The Best way to switch to Linux is to NOT

1984 , 7 hours ago

I don’t understand the difficulty. My kid who used Windows for at least 7 years installed Ubuntu and just started using it. Why is this difficult for people? I helped him boot the computer from a USB stick and that’s it.

Here is the app store, install programs from here.

Ok.

Deebster , 7 hours ago

Yup, I think a lot of people just use their web browser for everything, and they can definitely just switch. Outside of work, how many non-techies have set up their email to use a native program? Very few, in my experience.

I think documents are sometimes the exception, since there’s a sizable (perhaps older) group that like to use Word for everything.

neo , 3 hours ago

All the tech literacy programs for parents also basically ended up only teaching office software, for some reason.

Max_P , 6 hours ago

I switched as a kid too, but that makes it really easy because I never ended up depending on a bunch of proprietary Windows only apps. I never learned stuff like Photoshop and Illustrator and Premiere, not even on pirated versions like most kids do. Photoshop CS2 technically ran under wine but the experience was so miserable I learned GIMP instead. My last Windows was XP.

The older you get the more “serious” software you have too, like tax stuff, the whole Windows-centered workflow at work. The deeper you are into the ecosystem the worse it is.

The issue I see over and over and over is not that using Linux in itself is that hard, it’s dealbreaker software and hardware. Oh your capture card isn’t supported. Your audio mixer’s not supported. It sucks. So basically what OP said: you have to switch to Linux friendly software first, then it’s basically just swapping the OS and not flipping your entire computing experience over.

ExtremeDullard , 6 hours ago

My mom is 80 years old and I got her on Mint years ago - mostly because I was tired of fixing the mistakes Windows let her make.

My mom is a walking disaster with computers but she got used to it and now she can’t mess up anything, and she doesn’t worry about messing up anything anymore too. If she can do it, anyone can do it.

adam_y , 6 hours ago

I think some folk want to pretend using Linux is hard so that they can feel more… Uh… Technical for using it.

kernelle , 2 hours ago

It’s actually hilarious how disconnected some Linux folks are lmao

The average person

• doesn’t know what an operating system is
• can barely work with windows, has had many struggles learning windows
• is scared of change
• doesn’t know about the existence of a BIOS
• will never be able to boot anything else but default by themselves
• doesn’t know how to troubleshoot anything about computers
• literally does not know or care about the existence of Linux

I know these things are changing, but anyone saying people are able to switch to Linux by themselves and its easy and doable for the average person is fucking delusional, this post is one of the most reasonable takes I’ve seen on the sub

uranibaba , 1 hour ago

If all you do is browse the web, as is the case for a a lot of people, the OS does not matter. Heck, my neighbor does not even have a computer, does everything on his phone.

kernelle , 1 hour ago

Exactly, in reality people will use what’s given to them. Just like windows, introduce it now and people would lose their fucking minds about how convoluted it is.

Transition costs are what we should be looking at, right now to install or use Linux you need someone with experience explaining it to you. Just like it was when PC’s were becoming a thing. Don’t have that person? Only alternative is MacOS or ChromeOS for them.

soundconjurer , 21 minutes ago

@uranibaba @kernelle , well, yes and no. Yes, visiting most websites will absolutely not matter. Streaming however, does matter. Streaming from services is either not supported for some services and only supports lower resolutions. I am not sure which are supported or not currently, I remember Max not working on Linux, it might have worked with OS spoofing.

Edit: I dropped Max a while ago and haven't tried to use it for a long time after it initially didn't work while I had the service.

acceptable_humor OP , 4 hours ago

The thing is alot of people who work really well in the windows environment and have been doing so for a while will now have to face both a new environment and new tools. Then there is the problem of time … If you are trying to work while also troubleshooting your OS with none of the tools that you know how to troubleshoot with it could be frustrating.

uranibaba , 1 hour ago

work while also troubleshooting

Let’s not pretend that most people know how to troubleshoot. ^only^ ^a^ ^little^ ^/s^

GustavoM , 19 minutes ago

tl;dw:

Improvise (but not really). Adapt. Overcome.

Then again, I’d rather go for a much “cleaner” approach and suggest new users to “unlearn” the bad habits learnt by using Windows. Which is the “click once and forget” mentality, along many others.

notthebees , 3 hours ago

Use libreoffice over open office.

