I’ve been almost-ready to ditch Windows for years. Now’s the time.
My new neighbor is an old-school nerd. He hosts install parties at our local leftist third space.
He’s going to help me switch to… not sure yet. Probably Mint. I can’t wait. It feels as good as never giving a cent to Amazon, Uber, and streaming services.
Yay.
Have fun! Whatever you do, if you run into an issue you can’t solve, stick with it. You’ll learn and become better over time.
I’ve been gaming on Linux for about 3 years now and it’s been great. Had some hiccups here and there but they were solved with some searching.
Mint is a good choice for your first linux.
Second this! Been using it for years. Not a single problem. It just works
Plus it’s built on Debian right? So if you ever want to bring things even lower-level you’re positioned well to learn more in preparation.
The “main” version is built on Ubuntu. There is a Debian based version (LMDE), but the Ubuntu based one is the “recommended” one.
Ubuntu is Debian based, so it stays true
Finally moved my gaming machine over while upgrading storage the other day. Pretty much seamless.
2 years ago when I started my switch I tried ~10 distros and then did a prolonged test of about 2 months for each of the 2 distros that were the closest to being perfect out of the box and settled on Bazzite.
I wish you a happy journey and if you don’t like one flavor don’t ditch Pizza, there are many more flavors to try and one of them surely will become your favorite.
I tried ~10 distros and then did a prolonged test of about 2 months for each of the 2 distros that were the closest to being perfect out of the box
Oh wow, that’s some serious dedication. Have you ever written out your experience?
No, I don’t believe it’s of any worth, as experiences will vary depending on user preferences and hardware. What would be the value of content like that?
But yeah, I was adamant about switching. I knew I would ditch Windows. I forced it down on my self to such a degree that I had to learn how to work (while working) without the tools I used for ~20 years like Adobe for example. I freaking love Inkscape and gimp is the most unintuitive piece of software on my PC.
Even if it’s subjective and reliant on the used hardware, if we had enough of these reports, they would become very valuable as patterns would inevitably show up.
But, I’m afraid we’re past the point in which you can reliably and vividly recollect the whole experience 😅.
There are already gazillions of reports scattered around both open and closed platforms.
But you can’t easily search for them with proper filters, they are almost useless.
What we truly need is a platform that enables this. And it needs to be federated, so every willing distro can host their own but share them to those instances interested in aggregating all distros.
Fedora and Ubuntu have their own, but Distro Watch aggregates both so that anyone wanting to switch can easily compare.
Sounds like you’re in good hands. Enjoy the ride, plenty to learn and to feel good about understanding :)
Never go to a second location, let a third.
You in trouble.
Oh yeah baby
That’s great to hear! Welcome, and have frustrating fun!
If you don’t mind me asking; in your context, what does “leftist” mean? When I hear the term, it’s usually meant as a pejorative for some nebulous group the utterer doesn’t like.
Thanks !
Not a native speaker, so don’t put too much faith in my answer, but: for me, it means actual left, faaaar left, not the milquetoast leftf-wing parties that sometimes win elections in Western Europe.
There’s a good measure of gift economy, for example. We share many resources, grow food for each other (I do squash, a neighbor does leek, and so on–but we don’t trade, we just take what we need.) When we need musclepower we just pass the word around and strangers or friends come build a wall / clean out an old barn / stack firewood. There’s a buy-nothing warehouse were we drop everything from clothes to building materials, toys, kitchenware, and art supplies.
I volunteer to manage a pay-what-you-want hostel for hikers. There’s a lot of grassroot community politics / activism. It’s nice.
"It feels as good as never giving a cent to Amazon, Uber, and streaming services.
Yay. " Yay indeed. Just started my Cinnamon journey. Old Win7 laptop - never going back, to Apple either.
Apple, with their M silicon, has been tempting recently, but I really can’t bring myself to pull the trigger when I could have a top of the line Framework for the same price as a middle range MacBook pro. Sure, the MacBook is probably more powerful, but the framework would actually be mine.
