Am the the only weirdo who swapped over to Linux without knowing a ton about it, and didn’t really have any issues? I just started with a Windows-user-friendly distro (Mint Cinnamon), and then just looked up how to get through any weird (to me) issues that I encountered over time. Gradually learned more about what’s under the hood as I went.
But I see these memes and stories about “I tried Linux, it lasted a week and I went back to Windows” here and there.
I guess you either picked a distro that isn’t stupid about drivers or you don’t play a lot of those anticheat games (most of which are trashy anyway).
Personally I’ve always had less problems with Linux. Windows gets in your way and tries to slow you down every chance it gets. If something goes wrong your chances of fixing Windows without a reinstall are really slim. On Linux, it’s more viable to actually fix it which saves you weeks of your time. Reinstalling all my Windows shit every year was such an awful chore. sfc /scannow my ass, that shit never fixed anything
i’ve reinstalled Linux far more times than Windows because of Pop_OS being a stupidly broken distro and my stubbornness to keep using it for good gaming support. ZorinOS has treated me better, but i still just don’t know how to do the things i want to on it. i can barely figure out how to run an executable despite having grown up with Ubuntu since the beginning. I would have grown up using Linux my whole life if my school laptops weren’t running Windows. Now i just cannot use Linux for more than a week without going back to Windows.
I’d recommend trying fedora/nobara(derivative of fedora focused on gaming) it’s widely supported cuz it’s one of the big 3 distris but with much newer packages than Debian but your not getting all the new software the moment it drops like Arch so it’s more stable, they’re very solid distris and automatically support snapshots(they allow you to rollback to previous file states for the entire system without taking up a tonn of memory if you somehow fuck your system). I, at least never had a problem gaming on them and found them to be ideal all-rounders in general
As for running executables you may need to modify permissions with the chroot command, additionally you may need to sudo to run it
I took the dark path when Vista became thing. With zero technical knowledge, I turned to Linux, with no regrets.
My entry way was SUSE, which was a shock, with KDE and a radically user experience from WinXP, my former daily driver for many, many years; I was an unashamed fanboy.
My next and final distro was Debian, when Debian was everything but user friendly. But Debian gave me a sense of control over my computer, which Vista had very proudly took away, while gobling away resources from a not so powerful machine.
That computer stayed home for about eight years, when it died, beyond any viable repair.
Debian stayed, although I admit I’ve been using Mint lately, mainly to accomodate for playing GOG games with the least stress.
But I’m a Debian person, no doubt about.
And I am the kind of person that spins his laptop at someone sporting a Debian-based distro and utters “I am your father.”
Nah, I think if you used a distro like mint on most hardware your experience is completely reasonable.
I started playing around with Nixos (seasoned Linux user)… That’s a real hole though. Not hard. Just different. And weird. Very cool, but still quite a bit rough around the edges.
Linux is perfectly fine for GUI users. It’s really great for most common use cases. You might have issues with games (or so do I’ve heard), but I’m not a gamer and don’t know much about this… Steam has helped make games on Linux a lot better. I just play supertux or supertuxcart or mahjong once in a blue moon and am happy.
Most things work perfectly - stick to Ubuntu or Fedora or opensuse. Once you get the hang of things, things actually feel better on the Linux desktop:
much faster than Windows
no tracking
highly customizable
if you ever get into it, you can script your setup to be easily replicable across machines
Things that you’ll have to fight
fingerprint scanners - only a small subset work. My Dell latitude scanner works perfectly though.
some printers might need manual driver download/install
some software is only built for Windows (less and less of those these days, unless you’re doing something specialized)
Actually, my experience on Linux was much better than windows for printers. Everything can be downloaded from a repo. No need to go around looking at manufacturer websites.
Gaming is actually pretty great on Linux now thanks to Proton. I still use Windows for games usually, but of the ones over tried in Linux, I haven’t had any issues.
If you have a Mac with M1/M2 chips then I’ve heard about great things about Asahi Linux. Not sure how it’ll work with games though, it already has a hard time on ARM Macs since most games are made for Intel Macs.
