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.
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.
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 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.
I got a countdown on my birthday app counting down to October 14. Cant wait
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.
Mint is the way I went (13 months ago). Linux Mint Debian Edition in particular.
Mint.
I’ll be very honest with you. It’s not fancy, it’s not snazzy computing. It’s simple, designed with a graphical interface in mind, and a good operating system for someone who A) does not know Linux, or B) does not want to fiddle.
If you do ANY gaming at all: Bazzite KDE
If you don’t: Fedora KDE
Fedora gnome and i game fine.
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.
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.
Amazing, thank you so much. I’m going to check it out right now!
Linux Mint and maybe Fedora
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.
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
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.
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.
Endeavour OS. It may be a bit more hands on than something like Ubuntu/Fedora but there are ways less abstractions, better document and community support that makes it simpler over all.
Pick up a note-taking application like Joplin or something and write down solutions to problems and you’ll be fine.
I’d recommend against Ubuntu/Fedora/Mint etc. tbh, they are simpler on the surface but there are no ing parts that make it more complex when things break.
Play around with distrobox and docker too, that makes a lot of stuff easier.
Oh god, please do not do what Hawk just said (No offense Hawk). The “a bit more hands on” means you’ll have to learn to use half of the GNU Utils (command line commands) to feel comfortable. If even Mac feels confusing you’ll NOT feel comfy on Endeavour.
The most easy one is Mint. It might not be the one with the most modern tech under the hood, but it’s pretty much the greatest start as a “normal user just wanting things to work” you can get without immediate help by someone knowledgeable. The community is also extremely friendly and there’s a plethora of tutorials for things on Mint on the web (also many how-to’s for Ubuntu apply on it, and it’s compatible with any downloadable software for Ubuntu (.deb packages, those are basically install files - some companies still prefer to offer their stuff this way).
As context, Endeavour OS is based on Arch Linux. That community expects you to become comfortable with the command line. Endeavour is more of a buffer to it than a remedy, it’s definitely aimed at more advanced users and those who like a more steep learning curve.
If you’re perhaps also in for new hardware, may I also suggest taking a look at companies like Tuxedo Computers, System76 or Slimbook? If you buy from them you get their tested systems on tested hardware including customer support. Extremely valuable for newcomers.
You can find a list of hardware vendors here. (The blogpost is a little bit outdated, you might find it useful nonetheless. Ignore the distro recommendations in it though, I gotta redo the thing eventually)
This is based on my experience teaching at university, Your mileage may vary. This is what I found to work the best for first year students.
Sounds like a fair recommendation to students given the nature of Arch with almost zero bounding boxes to navigate around, I’d absolutely not recommend it to average users who do not look for a deeper learning experience though. In my experience most people want their tool to work in a comfortable way, in this case being the PC. The experience of downloading something from the AUR using “just one command” might be a positive one for many, but for people who aren’t into technology to at least some degree using the CLI in any way is, more often than not, at least uncomfortable.
OP mentioned Mac being confusing to them, so I wouldn’t assume them wanting the student experience with Linux but rather smooth-sailing.
Bro, no one who is a ‘casual user’ or is one of the “people who aren’t into technology” will ever need to look at the AUR. I’ve set up Endeavor for a friend who is, lovably, an idiot. He used it, without issue, for games on steam, opening documents, and browsing the web, which is one thing more than most will be using it for. Everything a casual person might need is in a gui.
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
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.
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’ve been using Pop!_OS, and I’m quite pleased. I would definitely recommend it for Linux newcomers.
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.
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
True every single 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
year +1
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.
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
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!
