I switched a few years ago. I’ve been using windows for over 30 years. They changed a bunch of random shit I had used in the past. I figured I’d give it a shot.
I never went back. I’m not a coder. I don’t even like tech very much. I’ve been really happy with Ubuntu for years.
I wanted something that just worked. It has.
I installed Pop!_OS on a Thinkpad and made it my main work computer. It is the most boring computing experience ever. Nothing ever breaks. It just works.
It’s been my daily driver for years now. The two computers os have literally never failed, no software issues other than some bugs I myself introduced.
I’m surprised how well my thinkpad was supported in the Fedora plasma spin. Everything just worked out of the box. No drivers were needed. Even the fingerprint reader works.
I thought it would just be for login, but even terminal will use it when I need to sudo.
How awesome!
The Steam Deck was the reason I changed. Used the Deck as my only PC for a couple of months and liked the experience so I changed.
I’ve had OpenSUSE on my PC for over a year now and really like it… But I’ll be honest, the move and troubleshooting problems for setup was a pain in the ass. But it’s stable and steady since I’ve gotten over setup pains.
I hear you. I spent a while switching to OpenSUSE too because it seemed so easy, I’ve installed OSs plenty!
But I like to partition and stuff, and have a lot of drives from over the years. Oh, what filesystem? Well geeze that might as well be an epic RPG’s “choose a name” screen!
Now it’s easy: Their perfectly fine default of BTRFS because snapshots and I might try dedup, thank you very much. Lol but I still feel like I had to wade through way too much to reach that conclusion.
Once it’s installed and configured though? Man, everything I throw at it is just fine. Love my Tumbleweed. Haven’t looked back in like 4 years. :)
Tumbleweed brotherhood ✊
It doesn’t get used or recommended enough.
Tumbleweed.💖
Although for my relatives I’ll rather recommend Slowroll once it’s our of beta (or even Leap for older family members). Just that little bit more stable. 🙂 Still, OpenSuse does a fantastic job. I’d love to see them available directly from device vendors like Tuxedo, System76 or hell, even Framework.
They say they’re the distribution for humans. Apparently, it is so!
Removing Windows from your computer is like ridding your body of a terrible disease
Or when an insurance company CEO somehow transitions to an “unalive” state…
Edit: A little bit of a cathartic rant to people who will understand lol. I love you all. <3
Echo chamber or not, I’m happy to finally be back on Lemmy and see some damn community positivity about Linux for a change. It isn’t perfect but it’s beautiful and it’s worth it and it’s ours.
It’s a resistance instrument over ever-entitled, creeping corporate control over our lives, it’s not “better Windows”, it’s just better.
I just got super bummed out reading a bunch of those bizarre “Normal people can’t be bothered and it doesn’t instantly just work with a single button push so it’s too complicated and everyone will hate it forever.” Tirades… You know the ones…
The kicker… That was after I stumbled from an unrelated link into /r/linux !!, when someone was asking how to help people not be “so scared” to try Linux.
Huge, angry posts about how it can’t stand up to proprietary capital-ware, and asking users to click a button or type a word “is just too much.” It’s freaking sad.
I dunno if the reddit brigading just got super bad or they’re all self-loathing over there. But it was weird. And bitter.
I’m happy with our operating-system punk movement, where we invite artists and gamers and coders and family members to learn something and have their computing experience back, since we can’t go back to the 00’s when computing was an activity and the Internet was a place.
The servile corporate wageslaves who disregard their rights and throw a fit whenever they need to troubleshoot something, can keep their bloated service-appliances and their self righteous corpo-simp attitudes, whilst loudly announcing “tHe DeSkToP iS dYiNg” and “aNdRoiD iS LiNuX.” They can keep it.
Meanwhile we welcome the curious, and the seeking, and those wanting something more.
I don’t care if we’ll never get “critical mass adoption.” Part of me hopes I never see Linux getting talked about in mainstream TV news or something, because that’s when the grifters will descend like vultures and corporations and states will be wanting a piece of it.
But hey I’ll gladly take the time to help someone discover it and enjoy it as much as possible so it can be even greater than it is today. I’ll gladly release my work to be Linux compatible and donate to software that changes my life for the better every day.
I’ll gladly troubleshoot a little, and be patient, and donate when I can, and report bugs, and share what I’ve learned. Because we’re in this community together, and Open Source belongs to all of us, and you’re doing a great job.
