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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

#161

Post by mkozlows »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #56

>I picked CachyOS rather than a better-known distro like Ubuntu because it’s optimized for modern hardware, >First challenge: My mouse buttons don’t work. I can move the cursor, but can’t click on anything. Maybe should've picked Ubuntu? I suspect this is the Linus (tech tips, not Torvalds) strategy of picking up an obscure distro for content purposes. Can't really have an article if everything just works, right

I suspect they sincerely picked CachyOS because they read people advocating for it, and were convinced by the advocacy. People advocate all kinds of distros, and all of them except the one I advocate are bad choices.

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

#162

Post by oliwarner »

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.

Like the ThinkPad T14s or any other Snapdragon X Elite, or better? Apple chips are great in this space but they're not alone.

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

#163

Post by BoredPositron »

nikanj wrote: post #55

Do any of the main-stream Linux installers make any attempt at bringing over your files? I have seen so many ”anyone can switch to Linux” articles, and none of them seem to mention ”all of your files are going to be utterly lost”

What desktop OS offers file migration from a different desktop OS during installation on the same machine? Windows and macOS definelty not...

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

#164

Post by mkozlows »

antennafirepla wrote: post #18

For not much prior research, he sure has done a lot of prior research to even know about desktop environments or bootloaders compared to your average windows user. This article read like every other promising Linux is user friendly and easy, then proceeding with the author fixing issues the average user wouldn’t be able to even diagnose. I think anyone technically savvy enough to follow the article is already aware L…

What's funny is, the author is only having these questions because they chose a wacky Arch-based ultra-techie distro that I'd never even heard of.

If they'd just installed normal Ubuntu or Fedora, they wouldn't even know what a bootloader was, and they'd just use whatever desktop environment (probably GNOME, maybe KDE) came with it.

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

#165

Post by amlib »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #41
rsyring wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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...

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

#166

Post by pjmlp »

halapro wrote: post #159
blauditore wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unify the look and feel of mobile and desktop Lol, that's what Microsoft tried 10+ years ago and everybody gave them shit for it, especially Apple fans. Now Apple is "inventing" this again.

You can't seriously compare how inappropriate Windows 8 was on desktop to the latest macOS. Bad UI aside, the OS is effectively the same OS X from 2001 with some fresh skin. Also a lot of people hate on macOS changes, I myself did not upgrade to the latest version.

I guarantee that there is enough stuff from 2001 that won't work in Tahoe.

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

#167

Post by oliwarner »

Rayosay wrote: post #53
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that the ThinkPad X13s Gen1 might meet these requirements. It is my favorite ARM Linux laptop I've ever used. It has great support in Debian 13 (trixie), and it feels pretty smooth and fast. It doesn't have any fans, stays cool, and I regularly get a full day's worth of battery life out of it with margin to spare (10-12 hours). It's better than the newer Snapdragon X1 Elite based ThinkPads, in my opinion, eve…

Have you managed to get sleep states to work? I'd love mine but it never sleeps properly.

Ubuntu but I'd change for sleep.

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

#168

Post by prezk »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #58
prezk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux will run on most platforms, so just pick up a fast, lightweight laptop, and select a conservative power profile for longer battery life and less heat, and don't run 32-thread machine learning jobs on it. A 12-hour laptop battery life is a little bit of a red herring: yes, you can get it on efficient ultrabooks and MacBooks, with light use like web browsing or office work, on low brightness and minimal backgroun…

And how many laptops running Linux are light, power efficient, fast, quiet with good battery life? My 16 inch M3 MacBook Pro runs 5 hours at 80% brightness doing development with my USB powered (video and power from one USB cord) portable monitor. The Mac battery is powering the monitor https://a.co/d/gHqpcs3

Pretty much every laptop on the planet will run Linux. Maybe your optics are tinted because you seem to be a Mac person, and Linux support for newer Macs has known issues with low power modes.

I note how your 12+ hour claim was reduced to 5 hours when you actually put it to real work. It's still impressive, of course, but 5 hours aren't out of reach for Ryzen laptops either.

BTW, I have a RISC-V platform with 8 1.6GHz CPUs that uses under 5W under full load; on your 100Wh battery it would last for 20 hours. It's not a complete system, and performance lags behind Apple/Intel CPUs, but I think in few years RISC-V may take a bite out of both.

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

#169

Post by pjmlp »

1over137 wrote: post #122
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…

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

However if we don't get something like SuSE desktops and laptops at Media Markt and friends, most people won't care.

In fact I know of library that rolled back to Windows kiosk mode, from a previous SuSE deployment, because it wasn't what library users were expecting.

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

#170

Post by ipsi »

philistine wrote: post #45
freedomben wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you get someone to help you with the installation, or buy a pre-installed Linux, then yes I believe this to be true. I only have anecdotal evidence, but I have my dad who is very non-tech savvy who after about a day with gnome actually said it's the first desktop environment that he liked more than Windows 95. There has been one time in 5 years that he had to reach out for technical assistance. It turned out that…

Printers. It always haunts us. I have exclusively bought Brother for home and work for close to two decades at this point because they follow CUPS standards requiring no fidgeting, and their modern offerings all have AirPrint, which eliminates the need for drivers. It's 2026, and the normies still think you cannot print from your phone because printers suck so much.

Even then - I have a reasonably nice Brother Printer/Scanner/etc device, and I could never get AirPrint to reliably work until I switched over to using Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi. Something to do with it going to sleep and not broadcasting the necessary mDNS stuff, IIRC. I couldn't find any combination of settings in the printer to make it happy, and since it's now right next to a switch, it's not really worth the effort of digging any further.
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