Gonna repeat something I said a little while ago.
If you’re planning to try Linux but have no experience with it, the best piece of advice I was given is this. Learn how the filesystem is structured. It will make everything else you try to do easier.
You’re also going to get a ton of conflicting advice on which distro to use. Pop OS or Mint are my suggestions. !linux_gaming@lemmy.world is a good resource to know about too
You’re clearly wrong. The answer is Arch
OK, but seriously. There are two main general use families:
Debian based and redhat based
Pick something that has a DE out of the box. Use it. The big ones used to be GNOME and KDE. I dont know which one is more recommended now.
Find equivalent programs (ie. Notepad -> gedit, adobe pdf reader -> evince).
Figure out the windows start menu equivalent: how do I access my programs?
Maybe six months to a year later, learn how to use a terminal emulator.
Maybe a year later, switch to arch and find out why it’s superior
Thanks for this. I loathe the idea of being stuck on a platform that’s hard to use and swarmed by too many angry idiots who only ever say that linux is perfect and everybody who doesn’t think so is too dumb to read. Everything that makes linux approachable is a big win.
Gotta ditch Microsoft though. Ugh. Changing an OS is such a massive pain, regardless of how much of a requirement Microsoft Recall makes it.
Anyway, more stuff like this, everybody! Thank you again.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do a little of that in my younger years, but I’ve calmed down a lot. These days I generally advise caution when someone tells me they want to switch to Linux.
I personally don’t actually think any one variant of Linux is that much harder to use than Windows or Mac. I think the difficulty comes from two things:
One, I think people forget how much learning is involved in those OS’s as well. If you’ve ever tried to teach an elderly grandparent how to use “the computer” then you know first hand how much of this specialised knowledge you can take for granted. Simple things like knowing where to look to change mouse sensitivity as an example, are really challenging to any new user of any OS.
Two, there isn’t just one variant of Linux. It’s biggest strength is also it’s greatest weakness here. It’s amazing that you have so many choices for your desktop environment, but that comes with the major drawback of users needing to understand what a desktop environment is, and why Googling “how to change mouse sensitivity in Linux” is probably not going to return anything useful. You have so much choice in Linux for every little thing. Down to a level of granularity that most Windows or Mac users wouldn’t even realise they’re not getting a choice in. Alsa vs pulseaudio, xorg vs wayland, not to mention the plethora of package managers. Hell even drivers for your video card: proprietary vs open source. And yes, some of those examples boil down to the old way vs the new way, but ALL of this is added complexity, which results in a steeper learning curve for a new user.
So yeah, Linux is hard to use. The learning curve is a cliff, and anyone who thinks it’s perfect is kidding themselves! ESPECIALLY for the user who just wants to play a few games, and maybe do some browsing. We’ll never get the year of the Linux desktop with this mentality!
I do also try to warn new users about this. It is a whole new ballgame, and it will take some effort to get up to the same level of comfort you have in Windows. It really is best to not just jump in to the deep end, and fully wipe your system on day 1.
Start with a VM, then dual boot, and once you’ve stopped booting into WIndows in frustration, then you’re ready to commit.
One thing I promise though, it is 100% worth the effort
how to change mouse sensitivity in Linux
They don’t need to understand DEs or any of that. Press Super (“the Windows key”) and start typing “mouse”. Please teach people how to use PCs properly; this is the fastest way to access any program or setting in both Windows and popular DEs: Cinnamon, KDE, MATE… Windows will even happily send anything you type here to Bing for easy web search by default 😑
OK so I think you might be joking but in case you’re not:
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“They don’t need to understand DEs” and “Please teach people.” Well which is it? is it intuitive or does it need to be taught? It can’t be both
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That was just an example. Your solution doesn’t solve the problem I’m describing as a whole and I think my point still stands. Search might be common to most DEs but that doesn’t change the fact that they all work slightly differently, and if you want to know how to do something that can’t just be searched for, you need to know what DE you’re using. Which means knowing what a DE is. Not to mention, a user coming from a Mac wouldn’t think to just hit super anyway. It’s cmd + space there.
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It’s not the “proper” way, it’s just “a” way. There is no “proper” way do to this kind of thing. I would even argue that it’s not even the “best” way because you’re not learning how to navigate your OS/DE if you do it that way.
This is exactly the kind of facetious bs “ugh, it’s not hard, just rtfm, noob” response the op is talking about
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My wife is not good with computers. I moved her over to Linux with vanilla gnome. It took one 1/2 hr session and she was off and running. The next day I got a bunch of questions - another half hour. About a week later she said “this is SO much better than windows - I love it!”
Linux is easy to use. Installing and maintaining-no. But using - yes.
