cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34247715
Curious on the experiences of those recently migrating to Linux from Windows 10, Intel-based MacOS, etc. How is it being on Linux? Anything surprise or frustrate you?
great, everything works, after some tinkering
I started daily driving a year ago with Fedora Silverblue (Atomic) which uses GNOME because people said Atomic distros are friendlier to beginners, and Fedora already had a good reputation for working fairly well out the box. The only issue I had was a Bluetooth issue, and you can rollback to previous kernel versions to wait until a fix is made. If I was just a browse the internet and play games on Steam kind of person, I think I would have loved it. But I did try to tinker and do things that were far to difficult to figure out how to change on an Atomic distro, especially since I couldn’t find instructions or documentation for my distro, so I moved to regular Fedora KDE after a few months and I absolutely love it.
No annoying pop-ups, no stalking, no weird shit being enabled by default, just an OS that does what YOU want it to do. I am comfortable with using the terminal due to taking a Linux course, but I feel that you could do a lot without having to use it. Plus, most sites and github projects give you basic installation guides anyway. The only two issues I have had were Bluetooth and my touchpad not working. The solution for these two issues were simple, but I couldn’t find the information for literal months. I solved the Bluetooth issue by doing a power reset, apparently you have to do that when you get a kernel update. The touchpad issue was it disabled itself in the system settings one day. That’s literally it. My computer hasn’t blown up, my mic and camera always work, I have found FOSS alternatives for almost everything, I don’t game much on laptop but I’ve gotten old Japanese 32-bit games to work on Lutris, etc.
Maybe I’ll distro-hop in the future, but it’s only for the pure curiousity and fun, not out of necessity or broken tech. In fact, Linux just makes tech fun. It makes my laptop feel brand new, and makes me go “Wow. I love using technology.”
The only reason I still have my Windows partition is because my college uses Lockdown Browser for online tests, and I don’t want to fuck up a no-retakes test or do testing in person. Once I graduate, I’m probably nuking that partition, I feel like barfing every time I boot into it.
I switched about a year ago to fedora cinnamon. Less frustration than windows, even though cinnamon kinda sucks compared to KDE that I switched to immediately after the first time I tried it (should have tried it months sooner, literally only took a few mins to install and check out).
While I wouldn’t say that there were zero problems, I did notice that I spend less time troubleshooting or searching for how to change something on Linux than I did on windows by the end. Also, going from empty disk to gaming involved fewer steps, at least with an AMD gpu.
I work in IT and run a number of Linux servers and desktops, but my main gaming computer hasn’t run Linux since about 2021. Around mid-2021 I got tired of not playing certain games due to lack of Linux compatibility and realized my Windows skills were slipping so I switched it over to Windows 10
September of 2025 I installed a new SSD into my desktop and installed Bazzite (I have a bad habit of breaking my Linux desktops through too much tinkering, so they accumulate configuration quirks that I can work around but become more and more of headache. I describe it as being like a mechanics car to non-technical users, it works perfectly but you can’t use third gear, you have to cycle the heat before the AC goes and you use the screwdriver in the glove compartment to change the radio station) so immutable seemed like a really safe bet, plus its already preconfigured 80% of the way to how I like things which is closer than other distros
I fully expected to find some key game that I play a lot or software that I rely on wouldn’t work under wine/proton, but everything just kept working perfectly so it’s stuck for over a quarter of a year already. Also I’ve had less problems with KDE than I’ve previously had when running KDE 5+ years ago, so definitely some improvements there
I started with PopOS in September (?), ultimately replacing Windows on every PC in the house. It’s been going well. I’ve had to troubleshoot a few things, the biggest of which being a boot failure, but that turned out to be hardware related, not Linux’s fault. Feeling like I own my computer again is great.
Since then, I’ve gotten into self-hosting and now have a NAS, a Debian Jellyfin server, and a ton of storage space. Right now I’m just backing up basic stuff for the family, as well as streaming movies/shows/music within the house. I’ve ripped so many old DVDs and CDs in the past few months…
Next steps will probably be: books, audiobooks, and archiving family photos/videos in a way that is easier to browse than just files on a hard drive. I will likely de-google eventually.
In short, I’m having fun and should’ve done this a long time ago.
Im on a similar self hosting journey. What do think you’ll use for de googled phone photos and videos? Im not sure where to even start looking.
I’ve set-up Immich recently, moved 400gb photos from Google Takeout, works flawlessly so far.
Thanks, I was hoping someone else with more experience than us would chime in. Ill check it out.
I have around 5 year of experience self hosting.
There are tons of photo and video alternatives.
One of the first was piwigo, but I don’t know what they are up to now. Photoprism brought a bunch of new interest into the space, but is a bit hindered by their pricing model.
The three frontrunners nowadays are: Immich, Photoprism, and Ente.
Immich: easy and very practical google photos recreation (and surpassing in some ways)
Ente: A self-hosted or externally hosted, easy version. More of an ecosystem with Ente Auth authenticator app like Aegis with cloud sync.
