cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/34247715
Curious on the experiences of those recently migrating to Linux from Windows 10, Intel-based MacOS, etc. How is it being on Linux? Anything surprise or frustrate you?
Perfectly ! Switched to Zorin for my gf laptop who couldn’t handle Windows anymore, decided to do it on my main PC as well and now am trying to revive an old mini-pc with the Lite version. Everything is fine, except for a short list of games (with anticheat like Vanguard or thing like this).
Im not sure if its been a year or a bit over but not much fuss for me but I use zorin which uses ubuntu lte on older laptops. still looking to goof with benzite and I am far enough along with appimage to do it but im a slow mover.
I started usung mint on my home desktop in April 2025, completely wiping windows. Was a fun experience and here in 2026 I got the confidence to daily drive Linux on my work computer as well.
I’m using omarchy and loving it. It has been a great learning process and I feel like using my own computer is fun again. There are a lot of great programs on Linux as well.
So far so good! Bazzite on my gaming PC has been flawless. My Rocket League rankings have improved because the game runs slightly smoother; higher framerate equals better personal performance. Been playing a bunch of Blue Prince also, though that one doesn’t exactly need a lot of CPU.
I don’t know why it took me so long to switch bit I’m never going back to Microslop
Almost perfect, the only issue I have is some of the games I want to play not working so I still need to dual boot windows.
If you already tried proton and it hasn’t worked for the games you want to play, you have my sympathies. However, if that’s not the case, I highly recommend trying it out.
I’ve been running Arch on my main PC for two years and, so far, Steam’s Proton has worked with every game I’ve tried it on.
If you need to install the game using a windows installer like a repack, wine seems to work for that. Then, as long as you can find the game’s exe, you can add it to steam and choose to have it run via proton. And after that it launches just like every other game would.
Even NVIDIAs raytracing has worked for me which is kind of an impressive feat considering how much of a pain NVIDIA graphics can be on Linux sometimes.
Of course I use proton.
If your gaming on linux and not using proton either your doing it wrong or somehow you only have native games.
Is that down to anti-cheat software?
Working nice, no real problems. I am using Fedora. Still forced to use a virtual windows machine (actually a docker image) to make python exe for windows and to use excel (via winapps).
Only thing I didn’t get to is to set a good backup strategy yo be able to easily restore previous state if anything broke. It’s possible but ask for too much time to do it properly. Which there was an alternative to macrium reflects for windows.
I know there is time machine but my sub volumes are not named the way time machine is expecting.
It would be nice to have an easy app setting it all up!For the most part it’s great, I’m just a bit sad I haven’t been able to get a couple of my vsts working in reaper. Other than that, no complaints at all. It boots faster, feels less bloated, and I can still play every game I’ve cared about so far.
Which VST plugins would you recommend for Reaper on Linux? Been working on leveling up my audio recording, level balancing, denoise, etc.
The Airwindows plugins are all available for Linux and are some of the best dynamics processors, just not so pretty. https://www.airwindows.com/
Still trying to sort that out lol. I can only recommend definitely not anything from Izotope. Surge XT is a synth that seems to work well though, and graillion works for autotune are a couple I use off the top of my head. I’m not very skilled though, so take the above with a grain of salt.
I use Izotope with Reaper just fine. To get the UI working you need Wine 9.21 or earlier.
Oh shit, really? Thanks for the tip, I’ll try that out
Yep, there’s a tutorial do downgrade Wine in the yabridge repo
Thanks!
I did it in December. I had tried to run dual-boot many times in the last decade, but always ended up back at Windows (gaming was part of this). This time, I do not think I will going back.
I chose Pop OS because of support for Nvidia GPUs and out-of-the-box flatpak integration. It was a bit frustrating at first because the new Cosmic DE is rather buggy. But I switched to KDE and things are smooth now. If I could go back, I’d probably install Kubuntu (or maybe Fedora KDE)
Some things that have frustrated me:
- Getting RDP to work took some struggles, and KDE is very laggy through RDP. Instead I make RDP boot into XFCE.
- Updated my graphics drivers and all my games stopped working. Turns out this was because I had to accordingly update Flatpak stuff so that the container and my system would be synchronized.
- The game I currently play most (Elden Ring Nightreign) has some brief moments of intense stuttering. I think this is because of EAC— I did not have the problem in Windows. But this is bearable. Also, screen-sharing in Discord seems to cause much more performance degradation than on Windows.
- Zoom on Linux isn’t as good as Zoom on Windows (lacking features, a bit buggy).
- I don’t like (/know how to use Libreoffice). Not really a big problem because I mostly use LaTeX.
- Thunderbird doesn’t play super great with Microsoft Exchange, even though support has been added. I miss the outlook app (I mostly use outlook.com now).
Good things:
- I enjoy no longer being on Windows 11. From Explorer freezing randomly, to idling at like 16GB of RAM, to search not working unless I used task manager to end explorer.exe, I had enough.
- I very much enjoy being able to update everything through terminal in a few clicks.
- I like being in control of my own hardware again.
I’ve no regrets. I just wish I could also make the switch on my laptop. However, for whatever reason, my trackpad becomes intermittently sluggish on Ubuntu/Pop (I’ve tried both). None of the solutions online (XPS 9510) seem to work. If I ever purchase another laptop, I will be sure to get one with better Linux support.
It’s been about two months, smooth sailing so far. No regrets. Running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma, blender, reaper, steam and GoG, discord and a web app to use whatsapp. Have not missed windows one bit. I’m slowly learning more as I go, but so far the much boogified Arch has been easy to get going with Endeavour, and I haven’t run into any unmanageable problems so far.
I simply adore that the only programs on my PC are ones that I want on it.
I switched about a year ago. It’s going great. The only problem with my computer was because my RAM broke, but that would’ve still happened on Windows.
Its about 2 years with Linux on my laptop and about 1 year full time on all my devices, besides my work laptop with runs w11.
I run KDE neon on both. I distro hopped around from Ubuntu, fedora, mint, KDE, pop but ended up with KDE again. I feel like it does not matter anymore what de or distro I use. I need my browser and a terminal and my tools, then i can work.
Its nice having a reminder every time I am working with windows that I did the correct choice.
There are some bugs, but at least tgjey are mine now.
Only thing I miss, is ableton. I did not dabble in it with wine or winboat too much, but that’s the only thing I miss.
But worth it. I stand behind the idiology and got a few other people around me to switch
Switched from w11 to bazzite for personal use (still have to use windows for work) and it’s been great. Wish there were a few pieces of software with native Linux support so I could switch for work too.
Switched from w10 to arch on my home, mostly gaming, pc. It feels nice, and i like their rolling update model. But i had s lot of experience with Ubuntu before, currently have it on my working laptop
I switches to Pop!OS on my laptop that I didt use so much until now and its been solid and reliable for 99% of everything ive needed to do. Later switched my desktop to Bazzite and its been a wonderful experience. I did have a little bit of stuttering on beefier games but I mostly play middle graphics games and those were a non issue. Maybe 1-2 games I have wont run? Intel and nvidia is probably more of the reason.
I havent even looked back at windows at this point
Doing great. Learned alot about Linux. I’m not that good at working with coding or so, but I love the help I can get from the Linux community. I’m on Fedora, because I liked their homepage, and because I had to start somewhere😁