Blaiz0r , 3 hours ago

But what about Only Office?

beefbot , 2 hours ago

Seconded, why not OnlyOffice? (maybe parent commenter got names confused 🤷‍♂️ no judgement)

as for OpenOffice vs Libre Office— IIRC Libre has more recent development on it, which IMHO feels like a good sign for open source software; it’s kept more up to date

notthebees , 19 minutes ago

I’m stupid. I didn’t realize it said onlyoffice, not open office. Oop

geneva_convenience , 1 hour ago

Most people are trying to play video games they do not care about the professional software

Breadhax0r , 47 minutes ago

Yeah…I was dual booting to test mint, then accidentally wiped my windows drive when I tried out bazzite and went ‘welp, guess this is my life now’ and haven’t gone back to windows lol

eugenia , 1 hour ago

Davinci Resolve is not a solution for at least 60% of the people who would move to Linux. The new version has trouble working on Debian-based systems (even with the various scripts and workarounds that exist), and it requires an nvidia card with lots of GBs of VRAM (while it does work on Windows with Intel/AMD without big problems). So I’d never suggest Resolve to someone moving to Linux unless they’re going to use Fedora, and have a recent nvidia card. For everyone else, there’s KDENLive and Shotcut. Which are way worse in the things they can do compared to Resolve (especially when it comes to professional color grading and audio plugins specifically for human speech), but that’s the situation we’re in.

turnipjs , 6 hours ago

Who wants to start a flame war? NixOS is a better bleeding edge distro than Arch. Nixpkgs has way more packages than Arch.

737 , 5 hours ago

Maybe, but arch is simpler

uranibaba , 1 hour ago

Is arch btw simpler than NixOS? I always thought that arch btw was on top of the difficulty food chain.

acceptable_humor OP , 4 hours ago

I wrote this for beginners … While you shouldn’t be installing arch either as a beginner but if your are up for it tools like the arch wiki and archisntall are still easier than learning nix os …

I have been using linux since years now and I have no idea what a nix is /j

Jilanico , 7 hours ago

Dual booting is also an option.

cRazi_man , 7 hours ago (edited 6 hours ago)

In order to use dual boot, one must be able to set up dual boot. This guide is addressed towards people who have never used Linux.

If you’re lucky enough to have more than one device, then I’d just say use Linux on your secondary device. I used my Steam Deck as my PC for a month before I made the change.

eatham , 6 hours ago

Dual booting is done for you in the installer, at least for mint.

cRazi_man , 5 hours ago (edited 5 hours ago)

I know it has the ability to, but I don’t recommend it. I’ve recently commented on this so I’ll paste it here:

DO NOT dual boot as a beginner. I did this when I started and would screw up something with the bootloader and be unable to boot one of the OSs (data can still be copied off, but installed app data isn’t easily recovered). Being a noob at the time, I even accidentally wiped the wrong drive during a distro hop.

For a beginner I would recommend you remove your Windows SSD and keep it safe in a drawer. Or clone the drive first. Then you can mess around all you want while keeping your original SSD safe.if the data and OS/app installs are valuable then don’t fuck around learning a new system with the drive in situ. Certainly don’t try to learn to partition and dual boot off the same drive. The noob risk is just too high.

lemm.ee/comment/13744698

Max_P , 6 hours ago

The major problem with dual-booting is if you get lazy and end up never booting the Linux install. Sure you can do most stuff on Linux but Windows does all your stuff, so you end up with “I might play after those YouTube videos” and boot into Windows to save the possible upcoming reboot. And then you’re always on Windows.

But it’s a very good option if you can manage to get yourself into the opposite situation: avoiding having to reboot into Windows and find workarounds and alternatives.

uranibaba , 1 hour ago

I have two applications that does not have a replacement for Linux, running Windows as a virtual machine is a great alternative as you don’t have to leave Linux (or reboot) to use them.

MudMan , 7 hours ago

I keep trying to explain how Linux advocacy gets the challenges of mainstream Linux usage wrong and, while I appreciate the fresh take here, I'm afraid that's still the case.

Effectively this guide is: lightly compromise your Windows experience for a while until you're ready, followed by "here's a bunch of alien concepts you don't know or care about and actively disprove the idea that it's all about the app alternatives."