Photoprism: much more geared to photographers, tons of organizational and sorting tools and geared towards using metadata of different cameras and such. Limited for me as they don’t have multi-user support unless you pay 6€/month. I would consider that an essential feature to put in their 2€/month and move advanced geocoding to 6€/month.
Immich on the other hand has a 1 time optional (you really should) $100 fee or $25 per account
They are 3 great options.
I don’t know yet either. I’m only at the “idea” phase for that one and not quite ready to move on it yet. It seems like such a common need that there must be a few open source projects out there, I assume.
I’ve briefly considered putting videos in their own category in Jellyfin, just for simplicity’s sake. Not sure if it handles photos too or if I would even want to try that though.
Also swapped to Pop!_OS, a bit over a month back. It was definitely an adjustment, and I think I did something wrong during or following the initial installation that was killing my download speed (sub-10 mbps) and overall slowed my PC that I couldn’t troubleshoot after a week of looking online, but a clean reinstall fixed it and it’s been smooth since.
Still getting used to various things, like how not all companies have official linux support so sometimes you have to rely on other users uploading software on github (or available directly on the pop store) to configure devices or there just isn’t anything available and it won’t run in something like bottles, using the terminal for any number of things, or how terrible the pre-installed file explorer is (I’ve been using Dolphin instead), etc.
I haven’t had any issues with any Steam games or the couple that I tried from GOG using the Heroic launcher, aside from some applications consistently launching in the incorrect window size (solved by using shift + super + arrow keys). Protondb showed 98% or so of my Steam library running fine without much if any modification.
I have a fairly decent gaming PC — why I decided to try PopOS first, based on online recommendations and some folks on discord — and as far as I can tell, performance has not noticeably changed since the earlier-mentioned reinstall.
I’m happy with how it’s been going the last few weeks, and it’s not like I never had ongoing debilitating issues with Windows. Further down the line, I might try out some other distros, but I’m content with how it’s going now.
I also swapped from google services to Proton (not related to the steam compatibility service) and a couple others, along with replacing android OS on my Pixel with GrapheneOS, which has been going well, but that’s not linux-specific.
That’s awesome! I’ve also had pretty good luck with gaming. The one thing I haven’t figured out how to fix yet is streaming to discord. If a game is running through the proton layer, discord doesn’t identify the game (I think the application gets called steamapp+random numbers), and I’m not sure how to direct it to it. Other than that, just some minor tweaking here or there.
I have been on Linux for almost 9 months now and I miss nothing about windows. I tried a bunch of distributions, starting with Fedora, but now I have settled on an Arch based distribution and am happily running Manjaro.
Manjaro is so nice for daily driving. I switched to CachyOs maybe… Two years ago? And despite having some hiccups, I’d rather have it a million times over Windows.
Once Manjaro inevitably shits itself, think of EndeavourOS! It’s the perfect fully Arch-native, simple to set up and use distro.
I’m perfectly happy using Mint. I’ll explore more distros eventually but I miss nothing about Windows
I started using Mint a few months ago, and this is basically my experience as well. On the occasion that I have to use a Windows PC, such as for work, I am just reminded of how awful it is.
Mint+KDE on my daily driver, works great, no complaints after over a year. Plus fun desktop effects!
Just a question: why use KDE on Mint instead of KDE Debian?
Cause I started with Mint and didn’t feel a need to fix what wasnt broke
I use KDE Debian on my desktop server
I switched from Windows to Mint at the tail end of September, and I’ve only had minimal issues. I backed up everything I cared about and just nuked Windows in one go, since it wasn’t compatible with 11 and I don’t want security problems. I expected my Nvidia graphics card to cause huge issues, but it literally just worked.
I did have an issue getting my Steam games to run, but it was fixed by figuring out how to change the compatibility settings on Steam (the incredibly complicated operation of right clicking on the game title).
I’ve been taking classes as well, and using Libre Office has met basically 100% of my needs. I did have some issues with converting to .docx when images were involved (resulting in images going on walkabout), but I consider that 50% a Windows problem.
I also use Libre Office for college. If your professor allows it try submitting a pdf of a document instead of converting to .docx. Documents generally suck as a file type, and so I’ve had many professors take only .pdf for submission due to formatting issues.
That’s exactly what I wound up doing! As long as Turnitin recognizes it, none of my teachers have cared about the format so far.
Absolutely the same experience I had, but I’m dual booting windows.
Literally everything just worked with no issue. I know Mint is like Linux Lite, but I love that it’s been so easy to move.
Mint is full fat Linux. Just one of the most polished and stable. Just because you aren’t running gentoo or arch doesn’t mean you aren’t running Linux. 😉
I’ve run Linux since the mid 90s. Honestly the most I tend to use the terminal for is updating or rsync. With KDE especially you can configure most things inside it and do basic user management as well. It’s come a long way from it’s CDEish 1.0 days. And a lot of the other DE are fairly similar.
Same, I’m keeping my dual boot for one multiplayer game that I play to keep in touch with friends.
Switched from Window 10 to Linux Mint about 3 weeks ago so I’d have something familiar to work with.
Honesty, so far Mint works just like Windows should have worked. I’m surprised at how much stuff has been made automatic and easy for a lifelong windows user. Some specific games have a performance issues, Alt+Tab to switch apps doesn’t work if you are in a full screen application.
I would encourage anyone on Windows to buy a small drive (I used a 500 GB SSD I got for like 40 bucks) load a Linux distro on it and give it a shot. You probably won’t be back on Windows.
Regarding alt tab, are you on multiple screens or just one?
One screen. It will bring up an application switch widget in the middle of the screen, and I can hold alt and hitting tab to cycle through options, but when I release alt-tab, it does not switch the application.
Yeah that’s weird. I tried to replicate it; it worked for a little while, then the game window just auto minimizes every time I try to alt tab it. I end up running my game in Windowed mode mainly so that I can see my task bar at the top and don’t experience problems that way.
I’m Loving Fedora! All hardware works flawlessly. Games play great.I couldn’t be happier.
I think this is a perfect storm for microslop, everyone on earth right now has a friend who literally knows everything about linux, and that access to knowledge is making it easier than ever before for people to switch. Id be really scared right now if I was MS.
Yep! They should be terrified. I was still keeping a laptop around with Windows on it to run Vectric Aspire (CNC design software) because I couldn’t get it to run on Linux. Proprietary software like that is the anchor keeping many people on Windows. Just last week a new version of Wine was released that runs it perfectly. I now have zero reason to keep any Windows computers around. Wine and Proton are advancing so fast that soon they will run Windows software better than Windows (they already do in a few cases).
I switched from Windows 10 to Kubuntu some months ago and it’s been pretty rough mostly. I’ve been having issues with but not limited to: multi-monitor setup, nvidia gpu, network dropping, game/software support, hardware support (headset working poorly, motherboard not reporting any sensors), poor performance in some cases…
Still better than spreading my cheeks and letting Microsoft fuck me in the ass though
I had issues with Kububtu and switched to CachyOS and they’re mostly resolved. My second monitor still only shows 60hz but its not used for games so meh.
Switched to Bazzite from windows 10 a few months ago since I read that it supports Nvidia cards well and I’m in no position to buy a new GPU. The only applications that I miss are the DAW that I used for music and Titanfall 2 as that’s through the EA launcher and have yet to find a reliable way to make it run without it falling apart. My partner (Who is not tech savvy at all) is even starting to get used to it and dislikes when she occasionally uses the windows 11 laptop (been using it for said DAW)
Ardour and Reaper are both excellent DAWs on Linux… But I do recognize they may not be what you used to use. Getting used to new complex software that is a lot like, but not quite what you used to use is hard.
I hadn’t heard of Ardour, thanks for the tip, will check it out. Been using MPC for so long I might as well learn something new honestly
I know basically nothing about it, but I feel like I’ve read about Titanfall 2 having 3rd party launchers?
Oh yeah, you’re right, I forgot about Northstar servers. They were put up when they game was getting denial of service attacks
Linux is great so far. It’s been a bit of a trick learning the ins and outs, but now it’s getting close to a year I’ve ironed out most of the kinks and have a stable functional computer.
See this is the problem. You shouldn’t have to learn an operating system to have a stable and functional computer.
I chose to use an unstable distro both for more performance and to force some learning. Most of my problems were honestly either software not built to run on Linux, or the fact I didn’t disable my integrated graphics in the BIOS.
Like things could be better, but I think it’s pretty good. Windows would have wiped a significant amount of customisation within a year, and that’s my baseline.
Yes I remember when I was 5 and inherently knew how to use windows. /s
So painfully, boringly good.
Day-to-day, it just works, I don’t have to fight it. It doesn’t do anything I don’t want it to do. I don’t miss office, everything is clean and snappy.
I have managed to play almost every game thrown at it (Bazzite) - the only one that didn’t work was an older DX7 title. DOS games just work - they took more effort than this under Win9x.
I have got a couple of minor issues but all fixable.:
- I encountered a issue where it wouldn’t wake from sleep - fixed by selecting a different color profile in the display settings.
- I managed to break something in fstsb trying to setup a persistent network drive. Very easy to roll back, I’m 100% sold on immutable until I need something more customisable
- Recently my Bluetooth kb/mouse would drop off when the PC went idle, wouldn’t reconnect/wake up until power cycling the PC. Fixed by disabling BT hibernation/sleep
Having said that, last week I had to install Win11 on the kids laptop to be ready for school - I hadn’t installed 11 outside of a controlled Corp environment with solid group policy control since the early days. God-damn Win11 is a dumpster fire! The install UI looks nice but the noise is turned up to 11, popup, wizards, setup this, setup that, backup, OneDrive, give us all your information and sign away any privacy.
Regardless of any minor issues I bump into on the way, I am never going back!
My daily driver is a Mac laptop, so I wouldn’t say I’m fully switched. . But I did switch over my gaming PC to Bazzite and have zero regrets. I do, however, dual boot back into windows when the kid wants to play Fortnite.
