I just did it about 2 months ago with my two laptops.
One (I use for work, self employed) I installed Manjaro, had a few hiccups in the first 2-3 weeks (some due my inexperience, some I assume is manjaro but i don’t really know), anyway now it is stable and working fine.
The other one I use for gaming I installed Garuda, also arch based but with focus in games, so it comes with a lot of stuff you will need for my gaming on linux pre-installed and so far it is great. As insane as it sounds some games that are windows only now run better on my garuda than when I was on windows lol.
The main diference I noticed is Linux sometimes is not for the faint of heart, you have to have both good reason and some commitment to use it (in my case it is also ideological, otherwise I would have stayed in win10 until EOL).
It is true that it makes better use of your hardware (with Nvidia it is complicated… both my laptops have nvidia GPUs) but there is also a learning curve.
The community have some genuine amazing people and some assholes. ignore the assholes and payback the good ones by teaching newcomers when you have earned some xp :)
Welcome! I made the leap not long ago as well. I’m using Linux Mint, and I’ve had a great experience with it (including gaming).
My recommendation: when you get to installing games, use something like Lutris or PlayOnLinux. These are frontends (like Steam) that will help manage any special configurations you might need. They can even connect to online sources and apply settings that have worked for other people. I’ve been using Lutris and it’s been pretty good (I’ve been playing a lot of BG3 lately, runs like a dream).
I’ve been using Linux for ~14 years and am not a computer person at all. Of all the distros, Linux Mint is by far the easiest, most intuitive, and works without problems. I think that the installation is even easier than Windows. There’s also a large supportive community in case you should into any problems, abd because it’s tailored for newer users, whatever problem you run into has likely already been resolved by someone else.
My personal favorite at the moment is KDE Neon tho.
So far I’ve tried Debian12 on my old laptop and Mint on my self hosting rig. I think I’ll sping so VMs and test new distros before commiting to a full install. I wasn’t too happy with Mint because its boot time is much slower than Debian on a comparatively better machine so I’m not too tempted to go for it again. But maybe I messed up something and caused slow boot times.
Yeah, Mint will tend to be a little slower than Debian since Mint is Debian plus Ubuntu plus Mint. If you’re looking for speed, LMDE or XFCE desktop environments would be the quickest. Of those 2, LMDE might be faster, but it’s almost a bare bones GUI. XFCE might be just a little slower, but the GUI will be more adjustable.
I’ve been crucified for mentioning this before. But Bottles is another alternative that allows easy configuration of Wine prefixes for gaming. It is another alternative worth considering, not better or worse, just different.
Pick something basic like PopOs or Mint or whatever to start with. If youre trying to avoid distrohopping, install a virtual machine and test out distros with.
Avoiding any kind of distrohopping is kinda silly in the long term. You will want to find the distro that suits your needs best. By using a virtual machine, you can basically hop on the side, and keep a working system around til you find your goldilocks distro.
Ive been using linux for over 20 years. Ive daily driven several different distros for years at a time. If you stick with linux, you will most likely do the same.
I did the windows partition at one point and I eventually told myself that I don’t need to play the games that don’t work on Linux.
But no problem in doing it.
Also I’ve been using Linux mint for years. You I’ll be tempted to hop around, but that’s part of the Linux experience, you will eventually find your “home”.
You should “distro hop” when you make a decision like this.
This is similar to having a Chevy truck and getting tired of all the problems it has had over its time with you. So you decide to look into Dodge, Ford, Toyota, etc. Of course no one wants to “hop” from vehicle to vehicle; you want to find the right truck for you now! But that’s unrealistic and your best bet is to go to different dealers, look at the different trucks, and take them for test drives.
You should be doing the same to figure out what you like, what you need, and what you want in a distro. Since 99% of them are free, install them and boot them up. Go for live installs on a USB first to give each one a try without having to go through the installation to your machine. But do know that some times, you may experience different results on live USB vs install on SSD. I experienced this with Zorin and its Nvidia drivers that allowed dual screens on live USB but didn’t when installed and I never got it set up correctly.
You’ll get a lot of recommendations here and you should take them into account and the pros that people suggest and see if they fit your specific needs/wants in an OS.
Despite what I said about my experience with Zorin, it was a pretty nice setup and a good one for someone that wants that Windows feel still but without the added Microsoft bullshit. My display issues seem to be a rarity and even despite that, I enjoyed it and have it currently installed to a Chromebook I have for any little Linux needs I need from time to time on the go.
Welcome, I was very excited to make a full switch and ditch windows from my life 2 years ago, It makes me love to use my PC again. First, distro, I suggest 2 Mint and EndevourOS, I suggest this two because they are community driven with a great user base and are very user-friendly.
Why Mint? Mint has specific versions, you will update similarly to windows from time to time, you sometimes will not have the latest version of a package but is not that stale as a distro like Debian that aims for maximum stability and is sometimes too old for some normal desktop stuff.
