Honestly I’ve been eyeing Linux more and more, but it also scares me a little. What I’m mostly worried about is losing any functionality I’ve gotten used to.
I’m a big Linux advocate these days and my best advice is to set realistic expectations. If your intent is to recreate your Windows experience exactly, you’ll always be left disappointed. There’s simply nothing better than OneNote at what it does, but I migrated my note taking habits over to Obsidian and I’m perfectly happy there now. Turns out I didn’t need 90% of OneNote’s immense functionality.
At the end of the day though, Linux is FOSS: it’s made by people, for people, to solve the computing problems people have. There are a variety of solutions out there. Reexamine your workflows and be open to fitting new solutions to them, there are just SO MANY choices out there for how to handle most problems.
Aside from that, there’s always going to be a small learning curve. People tend to view that as simply a hassle that takes time to overcome and while that’s not entirely wrong, it very much undercuts the real value of learning how to operate and maintain the OS that you most likely use every day, all day. It’s extremely hard to accurately describe the value of investing that time and having an OS that isn’t bloated with corporate nonsense and fighting you to dictate your workflows into their intended patterns so they can agitate you with ads and paid services at every step. There’s a reason we all come out sounding like zealots and while I acknowledge it can feel a little cult-ish, who you gonna trust? Your online nerd community or a corporation who has shown time and time again that they do not value you as an individual user?
Pasting my comment here from another on this thread.
I’ve been using Cachy OS and Marvel Rivals, Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Crusader Kings 3, and UFO 50 have all worked out of the box including multiplayer. Turmoil and Helldivers 2 required a “tweak” which was switching back from Cachy’s version of Proton to the default Steam one. (Turmoil had minor graphical glitches and Helldivers 2 wouldn’t work on multiplayer until I did that.)
Linux gaming is worlds better than it has been in ages.
As someone who has used linux since 2009, I remember the days when linux “gaming” was super tux cart and some clone of minesweeper, that’s it. Linux has gotten SO much better in regards to gaming and will only continue to do so.
Uplink, Neverwinter Nights, and a few other games had native clients circa 2002-3. Wolfenstein and CS worked via opengl and wine. World of Warcraft, doom 1 & 2, StarCraft 1 (I never played 2)
Sometimes it was a pain getting games to work, for sure. And it’s 1000% better than it used to be! But there were lots of games available even back then, if you knew where to look.
Also me whenever a new version of windows came out or I just to reinstall for some reason. It never felt the same as it was.
I’ve switched to Linux a long time ago. You’ll get used to it and it will be the new normal if you give it a chance and understand that it is different.
People worry too much about it, just give it a spin.
I’ve been using Mint since November. Love it. It’s made using my PC new and fun again. There are only two things I cannot figure out yet, and that’s putting roms on my PS2 hard drive, and connecting my TI-86 calculator. Luckily, those are both things I can do on my XP machine.
https://www.protondb.com/ if you didn’t know about protondb it’s really helpful to look for game compatibility. Proton is what lets most windows games run on linux, and is easy to turn on in the steam compatibility settings.
Ironically, windows games run better on Linux than Linux games run on Linux. I wouldn’t worry about it, Proton (the thing that lets you run Windows games) is extremely good now. Just make sure to enable it in your Steam settings
I’m at the point now that I don’t even bother checking ProtonDB unless it’s a really expensive purchase. Most things work out of the box for me. With some games that have a native Linux client, the Windows version will actually run better for me.
Honestly I’ve been eyeing Linux more and more, but it also scares me a little. What I’m mostly worried about is losing any functionality I’ve gotten used to.
I’m a big Linux advocate these days and my best advice is to set realistic expectations. If your intent is to recreate your Windows experience exactly, you’ll always be left disappointed. There’s simply nothing better than OneNote at what it does, but I migrated my note taking habits over to Obsidian and I’m perfectly happy there now. Turns out I didn’t need 90% of OneNote’s immense functionality.
At the end of the day though, Linux is FOSS: it’s made by people, for people, to solve the computing problems people have. There are a variety of solutions out there. Reexamine your workflows and be open to fitting new solutions to them, there are just SO MANY choices out there for how to handle most problems.
Aside from that, there’s always going to be a small learning curve. People tend to view that as simply a hassle that takes time to overcome and while that’s not entirely wrong, it very much undercuts the real value of learning how to operate and maintain the OS that you most likely use every day, all day. It’s extremely hard to accurately describe the value of investing that time and having an OS that isn’t bloated with corporate nonsense and fighting you to dictate your workflows into their intended patterns so they can agitate you with ads and paid services at every step. There’s a reason we all come out sounding like zealots and while I acknowledge it can feel a little cult-ish, who you gonna trust? Your online nerd community or a corporation who has shown time and time again that they do not value you as an individual user?
My main concern is for my hobbies, like games and such. I’ve heard that games can have a bit of difficulty running on Linux, and graphics drivers too.
Pasting my comment here from another on this thread.
I’ve been using Cachy OS and Marvel Rivals, Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Crusader Kings 3, and UFO 50 have all worked out of the box including multiplayer. Turmoil and Helldivers 2 required a “tweak” which was switching back from Cachy’s version of Proton to the default Steam one. (Turmoil had minor graphical glitches and Helldivers 2 wouldn’t work on multiplayer until I did that.)
Linux gaming is worlds better than it has been in ages.
As someone who has used linux since 2009, I remember the days when linux “gaming” was super tux cart and some clone of minesweeper, that’s it. Linux has gotten SO much better in regards to gaming and will only continue to do so.
Linux user since 1998, checking in.
Uplink, Neverwinter Nights, and a few other games had native clients circa 2002-3. Wolfenstein and CS worked via opengl and wine. World of Warcraft, doom 1 & 2, StarCraft 1 (I never played 2)
Sometimes it was a pain getting games to work, for sure. And it’s 1000% better than it used to be! But there were lots of games available even back then, if you knew where to look.
Also me whenever a new version of windows came out or I just to reinstall for some reason. It never felt the same as it was.
I’ve switched to Linux a long time ago. You’ll get used to it and it will be the new normal if you give it a chance and understand that it is different.
People worry too much about it, just give it a spin.
I’ve been using Mint since November. Love it. It’s made using my PC new and fun again. There are only two things I cannot figure out yet, and that’s putting roms on my PS2 hard drive, and connecting my TI-86 calculator. Luckily, those are both things I can do on my XP machine.
Do it. I was where you are 2 months ago. Everything isn’t perfect to where it was but I don’t mind it and am not looking back.
Dumb question. Can you play games that don’t officially support Linux? The oblivion remaster that came out today for instance
I’m due for an OS reinstall and maybe this is the time for the switch
https://www.protondb.com/ if you didn’t know about protondb it’s really helpful to look for game compatibility. Proton is what lets most windows games run on linux, and is easy to turn on in the steam compatibility settings.
Ironically, windows games run better on Linux than Linux games run on Linux. I wouldn’t worry about it, Proton (the thing that lets you run Windows games) is extremely good now. Just make sure to enable it in your Steam settings
From personal experience testing some games before, indie games ran better performance than they do on windows while AAA games ran worse.
That was years ago tho. Apparently steamdeck uses linux and valve has started helping to the contributors working on linux gaming.
I’m at the point now that I don’t even bother checking ProtonDB unless it’s a really expensive purchase. Most things work out of the box for me. With some games that have a native Linux client, the Windows version will actually run better for me.
You can try Linux with dual booting ( but be careful or windows will fuck everything up)