I was using Windows for a long time, from 95, XP, 7 and 10. Games just worked out fine, software that I needed I pirated. But I was annoyed from updates, (cannot turn off MY pc, just update and turn off option) bing, fokin bing and oh the best - F1 binded to it.
On parent’s pc is 7 still installed lol, not gonna change soon, anyway, my old laptop(server since 2017) wasn’t working properly with win, so only option to save it was Linux. Ubuntu was my choice in few years back, That was the moment I discovered open source software (head exploding image).
Recently i switched my main computer into PopOs, since I worked on it I was ,scared, to do it, because of some windows specific software. (I’m still able to boot into win, I kept it for some programs that I need once per year).
But I will never go back to windows as a main. First month was little bit stressful, configuring things and getting used to new workflows, but it is just a pleasure to use. No annoying popups, no preinstalled spyware, no stress related to running unknown .exe files, no bing. I just went from small dark closed box to a nice huge green open(source) forest…
Everything just works. If not, I still can fix it (mostly). I’ve got better with security, I understand more how things works generally. I found my peace in getting to know more how things works, not just guessing what it can do and never actually find out.
So if there is some one that is disgusted with how windows pc works, and is still using it, just switch it for Linux. Just do it, it will bring joy into using your machine as you need to and want to.
Just wanted to say this…
…and share the software, you’ll be free… https://youtu.be/9sJUDx7iEJw
I just went from small dark closed box to a nice huge green open(source) forest…
best. sentence. ever.
enjoy your new found freedom to explore and learn, friend.
Welcome to the communion, Chungus.
I highly recommend ZorinOS for relatives stuck on old Windowses.
Gentlemen, we unplugged another one. Zion is growing day by day.
is Zion acceptable? I’m running it in a VM on my unraid server. passing through my graphics card and mouse and everything to the Zion VM. so far it has worked better out of the box than anything else I’ve tried. so I kind of assumed that it was for losers because it works too well lol
I was making a matrix reference
damnit lol!
I get it for personal or even business use on a small scale is great. I use Linux daily, I’m a sysadmin and manage windows and Linux servers. My main desktop is windows. I’m considering switching my home pc over to Linux again since generally (from what I hear) gaming works mostly and that was what used to always bring me back to windows. Now I don’t really game that much anymore anyway so it may not even really matter that much for me.
But for a business that has hundreds or thousands of user devices that they need to secure, configure, meet compliance, etc, how would they do that with a Linux distribution? Microsoft has active directory and group policy to manage this kind of thing (and now moving toward AAD and intune to manage device configuration) but I have yet to see any kind of Linux desktop distribution that has a central configuration management, patch management and security management. Sure you can configure it to auto update and send it out hoping for the best, but what happens when a device stops checking in, or the VPN client breaks, or there is some software we need to push out to all our users immediately? What choice do we have?
Yes, it’s possible to deploy Linux in enterprise. Google even develops ChromeOS for that purpose, deploys Chromebooks in-house, and sells Chromebooks. Heck, you can enroll your Linux boxes into Active Directory with SSSD if you want to. You can use pull-based configuration management tools to configure workstations. Albeit rare, there’re MDM solutions similar to Windows ones with Linux support, such as Kolide and Scalefusion. I agree that the Windows sysadmin experience is seamless if you fit into Microsoft’s model, compared to Linux. Linux sysadmins must know how to write scripts to bridge the gap. Although I suspect the Microsoft experience will get worse as Microsoft deprecates older solutions in favor of Azure.
Good for you, welcome aboard!
I want to switch, but every flavor I’ve tried so far has not been compatible with my twin graphic cards.
No promises but arch Linux is pretty much a swiss army knife for stuff like this. I just use it because I can get it running on anything and set it up anyway I want.
Well, swiss army knifes work… really bad in comparison with specialised tools.
Then it’s more like if you can’t find the right too for the job, make one.
… and with high probability you will make it subpar to one maden by industry.
Don’t get me wrong, Linux sure is entertaining and powerful, but it demands you to be very very experienced with it to gain considerable profit over using proprietary stuff.
I’m beginning to think you’ve never used Linux or you have only dabbled with it a little in the past. I almost wonder if you’ve even used arch properly setup with kde or gnome or even booted up arch before.