Why endevourOS? EndevourOS is probably the well-rounded, user-friendly rolling release distro out there, you will always have the latest versions of your packages. It is based on arch, that is the fact the best rolling release distro, but have a more normal installation, Arch is just unbearable to install for any non-experienced user, you have to learn so many things that I feel is a waste of time of a new user that want to touch the buttons, but I do recommend to you if you want to understand your system in the future.
Now about the desktop environment, I suggest you take some time choosing and even hoping between them, it would be your daily workflow, and it is more important than distro. Here is a great video talking about the major ones, you can have multiple DEs at the same time, if you install a new DE you can switch between them in your login screen, do not be afraid to test.
About games:
If you use steam, always check games compatibility here. It is a community resource to talk about how you run your games.
If you use GoG or Epic, Heroic is a great launcher that aggregates both.
About wine, wine is a program that translate windows programs to linux, every non-native game on linux run through wine (even valve proton is just a product on top of wine with some additional sauce). Wine has the concept of wineprefix that is the folder that contains your Windows driver (C: disk and configuration about this wineprefix), if you just run a program with wine it will default to the folder ~/.wine on your personal desktop. I took some time to get it, and I believe it would have helped me to understand earlier.
Both steam and heroic uses different wineprefixes to manage your games, but if your game is not from these 3 stores? (you can manage it by hand but… you know, I’m lazy)
There is Lutris, Lutris help you to manage games in different wineprefixes and have an amazing interface to configure a lot of stuff, there is also a repository of installer scripts that you can click and run, I feel lutris a little more complicated cause usually I had to do tinkering (older scripts and things like that). You can also install your games directly or even other programs if you want to keep your wineprefixes organized.
Idk if I would suggest Endeavour to a first time user. In my experience it has been perfectly stable and simple, except for some random boot time kernel panics, but the potential for an inexperienced user to break an install without at least some core concepts of a package manager, especially with the AUR, is certainly there.
My example is just me, but I started with Ubuntu 10 years ago, and I broke that shit all the time. I had a not so good internet connection and half of the issues were related to dpkg not committing the installation.
I also think that AUR have the opposite effect comparing with PPAs, that I found much more error prone.
Welcome to the club! My advice is, after you’re done with the installation, make a bootable external device with a live distro (e.g. a USB stick) and keep it around. Now, if your main system ever gets messed up and can’t boot anymore, you can boot the live one and start troubleshooting.
Don’t be scared by this suggestion: getting an unbootable system is not so common, but if it happens you’ll be glad you have something ready to work on it
You can trial several distros, desktop environments, etc. on Live boot USB first, no need to rush that decision. But for no hassle configuration and day one 100% productivity, Mint or EndeavorOS. You won’t look back.
Keep your home in a separate disk altogether, or at least a different partition.
Configure Timeshift or another system backup tool as soon as possible, because as a noob you will want to do things that might inadvertently break your system.
Ignore fanboys, distro warriors and zealots in general. The magic of Linux is that it is whatever you want to make of it.
I can say about CS, I can run on average 150hz in low setting and FSR on performance, the game seems like shit, but you can. On medium, I can run around 120, and I feel that some maps are heavier.
Do you are playing on Xorg? Usually wayland can have some impact on your game.
Are you experiencing too much stuttering in all games? Recently I discovered my MOBO was trolling and I had to disable some energy related features.
Are you running your game with gamemode? It can make a great difference.
You can also try different kernels youtu.be/qNzd57b0h08
Operating System: EndeavourOS KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.8 Graphics Platform: Wayland Processors: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-Core Processor Memory: 31,3 GiB of RAM iirc it is 3200 Mhz but it should not have a so big impact Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
Thanks! Yep, Xorg. I mucked with some setting in BIOS, enabling EZ Tune, and have had a slight performance improvement from doing so, so something was throttling it there. Hadn’t heard of gamemode before, might give that a go, along with mangohud.
~2010 is when I gave up on dual booting and went 100% Linux. TBF I had mostly been on Linux many years before but just kept Windows “in case I needed it”
It’s a great time to take that leap, it’s getting better everyday too. The ONLY thing I wish I had was Office, but webapps and things like OnlyOffice work just as well if not better.
First off, welcome to the club! You’ve taken your first step into a larger world :) I was a Windows user most of my life. Switched 100% about 4 years ago and I’ve never looked back.
Lots of good advice here, make sure Timeshift is set up. It can save you from accidentally borking your system lol.
As for Distros, my favorites for new users are Linux Mint, Fedora, and Pop_OS. I currently use Linux Mint with their Cinnamon desktop on my laptop and it works great. Cinnamon is similar to a cross between Windows XP and Windows 7 and feels very familiar to navigate for a long time Windows user.
My favorite desktop environment is KDE Plasma, because you can customize it like crazy.
Use the live image editions to test on USB like other people suggested, it will save you lots of time deciding which distro and desktop environment to choose.
DistroChooser can help you decide which distro to try.
Personally, the most important thing to decide is the desktop environment choice (do you prefer Gnome, KDE, or something else like XFCE, Sway, etc). The other is whether you prefer more stable system or more bleeding edge system.
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