So glad I switched to Linux a year ago, so much bs from Microsoft for exactly this and it was too much bs.
me too
Or macOS
idont think so mac is closed source
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
I’m at about 19 years since switching - MS reaffirms my decision for me each and every year.
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.
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
Win2Linux project that i’m working on. It should be an official part of KDE Eco initiative soon, if there’s no unexpected problems coming up. I’m running it on my private server for testing. It does not collect any information. Give me feedback on the design…
I already got that the font size is a little bit too large. Oh and some links don’t work yet.
Getting an SSL protocol error on that link.
yeah, i don’t have SSL yet. just click “advanced > continue anyways” in most browsers.
Linux!? But I heard that’s nerd stuff and I want to play all the latest video games!?
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 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.
Can anyone recommend a very beginner friendly Linux OS for someone who only knows what Linux is but doesn’t have experience with it and has never used anything but windows? Even Apple’s OS is confusing to me. But windows is trying to force this most recent terrible update every time we turn on the computer, and I’ve had enough.
(I told my husband about all the helpful comments and he sent me this, thinking that’s what everyone was explaining to me. I told him no, I know Linux isn’t an OS, I just didn’t know the OS’s are called distros. Cue the most confused face I’ve ever seen. He’s usually more tech savvy than I am, so I got an ego boost explaining it to him. Thanks everyone!)
Mint is the way I went (13 months ago). Linux Mint Debian Edition in particular.
Mint, some people will criticize me for sugesting it but I belive it’s the most user friendly distro that you can just search an error on google and get a solution instantly since it’s so widespread. I was going to say Ubuntu but they have made some questionable decisions regarding ads.
Why would anyone criticize Mint as a suggestion? It’s easy to use and stable. I have been using it on my main pc for abut a year with barely any issues (i had more problems on windows). I have tried other distros: mutable, immutable, rolling etc but I always come back to Mint if I want things to just work.
P.S. I have used ubuntu professionally for about 7 years and while I don’t always like it, it is still a solid choice.
I’m going to second Linux Mint, I installed it on my grandma’s computers recently and she’s had no complaints in the last 6 months.
Other than trying to get her Epson printer to work (which I only found out about this morning because she uses it so little) so I’m going to try to get it to work for her tomorrow.
I did mention that I’d happily buy her a new printer but she’s insisting on keeping her current one. I’m praying I can get it working.
Linux Mint and maybe Fedora
Amazing, thank you so much. I’m going to check it out right now!
Without a doubt, the most user-friendly distro is Linux Mint. Although, if you are a gamer, you might appreciate a distro like Bazzite more, since it comes with everything you will need for gaming pre-installed.
Stick with something popular. People like to argue about distros, but beyond their package manager and some settings, it’s the same thing under the hood (not saying these difference are nothing, but still). For a beginner, or really for anyone just looking to use their system instead of tinkering with it endlessly, a popular, well supported distribution will do the job.
Ubuntu fits that bill, although they made some very weird decisions recently, so I’d suggest starting with Mint if you’re new to this. Most everything should work out of the box if you have common hardware, and there’s a decent community around in case something goes wrong.
I’d also advise jumping to anything too new, flashy, or promising stuff that should really, really not be distribution dependant. My position on things is that if there’s a common tool that’s available everywhere to do something, and some distributions decides to make “their own” which does the same thing but is very specific, that’s just wasting time. Hence the disdain for raw ubuntu, among other.
As already said, Mint is the only sane choice for the common user. The only thing I’d add is to select the MintDE edition which is built off Debian instead of Ubuntu.
You won’t notice any real difference between either variant but you should encounter fewer issues on the Debian version.
Can’t confirm, I’d strongly recommend the default version for fewer problems and support of PPAs. While it’s technically better not to use something related to Ubuntu for moral reasons, for beginners I’d strongly suggest not putting unnecessary obstacles into your own way.
While I agree philosophically and would prefer the Debian based version. I personally have had issues with it, myabe it’s my Nvidia graphics.
So for a beginner I would reccomend the version that is considered the “main” version at the moment. Currently it is still Ubuntu based afaik.
I’d recommend Ubuntu. I’ve never tried Mint like others have suggested, but one of the strengths of Ubuntu is that it’s one of the more popular distros, which means if you want to install a program, it probably has an easy install version for Ubuntu/Debian, or specific instructions, or just a lot of people online who have had the same errors as you and can give you suggestions when something starts causing issues
If you do ANY gaming at all: Bazzite KDE
If you don’t: Fedora KDE
Fedora gnome and i game fine.
The best that I can think of that fits those requironments would be Linux mint. When downloading you can select between 3 different Editions, whose only difference is the desktop, all this boils down to is how it looks, so just select whatever looks best to you.
Now something to keep in mind when switching to linux; while you will be able to do all that youd want on a PC on linux, some software that you might use and be accustomed to (like the adobe suit) might not be supported on linux (like the adobe suit) so youd need to find alternatives. Linux was designed around terminals, ‘cmd’ on windows, so while you can do most in a GUI, you will more often than not find tutorials using said terminals. And unlike on windows with guis, terminals have both direct system access, as well was expect you to know what you are doing, so read what it prints, its important.
Talking by experience, the one distro that let me just install it, then use my computer without to care about what distro it was using, was Fedora Specifically the XFCE spin
I’ve been using Pop!_OS, and I’m quite pleased. I would definitely recommend it for Linux newcomers.
Ubuntu is one of the easiest distro to get into Linux in my experience.
I am currently running Linux Mint and it had a lot of issues one both my machines (laptop and PC). Never had these issues with Ubuntu. I am waiting to finish my client’s project before I am dropping Linux Mint.
Pop! _OS, provided you know how to find specific wifi modules (drivers) for laptops like Macbook or Broadcam devices in general.
I’ve got some documentation somewhere on the topic let me see if I can find it.
In any case for now I suggest looking it up, it can be installed on literally anything. I installed it on multiple Macbooks using Ubuntu WiFi drivers (both free and non-free WiFi modules) to gain full functionality Wifi-wise.
For the most part “wl” will be available for your device (foss wifi module) so for most devices you’ll be fine right outta the box. And, in the event bluetooth is missing, by installing “blueman” for Bluetooth capabilities.
For most if not all Windows devices (amd64, amd86, intel, NVidia, etc) it can be installed in one fell swoop.
Best part, you can encrypt your data using the same password you use to login. It’s one of the first things you see before confirming the installation to your device.
And the installer is intuitive and really user-friendly.
In terms of DE’s it is as versatile as Ubuntu, it is after all, compatible with most - if not all, Ubuntu repositories.
You can use the default DE GNOME to make your device look like Windows Vista.
You can, alternatively use KDE Plasma to make it look like it’s Windows 7 using the sddm display manager.
It’s as versatile as any other distro but with an easy installer, you literally just press buttons. Obviously you’ve gotta wipe the data on the drive. So here’s to hoping you’ve either made backups or, have made peace with the death of that drive.
In any case, failing drives are as easy to fix as telling the drive to ignore the damaged sectors.
Pop!_OS is like Ubuntu if it had Debian’s stability IMO. It’s been fantastic thus far and I highly recommend it. They also have very extensive documentation!
I like Kubuntu tbh
I didn’t like Mint all that much.
If you have an old laptop you can try a few out and see what works, they’ll run faster than windows. If you’re on windows you might have access to Hyper-V Virtual Machine and then you can just run some Linux Distros in a virtual machine to see if they’re nice. You can even try moving some files into the VM and see if you can still work with them after a migration from windows.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
I got a countdown on my birthday app counting down to October 14. Cant wait
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…
