Could be small or big.
My answer has always been that, Linux can’t handle everything I’d ask out of it that I normally can with Windows. I know the games issue has been progressing far from the days when that used to have been an archaic flaw with Linux for the longest time. Games might not be the issue except for some concerns I have for some games.
I was taking some time a few moments ago, to check if a program called Firestorm Viewer would work on Linux Mint which could’ve been my distro of choice. And the description written on the linux page described exactly the kind of concerns I’d have for compatibility and usability from going Windows to Linux.
They said that their viewer was tested and designed to function mostly with Ubuntu and while it could work with other distros, it’s not to be expected to be smooth.
That’s the kind of sentiment and concern I have always had with Linux if I were to go from Windows to it. There are programs and tools on Windows that I have that are used for specific purposes and I know they will not function on Linux. Furthermore, incase anything breaks down, any and all solutions would only be applicable to that thing that would be far easier to solve than just being SOL if I was on Linux.
It is something as a user that I just can’t simply afford to deal with on a regular basis if I made the switch.
So while I may not have too much of an issue running games, I won’t have too much of an issue using alternatives, I won’t have to deal with the Windows ecosystem .etc I will just be running into other walls that would simply make me second guess my decision and make me regret switching to the point where I would dip back into Windows in a hurry.
Drivers. I’ve got a bunch of music stuff that lets you edit presets on the computer and they just don’t make drivers for Linux
You could always dual boot - have a secondary drive to ease into Linux and keep your Windows drive as you work on setting things up/functioning in Linux.
Isn’t mint based on Ubuntu? So that should work without a hitch for you. Worst case just boot into the live usb without installing it directly and just try it there.
As for me, I dual boot on separate drives because I have specific software that requires windows sometimes. Otherwise it’s primarily Linux on all machines in the house.
Yeah! Once you get into linux you discover that in reality there are like 3 maybe 4 linux distros. Ubuntu is based on Debian and Mint is based on Ubuntu. And if you are knowledgeable enough then you just compile everything from source and it doesn’t matter if you’re running Fedora or FreeBSD.
I may be a fool though, don’t listen to me.
The only thing a beginner needs to know is Linux Mint. I think any time anyone shows curiosity in trying Linux, it should be stressed that there’s a really simple and “safe” way to start, which would be through Linux Mint.
None, we only use linux.
At the house yeah its the family computers. Haven’t had to reimage for years. The windows 10 old lap had to get reimaged after the last windows update blue screened it haha.
I’m lazy and haven’t gotten around to it yet
+1
I did flip my peripheral electronics, it’s just my main computer I haven’t changed yet. I made an attempt a while back ago but ran into enough snags, after already having a rough day, that I gave up and I haven’t tried again since. I’m pretty sure I know what the problem is, I just haven’t found myself wanting to sit down and burn the time it would take to install the new OS and get everything installed and tweaked how I like it etc. The latter part being a most-of-the-day project.
I will do it eventually though. I am sick of Windows. Now I just need to get over my fatigue and get off my ass.
For me, the snag is that I haven’t sorted through my files yet to decide what to keep
If you’re definitely making the hop, copy the whole windows file system to an external NTFS-formatted drive and then mount that and sort the files later haha.
You won’t be able to boot it as a backup, but the files will be there. If you have drive encryption you have to turn it off
+1
I made the change about a year ago now. I saw the end of Windows 10 coming up and decided to install linux in a dual boot and try my best to use it exclusively for a couple months until I properly got used to it. You will need to accept that not every program you use on Windows will be available and you may have to try out a couple replacements before you find something that works for you. But most things have decent alternatives. Especially considering how much is done in a web browser these days, there aren’t too many programs I really miss from Windows (mostly 3D CAD and RAW image processing).
Also, note that the differences between distros is way overblown when it comes to compatibility, it is mostly just a case of whether your package manager has the packages you want available and how bleeding edge the packages your distro uses are. Debian based distros (e.g. Ubuntu and Mint) tend to use slightly older packages than ones that are rolling release like Arch which should theoretically be a bit more stable.
I saw the end of Windows 10 coming up and decided to install linux in a dual boot
This is something I need to learn how to do - I’ve no idea how dual booting works, but I could do with learning. Did you have any good resources to help you, or did you already know how to do it?
I’m travelling atm and bricking my laptop would be a disaster. That’s it
Almost 20 years ago I was living in China and my Mac’s hdd got corrupted. While I was able to restore the os I couldn’t get a copy of ms office anywhere - that’s when I switched over to saving everything as .rtf Wrote my dissertation in Nisus Writer Pro and still won’t fuck with any proprietary file format.
