Should I finally leave windows?

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Well, we all know mac has some very annoying “artificial” limitations, like not able to handle a lot of monitors together, which they call it stepping into the toes of the pro models. I already stopped using macs.

Windows is also getting into limiting stuff lately, like the AI watermark thing, not able to just go and stop updates, and just increasing the license prices for windows 10.

I have a desktop, and it is good to support any OS (check about for details about it, no not power mac) , I have been getting into linux deeply, kali, zorin, pearos, minios, slax, ubuntu, and a lot. I ask which is the best os that still supports steam with the majority of games that are also in windows… Yeah, should support gimp atleast, minios tends to lag a lot even after having a preinstalled gimp. It is ok of it has a learning curve, but not too much. I don’t really mind if it doesn’t have a app store, after seeing Microsoft Store, I am still somehow alive is the biggest magic.

Plus, is it really viable for me to end using windows, or should I dual boot? i don’t really use anything now that is windows only, except the file explorer, it is simply perfect.

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Switching to Linux makes sense if all equipment has drivers for Linux and you do not depend on specific software that exists only for Windows and does not work in Wine. For example, I cannot fully switch to Linux, since I use the music program Ableton Live, which is not consistently emulated in Linux, I am very dependent on this software. As for the games, from my steam library, a lot of games work natively in Linux, the rest also work well, but through proton, only a few minor games refused to launch at all.

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Yes, all of them have linux drivers. In fact the only windows only program I use is file explorer. I was still thinking is there something that is still far behind windows, I mean there are several linux users here who have spent years with it, they would be better to ask from. Like I saw a video online of running davinci on linux mint, it had a section where it says that the dragging around of windows are jittery and doesn’t use the full refresh rate. That’s why I was here to supposedly know the best OS. I already use libre and open office, audacity works just fine, gimp with plugins is great, shotcut is good too, obs is fine. For me I am ready to leave if it’s totally fine, but the little windows things stop me sometimes, like ease of use, more gui, and PowerPoint. Just because of the morph transition, I love it. But I don’t make ppt’s often, so guess I am ready to leave that too.

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In any current Linux distribution, for example Linux Mint Cinnamon, the file manager is in no way inferior in functionality to the one found in Windows.

On an old laptop, I successfully used Linux Mint Cinnamon, everything worked very stable and smoothly, I did not experience any problems. I haven’t tried it in Davinci, but Shotcut was much faster and more responsive than in Windows.

From personal experience I can say that the older the equipment, the fewer problems there are with Linux. Every time I buy a new windows laptop, I have problems installing my favorite distribution, Linux Mint. The problem has always been that this distribution does not use the latest versions of the kernel. Because of this, Linux on the new laptop either did not work at all or worked without support for many devices. Perhaps other distributions avoid these problems and use new kernels, but life is too short for me to spend many years studying each of the existing distributions.

I can recommend that you install Linux next to Windows and when you start your computer, choose which operating system to boot into. When you realize that you no longer need Windows, you can easily get rid of it.

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But aside from the obvious advantages of Linux, it would not be fair to remain silent about the disadvantages. Installing applications in Linux is fundamentally different from installing applications in Windows. If the application is not in the repository of your distribution, you will have to manually connect new repositories, and this is sometimes dangerous, since they may contain versions of packages that can harm your distribution. I killed my system several times by connecting a repository with newer versions of drivers for the video card. If in Windows you can boot into safe mode and remove the driver, then in Linux the graphical environment most likely will not load and in front of your monitor you will see a black screen and a text interface from the times of MS-DOS.

The second and very important drawback is the ineffective operation of Linux’s energy saving functions. My old laptop worked much faster in Linux due to the fact that it has completely different power consumption and temperature limits. The games ran faster, but because of this, my laptop consumed electricity at the limit of the power supply, which caused both the power supply and the laptop itself to overheat; in Windows, the laptop also overheated, but not so much. Even during inactivity, when only the desktop was loaded, electricity consumption in Linux was higher than in Windows, which is why the laptop did not last as long on battery power as in Windows. And no power saving settings solved this problem, except for radical ones - forcing the processor to work at lower frequencies and forcibly disabling discrete graphics. I measured the consumption from the outlet using an external watt meter, so I know what I’m talking about.

