cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34247715
Curious on the experiences of those recently migrating to Linux from Windows 10, Intel-based MacOS, etc. How is it being on Linux? Anything surprise or frustrate you?
I started usung mint on my home desktop in April 2025, completely wiping windows. Was a fun experience and here in 2026 I got the confidence to daily drive Linux on my work computer as well.
I’m using omarchy and loving it. It has been a great learning process and I feel like using my own computer is fun again. There are a lot of great programs on Linux as well.
It’s a breath of fresh air and a real productivity boost. It’s been ages since I’ve been so enthusiastic and passionate about pc’s.
Vast improvements. No regrets. Still working through a few growing pains, though.
What are the few growing pains?
Tell you what, I’ll just link a couple of recent posts/comments from elsewhere:
These few month been relatively smooth sailing. Lot of unlearning and recognizing just how limiting windows was in comparison.
I tried helping a friend with windows recently and immediate felt like I was back in the gulag, so yeah I think Im here for good
Love it (CachyOS). For the most part, everything “just works.” I have no plans to go back—not even wishful musings.
There have been a few…let’s call them…stnanks.
- Not all of the sensors were recognized for my motherboard out of the box. The important ones, like basic CPU temp and a few others were fine, but more granular ones, like fan speed, Tjunc, Tdie, etc. were missing. I like to apply my own fan curves based on various sensor conditions, so this was a sticking point initially.
- Thankfully, the Arch wiki and a thanklessly maintained
dkmsmodule for this specific (problematic) chipset came to my rescue. Pretty easy to get set up.
- Thankfully, the Arch wiki and a thanklessly maintained
- A small number of very specific games and mods don’t work on Linux. If you exclusively play competitive online games, there’s a good chance you are going to be out of luck.
- I have friends that play League, but I’m not willing to give up Linux just for that one game. Plenty of other multiplayer games out there that work just fine.
- Audio routing is both easier and more difficult.
- There’s great GUIs to manage audio connections.
- Trying to get automatic connections going, like with VoiceMeeter, is a lot more technical and involves learning Lua and Pipewire/Wireplumber. Not impossible, and audio tends to work just fine otherwise, but if you want a specific custom setup, it will take some effort.
Overall, I wouldn’t trade what I have for Microsoft any day of the week. I’m done being their product.
Recently learned about cachy and installed it yesterday to give it a try. I love it. It’s like arch, so that’s nice if you’re already familiar with arch, but a little less manual, and more functional out of the box; literally every bit of hardware wierdness on my 2in1 laptop just worked out of the box. Also, I love the fish terminal.
- Not all of the sensors were recognized for my motherboard out of the box. The important ones, like basic CPU temp and a few others were fine, but more granular ones, like fan speed, Tjunc, Tdie, etc. were missing. I like to apply my own fan curves based on various sensor conditions, so this was a sticking point initially.
Switched from w11 to bazzite for personal use (still have to use windows for work) and it’s been great. Wish there were a few pieces of software with native Linux support so I could switch for work too.
Honestly it worked so well I often forget I’m a new user
Linux is amazing using it for one year now. File explorer tabs is the best thing. Steam proton games works great. Updating software is no longer a nightmare. Big thanks to the Linux community. :)
Feels great!
like a breath of fresh air.
Nobara has been great. I fucked it up once and had to do a full resinstall. I also tried Mint and Bazzite but ended up going back to Nobara. Only had to go boot into Windows a few times to use some old programs but pretty much everything else has been perfect for me.
Doing great. Learned alot about Linux. I’m not that good at working with coding or so, but I love the help I can get from the Linux community. I’m on Fedora, because I liked their homepage, and because I had to start somewhere😁
amazing, best thing I’ve done (although I’m not a fan of bazzite) but besides bazzite, the best thing. never looking back.
It just works… nothing bothering me, no annoying bullshit. it all just works as expected
I switched over a decade ago. It was great. Since then Windows has only gotten worse and Linux and its desktops have only gotten better. It’s wild to me people still need to ask this.
works great. I’m struggling to even think of anything negative to say. KDE connect doesn’t work as well as I want between my laptop and PC? I really wish I could install something similar on my phone.
Kde connect has some odd issues with routers, I’m suspecting the network swapping from 2.4g to 5g.
Ah yea thats probably it. I had issues with the wifi on my laptop so i swapped to 2.4g. My pc is wired to the router via ethernet, and my phone uses 5g
You can install KDE connect on your phone
Oops, phrasing error on my part. I have kde connect on my phone, i meant to say i wanted linux on my phone, hehe. Android doesnt count :)
Switched from macOS a year ago due to end life support, got the hang of the system after distro hopping for a while
Now I use Manjaro on a handheld 😝 never using macOS or Windows again