Yeah i still use reddit alongside lemmy as well, and i started noticing that the pcmasterrace subreddit had more and more post complaining about linux users. It got so annoying that i ended up leaving the subreddit. It was kinda ironic because they kept complaining about how linux users bring up the fact that they use linux, but it seemed to me like i saw more posts of people complaining about it instead of actual linux users talking about linux lol
I’m more of a proponent for running some Linux distro for my main OS and then virtualizing Windows if desired for things that are broken in WINE/Proton somehow but work fine in Windows, at this point.
I don’t trust Windows enough to run it baremetal in a dual-boot anymore though, virtualization at least isolates it from the host where it counts, where in a dual-boot, even if it generally doesn’t happen, there’s still the looming threat of Windows screwing up the Linux install somehow, where that isn’t a problem when virtualizing since, as I said, it’s isolated where it counts, even if paravirtualization is a thing for storage drivers and networking and the like, and hardware passthrough is a thing for things like GPUs.
The servile corporate wageslaves who disregard their rights and throw a fit whenever they need to troubleshoot something,
This is what drives me fucking nuts. Somehow everyone seems to forget that they are constantly troubleshooting “the computer” for the people that they would have to troubleshoot “Linux” for. And why is that such a complaint? After all:
and asking users to click a button or type a word “is just too much.” It’s freaking sad.
Nobody who has had to deal with computers has gotten away from going through some esoteric help website with commands like “win+R,” then “sysinfo” or “regex” or whatever, clicking through a five layer deep directory, and changing something. Alternatively, you might have been forced to uninstall a driver and reinstall an older version, or update bios with a usb. The only difference with linux is the instructions you’ll be following will be for a terminal line, MAYBE. Just as an example of what you’ll find if you’re searching for help with linux. They have instructions for if you have no earthly idea what you’re doing. No one can tell me that you had that much hand holding when you were having to figure out why the hell the windows update wouldn’t install without giving you a bluescreen of death.
If there’s any new Lemmy users here, coming from Reddit (feel like I’m opening a seance), and if you’re wondering what else you might decide to change during this era of change -
Try Linux! It’s easy now, and frankly just better :)
If ur new to Linux try mint. Dont try arch or gentoo or some other distro cos someone said it was cool. Take the basic Linux mint and get urself comfortable with it first.
Fedora is pretty nice too.
I came 1.5 years ago when reddit fucked up big. Read about Linux here a lot, but not engaged much with it. But since I can’t make the switch to Windows 11 I tryed out Linux Mint two weeks ago. Haven’t booted into Windows since then, but for one game i have to start using a mod Manager and that won’t run in Linux. Every other game I play, even with mods, works just fine. It’s fucking cool. And it’s so damn nice that I can decide exactly how it looks and feels. So, thanks for that Lemmy.
May I ask what game?
Total War Warhammer 3
The problem is that I play it exclusively in Multiplayer and my buddy and me have to start it with the same mods and trough the same mod manager. I get the manager to run using wine or bottles, but I I can’t click the play game button.
So, for now at least, double boot it is.
Sounds like a nuisance to get working so I don’t blame you for dual booting but it sounds it probably doesn’t know how to find the location of the binary it should be running.
Maybe I’ll figure it out further down the line, put after two weeks I don’t even know what you are talking about right now :-)
Yes, I’m new to Lemmy, ex-Reddit, and now I’m looking at what else I can do. I ran Linux Mint on an old laptop for many years, but that was when I was still working and I also had a company laptop on Windows if I needed it. So now I’m retired and currently I only have a refurbished Lenovo with Win 10, which goes out of support soon. I suppose I could do dual boot on that machine, but I’d rather have Windows in a VM for the rare occasions when I can’t get something to run in Wine. I have no idea where I’d buy a copy of Win 11, but presumably Microsoft have a store.
I think Lenovos are kinda renowned as good candidates for Linux laptops, though I’m not knowledgeable enough to talk models and such. Go for it!
if the best time to switch is always today then if i put it off till tomorrow it will be even better right?
no you would miss a day
Y’all, for real, I was on Windows for gaming. Gaming on Linux really does seem to “just work” now. I’m using CachyOS. It just works. The only tweak I had to do was to tell Helldivers 2 to use the vanilla version of Proton instead of Cachy’s version. So literally if I was on a more traditional distribution I’d have to do less.
Yep. Used to be cautious about it working, having to check protondb before buying/installing/playing and what have you…
but I havent done that in a year.
I just install a game, even a new game, and it just works. No thought, no concern,no issues… OS related, that is, it obviously doesnt make buggy games not buggy, so buggy games are still buggy, but thats the games fault, and you’d run into that regardless of the OS… Like Cities Skylines 2 bad performance, or modded minecraft crashing due to mod things.
Want to be specific so someone doesnt follow my post with a predictable “WELL I PLAYED insert known buggy game AND IT STILL CRASHED AND I DIDNT GET A BLOWJOB FROM BETTY WHITES GHOST OR ANYTHING, YOU LIAR!”
