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.
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.
(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 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 choice the right one the first time. Get your mindset back to learning the whole system, keep and 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 :/ )
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.
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.
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.
(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 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 choice the right one the first time. Get your mindset back to learning the whole system, keep and 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.
Ubuntu, PopOS, or Linux Mint. All different interface, but largely identical.
Just get Mint, you’ll be fine.
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.
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!
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.
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
Fair, but that’s not a Linux problem. Publishers need to support the platform. Is windows bad for not “running” final cut?
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.
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.
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.
It is a bit against the grain, but also very true
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.
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
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 :/ )
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
Not sure what made them not work, but this makes sense.
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
If it’s anticheat, blame the devs, because they’re specifically blocking Linux. If it’s something else, maybe we can help.