I used Windows since the late 90’s during the DOS days. I switched to Mac last year with a Mac M1 Mini for $700 and never looked back. The Apple ecosystem works great if you have an iPhone. And the updates they make actually make sense. I lost it when Microsoft wanted me to buy new hardware that I don’t need to run Windows 11 which I don’t want.
I‘m just getting really triggered when anyone tries to convert people to the apple ecosystem.
They‘re the worst. Microsoft is half as bad.
I‘m sitting at home with a 500€ ipad which still works wonderfully but apple killed support and made installing something else impossible. Even jailbreaking doesn’t really work well. The device can literally not even open a website anymore because apple needs to sell.
I recommend Linux Mint. It’s super user friendly, and there is a lot of support out there if you run into any issues.
Now that gaming is less important for me, I feel like now is a good time to switch mainly to Linux.
Eh, gaming works just fine on Linux. The main issues are with multiplayer games, so you can still probably play most of your single player games on Linux. Steam makes it really easy, and you can play Epic and GOG with Heroic Launcher.
But as for tips:
keep a windows install as a dual boot, at least for the first few weeks, but set Linux as the default; if you can, use a separate drive for Linux; partitions work, but it’s easy to accidentally remove Linux’s boot loader when troubleshooting Windows problems
don’t get fancy with your distro, just pick a popular one
try to avoid the CLI; a lot of people will post commands to run, but if you don’t know what they’re doing, you can hose your system; instructions for GUI tools tend to be less problematic for newer users, at least from my experience
But the most important is to have fun! Solve one problem at a time, and enjoy your new system!
Posting to say thank you to all the helpful replies here. Just skimming I see so many good resource links and tips. I am about to do the same thing OP is doing since I decided Windows 10 is the last release I’ll be using as my main PC, for many of the same reasons as OP. I have some linux server experience but have never used it as my primary desktop PC. But I am too tired of the telemetry blocking game to keep putting up with Microsoft’s bullshit. I’ll have a Windows 11 partition for gaming with things that don’t work on linux, but Microsoft can kiss access to any of my non-videogame data goodbye.
It’s a sign of the times that so many helpful replies are here instead of 10-15 years ago where mostly you’d get “RTFM” responses. Thank you everyone for sharing your experiences.
You're using an RDNA2 card so it's possible your low FPS is caused by this issue. I would try this fix that was mentioned in the comments under that issue to see if your performance improves.
Sounds like you’re about where I was at the beginning of my Linux journey. I was a Windows user from birth (well okay, my very first computer was dual-booted with OS/2) because that’s what computers came with, etc. I started playing with Raspberry Pis as a hobby, I learned a little Linux, and at the time you HAD to do a lot of stuff in Raspberry Pi OS through the terminal; it didn’t have a GUI package manager yet, so I learned some bash.
Then my laptop died, I got a new one, and Windows 8.1 was inflicted upon me. I decided to try desktop Linux.
I did decide to keep Windows 8.1 around because I still sorta knew how to use it and that’s where all the software I knew how to use ran, so I dual booted. I tried out a few distros in VirtualBox, and Linux Mint just felt like home and it’s been my preferred daily driver ever since.
It is a different system, you will have to get used to doing things a little differently and thinking in Linux’s terms. If you have something you NEED to do, and you’re struggling to figure it out in Linux, go ahead and boot into Windows, get it done, turn it in, then come back to Linux and without that time pressure see if you can figure it out now. Eventually you’ll stop booting to Windows.
As for gaming: Valve has done a lot for us. It’s amazing how good it is now. Used to be there was a list of games that did work on Linux, now it’s more efficient to make a list of games that don’t. Mainly competitive multiplayer games because of EAC. Some of the high end bells and whistles don’t work as well in Linux because they don’t get as much attention as Windows does, but I’ve spent a lot of time in some very good looking games made in Unity and Unreal.
I can provide nothing specifically to the topic at hand, but a great resource is ProtonDB (here the CS2 specific page). You can see which launch options, workarounds, etc work on which distro, GPU, …
If you get it working, consider posting there, so others can benefit from your knowledge 😀
Linux Mint does not use very recent versions of the gfx drivers for that card (IIRC from last time I checked). My RX6600 therefore had some performance hit when I ran Mint (compared to Windows or other Linux distros). Arguably one could bump the installed versions of xserver-xorg-drivers-amdgpu and mesa-vulkan-drivers to more recent versions. You could have a look into the repo with Synaptic Package Manager and see whether there is a more recent version of the relevant stuff available (perhaps you need to allow for “testing” software source.
