If you’re planning to try Linux but have no experience with it, the best piece of advice I was given is this. Learn how the filesystem is structured. It will make everything else you try to do easier.
You’re also going to get a ton of conflicting advice on which distro to use. Pop OS or Mint are my suggestions. !linux_gaming@lemmy.world is a good resource to know about too
Thanks for this. I loathe the idea of being stuck on a platform that’s hard to use and swarmed by too many angry idiots who only ever say that linux is perfect and everybody who doesn’t think so is too dumb to read. Everything that makes linux approachable is a big win.
Gotta ditch Microsoft though. Ugh. Changing an OS is such a massive pain, regardless of how much of a requirement Microsoft Recall makes it.
Anyway, more stuff like this, everybody! Thank you again.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do a little of that in my younger years, but I’ve calmed down a lot. These days I generally advise caution when someone tells me they want to switch to Linux.
I personally don’t actually think any one variant of Linux is that much harder to use than Windows or Mac. I think the difficulty comes from two things:
One, I think people forget how much learning is involved in those OS’s as well. If you’ve ever tried to teach an elderly grandparent how to use “the computer” then you know first hand how much of this specialised knowledge you can take for granted. Simple things like knowing where to look to change mouse sensitivity as an example, are really challenging to any new user of any OS.
Two, there isn’t just one variant of Linux. It’s biggest strength is also it’s greatest weakness here. It’s amazing that you have so many choices for your desktop environment, but that comes with the major drawback of users needing to understand what a desktop environment is, and why Googling “how to change mouse sensitivity in Linux” is probably not going to return anything useful. You have so much choice in Linux for every little thing. Down to a level of granularity that most Windows or Mac users wouldn’t even realise they’re not getting a choice in. Alsa vs pulseaudio, xorg vs wayland, not to mention the plethora of package managers. Hell even drivers for your video card: proprietary vs open source. And yes, some of those examples boil down to the old way vs the new way, but ALL of this is added complexity, which results in a steeper learning curve for a new user.
So yeah, Linux is hard to use. The learning curve is a cliff, and anyone who thinks it’s perfect is kidding themselves! ESPECIALLY for the user who just wants to play a few games, and maybe do some browsing. We’ll never get the year of the Linux desktop with this mentality!
I do also try to warn new users about this. It is a whole new ballgame, and it will take some effort to get up to the same level of comfort you have in Windows. It really is best to not just jump in to the deep end, and fully wipe your system on day 1.
Start with a VM, then dual boot, and once you’ve stopped booting into WIndows in frustration, then you’re ready to commit.
One thing I promise though, it is 100% worth the effort
I’ll second PopOs, I was sick & tired of windows, I’d wanted Linux for a while and tried a few, PopOs just clicked for me and I’ve not had one problem gaming (which is what I mainly do). 20 min install time and not one problem since, which is about 14 months.
I’m currently on Pop for the last couple years and I’m really happy with it. Being stuck based on 22.04 is getting a little old, but at least it means no new big bugs (in theory).
Honestly, even if I don’t like Snaps that much, Ubuntu/Kubuntu ain’t so bad after all. I’ve been running it as a daily for months now on my Linux-only gaming PC and it’s working quite well. There’s good support for proprietary drivers and media codecs out of the box.
And personally, I’d advise on using the Kubuntu version because KDE is so much closer in terms of desktop paradigm than Gnome.
Ye, my dirty little secret is that I’m still running kubuntu on my main laptop (which I do a lot of gaming on as well fwiw.) It’s what it shipped with, and it works just fine. I can’t say I would have actively chosen it, but It’s also not bad enough to make me want to go through the hassle of installing something else
It’s like a Honda Civic. It’s just reliable and easy to maintain with good performance and some good features and some you don’t really want but are still practical. And there’s a big community giving lots of support and documentation to tweak it if you want more out of it.
Gonna repeat something I said a little while ago.
If you’re planning to try Linux but have no experience with it, the best piece of advice I was given is this. Learn how the filesystem is structured. It will make everything else you try to do easier.
