If I understand correctly, the filesystem driver is contained within the kernel for all linux-native filesystems (Ext4, XFS, BtrFS, F2FS, etc.), just as drivers for computer components and devices are. But drivers to access NTFS (Windows) and HFS+ (Mac OS) drives are programs in userspace
Tldr and tealdeer in the arch repo are both helpful, but Ill do you one better since someone already beat me to it. I found fish shell’s tab completion with either tool to be immensely helpful if you’re not trying to stay stock standard. But if you’re working on a lot of remote machines you don’t own stick with bash/zsh.
There’s some easy to find fuzzy search and linting for for history plugins that mean if you found it once you can do it again in whichever shell.
Its mostly familiarity, but i don’t think I could function without fzf.
I can see why you want to dual boot, given your use case. For gaming and MS office, Linux is not better than Windows. That said, Linux is fun to learn and you can experiment and gradually move everything over from Windows.
If you want the absolute easiest transition from Windows, I think Linux Mint Cinnamon is the best. It looks like Windows out of the box and is organized similarly. Its like going to a familiar grocery store where you know where to find the things you need. It is stable, there are rarely any weird conflicts or updates that break the system, and it comes with all the codecs you’ll need for media. In terms of installing new software, the software “store” is so simple, it makes installing software much like installing apps on Android (without all the bullshit marketing, of course). Shit just works. Steam, spotify, etc. are right there and install flawlessly. Many Steam games are native Linux and you’ll be able to install the Linux version of any game you own. For Windows-only games, you can gradually experiment with Wine, etc. and see how that works for you.
MS Office is obviously the elephant in the room, but office apps are pretty standardized at this point. You can use MS 365 online apps. Or, it is an easy transition from Word, Excel and Powerpoint to LibreOffice. Much more intuitive than using Google apps, for example. Write a few papers in LibreOffice and just save in Word format for submission (although most profs will accept Open Document Format as well, which is also supported by MS Office). Double-check formatting in Windows or the online Office 365 apps if you are worried. It is pretty easy to get used to if you use Office like most people do.
But don’t take my word for it. Make a bootable live usb and see for yourself. …readthedocs.io/…/latest/
I don’t know whether I have gotten some settings wrong in Steam, but I have to open the Properties window of every freshly installed game, and set it to launch using Proton GE, otherwise it just defaults to nothing. So if a game doesn’t work for you, always check if it is configured to launch using at least some kind of Proton thingy.
If the package manager on your old PC is keeping copies of everything it installs, just copy all of those packages over and go through the package manager on the new PC. Look under /var/cache
My preferred daily has been opensuse tumble weed on my self built desktop and Lenovo laptops. I had been using Leap on a couple old MacBooks (one air, and one mbp). I tried nixos about 6 months ago and I’ve migrated several of my machines over to nix. Opensuse and nix are without question my top two.
Servers, I run Debian server, Ubuntu server, and rocky.
OpenSUSE for most of my systems. It has been going for 7 years with no upgrade issues, and nVidia hosts an OpenSUSE version of their proprietary drivers, so you get good GPU support. YAST2 GUI, btrfs snapshot, and rollbacks mean if you break something you are up and running by picking another boot snapshot. On an older laptop from 2010 i gound NixOS was the best choice out of all the distros
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