Buy European

My partner and I will be switching from Windows to Linux Mint soon and we are excited! We have been watching some tutorials and looking into tips and common problems before we get started to have the best chance of success.

To be honest with a distro like Mint it seems a lot easier to move to Linux than I expected. It's good to see commenters on this thread seem to agree, since the only reason I never considered it in the past was that I had this image of Linux as a really complicated OS that only IT-people could use. Not anymore!

For me personally, Bazzite has been easier than Windows.

A Guix user! Glad to see someone trying it. I have mixed - but high hopes for Guix, as an os in itself, but also for the good a purist foss os like that does for the wider community. (I know you can also add in non-guix for some non-free packages).

If I were back in my days of trying out distros and customising, I think that's the one I'd like to use now. Alas these days I haven't a lot of energy to meddle withmy Linux as well as using it.

Probably sitting at 16-20 years with a short windows break in the first 5 year. I run Linux distros on my main computers, but have a windows disk I kept around for gaming only. I hear Linux has gotten better with games, but I don't mind the separation of not being able to go straight from productivity to games without a reboot.

Been using Linux Mint for a couple of months. I love it and I'm kicking myself for not making the switch years ago. It is exactly how an OS should be.

Been happy for a few years using EndeavourOS, arch-based newbie-friendly gaming-ready distribution. Also ships kde by default so might be something you want to look at ;)

Been using bazzite for about 6 weeks now. It was so easy to install and maintain. Sure, the computer have had a couple of hard freezes so I had to reboot but I regret nothing. Everything feels so fast and responsive. Making it look and behave as I want it to is super easy.

I use my computer for gaming, watching streams and have my kids watch cartoons every now and then on my second monitor while I play games. Everything just works. Was a bit worried about splitting the sound between different outputs but even that was easier than on windows.

Sure, there are things that isn't perfect or needs some more thinking at times but those are my own projects and I like to thinker a bit too. If I didn't want to tinker anything I would just go console gaming instead.

i have read all the comments and one thing is clear: Linux is getting better and better! We all know its not like this in Windows Land!

On my 26th year, and I'm beginning to get the hang of it.

Fully replaced windows for Linux now on gaming pc and dev laptop. Running mint on the game pc because I just want it to work, have arch on the laptop because it's been hella fun to tinker with. Would NOT recommend arch if you just want a nice and simple pc experience 😅

It's been my desktop for 30+ years now. All in all, it works.

Running Ubuntu 25.04 with Wayland plasma so it'll play nice with my rig, really happy so far. My login screen doesn't display properly for some reason but it's the last in a list of minor problems I've been getting through.

I've been using linux at work for years, but never installed a distro at home to replace my desktop before.

Switched to linux mint at home last autumn and had 0 issues and love it!

To be fair I knew my way around Debian already, but using linux with a desktop environment to replace my home setup posed some challenges that simply originate from being used to windows at home.

I went with Linux Mint because I wanted my home desktop to work with minimal fiddling and I'm still really happy!

Edit: words.

I started out with Linux Mint which I had trouble with when I kept getting notified that I had unnecessary files in my Boot folder. I deleted the wrong files and broke my first installation. Tried ZorinOS and loved it. I decided to try Ubuntu to see what all the hype was about and didn't like how much Snaps were pushed on me. Went back to ZorinOS and I like everything as is out of the box. I don't care much for the Windows App Support. VirtualBox is a life saver.

Fedora KDE or OpenSUSE Tumbleweed KDE. I like the fact that OpenSUSE is not based in the USA, but I don't like how it requires root to be an active user with a password (I prefer a disabled root account and sudo or similar kind of privilege escalation system like everyone else does).

VR support is still ultra jank.

Still haven't gotten a reliable replacement to Parsec.

Nothing says pain like trying to convert a word doc or excel spreadsheet with formatting tables and the like into LibreOffice.

All the Space Engineers in Proton how-to docs are very old and out of date, and don't work with the modern setups.

Took an arrow to the knee back in 2008 and I haven't been back

I've settled on a few distros depending on use case and I use linux for most of my PC related stuff. I do keep a Windows partition on almost every machine though. Just for the odd github project that only supports Windows, some games or if anything happened to my Linux partition and I need to use my machine in a hurry I could still boot into that. Don't always have a bootstick with me.

I'm right there with you regarding desktop environments. Xfce is fine for older machines but I've found that Kanotix (debian based distro optimised for slow hardware and live sessions that has a kde version) runs well on pretty much anything.

Also fyi Kubuntu and KDE Neon are extremely similar under the hood but kde components tend to work better with the latter, especially using wayland. Just in case you run into trouble down the line.

Some years ago, after a few failed attempts, I made the switch from Windows to Linux. I used Gentoo Linux on my computer for a few years. After that, I ended up switching to the Apple lands, and a couple of years ago back to Windows. Been thinking of switching back to Linux for a while, and thanks to the nonsense and sense that this year has brought, I am back to using Linux.

At first, I wanted to see how gaming is on Linux, and specifically on my machine. Figured the easiest way to do that is by installing Linux on an external SSD drive. I chose Linux Mint for that installation. Turns out, gaming is great on Linux nowadays. I haven't had any issues with the few games I have played. I was chosen into a closed beta of a game, and even that game works perfectly - even though it isn't even released yet. On Mint, I only had some audio problems outside of games.

