I get the feeling that Lemmy has a relatively higher concentration of Linux users. I’m preparing to move over to Linux when I build my new computer. I already put Linux Mint Cinnamon edition on one of my old laptops and I like it quite a bit. I figure that since I’ve been wanting to switch over for years, I should just do it. The games were the thing holding me back, and Proton seems to have taken care of that(I don’t really play multiplayer games that require anticheat… I’m a singleplayer kind of girl).
For me, anyway, I want to switch because Windows has been creeping me out with its telemetry. Windows 11 looks lousy, and I’d have to jump through some hoops to get my old hardware on 11, anyway.
Been a full-time Linux user since 1999 — fed up with Windows … I guess it would have been 98? I found Red Hat Linux on CD at, I think, Office Depot. It was a dive into the deep end. I was having x-server problems at first, and a math professor buddy told me where to find the config file and how to fire up vi. I think I probably spent two days sorting out how to use vi. But I never looked back. Found ways early on of making sure I was compatible with colleagues and others and, of course, have needed to spin up Windows VMs over the years for things as silly as getting Adobe DRM content to display. But it’s all so easy, now, though I do see a lot of good advice here about being certain about compatibility, etc., if you’re on bleeding-edge hardware (given what you posted, I seriously doubt you’ll have any issues).
I’ve used Fedora as a daily driver for at least the last seven or eight years, Ubuntu before that. I’ve run Arch on a few things and always run Ubuntu on servers (just got used to it). Windows will very quickly become something you don’t miss at all.
Having said all that, I’ve never been a gamer of any kind, and I know that makes a big difference.
Full time Linux user for about 6 years now. Both at work and at home.
If games is what’s holding you back, don’t worry about it so much. There are very few games that don’t run on Linux these days, like you said, because of anticheat, or just because the underlying company is horrible. Valorant comes to mind for games, Epic and EA for companies.
Some example of game i’ve been playing on Linux, with no issues: Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Everspace 2, Dying Light, Sekiro, Warhammer 40k: Darktide, Guild Wars 2, Doom Eternal, Elite Dangerous, Valheim, Minecraft etc…
There’s more things working than not working these days.
That said, I would also be lying if I said there isn’t going to be a learning curve. It’s a little bit more work (especially for games not available on Steam), but it’s really not that bad, and the community is very helpful.
Been using Linux for over 10 years at this point. Haven’t considered going back to Windows. Even put my boomers on Fedora with GNOME without issue.
I tried once the last decade and it was a pretty bad user experience.
It’s improved a lot :)
You do run the risk of a driver issue giving you trouble, especially for brand new cards, but the kernel is so well-populated now that it’s unlikely to be anything other than plug-and-play 🎉
😆 No, I meant Windows. I gave it a brief shot after some trouble with Linux gaming, but the user experience was much worse.
Current user. It’s been my primary OS since around 2001.
People have a lot of opinions. My TLDR is if you’re interested, try it out.
Last time I tried Linux was 23 or so years ago. I had no idea what I was doing or at that time knew how to figure it out. That being said, I want to use Linux but am apprehensive.
I see computers as tools. I think that tools should be intuitive and fairly easy to use. My brief experience with Linux left me feeling that it requires a fair amount of time dedicated to setup and upkeep. That’s time I would much rather spend on other endeavors.
Windows has gotten to a point where I don’t like using it. I will not switch to Apple products, full stop. But I won’t make Linux a full-time hobby.
What should I do, friends?
Try a live version(run from a thumb drive) or a virtual box environment. It’s come a long way in 20 years. I’d recommend an easier distribution to start like Ubuntu or mint. Note Ubuntu comes in gnome and kde interfaces. Kde is more start menu like to me.
Once I got everything working on my hardware, I was able to stop fussing with it. Privacy and lack of bloat was my reason to switch from windows.
You just gotta do what’s right for you. That might be windows, Mac, Linux, or something else.
From a thumb drive, you say? That sounds like a low commitment experiment I can get behind. I shall have to look into that more. Thanks!
Yep, boot from a thumb drive or if you’ve got the power for it run a vm in windows. When you’re ready for the half commit phase, dual boot. Then you can pick windows or Linux at startup.
I’ve never posted a question on a Linux forum, but I’ve searched and used lots. I currently run Linux mint and then put windows in a VM if I really need a windows app.
If you’re not a gamer (with caveats) and don’t have to use msoffice desktop apps you’ll likely be fine in Linux.
For gaming a lot of steam games are supported but not all so there’s some gap there.
I have a T500 on Mint that I don’t use as much atm, due to being on an M1 MacBook Air. My ideal future setup, though, is a desktop with Linux and another PC for windows for software I can’t get on it, so there’s no issue for dual-boot partitions that I’ve increasingly seen being a thing with Windows.
I’ve been using linux for years ( and before that solaris and sunos and … ). My lab computers are running linux exclusively. For people coming from windows wanting to check it out, I’d suggest installing VirtualBox on your windows pc, from https://www.virtualbox.org/, and then installing linux to that ( for instance, download the install image of some linux, is like ubuntu, so the file would be from https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop, and give the to virtualbox for the client install ). For a lot of linux uses this windows+linux arrangement can be optimal, since you can still play windows games, or other tightly OS bound windows apps, but if you fullscreen virtualbox its almost identical to just having linux installed directly.