Nah I put my parents and grandparents on opensuse so I don’t have to constantly clean up their viruses. Just installed whatever via flatpak like bottles for running my grandma’s old mahjong tile matching game in wine. They haven’t asked for help with anything else since and I can actually relax sometimes now.
Hardest part was installing the printer driver I guess. For anyone not comfortable with cli installers anyway.
I feel like most people who swapped back either are gamers or otherwise not part of the growing number of people who could happily boot into a web browser and have nothing else on their PC. Like if you have a specific need for professional software you might have trouble staying away from windows, sadly.
You must be young. My first Linux distro was like knoppix back in… 2001? Shit ways way different back then. Drivers you had to find manually and inject during install 😂
Also around that time, wifi was becoming popular.
Installing those goddamn wifi drivers for those pcmcia cards Jesus Christ. I mainly used fedora around them.
Fedora kind of went to shit for me and I always struggled with drivers until a few years later I did a big distro evaluation and decided to move to Ubuntu where I still am today.
I took the dark path when Vista became thing. With zero technical knowledge, I turned to Linux, with no regrets.
My entry way was SUSE, which was a shock, with KDE and a radically user experience from WinXP, my former daily driver for many, many years; I was an unashamed fanboy.
My next and final distro was Debian, when Debian was everything but user friendly. But Debian gave me a sense of control over my computer, which Vista had very proudly took away, while gobling away resources from a not so powerful machine.
That computer stayed home for about eight years, when it died, beyond any viable repair.
Debian stayed, although I admit I’ve been using Mint lately, mainly to accomodate for playing GOG games with the least stress.
But I’m a Debian person, no doubt about.
And I am the kind of person that spins his laptop at someone sporting a Debian-based distro and utters “I am your father.”
Am the the only weirdo who swapped over to Linux without knowing a ton about it, and didn’t really have any issues? I just started with a Windows-user-friendly distro (Mint Cinnamon), and then just looked up how to get through any weird (to me) issues that I encountered over time. Gradually learned more about what’s under the hood as I went.
But I see these memes and stories about “I tried Linux, it lasted a week and I went back to Windows” here and there.
It’s not scary. Am I missing something? XoD
I guess you either picked a distro that isn’t stupid about drivers or you don’t play a lot of those anticheat games (most of which are trashy anyway).
Personally I’ve always had less problems with Linux. Windows gets in your way and tries to slow you down every chance it gets. If something goes wrong your chances of fixing Windows without a reinstall are really slim. On Linux, it’s more viable to actually fix it which saves you weeks of your time. Reinstalling all my Windows shit every year was such an awful chore. sfc /scannow my ass, that shit never fixed anything
i’ve reinstalled Linux far more times than Windows because of Pop_OS being a stupidly broken distro and my stubbornness to keep using it for good gaming support. ZorinOS has treated me better, but i still just don’t know how to do the things i want to on it. i can barely figure out how to run an executable despite having grown up with Ubuntu since the beginning. I would have grown up using Linux my whole life if my school laptops weren’t running Windows. Now i just cannot use Linux for more than a week without going back to Windows.
I’d recommend trying fedora/nobara(derivative of fedora focused on gaming) it’s widely supported cuz it’s one of the big 3 distris but with much newer packages than Debian but your not getting all the new software the moment it drops like Arch so it’s more stable, they’re very solid distris and automatically support snapshots(they allow you to rollback to previous file states for the entire system without taking up a tonn of memory if you somehow fuck your system). I, at least never had a problem gaming on them and found them to be ideal all-rounders in general
As for running executables you may need to modify permissions with the chroot command, additionally you may need to sudo to run it
I took the dark path when Vista became thing. With zero technical knowledge, I turned to Linux, with no regrets.
My entry way was SUSE, which was a shock, with KDE and a radically user experience from WinXP, my former daily driver for many, many years; I was an unashamed fanboy.
My next and final distro was Debian, when Debian was everything but user friendly. But Debian gave me a sense of control over my computer, which Vista had very proudly took away, while gobling away resources from a not so powerful machine.