My aunt bought some Wal-Mart $200 Lenovo like 8 years ago. It ran Windows 10 like I run a mile…eventually. I put what upgrades into it I could (added some RAM and an SSD) and threw Linux Mint on it, perfectly usable.
Last week: “Hey, can my Linux computer run The Sims? They just released a bundle with Sims 1 and 2.” I got to looking at it, “no info” on steam deck compatibility, system requirements require a newer GPU than her laptop, like they call out Intel HD 620 and she’s got Intel HD 520.
Proton will almost certainly run it, but that machine’s iGPU won’t. I got to blame the hardware and not Linux!
saving her some headaches, I think.
I’ve heard the rereleases are very buggy and crashy.
EA? Being lazy and publishing a subpar product? In this timeline? You don’t say.
my favorite thing is that you can only get the proper UI scale and zoom level at 1440p in the rerelease Sims 1.
Its just mindboggling.
Now just see if you can pirate the OGs and run those, close enough unless Aunt Susan is a graphics junkie.
I think I could lay my hands on legitimate original discs from back in the day, but I’m not going to take on the project of getting them to run on a modern Linux machine as I’m already having a tooth pulled this week.
https://www.protondb.com/search?q=The+Sims
Well I went to check for you and found that the “legacy edition” supposedly runs fine through proton, who knows. Good luck either way!
I was trying or Linux for gaming… But I found using mods too difficult or annoying and switched back to Windows. That’s only for my gaming machine though…I use a Linux laptop for everything else
What games?
Bg3 mostly. It’s a copy from dodi too… Which requires 4 additional updates to be current lol
I’m sure I could have figured it out, but would have just taken time.
SteamTinkerLaunch let’s you easily launch VMM and MO2 for basically any game, for anything else it should usually be as simple as finding the Linux path for your game and moving files by hand
Sometimes it is a little more complicated than just getting the mod to be top dog in the launch. I just recently got skyrim working with mods, and it was definitely annoying. I still can’t get starcraft to work right.
I play all kinds of old games, Japanese games that require patching, and use mods. That technical stuff is why I haven’t tried Linux yet, because things are already irksome with a well-known OS. I don’t want to imagine what edge cases on Linux could be.
Unfortunately, I might be forced to make the switch if Microsoft decides to ally with the Trump Regime. 😱
I found games i couldn’t get working on windows now work fine on linux. Ss1 runs on linux without tinkering while its hell on win 10 onwards. Xy doesn’t work on w11, runs fine on linux, rtc.
All the games I play regularly worked with zero configuration. I can count on one hand the number of times I had to tweak something to get a game running. Gaming on Linux is amazing these days.
However, there are a few popular games still broken. I don’t do online competitive, so this doesn’t impact me.
I was absolutely amazed that the new Overwatch game (Marvel Rivals) ran out of the box with GloriousEggroll v23. Kind of a wild sentence.
Same! I thought I wouldn’t be able to play any competitive PVP games!
Mostly you can’t, glad that one runs!
The issue though usually (just for clarity’s sake) isn’t that the games don’t run, usually they’d still run fine, but the DRM is often kernel level and nobody on linux wants that, or the DRM just doesn’t work on linux (fault of DRM company), or everything works but they’ll still ban your acct for playing on linux because fuck you (looking at you Destiny).
The things that don’t run now aren’t usually linux’s fault, it’s the company/DRM every time.
This year totally is the year of Linux, guys!
Trust me!
Don’t need it to be the year of the Linux desktop for me to switch to use it myself.
year +1
The only way Linux ever becomes viable for the mainstream is when there is a single distribution that covers every feature and is as streamlined and user friendly as possible.
- No command lines ever for anything
- huge software compatibility
- hardware compatibility of the newest and oldest of hardware
- easy troubleshooting even your nan can follow
- and most of all: every Linux user agrees it is the best Linux distribution (unless you are into niche stuff)
So until even you guys can agree on one distribution being the best, it will not be the year of the Linux ever.–
Does this apply to Windows as well? Haha
For Linux to go mainstream is simple. Have Linux be default on every computer sold in stores.
Something like 99% of people who go to a store and buy a laptop, does so because they need a device to access their online bank or watch funny videos on YouTube. Maybe check their mail and open a PDF or two.
I think it doesn’t occur to most people to even consider what OS to use on a computer. They just use the computer.
It seems like what you want is a tablet.
