The problem is there are a billion versions of linux, idk what one to choosex idk if i can play my steam games on linux, everyone who talks about linux seems to be a programmer /coder, and uses jargon that i don’t even understand, so idk if I’ll even be able to USE linux. And if I ask any questions I feel like it’s all gonna end up sounsing like another language to me.
The whole idea of moving to linux is overwhelming.
But I’m starting to hate windows 11. And fuck Apple all together.
My 72 year old, non techy father in law had a laptop that could not be updated to Windows 11 without modifying the installer to get around Microsoft limitations. I suggested Linux, He decided to just buy a new laptop with Windows 11 on it. About a week later he was complaining about the way Microsoft was forcing him to have an online account and how he wanted to get rid of onedrive. I suggested Linux again and he said why not?
I installed Linux Mint for him and gave him the password. I offered to show him around but he said he would take a look at it and let me know if he has trouble doing anything.
Its been a few months now, and he hasn’t had any problems or even questions. Everything is just working for him.
I also gave my 16 year old daughter a Linux Mint laptop and the password a couple of years ago. She uses it all the time and has never asked for help in figuring out how to do anything.
The distro doesn’t really matter too much, but if you are coming from Windows 7 or 10, Linux Mint will seem very familiar to you.
I can’t really think of a better example of what you’re talking about than that there’s three other people replying to this, each recommending you use a different flavor of linux…
It’s just personal preference though. You could pick any of the popular modern ones and run everything just fine. It’s like buying an Android phone. Plenty of brands to choose from, but they can all get the job done, run whatever apps you want, etc.
But I’m going ahead and trying to sift through all the info I’m getting here, and so far I’m getting the idea that what ever I start with should at least have the word Mint
Yeah, Mint is fine and has enough users to have decent guides out there, a broad support system and great comparability. Think of it like a phone: you can pick a Samsung phone of a specific model, or a Motorola, or a Google Pixel or whatever and they can all run the same apps. The brand and model are mostly a preference thing, and while they do have their differences, once you have an Android phone you can see what those differences are firsthand and change later down the road. The biggest shift would be going from an iPhone to any Android phone. Later on you can worry about which Android brand you like best, what you like about specific interfaces or whatever. Some are nicer to use than others for sure, but it’s not as big of a deal as some people make it out to be as long as you get something generally popular, modern and with enough support/backing/users. Whether for Android phones or Linux distros tho, it’s normal for people to have their own preferences and recommendations based on their personal experience and needs since there are so many possibilities out there.
If you don’t know what to choose, just pick Mint and give it a try. It’s not that difficult. Don’t go for those things, which need more knowledge, start with the easiest one and if your knowledge is growing and you are willing to do distro hopping, you can try more complex stuff.
everyone who talks about linux seems to be a programmer /coder, and uses jargon that i don’t even understand
I’ve been pointing that out for a while, but unfortunately there is a vocal subset of the community that thinks referring people to just read technical manuals is fine (if you can’t, just learn to read it, duh).
Some things are concepts you’ll learn easily, don’t worry, and for the rest, you’ll always find someone willing to break it down if you manage to look past the snobs. If you want, shoot me a DM if you just want to understand a specific term without someone making you feel like an idiot.
The problem is there are a billion versions of linux, idk what one to choose
There are plenty of suggestions here. Ubuntu is what got me started and I still think it’s a good start*. Mint is from the same family, “Pop! OS” too (the name sounds silly to me, but it’s legit and popular for a reason). Just look at pictures and see what seems prettiest to you, then go with that. The usage won’t be too different.
The grandpa of that family is Debian, but I’m not sure it’s quite as user-friendly out of the box. I’m mentioning it in case you come across the term.
The other big families are Fedora and Arch. I personally use a Fedora-Child, but to keep things narrow, I recommend the three mentioned above as starters.
* If you come across people hating Ubuntu - including myself - it’s usually for ideological reasons rather than usability ones. Don’t worry about that for now. Getting into the weeds of things is a skill you don’t have yet and that’s perfectly fine.
if i can play my steam games on linux
Steam, fortunately, is the one platform that works best with Linux. For their handheld, they decided to flip off MS and made their own Linux, along with a wrapper tool to make all the games run on it anyway.
You may hear the terms “compatibility layer”, “Proton” and “wine”, which is exactly that: A tool to make Windows stuff run on Linux. Again, don’t worry about the specifics, just believe me: I’m playing almost all of my steam games just as I used to.
If there is a specific game you care about, https://www.protondb.com/ has a large store of knowledge. Some things run out of the box, some may require a few extra settings that are usually easy to add, and if there ever is a thing you don’t understand, my offer stands.
The whole idea of moving to linux is overwhelming.
It’s a scary plunge, a leap of faith, but I assure you: There are people ready to catch you at the bottom. The reception wasn’t as warm when I jumped off of Win7, and the snobs are still around, but things have improved a lot over the past few years. Trust me, trust us: You won’t be left alone.
The fact that people HAD to learn to use Windows, too. It’s just in the past and appears easy because they already can. If a person used computers with Linux from the start, it would be as easy for them as for Windows users.
That, and that practically all courses that taught (teach?) how to use a computer, use Windows, MS Office, and other Windows-based software.
There was some nonprofit (I think it was One Laptop Per Child) that gave laptops with Linux preinstalled, Sugar for elementary school students and I think Ubuntu for highschool students.
My youngest niece at least knows her way around Ubuntu.
there is a vocal subset of the community that thinks referring people to just read technical manuals is fine
I mean, I agree, it’s not ideal. Just to point out though… Windows is also not really well documented, and if you have an issue that’s a bit on the unusual side? You can find yourself skimming forums for days, or just saying fuck it and reinstalling. There’s definitely more information out there on Windows troubleshooting, but it has market dominance and it would be insane if there wasn’t loads out there.