You’re also going to get a ton of conflicting advice on which distro to use. Pop OS or Mint are my suggestions. !linux_gaming@lemmy.world is a good resource to know about too
Thanks for this. I loathe the idea of being stuck on a platform that’s hard to use and swarmed by too many angry idiots who only ever say that linux is perfect and everybody who doesn’t think so is too dumb to read. Everything that makes linux approachable is a big win.
Gotta ditch Microsoft though. Ugh. Changing an OS is such a massive pain, regardless of how much of a requirement Microsoft Recall makes it.
Anyway, more stuff like this, everybody! Thank you again.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do a little of that in my younger years, but I’ve calmed down a lot. These days I generally advise caution when someone tells me they want to switch to Linux.
I personally don’t actually think any one variant of Linux is that much harder to use than Windows or Mac. I think the difficulty comes from two things:
One, I think people forget how much learning is involved in those OS’s as well. If you’ve ever tried to teach an elderly grandparent how to use “the computer” then you know first hand how much of this specialised knowledge you can take for granted. Simple things like knowing where to look to change mouse sensitivity as an example, are really challenging to any new user of any OS.
Two, there isn’t just one variant of Linux. It’s biggest strength is also it’s greatest weakness here. It’s amazing that you have so many choices for your desktop environment, but that comes with the major drawback of users needing to understand what a desktop environment is, and why Googling “how to change mouse sensitivity in Linux” is probably not going to return anything useful. You have so much choice in Linux for every little thing. Down to a level of granularity that most Windows or Mac users wouldn’t even realise they’re not getting a choice in. Alsa vs pulseaudio, xorg vs wayland, not to mention the plethora of package managers. Hell even drivers for your video card: proprietary vs open source. And yes, some of those examples boil down to the old way vs the new way, but ALL of this is added complexity, which results in a steeper learning curve for a new user.
So yeah, Linux is hard to use. The learning curve is a cliff, and anyone who thinks it’s perfect is kidding themselves! ESPECIALLY for the user who just wants to play a few games, and maybe do some browsing. We’ll never get the year of the Linux desktop with this mentality!
I do also try to warn new users about this. It is a whole new ballgame, and it will take some effort to get up to the same level of comfort you have in Windows. It really is best to not just jump in to the deep end, and fully wipe your system on day 1.
Start with a VM, then dual boot, and once you’ve stopped booting into WIndows in frustration, then you’re ready to commit.
One thing I promise though, it is 100% worth the effort
I’ll second PopOs, I was sick & tired of windows, I’d wanted Linux for a while and tried a few, PopOs just clicked for me and I’ve not had one problem gaming (which is what I mainly do). 20 min install time and not one problem since, which is about 14 months.
I’m currently on Pop for the last couple years and I’m really happy with it. Being stuck based on 22.04 is getting a little old, but at least it means no new big bugs (in theory).
I was stuck too and I had to reinstall everything to get the upgrade done. That’s the Linux game
Honestly, even if I don’t like Snaps that much, Ubuntu/Kubuntu ain’t so bad after all. I’ve been running it as a daily for months now on my Linux-only gaming PC and it’s working quite well. There’s good support for proprietary drivers and media codecs out of the box.
And personally, I’d advise on using the Kubuntu version because KDE is so much closer in terms of desktop paradigm than Gnome.
And Fedora ain’t bad either.
Ye, my dirty little secret is that I’m still running kubuntu on my main laptop (which I do a lot of gaming on as well fwiw.) It’s what it shipped with, and it works just fine. I can’t say I would have actively chosen it, but It’s also not bad enough to make me want to go through the hassle of installing something else
It’s like a Honda Civic. It’s just reliable and easy to maintain with good performance and some good features and some you don’t really want but are still practical. And there’s a big community giving lots of support and documentation to tweak it if you want more out of it.
You’re clearly wrong. The answer is Arch
OK, but seriously. There are two main general use families:
Debian based and redhat based
Pick something that has a DE out of the box. Use it. The big ones used to be GNOME and KDE. I dont know which one is more recommended now.
Find equivalent programs (ie. Notepad -> gedit, adobe pdf reader -> evince).
Figure out the windows start menu equivalent: how do I access my programs?
Maybe six months to a year later, learn how to use a terminal emulator.
Maybe a year later, switch to arch and find out why it’s superior
Been using Bazzite. Super simple install, been working really well.