Microsoft tells Windows 10 users to just trade in their PC for a newer one, because how hard can it be?

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I'm coming from a non programmer perspective who has been on linux just short of a year. I work in finance but use CachyOS on my personal computer and laptop. I started with PopOs because I had heard that it was "out of the box for nvidia gaming" but soon after learned that most gaming distros are just advertised as such because of pre installed ease of use programs. Proton, wine, etc will run on most forks of linux and the distro you choose matters less and less the more familiar you get with using linux. I recommend CachyOS as a first distro because the installer allows you to choose your desktop environment / window manager. Allows for more options for a beginner so you don't feel limited to what is packaged in other "beginner friendly" distros.

Note that anticheat is still the biggest pain point for linux compatibility layers so I just go on ProtonDB, check to see if the anticheat allows for linux, and if not I have a dual boot of debloated/removed telemetry windows that can run those games. Within my time using it, only rainbow 6 has required me to launch the windows instance. Aside from that all my singleplayer and multiplayer games run, albeit some with a 5% performance decrease (but that's more of an Nvidia issue than an inherent linux issue).

My advice is to just try it. Doesn't take much time or effort to back up your necessary files and just switch even if temporarily just to see if it's for you

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(Taking your questions seriously and attempting to offer genuine and practical advice with some of my usual psychotic sense of humor)

There aren't billions of versions of Linux, only tens of thousands. Of those, some are meant for servers, some are meant for embedded devices, some are meant for supercomputers, some haven't been updated in a decade and some are for specific weird niches. Filter out the joke ones like Hannah Montana Linux and what you'll have left are five major distros called Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, Arch and SuSe. These five are quite different from each other, they do things like develop their own package managers and such. Most other distros are minor modifications of these, most of the time just including a different desktop environment or included software. Debian's forks include Ubuntu, Linux Mint, ElementaryOS and Neon. Fedora is a fork of Red Hat, Manjaro, EndeavourOS and SteamOS are forks of Arch, and I'm sure Slackware and SuSe have been forked too. The majority of forks are "What if this distro, but this desktop instead of that one?" This is why there are three different versions of Linux Mint, your choice of Cinnamon, xfce and MATE desktops. How do you choose? Try a few and see which one you like best. They're all free.

You can play Steam games on Linux. Valve has gone BIG into Linux compatibility, their Steam Deck handheld gaming PC ships with a Linux operating system called SteamOS which as previously mentioned is a fork of Arch Linux that comes with the KDE desktop. They have a compatibility layer called Proton which, if I understand the tech correctly, translates DirectX API calls into Vulkan API calls which Linux can understand. At this point, the vast, vast majority of Windows games just work on Linux. The one big sticking point at the moment are kernel-level anticheat systems often used in competitive multiplayer games. The developer has to specifically choose to release a Linux version that enables this, and most don't. So there are some games to include Fortnite that the developers have specifically chosen to not run on Linux. I've been PC gaming exclusively on Linux for over a decade now.

A lot of Linux users are indeed programmers, developers or sysadmins. I'll remind you that Android and ChromeOS are also both Linux operating systems. Many distros these days have complete and polished graphical desktop environments that make the OS similar to use to Windows or MacOS. Take a look at Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition, I bet you'll find your way around.

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TRIGGERED

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I would, except there's always some software or some feature missing. And there's always the FOSS app that "might" meet "some" aspects of what native software does but it's almost always never "native" support.

Sure, I know I can play MOST games on Linux, but I know for a fact they'll launch on windows.

Or things like, sure, I know that my corsair Hardware MIGHT be controlled by signal RGB, but what about controlling the pump in my AIO? Or the sound levels on ny headset? Or the DPI in my mouse?

Then you have things like drivers. I'm not using any Nvidia GPUs right now, but the nvidia support for Linux is atrocious and you lose access to things like RTX-HDR and RTX Voice, and hell, even in AMD you lose access to certain features like AMFM2.

Then the software, not only does things like Adobe or Office just don't exist, the FOSS solutions are not industry standard, so sure, I can learn to use LibreOffice, but that's worth absolutely nothing when you apply for a corporate job and they expect you to know how to use outlook as a bare minimum, hell, even the Google office suite is being adopted faster.... Ah, but if the software is available there's still a chance it doesn't work because it's missing a dependency or something and you have to ask people to use the terminal and... Sigh

All in all, it's just behind in many ways, sure, for some people it's ok, and for laptops I'd think is mostly ok, great even. But I know I could deal with Linux, and I don't want to troubleshoot a whole PC to play a game when I already spend the whole day dealing with solving issues or servers or services on my job.

I'm rooting for Steam OS to release to desktops because my living room PC is LITERALLY just for gaming, so that "could" work nicely.

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I don't know anything about Lightroom or what similar software would be, so unfortunately I won't be much help. But I hope you can find a decent alternative.