I understand why this doesn't read that way to the "community", but parse it as an outsider for a moment. What's a snap? Why are they bad? Why would I hate updates? Aren't updates automatic as they are in Windows? Why would I ever pick the hardware-incompatible distros? What's the tradeoff supposed to be, does that imply there is a downside to Mint over Ubuntu? It sure feels like I need to think about this picking a distro thing a lot more than the headline suggested. Also, what's a DE and how is that different to a distro? Did they just say I need a virtual machine to test these DE things before I can find one that works? WTF is that about?

Look, I keep trying to articulate the key misunderstanding and it's genuinely hard. I think the best way to put it is that all these "switch to Linux, it's fun!" guides are all trying to onboard users to a world of fun tinkering as a hobby. And that's great, it IS fun to tinker as a hobby, to some people. But that's not the reason people use Windows.

If you're on Windows and mildly frustrated about whatever MS is doing that week, the thing you want is a one button install that does everything for you, works first time and requires zero tinkering in the first place. App substitutes are whatever, UI changes and different choices in different DEs are trivial to adapt to (honestly, it's all mostly Windows-like or Mac-like, clearly normies don't particularly struggle with that). But if you're out there introducing even a hint of arguments about multiple technical choices, competing standards for app packages or VMs being used to test out different desktop environments you're kinda missing the point of what's keeping the average user from stepping away from their mainstream commercial OS.

In fairness, this isn't the guide's fault, it's all intrinsic to the Linux desktop ecosystem. It IS more cumbersome and convoluted from that perspective. If you ask me, the real advice I would have for a Windows user that wants to consider swapping would be: get a device that comes with a dedicated Linux setup out of the box. Seriously, go get a Steam Deck, go get a System76 laptop, a Raspberry Pi or whatever else you can find out there that has some flavor of Linux built specifically for it out of the box and use that for a bit. That bypasses 100% of this crap and just works out of the box the way Android or ChromeOS work out of the box. You'll get to know whether that's for you much quicker, more organically and with much less of a hassle that way... at the cost of needing new hardware. But hey, on the plus side, new hardware!

phrogpilot73 , 2 hours ago

If you’re on Windows and mildly frustrated about whatever MS is doing that week, the thing you want is a one button install that does everything for you, works first time and requires zero tinkering in the first place.

This is the reason my 77 year old father in law switched. It seemed like every couple of weeks, he was calling me because Microsoft changed something. And it confused him, and he thought he broke something. I got so frustrated that I asked if he was open to trying Linux. After having him try some distros on Live USB, he went with Pop.

Haven’t heard from him other than the occasional question about how to do something new.

MudMan , 1 hour ago

I genuinely think Linux misses a beat by not having a widely available distro that is a) very closely tied to specific hardware and b) mostly focused on web browsing and media watching. It's kinda nuts and a knock on Linux devs that Google is running away with that segment through both Android and ChromeOS. My parents aren't on Windows anymore but for convenience purposes the device that does that for them is a Samsung tablet.

ColdWater , 2 hours ago

I just dive head first and use Arch btw if games or softwares I play/use refused to run Linux I just stop playing/using it and find alternatives, I yet to find any softwares that doesn’t have open source alternative

the16bitgamer , 2 hours ago

This is how switched, though I’d recommend properly platform agnostic software (Windows, Mac, and Linux support) since if you don’t find Linux proper works for your workflow, you could switch to a Mac.

Another thing which helped me was switching my Laptop first before my Desktop since if I had problems (which I did) I could loose my laptop and not worry about data loss.

As of now, I am 2 year with Linux on my laptop and 6 months on my desktop with no noticeable difference between my Windows experience and Linux.

BananaTrifleViolin , 2 hours ago

I get what you’re trying to say but I disagree with this. Software can be a barrier to switching OS but it very much depends on the individual user’s needs - it’s not as easy as substituting open source for closed, and is only part of the difference anyway. For example, I use Outlook at work; Thunderbird is great but it is in no way a substitute for Outlook. Similarly, I use Microsoft Office 365 at work; OnlyOffice is in no way a substitute for an individual user (it can be for a whole business or for personal use, but not if you’re tied in to an organisation or employer using Office). If you’re tied into those platforms with work, then for occasional use you can just use the online versions of Microsoft Office in Linux via a web browser. And if you need to work from home or do more, then realistically you need to have Windows and access to the full suite installed locally.