Personal: Linux with a secondary, occasionaly used box for things that only seem to work on Windows. Would just do a VM if I didn’t already have a spare hand-me-down box.
Work: I’m not fighting that battle. If they deploy Windows, I’m using Windows.
Going 100% Linux, even just in personal use, is still not feasible.
Was staying away from Linux for this reason. Last time I used it, it was brutal.
I just installed pop OS and everything works out of the box except for the faceID thing. But that was 10 minutes setting up another app and now it works.
The laptop performs so much better now than it did with window 11
My wife has zero computer skills. Windows drove her mad. I put nixOS on it, asked what programs she needed for work/home (zoom, chrome, libreoffice, cups) filled the config in by copy paste, and ran the rebuild… She hasn’t bugged me in 5 years for anything.
ZorinOS is another install and use option. There’s no need for hacker CLI level stuff anymore
There’s no buildabear OS stuff in my industry. If I replaced the OS on my work laptop with Linux, I would 1) not be able to access anything, or 2) if I got access I might get arrested at worst and have a serious talk coming from HR for security violation at best.
What industry is that?
Every corporate setting ever.
Corpo says use Windows, you have to do that. Circumvent it and you are going to get fired. Even using a nonstandard browser, or whatever, can get you in hot water. Corpo protect their legal standing, workers are irrelevant.
Just curious, the corpo I first worked at had both Linux and windows. Other places, even with fully locked down world enterprise, have a form you can fillout to explain why you need something. Current place has enterprise software ports for Linux or Windows. So I was more curious what industry it was not the level of industry.
I’m in design and manufacturing aerospace systems/components. And before that, design and manufacturing of laboratory instrumentation. Both were similar: options were 1) default Windows build for engineering functions and 2) default Windows build for non-engineering functions, or 3) an act of god to get something else approved. Security, monitoring, retention, I’m sure were all reasons. Also just simplifying the number of builds IT would have to accommodate.
Ive know one person who managed to get a Linux box approved. It was so they could use a particular aerodynamics software package, iirc. IT made them keep it off network and would not support it in any capacity.
- I don’t have a personal computer, just my work computer right now so I don’t need it.
- I work in graphics so I’m wary that not everything I use now will be available (I know there are alternatives, but they aren’t equal).
- I got a steam deck for my gaming (not my day to day).
- my wife and I use Mac’s and iPhones and I’m worried it’ll be hard for her to switch and the ecosystem is very convent and easy right now.
- I acquired a gaming computer for my kid and promptly put mint on it.
- I only pretend to be technologically savvy and am not confident to answer all the questions my family needs to go full Linux. It’s more at the testing hobby level.
My main reasons boil down to availability of programs, no necessity yet, and ease of the new ecosystem isn’t as simple.
So many folks seem to be the opposite of me…
Linux just works now. Shit with my printer, device drivers, LAN things, stuff like like is like wrestling an animal on Windows for some reason, and… just works with KDE. It’s like they’ve swapped places.
Random Windows apps works better in wine than they do in actual windows, sometimes. With no fuss: I double click and they launch, that’s it.
Don’t even get me started on security.
But Linux is (mostly) not performant for gaming, at least not on Nvidia. It’s… fine, but I’m not going to take a 10%+ hit, sometimes much more severe, and poorer support for HDR, frame limiters, mod tools and such when I can just boot neutered Windows instead.
So I’m not getting away from Windows in the near future, but to frank, I don’t understand why more folks (who get past the admittedly tall hurdle of learning about partitioning and installing an OS) don’t dual boot, or seek to use certain poorly supported Linux native apps when double clicking exes mostly just works.
Dual boot is a pain in the ass. I did this for a time and just ended up going to one OS.
My journey with Linux has always ended with “Oh, it’s easy, just paste this mile long command i to the terminal to do something that is a checkbox on Win or MacOS” type nonsense.
There’s just not any true benefits for me to run Linux. Windows and MacOS have their own bullshit but generally the amount of BS is easier to manage than Linux.
I guess it depends on what that ‘something’ is.
My linux partition used to be like this (mostly Nvidia issues), but its been relatively well behaved. And now my Windows install has become a pain with UWP apps, printers, and LAN drives, specifically, that I’ve just given up trying to resolve TBH. Not to speak of some programming stuff.
Both OSes are tools that make specific things easier.
But Linux is (mostly) not performant for gaming, at least not on Nvidia.
