I get the feeling that Lemmy has a relatively higher concentration of Linux users. I’m preparing to move over to Linux when I build my new computer. I already put Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on one of my old laptops and I like it quite a bit. I figure that since I’ve been wanting to switch over for years, I should just do it. The games were the thing holding me back, and Proton seems to have taken care of that(I don’t really play multiplayer games that require anticheat… I’m a singleplayer kind of girl).

For me, anyway, I want to switch because Windows has been creeping me out with its telemetry. Windows 11 looks lousy, and I’d have to jump through some hoops to get my old hardware on 11, anyway.

  • I’ve been using linux almost exclusively since somewhere around 2008 or so. The main thing is to ensure that you are still able to do what you want to do with your computer, regardless of the OS. You may have to seek out some alternatives to programs that you’re currently using, but there’s a pretty good chance that there’s something available. Check out the available software on the Mint install you currently have, and check out protondb to see if the games you’re interested in are compatible. I’d recommend creating a backup of your current system before you do anything just in case you need to revert back.

    On a distro like Mint, I’ve never (or at least very rarely) run into any issues outside of NVIDIA drivers, and even that isn’t too bad given that it’s a slower-moving distro and Cinnamon isn’t using Wayland anyway. I put Mint on my parents’ computer since it ended up being easier for them than Windows was. That doesn’t mean that you won’t have any issues, but Mint is pretty easy to use, and they have a reasonably active forum for asking for help.

    For what it’s worth, Windows 11 is pretty lousy. You get ads shoved everywhere they can shove them, and their telemetry is pretty invasive, imo. That’s not even mentioning their future plans where everyone gets pushed to their cloud services. If you have any questions, please ask and I’ll answer as best I can.

  • Been a full-time Linux user since 1999 — fed up with Windows … I guess it would have been 98? I found Red Hat Linux on CD at, I think, Office Depot. It was a dive into the deep end. I was having x-server problems at first, and a math professor buddy told me where to find the config file and how to fire up vi. I think I probably spent two days sorting out how to use vi. But I never looked back. Found ways early on of making sure I was compatible with colleagues and others and, of course, have needed to spin up Windows VMs over the years for things as silly as getting Adobe DRM content to display. But it’s all so easy, now, though I do see a lot of good advice here about being certain about compatibility, etc., if you’re on bleeding-edge hardware (given what you posted, I seriously doubt you’ll have any issues).

    I’ve used Fedora as a daily driver for at least the last seven or eight years, Ubuntu before that. I’ve run Arch on a few things and always run Ubuntu on servers (just got used to it). Windows will very quickly become something you don’t miss at all.

    Having said all that, I’ve never been a gamer of any kind, and I know that makes a big difference.

  •  ulkesh   ( @ulkesh@beehaw.org ) 
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    81 year ago

    I use Linux every single day. I just don’t use Linux Desktop every single day. I help run/maintain numerous Ubuntu servers for various environments within our SDLC. I’m also the lead developer, so wearing many hats is fun (…sarcasm…)

  • Full time Linux user for about 6 years now. Both at work and at home.

    If games is what’s holding you back, don’t worry about it so much. There are very few games that don’t run on Linux these days, like you said, because of anticheat, or just because the underlying company is horrible. Valorant comes to mind for games, Epic and EA for companies.

    Some example of game i’ve been playing on Linux, with no issues: Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Everspace 2, Dying Light, Sekiro, Warhammer 40k: Darktide, Guild Wars 2, Doom Eternal, Elite Dangerous, Valheim, Minecraft etc…

    There’s more things working than not working these days.

    That said, I would also be lying if I said there isn’t going to be a learning curve. It’s a little bit more work (especially for games not available on Steam), but it’s really not that bad, and the community is very helpful.

  • I love Linux. I prefer it to windows, but windows is fine. Unfortunately, there are some programs I use that don’t work properly under linux, primarily Microsoft office, but also some games here and there. I’m sure that I could get those games working under linux, but it’s more work. I use linux at work, and windows at home at the moment, but I prefer linux and am very comfortable with both.

  • I have considered Linux for personal use but honestly for now I’m too braindead to put in the effort since I’m not that interested in spending time fiddling around with the OS. There are some proprietary software keeping me on Windows and I’m too lazy to dual boot for a few programs. I’ve had exposure to Ubuntu in college and dabbled in OpenSUSE though and it was pretty nice.

    I have to say though that I transitioned to a lot of (open source) programs that are also available on Linux because I’ve had pains before with typical annoying shenanigans with closed software (enshittification but make it programs instead of social media). Programming and Linux are also adjacent relevant skills to my wider field so maybe sometime in the next few months/years I may transition. Windows is kinda meh but not irritating enough to make me switch. I have a Raspberry Pi running Linux for Home Assistant for smart home stuff though!

  • I tried Linux Mint, and I absolutely hated it.

    It (and apparently Linux as a whole) lacks basic accessibility features one can expect in Windows, like colorblind or grayscale filters.

    The rate at which I ran into problems in trying to do basic things was maddening. I like tinkering with my PC, don’t get me wrong, but I need my computer to be reliable enough to count on when I need to get something done in a hurry, or when I’m having a bad brain day and really don’t want to fall into a miserable troubleshooting loop tk make my day even worse.

    This problem was compounded by the fact that help forums were full of assholes, including assholes who try to trick newbies into deleting their whole OS and all their potentially vital or irreplaceable data as a “joke”. Not everyone was an asshole, but there were more than enough. And there weren’t enough helpful people to actually help solve problems in the way that you can google most Windows problems and immediately find an idea of what to try. And so many people obsessed with the philosphy of FOSS, over and above the utility of the PC, who are chomping at the bit to lecture others at any moment.