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This is kinda funny, just thinking someone believes you can "trade in" a PC at all. Even more so when they are trying to say those same Windows 10 machines will be so useless you need to trade them in in the first place, making the value of such a trade in what, next to nothing?

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Maybe? I never bothered to check, but my understanding was they specifically didn't support that gen for whatever reason.

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The anticheats harvest data that has value, it's a business decision rather than a technical problem

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Just use Ubuntu. (Surely I'll get hate for this.)

It's based on Debian, a major branch off the tree. It just fucking works. Millions of tutorials, groups, etc. to find troubleshooting info. Probably won't have to do anything to get a machine running that does everything you're doing now.

Get the swing of that and go from there, if you want to try other branches.

This realization helped me quite a bit: Windows does all sorts of arcane voodoo with the registry and DLLs and such. Weird Linux appeals to many because all the configuration is contained in simple text files. Got a program that reads and write plain old text? Aight. You can configure Linux. In a way, it's so simple it's hard to get your head around coming from Windows.

tl;dr: Just download and install Ubuntu. Go from there with your nicely working machine.

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Hmm. I wonder if Aquaman is in the market for some old computers.

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A testament to the shot development standards at MS. An OS literally should not in a million years be this resource inefficient, especially out of the box.

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Kinda funny the same statement to Tesla owners, where comments are telling that it's easy...

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Someone has to say it: I bought a MacBook!

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Just use Ubuntu. It's super easy and built for folks new to Linux. Plus steam plays all games on Linux, so no worries there.

You can duck duck go any question and then add "ubuntu" to the end and get help. No reason not to at this point.

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Peppermint OS and Pop! OS are my top favs.

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I can't recall ever trying it with peanut butter, that sounds interesting

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A MacBook is on the upgrade treadmill even faster than windows lol

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Try them here: https://distrosea.com/

I suggest Cinnamon Ubuntu for a combination of Mint and Ubuntu. It's got the Mint Windows like front end, with Ubuntu in the back. Most help online is for Ubuntu anyway.

https://distrosea.com/select/ubuntucinnamon/

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Gaming is 100 percent not 'on par' I've exclusively used Linux for years now, and consistently run into issues not present on windows.

Is it good enough? Almost, but there are hugely critical aspects missing.

Lots of simulators (I racing, fanatec) lack support
Anti cheats as mentioned.
Plain old poor performance.

Protondb only lists 20 percent of titles as 'platinum' rated, with most gold games needing tweaks.

30 percent of titles are silver or lower.

I still to this day get hitching and stuttering as data is streamed into memory in many games, sekiro recently comes to mind, making any level transition exceedingly annoying.

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everyone who talks about linux seems to be a programmer /coder, and uses jargon that i don't even understand

I've been pointing that out for a while, but unfortunately there is a vocal subset of the community that thinks referring people to just read technical manuals is fine (if you can't, just learn to read it, duh).

Some things are concepts you'll learn easily, don't worry, and for the rest, you'll always find someone willing to break it down if you manage to look past the snobs. If you want, shoot me a DM if you just want to understand a specific term without someone making you feel like an idiot.

The problem is there are a billion versions of linux, idk what one to choose

There are plenty of suggestions here. Ubuntu is what got me started and I still think it's a good start*. Mint is from the same family, "Pop! OS" too (the name sounds silly to me, but it's legit and popular for a reason). Just look at pictures and see what seems prettiest to you, then go with that. The usage won't be too different.
The grandpa of that family is Debian, but I'm not sure it's quite as user-friendly out of the box. I'm mentioning it in case you come across the term.

The other big families are Fedora and Arch. I personally use a Fedora-Child, but to keep things narrow, I recommend the three mentioned above as starters.

* If you come across people hating Ubuntu - including myself - it's usually for ideological reasons rather than usability ones. Don't worry about that for now. Getting into the weeds of things is a skill you don't have yet and that's perfectly fine.

if i can play my steam games on linux

Steam, fortunately, is the one platform that works best with Linux. For their handheld, they decided to flip off MS and made their own Linux, along with a wrapper tool to make all the games run on it anyway.

You may hear the terms "compatibility layer", "Proton" and "wine", which is exactly that: A tool to make Windows stuff run on Linux. Again, don't worry about the specifics, just believe me: I'm playing almost all of my steam games just as I used to.

If there is a specific game you care about, https://www.protondb.com/ has a large store of knowledge. Some things run out of the box, some may require a few extra settings that are usually easy to add, and if there ever is a thing you don't understand, my offer stands.

The whole idea of moving to linux is overwhelming.

It's a scary plunge, a leap of faith, but I assure you: There are people ready to catch you at the bottom. The reception wasn't as warm when I jumped off of Win7, and the snobs are still around, but things have improved a lot over the past few years. Trust me, trust us: You won't be left alone.

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Microsoft tells Windows 10 users to just trade in their PC for a newer one, because how hard can it be?