cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34247715
Curious on the experiences of those recently migrating to Linux from Windows 10, Intel-based MacOS, etc. How is it being on Linux? Anything surprise or frustrate you?
great, everything works, after some tinkering
So painfully, boringly good.
Day-to-day, it just works, I don’t have to fight it. It doesn’t do anything I don’t want it to do. I don’t miss office, everything is clean and snappy.
I have managed to play almost every game thrown at it (Bazzite) - the only one that didn’t work was an older DX7 title. DOS games just work - they took more effort than this under Win9x.
I have got a couple of minor issues but all fixable.:
- I encountered a issue where it wouldn’t wake from sleep - fixed by selecting a different color profile in the display settings.
- I managed to break something in fstsb trying to setup a persistent network drive. Very easy to roll back, I’m 100% sold on immutable until I need something more customisable
- Recently my Bluetooth kb/mouse would drop off when the PC went idle, wouldn’t reconnect/wake up until power cycling the PC. Fixed by disabling BT hibernation/sleep
Having said that, last week I had to install Win11 on the kids laptop to be ready for school - I hadn’t installed 11 outside of a controlled Corp environment with solid group policy control since the early days. God-damn Win11 is a dumpster fire! The install UI looks nice but the noise is turned up to 11, popup, wizards, setup this, setup that, backup, OneDrive, give us all your information and sign away any privacy.
Regardless of any minor issues I bump into on the way, I am never going back!
It’s amazing! Full customization beyond what I’m used to and it all just runs my hardware perfectly.
My only issue is getting VR to work nicely with my specific setup but I imagine when steam frame comes out there will be a lot of VR specific updates to Linux drivers.
Mostly really good, I feel like I’ve traded a lot of major problems that I can’t do anything about for a few tiny problems that I can actually solve
That’s how I feel as well, and it’s nice not to have random background processes randomly slowing the system down. I really like that if shit doesn’t work or I don’t like it I can just try a different distro. I started out on Bazzite, but it didn’t play well with my hardware. Now I’m on Pop! running Plasma desktop, everything works, and I’ve got it heavily customized.
It’s been GREAT! All my torrenting related stuff works better than it did on windows 10. I am slowing loading old 2000’s windows PC games on my Mint installation and so far it’s been working well.
My computers are MUCH faster on linux and updates take 20 seconds instead of 15 minutes.
I switched from windows 10 to pop!_os on my thinkpad p15s almost a year ago. My biggest surprise was thinking I would still need windows for anything when I haven’t needed to think about it since.
The most frustrating part is that I’m requires to use windows 11 for work and it just feels so broken. But in all seriousness the biggest issues I’ve had were a couple driver issues that were easily fixed from the debug.
Honestly my biggest regret was not switching sooner. The learning curve really wasn’t bad. Just read the forums and docs. I run it on everything now. I game with it, I run a small homelab with it, I’m productive with it. I dont think there is anything I would miss. Everything works as well if not even better.
My steam wrapped for 2023 is fully windows, 2024 has about 40% windows 60% Linux, purely from the moment I switched halfway through the year, and 2025 is fully Linux.
I regret nothing.
Caveats:
- I built a new computer in early 2025, knew I’d be making Linux, went AMD 7900xtx. Worked right out the box flawlessly.
- I started out self hosting stuff and got somewhat comfortable with Linux in those instances, so when I eventually threw endeavouros into my laptop, it all just worked for me. I had a couple of “laptop won’t boot because its battery died mid update” events, which is about a couple more than there ever should’ve been, but it wasn’t too hard to recover the laptop every time, with help from chatgpt
- switched to Bazzite for my new desktop and work framework 13 laptop, but hold endeavouros in my heart with great affection, because it is awesome and Linux is awesome no matter what flavour you pick (restrictions apply, research what you’re getting into when picking a distro, and compare a bit but don’t overstress)
- Linux may or may not radicalize you heavily. The liberating feeling sometimes might make you mad that you put up with all that Apple/Microsoft/Adobe bullshit for all those years. Self-hosting intensifies radicalization. Don’t come blaming me when you find yourself in a shadow war with the Mossad over your email server getting shadowbanned throughout the Chilean Patagonia due to attempting to create an ex-engineers’ farming commune and a regional meshcore network there.
with help from chatgpt
🤦♂️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♂️ 🤦♂️
Can we not? Please? FFS.