If you come across people hating Ubuntu - including myself - it’s usually for ideological reasons rather than usability ones.
Yeah, fuck canonical! Shame they make a fairly decent and stable distro…
I got pushed away from arch because of the constant RTFM answer to questions when trying to google solutions to problems. Half the time they wouldn’t even link the actual part of the manual they were talking about and just linked the whole thing to the person in question.
Running gentoo now and couldn’t be happier with the community and how helpful people are.
Yeah, I’m not on base Arch. I run Garuda Arch, it’s a quite polished derivative.
Things that drew me to, and kept me on Garuda:
Flavours in:
-KDE(lite & several other KDE based including a gaming flavour with options for a bunch of preconfigured programs)
-GNOME
-Cinnamon
-XFCE
-SWAY
-i3
-Hyprland
-A NixOS subsystem
-COSMIC
The forums are highly active, any issues that aren’t already covered in the forum the Devs are really quick to respond to. Think the longest I waited for a Dev or mod/admin to hop into a question I posted was 45mins.
The gaming flavour’s preconfigured bits work exceedingly well OOTB
If you’re feeling a hankering to distro-hop, I would highly recommend Garuda.
A lot of Windows troubleshooting info, even on Microsoft forums, is frankly garbage responses to reboot this, regedit that without any real fixing involved. The Linux stuff I find much better, especially when one of the actual developers gets involved which isn’t that uncommon.
I’m a noob, and Mint fully works. I had only the smallest of learning humps before I was set. Mint reminds me of Window’s glory days, and it makes me happy 😊
(Taking your questions seriously and attempting to offer genuine and practical advice with some of my usual psychotic sense of humor)
There aren’t billions of versions of Linux, only tens of thousands. Of those, some are meant for servers, some are meant for embedded devices, some are meant for supercomputers, some haven’t been updated in a decade and some are for specific weird niches. Filter out the joke ones like Hannah Montana Linux and what you’ll have left are five major distros called Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, Arch and SuSe. These five are quite different from each other, they do things like develop their own package managers and such. Most other distros are minor modifications of these, most of the time just including a different desktop environment or included software. Debian’s forks include Ubuntu, Linux Mint, ElementaryOS and Neon. Fedora is a fork of Red Hat, Manjaro, EndeavourOS and SteamOS are forks of Arch, and I’m sure Slackware and SuSe have been forked too. The majority of forks are “What if this distro, but this desktop instead of that one?” This is why there are three different versions of Linux Mint, your choice of Cinnamon, xfce and MATE desktops. How do you choose? Try a few and see which one you like best. They’re all free.
You can play Steam games on Linux. Valve has gone BIG into Linux compatibility, their Steam Deck handheld gaming PC ships with a Linux operating system called SteamOS which as previously mentioned is a fork of Arch Linux that comes with the KDE desktop. They have a compatibility layer called Proton which, if I understand the tech correctly, translates DirectX API calls into Vulkan API calls which Linux can understand. At this point, the vast, vast majority of Windows games just work on Linux. The one big sticking point at the moment are kernel-level anticheat systems often used in competitive multiplayer games. The developer has to specifically choose to release a Linux version that enables this, and most don’t. So there are some games to include Fortnite that the developers have specifically chosen to not run on Linux. I’ve been PC gaming exclusively on Linux for over a decade now.
A lot of Linux users are indeed programmers, developers or sysadmins. I’ll remind you that Android and ChromeOS are also both Linux operating systems. Many distros these days have complete and polished graphical desktop environments that make the OS similar to use to Windows or MacOS. Take a look at Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition, I bet you’ll find your way around.
I’m not a programmer or coder and I’ve been using Linux for about a year. It’s been really user friendly after I figured out what distros are and which one to choose. I highly recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s worked quite well for me and was not a huge jump from windows because the user interface is similar. All you need to install it is a thumb drive.
I like playing games on steam and haven’t had any issues. There’s this really cool website called protondb where you can search steam game compatibility with Linux. For the few that aren’t compatible, oftentimes people share fixes which usually consists of copy pasting stuff on there.
Linux community doesn’t help the user friendly nature of the OS, that’s true. Steam deck runs Linux so if it works on steam deck it will likely work on Linux mint or Ubuntu.
Lots of terminal help and outdated forum posts make it feel difficult to manage Linux, you’re right it is overwhelming and it’s not going to have full software compatibility, but if you spend lots of time in the browser and rely on web services it works fairly well over all and is generally low maintenance if you stick to the App Store and use graphic user interfaces.
It’s based on Debian, a major branch off the tree. It just fucking works. Millions of tutorials, groups, etc. to find troubleshooting info. Probably won’t have to do anything to get a machine running that does everything you’re doing now.
Get the swing of that and go from there, if you want to try other branches.
This realization helped me quite a bit: Windows does all sorts of arcane voodoo with the registry and DLLs and such. Weirdness Linux appeals to many because all the configuration is contained in simple text files. Got a program that reads and writes plain old text? Aight. You can configure Linux. In a way, it’s so simple it’s hard to get your head around coming from Windows.
tl;dr: Just download and install Ubuntu. Go from there with your nicely working machine.
So basically, Ubuntu just with a different name and paint job. (I’ve used them both)
We are all at the most basic level, running pretty much the same kernel, one of the same small handful of desktop environments, and we choose from the same pool of software, (unless you need to get out into the weeds for a program on git hub). Everything else is either window dressing, (package mangers are window dressing-- they all do the same basic thing), or a choice on just how close to the bleeding edge we want to be, (rolling releases or immutable).