    It also crashed more often than Windows ever did.

    I hate the way app installation works. Just let me go to a website, download the thing I want and see its description and instructions as presented by its maker, and install it. It’s so much simpler and more intuitive in practice.

    And Windows a) is much better for gaming, even now, b) has numerous apps I use for which there is no true Linux equivalent, and c) has a much better user interface, even when dealing with aspects of it that are new to me.

    Windows powertools and group policy editor and so on give me more than enough control. I disabled the most annoying things, like the forced restarts for updates at inconvenient times, and the telemetry.

    At the end of the day, Linux offers better privacy, this is inarguably. Philosphically, I really, really want it to succeed. But it’s built by and for a very specific type of nerd, without consideration for regular users in many ways (see the point about accessibilty settings especially), or at least not with as much as Windows offers. I want to believe this might get better in future, but it’s been years and years now, and still no colorblind mode in the most highly recommened distro for new users from Windows? That is not promising.

    Better privacy and the occasional fun of tinkering with it just 100% is not worth all the tradeoffs compared to Windows, for me. I’d rather devote my tinkering time to making Windows private and blicking its telemetry rather than trying to get Linux to function. The reliability and versatility is just not there.

  • I am currently using Linux Mint! I love it, especially as someone who can’t afford fancy things like 70 dollar games or expensive software. I’m enjoying going through recommendation lists to see what I can use in lieu of Windows softwares.

    Initially, the gaming was also what made me avoid doing it, but… I can’t play triple AAA games on my laptop anyway because I don’t have a GPU, lmao. The only game I play regularly is on my phone and can be single player.

    I don’t play MMO like I did as a teen, so there’s no point in worrying about that either. I have some visual novels I might not be able to play right now, but I play games at such a slow rate that I can just put them on my backlog for when they do work.

    Currently, I’m playing through my backlog of older games like Trails in the Sky which work decently. Emulation also works great on it!

  • Last time I tried Linux was 23 or so years ago. I had no idea what I was doing or at that time knew how to figure it out. That being said, I want to use Linux but am apprehensive.

    I see computers as tools. I think that tools should be intuitive and fairly easy to use. My brief experience with Linux left me feeling that it requires a fair amount of time dedicated to setup and upkeep. That’s time I would much rather spend on other endeavors.

    Windows has gotten to a point where I don’t like using it. I will not switch to Apple products, full stop. But I won’t make Linux a full-time hobby.

    What should I do, friends?

    • Try a live version(run from a thumb drive) or a virtual box environment. It’s come a long way in 20 years. I’d recommend an easier distribution to start like Ubuntu or mint. Note Ubuntu comes in gnome and kde interfaces. Kde is more start menu like to me.

      Once I got everything working on my hardware, I was able to stop fussing with it. Privacy and lack of bloat was my reason to switch from windows.

      You just gotta do what’s right for you. That might be windows, Mac, Linux, or something else.

        • Yep, boot from a thumb drive or if you’ve got the power for it run a vm in windows. When you’re ready for the half commit phase, dual boot. Then you can pick windows or Linux at startup.

          I’ve never posted a question on a Linux forum, but I’ve searched and used lots. I currently run Linux mint and then put windows in a VM if I really need a windows app.

          If you’re not a gamer (with caveats) and don’t have to use msoffice desktop apps you’ll likely be fine in Linux.

          For gaming a lot of steam games are supported but not all so there’s some gap there.

    • It’s definitely much similar than it was so shouldn’t require that much time to maintain but you definitely still run into the occasional issue which you can lose time to. I’d just try it out and see if Linux avoids your gripes with Windows.

  • I daily drive both windows and Linux mint. In my experience, it’s been getting a lot better but isn’t ready for non-technical users who just want something to work. I needed to disable the nipple button on my laptop cause it drifts hard and I had to resort to the terminal for that.

    I’m liking mint a lot, but I would suggest having at the least have one windows machine that you can quickly access.

  • My Linux journey is meandering and has a less than satisfying arc, but now I feel like typing it out for all of you. You’re welcome.

    I grew up using a Macintosh and started using Microsoft on Windows 97. We were a a multi-computer household at that point, (thanks, Dad!) but I still preferred my Mac for the next decade or so. I was much more in-tune with Unix at that point, but I went to the darkside for a few years for school and eventually found myself ready to build my own PC in 2011.

    One of my buddies at the time was super in to trying new Linux distros and would always show them off to me, so he convinced me to try Ubuntu on it. I decided to dual-boot since it would primarily be a gaming PC. I was default Ubuntu and needed a command to be Windows and that worked great for awhile. But as I started using Windows more and more, I eventually reached a point where deleting the Ubuntu partition made more sense. Keeping up with both wasn’t helping me out.

    Now, it’s fully Windows 10 and will not be updating past that, but I’m also using a Steam Deck, so at least I get some Unix that way!

    I certainly won’t be going back to a Mac, but I am considering a full Linux boot for my next build. That’s a couple years out still. My baby was built to last, and after a couple upgraded GPUs and harddrives, she still hasn’t disappointed me. I’m definitely more of a GUI user than a command line user though. I can navigate a command line, but it’s a constant game of looking stuff up.

    No matter, it’s super exciting to see Linux rising up the ranks in terms of the amount of games that will work! I’m very excited to see how the community grows from this.

  • I have a windows pc I use for work (and most gaming), but on my personal laptop I currently use Mint.

    Ive been using linux since 2010, but since I am not a programmer and know only a few basic commands I have stuck to very user friendly distros like Mint, Ubuntu, Zorin etc.

    My work pc runs windows 11 and its a shame its so brutal behind the scenes, it actually looks and runs very nicely. But I try to run OSOShutup! And other tools to reduce telemetry, (hopefully that helps a bit)