Disclaimer: when I say “bullshit”, I do not mean “you are brainless fool”, I only mean “this idea is so ridiculously wrong it is time we put it to rest at last”
No command lines ever for anything
This annoys me so much I literally registered to answer: bullshit. Stop with that strawman, will ya all, Linux enthusiasts
easy troubleshooting even your nan can follow
Same level bullshit. Watch win (and mac?) being hell to debug
every Linux user agrees it is the best Linux distribution
Bullshit. See Win XP times with many custom-made “flavours”. That did nothing to make windows less popular
when there is a single distribution
Bullshit number one. Linux will become major thing as a result of people pushing back against corporate wall-gardening and spying and/or when it starts coming pre-installed (see Android phones for the latter). All the scary-command-line whining is just elitist bullshit
Hell people still argue about the best version of Windows lol (I miss XP and 7) people will never agree on a single Linux distro
It’s like saying “Nobody will ever buy a vacuum until we can decide if Dyson or Bissel are better” lmao.
I was going to make a crack about you inventing MacOSX, which is at least “Linux adjacent”, but I don’t know how to work without a command line on either Windows or Mac. Some functionality is just so much more inconvenient or even impossible through the GUI, even on those
“How do I do X on Mac”
“First install homebrew, and then install this plugin”
50 plugins later
“There, now I can finally use the GUI”
So Macs run Gnome now?
I always find the command line argument to be a bit of an odd thing too. If you Google any weird Windows error, I can almost guarantee you will find a Microsoft forums result with someone saying to run
sfc /scannow(or a DISM command).What I think it really comes down to is that people are used to troubleshooting Windows stuff that they forget they’re having to do it. Then some will say that “Windows doesn’t need troubleshooting” which is pure crap unless maybe all you do is login and open Chrome - which Linux can do that perfectly fine too.
At the end of the day, I don’t really care all that much about what OS other people use (use the best tool for the job and all that). I’m not going to be using their PC, but I do get a bit aggravated when people seem to go out of their way to make it look like Linux is still the same ecosystem it was in the '00s.
So, Ubuntu 10+ years ago? For normie usage you don’t need to worry about any of those things. It comes with firefox.
I worked in a PC repair shop until a few years ago. Most people didn’t want to buy MS office. Most of what they did is in a web browser. But most people that came in to buy a boot USB wanted a windows one rather than Linux, either way I just copied what ever ISO they wanted to it. Copy/paste doesn’t cost anything.
I used Linux on and off over the years and will probably switch back to using it when Windows 10 is no longer supported. Linux will never be mainstream but the user base would grow if every Steam game ran on Linux seamlessly. That’s probably never going to happen, though. There will also never be “the one” distro to rule them all. Mint and Ubuntu come pretty close.
It’s honestly getting there. The major barrier at this point is kernel level anti-cheat, which is a bad idea people shouldn’t be using anyway.
There’s still the odd game that’s somehow broken in WINE that isn’t broken by anticheat or DRM, but by just being crusty code, but those edge cases will do fine in a Windows VM /w a spare GPU being passed through to it.
Anything that uses kernel anticheat, so basically any modern multiplayer title, is platform-locked into a baremetal Windows install, but since I have no interest whatsoever in modern multiplayer titles and thus no interest in anything with a kernel anticheat, I can do just fine virtualizing Windows in that scenario while using a Linux host for everything else.
(which, Soulbringer, one of my previous edge-case titles, works great in Proton /w dxwrapper+DXVK, but Civ3’s audio is still broken in Proton even if C3X fixes the graphics, so that’s still being ran in a Windows VM, which I currently have Win11 LTSC running in a VM /w my Vega 56 being passed through to it for just that very purpose, while I’m using an RX 6600 for my host card)
As for apps like Maya, Blender is actually competitive with it nowadays.
As an addendum relating to modern multiplayer titles, those are the few titles where it would make more sense to play them on console instead of PC anyways since the way in which they’re locked down goes against PC’s main selling point: the fact that you actually own your system to a degree where the consoles are effectively locked into the PS, Xbox, or Nintendo walled garden.
I’ve read that modding many games is a total bitch-and-a-half on Linux, too. No idea if that’s true or not, but still. I’m a sicker for fuckin’ with games and if stuff breaks on Linux that works fine on windows, that’s a problem.
That depends, the Fallout and Elder Scrolls games are easily modded regardless of OS, and I’ve had good luck with HedgeModManager too for Sonic Generations, and even for Civ3, C3X fixes the black map bug however I haven’t found a good fix for the crackling and popping audio.
Sure it can’t be uninstalled, but that’s no big deal. Just go to Settings and turn it off.
Of course, software needs to update, so it might get turned back on occasionally. Just go turn it off again.
And all the other stuff you turn off. Every time.
the best time to switch to linux is a few years ago.
the second best time is now.
