Just made the switch to Linux as a lifetime Windows user.
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Windows is a disaster. Linux Mint was easier to install than Windows 11 and it's not even close.
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Linux Mint is terrific, also recommend it to new Linux users. I just want things easy, clean, and fast. Also, fuck Microsoft.
Debian + KDE
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Congrats! I'm excited to see your upcoming posts on distro hopping.
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I bounced around to all sorts of systems and DEs and came to this same conclusion. Debian + KDE is where it all ended up after try easily over 20 different systems throughout the years.
It’s the most “we trust you, but also respect your time” combo I’ve found.
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Welcome! Be sure if to reach out to the community if you have any issues or questions. We love to help!
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Related to the Discord Canary comment, Vesktop is a third-party Discord client that's properly supported Wayland for quite some time now. I've been using it ever since swapping to Linux full-time to make sure streaming works correctly.
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A friend just had her Windows 11 PC hijacked and used to drain money from her bank account. Not too much of a worry with Linux of any flavor.
It took 5x as long to wipe the disk and reload Windows as it would have to load Linux, plus another hour to change the settings to turn off as much of of Window's advertising and spyware as possible. Microsoft will no doubt change the settings back when Windows update runs or maybe just pile on more ads.
I'd much rather deal with some hardware incompatibilities than Microsoft's bullshit.
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Audio support for streaming was still unavailable when I tried this. Maybe because Mint Cinnamon is still X11?
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The sense of ownership and control the Linux experience offers is something I've never felt with Windows.
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My comment was not meant to steer anyone away from Linux, just pointing out something.
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Congrats! There’s probably a few things not perfect that you haven’t noticed yet-but ya, despite what the trolls say, Linux pretty much just works these days. Oftentimes better than windows.
Sometimes you’ll run into a program that is windows only and that’s a pain. The first thing I do is try to find a linux alternative-sometimes you can sometimes you can’t (stuff designed to interface with your hardware can be a pain sometimes - controllers, rgb lights, fan speeds, motherboard stuff). Bottles works great for running windows programs. And if all else fails a windows vm.
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Plus now I have the benefit of no preinstalled spyware or bloatware
Now you get to choose the bloatware and spyware yourself! /s
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I got 35+ years into Windows.
I'm the guy they get to "fix" stuff in PROD.
I fight Windows all day.
I'm not doing that at home anymore. -
Windows 11 no longer "just working" is what made me finally take Linux seriously as an option and I am so glad I did.
I genuinely think it is ready for prime time. As I said elsewhere the concept of immutable distros is a game changer for those of us who like to customize but hate the command line
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Yeah I have a Ser5 as a living room PC, wiped windows and have Nobara running on it. Linux is great - browse the web, play games, stream videos, and all with interfaces that actually work on a TV. I don't miss Windows at all.
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Real shit tho
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The only thing I had to work around was downloading the deb build of Discord Canary to enable audio output in Discord streams since it was only recently added to Discord's dev/beta build (Canary).
Keep in mind Linux is all about FOSS, if the software you use doesn’t have all the features you want look around for alternatives.
I encountered this same issue when installing Discord and opted to use Vencord instead.
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You'll probably be installing programs and changing a lot of settings over the next few weeks. Make sure you use TimeShift (pre-installed on Mint) to make system snapshots. (It works like System Restore on Windows. You can even run it from your Linux Live flash drive if you mess up something so badly that you can't boot from the hard drive).
LibreOffice comes pre-installed and you can use Thunderbird for email. And if you used Steam to play games on Windows, you're in for a nice surprise. Steam has a native Linux client and it uses Proton / Wine to let you play your Windows games on Linux. It's handled everything I've thrown at except for a couple of older games.