My Linux journey is meandering and has a less than satisfying arc, but now I feel like typing it out for all of you. You’re welcome.
I grew up using a Macintosh and started using Microsoft on Windows 97. We were a a multi-computer household at that point, (thanks, Dad!) but I still preferred my Mac for the next decade or so. I was much more in-tune with Unix at that point, but I went to the darkside for a few years for school and eventually found myself ready to build my own PC in 2011.
One of my buddies at the time was super in to trying new Linux distros and would always show them off to me, so he convinced me to try Ubuntu on it. I decided to dual-boot since it would primarily be a gaming PC. I was default Ubuntu and needed a command to be Windows and that worked great for awhile. But as I started using Windows more and more, I eventually reached a point where deleting the Ubuntu partition made more sense. Keeping up with both wasn’t helping me out.
Now, it’s fully Windows 10 and will not be updating past that, but I’m also using a Steam Deck, so at least I get some Unix that way!
I certainly won’t be going back to a Mac, but I am considering a full Linux boot for my next build. That’s a couple years out still. My baby was built to last, and after a couple upgraded GPUs and harddrives, she still hasn’t disappointed me. I’m definitely more of a GUI user than a command line user though. I can navigate a command line, but it’s a constant game of looking stuff up.
No matter, it’s super exciting to see Linux rising up the ranks in terms of the amount of games that will work! I’m very excited to see how the community grows from this.
I use Linux wherever I can and after spending years trying different distros I’ve always come back to Mint. Although I enjoy tinkering with new user interfaces, spending time fixing problems instead of actually using the OS eventually got old. Once set up Mint works for years without a hiccup.
Microsoft’s telemetry, increasing invasiveness pushing ads, and general dumbing down of their OS so it’s usable for people who don’t know what to do when they reach the edge of the mouse pad has gotten ridiculous.
Microsoft’s intent to move Windows to the cloud should make more people question using it. Despite having to pay for Windows it seems Microsoft has decided that we’re what’s actually for sale, not the operating system.
I am currently using Linux Mint! I love it, especially as someone who can’t afford fancy things like 70 dollar games or expensive software. I’m enjoying going through recommendation lists to see what I can use in lieu of Windows softwares.
Initially, the gaming was also what made me avoid doing it, but… I can’t play triple AAA games on my laptop anyway because I don’t have a GPU, lmao. The only game I play regularly is on my phone and can be single player.
I don’t play MMO like I did as a teen, so there’s no point in worrying about that either. I have some visual novels I might not be able to play right now, but I play games at such a slow rate that I can just put them on my backlog for when they do work.
Currently, I’m playing through my backlog of older games like Trails in the Sky which work decently. Emulation also works great on it!
Yep, tried several distributions and ultimately landed on Ubuntu for the ease of troubleshooting. I’ve used Linux full-time, including for work, for a few years now and at this point can’t imagine wanting to switch back. Agreed that there are still some games I have to skip on for now however there are plenty now to not be a deal breaker for me.
I use macOS as my primary, but I use Rocky Linux and Ubuntu for my servers
I’ve been using linux almost exclusively since somewhere around 2008 or so. The main thing is to ensure that you are still able to do what you want to do with your computer, regardless of the OS. You may have to seek out some alternatives to programs that you’re currently using, but there’s a pretty good chance that there’s something available. Check out the available software on the Mint install you currently have, and check out protondb to see if the games you’re interested in are compatible. I’d recommend creating a backup of your current system before you do anything just in case you need to revert back.
On a distro like Mint, I’ve never (or at least very rarely) run into any issues outside of NVIDIA drivers, and even that isn’t too bad given that it’s a slower-moving distro and Cinnamon isn’t using Wayland anyway. I put Mint on my parents’ computer since it ended up being easier for them than Windows was. That doesn’t mean that you won’t have any issues, but Mint is pretty easy to use, and they have a reasonably active forum for asking for help.
For what it’s worth, Windows 11 is pretty lousy. You get ads shoved everywhere they can shove them, and their telemetry is pretty invasive, imo. That’s not even mentioning their future plans where everyone gets pushed to their cloud services. If you have any questions, please ask and I’ll answer as best I can.
I don’t currently use the computer much, but I have Windows 10 and Linux set up for dual boot on my old desktop and primarily use Linux there. My kid uses Windows for playing games and sometimes I do, too, but I don’t game much these days.
My laptop has Windows 11, but they keep filling it with all kinds of advertising and I absolutely hate advertising. I am very tempted to replace it entirely with Linux.
I’ve toyed around with different distros several years back and at this point I’ve settled on Ubuntu simply because any time I search for answers to problems that crop up, the results are primarily geared for Ubuntu users and being middle aged, I lack the patience to dig deeper to learn how to fix something on a less popular distro. Having something with longer term support is nice for me, too, because I’ve been stuck with horribly slow DSL internet living out in a rural area, so downloading updates all the time is not trivial for me either. For a little bit I thought I wanted to be bleeding edge and then I realized it was pretty impractical and unnecessary for my situation.
I used to use primarily linux on my desktop and laptop but haven’t in a long time. Back then it was because I couldn’t afford newer hardware and so linux (I used to use xfce and then later lxqt) performed great on older hardware. But now that I can afford it, I have been using Macs though I still dip into a headless linux VM for some development when the need arises.