Thanks. Following some snooping around the amd site, I’ve run ’amdgpu -install’ and a few additional drivers were installed. Along with some bios power changes I made (enabling asus EZ tune), I am getting above 150 on average now, so suspect this may have had some improvement.
I made a video going over my own experience. But I feel the biggest tip is to understand the difference between the OS and the Desktop Environment, since in Linux these are separate.
In Windows I found myself identifying the OS based on how the start menu looks and how the file explorer is.
But in Linux these are separate and are called Desktop Environmenta (DE). Your desktop can look like Windows with DE’s like KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or Mate. It can be Mac like with KDE Plasma, or Gnome. Or it can be unique like Gnome.
If you noticed I repeated a few names, that’s because they can be customized, and some distributions make them look and feel the way they want them too.
Meanwhile the distro is more focused on what applications are pre-installed and what software will run and are available. I.e. Debain is more stable while arch is more up-to-date.
There are many guides going over this, but distro hopping is the best for narrowing this down. I found finding applications that need to work and seeing if the distro can do it, can weed out any distro that won’t work for you. If you don’t like the feel of a distro but like the functionally, then look for a similar distro but with a new GUI.
For example Ubuntu ships with a mostly unmodified Gnome. I personally am not a fan of Gnome and prefer a more Windows-like feel. So I look around and find Zorin, Kubuntu, and Mint.
Word of the wise though, while you can install more than one de on install, you are better off either making a new profile or not swapping your de. Something something shared resources, something something breaking your install.
Resize Rebar was something that was previously switched off I discovered. Turning this on via the Asus EZ Tuner made a great difference. Found im still on a Mesa 22.x driver for some reason, despite running latest driver update, and my kernal is showing 5.15.x, despite having all OS updates installed… will need to investigate, perhaps a Mint issue. Thanks!
5.15.X is the previous LTS kernel. Probably the default when you installed it. I don’t use Mint but you should be able to use 6.1.X at the least (the current LTS kernel).
In the last few months I switched from years of arch to opensuse to bazzite. I got sick of updating everything all the time. Bazzite (also kinoite, ublue, silver blue, etc.) does everything with just a brief notification and is active next boot. Primary app install via flatpak, appimage, also fedora repos and rpm packages via rpm-ostree. And nix which I haven’t delved into yet.
The only things I’m not sure about are the driver’s for my brother laser printer, and undervolting requires turning off secureboot or a patch which may be too involved for me with this distro.
I have a Brother printer + scanner too (MFC-L2750DW). Many Brother printers (and a lot of non-Brother printers too) are supported by default in Fedora using a “driverless” method. It’s part of “IPP Everywhere” (www.pwg.org/ipp/everywhere.html), AirPrint (Apple), and Direct Print (Microsoft), and most printers support it these days, and Fedora supports all of these. (Other distros likely do too.)
At least in GNOME (on Silverblue here), if it doesn’t already show up and work, you can click on “Add Printer…” and it should find and add it. KDE and other desktops will likely be different — although hopefully not much different.
Scanning with “Document Scanner”, aka: “Simple-Scan”, detects my networked Brother printer for scanning without having to do anything too. flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.SimpleScan
I hope this helps!
undervolting requires turning off secureboot or a patch
I haven’t looked into undervolting much. I know some people have mentioned CoreCtrl; I haven’t managed to figure it out yet.
If it requires turning off secureboot or a patch, that’s a bummer and might be why I couldn’t find the settings in CoreCtrl. I haven’t seen this when looking it up a while back, however (but the Internet is big). CoreCtrl setup docs @ gitlab.com/corectrl/corectrl/-/wikis/Setup don’t mention either.
I do see that it requires setting a kernel flag, which on ostree-based distributions is:
I didn’t know about driverless printing. If it works out I’ll switch my parents over too since the lower maintenance updating is great and printer is the only thing they need that I wasn’t sure about.
The undervolting thing is on an old Intel, I think haswell. A lenovo t440p with the standard fare mod pack. I forgot what it was called but there was some procedure involving mok installation and signing the module that allows voltage control, and/or patch to bypass some aspect of it. I was only reading up on it before I switched distros to bazzite after liking it on steam deck and now it looks like I might have to make a custom ublue image to achieve this if I understand correctly. I’ll probably just switch to seabios and do away with the uefi entirely though as tianocore doesn’t have a bios settings menu but one can be added as a payload when using seabios.
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