I’m coming from a non programmer perspective who has been on linux just short of a year. I work in finance but use CachyOS on my personal computer and laptop. I started with PopOs because I had heard that it was “out of the box for nvidia gaming” but soon after learned that most gaming distros are just advertised as such because of pre installed ease of use programs. Proton, wine, etc will run on most forks of linux and the distro you choose matters less and less the more familiar you get with using linux. I recommend CachyOS as a first distro because the installer allows you to choose your desktop environment / window manager. Allows for more options for a beginner so you don’t feel limited to what is packaged in other “beginner friendly” distros.
Note that anticheat is still the biggest pain point for linux compatibility layers so I just go on ProtonDB, check to see if the anticheat allows for linux, and if not I have a dual boot of debloated/removed telemetry windows that can run those games. Within my time using it, only rainbow 6 has required me to launch the windows instance. Aside from that all my singleplayer and multiplayer games run, albeit some with a 5% performance decrease (but that’s more of an Nvidia issue than an inherent linux issue).
My advice is to just try it. Doesn’t take much time or effort to back up your necessary files and just switch even if temporarily just to see if it’s for you :)
At some point you were foreign to Windows also. Everything must have also felt new and weird. The only way to make it feel not new is experience. One way to do that is to stop thinking if you choose the right one the first time. Get your mindset back to learning the whole system, keep an open mind. Go Linux Mint feel it out. Another is stay on Windows 10 and wait it out perhaps Microsoft will budge and allow outdated systems to install Windows 11 with support.
Set a usage scenario (Desktop, Gaming), decide if you want rock-solid or fancy new features, then google it. And add the word “beginner” if you’re new to linux.
I suggest Cinnamon Ubuntu for a combination of Mint and Ubuntu and the best of both worlds. It’s got the Mint Windows like front end, with Ubuntu in the back. Most help online is for Ubuntu anyway and it’s better with games imo.
One: You could literally say use Linux Mint in 2010 and in 2025 and be ok. You don’t need to know about the totality of the ecosystem in order to use Linux any more than you must understand the totality automotive tech and every car to pick one and drive. If you pick the something different its also probably good enough.
Two: If they really are too stupid at some degree of ineptitude they are just going to need to pay someone smarter their money whether that is Apple, another Windows machine, or even a Linux OEM. Installing your own OS on an infinite range of hardware with a range of support is never going to be so easy someone who is entirely tech illiterate can do it and that is ok.
I need Adobe, specifically Lightroom, because there’s no alternative. I can’t just stop using it as a semi-professional photographer (I make money from it, just not a ton).
Darktable doesn’t handle large libraries well and also is missing features such as AI remove and integration with photoshop for splitting photos up for social media posts.
Then Apple. Their M-series are fantastic, and their support cycles are great. Also, taking marketshare from Microsoft is generally a good thing because it’ll force them to make a better product.
If it came down to ditching adobe or quitting photography I would quit photography and I love taking photos lol.
Adobe is a threat to the photography industry for many reasons (especially to future photographers who want to follow in your footsteps) you should reconsider your options.
Sorry but then you will have to continue living on your knees, drinking verification cans at their mercy and pray they don’t alter the deal again (they will).
It is, but i wanted to contextualize it for them and others reading. People sometimes have some idea that it would be impossible to port due to some inhernat aspect to linux. Might be true for something that makes heavy windows API use, but for many others its just a business case. And I wanted emphasis that a bit
I’m going to go against the grain here a bit and say that people considering a switch to Linux need to have certain expectations going into it. There are zero guarantees that anything Linux will be a “just works” operation. Especially when you get into the laptop scene and proprietary hardware.
Like sometimes an update will break things. Sometimes you will break things and spend time fixing it. Sometimes a piece of software and/or hardware will just not work at all and you’ll try convoluted workarounds that may or may not work. Linux support is often an afterthought considering <5% of desktop users use it. Popular programs and software are often just not available at all and the FOSS alternatives lack features you may need.
I truly feel that Linux is like the “I own an old hotrod in my garage and work on it as a hobby” compared to “I drive a cheap commuter car and just want it to work”. Yes windows breaks sometimes too, and I hate using their current operating system at work with telemetry and ads and knee-crippling limitations or random ass crashes, etc.
But I’ve also been in the position that I woke up one day and updated Garuda Linux and spent the entire day trying to not boot into a plain black screen when I had my KVM connected. I finally got my fstab working to mount my NFS share of my NAS after months of fucking with it when I feel like this is an incredibly easy “problem” that’s solution should have been apparent for the last 30 years or so and in my eyes should be something the OS should just “do on its own” automatically.
All that being said, I still love Linux and will never use anything else on my systems. I enjoy the tweaking of things, experimenting, having all the control I could ever want.
The Linux experience is a spectrum. Just like owning a car, sure there are people who own custom hotrods. But there are also enterprise level work trucks that can carry thousands of tons. There’s all sorts if in between, including small town cars, hatchbacks and buses. Just like they’re all vehicles of all different sorts, there’s also all sorts of Linux.
Buy System76 or Framework laptops and you’ll never have a driver problem. Use a stable user friendly distro like Mint and your experience will be smooth sailing. Use an immutable distro and you cannot wreak your system. Hire a pro data center and they’ll set you up with enterprise level servers. TrueNAS sells hardware and also distributes a high compatibility community Linux distro for NAS.
Now, use a niche experimental distro packaged by a single developer on their free time. Well, don’t act surprised if it breaks.
Especially when you get into the laptop scene and proprietary hardware.
Pro-tip for those who go this route: get a Thinkpad T or P series. Both are highly-supported by Linux, come in Intel and AMD flavors, and even have extra power-management features and utilities no other laptops have.