Either way, it’s hard to have a debate with someone who is either arguing a point without understanding the other side or has very outdated information about a subject and is disinterested in discussion. I don’t judge if you prefer windows or Mac os or whatever. I don’t think this conversation is going to go anywhere and I don’t care to waste energy on it.
Either way, it’s hard to have a debate with someone who is either arguing a point without understanding the other side
It’s true.
One of us! One of us! Which distro did you go with, and how has the driver functionality been? Is this for a laptop or a desktop?
They said it was PopOS in the post
I looked for it, too. :(
Main is Pop_Os and server is now Mint. With ryzen PC setup it´s great. Laptop is old i5, didn’t have a problem.
I’m thinking about making the switch soon, can you tell me why you went pop_OS instead of mint?
I’m getting overwhelmed with options and just want to know why you went with one over the other
Not OP, but I’m building a new PC that will run Pop too. Main reason is that it’s very different from a UI perspective than Windows. Which I’m so sick of. I actually like MacOS but hate Apple’s hardware prices. So Linux it is and Pop seems like it’s stable and designed well. I may have to run a Win VM to use Fusion360, but I’d like to try FreeCAD first though. I’m designing for 3d printing so nothing crazy complicated.
If you have a very new hardware, Pop Os is probably better. Otherwise, mint!
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/9sJUDx7iEJw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I just did this also with my laptop after getting a bigger SSD and dual booting it. The only thing I am missing is fingerprint support, but even with windows it was extremely spotty. I had went through the trouble of adding another finger as a backup and still had over a 50% failure rate when trying to unlock my computer so I haven’t missed it.
It’s interesting how far Linux desktop has progressed recently… I don’t hate Windows, in fact I think it’s a great OS for most purposes. But I happened to try Linux Mint a few years ago in a fit of pique about being excluded from the Win11 upgrade for spurious reasons… and it just kind of stuck.
Two years later and I am full on Linux now. Don’t even have a Windows partition (though I do keep a VM). And I’m about to buy a new laptop that I intend to buy without an OS, it will never be touched by Windows, there’s just no need.
For my purposes, Linux does everything now. OS, software, the games I want to play… I never even think about it. Also, everywhere I look, I see Linux - my Steamdeck, my MiSTer, my Pis, my Miyoo Mini. It’s everywhere…
I switched five years ago or so, but the last two years have been great. Almost all of the little annoyances I had disappeared in that time.
The past two years is mostly learning not to brute force the windows or macos way on Linux. I had the benefit of moving from windows to Mac os and back to windows.
Your not married to any software after the first time you switch OSes and open source is very good at existing everywhere there isn’t a fee to operate.
Yeah, it’s weird. I’d been trying it on and off since 1997, and always bounced off because of some annoyance or other. Now… nothing. It’s very low friction.
I had a similar experience. Tried Linux off and on since the early 2000s but never really got proper hardware support and kept giving up on it; only to try again some time later. Then around 2013 things just started to work and I got a usable experience overall. Though saying that Linux Mandrake did get pretty close at an earlier stage, I believe the accelerated graphics card was the only thing not working at the time (approx 2006-2008).
I didnt hate Windows until 10/11. I hate the design aesthetic they’ve taken with it, and I hate the walled garden approach they are slowly moving the OS towards, and the ridiculous overbearing nature of the telemetry data gathering.
I still will argue any day that Windows 7 is the best OS ever made, It had the best balance of usability, stability, and performance, and I would still be using it today if it wasnt for being EoL’d. first OS I got at launch, and installed Day 1.
But I’m on linux now, and on Linux I’m staying.
Your not missing much with window 11. It’s like moving from a toxic relationship to an abusive one. Your constantly second guessing yourself on what your still allowed to do on it while you question if you actually own the os you spent $200 on.
I use it for work. Other than having to think for a second to find weirdly hidden menu items, it’s fine. At least for my purposes, as a .NET dev. One thing I love about it is Windows Sandbox… really wish Linux would could up something similar.
really wish Linux would could up something similar.
I mean, it kinda already exists. Just run it in a Docker container and remap the users in the container to non-existent uids/gids on the host.
As far as I’m aware WS is pretty close to what you get by just using virtalbox (with an easier setup) so you could do that on Linux. With Linux you also have more advanced solutions though like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubes_OS
holy shit it’s big chungus i’m your biggest fan
Big Chungus hugs to you!
I made the switch recently as well. I was really unsure of how the whole thing would turn out with me having used Windows for the last 20 years +, but man, it was way easier than I thought.
