Linux

My wife wanted Linux on her tablet. She read online that Gnome was the preferred DE on touchscreens. I warned her that I personally dislike Gnome, but it's not like I'm going to throw a minimal window manager at her, so I told her that's fine and she should try it out.

Since I'm her tech support, I installed Garuda, a distro I already use. She played around with it, then asked if she could have desktop icons. It was stupid that she had to press a whole extra button just to see her "home screen", she said. So I installed the desktop icons gnome extension, but it lacks basic features like either right click or drag, or maybe both. I can't recall at the moment.

Then the onscreen keyboard wouldn't appear automatically when using certain programs like Brave. And using the stylus to press the OSK would close it entirely. The stylus was really fidgety and oversensitive, too. I have zero touchscreen experience on Linux, so I was disappointed with gnome's lack of GUI controls to fix these kinds of things.

She started to complain that Linux is too hard, then signed up for the 1 year extended Windows 10 support on her old laptop.

So I reinstalled Garuda with KDE this time, told her I tried something new, and she's been happy with it so far. Turns out my wife just hates Gnome. And she expressed this hate completely unprompted.

That's right, my love; fuck Gnome.

I've never been more proud.

I went to Linux Mint and it's been painless. All my games I want to play run on it (through Steam).

My son is getting my old computer as a hand me down and I put Mint on it, too. I've installed Sober on it so he can play Roblox. I don't know how it'll go but we'll see...

I helped switch my 88 years old grandma to Mint a few months back when her laptop started to run painfully slow. I don't think she understands that I changed her OS but she is happy with "whatever I did to her laptop", now her laptop runs much faster and 0 problems so far for her needs, very simple needs but she actually uses it a lot!

The only logical addition to the post title is "If so, you may be entitled to compensation."

Customer Testimonials: "My cousin Rick switched to Linux and now he never stops talking about Arch and flatpacks and kernel panics. BS&D Associates got us $30,000,000 in damages!"

Yes! Two folks swapped to nix, one to mint.

Getting VR to work has been a journey on nix. Everything on mint has gone smoothly afaik.

Windows 10 EOL (and moving) both roughly lined up, so we all decided to get away from big tech. The nix os was new, interesting, and feels very powerful when things work. Mint was a known safe choice.

Anyone have suggestions for parental controls on linux? Mainly, to block logins after bedtime, or to limit time on the system.

Yep, me and SO.

I was into linux like 15 years ago. Liked it, but wasn't smart enough to get it working and win 7 was still bearable. Called it quits after MS kept somehow getting worse.

Convinced SO to change over and everytbing works fine for them so far! It took a little tinkering but no complaints.

I’ve been doing my work in Linux for a while now. I’ve started trying out Bazzite for gaming. It’s been quite nice, but not without issues.

My advice is when you recommend Linux, do it for a specific reason, not a general philosophical one (it does not motivate them like you), and do not move up generationally. Older people generally have more elaborate workflows and unlearning then may not be worth it for them.

✋

A little over a year ago, I had a 5-year-old daily-driver Windows laptop that I knew wouldn't get Windows 11, so I put Mint on my 15-year-old desktop machine to see if I could live that life. I had tried dual-booting Ubuntu a couple of times over the previous decade or so, but always just booted into Windows after the novelty wore off. While I expected it to run Linux better than Windows, I was still bracing myself for a terribly slow experience. I was startled to discover that my 15-year-old desktop computer, which had essentially been sitting cold for over five years because it ran Windows 7 like molasses and wasn't eligible for Windows 10, not only ran Linux Mint better than Windows 7, but also ran Windows 10 in VirtualBox better than Windows 7 on baremetal. It was a little slow and laggy, definitely not gaming ready, but perfectly usable.

Then I discovered that, when I went back to my Windows laptop, I missed the way Linux worked and all of the customizability. And I discovered that Valve's work to make the Steam Deck a viable gaming console was making Steam gaming on Linux a quite pleasant experience. So earlier this year, when I bought a new laptop (trying to beat the tariffs), I decided to get a Framework without Windows preinstalled. I put Mint on it, too, and only rarely needed to boot into VirtualBox a couple of times for work stuff (mostly opening Adobe files). So last week, I turned Windows on for the last time on my old laptop, pulled the last couple of files off of it, marveled at how old Windows looked, and installed Mint on that one too.

My house went from 100% Windows to 0% Windows over the course of the past year, due entirely to Microsoft's own-goal of killing off their most popular and reliable product. And I couldn't be happier.

Problems and challenges? I haven't run into a single one that wasn't already a problem before I installed Linux. Maybe it just hasn't been long enough, or maybe sticking with a "normie" distro has insulated me from the worst of it, but I haven't had a single driver issue (on the contrary, the Bluetooth module that never worked on my old laptop under Windows works perfectly now), and I've been able to find an open-source alternative to basically every Windows-only application I want or need. My wife's old Chromebook, which had been basically useless for anything but web browsing before we replaced it, is still basically useless for anything but web browsing even on Lubuntu (it was too puny even for Mint). But no problems due to Linux or due to not having Windows outside of a VM. No hours spent debugging broken drivers. It's all been super smooth.