Linux is like the “I own an old hotrod in my garage and work on it as a hobby” compared to “I drive a cheap commuter car and just want it to work”
Really?
Linux gives you choice, sure, but it doesn’t just randomly break unless you’re doing something exotic.
Garuda Linux
There’s your problem, you’re using a bleeding edge distro, which is like having a hotrod.
If you want a boring commuter, install a boring commuter distro, like Debian. If you want something fresher, there are a lot of options before you get to Arch-based distros, like Fedora. Stick to the most popular distros and you probably won’t have problems.
Don’t get me wrong, Arch can be fantastic, I ran it for several years with minimal problems, but you really do need to be ready to step in and get your hands dirty.
My main advice is to go in expecting to need to replace software. A lot of stuff works (e.g. discord, Steam, etc), but a lot of stuff doesn’t. If you’re flexible, use a mainstream distro, and stick to what’s available in the repo or on flathub, it’ll probably be more stable than Windows. Just don’t expect your random RGB app or whatever to work, and be ready to swap some POS hardware if the manufacturer doesn’t support Linux (e.g. certain WiFi vendors that aren’t Intel).
Also, don’t expect Linux to make things faster, you’re still limited by your hardware. But do expect common tasks to work well.
Linux is like the “I own an old hotrod in my garage and work on it as a hobby” compared to “I drive a cheap commuter car and just want it to work”
Really?
Linux gives you choice, sure, but it doesn’t just randomly break unless you’re doing something exotic.
I see it more as a pre-built kit RC car (like Traxxas or Arrma stuff) that in stock form (like a Debian or Fedora distro) is acceptable for 99% of the things we want to do with it, but also allows you to get under the hood and tweak/upgrade/change the inner workings to your liking with support from the manufacturer. Unlike other prebuilt cars from the toy store that have no real upgrade opportunities and don’t want you under the hood, they are as-delivered with no other options…
Anyway…
Also, don’t expect Linux to make things faster, you’re still limited by your hardware. But do expect common tasks to work well.
Sadly nothing for Adobe InDesign, which is like 2/3 of my workflow :( (Also I don’t see an option to filter to Linux programs on that site.)
I spent half hour searching on alternativeto.net just now, but for the 3 Adobe programs I use (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) all FLOSS Linux options seem to be lacking essential features. Based on comments, even in more popular alternatives, features like PDF exporting or CMYK colour handling require workarounds or additional external programs.
(Re. searching only for FLOSS: I’m not opposed to paying for software, but when I enabled that option on alternativeto.net, a lot of results were subscription-based, which I do strongly oppose :/ )
Gaming is 100 percent not ‘on par’ I’ve exclusively used Linux for years now, and consistently run into issues not present on windows.
Is it good enough? Almost, but there are hugely critical aspects missing.
Lots of simulators (I racing, fanatec) lack support
Anti cheats as mentioned.
Plain old poor performance.
Protondb only lists 20 percent of titles as ‘platinum’ rated, with most gold games needing tweaks.
30 percent of titles are silver or lower.
I still to this day get hitching and stuttering as data is streamed into memory in many games, sekiro recently comes to mind, making any level transition exceedingly annoying.
Gaming is 100 percent not ‘on par’ I’ve exclusively used Linux for years now, and consistently run into issues not present on windows.
I have a LARGE diverse library of games I bought when I was gaming on windows.
Literally all of them work fine on my steam deck except a handful of AAA games from companies hostile to linux (“anticheat” bs, they don’t want linux gaming to suceed for business reasons), some really ancient DOS games actually work better like Steel Panthers/winspmbt.
I am sorry but especially if you are into indie games even a little, your perspective is no longer indicative for the experience of gaming on linux in general.
Don’t gaslight me. The games you play may work fine, but the games I play don’t always. And the games I play are almost exclusively single player small scale indie games. I play games on Linux just about every day, exclusively. My experience is that, while serviceable it’s just strictly not on par, as you claim. Though you contradict yourself anyway by hand waving games that don’t work.
I don’t understand the need that people have to pretend like it’s all perfect. Attitude like yours is toxic, diminishing the experience of others in order to pretend like there are not any issues, trying to put the onus on the user for playing the wrong games or not conforming to the idea that proton is a perfect solution.
I don’t understand the need that people have to pretend like it’s all perfect.
I am not claiming it is perfect, I am saying the experience is already much less of a headache than windows is at this point with all of microsoft’s bs.
Seriously, use Linux. What is the problem?
The problem is there are a billion versions of linux, idk what one to choosex idk if i can play my steam games on linux, everyone who talks about linux seems to be a programmer /coder, and uses jargon that i don’t even understand, so idk if I’ll even be able to USE linux. And if I ask any questions I feel like it’s all gonna end up sounsing like another language to me.
The whole idea of moving to linux is overwhelming.
But I’m starting to hate windows 11. And fuck Apple all together.
My 72 year old, non techy father in law had a laptop that could not be updated to Windows 11 without modifying the installer to get around Microsoft limitations. I suggested Linux, He decided to just buy a new laptop with Windows 11 on it. About a week later he was complaining about the way Microsoft was forcing him to have an online account and how he wanted to get rid of onedrive. I suggested Linux again and he said why not?
I installed Linux Mint for him and gave him the password. I offered to show him around but he said he would take a look at it and let me know if he has trouble doing anything.
Its been a few months now, and he hasn’t had any problems or even questions. Everything is just working for him.
I also gave my 16 year old daughter a Linux Mint laptop and the password a couple of years ago. She uses it all the time and has never asked for help in figuring out how to do anything.
The distro doesn’t really matter too much, but if you are coming from Windows 7 or 10, Linux Mint will seem very familiar to you.
I can’t really think of a better example of what you’re talking about than that there’s three other people replying to this, each recommending you use a different flavor of linux…
Eh, I gave them one. The others are also fine.