I went with EndeavourOS on my desktop and Pop!OS on my laptop (for easy igpu/dedicated gpu switching) and I haven’t missed Windows since. What’s the most difficult is learning the new keyboard shortcuts, but even those you could rebind in Linux. Because you can customize the OS to however YOU work best, instead of having to conform to whatever the OS thinks is best for you.
And man, package managers, am I right? How cool are they…I tried to use chocolatey and winget on Win11 but they never felt quite right, but pacman and yay? Absolutely glorious. I love typing yay into the terminal every couple of days and watching it go, keeping my system up to date.
This is exactly my setup as well - endeavourOS on the desktop, Pop_Os! on the gaming laptop, both dual-booted with Windows (for now). I’m not doing much PC gaming recently anyway but that’s why I kept the windows 10 installs for now - but haven’t used either in more than a month.
I actually do most of my gaming on Linux. No problems thus far. I’ve only got Win11 on my PC to play VR.
Hey, you know the keyboard shortcut for endeavor that does the same thing as the Win+X for Windows? That’s always how I shut down our restart my windows PC. I installed endeavor on my Lenovo duet 3 that came preinstalled with win 11 and that is one of the few things I’m missing. Snip with shift+win+s, and the clipboard history would be the others.
I’m debating if I want to dual boot endeavor on my main PC, but I’m not sure about it because my nvme is pretty small. I also networked my kids computer and my garage computer for file shares and I’m not quite sure how well using those windows PCs to get files off a Linux system would work. Thoughts?
That depends on your desktop manager. I am using GNOME and I’m using its custom shortcut feature as well. If you’re also using GNOME you can just go into Settings -> Keyboard -> View and Customise Shortcuts -> Custom Shortcuts to add keyboard shortcuts. I added Shift+Win+S to take screenshots with Flameshot for example. But you can add pretty much anything there.
File sharing from Linux to Windows is extremely easy. Samba (Linux implementation of smb) is very easy to implement. From what I remember you just have to install samba and then add new network shares in /etc/samba/smb.conf.
In terms of disk space you’ll have to put some thought into if you really want to dual boot. If disk space is sparse it’s going to be tough. EndeavourOS is pretty lightweight but if you want to daily drive it it’s still going to take up a considerable amount of space. The biggest problem with one disk drive is usually creating partitions. With Windows already installed your UEFI partition is likely too small to contain both Win and Linux boot data. And when you install Linux as a new partition on your existing drive you will simultaneously hamper your ability to change the existing partition sizes. I would advise to get a new (even if small) SSD for Linux to get around any partition related problems.
Hmm… That’s a good answer, thanks for taking the time! I currently have about 130gb free on my boot drive, and I keep all my data on a separate 4tb drive. Dual booting on the same nvme could possibly be an issue though.
Thanks much!
If you have any more questions don’t hesitate to write me a PM or otherwise reach out. I might be able to help. As for your free disk space I think you’ll have a hard time making it all work with just 130GB of free disk space. Not because EndeavourOS can’t work with 130GB but because as soon as you set the partitions it’s extremely hard to change your partition size for Windows and Linux because of the way these partitions sit on your physicial drive.
Your 4tb drive should be less of an issue. I don’t have a lot of knowledge as to how Linux works with NTFS but as far as I know Linux is way better at working with Windows file systems as Windows is with working with Linux file systems.
The only thing currently stopping me from using *nix as my main OS is the fact that my wireless card does not work with linux distros, and the graphics driver sometimes decides to commit Seppuku.
What wireless card?
It’s a Realtek, don’t remember the exact model, but every time I tried to make it work, it simply didn’t. Manually installing the driver didn’t get me much further either.
Yeah Realtek is a pain. I was thinking broadcom
I’m not at home to check but my one system may have this, I had to add lines to hw config so it recognized the card. i can check in a few days
Today you’re big chungus. Tomorrow you’ll be oh lawd he comin’.
Great to hear!
Now that you have a couple of days since the switch what are you missing or not missing aside from what you pointed out? Any little things that stick out?
Missing? Nothing. Few things were easier to run on win, some wizards helped me along the way but otherwise, I don’t think I was happier to use a computer. It’s 3-4 months since I switched main and only one time booted into win for my bookmarks and passwords
Awesome!
Thanks for the update!
