I switched from W11 when Copilot Vision was scheduled for a forced install. Choose Debian KDE because my servers are all Debian-based already, and I wanted boring and stable. For the most part, it’s been smooth sailing. There’s a touchpad issue sometimes that requires reloading the mouse module, and updating my Dell dock requires loading a Windows boot disk to run the installer from that environment. That’s about it for problems. Using apt and flatpak to manage updates for all my software has been great. I do not miss downloading and clicking through installer wizards all the time.

Sure! I’d been playing with regular Gnome Ubuntu for a long while. Never really liked Gnome, figured if I had to use it some day I would just deal.

But then, on reddit of all places, I read about KDE, and Kubuntu. I looked at the screenshots and holy hell, it kinda looks like Windows!!

Now… like, I’m not some sort of windows fangirl here, it’s just, they layout with the task bar, start menu, all that jazz makes a whole buncha sense to me. And to see that there was a version of Ubuntu that had that kinda interface fast tracked me into installing it.

I like using Ubuntu too because it seems pretty straight forward and approachable to someone like me, who isn’t super great with computers in general, and who certainly doesn’t want to spend a bunch of time tinkering with every setting and what not. But I also value my privacy and not funneling money to billionaires…

So now I’m running Kubuntu, and while it’s been great, I am running into issues with some of my games I want to play on Steam and using Lutris. So now I’m back to having to tweak shit, and I’m not too happy about it.

I do know of Bazzite, so I may wipe my Kubuntu install to try it. I just, I don’t want to be in the same boat again, and go through all of that.

I am also planning on getting a SteamDeck when my bonus from work comes through after the new year, so this may all be moot, as I am hoping to do my Steam/GOG gaming on that.

Edit: I should specify, my laptop has a GTX 1050ti and I guess Nvidia is the bane of linux or something, and is most likely the cause of most of my issues playing games.

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

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

I’m in process.

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

I didn’t migrate until Windows 2000.

I switched when they announced Windows was going to start watching everything you do. So it can help you better… of course.

I started with Bazzite and didn’t really understand immutability. I had just heard it was good for gaming. I bricked my installation trying to get write access to the folder where login screen images are stored because that part happens to be immutable.

I switched to Garuda because it is also gamer focused and the system folders aren’t on lockdown. Both were super easy and have worked great.

I’m still learning what it means to be on Arch, but that’s an interesting journey, so I don’t mind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just helped someone yesterday, though they had Windows 11 already. They ended up with Pop!_OS, probably inspired by me having Pop!_OS (I did not make decisions here, only helped). Now we need to work out why Pop!_OS acting like the laptop can’t do Wi-Fi

✋

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

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

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

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

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

Moved my father-in-law from Windows 10 to Mint.

Biggest problem was all his ‘documents’, which were office365 web links rather than ‘actual documents’. Linux presents them as the urls that they really are. They open just fine, though, and can be exported as real local docs for libreoffice etc.

Security and privacy were the main selling points for him. He’d done some reading and thought that Mint was among the best choices for a newstart that just want everything to work; no interests in playing games or anything. I agreed that was the most solid choice. I use Arch btw myself, but wouldn’t recommend that for beginners.

I’m just finishing off switching now. My media server and laptop have been on Xubuntu and Mint respectively for the last few years, but my main PC was stuck on Windows 10 while I got some stuff finished. It’s now on Mint while I confirm that everything’s transferred over properly.

While I do prefer Linux, it’s been quite frustrating so far. The big stuff has been pretty smooth, but I’ve had a few silly little issues that have made things harder than they should be.

My Bluetooth headphones wouldn’t stay connected until I removed them and added them back, and I couldn’t print until I deleted an outdated certificate. MusicBrainz Picard wouldn’t move and rename files correctly until after an unrelated reboot. I couldn’t write to a drive mounted through fstab because none of the guides I found said that you had to do anything different for an NTFS drive, even though some of them were aimed at people switching from Windows.

At the moment, every time I add a podcast to Clementine, it downloads every episode, and I can’t see any way to change it.

Nothing major, but I’m going to pull all of my hair out by the time I’m done 😫

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