It’s just personal preference though. You could pick any of the popular modern ones and run everything just fine. It’s like buying an Android phone. Plenty of brands to choose from, but they can all get the job done, run whatever apps you want, etc.
Lmfao yes, case in point.
But I’m going ahead and trying to sift through all the info I’m getting here, and so far I’m getting the idea that what ever I start with should at least have the word Mint
Yeah, Mint is fine and has enough users to have decent guides out there, a broad support system and great comparability. Think of it like a phone: you can pick a Samsung phone of a specific model, or a Motorola, or a Google Pixel or whatever and they can all run the same apps. The brand and model are mostly a preference thing, and while they do have their differences, once you have an Android phone you can see what those differences are firsthand and change later down the road. The biggest shift would be going from an iPhone to any Android phone. Later on you can worry about which Android brand you like best, what you like about specific interfaces or whatever. Some are nicer to use than others for sure, but it’s not as big of a deal as some people make it out to be as long as you get something generally popular, modern and with enough support/backing/users. Whether for Android phones or Linux distros tho, it’s normal for people to have their own preferences and recommendations based on their personal experience and needs since there are so many possibilities out there.
If you don’t know what to choose, just pick Mint and give it a try. It’s not that difficult. Don’t go for those things, which need more knowledge, start with the easiest one and if your knowledge is growing and you are willing to do distro hopping, you can try more complex stuff.
I’ve been pointing that out for a while, but unfortunately there is a vocal subset of the community that thinks referring people to just read technical manuals is fine (if you can’t, just learn to read it, duh).
Some things are concepts you’ll learn easily, don’t worry, and for the rest, you’ll always find someone willing to break it down if you manage to look past the snobs. If you want, shoot me a DM if you just want to understand a specific term without someone making you feel like an idiot.
There are plenty of suggestions here. Ubuntu is what got me started and I still think it’s a good start*. Mint is from the same family, “Pop! OS” too (the name sounds silly to me, but it’s legit and popular for a reason). Just look at pictures and see what seems prettiest to you, then go with that. The usage won’t be too different.
The grandpa of that family is Debian, but I’m not sure it’s quite as user-friendly out of the box. I’m mentioning it in case you come across the term.
The other big families are Fedora and Arch. I personally use a Fedora-Child, but to keep things narrow, I recommend the three mentioned above as starters.
* If you come across people hating Ubuntu - including myself - it’s usually for ideological reasons rather than usability ones. Don’t worry about that for now. Getting into the weeds of things is a skill you don’t have yet and that’s perfectly fine.
Steam, fortunately, is the one platform that works best with Linux. For their handheld, they decided to flip off MS and made their own Linux, along with a wrapper tool to make all the games run on it anyway.
You may hear the terms “compatibility layer”, “Proton” and “wine”, which is exactly that: A tool to make Windows stuff run on Linux. Again, don’t worry about the specifics, just believe me: I’m playing almost all of my steam games just as I used to.
If there is a specific game you care about, https://www.protondb.com/ has a large store of knowledge. Some things run out of the box, some may require a few extra settings that are usually easy to add, and if there ever is a thing you don’t understand, my offer stands.
It’s a scary plunge, a leap of faith, but I assure you: There are people ready to catch you at the bottom. The reception wasn’t as warm when I jumped off of Win7, and the snobs are still around, but things have improved a lot over the past few years. Trust me, trust us: You won’t be left alone.
The fact that people HAD to learn to use Windows, too. It’s just in the past and appears easy because they already can. If a person used computers with Linux from the start, it would be as easy for them as for Windows users.
That, and that practically all courses that taught (teach?) how to use a computer, use Windows, MS Office, and other Windows-based software.
There was some nonprofit (I think it was One Laptop Per Child) that gave laptops with Linux preinstalled, Sugar for elementary school students and I think Ubuntu for highschool students.
My youngest niece at least knows her way around Ubuntu.
I mean, I agree, it’s not ideal. Just to point out though… Windows is also not really well documented, and if you have an issue that’s a bit on the unusual side? You can find yourself skimming forums for days, or just saying fuck it and reinstalling. There’s definitely more information out there on Windows troubleshooting, but it has market dominance and it would be insane if there wasn’t loads out there.
Yeah, fuck canonical! Shame they make a fairly decent and stable distro…
I got pushed away from arch because of the constant RTFM answer to questions when trying to google solutions to problems. Half the time they wouldn’t even link the actual part of the manual they were talking about and just linked the whole thing to the person in question.
Running gentoo now and couldn’t be happier with the community and how helpful people are.
Yeah, I’m not on base Arch. I run Garuda Arch, it’s a quite polished derivative.
Things that drew me to, and kept me on Garuda:
-KDE(lite & several other KDE based including a gaming flavour with options for a bunch of preconfigured programs)
-GNOME
-Cinnamon
-XFCE
-SWAY
-i3
-Hyprland
-A NixOS subsystem
-COSMIC
If you’re feeling a hankering to distro-hop, I would highly recommend Garuda.
I’ll check it out. Ive been running a single distro for almost a month which is far too long.
Yeesh! Well…now you can install every flavour of Garuda! 🤣 12 flavours should keep you busy for at least an afternoon!
I’m installing dr460nized first lol it looks good.
A lot of Windows troubleshooting info, even on Microsoft forums, is frankly garbage responses to reboot this, regedit that without any real fixing involved. The Linux stuff I find much better, especially when one of the actual developers gets involved which isn’t that uncommon.
Install Linux Mint Cinnamon. You don’t need to be a coder and there is a discord for any tech support needs
Just get Mint, you’ll be fine.
