I’d like to hear people’s journeys and motivations from people who switched over the last few months, and if there were particular challenges that were faced.
Anyone have suggestions for parental controls on linux? Mainly, to block logins after bedtime, or to limit time on the system.
Haven’t tested these myself, but after a brief search, timekpr and little-brother are packages I found you could try, related to session time management.
(Semi) Recent convert here from Win11 to Bazzite - Didn’t switch due to Win10 EOL but because Windows Recall kept fucking re-enabling itself every time windows updated and it was pissing me off.
I miss playing some games that require kernal level anti-cheat, but that’s a small price to pay for me.
The biggest hurdle I have and kind of still have is the difference in package managers and stuff like that. There appimages which I’ve sorta got my head around, gear lever helps. Then there are .deb files of some programs, some come as .tar.gz or .rpm files.
That’s ignoring flatpaks, snaps and other packages like that - I do wish there was a more uniform structure to these that is better explained, often software download pages will list some distros like Ubuntu, Arch & Fedora but miss out many like Bazzite which is fine if you know Bazzite is based on Fedora but if you don’t then you’re already stuck at that point.
Plus most pieces of software that have instructions for Fedora ask you to use dnf to download stuff, and if you try that in Bazzite it throws a fit and simultaneously tells you that rpm-ostree should be used but also don’t use rpm-ostree for things unless you absolutely have to.
I love Bazzite, I’m never going back, but it can be frustrating for sure if you’re unfamiliar with things.
I got an older laptop and set up a Mint dual-boot, just because there are a few things I need Windows for, but I’m on Linux 99% of the time.
I did find in the past that a dual-boot didn’t work well on an old Lenovo I owned, so I picked Acer this time, and it works really well. I just don’t want to have to worry about my privacy all the time, so Linux + my Proton VPN helps ease my anxiety.
My wife is the last one in the family to switch to Linux. I started with Linux on PCs (I only used Windows 95 back then in a dual-boot config for gaming only, but did work on Linux back then already), my daughter and my so use Linux for University, and now my wife is the last one to convert over the Win11 fuckup.
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A little over a year ago, I had a 5-year-old daily-driver Windows laptop that I knew wouldn’t get Windows 11, so I put Mint on my 15-year-old desktop machine to see if I could live that life. I had tried dual-booting Ubuntu a couple of times over the previous decade or so, but always just booted into Windows after the novelty wore off. While I expected it to run Linux better than Windows, I was still bracing myself for a terribly slow experience. I was startled to discover that my 15-year-old desktop computer, which had essentially been sitting cold for over five years because it ran Windows 7 like molasses and wasn’t eligible for Windows 10, not only ran Linux Mint better than Windows 7, but also ran Windows 10 in VirtualBox better than Windows 7 on baremetal. It was a little slow and laggy, definitely not gaming ready, but perfectly usable.
Then I discovered that, when I went back to my Windows laptop, I missed the way Linux worked and all of the customizability. And I discovered that Valve’s work to make the Steam Deck a viable gaming console was making Steam gaming on Linux a quite pleasant experience. So earlier this year, when I bought a new laptop (trying to beat the tariffs), I decided to get a Framework without Windows preinstalled. I put Mint on it, too, and only rarely needed to boot into VirtualBox a couple of times for work stuff (mostly opening Adobe files). So last week, I turned Windows on for the last time on my old laptop, pulled the last couple of files off of it, marveled at how old Windows looked, and installed Mint on that one too.
My house went from 100% Windows to 0% Windows over the course of the past year, due entirely to Microsoft’s own-goal of killing off their most popular and reliable product. And I couldn’t be happier.
Problems and challenges? I haven’t run into a single one that wasn’t already a problem before I installed Linux. Maybe it just hasn’t been long enough, or maybe sticking with a “normie” distro has insulated me from the worst of it, but I haven’t had a single driver issue (on the contrary, the Bluetooth module that never worked on my old laptop under Windows works perfectly now), and I’ve been able to find an open-source alternative to basically every Windows-only application I want or need. My wife’s old Chromebook, which had been basically useless for anything but web browsing before we replaced it, is still basically useless for anything but web browsing even on Lubuntu (it was too puny even for Mint). But no problems due to Linux or due to not having Windows outside of a VM. No hours spent debugging broken drivers. It’s all been super smooth.
Oh, I guess one thing is that I know Powershell a whole lot better than Bash. That’s been a little bit of a learning curve.
If you like Powershell you could always look into Python
“Like” might be too strong a word, lol. But thanks, I’ve heard great things.
Ah! I take it back, there has been one other thing. For one of my pairs of Bluetooth headphones, on one of my computers, Blueman intermittently won’t show the correct sink (not sync) codec options, and no amount of disconnecting/reconnecting will fix it, meaning that they only work in VoIP headset mode (so, lower quality). I bought these headphones after I switched to Linux, and they’ve only ever been connected to the one machine, so I don’t know if the problem is with the headphones, with Mint, with the hardware, or with Blueman. I have to tear down the Bluetooth stack and rebuild it, which sounds a lot worse than it is (actually it takes like two terminal commands and four seconds), but annoyingly that means it also disconnects every other Bluetooth device I have connected.
It’s a minor annoyance, but it’s an annoyance. Still, I’ll take it over dealing with Windows’ terrible audio interface any day.
Had a relative switch to Linux recently. Lenovo IdeaPad computer running windows 10. The stuff was getting insanely slow and battery life was reduced ton the point that it was being a pain to use. Backed all the documents and data on a local instance of dufs running on home server and installed Linux Mint on it. Had minor issues regarding WiFi and Bluetooth. Solved the wifi one but bluetooth is still a bit unstable sometimes. Came back 1 week later and the user is delighted. Says that everything works 3 times faster than on windows and that battery lasts 3 times longer. They also went on themselves to look for open source alternatives to windows apps they were using and installed them. That’s a win !
