Could be small or big.
My answer has always been that, Linux can’t handle everything I’d ask out of it that I normally can with Windows. I know the games issue has been progressing far from the days when that used to have been an archaic flaw with Linux for the longest time. Games might not be the issue except for some concerns I have for some games.
I was taking some time a few moments ago, to check if a program called Firestorm Viewer would work on Linux Mint which could’ve been my distro of choice. And the description written on the linux page described exactly the kind of concerns I’d have for compatibility and usability from going Windows to Linux.
They said that their viewer was tested and designed to function mostly with Ubuntu and while it could work with other distros, it’s not to be expected to be smooth.
That’s the kind of sentiment and concern I have always had with Linux if I were to go from Windows to it. There are programs and tools on Windows that I have that are used for specific purposes and I know they will not function on Linux. Furthermore, incase anything breaks down, any and all solutions would only be applicable to that thing that would be far easier to solve than just being SOL if I was on Linux.
It is something as a user that I just can’t simply afford to deal with on a regular basis if I made the switch.
So while I may not have too much of an issue running games, I won’t have too much of an issue using alternatives, I won’t have to deal with the Windows ecosystem .etc I will just be running into other walls that would simply make me second guess my decision and make me regret switching to the point where I would dip back into Windows in a hurry.
Only remaining windows devices in my house are my wife’s gaming rig, my gaming rig, and my work laptop.
Gaming rigs are using heavily debloated windows 11 installations, and if I ever figure it out enough they will act a lot more like game consoles than PCs eventually. The moment Linux can reliably play all the games I frequent, Windows will be purged.
Work laptop is non-negotiable sadly. My work uses Windows 10 and an absurd amount of permission controls over it. I am a web developer and every time I need admin permissions for UAC, I have to send a ticket to IT and wait for them to remote into my laptop just to enter a password. Dumbest shit I’ve seen, but this company is the masters of time wasted. But at least it isn’t Windows 11 I guess.
Other devices are mostly linux. Wife’s work laptop is MacOS.
While we are nearly an “All Linux” shop at home, there is one machine that I won’t change.
It is a HP oscilloscope running a heavily modified version of Win98. Back then, it cost as much as a new car, and it still works mostly fine (and where it doesn’t, I know, and can work around). The Windows is basically an afterthought to the hardware, and I don’t think I could get any kind of drivers for the hardware - not even for a newer Windows version. So that remains.
But even my wife wants to switch to Linux now instead of going Win11.
If it works, don’t fix it.
I have tried several times, with both Ubuntu and Mint, and it never ends well for me. I even use Ubuntu as a web server for years, and have similar problems there, just in a different use case. I don’t even get to a point where I’m unable to run apps that can run on Windows. It always seems to work fine during the first few hours and while doing the setup and config stage, I eventually run into a never-ending troubleshooting wormhole that leads nowhere but aggravation. I’ll spend hours upon hours scouring the internet for solutions and it always ends the same way “I have this same problem, and this fixed it.” and whatever “this” was never fixes it for me, whatever it is. I feel like Linux is just so always evolving that there’s no standards and a command that works for one user on a previous version/distro is just completely useless for me because of some obscure technical glitch or difference whatever my installation has. Dealing with repositories, updates and endless dependencies is always just impossible and it’s completely alien to someone who’s used Windows for 40 years.
My current iteration is I’m running a dual boot machine with Mint and Windows with the intention of phasing out Windows, but I’m unable to trust Linux Mint to be there when I need it. After a day or so of installing apps and configuration, it became unstable. I attempted to update the video drivers to the “recommended” version and it seems to have borked the whole Linux installation and nothing on the internet seems helpful, and the communities aren’t very friendly to n00bs.
So I always end up back on Windows, even though my hateful soul wants to ditch it badly. As much as I hate Windows and MS, Windows rarely has severe stability issues.
Maybe you should try something Arch-based like Cachy OS? Coming from Mint I don’t think I could live without the Arch wiki now. Just like you said, I was tired of the never ending obscure forums. I’m personally using EndeavourOS and everything just works™️. I’d like to think it’s due to the fact that less things are pre-configured, so my configs are the singular source of truth. I would say Ubuntu based distros are not good for extensively modifying.
I second CachyOS. That shit just works on every machine I slap it on.
Again, thank you for the recommendation of CachyOS. I whipped it up last night on my computer, and other than a small blip that the drive doesn’t appear in bootable devices on my BIOS unless I go deep digging and manually click it to boot, it’s been very smooth and reliable. I’ve been using it all night/day and it is really nice. I just have to figure out why the drive doesn’t appear in my boot order menu when it’s clearly a bootable OS.
Glad to help!
If you’re trying to use grub(im not sure which boot loader you’re using), you’ll need to add the drive ID to the boot config. You can use something like
lsblk -fI hope that’s enough information to help you keep going.
Thanks for the tips! I’ll check them out. I had not heard of those.
