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I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

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Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#181

Post by crazysim »

amlib wrote: post #165
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, the remaining difficulties with Linux tend to revolve around managing ownership and permissions of files and directories. I recently plugged in my external hard drive into my Linux PC and it just wouldn't read it. "You do not have permission to access this drive" or something like that. The solution after googling ended up being (for some reason) some combination of sudo chown -R user /dev/sda1 and…

This shouldn't happen with external disks formatted with ntfs, ext or udf. If you have an EXT4 or something like that external disk things get more hazy...

Can't it just do what I _mean_ if it's a Desktop install and mount it like ntfs, udf, or etc?

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#182

Post by Forgeties79 »

cyberpunk wrote: post #130
1over137 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial OSes (both Windows and macOS) are also both American, and lots of people are trying to de-Americanize.

Yep, I'm in this boat. After years of macs my next will be a FreeBSD Desktop. edit: Although phone is much harder. I guess I'll just turn all the 'stuff' like icloud off, use only signal and my banking/etc apps, and get a separate camera.. Anyone found a less painful way to live without an iPhone/Android?

As someone who had been in the Apple ecosystem since Windows XP, it was difficult to lose that constant seamless interplay between my phone and computer. But honestly? The trade-off was worth it in the end. I’m 8mo into Linux-only desktop and man…it’s great.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#183

Post by duxup »

My experience:

I came from windows to MacOS so despite what folks bemoan about MacOS ... I still love it and it is problem free enough that I don't feel the need to do the lifting to go to Linux.

I think that's a common thing for those of who maybe haven't ridden MacOS for so long.

Windows for me is on a whole several levels of worse when I have to dive back into it. Windows feels like an OS POINTED AT ME rather than for me.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#184

Post by nineteen999 »

0xperke wrote: post #44

For all who switched to Linux: which distro did you choose and why? Fedora: wanted to have the newest kernel and updates due to new hardware - so far i am really satisfied; the only issue i have is that the printer does not work everytime… as a workaround i print with my iphone instead.

I guess i've never really "switched" - I've always used Linux desktops together with Windows desktops - each to the strengths that they are good at it. And this goes back to the late 1990's. There are times I've used more than the other.

But yes Fedora - I have traditionally worked on "Enterprise" Linux where RHEL is the standard, so I track Fedora for bleeding edge development work and target EL for "production".

Don't get me wrong I'm just as comfortable on Debian systems or even building Linux-from-scratch type systems but I really don't have a day to day use case for Linux distributions outside of Fedora/Redhat, they cover all my needs.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#186

Post by faust201 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #14
toddmorey wrote: post #9

Commercial OSes (both Windows and MacOS) now feel so insanely agenda driven, and the agenda no longer feels like anything close to making the user happy and productive. For Mac, it feels like Apple wants to leverage what came out of VisionOS and unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop--two things no one asked for. For Windows, it feels like ads for their partners and ensuring they don't fumble the ai/agent tran…

Come back when I can run Linux on a laptop that has 12+ hours battery life, runs fast, that’s lightweight, quiet and doesn’t cause infertility from the heat when I put it on my lap…. Using an x86 laptop in 2025 is like using a flip phone 6 years after the iPhone came out. Of course if you are a gamer, ignore everything I just wrote.

One good thing is choice. You are free to use macOS or even windows.

But this battery argument is bull shit

15 years ago it was so difficult to find charging points.

Not now. I have never ever been in a situation the I needed to be away from charging for > 6 hours. 6-10 hours is really possible.

If your working or life demands that then pity you. I have better life/work.

And again choice. You are free to use macOS or even windows.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#187

Post by surgical_fire »

rsyring wrote: post #10
peanut-walrus wrote: post #7

I've been a Linux admin for 25 years but up until a few months ago my personal computer has been windows (gaming desktop) or Mac (laptop). I decided to give desktop Linux another shot and I'm glad I did. I was prepared for a lot of jankiness but figured I have enough experience to fix whatever needs fixing. Surprisingly, this has not been the case at all, the PC has been not only as stable as Windows or Mac but also…

I've been running a Linux desktop for about 13 years. There are still "moments" where you have to work on it and it can be more opaque than Windows/Mac. But you have the control to do what you need to do, which is one huge factor for me in Linux's favor. I moved my immediate and mostly non-tech family to all run Linux including an aging relative who needed a locked-down Firefox install to keep her from falling victim…

I've been on Mint for nearly 4 years now,. migrating from Windows.

The only hiccup I had was botched updates once, and the OS would error during boot.

The fix was easy, boot to terminal, fiddle with timeshift to restore to the point prior to update, then apply de updates carefully with a few reboots in between.

Now, was that easy? For someone well versed in the technicalities, yes. For a layman, probably not.

Now, that said, it was the only problem I had in 4 years. It has been very smooth sailing besides that.

My experience with Windows prior to that was always horrible. Yearly clean installs because after a while the computer felt extremely sluggish. Random blue screens for god knows what reason.

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#188

Post by jna_sh »

mongrelion wrote: post #117
bikelang wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bazzite is my first immutable distro. Idk that I would want this for my dev machine - but for a gaming/general desktop usage it’s pretty amazing. If they exposed more of the maintenance tooling and stuff like adding RPM layers via the UI then I think they’d have a really compelling OS for non-technical users.

I had the dilemma of choosing between Bazzite and CachyOS or Manjaro for my workstation, which is also my gaming rig. The whole immutable distro felt like a hinder for my workflow (running docker containers, etc.), so that's why I went for CachyOS.

I think you should take another look, especially at the “Bazzite developer experience” edition: container based development is pretty much what it’s centred around. Alternatively, Bluefin, which is much more dev focused

Re: I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great

#190

Post by jna_sh »

freedomben wrote: post #39
bikelang wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bazzite is my first immutable distro. Idk that I would want this for my dev machine - but for a gaming/general desktop usage it’s pretty amazing. If they exposed more of the maintenance tooling and stuff like adding RPM layers via the UI then I think they’d have a really compelling OS for non-technical users.

I agree, if you have a specific dev flow that is compatible with the immutable OS approach, then these can be wonderful dev machines, but personally I don't want to change my workflow to fit the OS, I prefer the OS to fit my workflow. At some point I I'm pretty confident that I will switch to an immutable version of Fedora and relearn my workflow in a distro box like world as I do see some real benefits to doing so,…

I expected it to be an issue but I’ve had surprisingly few problems so far. If you’re working in docker-land or can use devcontainers, it just works. If you’re not but your stack is well supported by homebrew, also not a problem. Anything else you can handle via a distrobox container, where you can install from package managers to your heart’s content, and they have good integration with the base OS, but I’ve had to reach for distrobox a lot less than I expected.
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