I’m a noob, and Mint fully works. I had only the smallest of learning humps before I was set. Mint reminds me of Window’s glory days, and it makes me happy 😊
(Taking your questions seriously and attempting to offer genuine and practical advice with some of my usual psychotic sense of humor)
There aren’t billions of versions of Linux, only tens of thousands. Of those, some are meant for servers, some are meant for embedded devices, some are meant for supercomputers, some haven’t been updated in a decade and some are for specific weird niches. Filter out the joke ones like Hannah Montana Linux and what you’ll have left are five major distros called Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, Arch and SuSe. These five are quite different from each other, they do things like develop their own package managers and such. Most other distros are minor modifications of these, most of the time just including a different desktop environment or included software. Debian’s forks include Ubuntu, Linux Mint, ElementaryOS and Neon. Fedora is a fork of Red Hat, Manjaro, EndeavourOS and SteamOS are forks of Arch, and I’m sure Slackware and SuSe have been forked too. The majority of forks are “What if this distro, but this desktop instead of that one?” This is why there are three different versions of Linux Mint, your choice of Cinnamon, xfce and MATE desktops. How do you choose? Try a few and see which one you like best. They’re all free.
You can play Steam games on Linux. Valve has gone BIG into Linux compatibility, their Steam Deck handheld gaming PC ships with a Linux operating system called SteamOS which as previously mentioned is a fork of Arch Linux that comes with the KDE desktop. They have a compatibility layer called Proton which, if I understand the tech correctly, translates DirectX API calls into Vulkan API calls which Linux can understand. At this point, the vast, vast majority of Windows games just work on Linux. The one big sticking point at the moment are kernel-level anticheat systems often used in competitive multiplayer games. The developer has to specifically choose to release a Linux version that enables this, and most don’t. So there are some games to include Fortnite that the developers have specifically chosen to not run on Linux. I’ve been PC gaming exclusively on Linux for over a decade now.
A lot of Linux users are indeed programmers, developers or sysadmins. I’ll remind you that Android and ChromeOS are also both Linux operating systems. Many distros these days have complete and polished graphical desktop environments that make the OS similar to use to Windows or MacOS. Take a look at Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition, I bet you’ll find your way around.
Ubuntu, PopOS, or Linux Mint. All different interface, but largely identical.
I’m not a programmer or coder and I’ve been using Linux for about a year. It’s been really user friendly after I figured out what distros are and which one to choose. I highly recommend Linux Mint Debian Edition. It’s worked quite well for me and was not a huge jump from windows because the user interface is similar. All you need to install it is a thumb drive.
I like playing games on steam and haven’t had any issues. There’s this really cool website called protondb where you can search steam game compatibility with Linux. For the few that aren’t compatible, oftentimes people share fixes which usually consists of copy pasting stuff on there.
Okay yeah, 2 other comments suggested Mint, I’ll look into it
And thanks for letting me know about protondb, sounds promising!
Linux community doesn’t help the user friendly nature of the OS, that’s true. Steam deck runs Linux so if it works on steam deck it will likely work on Linux mint or Ubuntu.
Lots of terminal help and outdated forum posts make it feel difficult to manage Linux, you’re right it is overwhelming and it’s not going to have full software compatibility, but if you spend lots of time in the browser and rely on web services it works fairly well over all and is generally low maintenance if you stick to the App Store and use graphic user interfaces.
Just use Ubuntu. (Surely I’ll get hate for this.)
It’s based on Debian, a major branch off the tree. It just fucking works. Millions of tutorials, groups, etc. to find troubleshooting info. Probably won’t have to do anything to get a machine running that does everything you’re doing now.
Get the swing of that and go from there, if you want to try other branches.
This realization helped me quite a bit: Windows does all sorts of arcane voodoo with the registry and DLLs and such. Weirdness Linux appeals to many because all the configuration is contained in simple text files. Got a program that reads and writes plain old text? Aight. You can configure Linux. In a way, it’s so simple it’s hard to get your head around coming from Windows.
tl;dr: Just download and install Ubuntu. Go from there with your nicely working machine.
Yes, I hate it.
Use Mint - it works better than Ubuntu, Canonical has made enough ‘mistakes’ to get on the blacklist.
So basically, Ubuntu just with a different name and paint job. (I’ve used them both)
We are all at the most basic level, running pretty much the same kernel, one of the same small handful of desktop environments, and we choose from the same pool of software, (unless you need to get out into the weeds for a program on git hub). Everything else is either window dressing, (package mangers are window dressing-- they all do the same basic thing), or a choice on just how close to the bleeding edge we want to be, (rolling releases or immutable).
No snap by default is on its own a huge difference. Far from window dressing.
If you give a new user snaps, many things will not work as they expect, and that is not a hurdle beginners should have to pass.
Nobody cares about kernel, I don’t even know anyone who builds their own (I use Gentoo btw), they either go bleed, or stable, nothing in between.
But package delivery matters a lot.
I’m coming from a non programmer perspective who has been on linux just short of a year. I work in finance but use CachyOS on my personal computer and laptop. I started with PopOs because I had heard that it was “out of the box for nvidia gaming” but soon after learned that most gaming distros are just advertised as such because of pre installed ease of use programs. Proton, wine, etc will run on most forks of linux and the distro you choose matters less and less the more familiar you get with using linux. I recommend CachyOS as a first distro because the installer allows you to choose your desktop environment / window manager. Allows for more options for a beginner so you don’t feel limited to what is packaged in other “beginner friendly” distros.
Note that anticheat is still the biggest pain point for linux compatibility layers so I just go on ProtonDB, check to see if the anticheat allows for linux, and if not I have a dual boot of debloated/removed telemetry windows that can run those games. Within my time using it, only rainbow 6 has required me to launch the windows instance. Aside from that all my singleplayer and multiplayer games run, albeit some with a 5% performance decrease (but that’s more of an Nvidia issue than an inherent linux issue).
