For a long time (until end of 2023) I used ahoy Win7 on cheap 2012 laptop (2-core 1500 MHz 6GB RAM), and influenced by mentions of Linux efficiency tried dualboot installing Arch, Manjaro, Ubuntu, maybe even Mint. Also much earlier (maybe 2009?) couple of times tried Puppy Linux on CD my dad gave me a long time ago. Ubuntu stuck, and sometimes I primarily used it, returning to Win to games (my major use case for PC). So when I finally built an actual PC I was already familiar enough to try and actually commit and install Ubuntu as sole OS. And it kinda just worked. Probably important thing is CPU and GPU used are both AMD.
Yes there are some quirks, some bugs (i.e. sometimes frozen apps in Wayland lock whole system, or still don’t know how to get screen recording to work properly), also that snap drama I don’t understand, also trying to use some things from Windows through Wine is pain in the ass and a huge timesink (and no guarantee it’ll eventually work), specifically modding software for Win-only games. But generally, thanks to Wine and Proton, and probably also more attention of gamedevs to Linux userbase, my gaming needs are covered.
Also I joined Lemmy during big Spez drama, so I’ve had general influence of “another example of Win enshittification”.
Also my sister has Win10 laptop, and I really don’t like some things like integrated in start menu internet search, or clusterfuck the Control Panel (where are all settings should be) has become.
I’m aware that at some point sourceforge went down the toilet, but in the early 2000s it seemed to be a pretty reliable website for open source software. I had gone a few years coming across more and more evidence that any software I was downloading from sourceforge was much less likely to be a load of shit than software downloaded anywhere else. At some point I made the connection that maybe open source software is better in general. That made me curious about the experience of using an entire operating system that was open source. Either 2012 or late 2011 I installed Fedora to dual boot with windows (like 70% sure it was win7, might have been vista). Over the next year or two I sampled a bunch of other distros, and also PCBSD (not sure if that still exists) at one point. In retrospect I was really sampling DEs, but I didn’t know the distinction.
Discovering the philosophy behind GNU was what led me to abandoning windows entirely. I think I had already had some of the core ideas of free software, albeit in extremely rudimentary forms (gee, these EULAs sure do seem like they’re deliberately obfuscated), floating around my head for a while. The concept of free software resonated with me, so that’s when I finally removed my windows partition. I stopped distro-hopping and settled on Trisquel for two or three years.
Afterwards, I decided to move to Parabola because I thought it would force me to learn things, but the main thing I learned was how to read documentation just well enough to get everything working by trial-and-error tinkering.
I’ve kind of moved on from free software at this point. I do still agree with the ideals, but I think the goals are somewhat inconsistent with a capitalist economy to begin with so I’d rather be concerned about that.
Today I use arch and still have no idea what the hell I’m doing, but I’ve had a stable system for years and I’m too comfortable with it to switch to a friendlier distribution.
I’m a leftist that doesn’t like corporations or what they do to people. I try not to run corporate backed distros, too. I hate that Red Hat has such a grip on the open source world.
As a professional software dev, I worked with pretty much every OS daily. My personal computer was a Windows, my work laptop was a Mac, and I ran my code on Linux so I was familiar with the things I liked and disliked about each. I also ran my own set of server with my websites, mail servers, and various research projects to learn and grow.
Then I decided it was time to order a new laptop and I didn’t want to go to Windows 11 because I felt Microsoft was going too much into features I didn’t want like Ads, more tracking, pushing AI. Don’t get me wrong, I like AI, but it was too much about forcing me to use it to justify their stock valuations.
I also was working on reducing my usage of big tech, setting up self hosted services like pi-hole, Home Assistant, starting to work my own Mint alternative. It just felt natural to get a Framework laptop and try running Linux on it.
I still have a Windows desktop for games and other things, I still use Mac at work. I still like the Mac for it’s power efficiency and it doesn’t get as hot. Linux has some annoyances here and there, like dbus locking up, or weird GNOME issues, or for a while my screen would artifact until set some kernel params, or the fact that my wifi card would crash and I had to replace it with an Intel card, but I’ll stick with it.
Steam play. I spent nine years with linux as my main work os. Then I’d come home and game on windows. Once Steam play was mature I setup a dual boot to give it shot. I think I booted into windows twice after that.
A mix of factors for me. Firstly, privacy concerns, settings reverting themselves after updates, and the looming threat of Windows 11 were I to get a new PC. Stuttery performance on my already 3 year old laptop at the time (I still use the same laptop. It is now 6 years old and still runs great with Linux). General bloat, driver problems, and instability issues.
I did not make the switch all at once, but thankfully my laptop has two NVMe slots, which made dual booting easier while I got more used to using Linux as my daily driver. Within about a year, I was booting into Windows less and less, and eventually hardly ever once I found ways to use Linux for everything I needed.
What pushed me over the edge: the threat of Windows screenshotting everything I did.
Absolutely fucking not. Took it all to Ubuntu the day after I heard. Couple days later everything I need was set up & a few months later I haven’t looked back
Momentum 4 owner here too. Can you provide the details of your distro? You already have aptx/aptx-hd available, it’s what you should use with them. Ima look into it when I get home.
The main issues to watch out for are driver issues related to certain peripherals like fingerprint scanners, SD card readers, and certain oddball wifi chipsets. Hybrid graphics with both integrated CPU graphics and a dedicated GPU can lead to poor battery life in some systems such as many gaming laptops. In my experience, Linux runs fine on every laptop which I have tried it with, including 2 with hybrid Nvidia graphics. I’m also 2 for 2 on SD card readers and 3/3 on wifi cards as well, despite no prior research on my part.
Arch Linux sounds like it would be the closest to what you are describing. Or try out one of the more preconfigured versions like Endeavour OS or Arcolinux, as the install process for Arch can be a bit involved for someone new to Linux.
Usually not difficult so long as something is not a hard dependency for some other piece of software. Running something as root in Linux is as simple as typing “sudo” before a command and entering your root password
No. Per the above, elevated user privileges are permitted as a normal part of using Linux and do not require you to hack or bypass the OS’s security mechanisms like in Android or iOS.
If you install more than one, depending on your login manager it is usually as simple as a dropdown menu to select which DE you want to use when logging in.
Wayland is a window manager/GUI system used in Linux. It has been getting a lot of discussion lately because the Linux community is gradually shifting from the longstanding but now unmaintained X11 system to Wayland. You probably don’t need to worry about it.
Probably something accessing your microphone and making the headset switch to HSP/HFP. Correcting the microphone input usually allows me to switch back to A2DP, but not always unfortunately. I’ve had it happen a few times at random too (some games, a chat program). I still don’t know what causes my issues exactly, but after a few updates and editing my Pipewire config it doesn’t seem to happen as much anymore.
I dug in deep and I think completely removing the HSP and HFP roles from the Wireplumber config file solved the issue. I don’t know what to do if you’re on Pulseaudio, and there’s no GUI setting to do this, but it may help you on your quest to figure this stuff out.
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