You can’t get stuck on Linux any more than you can get stuck on Windows. Every OS is just one short install away. And if you switch to Linux, there will come a point, like there is with everyone who tries it, when you start experimenting with different distros and downloading new ones to try every week, before you probably end up settling back on the one you started with.
Honestly, even if I don’t like Snaps that much, Ubuntu/Kubuntu ain’t so bad after all. I’ve been running it as a daily for months now on my Linux-only gaming PC and it’s working quite well. There’s good support for proprietary drivers and media codecs out of the box.
And personally, I’d advise on using the Kubuntu version because KDE is so much closer in terms of desktop paradigm than Gnome.
And Fedora ain’t bad either.
Canonical (Ubuntu) bastardized their own OS. I recommend Mint Debian for noobs; Mint is what Ubuntu used to be when it was good and going Debian gets away from Canonical entirely.
Wait what did they do?
Snaps, their own app-in-a-box format. Which would be fine, except they’re provided only by Ubuntu’s closed-source Snap Store, have larger size and inferior performance because dependencies are redundantly rolled into each one, and the worst part is that they started turning nearly every app in their OS into a Snap. If you
sudo apt install firefox, you get a Firefox Snap instead of a native package.
Ye, my dirty little secret is that I’m still running kubuntu on my main laptop (which I do a lot of gaming on as well fwiw.) It’s what it shipped with, and it works just fine. I can’t say I would have actively chosen it, but It’s also not bad enough to make me want to go through the hassle of installing something else
It’s like a Honda Civic. It’s just reliable and easy to maintain with good performance and some good features and some you don’t really want but are still practical. And there’s a big community giving lots of support and documentation to tweak it if you want more out of it.
Been using Bazzite. Super simple install, been working really well.
I’ll second PopOs, I was sick & tired of windows, I’d wanted Linux for a while and tried a few, PopOs just clicked for me and I’ve not had one problem gaming (which is what I mainly do). 20 min install time and not one problem since, which is about 14 months.
I’m currently on Pop for the last couple years and I’m really happy with it. Being stuck based on 22.04 is getting a little old, but at least it means no new big bugs (in theory).
I was stuck too and I had to reinstall everything to get the upgrade done. That’s the Linux game
I was able to upgrade to Windows 11 on my dinosaur desktop (at least 10 years old) without any issues. Been able to keep it updated, too, for at least the last 2 years.
There are ways to bypass certain hardware restrictions, and I’m sure plenty of how-tos are still available.
No need to sweat it.
Some people just don’t want to switch. I find windows 10 is still better than windows 11. I only updated on my gaming PC because it automatic updated.
W11 has some nice features that match GNOME and KDE desktops, but it also some terrible buggy stuff going on. And the Office Ai.exe and relates AI junk bogs down the system so badly. Thankfully I’m able to move everything to Linux for home use.
I installed bazzite recently and trying it out. Working well with game scope on nvidia card. But still has some graphical glitches. It’s almost there. Only issue I have now is I just got into PCVR and Linux support is lacking.
I’m on opensuse, which has a direct download from nvidia repos, it has been great. Almost all my steam games work. One complains it needs some unity c library , prompts to install then it runs. On the next run it says same thing, but since it is installed dialog prompts yo unistall, I say OK and game runs LOL
Oh, I hear you. I resisted for a very long time, but once I started using Windows 11, I upgraded all my Windows computers to it. It’s far more stable, in my opinion.
But… micro$oft has gone backwards as these iterations are pushed out. More ads, more spyware, more bloatware. Even if I want to keep using windows, they’ll force me out of it once my limit has been reached.
I’m surprised 0Patch hasn’t been mentioned in this thread. There’s really no reason to stop using Windows 10 after EOL if you can still get security updates.
Or, like me, still on Windows 7, they could just no longer use Steam. Lots of games I can still play on this OS or in my browser. Maybe someday I’ll go back to Linux, or maybe even React, just for the hell of it.
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Wine likely just runs your personal programs without issue. And you can swap them to a native compile at some point in the future if you feel motivated.
There are two things that hold me to Windows (10) as my daily driver: MS Office, and support for a virtual file synchronization a la Nextcloud (which I presume piggybacks off of what MS built for OneDrive.)
My secondary laptop, my 4 year old’s laptop, my gaming device (Steam deck), homelab, are all on Linux. It has been fun to learn Linux and it’s what I intend for my kid to grow up on.
Eventually, when I get a new laptop (current is 8 years old and I’m really hoping Framework gen 2 has a touchscreen) it’ll be Linux first… And I hope Nextcloud gets that virtual file sync going by then because a network share/WebDAV connection will make me sad.
and support for a virtual file synchronization a la Nextcloud (which I presume piggybacks off of what MS built for OneDrive.)
What’s a virtual file synchronization?