My advice is to just try it. Doesn’t take much time or effort to back up your necessary files and just switch even if temporarily just to see if it’s for you :)
At some point you were foreign to Windows also. Everything must have also felt new and weird. The only way to make it feel not new is experience. One way to do that is to stop thinking if you choose the right one the first time. Get your mindset back to learning the whole system, keep an open mind. Go Linux Mint feel it out. Another is stay on Windows 10 and wait it out perhaps Microsoft will budge and allow outdated systems to install Windows 11 with support.
You should start with a friendly Linux version, Ubuntu flavor.
Set a usage scenario (Desktop, Gaming), decide if you want rock-solid or fancy new features, then google it. And add the word “beginner” if you’re new to linux.
good simple advice, I like it
Try them here: https://distrosea.com/
I suggest Cinnamon Ubuntu for a combination of Mint and Ubuntu and the best of both worlds. It’s got the Mint Windows like front end, with Ubuntu in the back. Most help online is for Ubuntu anyway and it’s better with games imo.
https://distrosea.com/select/ubuntucinnamon/
My partner is a gamer and this is what I’m bringing him in on this summer.
Mint is Ubuntu with cinnamon minus snap +user friendliness
This is already too jargon filled for a new user and overwhelming. I already went through this with my partner who told me off for it lol.
Two things.
One: You could literally say use Linux Mint in 2010 and in 2025 and be ok. You don’t need to know about the totality of the ecosystem in order to use Linux any more than you must understand the totality automotive tech and every car to pick one and drive. If you pick the something different its also probably good enough.
Two: If they really are too stupid at some degree of ineptitude they are just going to need to pay someone smarter their money whether that is Apple, another Windows machine, or even a Linux OEM. Installing your own OS on an infinite range of hardware with a range of support is never going to be so easy someone who is entirely tech illiterate can do it and that is ok.
It’s not wise to assume someone is stupid based on ability with technology or need of it. This is why Linux fans drive people away and harm adoption.
In my experience on average the incompetent are also kind of stupid. Is your experience different?
Yikes man, good luck with that.
Sounds like Mint but worse.
Just use Ubuntu. It’s super easy and built for folks new to Linux. Plus steam plays all games on Linux, so no worries there.
You can duck duck go any question and then add “ubuntu” to the end and get help. No reason not to at this point.
People are too addicted to video games apparently
Gaming on Linux is better than it’s ever been. But yeah still a few Windows only releases, but that time is coming to an end I think.
Can’t judge people. Everybody decides how to spend their time. I think the problem can be solved. It just needs a right decision.
Adobe and ease of use
I need Adobe, specifically Lightroom, because there’s no alternative. I can’t just stop using it as a semi-professional photographer (I make money from it, just not a ton).
Darktable doesn’t handle large libraries well and also is missing features such as AI remove and integration with photoshop for splitting photos up for social media posts.
Then Apple. Their M-series are fantastic, and their support cycles are great. Also, taking marketshare from Microsoft is generally a good thing because it’ll force them to make a better product.
And I can’t game on Apple. A mac is a useless brick for the remaining 50% of what I do on a computer.
I highly recommend separate machines for work and personal/play.
If you need Adobe stuff for play, then a separate drive for Windows makes a ton of sense.
Use what works for you.
If it came down to ditching adobe or quitting photography I would quit photography and I love taking photos lol.
Adobe is a threat to the photography industry for many reasons (especially to future photographers who want to follow in your footsteps) you should reconsider your options.
Thank you for the useless opinion that adds nothing. Congrats
OK but people who need Adobe are a really small minority.
Sorry but then you will have to continue living on your knees, drinking verification cans at their mercy and pray they don’t alter the deal again (they will).
my main problems are the lack of support for Adobe programs and several online games
Edit: I guess a more accurate phrasing would have been “lack of support from…”
Fair, but that’s not a Linux problem. Publishers need to support the platform. Is windows bad for not “running” final cut?
Not the fault of Linux, but these are still the “problem” OP asked about regarding switching to Linux.
It is, but i wanted to contextualize it for them and others reading. People sometimes have some idea that it would be impossible to port due to some inhernat aspect to linux. Might be true for something that makes heavy windows API use, but for many others its just a business case. And I wanted emphasis that a bit
I have never run into anyone who thinks it would be impossible to port Photoshop to Linux.
pragmatist and whatever you call the other guy talking past each other
I’m going to go against the grain here a bit and say that people considering a switch to Linux need to have certain expectations going into it. There are zero guarantees that anything Linux will be a “just works” operation. Especially when you get into the laptop scene and proprietary hardware.
Like sometimes an update will break things. Sometimes you will break things and spend time fixing it. Sometimes a piece of software and/or hardware will just not work at all and you’ll try convoluted workarounds that may or may not work. Linux support is often an afterthought considering <5% of desktop users use it. Popular programs and software are often just not available at all and the FOSS alternatives lack features you may need.
I truly feel that Linux is like the “I own an old hotrod in my garage and work on it as a hobby” compared to “I drive a cheap commuter car and just want it to work”. Yes windows breaks sometimes too, and I hate using their current operating system at work with telemetry and ads and knee-crippling limitations or random ass crashes, etc.
But I’ve also been in the position that I woke up one day and updated Garuda Linux and spent the entire day trying to not boot into a plain black screen when I had my KVM connected. I finally got my fstab working to mount my NFS share of my NAS after months of fucking with it when I feel like this is an incredibly easy “problem” that’s solution should have been apparent for the last 30 years or so and in my eyes should be something the OS should just “do on its own” automatically.