Oh, I guess one thing is that I know Powershell a whole lot better than Bash. That's been a little bit of a learning curve.

Yes. I left a USB stick with a Linux installer on the table when they tried to upgrade to Windows 11. The upgrade failed and they instead upgraded to Linux without even needing to ask for help :>

My daughter is very Linux curious but she's not going to want to learn anything about it. She just wants to play games and chat with friends. I'll probably switch her when I upgrade and pass my current computer down.

Swapped to CachyOS

Pros:

• Super easy OS install
• Good tool for installing steam
• Most games play fine but knew this already from my steam deck

Cons:

• Struggled to find how to setup services like Jellfin, SABnzbd, etc. Not as simple as just installing them on windows, but not bad once I figured out how services work.
• Heavily modded games like Total War Warhammer 3 were a pain since the modding tools are designed for Windows. Got them working, but stability was worse.
• No Virtual Desktop for my Quest 3. I’ve heard I can get VR working on it, but only for games.
• Getting write access on my existing NTFS drive was a pain. Read access worked, by I had to change ownership from root on all files to allow changes.

I have a friend who was trying out endeavor with kde. He uses a trackball mouse, and configuring the acceleration curve has been a nightmare for him. Apparently it's the wayland compositor's job to expose the ability to configure libinput, and only certain ones do it (KDE being one of them), but configuration isn't as straight forward as in windows.

He was more able to configure it when using X11, but kept hitting a bug when using a custom acceleration curve where the cursor would shoot to the top left of the screen (I think it triggered when moving the cursor while clicking).

I haven't looked into it much myself, but it sounds like it has been one of those unfortunate sticking points for him right out of the gate.

Start of this year I transitioned to Arch Linux. Only regret is Battlefield 6 and I don't really care about that cause Arc Raiders is coming this week lol. Every other game has worked out of the box. Although actually RoboCop didn't work for me which was surprising but I think that's a temporary hitch.

I made a sheet for step for step instructions for my friends, hoping some of them convert soon with my help.

I switched maybe like two years ago now. I only had issues on one game but a bit later it just worked not sure what changed. I know EA stuff doesn't work so haven't really messed around with that. I check protonDB a lot to see game compatibility.

The biggest issue for me was getting a handle on a photo workflow for myself after switching and leaving lightroom/adobe behind. I use darkroom now which I'm still learning but I have a basic workflow down pretty well.

I built up a PC for my cousin for gaming and put bazzite on there, she hasn't really noticed anything being her first personal PC so thats pretty good, I've gone from popOS, to arch to bazzite

Had a relative switch to Linux recently. Lenovo IdeaPad computer running windows 10. The stuff was getting insanely slow and battery life was reduced ton the point that it was being a pain to use. Backed all the documents and data on a local instance of dufs running on home server and installed Linux Mint on it. Had minor issues regarding WiFi and Bluetooth. Solved the wifi one but bluetooth is still a bit unstable sometimes. Came back 1 week later and the user is delighted. Says that everything works 3 times faster than on windows and that battery lasts 3 times longer. They also went on themselves to look for open source alternatives to windows apps they were using and installed them. That's a win !

I switched recently because of it. A friend of mine made a workshop for anyone who is interested, to learn how to switch to Linux or Dual Boot. It was the final push for me to switch and loving it so far :)

Kinda, not fully committed yet cause as "out of the box" as bazzite is, I still have some things I prefer my windows partition for. Oddly enough, the most recent thing was formatting a god damned flash drive! Like it really doesn't need to be as complicated as the devs made it to be!

I got an older laptop and set up a Mint dual-boot, just because there are a few things I need Windows for, but I'm on Linux 99% of the time.

I did find in the past that a dual-boot didn't work well on an old Lenovo I owned, so I picked Acer this time, and it works really well. I just don't want to have to worry about my privacy all the time, so Linux + my Proton VPN helps ease my anxiety.

Just recently, less than a day ago, helped my dad install dual boot Mint ( cinnamon, yay :| ) on his laptop. Now I gotta move my windows partition onto the SSD I bought and had help installing so I can install mint on my desktop. Just in case he needs help with a problem and I can better diagnose potential problems/solutions. I'd rather switch to what I've got on my laptop ( MX w/ Plasma ) but someone has to be able to effectively play IT.

(Semi) Recent convert here from Win11 to Bazzite - Didn't switch due to Win10 EOL but because Windows Recall kept fucking re-enabling itself every time windows updated and it was pissing me off.

I miss playing some games that require kernal level anti-cheat, but that's a small price to pay for me.

The biggest hurdle I have and kind of still have is the difference in package managers and stuff like that. There appimages which I've sorta got my head around, gear lever helps. Then there are .deb files of some programs, some come as .tar.gz or .rpm files.

