about computer software, but aside from computer software being serious fucking business, the practices of these companies are what birthed disposable, unrepairable electronics, privacy erosion, robber AIs and so on. Do you think a tech industry dominated by free software supporters would have allowed the rise of people like Bezos, Zuckerberg or Musk?It’s more than that. They want training data for their LLMs. With enough training data, they can train these models to do office knowledge work themselves, removing the need to employ cubicle drones at all.
I wonder what will win out, the sociopathic need of managers and execs to gaze over heads in cubes like it’s their kingdom - e.g. “return to office” mandates that saved no money and made no sense other than to control people - or the sociopathic need of the business to cut costs so low that the stability of the entire company teeters on a house of cards, be it AI or something else.
How can I play cracked the last of us on my popOS sytsem?
Lutris should handle that. Its requires some tinkering as it works differently.
It seems it’s just a platform that I can run games on, and I need to find a cracked version of the game by myself, right? Do I need to look for a Linux-specific cracked version? Sorry for the dumb questions.
No it’s running Windows game on Linux so cracked versions work just as well. Don’t ask how I know that…
Oh that’s spicy thanks!
Ive been seriously looking into making the switch. After some reading I decided Mint would be the easiest transition and downloaded the ISO to try it out with a USB boot. Im sure its a fluke, but since I have dual monitors the display was messed up and whenever I tried to fix it the entire GUI went away on both monitors and wouldn’t recover. I had to force power off the machine and ive been hesitant since then to make the actual switch. Id hate to brick my machine right off the bat, just trying to swap display sources.
I’ve heard that happen with mint before. Try a bit more modern distro like fedora or openSUSE maybe?
I had a bit of trouble like that too… Tried Ubuntu and my 2nd display would have static bursts going through the middle horizontally. Couldn’t figure out a fix, tried out Fedora and had no problems.
As a long time Fedora user, it’s difficult to convince other Linux users of how reliable it is. I’ve used it on multiple computers for I think about a decade and I’ve rarely had problems, certainly fewer than I had with Windows.
Last week I finally parted with standard Fedora to try out an immutable version, right now it’s Bazzite… I’ve got to say it’s very cool, for some things it may be better for beginners, but for most I’d say it’s better to stick to the normal ones.
I think it’s better with KDE, though, especially if you’ve got multiple monitors with different pixel densities.
I had some gaming issues on Gnome, the mouse wouldn’t lock to my main window and it caused all kinds of problems.
Could not find a fix, swapped to KDE Plasma and the issue was gone, I’ve been liking KDE a lot more since, haha.
I flip flopped a bit over the years on my laptop, right now I’m on KDE as I feel it’s the better DE at this time.
On the desktop I’d always go with KDE, no question.
Mint is the one everyone touts, but mint is pretty shit tbh. Check out Zorin OS. I have a funky triple display setup and it handled it like a champ. Also UX/UI on Zorin is fantastic. There is GUI for everything.
Please give it another go. I think you’re right, thrt was a fluke.