Cry more
Going real well. My gaming PC (5800X3D/7900XTX/32GB) is running LMDE6 and so far none of my games have complained; Steam+Proton is great.
I also have a laptop (i7-10750H/1650Ti/16GB) running LMDE7, and that’s been my portable gaming machine for a while. Doesn’t play nice with RPCS3, but honestly that’s not a dealbreaker.
Pretty damn awesome and loving every minute of not having to use Windows
It’s been amazing. My RAM is singing praises with how much better the OS is at handling memory.
Great, using arch (btw) as my daily for school and its perfect!
I was using Windows 10 LTSC for a bit before Home/Pro editions reached EoL. My past experiences with Linux were all such a significant addition of frustration; I couldn’t justify switching to Linux.
After a string of back-to-back hardware failures, I’m back to using a 10+ year old desktop I built. Ended up trying trying Fedora 42 with KDE and suddenly had none of the issues I had with past Linux attempts. My three biggest complaints before about Linux had been random Bluetooth device incompatibility, Nvidia support being trash, and most Steam games requiring extra commands and constant troubleshooting to get running decently.
I feel like a lot of those issues were from me starting with Arch derivatives on niche laptop hardware that was already beginning to fail. My experience with Fedora has been fantastic. My biggest problems now have been: -KDE discover store is really inconsistent with its packages. I would not expect the average Windows “user”(bought a PC and that’s what it came with) to bother understanding the difference between a flatpak and a native package, and would get really annoyed when stuff is out of date or mis-configured out of the box. I had a better experience using a GUI in Arch with the AUR to install software, ironically enough. -There are a few things, ie Nvidia drivers, non-free codecs, non flatpak Steam, that have inconsistent community documentation on how to install them. These become immediately bad first impressions on people switching from Windows, and I think its important that they are clear to install properly as possible.
Other than that, Fedora is stable and runs great. I’m using a Nvidia GPU and have no issues with it(this time, at least…). A lot of my software was already open source, but I run a few Windows applications, besides Steam games, with Wine; rarely do I have to do any extra configuration. KDE Plasma as a desktop environment has given me the customization and control out of the box that I have been missing from Windows for over a decade, while Fedora has some sane defaults for it that make it accessible to Windows users expecting something a bit more familiar.
There’s always a weird quirk here and there, but I have had my fair share of troubleshooting on Windows before as well. I feel like Linux as a home PC OS is mature enough that people who don’t do much on the PC anyway could find their way around it, while it’s still going to be an annoying learning curve for people who see end user software as a hobby. Entirely usable though.
Obligatory I don’t play games with anti cheat and I don’t use streaming services with DRM. I have a few games with Denuvo, and haven’t had any problems arise that needed me to switch Proton versions that end up triggering install lock outs.
https://lemmy.ca/comment/21276696
I just put an old SSD and Linux on my decade old laptop, and it’s like a whole new computer
ofc, it was probably mostly the hard drive that was the problem to begin with, seeing as it took 10 minutes to boot up and log in, and another five before it would open a web or file browser…
I resurrected my wife’s old Macbook Pro from 2009 with an SSD and 8GB RAM (wouldn’t boot with 16GB), repasted the CPU, and gave it a good cleaning throughout.
The fan still attempts to takeoff when under load, but it runs really well otherwise. CPU is a P8700 C2D, which explained a lot when I discovered that.
Made the jump to Linux about a month ago. Too much bloat on Win11. With the forthcoming AI bullshit I decided to take the leap and see how much I liked it. I installed mint on an old laptop. I had to test it out and was surprised at how easy it was decided to dual boot my main gaming PC because there are still some games that require anti-cheat that I can’t play on Linux. But Once they figure out how to do that, I’ll be a complete convert. It’s amazing how much faster and smoother. My PC is running fedora.
Fantastic! Just switched my main PC to Cachy OS the other day from Linux Mint (previously W10) because I started to find it too restrictive. Tried out Hyprland for a bit and it was a lot of fun but I don’t have the time to fully customise everything, so went to Plasma. I’m saving Hyprland for when I retire.
My laptop is still running Mint Cinnamon (dual boot W11) but I’m contemplating on another OS that’s more friendly to Unity and Unreal game development. Any suggestions? I keep getting burst compiler errors in Unity, even on the latest LTS.