I bought a new larger NVMe drive from Goodram IRDM (European manufacturer, btw) to install Linux on. I chose Artix, an Arch derivative, as my flavor of Linux. So far, I haven't had any problems with it. Windows still resides on my old drive in case I happen to need it for something, but I haven't used it after I installed Mint on that external drive.

I have really enjoyed my switch to linux. I chose mint for ease of use and all in all it was really doable and man I love Linux. I have switched a month ago and going back to a windows device already feels like a horrible experience. All the pop ups, the feeling of helplessness that you feel when your Windows breaks and it fact makes your system so damn slow. I am a computer science student tho so I have a fair bit of affinity with tech and don't mind tinkering with my OS. Which made switching a breeze but im confident that anyone with google and a bit of free time can switch. Cannot recommend switching more :)

Started playing with Linux in high school about 15 years ago and have gone further and further down the rabbit hole as both Linux has become soo much better and I have become so much better at using it. Been working with Linux full time for a few years now and Windows feels so foreign and difficult too me now.

Only reason I still have Windows 10 on my gaming PC still is that I game so little that I haven't been gaming much in the last few years.

Glad to have you here!

I installed Mint in a cheap mini PC to self host, and have had problems with external USB storage drives.

They kept dismounting, until I realised you have to give them a permanent mount location (why?!).

And they kept losing power because Linux had a default setting that USB devices 'auto suspend' after some time. This took ages to diagnose, and command line stuff to fix 😔

Other than that it seems to be a solid distro.

Also - I think these distros should make it simpler to partition the SSD on install. I used to easily do that when building Windows PCs but it was not clear I was making the right choices with Mint, so I went with the default.

I'm on Mac OS and am not preparing to switch, will likely do this as one of the last steps but I do enjoy reading about people's experience now as I feel this is the big one. I mean all of Europe can get a new email provider and use alternatives for office/Photoshop etc, but it will be a much more meaningful step if it's part of a broader move to EU tech at the very foundation of software (os's and cloud infrastructure etc). Please keep us updated 🙏

It's going fine. Switched around 5 years ago, after using Apple products since the mid-80s. Switched to Mint, after trying a couple other distros. Mint ticks all the boxes for me ;)

I have no desire to move back to Apple. even though I do miss some features (Spotlight, for example) being fully in control of my computer and software is priceless. And so is my freedom to use my computer however I fancy without anyone having a word to say about that.

I still use an iPhone, though. Not much, but I do use it...

My switching started with dual booting Ubuntu and Windows but I quickly realised that I only wanted to use Ubuntu so then I removed windows from my laptop. Then I started looking around and tried Manjaro for a while and also had a short look at Mint but it was too close to windows for me.

Then I heard of immutable atomic distros and liked the concept so I used Vanilla OS, Fedora Silverblue and finally landed on Aeon which I currently use and am very happy with. I like that you have a stable clean base system and all the stuff you want to try out lives in containers and can easily be removed.

Recently I installed and tuned Arch with Hyprland on a second PC and also like that a lot but am unsure if I want to move away from atomic updates on my main laptop. I just really like that there is always at least one snapshot that you can boot into which works and you will robably never be locked out of your system entirely.

PikaOS (Debian unstable + gaming) with KDE is rocking my world right now. Linux has come so far. I've daily-driven Linux a few times and always fell off the train eventually, because I always felt like I ended up fighting it, but it's never felt as good and reliable as it does now.

Happy with Opensuse

I’ve been at it for about three years now. Started with Pop!_OS for my first try. Back then I had a laptop with an Nvidia GPU and I had a ton of problems using a secondary monitor. I ended up switching to Linux Mint, and In cinnamon, games would open on the wrong screen and I didn’t know of any easy way to force them to another screen. I later had the same issues with KDE and Gnome on a variety of distros. Eventually I came across EndeavourOS, and my dual monitor issues were mostly solved, but I still had a lot of quirks with the eventual adoption of Wayland.

Then I bought a desktop. A full AMD rig, Ryzen 7 7800x3d and a Sapphire 7800xt Nitro+. This changed everything. I had no idea how much easier things would be without being hamstrung by Nvidia.

I ended up spending a solid year running Fedora Workstation (Gnome) and loved it until I decided forcing gnome to look the way I wanted it to made it too unstable. Time to try a tiling WM. I tried an install of Fedora with Hyprland and always had issues with it. So I remembered my old friend EndeavourOS. I installed it without a DE, installed Hyprland with some preconfigured dot files to start from, and holy shit. This is gonna be home for a while. Sooooo incredibly smooth, positively gorgeous, insanely snappy and stable.

I’m really grateful for all the lessons along the way. The distros mentioned above probably only account for 15% of my distrohopping experimentation, and the problem solving taught me tons of things I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. Linux is meant to be explored and savored.

Installed Q4OS a few years ago on older laptop. Zero issues, easy peasy. Runs what i need anyway but I'm not a gamer (Plasma version)

I switched to Mint on my laptop about a month ago and so far it is nice, except that i mostly have no sound but sometimes randomly do. I am not a computer person so i am still too scared to also install it on my desktop. Maybe some day

Linux Mint at first, but then wanted to see what all the rage over KDE was about. Now I'm happily using Fedora on my Framework 13 with the only issues being either AMD (flickering screen) or Framework (broken charge limit) bugs.