Are you me!? What you described is exactly my experience with Linux. I really want to completely ditch Windows, but I’m not keen on the idea of spending full days of my life every year on maintaining a Linux installation. I tried Ubuntu, Manjaro and PopOS, all of which have bugs preventing audio from being played on my laptop (I spent so many hours troubleshooting and couldn’t figure it out). Finally tried Mint and audio works most of the time, but Mint is a super mediocre experience that I’m not excited about and I don’t understand why people rave about it. My laptop is dual boot and I use Mint 95% of the time but it’s pretty lame and doesn’t feel like “my” OS.
Linux enthusiasts scratching their heads wondering why the masses aren’t switching over to Linux need to understand that it’s nowhere near ready to go mainstream. Even after decades of development it takes more troubleshooting and customization than 95% of people are willing to give it.
I went back to windows for a few months on the newer desktop. I installed mint and discovered it had a lot of problems with the hardware. HDMI, Ethernet, WiFi, and various downstream things didn’t work. I fixed some of it with help from forums and such, but eventually I went back to windows.
But a couple months later, I tried Pop!_OS and that has worked perfectly out of the box. No regrets.
Isn’t mint based on Ubuntu? So that should work without a hitch for you. Worst case just boot into the live usb without installing it directly and just try it there.
As for me, I dual boot on separate drives because I have specific software that requires windows sometimes. Otherwise it’s primarily Linux on all machines in the house.
Yeah! Once you get into linux you discover that in reality there are like 3 maybe 4 linux distros. Ubuntu is based on Debian and Mint is based on Ubuntu. And if you are knowledgeable enough then you just compile everything from source and it doesn’t matter if you’re running Fedora or FreeBSD.
I may be a fool though, don’t listen to me.
The only thing a beginner needs to know is Linux Mint. I think any time anyone shows curiosity in trying Linux, it should be stressed that there’s a really simple and “safe” way to start, which would be through Linux Mint.
Fusion 360.
Blender is not suitable for me because from what I’ve read it’s good for sculpture work but not good for dimensional accuracy.
There is Free cad but last time I looked at it, it was very far behind in terms of features. But as soon as that can do STL mesh to editable object conversion I’ll switch.
So many folks seem to be the opposite of me…
Linux just works now. Shit with my printer, device drivers, LAN things, stuff like like is like wrestling an animal on Windows for some reason, and… just works with KDE. It’s like they’ve swapped places.
Random Windows apps works better in wine than they do in actual windows, sometimes. With no fuss: I double click and they launch, that’s it.
Don’t even get me started on security.
But Linux is (mostly) not performant for gaming, at least not on Nvidia. It’s… fine, but I’m not going to take a 10%+ hit, sometimes much more severe, and poorer support for HDR, frame limiters, mod tools and such when I can just boot neutered Windows instead.
So I’m not getting away from Windows in the near future, but to frank, I don’t understand why more folks (who get past the admittedly tall hurdle of learning about partitioning and installing an OS) don’t dual boot, or seek to use certain poorly supported Linux native apps when double clicking exes mostly just works.
But my point is you don’t have to pick and choose. And there’s no commitment. You can have your cake and eat it, and send the cake back if you don’t like it.
But Linux is (mostly) not performant for gaming, at least not on Nvidia.
That’s true. If you really want to switch to Linux full-time, going with Nvidia is gonna be painful. Drivers have improved a lot over the last few years (especially on Wayland), but there are still so many small bugs and problems that add up and drive you crazy if you have to deal with them every day.
That’s why I sold my 3060. I had a 12GB model and for a period of a few months, the Nvidia drivers were just completely broken and I couldn’t even launch into a graphical interface (I guess they didn’t test that much VRAM because most models only had 8GB), so I had to go back to earlier (even buggier) builds. Even after they finally fixed that there were still constant graphical glitches and stuttering on Wayland with KDE…it worked, but it wasn’t fun.
Since I switched to an RX7800XT everything just works out of the box and I often get even better performance than on Windows. Just a few FPS here and there, but it’s still nice.
Nvidia doesn’t care. They do the bare minimum to make their cards somewhat work on Linux, but it’s not enough.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure working Nvidia on wayland is a very recent thing.
Honestly I just boot from my (AMD) IGP for linux, which is better for compute anyway.
Dual boot is a pain in the ass. I did this for a time and just ended up going to one OS.
My journey with Linux has always ended with “Oh, it’s easy, just paste this mile long command i to the terminal to do something that is a checkbox on Win or MacOS” type nonsense.
There’s just not any true benefits for me to run Linux. Windows and MacOS have their own bullshit but generally the amount of BS is easier to manage than Linux.
I guess it depends on what that ‘something’ is.
My linux partition used to be like this (mostly Nvidia issues), but its been relatively well behaved. And now my Windows install has become a pain with UWP apps, printers, and LAN drives, specifically, that I’ve just given up trying to resolve TBH. Not to speak of some programming stuff.
Both OSes are tools that make specific things easier.
I don’t have any reason to use Linux personally.
I’m not self hosting or running servers out of my house. I’m browsing the internet and playing the occasional computer game.
I use a apple desktop and a windows laptop
Affinity software, Linux alternatives just are not there sadly. If affinity released a linux version tomorrow I’d be gone.