I switched a few years ago, and recently spun up a secondary Windows install because I was planning on checking out Game Pass. I couldn’t make it more than a couple hours, Windows 11 is a hot mess now and it felt really gross to see all the ads everywhere. Even the login screen isn’t free of them anymore!
I honestly don’t know how people use that shit, I wouldn’t force it on somebody I hated.
It is actually quite bad to use. If for whatever reason I needed a commercial OS I’d have to use MacOS at this stage.
Microsoft has really dropped the ball in terms of quality.
Just switched from windows to arch with KDE Plasma on my laptop and I have been experiencing so much joy playing with all the wonderful FOSS I never even knew about
My Surface Pro 7 was perma nagging me about going to W11. Screw it, just installed LMDE 2 days ago, chose Mint Debian Edition as I use it on my desktop for the last 13 months.
nice bro i used lmde for a month it was very good
goodjob bro i use arch but with gnome i used it with kde for a lot of times but now im using gnome
Can’t recommend it enough! I’ve tried Linux distros in the past but always found that there were hardware issues or certain programs didn’t work. Not to mention I essentially had to give up gaming. Linux was cool but I just couldn’t use it as my daily driver.
I switched to Pop!_OS last month and I’ve been blown away. The install was simple and straightforward and the only hardware that required special config was my gaming mouse that needed “libratbag” and “piper” to remap the extra buttons and adjust the RGB.
Other than that, all the programs I normally use like Discord, Dropbox, Steam, and every game I’ve tested so far work flawlessly. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything or had to give up something like I did before. I actually feel like I’ve upgraded since I’m loving the auto tiling window manager and multiple desktops that Pop!_OS has as options.
I’m still waiting for one of two things to happen:
- Windows 10 EoS
- Steam OS 3 official support for PC
Going to 100% Linux (currently dual boot for da gamez) within 24h hours from that happening
I also did dual boot for ‘da gamez’… but then found that I’ve never had to boot into Windows for any game whatsoever. It’s been a few years now. So apparently I didn’t need dual boot after all.
If you want Steam OS on a desktop, install Bazzite. It’s the closest your going to get and it’s great.
Bookmarking this in case I’ll need it in 8 months
What do you expect from SteamOS 3?
From the system itself - stability and compatibility with my peripherals
I know that Proton is the thing allowing games to run smoothly on Linux, but the fact it’s an OS made specifically for gaming, used on a pretty popular handheld will give the devs more incentive to make their stuff well out of the box
Kinda same. Using windows only for League of Legends. Yes, I am hooked on that. Best thing I can do is find other games to take up some time. I just installed ZenlessZoneZero via sleepy launcher yesterday on my Mint install. Time to dive into those gachas!
I’ve switched to DOTA 2 after the infamous butterfly trailer, which was about 2 years ago. I like it more than League now, though it’s a shame DOTA doesn’t have 2500MS Singed equivalent. To be fair, Primal Beast and Centaur Warrunner can get close, but nowhere near poisoning the whole teamfight and running away before anyone can process what has happened.
Neither of those is going to happen…
Isn’t windows 10 end of support this year?
Also, didn’t Valve commit to SteamOS 3 for PCs at some point?
Steam os is going to be neither better or worse than anything else Linux based.
Yes, Windows 10 is EOL this year. However, if you are using it right now you shouldn’t have any issues with Windows 11. Windows 10 as it is right now is much worse than 11.
I dislike esthetics more than disfunctionality
Also Steam OS 3 is used by a pretty popular handheld, so devs are more incentivised to get their stuff running well out of the box
Linux!? But I heard that’s nerd stuff and I want to play all the latest video games!?
I wish Debian wouldn’t try to autoinstall updates out of the box like Windows. Especially when it doesn’t have the disk space to do that and bricks itself
If you choose “expert install” it asks you if you want automated updates or not.
If steam deck runs it, linux runs it.
They’re all steamos
I wish Valve would accelerate VR gaming on linux as much as well. It’s mhe only thing blocking me from switching.
Reportedly works for many others flawlessly but I just get mad jitter. then again I’m using fedora which might be too new.
I’m on windows 10. And they were right that it was the last version of windows I’ll ever need. I only change OS when I update my hardware. So next hw refresh, I’m going to Linux.
welcome
I will be happy to make the switch.
we all here happy to help you can ask me personally and i will help if i could so which distro are you trying first
I’ve used Mint, Ubuntu, CentOS and Kali here and there. Never on my personal computer though. May go with one of those, but I see some other newcomers that I might try. I appreciate the offer to help.
mostly debian so there won’t be big diffrence