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That might create some problems for me, I have a very recent desktop.

I usually boot through a spare ssd or pendrive, it’s just easier to maintain.

I am already on that path, I use windows and linux together, but when I decide to finally switch, there is something that stops me, like I can’t install apps through terminal in live boot (with persistence) of kali linux. Zorin gives the best features in the paid version, which defeats my whole idea of switching to Linux- it’s free.

I see, it might be the biggest limiting factor for me.

Didn’t know that earlier :hushed:

I don’t have any problems with that, I have desktop.

couple extra bucks is not a deal, the rtx 40 series already sucks a lot :wink: (electricity ofcourse)

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Btw, any other linux os’s to suggest?

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So far I have only managed to work with distributions based on Debian (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Debian itself). Of all these distributions, I liked Linux Mint. I do not deny the fact that there are still many worthy distributions, but I have not used them and cannot advise them, it would be wrong on my part to advise something that I have no experience with.

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I just downloaded the latest Linux Mint 21.3, burned it onto a flash drive, booted into LiveUSB mode and was very disappointed. During boot, the system informed me of numerous errors, but in the end Linux booted with a screen resolution of approximately 800x600, still does not see my wi-fi adapter, this makes it pointless to try to install this system on my laptop, since it will not be able to have an output to the Internet to update. History repeats itself, I’ll probably be able to install Linux during the second half of my laptop’s life, or I’ll try some other distribution. But I’m very used to mint, and it’s unpleasant for me to realize that it’s impossible to work on new hardware with this distribution.

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I too have many errors, especially with slax, it always chooses 600x400 by and doesn’t recognize my nvidia card.

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I have just given up on it, I have a tp link wifi adapter (usb). It never gets recognized, even though it is highly popular for supporting kali linux, anything other than kali linux and windows doesn’t seem to recognize it. I rather use Ethernet or my phone cable as usb tethering.

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Probably zorin educational might be worth a shot.

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My new laptop does not have an ethernet interface, only wifi. I understand that you can buy a USB-ETHERNET adapter, but I don’t want to install the distribution once and not be sure that it will work well. I also understand that, purely theoretically, I could download an image of a fresh kernel from under Windows, and try to update it offline in Linux, but… I’m not ready to spend so much of my life’s valuable resource, like time, just to to basically make my favorite distribution work. I won’t enjoy it, I won’t get paid for it, which means I’ll be wasting my time. I think this: either the software or operating system is installed easily and simply, or I don’t need such software with which I need to overcome problems. I try to simplify my life, not complicate it. That’s why my favorite video editor is shotcut, here I can do in three clicks what I would have to spend a lot of time doing in others.

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It’s not, it’s a wifi adapter. My Desktop has ethernet by default. I was saying that that tp-link wireless wifi adapter also has issues with anything other than windows or kali linux. So I save time by using the free ethernet cable that I got with my router.

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I think this is good: * MX-23.3_x64 “ahs”, an “Advanced Hardware Support” release for very recent hardware, with 6.6 kernel and newer graphics drivers and firmware. 64 bit only. For newer hardware.

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I will try MX linux, however not from this link, but from the official website :wink:
(It’s better to link the actual website then a sourceforge download page)

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Uhmm… Uhmm… No premiere pro and flame were harmed in making of this post :slightly_smiling_face::wink:

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I’ll add my two cents as a long-time Linux user - as in, I’ve been using Linux as my primary OS for about 10 years now. I started with Ubuntu way back then, and have stayed with it - if I had the time to spare, I might experiment with others, but thus far I have been very satisfied with Ubuntu.