That computer stayed home for about eight years, when it died, beyond any viable repair.
Debian stayed, although I admit I’ve been using Mint lately, mainly to accomodate for playing GOG games with the least stress.
But I’m a Debian person, no doubt about.
And I am the kind of person that spins his laptop at someone sporting a Debian-based distro and utters “I am your father.”
Nah, I think if you used a distro like mint on most hardware your experience is completely reasonable.
I started playing around with Nixos (seasoned Linux user)… That’s a real hole though. Not hard. Just different. And weird. Very cool, but still quite a bit rough around the edges.
I’ve been seeing lot of these posts about Linux. Way more since I joined Lemmy. What’s the deal?
I have 0 knowledge of programming/coding and feel should be as far away from Linux as possible. Is it not meant for GUI people like us?
Linux is perfectly fine for GUI users. It’s really great for most common use cases. You might have issues with games (or so do I’ve heard), but I’m not a gamer and don’t know much about this… Steam has helped make games on Linux a lot better. I just play supertux or supertuxcart or mahjong once in a blue moon and am happy.
Most things work perfectly - stick to Ubuntu or Fedora or opensuse. Once you get the hang of things, things actually feel better on the Linux desktop:
Things that you’ll have to fight
Actually, my experience on Linux was much better than windows for printers. Everything can be downloaded from a repo. No need to go around looking at manufacturer websites.
Gaming is actually pretty great on Linux now thanks to Proton. I still use Windows for games usually, but of the ones over tried in Linux, I haven’t had any issues.
Is there any way to try Linux on a MacBook. My only gripe with it is lack of games. The Linux library can’t be worst than what I have now.
If you have a Mac with M1/M2 chips then I’ve heard about great things about Asahi Linux. Not sure how it’ll work with games though, it already has a hard time on ARM Macs since most games are made for Intel Macs.
I’ll look into it thanks
Printers were a pain on Windows on Linux they worked without much tinkering at least for me
Nah I put my parents and grandparents on opensuse so I don’t have to constantly clean up their viruses. Just installed whatever via flatpak like bottles for running my grandma’s old mahjong tile matching game in wine. They haven’t asked for help with anything else since and I can actually relax sometimes now.
Hardest part was installing the printer driver I guess. For anyone not comfortable with cli installers anyway.
That’s cool
Lol same here, switched to Ubuntu for the most easy noob distro and don’t ever touch the terminal, it’s been going well don’t ever miss windows.
Yep. The most dangerous thing about Linux is also its draw for me.
You can tweak and fiddle with setting and suddenly 為什麼我要輸入中文
I feel like most people who swapped back either are gamers or otherwise not part of the growing number of people who could happily boot into a web browser and have nothing else on their PC. Like if you have a specific need for professional software you might have trouble staying away from windows, sadly.
You must be young. My first Linux distro was like knoppix back in… 2001? Shit ways way different back then. Drivers you had to find manually and inject during install 😂
Holy shit knoppix, forgot about that distro.
Also around that time, wifi was becoming popular. Installing those goddamn wifi drivers for those pcmcia cards Jesus Christ. I mainly used fedora around them.
Fedora kind of went to shit for me and I always struggled with drivers until a few years later I did a big distro evaluation and decided to move to Ubuntu where I still am today.
I did the same, moved to Ubuntu then arch now manjaro
I took the dark path when Vista became thing. With zero technical knowledge, I turned to Linux, with no regrets.
My entry way was SUSE, which was a shock, with KDE and a radically user experience from WinXP, my former daily driver for many, many years; I was an unashamed fanboy.
My next and final distro was Debian, when Debian was everything but user friendly. But Debian gave me a sense of control over my computer, which Vista had very proudly took away, while gobling away resources from a not so powerful machine.
That computer stayed home for about eight years, when it died, beyond any viable repair.
Debian stayed, although I admit I’ve been using Mint lately, mainly to accomodate for playing GOG games with the least stress.
But I’m a Debian person, no doubt about.
And I am the kind of person that spins his laptop at someone sporting a Debian-based distro and utters “I am your father.”