That's ignoring flatpaks, snaps and other packages like that - I do wish there was a more uniform structure to these that is better explained, often software download pages will list some distros like Ubuntu, Arch & Fedora but miss out many like Bazzite which is fine if you know Bazzite is based on Fedora but if you don't then you're already stuck at that point.

Plus most pieces of software that have instructions for Fedora ask you to use dnf to download stuff, and if you try that in Bazzite it throws a fit and simultaneously tells you that rpm-ostree should be used but also don't use rpm-ostree for things unless you absolutely have to.

I love Bazzite, I'm never going back, but it can be frustrating for sure if you're unfamiliar with things.

Made the move gradually - first the private computers of my family,then my company. Very happy with how it went, especially in terms of staff adoption. We still retain some dual boot windows machines,sadly,as some things currently still can't be done in the Linux world (CAD is the one thing, some very specific Office document things we sadly get dictated by a client the other one.)

My big gaming rig is running great on Fedora. My smaller gaming box running xubuntu had its nvidia drivers borked by a “phased” driver rollout. Overall, I think you gotta pay attention to the terminal when updating things. Maybe it’s just xubuntu being shit lol. Unfortunately, the game I play works best on Debian for now.

Converting someone to... are you mistaking it with a sect?

I switched to Endeavor OS a few months ago for my gaming PC. Working great so far. I’m using Linux a lot at work, so the transition has been smooth for me.

Also helped a relative to switch to Linux Mint by their own request. It was a welcome surprise. They really didn’t want to switch to Windows 11.

I'm jealous of those that converted to Linux from Windows 10.

I didn't migrate until Windows 2000.

I switched to Mint in March. I have to use W11 for work and I thoroughly hate it. I did not want all the ads and AI stuff that come pre-packaged. I also did not want to upgrade my pc - I have an arbitrary rule that I'm only allowed new hardware every 10 years, so I have another 2 years left until I can upgrade.

So I used all my anger and pettiness, went on youtube to see how difficult it'd be to install Linux. The first video I found was Zorin vs Mint, and I thought Mint was a good fit for an absolute noob like myself. I really did not want to faff with learning commands and stuff so I was very pleasantly surprised with flatpaks and whatnot. Overall I'd say it was a very good experience, I'm just annoyed I've not done it earlier.

... it's been a journey. TLDR: Wayland is super broken, NVIDIA makes it worse, Ubuntu doesn't come with the right drivers out of box, UI inconsistency is everywhere (only Mac gets it right, at the cost of everything else) but major feature upgrades in most regular stuff.

I switched to Debian +Plasma X11, which makes most things work out of the box, but KiCAD crashes Plasma and logs you out of you open a large enough file. If I use Wayland, all of the windows open in a giant pile in the center my screen and OrcaSlicer segfaults when opening a webkit embed. Also no 3d views.

NVIDIA breaks all the rendering stuff, so no 3d model previews in your icons :( and the install defaults to unsafe mode on high refresh screens for Kubuntu, which cuts off the top half of your screen. Print previews are broken on Kate (NVIDIA)

Older Unity Engine can't run controller input natively on linux, so you still play games under proton.

Login screen wallpaper and Wallpaper waking up from sleep and "wallpaper" are three different wallpapers on Debian/Plasma.

Plasma Desktop is not considered an active window so creating a new file and pressing enter doesn't open it, but rather selects a foreground window, But if no window exists, it will open the file.

Now, the better stuff:

Printer drivers work out of box on basically everything I've tested and adding printers is plug and play unlike Windows. Printers on? You're done!

Separated home and root partitions, I nuked my install 4 times and didn't need to copy over my data. (Auto partition doesn't give round numbers to the partitions and this irritates me why 61.73.gb root partitions why not 62???)

Snapshot backups - I no longer care if I accidentally need some older file I deleted, if I ran a backup recently, it's there. Restic

Updates: I can reinstall and uninstall without rebooting - takes 2 minutes max. (Downloading is the bigger portion of it)

Faster boot times, way better keyboard input support, more customizable, integrated file management zip/rar support (very cool) Files open faster, dark mode everywhere, I can compile C firmware about 6-8 times faster without windows scanning my code every time. Although, is antivirus a thing on Linux?

They fixed rounded corners!!! Firefox still likes to be special and ignore window decorations, not sure what's up with that.

No Copilot and no "my computer fans suddenly spun up for no reason whatsoever", although I miss task manager, I have htop now,

I've always been interested in Linux, and for my home server it's been my OS for the last decade, but for the workstation I found myself dual-booting. With the advent of atomic distributions such as Fedora Kinoite, Universal Blue, Fedora CoreOS etc using the concept of OS images through OSTree / bootc, combined with containerization through flatpak and podman is a great step forward stability and reproducibility.

My desktop has been switched to Aurora (Universal Blue) for more than a year and I couldn't be happier.