That’s true. If you really want to switch to Linux full-time, going with Nvidia is gonna be painful. Drivers have improved a lot over the last few years (especially on Wayland), but there are still so many small bugs and problems that add up and drive you crazy if you have to deal with them every day.
That’s why I sold my 3060. I had a 12GB model and for a period of a few months, the Nvidia drivers were just completely broken and I couldn’t even launch into a graphical interface (I guess they didn’t test that much VRAM because most models only had 8GB), so I had to go back to earlier (even buggier) builds. Even after they finally fixed that there were still constant graphical glitches and stuttering on Wayland with KDE…it worked, but it wasn’t fun.
Since I switched to an RX7800XT everything just works out of the box and I often get even better performance than on Windows. Just a few FPS here and there, but it’s still nice.
Nvidia doesn’t care. They do the bare minimum to make their cards somewhat work on Linux, but it’s not enough.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure working Nvidia on wayland is a very recent thing.
Honestly I just boot from my (AMD) IGP for linux, which is better for compute anyway.
Most recently when I used Windows was because of work. I’ve been seeing these posts for a while now and I can make some valid arguments.
- Anti cheat games
- Adobe products (Web is not the same)
- MS Office desktop
- Work has processes linked to Windows specifically (server that only works on IIS Express maybe?)
- Big legacy codebase where they don’t match filename casing.
- Specific Visual Studio scripts or plugins for a DSL.
- Security requirements that need windows APIs (like mandating crowdstrike)
- Music production with a Ableton (it works but it’s not noob friendly).
- You have deep knowledge of Windows and getting up to speed on Linux would take a year without guarantees you have a comparable system.
- Your client is on Windows and you’re making a desktop Windows app that’s not cross platform.
Thankfully none of these apply to me so I’m on Linux but I can see how this is an issue.
Adobe products (Web is not the same)
Photoshop and Illustrator do work, but getting them to run is painful.
- you have to build a separate version of wine from source code and apply a patch to it
- it needs to be cracked (the licensing stuff does not work)
- it has to be installed on Windows and the files need to be copied manually (the installer doesn’t work)
I have done it and use it regularly, but it’s not that trivial.
Wow, I thought the reason Adobe wasn’t on Linux was something more difficult than “Needs dependencies, files and an installer”. Since Wine is LGPL they could literally just bundle it with the software in an installer.
It just makes me think about how Adobe just doesn’t want to the bare minimum for Linux support and force people to learn alternative tools.
I would like to add two more points
- Certain pricey applications aimed students and researchers (non CS background) which are only released for Windows
- Inability to learn a new way of using the PC after learning the “windows way” for 20 years. Even Windows shenanigans are second-nature to mildly-PC literate people.
Small? My biggest issue is tiny and probably fixable but not to my skill set. A big workflow for me is finding images in browser and dragging them to a folder to save. Linux can do it but doesn’t save the file extensions and renames the file to a number.
Bigger would be there it’s no replacement for Irfanview. There are multiple tools that add up to its functionality but not as easy or fast.
Bigger yet would be VR support. Some games in general, really. Most of what I play works on my Steam deck so I know Linux covers 80% of my gaming needs excepting VR.
I don’t think I’m good enough with computers not to just fuck it all up.
My PC is hooked up to my main TV as a gaming/home theater thing.
I think my setup is pretty cool, it’s synced up to my Philips hue lights, surround sound, the whole shebang.
For whatever reason, I assume some sort of DRM nonsense, the light sync doesn’t work through the hue sync box and I have to use the PC app
The Hue app doesn’t support Linux, and from what I can find the app doesn’t work right through proton/WINE/etc. there’s a handful of people trying to cobble together their own Linux hue sync apps but none of them seem like they’re quite there yet.
I’m pretty sure that with the advancements made in the last few years I can probably run just about any game or program I want (most of what I use aside from games is FOSS anyway) but I do still have a bit of a bad taste lingering in my mouth from trying to get games and stuff running on Linux over a decade ago.
I ended up doing it, but my hesitation prior to the switch was gaming. I did it anyway though, and now with Proton I don’t miss a thing.
Get a couple USB sticks and backup your documents folder. Having backup, aside from being a generally good idea, should make you feel safer to test and experiment.
I do understand the general concern about running your Windows apps, but I’d say just trust yourself and see what you canake work, and what you can find good alternatives for. I’m at a point now where there are Linux apps that I really like but can’t get to work quite right on Windows. It’s not a one-way thing.