Edit: These are reasons I use Linux because I read the title too fast… Doh…
Because I dont think its normal to have an American tech company recording what I do at my computer. Its a bit shocking that people have given up and just let them watch everything now.
Its not only that, its also that windows always is annoying. Weather its constant sounds, notifications, ads, user interface changes or bugs, its all so annoying.
Linux is just beautiful, quiet, fast, no ads. Doesnt get slower with time. Updates are actually adding features you may want.
The entire open source idea is beautiful. Sharing solutions, working together, without profit motives.
For work our projects use .NET Framework so it needs to run on windows.
For personal use it’s a combination of mostly Valorant, which refuses to run anywhere but windows… and short term productivity loss because it’s simply the platform I know my way around.
For my homelab I naturally have Linux running though, and the second Valorant supports Linux (lol) I’m gone.
I have a professional advantage in being a windows power user. Only way of maintaining that is running windows at home. I do have several Linux systems too.
being a linux power user is a big advantage.
Personal: Linux with a secondary, occasionaly used box for things that only seem to work on Windows. Would just do a VM if I didn’t already have a spare hand-me-down box.
Work: I’m not fighting that battle. If they deploy Windows, I’m using Windows.
Going 100% Linux, even just in personal use, is still not feasible for someone who doesn’t want to make it one of their primary hobbies.
My wife has zero computer skills. Windows drove her mad. I put nixOS on it, asked what programs she needed for work/home (zoom, chrome, libreoffice, cups) filled the config in by copy paste, and ran the rebuild… She hasn’t bugged me in 5 years for anything.
ZorinOS is another install and use option. There’s no need for hacker CLI level stuff anymore
There’s no buildabear OS stuff in my industry. If I replaced the OS on my work laptop with Linux, I would 1) not be able to access anything, or 2) if I got access I might get arrested at worst and have a serious talk coming from HR for security violation at best.
What industry is that?
Every corporate setting ever.
Corpo says use Windows, you have to do that. Circumvent it and you are going to get fired. Even using a nonstandard browser, or whatever, can get you in hot water. Corpo protect their legal standing, workers are irrelevant.
Just curious, the corpo I first worked at had both Linux and windows. Other places, even with fully locked down world enterprise, have a form you can fillout to explain why you need something. Current place has enterprise software ports for Linux or Windows. So I was more curious what industry it was not the level of industry.
I’m in design and manufacturing aerospace systems/components. And before that, design and manufacturing of laboratory instrumentation. Both were similar: options were 1) default Windows build for engineering functions and 2) default Windows build for non-engineering functions, or 3) an act of god to get something else approved. Security, monitoring, retention, I’m sure were all reasons. Also just simplifying the number of builds IT would have to accommodate.
Ive know one person who managed to get a Linux box approved. It was so they could use a particular aerodynamics software package, iirc. IT made them keep it off network and would not support it in any capacity.
Interesting.
Up till about 2018 aerospace CAD/CAM/FEA had Unigraphics/NX and PLM software as a Linux option. For who knows why, they dropped the Graphical Linux version so we are back on Windows, and headless Linux for automation only. I’m hoping with Wayland maturing they will eventually bring Linux back because it was a lot more performant than the Windows version.
Was staying away from Linux for this reason. Last time I used it, it was brutal.
I just installed pop OS and everything works out of the box except for the faceID thing. But that was 10 minutes setting up another app and now it works.
The laptop performs so much better now than it did with window 11
I had the same experience with kubuntu, everything works, had one small awake from sleep issue with my NVIDIA 3060, fix was no harder than fixing a normal windows issue, no problems since, crashes less than the system did with windows.
Adobe and games. But actually mostly Adobe.
This was my issue but one day I found out about LinOffice a project that will run office in a container and the windows appear on my KDE desktop as apps. So I looked into it deeper and it says it works alongside something called WimApps (https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps) that lets you also run office but more importantly will work with Creative Cloud. It’s seamless, it’s like I’m running Photoshop on windows. Closing apps can sometimes be wonky but it runs everything I’ve thrown at it.
What Adobe programs have you tried on WinApps?
I tried messing with my boot settings since it was required for playing the new battlefield open beta or whatever. After changing the settings, my computer could no longer find the boot drive and I was stuck in BIOS. Managed to revert and everything was ok, but with all that will be involved in transitioning to Linux, I don’t feel like risking my PC for that when everything works now, as much as I would love to be on Linux.
I know dual boot exists, I’m not interested - have to cut my storage volume to do that and I’d rather it be all or nothing.
I know I can test drive Linux by booting from a USB drive, not interested cause I’ve already done it in the past and it was fine, but it doesn’t fix the issues with transitioning.
I know I can back up all my data and proceed from that point - so what, all my data is backed up, my drives are formatted, and then what do I do if I run into the issue of not being able to boot from that drive again? Or even another issue I don’t know about yet that bricks my shit?
Beyond all of that, transitioning will involve a lot of work and investigating to set everything as I like it and fix any problems I run into. I only have so much time in the day and so much attention to give things and with the risk consideration added on, it’s just not worth the time and effort and attention it would take.
That said, I’m considering it once I get a lot of free time to commit to it somehow or I replace my current pc