I may be pulling out the wrong term, but:
The Nextcloud application on Windows shows the entire contents of your Nextcloud account in Windows Explorer, as if they were on your hard drive. They are indexed in search. When you access a file, it dynamically downloads that to your hard drive where it stays and is kept in sync with any changes on the server and the server is updated with any changes to the local file.
Maybe on demand file sync is a better term.
Ah, like the Android app. I think the Linux Nextcloud version has an experimental option for it but I never gave it a try.
I assume the partial sync is not sufficient for your use case? I usually only sync the folders I need on that machine.
i’ll upgrade to some baby Linux distro once the end of life hits, i am lazy
(i’d also need to set up a dual boot as i’m cursed to need Adobe apps and those are famously allergic to Linux)
Don’t do dual boot. Windows will purposefully fuck up your MBR so Linux disappears every update and it’s a bitch to fix.
Run that shit in a VM. It’s 2025 you will get good performance.
nope, adobe apps are allergic to VMs too, less so but still. believe me i’m not hyped about having a whole dedicated OS just so i can run 4 programs, but dual boot is my only option
since i’ll set all that up past end of life for win10 i won’t be getting any security updates so i can safely just disable that option altogether, which will hopefully make the two OS coexist peacefully
I think the dual boot problems are generally associated to using the same drive. If you have one drive for each you can use BIOS to control boot order instead.
neat! i do hope i’ll have saved up for a proper PC by then so having two drives won’t be much of a hassle (currently i have a laptop)
Many laptops support a second drive
i feel oddly unsafe when my entire digital life is running from an external drive. backups sure, but the main thing? makes me nervous
Many laptops support a second internal drive.*
Yes 100% this is the problem. You can even add a redirect to Grub / systemd-boot to load the Windows bootloader from the other drive example for systemd-boot.
Does not work with bitlocker though without diving into very advanced settings to control which events are considered insecure so the tpm releases the keys.
That’s been my experience as well. Dual boot, separate drives. Never had Windows touch it.
I’ve been dual booting with Grub for a year now and the only issue I ever had was accidentally installing Grub to the wrong drive at first
Maybe it’s because I run the LTSC IOT version but so far I just pick which OS at boot and go, defaults to Linux after 10s of inactivity
Yeah grub with 2 drives, one windows, one linux. No problems at all.
so whats the solution about adobe product,
are there any alternatives to use on linux?
of course there are alternatives, but they are all compromises, here’s a couple of reasons why:
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Adobe aggressively patents every new feature they come up with, so every other software has to reinvent the wheel each time
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adobe has a huge head start with the software they already have & they make bank on the subscription model so the development (though subpar for how much money they make) is constant and steady
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to replace say photoshop you need more than one program. photoshop is a beast, it’s RAM hungry but for a good reason, you can edit photography, draw traditionally, paint with oils, watercolours, do calligraphy, do pixel art, create collages, do photo manipulation, create designs, fill out digital forms, make your file into an editable pdf, sketch, hell you can even animate if you’re feeling masochistic! you can bascially change any image into any other image you can possibly imagine, it’s incredibly versatile and powerful. other software focuses on niches (because they can’t afford to try to compete with adobe), doing one thing but doing it really well, no single program can challange photoshop, even if the main feature it offers is better than what photoshop can do. same goes for After Effects, Illustrator, and i’m sure others but those are the main ones i use (Premiere Pro recently-ish got outmatched by Davinci Resolve which is a huge win)
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if you plan on making money with your art you’re basically required to at least be competent working with Adobe apps, it’s the industry standard, and it’s not looking like that’s going to change any time soon. look up any digital drawing course, 80% are going to use photoshop, 15% procreate, 5% krita, corel, and other software (disclaimer, those numbers are vibes based and do not reflect the actual %s)
so yes, there are alternatives, but there is no photoshop-but-different-brand or after-effects-but-we-rearranged-the-ui. To replace one Adobe app you often need several programs which slows down the workflow significantly
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Switch to GPT, makes Things easier. You can do that from inside Windows without Reinstall or anything. Also Install Linux in another Drive, then you got No issues.
I switched to endeavour-os last September.
I’ve been meaning to get a Linux VM spun up for testing games. I gather that I’ll have some issues (i.e. blockers) with multi-player games and cheat-prevention, but I’d just as soon play single player games anyway.
I’ve been a Linux/Unix admin for 25+ years so I’ve no excuse other than convenience. But I’m done.
I’m sure you know this already, but for anyone who doesn’t: If you want to know if a specific game will work under Linux, Proton DB is your friend!
Thanks for posting this, I didn’t realise how many of my most played games have issues, or are unplayable, according to Proton DB. I forgot that it was effectively impossible to play a huge number of multiplayer games with anticheat/whatever stuff.
Again though, appreciate it!
That’s really unfortunate, but yeah, better to know beforehand.