I switched recently because of it. A friend of mine made a workshop for anyone who is interested, to learn how to switch to Linux or Dual Boot. It was the final push for me to switch and loving it so far :)
Glad to hear from someone on the receiving side of recommendations to switch, and that it is going well for you.
Just recently, less than a day ago, helped my dad install dual boot Mint ( cinnamon, yay :| ) on his laptop. Now I gotta move my windows partition onto the SSD I bought and had help installing so I can install mint on my desktop. Just in case he needs help with a problem and I can better diagnose potential problems/solutions. I’d rather switch to what I’ve got on my laptop ( MX w/ Plasma ) but someone has to be able to effectively play IT.
Kinda, not fully committed yet cause as “out of the box” as bazzite is, I still have some things I prefer my windows partition for. Oddly enough, the most recent thing was formatting a god damned flash drive! Like it really doesn’t need to be as complicated as the devs made it to be!
I know you aren’t here looking for suggestions but give gparted a try. It has a nice GUI and if you are used to disk management in windows, the only major difference in finding your way around is selecting the physical drive via a dropdown, instead of seeing all the physical disks at once.
Heck yeah! Love suggestions whether requested or not! Thanks homie.
I went to Linux Mint and it’s been painless. All my games I want to play run on it (through Steam).
My son is getting my old computer as a hand me down and I put Mint on it, too. I’ve installed Sober on it so he can play Roblox. I don’t know how it’ll go but we’ll see…
Sober… Roblox
It works great for my family! Only annoyance is having to run
flatpak updateoften.Yea, roblox and fortnite are the two hold backs for me switching my kids PCs since the anti cheat doesn’t apparently work on Linux. I hadn’t heard of Sober though. Hope it works out!
Made the move gradually - first the private computers of my family,then my company. Very happy with how it went, especially in terms of staff adoption. We still retain some dual boot windows machines,sadly,as some things currently still can’t be done in the Linux world (CAD is the one thing, some very specific Office document things we sadly get dictated by a client the other one.)
Impressive that you were able to pull off the migration for a corporate usecase.
It’s not that hard actually, at least tech-wise. Our ERP always has been web based and so is our project management (Redmine). The biggest “installable” Apps are QGIS(always worked on Linux), some LaTex Apps and the Affinity suite (which works through bottles)
Officewise Softmaker is close enough to MS Office that even someone with little experience computerwise has no issues.
Combine that with a Proxmox+FreeIPA+Opsi stack in the background and you’re set.Fedora 42 Plasma is used as a client OS with benefits from us only having 2 different client models hardware wise.
“Politic” wise I have the huge advantage that I am the sole owner of the company, that my staff is young and willing to innovate as this is basically our job (we do consulting for healthcare) and that we are somewhat small and work home-office full time.
The major challenge was to make people to actually try Linux. Plasma helped her enormously,because, let’s face it, it’s beautiful. That gave Linux a lot of godwil and after two days it was usually a “I never thought it would be that easy” or “that works as smooth as Win7/10 once did for me and MS destroyed that”.
Now some of my employees have privately changed to Linux as well.
I’ve been doing my work in Linux for a while now. I’ve started trying out Bazzite for gaming. It’s been quite nice, but not without issues.
I have a friend who was trying out endeavor with kde. He uses a trackball mouse, and configuring the acceleration curve has been a nightmare for him. Apparently it’s the wayland compositor’s job to expose the ability to configure libinput, and only certain ones do it (KDE being one of them), but configuration isn’t as straight forward as in windows.
He was more able to configure it when using X11, but kept hitting a bug when using a custom acceleration curve where the cursor would shoot to the top left of the screen (I think it triggered when moving the cursor while clicking).
I haven’t looked into it much myself, but it sounds like it has been one of those unfortunate sticking points for him right out of the gate.
My advice is when you recommend Linux, do it for a specific reason, not a general philosophical one (it does not motivate them like you), and do not move up generationally. Older people generally have more elaborate workflows and unlearning then may not be worth it for them.
My advice is, when you’re recommending Linux be very sure that you’re ready to be the 1st level support from then on. Personally I’m too old for that shit. People are ignorant and unhappy for so many self chosen reasons, their personal computer desktop is just another one and I just can’t fix the world.
Thanks. I figured Microsoft trying to force people off Windows 10 might be a bigger reason than ever to get people to switch than philosophical ones. I wanted to see if that was true for people on Lemmy or if there were other reasons, hence I made this post.
I think the hardest to get on Linux is those in the middle with a very specific piece of hardware or software that needs to work in a certain way. Kind of like the bell curve meme, total computer beginners and total computer experts can embrace linux the easiest.
Its 100 percent like that. The middle users like me have the most issues.
Gamer/music maker/old random software/nas setups/networking/racing wheel peripherals, people who do this stuff it takes way more time investment.
If you just use a browser. The os doesn’t matter
I believe that the main reason for recommending Linux, in my opinion, is because it is open source code that can be audited. And the second reason is so that the EU can have greater digital and technological sovereignty.
I don’t think I will ever tell anyone to go penguin mode “for the EU”, but that is a novel idea.
Several countries in the European Union have already switched to penguin mode. 😎
Yep, me and SO.
I was into linux like 15 years ago. Liked it, but wasn’t smart enough to get it working and win 7 was still bearable. Called it quits after MS kept somehow getting worse.
Convinced SO to change over and everytbing works fine for them so far! It took a little tinkering but no complaints.