I keep a virtual Windows machine on hand for the times I absolutely have to use Windows. For me, that boils down to 1) Logos Bible Software, 2) digitally signed documents specific to the university, and 3) Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. After so many years with Linux as my daily driver, I absolutely detest having to fire up Windows … and I find myself (as the unofficial tech support person in my department) having to sort out irritating Windows issues as often as I face any sort of Linux bugs.

Other than occasionally playing a few rounds of Oolite (a modern cross-platform version of the ancient C64 game Elite), I’m not a game-player, so can’t comment on Steam or other matters related to gaming.

When it comes to other software, I have not experienced the problems that others mentioned above, of breaking the system when adding third-party repositories - but honestly I do very little of that. These days, most software that is not supported in the built-in Debian/Ubuntu repositories is made available in a self-contained AppImage. Often the built-in repository has a somewhat earlier version (e.g., of Shotcut), but the latest version is available via AppImage. For someone who is not comfortable with a little bit of tech work, this may not be a good option - sometimes one needs to update the permissions on the file to make it executable, for example, and I put AppImage executables into my dock structure manually - not sure if there is a way to make them show up in a menu automatically.

In general I feel that I can find safe Linux programs of virtually any variety to accomplish the tasks I need, much more easily than I can find Windows programs to accomplish the same tasks - or at least, with respect to FOSS programs. There’s always a commercial Windows program that someone is ready to sell … :slight_smile:

With regard to hardware support (e.g., the problems mentioned above with new laptops having trouble running Mint until the Mint distribution catches up), I would say that it is laptops that are going to be most likely to experience this sort of thing, and it very much depends on the type of laptop. In general, I find that Dells are happy to run Linux, while other brands may have one or two oddball peripherals that don’t want to work, or may take a while for Linux to catch up with. Unless your desktop machine is an all-in-one (monitor+computer combo), I will predict that you will have no compatibility issues at all.

Of course, there are two ways to ease the transition / test for compatibility issues. One is to try Linux via a live-USB - basically, you burn a bootable USB stick, and boot from it; you get the option either to try Linux or to install it. Very important: be aware that the live-USB version is going to be way, way slower than the installed version will be, so the goal here is not to judge performance, but rather to see if all of the peripherals work (wifi, etc.).

The other way to ease the transition is, as mentioned above, to install Linux alongside Windows in a dual-boot configuration. I can’t speak for other distros, but Ubuntu has offered this as a standard option since before I began using it. This is how I first began, with the ability to boot into either OS. Linux was able to read the Windows files directly, but not vice-versa, so I kept all my documents in the Windows file structure, and could work on them when in Linux. It didn’t take very long before I realized I was almost never booting into Windows, at which point I went with the virtual machine approach - and it is even possible to share the Linux files with the Windows virtual machine, even though they are stored in a format that Windows doesn’t know - the virtual machine (I use VirtualBox) transparently translates them. Thus, I keep all my files in Linux, but for those few times when I have to use Windows, I can still get to them. It is even possible to cut and paste between the Windows virtual machine and Linux.

Obviously, each person’s needs are different, and thus each person’s experiences will be different - so YMMV!

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I install those os’s on a thunderbolt external ssd, to see how well it performs (on my laptop), sometimes on a usb 3.0 pendrive (usually sandisk, hp 2.0 sometimes) on my desktop.

Yes, it’s used by many. The main reason I don’t use it is, because I think fedora is better than Ubuntu. However, I use ubuntu in my VM.

The only thing that’s usually not working is the tp link wifi adaptor, I don’t know why but it doesn’t correctly work on anything else than windows, mac, and kali linux.
.

I believe I would dual boot, after finding which linux distro is the best for me.

But probably to edit windows drives in linux, I would have to disable fast boot in windows.

P. S:- I honestly thought you were @Austin seeing your profile pic :sweat_smile:

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Nah, I would be trolling you and say “stick with Windows” just to make you trust random Internet advice a little less lol.

Speaking of advice, Linux Mint 22 and onward will use a new kernel series with each release instead of holding the kernel version steady for two years. So, that could help with hardware compatibility on newer laptops. This was announced in their April 1 blog entry.

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