The really painful part about this is it doesn’t need to be this way. A lot of popular anti cheat software supports Linux, but the game devs just don’t enable it. GTA is one example of these. It’s allegedly just a checkbox that Rockstar won’t check.
Out of curiosity, what games are you looking at?
R6 Siege, Apex Legends, PUBG, Insurgency Sandstorm (which seems to be an off/on thing from the descriptions.)
I’d recommend the other way around; Windows in a VM for the vew games that don’t work on Linux.
Kernel anti-cheats won’t (shouldn’t) work in a a VM
Now no one should have those but if someone was smart enough to know that then they would be on Linux already
Wait, really? I only knew VM-detection from malw… oh.
Honestly I migrated to bazzite about a month ago and my entire library has just… worked. It was shockingly easy. I haven’t changed anything from defaults at all.
im one of them 😬
M$ ended win7 support in January 14, 2020. Steam did not end win7 support until January 1 2024. M$ ending support for their OS does not mean Steam will do so anytime soon. Considering how small number of their users has updated, there’s a good chance Steam will keep supporting win10 for many more years. By that time I know I will no longer be using Windows.
Yep, that was the only reason I finally pulled the trigger. What makes me laugh is it wasn’t even about windows, it was because of fucking CHROME.
There’s a decent chance M$ continues supporting Win10 after “End of Life,” just like [ checks notes ] every single “mandatory” update they’ve ever attempted.
You are not wrong here. However, this is a double edged sword. By running windows 10 after a good while (let’s say, after 1 year of eol) you are risking for malware that is going to be non patched on windows 10. Of course, if you use the PC mostly for gaming and get stuff mostly from the usual places, I really doubt you get anything. If you work with documents however with macros and stuff, or you might have questionable internet hygiene or foreign external devices like usb on a frequent basis, do not get close to an out of date system
And even then, the only reason Steam ended support for Windows 7 was because it’s an Electron (Chromium) application. They decided to upgrade their version of Electron, probably to take advantage of newer security fixes in Chromium, which forced them to drop Win7 support because Chromium already had ended support for it.
Well I don’t know… it will end in October. Time surely doesn’t fly that fast…
Maybe because Windows 11 sucks
Yeah well Windows 11 fucking sucks. What do they expect? Maybe if you have to do all kinds of shady shit to get people to accept the newest version of your shitty product you should take a good look at yourself and evaluate why that is.
Windows 11 is great with some tweaks and has by-far the best HDR implementation of any OS, bar none. I’m getting so sick and tired of people who don’t even use it hating on it constantly. Y’all have done this with every new Windows release except 7 and 98SE. Win11 is a great companion to Arch. Get over yourselves already.
I’m getting so sick and tired of people who don’t even use it hating on it constantly
Linux users: First time?
Mate, i could not give a shit about hdr. It’s a frigging computer
You don’t play games or watch movies on your PC? Not even YouTube?
Yeah, and i view it as gaming and watching on a computer.
The number of games that people would notice hdr enough to want it are actually quite small. The entire market is not obsessive gamers
HDR implementation
I don’t even know what that is. I use Windows 11 at work every day and it fucking sucks. It has been non stop annoyances since I got upgraded from 10. I don’t have any problems on my windows 10 pc at home.
High Dynamic Range, tl;dr it’s better graphics, but ultimately inconsequential to most users
Thanks. And yeah don’t really give a shit about graphics when I’m dealing with constant usability problems. I guess if all you care about is playing video games that would be more of a concern but my eyes are too shitty to appreciate high end graphics anyway.
You seriously don’t know what HDR is? Really? Then we have nothing further to discuss.
K
If you think graphics are the only element of an OS of import, then you need to sit tf down
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As if HDR makes all the anti consumer shit okay?
Truly, it really isn’t that bad after about 10 minutes of tweaking. For all complaining I see in the PCMR spaces, you’d think it needed much more. Should it have to be done? Probably not. Am I glad it can be and there’s plenty of tools (really only 2 needed) to make it look feel and behave like Win10? Yes. Is the Win10 EoL the same as darling XP’s? Also yes, which makes much of this even funnier to me.
Ah yes, the only thing that matters for gaming is checks clipboard, oh that’s right, HDR. Very well said.
I’ve tried both 10 and 11, though not much for gaming since I mostly only game on Linux these days. On my Windows machine, 11 has issues with my scanner, it has some stupid service that conflicts with my scanner, it’s called something like “Windows image acquisition service”, I need to stop that service every time I want to scan a document. It’s so dumb.
Windows 10 was better than 11.
I just came across this incredibly detailed guide yesterday. It’s my new go to for those looking to switch. It’s a pick-what-you-want guide. Do as much of it or as little as you want. But I was in preparation to write basically this and this guy did a much better version in 2 months:
