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?
I’m a programmer and have switched to NixOS, because I can define all my configurations in code+git repo, which is great. I now have a single repo that has some parts that are shared, and some parts are host-specific (one desktop + 2 laptops, for now), and if I fix some bug (like my Samsung 990 Pro SSDs having Linux issues), I know it’ll be permanently fixed, instead of having to re-figure everything out after a reinstallation.
NixOS BTW. We’re making it ours.
edit: Steam has been a non-issue, so gaming has been great so far! Not that I’ve been gaming a ton, but still.
Also, being able to use an LLM to fix stuff for me in my nixcfg repo has been great - I would NOT have been as productive with NixOS had I not have had Codex.
after a terrible time trying to work through a USB/motherboard/speaker/microphone combo issue, it’s been good. working on Bazzite as i have intel/nvidia gear and my pc primarily is for gaming. getting games to run has been as easy as it was on windows.
Switched to Mint a few months ago on my Desktop. I discovered a few issues during my time with it such as waking itself from suspend mode or the headphone jack in my front header not getting picked up, but both issues were fixed with just a bit of searching.
Overall it’s a great feeling to be able to just do what I want with my computer and not worry about big corpa messing with me, even if I do expect that things may need to be patched up here and there.
I posted this before, but it feels like going back to the best days of PC ownership. It’s fast, I’m in control, everything I want works and I honestly don’t think about my OS very much.
I chose bazzite since I love gaming, but of course it’s just a competent OS overall with which I also do my private office tasks.
Booting up my PC finally feels like a joy again.
Like most people I use Windows 11 at work and the contrast is enormous.
Like most people I use Windows 11 at work and the contrast is enormous.
Same
Open file explorer. Start a search. Open new tab in file explorer. Notice the folder path didn’t change. Observe that you permanently glitched the file explorer path bar until you close file explorer.
I hate using this buggy OS.
This is my experience to a T. Picked Bazzite for gaming. It just works. Anyone worried about not being able to do the things you think you need Windows for need not worry. You can do all of that and more.
I’ve switched systems some 15? years ago. But my mum did it recently, so I asked her this question. (Disclaimer: she isn’t the one managing her machine. Guess who does it.)
She claims it’s basically the same thing. She was surprised her start menu got different some days ago (when I updated her Mint), but it was the good type of surprise, like, “ah, it shows my profile pic now!”. Then she rambled about things that disappear from her email, but that is not an OS issue, it’s PEBKAC (she’s extremely disorganised). And… that’s it.
This is something I would love to do for people on a professional basis… I’m laying the groundwork for it right now (side hustle and fallback cushion for if the American 3rd party contract ends, esp. before 2029).
FOSS transitions and tech help, senior target demo, but basically anyone, even solo/small businesses… saving money, and sanity!
I think it was two years or so for me now, but honestly, it’s going great. I’ve got alternatives for the windows only apps I used to use, and my games run smoothly.
Every time I have to use a windows computer for some reason, I’m reminded of why I stopped using that OS…
Overall I’m damn happy. I’m surprised by how many basic things are faster, just opening and deleting files is fast. For some reason, something as simple as emptying the Recycle Bin in Windows is slow as hell; and I didn’t realize how bad it was until daily-ing Mint.
Me and several of my friends have switched recently, with others showing interest or partly switching already.
I’m surprised by how many basic things are faster
I switched 14 years ago but it really is shocking realizing just how much you were either used to or sort of worked around dysfunctionality with Windows because…that’s just the OS.
Most of the games I play don’t work on wine (Teknoparrot), and multiple machines I have are either missing or have broken essential drivers for built-in peripherals like wifi/BT, fingerprint readers etc. So… I had to go back.
One of my laptops has a 10+ year old unfixed kernel bug for the bluetooth not working… and the wifi only uploads at 1mbps under Linux, but works fine on Windows.
I’m sure people that don’t happen to have random hardware/software incompatibilities are enjoying linux, but there’s also still lots of people that can’t switch.
Some of those issues are addressable, even though they definitely suck, depending on how badly someone wants to swap to Linux. I have a PC I connect to my TV, and while it’s built in wifi doesn’t work on linux, I was able to buy a PCI wifi card and put it in, which works. You can do similar for Bluetooth. Currently I just use it over Ethernet. For laptops, it’s a pain but there are USB wifi/bluetooth devices you can get. Fingerprint readers are tougher, I believe, but I feel less critical. Either way, use what works best for you!
My only surprise is how easy it was.
I’m rocking Bazzite and the only time I wanted Windows was when I got stuck on a boss in Silksong and wanted to use CheatEngine.
Cheat Engine is a thing on Linux!
Game Conqueror is bundled for a lot of distros but PINCE is my favorite.
I couldn’t get Game Conqueror working on Bazzite. PINCE worked, but I couldn’t use any existing CE configs, and saving my own didn’t work the next time I loaded the game either. That could maybe just be a Silksong thing but I’ve never had that issue before.
Not a dealbreaker for Linux, but it was the one time I remember thinking “this is a lot easier on Windows”
I had the same issue with PINCE not restoring the correct memory addresses on start.
Although I think I’m doing something wrong and the memory in modern games is just dynamic so the correct location can’t be found with just the memory addresses. Haven’t looked if it is possible yet but I assume you need some pattern matching to find the right address, not sure if PINCE can do that yet.
Although I think I’m doing something wrong and the memory in modern games is just dynamic so the correct location can’t be found with just the memory addresses.
OK that’s the same thing I was suspecting. I noticed the memory addresses had similar names, but there was no way to search for partial addresses or anything.
I’m happy! It Just Works. Windows 11 -> Linux.
- I have had ONE WiFi problem that was my computer’s fault the whole year; as opposed to half the times I open the computer.
- One video game didn’t Just Work, I had to tinker, but I got it working smoothly with mods.
- A bit of trouble with flash drives initially because they were not formatted to something compatible with Linux. Once I learned that I managed to shuffle data around and format it to be compatible with MacOS, Linux, and my Windows VM. But Linux actually saved me and let me get an old flash drive working that did not work at all. Love reformatting on my distro, it’s easier and more visual than when I tried to do it on Mac or Windows.
For the future regarding Flash drives. The different filesystems used by Mac and Windows (APFS and NTFS) can be used on Linux.
APFS support is sometimes built in, but if not can be installed by following the guide here(github). Note that this will require building from source, which can be scary if you haven’t done it before, but is pretty easy if a bit tedious. This repo in particular has a good guide.
For NTFS support, you can install the read-only
ntfspackage, or the read-writentfs-3gpackage. This utilizes the FUSE so you’ll need the ‘fuse’ tools as well.For the older Apple HFS+ filesystem you’ll need
hfsprogs. This is available from the AUR on Arch based distros, or in the Bookworm repo for Debian distros. For other distributions you may need to compile from source which you can find from the Debian package page.I default to exFAT for flash drives. Every OS can use it out of the box, so it is the obvious choice.
This is the logical choice on newly formatted drives regarding interoperability, but you really should use f2fs or another Copy on Write filesystem for your flash drives if it’s an option.
Hey thank you for the good information; I starred your comment! This is the stuff I like seeing on programming.dev.
And I have built from source before—but considering how un-knowledgeable I feel compared to the average poster here, probably a good thing you included that reassurance that it’s not so hard, since I feel just barely technical enough to be able to build from source. It’s also friendly to drive-by readers at my level of expertise/knowledge or lower who have not built from source yet.
I switched to Bazzite and I’m really liking it.
I have had a few issues with old SDR software that didn’t work.
All in all, I’m very happy with the change and have absolutely no plan to return.
I haven’t missed Windows one bit. There were a few things that were tricky to get right int he beginning and also I had to get used to using some other software for some of the things I used on windows but honestly it’s been worth it.
I need them to decide on Wayland or x and make the damn switch. I’m tired of switching servers for apps.
They did. It’s Wayland. Everything should work in Wayland now. It’s the default for everything, even xfce (4.20+), and x compatibility is handled by xwayland.
I’ve been running Ubuntu lts waiting on a new one, so it’s a me problem as usual. Getting new hardware soon, I’ll play with some big boy distros
You can jump to 25.10 for the short-term release, and there’s a preview available for 26.04 (officially releases in April), both of which have Wayland by default in Plasma and I believe Gnome.
Though I would strongly recommend you try Debian, version 13 (Trixie) includes Plasma 6 and of course Wayland by default.
It’s a bright future.I don’t remember why but I was trying to stay on Ubuntu lts on this computer. Honestly I need to just wipe the drive and start over.
It was probably from before Debian included the non-free firmware in the installation media, so you had to scramble to put those on a floppy disk or something, all while your system was out of commission.
🤣 I missed floppy’s but I remember those days
I miss Zip Disks. Those things were so cool and so outclassed by perpendicular progress.
Switched to Bazzite coming up on 4 years ago, and haven’t looked back
