That’s pretty much it, after several months, maybe even a year of wanting to take the leap, a couple days ago I finally did it. I just wanted to share this cuz I think it’s an absolute win, and I guess just see if anyone has any general advice to keep in mind during the process. I ended up choosing Fedora, right now I’m dual booting while I’m still in the process of finding software alternatives and getting everything set up, but trying to minimize my use of windows as much as possible, and so far I’ve been loving it. I love this community and I just wanted to thank everyone that has given any advice or suggestions in the past, i’m really excited about this and grateful that I could get to this point.

  • max_dryzen@mander.xyz
    5·
    45 minutes ago
    • Always keep a live USB of your distro handy
    • Don’t ignore the terminal, you’re doing yourself a major disservice if you do. Terminal is life
    • The ArchWiki isn’t just for Arch users
  • Sturgist@lemmy.ca
    2·
    4 hours ago

    For some of the last really stubborn pieces of software that kept me locked it to at least dual booting windows, I’ve found running them in bottles is working really well. Bottles has a community preset for Fruity loops Studio, but it wasn’t really working. Oh it would run, but with massive input and audio lag, most VSTs just wouldn’t work with FL in that install. What does work, is creating a bottle for gaming, and then just installing everything through the “run exe” at the bottle prefix page. After 8 years of dual booting, I finally nuked my windows installs.

  • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nzEnglish
    7·
    8 hours ago

    I made the switch in 2010.

    I dual booted for a while, one day I realised that I hadn’t booted into windows for 3 months. At that point I reinstalled, no more dual booting. I haven’t looked back.

    I keep a windows VM, currently has Win10 installed, I haven’t had to use it in about 3 years.

    My advice is, keep dual booting. One day you’ll realise that booting into windows feels like a chore, you haven’t done it in months, so why keep it around…

  • PushButton@lemmy.world
    24·
    12 hours ago

    • It’s not a race, take your time to read and understand what is what and how things are functioning together.

    • Enjoy your stay, it’s going to be your next home, take care of it; make it beautiful, make it efficient, make sure to get rid of all what is irritating you.

    • Start with the minimum and build from there.

    • And, FFS, make backups ;)

  • endeavor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    4·
    8 hours ago

    I did the switch a few months ago and I did it cold turkey. Turning off secureboot and reformating my steam library drive solved all the issues I had. I also reccomend using timeshift or .tar and a bash script to make backups of your os when it’s stable, that way you can experiment in peace.

  • Alas Poor Erinaceus@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    7 hours ago

    Post-Snowden and post-Windows, I also started with Fedora, and, well, it honestly didn’t go all that well (this of course was my experience! If you like Fedora and it works for you, then 👍! Not here to dis the distro!). Actually, I think it had more to do with GNOME than with Fedora, so it depends on which desktop environment you’re using; when I switched DE to Cinnamon all my problems seemed to vanish into thin air. And from there, I just went straight to Mint and have been happy as a clam ever since and never looked back.

    In my experience, running Windows as a VM inside Mint was overall much better than dual booting, which can really get to be a pain after a while (and also I think that the Windows partition will sometimes overwrite the Linux part so be careful!); it sounds hard, but it isn’t—if old and senile Erinaceus can do it, you can too! Always happy to provide recommendations.

    EDIT: Also (and again not to step on anyone’s toes), I never had good luck using Wine; this is perhaps because I was trying to run Photoshop and other heavy, Adobe-type things in it (this was before Creative Cloud). Other programs might work differently with it, but in every case for me, a VM has worked better. I don’t play games (I know, boring), but I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t for people’s dependence on Adobe products that Windows might finally start losing a lot of market share and eventually end up on the rubbish heap where it belongs.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    6·
    12 hours ago

    If you play PC games (and already familiar with Fedora), check out Bazzite. The whole immutable thing is an adjustment, but I really like it.

    Though not really an adjustment from Windows, more of an adjustment if you’re coming from another Linux distro.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
      2·
      8 hours ago

      I would warn against using an atomic distro for newbies that want a bit more than Internet surfing and gaming.

      Handling such distros well requires specialized knowledge around them in particular, and not all common Linux solutions will fit.

      • chunkystyles@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        1 hour ago

        All of Linux requires specialized knowledge. Immutable just takes different knowledge.

        The real kicker with that is just that you can’t always just follow instructions you find online. Usually you can, as long as you’re doing them in a Distrobox, though.

        I went with immutable as a newbie, and I think it’s great. It feels like getting in on the ground floor of the future.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        11 hours ago

        I’ve been running it on my main PC (framework laptop) for I dunno 6 months now? And it’s been great.

        Distrobox is dope, and “rpm-ostree” is super useful.

        Aside from that, it’s incredibly stable. And games pretty much just work.

        I’ve seen people say that “it’s not for tech people, but good for newbies,” and I have to disagree. Just because it works most of the time without having to tinker (but you can if you want) doesn’t mean it’s for noobs… That’s how your PC is supposed to function.

    • JustARegularNerd@aussie.zoneEnglish
      32·
      17 hours ago

      Hey guys, my Dad was always a neck bearded Unix admin so I’ve grown up my whole life on FreeBSD, then moving over to Gentoo during my teen years.

      I’m starting to have thoughts about switching to Windows given that’s what my new job uses, but I couldn’t find any instructions on compiling Windows outside of very outdated releases like 2000. Also, does anyone know if emacs and htop are compatible, as those are my most used applications?

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    4·
    12 hours ago

    Before you know it, it will be over a decade post-Windows like me. This week I have been trying to get a Linux phone to a satisfactory state to leave the mobile duopoly behind…

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
    91·
    15 hours ago

    its amazing how nice it is now and makes sense for most people. I should have way before this but it was a thing with my wife. still can’t get her to take the plunge though.