But software does not preclude switching to Linux; for example I dual boot between Windows and Linux on my home PC. I have an M.2 drive for Windows and another M.2 drive for Linux. I rarely use Windows at all now, but when I do it’s if for some reason I need to be doing work related stuff from home or rarely if I can’t get a game working in Linux. In Linux I can do all my web browsing, social media, video streaming, music listening, even gaming and I know I’m doing so privately and securely.

I’d say the best way to switch to Linux is to switch to Linux. New users do not have to be “all in” - they can dual boot between Linux and Windows (or MacOS and Linux), and then have a low level of risk to try out the OS. It can even be beneficial in itself as they can compartmentalise work and free time by OS. And if they don’t want to dual boot, then just try it out by virtualisation.

superkret , 2 hours ago (edited 1 hour ago)

Great write-up, but in my opinion this is exactly the wrong way around.
That way, you don’t gain anything from your “switch” up front.
Better to switch to Linux and keep the apps you know wherever possible. Office, Teams, Photoshop, Lightroom and many others are available as web apps now. For many others, there are versions ported to Linux or running well in Wine. Finally, Gnome Boxes makes it trivial to integrate a small 50GB Windows VM to run apps where there’s no other option.
Then you can slowly migrate to Linux-specific open source tools, in your own time.

adam_y , 6 hours ago

Or, conversely, just switch to Linux.

Take an hour or so to have a look around the place.

Go on the internet if you have any questions.

People are smarter than you assume and if you want Linux to grow in popularity we need to stop pretending any if this is difficult.

wuphysics87 , 2 hours ago

You are giving the average person too much credit. If you ask them what OS they are running, they are as likely to say ‘windows’ as they are to say ‘dell’

nous , 2 hours ago

This does not work for everyone. A lot of people will try to switch, but find one tool they are used to they cannot now use and are not used to the alternatives so feel frustrated when trying to use them for real work. Then get pissed off at Linux and switch back to windows.

This advice is more for people that are thinking about Linux but have some professional or semi professional or hobby workflow on their computers that they need to be productive in. It can be very hard for them to switch os and tooling they are used to with no way to fall back to what they know when they need to.

You will find most people don’t rely on these tools and they can doba quick check and decide to switch straight away. But ignoring this advice for the rest can make transitioning to Linux easier.

We need to stop pretending that switching tools that you rely on and have spent decades learning to be proficient in is a trivial task for everyone.

Darohan , 8 hours ago

Was ready to downvote but this is actually a really good guide, well done OP! The one issue I will raise, though, because I faced it myself, is that as long as you’re still using Windows, it is way too easy to just go back to using the Windows programs not the open source ones. Only through switching to Linux can you really “throw yourself into the deep end” and force yourself to learn these new things. Microsoft has made themselves the “path of least resistance” (or at least that of “most momentum” for a reason) and if you’ve been using a computer for a while, it’s a lot easier to break the habits and realise the benefits by giving yourself no other option than it is by trying to discipline yourself into using the new options.

Nilz , 7 hours ago

Agreed, this has been my experience as well. I tried switching to full time Linux multiple times. I had already used it on my laptop for years but on my desktop I kept going back to Windows because things on Windows just worked the way I wanted and thought that for some things there weren’t any Linux alternatives.

That was until two years ago I challenged myself to only use Linux for a month. I’ve been using Linux on my desktop ever since and only use Windows now and then to play a single game that doesn’t work on Linux due to anti cheat.

fmstrat , 2 hours ago

And Debian could be used instead of Mint. Almost all the Ubuntu support online applies, except no snap requirement.

Also, start using WSL for random things you do in GUI today to learn CLI/bash.

But yea, great guide.

geoma , 3 hours ago

Being a linux user for 23 years and a linux promoter and installer for newbies, I don’t agree with so many of your recommendations and priorities.

micl , 3 hours ago

Seriously, OP sounds like they taste tested a handful of open software options and wanted to share, but had to implicate the newbie decision of windows vs Linux somewhere.