That said, in the current ram/ssd economies I’m not buying a laptop at all if I can help it. Unfortunately, I want one so I can edit on the go, and uploading TBs of video footage to my home PC and then editing remotely isn’t going to work, so I’ll probably have to cough up some dough eventually.
I know you’re getting a million suggestions and to be clear- nothing is wrong with Mint, but I recommend Fedora Kinoite as a first distro if you’re coming from Windows. KDE is going to be more familiar and the way the backend is designed makes it basically impossible to meaningfully break.
Bazzite or Zorin too
Definitely Bazzite, I also love Zorin but IMO that’s more an “Install on your dad’s laptop” OS than something for someone who knows how to install an OS.
if you ever installed windows you don’t even need help. download iso and burn it to disk or more likely nowadays steup a bootable usb with the image. boot and click next next next and walla.
You’re going to start switching on saturday, and keep switching the following week, and… it’s a process 😁 Have fun !
our local leftist third space.
You have no idea how jealous I am.
Sometimes I look at my life and I feel jealous of myself. Tbh I deliberately moved here (the boonies, and a leftist / alt-culture hotspot of grassroot community living), and it has its cons, but… Next week a wool felter is taking me foraging wild plants to teach me basket weaving, then I’m teaching her the basics of fermenting food (for booze, taste, or preservation), while my 10yo kid is 500km away for her country-wide robotics competition. I’m happily trapped in a caricature.
where is this? asking for a friend.
Central France. You coming?
guess i have to find a way to get accepted into europe (and finding a bunch of money)
So, in a week or so?
😂
As an American you can easily get into any country making decent salary (by European standards) as an English teacher. Try Poland, they accept basically anyone unless you’re Muslim
does it count if i’m not from the us and english isn’t my mother tongue?
Mince alors! If been to France multiple times, went to Burgundy last, and je parle in petit peu francais as well. You went full Braiding Sweetgrass and I really envy you! We moved to the county in west Germany and it’s all conservatives here. Not that they are actually conserving anything, though.
Und ich spreche Deutsch! Been to Bavaria (I know) a few times as a kid / teen, my grandmother taught highschool German for decades, and my dad reads Goethe for fun. German was the language I actually loved. Never use it nowadays though, and it’s so rusty I can’t do anything with it anymore. And my traitor kid just picked Italian as her 2nd foreign language. She sucks.
I thought it said “nerd space” not “third space” and I was like what’s that??!!
I need one though.
What’s a “third space”? 🫣
It’s a term from city planing. Essentialy places that are not your place of work or someone’s home.
Here is a more in depth explainer by NotJustBikes: https://youtu.be/VvdQ381K5xg
Critically somewhere that doesn’t cost money to simply exist in.
I don’t understand that explanation. Your workplace doesn’t cost money to exist in, it’s quite the opposite. Often a third place is a pub or something, in which you’re expected to buy a drink or something.
A city park is also a third place and that doesn’t cost you money to be there.
Yeah, a third place doesn’t have to cost money, but it also isn’t a requirement that it’s free.
Thanks! I had no idea that was a term. I suggest we upgrade those places to “second place”
We’re sort of required to have a home to sleep and such, and a workplace to make money, so third place is the term that makes sense. Somewhere you aren’t required to be, but you enjoy being.
Something capitalism deems evil
Why not both? 🤓
Do you live in a city? If you do, there is something of the sort in most cities; you just need to know the right people or look in the right places.
If not, yeah, rough, you could try travelling in to a city though.
Before anyone says anything, no my city is not huge, no I am not in the US. The political left is active pretty much everywhere on earth, sometimes more or less underground depending on the conditions, but they’ll have some sort of spaces for themselves.
Mint is a good choice. It just works.
Haha! No it doesn’t.
Nice move.
Feel free to check back and share your experience.
Yo, so first of all, congrats on being able to ditch Windows! Second of all, I got hype-convinced to make the switch a few days ago and I have LOVED it. Moving from Windows to Mint (at least so far) was a breeze. There’s a tiny bit more thought overhead that goes into fixing things sometimes, but if I’m really honest about that, I had a lot of that with Windows, too, I just have decades of fixing Windows experience.