All that being said, I still love Linux and will never use anything else on my systems. I enjoy the tweaking of things, experimenting, having all the control I could ever want.
The Linux experience is a spectrum. Just like owning a car, sure there are people who own custom hotrods. But there are also enterprise level work trucks that can carry thousands of tons. There’s all sorts if in between, including small town cars, hatchbacks and buses. Just like they’re all vehicles of all different sorts, there’s also all sorts of Linux.
Buy System76 or Framework laptops and you’ll never have a driver problem. Use a stable user friendly distro like Mint and your experience will be smooth sailing. Use an immutable distro and you cannot wreak your system. Hire a pro data center and they’ll set you up with enterprise level servers. TrueNAS sells hardware and also distributes a high compatibility community Linux distro for NAS.
Now, use a niche experimental distro packaged by a single developer on their free time. Well, don’t act surprised if it breaks.
Pro-tip for those who go this route: get a Thinkpad T or P series. Both are highly-supported by Linux, come in Intel and AMD flavors, and even have extra power-management features and utilities no other laptops have.
Really?
Linux gives you choice, sure, but it doesn’t just randomly break unless you’re doing something exotic.
There’s your problem, you’re using a bleeding edge distro, which is like having a hotrod.
If you want a boring commuter, install a boring commuter distro, like Debian. If you want something fresher, there are a lot of options before you get to Arch-based distros, like Fedora. Stick to the most popular distros and you probably won’t have problems.
Don’t get me wrong, Arch can be fantastic, I ran it for several years with minimal problems, but you really do need to be ready to step in and get your hands dirty.
My main advice is to go in expecting to need to replace software. A lot of stuff works (e.g. discord, Steam, etc), but a lot of stuff doesn’t. If you’re flexible, use a mainstream distro, and stick to what’s available in the repo or on flathub, it’ll probably be more stable than Windows. Just don’t expect your random RGB app or whatever to work, and be ready to swap some POS hardware if the manufacturer doesn’t support Linux (e.g. certain WiFi vendors that aren’t Intel).
Also, don’t expect Linux to make things faster, you’re still limited by your hardware. But do expect common tasks to work well.
I see it more as a pre-built kit RC car (like Traxxas or Arrma stuff) that in stock form (like a Debian or Fedora distro) is acceptable for 99% of the things we want to do with it, but also allows you to get under the hood and tweak/upgrade/change the inner workings to your liking with support from the manufacturer. Unlike other prebuilt cars from the toy store that have no real upgrade opportunities and don’t want you under the hood, they are as-delivered with no other options…
Anyway…
Very well put.
It is a bit against the grain, but also very true
The question was why it’s hard for people to switch to Linux. They answered the question. It doesn’t matter if it’s Linux’s “fault” or not.
Go to https://www.goeuropean.org/#products-list and try to enter the Adobe search word. :) Could it be an alternative for you?
Sadly nothing for Adobe InDesign, which is like 2/3 of my workflow :( (Also I don’t see an option to filter to Linux programs on that site.)
I spent half hour searching on alternativeto.net just now, but for the 3 Adobe programs I use (InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop) all FLOSS Linux options seem to be lacking essential features. Based on comments, even in more popular alternatives, features like PDF exporting or CMYK colour handling require workarounds or additional external programs.
(Re. searching only for FLOSS: I’m not opposed to paying for software, but when I enabled that option on alternativeto.net, a lot of results were subscription-based, which I do strongly oppose :/ )
It is how it is. :) Stay with what works for you.
Gaming. The only reason I went from Ubuntu to Windows.
steam and heroic launcher makes it very easy
From games with anti cheats exclusively functional on windows I’m assuming. Otherwise gaming is on par
Gaming is 100 percent not ‘on par’ I’ve exclusively used Linux for years now, and consistently run into issues not present on windows.
Is it good enough? Almost, but there are hugely critical aspects missing.
Lots of simulators (I racing, fanatec) lack support Anti cheats as mentioned. Plain old poor performance.
Protondb only lists 20 percent of titles as ‘platinum’ rated, with most gold games needing tweaks.
30 percent of titles are silver or lower.
I still to this day get hitching and stuttering as data is streamed into memory in many games, sekiro recently comes to mind, making any level transition exceedingly annoying.
I have a LARGE diverse library of games I bought when I was gaming on windows.
Literally all of them work fine on my steam deck except a handful of AAA games from companies hostile to linux (“anticheat” bs, they don’t want linux gaming to suceed for business reasons), some really ancient DOS games actually work better like Steel Panthers/winspmbt.
I am sorry but especially if you are into indie games even a little, your perspective is no longer indicative for the experience of gaming on linux in general.
Don’t gaslight me. The games you play may work fine, but the games I play don’t always. And the games I play are almost exclusively single player small scale indie games. I play games on Linux just about every day, exclusively. My experience is that, while serviceable it’s just strictly not on par, as you claim. Though you contradict yourself anyway by hand waving games that don’t work.
I don’t understand the need that people have to pretend like it’s all perfect. Attitude like yours is toxic, diminishing the experience of others in order to pretend like there are not any issues, trying to put the onus on the user for playing the wrong games or not conforming to the idea that proton is a perfect solution.
I am not claiming it is perfect, I am saying the experience is already much less of a headache than windows is at this point with all of microsoft’s bs.
Not sure what made them not work, but this makes sense.
If it’s anticheat, blame the devs, because they’re specifically blocking Linux. If it’s something else, maybe we can help.
The anticheats harvest data that has value, it’s a business decision rather than a technical problem.
For your particular situation, checkout the site protondb. It’s a user contributed site on how to get all games to work
Maybe buying a dedicated gaming device would be the option? Separation of concerns?