I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too • Hacker News Board

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#631

Post by AdeptusAquinas » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:39 PM UTC

I switched my laptop (Surface Laptop Go) from Win11 to Tumbleweed, and its great. Mainly because Windows kept getting slower, and arguably Win11 isn't great for an 8GB system. OpenSuse is a great distro.

But my gaming PC and primary workstation remains Win11, and always will be (windows, that is). Notably Suse under WSL2 works great there as well, and my Kubes workflow is just as easy with PowerShell commands as it is with bash.

OS's have purposes, and arguably there is no single platform that is better than the others in every way - Windows is better for games and is more stable across different hardware and configurations. Linux is much lighter, more intentional, and for me better for infosec and some coding activities.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#632

Post by lpcvoid » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:41 PM UTC

Jackknife9 wrote: post #42

I tried to leave Windows 11 for Linux - it just didn't work for me. I installed EndeavourOS onto my main gaming desktop. It worked great for a while and ran all the games I played with my friends. However, one night when I went on to play a game I ran a system update and it seemed to completely break my nvidea drivers - I tried reinstalling them and also using the open source driver. This meant I just couldn't play a…

The fix is not buying Nvidia, even though some people here will tell you how much AMDs drivers actually sucked in 2009 and how good Nvidia is now and all that noise.

Buy full AMD in 2026, and you'll have no problems with games.

Also, Bazzite would have saved you from this.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#633

Post by rasur » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #564

rasur wrote: post #111

Gaming is all well and good, but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live, Cubase and other Steinberg apps, plus many VSTs) from Windows to Linux. I see Wine, YABridge and LinVST mentioned in searches, but while I've got plenty of Linux experience, I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises rather than spend my time making things work. I have Reaper whi…

> I'm time-poor and would prefer to make computers make noises Then Linux is not for you at this point. I don't mean to discourage you - for me, Reaper works, Scarlett works, ffmpeg works etc. But there are quirks. Reaper has horrible scaling on 4k screen, which I believe can be resolved by forcing UI scaling, but this requires change every time I switch from laptop to external monitor, so I just live with tiny butto…

I'm not a Linux noob, but I do have better things to do than admin/fix in the evenings too.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#634

Post by vegabook » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:45 PM UTC

I moved from Windows about 10 years ago and it took 6 months to click. It was an enlightening experience, like the curtains had been drawn back. The only comparable experience was finally clicking with NixOS, about 18 months ago. Will never go back to any other Linux distro.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#635

Post by AlienRobot » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:45 PM UTC

voxleone wrote: post #299

It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could…

>desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds

Personally, I believe the REAL problem is the rough edges WITH Linux.

Hardware support? You can blame manufacturers for not supporting Linux. Software support? Same.

But if you use a Linux software made for Linux by Linux users and it just feels inconvenient, non-intuitive, buggy, and mentally painful to use, you're going to think that Linux is full of bad software. Because it doesn't matter if you use X11 or Wayland under the hood, you try to drag and drop an icon from the start menu to the desktop or vice-versa and that only works in some DEs. You try to drag and drop an image from Chrome to the file manager, and that doesn't always work. You try to click the close button and sometimes there is a few pixels of padding at the top so you can't close the window on first try.

This isn't Nvidia's fault, or Adobe's fault, or Microsoft's fault. It's just Linux.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#636

Post by faust201 » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:46 PM UTC

HeavyStorm wrote: post #594

voxleone wrote: post #299

It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could…

You overestimate the level of investment the average person can and will make for these freedoms. People buy Kindles because they work (and are heavily marketed), they buy Apple because they simply work, and will keep preferring windows to Linux until Linux offer a easier barrier to entry. Microsoft will (almost already has) loose its advantage to Apple before it loses to Linux.

May be in the US (as Apple products are cheaper and people are dependent on iMessge)

Rest will remain on pirated windows or linu.many often don't even use computer.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#637

Post by tsoukase » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:47 PM UTC

Chance-Device wrote: post #497

Everyone is talking about moving to Linux lately, it’s a bit of a trend. I wish they’d stop, for one simple reason: I’ve been using Linux exclusively (when I’m not forced to use macOS by work) for several years now, and I rather enjoy the lack of malware, spyware and other bullshit on the platform. If the general public comes over this situation might end. Desktop linux isn’t a target right now because its niche, I’d…

Better spread the Linux word because with enough users more developers will be attracted and the race good vs bad hackers in OSS will be won be the former. "Nothing is hidden under the sun". Closed source is made to push malware secretly.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#638

Post by Salgat » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:47 PM UTC

flexagoon wrote: post #227

iinnPP wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another anecdote in favor of Universal Blue's approach. My mother (who can't use a computer but to check email or regular websites) has been swapped to Aurora and has nothing but positive feedback. Been 90 days with zero issues.

To be fair, the people who barely use the computer are the easiest to move to Linux. As Mental Outlaw said, "to a normie, an OS is just a bootloader for Google Chrome". If all you do is check emails, it doesn't really matter what OS you have installed. Switching to Linux hasn't been an issue for those users for a long time - it's usually gamers, users of professional software, or IT people with deeply established wor…

My old man was using Ubuntu 20 years ago because all he needed was a browser and openoffice. Shoot, with a live cd you can even make computer use foolproof since it's impossible for them to permanently break it.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#639

Post by embedding-shape » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:48 PM UTC

rasur wrote: post #398

embedding-shape wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I'd be interested to hear of experiences with moving and using Audio apps (Ableton Live I've been using Linux for work and hobbies for more than a decade at this point, mostly Arch Linux, some CachyOS, but always had a partition of Windows available too. Why? Almost solely because Ableton does not run properly with Wine, Proton or any other tooling, and has never been able to do so, for as long as I've used Abl…

right - same here WRT windows partition. Not always using Live, but it gets used when it's necessary. I'm slightly disappointed that they haven't done the decent thing and released a Linux version, but .. ah well, what can ya do hey?

I'd be willing to shell out for a new license if they need that for making a Linux version... I guess next step is to fund some FOSS developer to actually add support for it to Wine, by force if must be :P Wonder if there is some way for developers to raise money for adding support for specific software to Wine? Might not be such a a bad idea.

Re: I dumped Windows 11 for Linux, and you should too

#640

Post by faust201 » Sun, Jan 11, 2026, 8:49 PM UTC

xattt wrote: post #473

voxleone wrote: post #299

It’s worth acknowledging the real challenges raised in this thread: desktop Linux still has rough edges for some use cases, hardware support isn’t always perfect, and niche professional software may lack native support or require workarounds. But these obstacles are not intrinsic technical limitations so much as ecosystem and investment gaps, areas where community projects, standards efforts, and wider adoption could…

> … desktop Linux still has rough edges … My personal pet peeve is the GTK/Qt divide. Theming has an extra step, as you have to pick a matching theme for the other toolkit apps you inevitably end up using. KDE/Qt has excellent scaling support, but GTK apps (OrcaSlicer for example) end up having blurry text or messed up text labels if you run a non-integer scaling resolution. The Wayland transition almost seems akin t…

This is only for people that know choices.

We at out Uni provide default Ubuntu installs on laptops. Most people just live with whatever UI.

I have a feeling that many have stopped configuring, themeing etc. those only from 80s to 2000 were just spending lots of time building and creating many themes like matrix etc.

Also people are so addicted to smartphone. That is the main place for their heart.