I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by freedomben » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

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…

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 he had been misled by a prompt to buy Ubuntu pro and had gotten into a weird state. I blame that one solely on canonical, not on Linux in general. After that I switched him to Fedora, and he's been running that now for a few years and didn't even realize I had changed his underlying OS. He is able to install anything he wants from the graphical storefront, and same with updates. In the early days we did have some trouble getting his printer to work, though once we switched him to Fedora everything on that printer worked out of the box. When my sister came over to his house with her MacBook, she had to mess with the Mac to get the printer working for over an hour, and it was still pretty hit or miss. It would lose half the jobs she tried to send to it. It truly is remarkable how usable Linux is for the average person now. For people that have to run software that only runs on Windows or Linux, excluding games of course since steam and other game managers handle those wonderfully now, there is definitely still a bit of pain. But for people who can get by with cloud-based or Linux friendly software, it's really quite good.

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

#32

Post by xerox13ster » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 4:59 PM UTC

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.

Given that this is your stance and demands for laptop hardware I have to assume that you have never once participated in the laptop market prior to the M1 releasing?

That’s the only way your unrealistic expectations make sense.

Of course, people have been parroting that about Linux on laptops for over a decade. I never understood it, since I’ve never had any significant issues with Linux on my laptops.

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

#33

Post by raw_anon_1111 » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

xerox13ster wrote: post #32

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.

Given that this is your stance and demands for laptop hardware I have to assume that you have never once participated in the laptop market prior to the M1 releasing? That’s the only way your unrealistic expectations make sense. Of course, people have been parroting that about Linux on laptops for over a decade. I never understood it, since I’ve never had any significant issues with Linux on my laptops.

Yes and I also had a flip phone before the iPhone came out and a 90 pound CRT before large CRTs got affordable.

In fact my first computer was a 1Mhz Apple //e with 128KB of RAM.

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

#34

Post by xboxnolifes » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

p4coder wrote: post #15

How do you do taxes in Linux? Install a windows VM? I don't want to use the web version. With Google docs being good enough, I don't really need windows for anything else. Last time I checked, the tax software didn't run under wine.

What tax software are you running? Basically all of the tax software for individuals is a browser-based SaaS.

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

#35

Post by plagiarist » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

mecsred wrote: post #19

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.

You mean the framework Ive been running for the past 4 years or so?

I've got a Framework I am not too upset with, but the battery life (especially during sleep) is definitely one of my gripes. I still have yet to try powertop or other tools to optimize, maybe I would be proven wrong.

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

#36

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:02 PM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#37

Post by bikelang » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

jna_sh wrote: post #5

Moved my Framework laptop to Bluefin and my gaming desktop to Bazzite early last year. Zero regrets, zero issues. I'm not new to Linux by any means, I've been dabbling since a kid. But in adulthood, I had given up on having Linux as my daily driver because I just wanted my main computers to work, I didn't want maintaining them to be a hobby. That's not been an issue with Bluefin or Bazzite. I'm sure it's not for a lo…

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.

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

#38

Post by freedomben » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #6

Back in the days of Unity I decided to make a full switch to Linux and it just worked. The UX was unfamiliar but it had a cohesiveness that made sense. I use macOS for the past 10 years as my main system (work stuff needs Mac-specific things) but switching to a decent Linux distro would honestly feel like an upgrade. Windows continues being a shitshow and I want nothing to do with it. What I think could really push L…

I think this is both the blessing and the curse of the incredible work that wine and steam has done. Unless and until we get the Linux packaging stuff figured out in a way that developers can target Linux instead of having to target each individual distro, I think the clear incentive for the vast majority of gaming companies will be to target windows even if they ultimately care more about Linux, because wine and proton are so good and so much easier to support than each individual distro natively.

Don't get me wrong, I rejoice when I get a native Linux game. I buy nearly every native Linux game I can find that is reasonably priced and sounds remotely interesting. I have a couple dozen games in my GOG backlog that I haven't even tried to run yet, but I bought on a sale or something because they were relatively cheap and supported Linux natively. So I would love a world where it was Linux first and Windows second.

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

#39

Post by freedomben » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

bikelang wrote: post #37

jna_sh wrote: post #5

Moved my Framework laptop to Bluefin and my gaming desktop to Bazzite early last year. Zero regrets, zero issues. I'm not new to Linux by any means, I've been dabbling since a kid. But in adulthood, I had given up on having Linux as my daily driver because I just wanted my main computers to work, I didn't want maintaining them to be a hobby. That's not been an issue with Bluefin or Bazzite. I'm sure it's not for a lo…

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, but I'm not in a hurry

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

#40

Post by fpauser » Sat, Jan 10, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

I switched from Windows to Linux ~20 years ago because and never came back to Windows. First years I used Ubuntu and experimented with Xubuntu, Lubuntu etc. Later went to Fedora Linux with Gnome Desktop which is still my preferred Linux Distribution. Nice to see so many people thinking about free and open alternatives to big tech!