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Download a new OS // Download the operating system you want to install. Search for Linux distributions for beginners to get some suggestions.
I feel like it's better to actually list/suggest a few beginner distros than to tell people to look it up.
Linux Mint (XFCE desktop) is the best for beginners coming from Windows, in my opinion. Linux enthusiasts will fawn over KDE because of customization, but they ignore that the vast majority of people don't want to spend months tweaking pixels, widgets and animations, they just want to use the computer.
My point is that the site should be recommending a few newbie distros, instead of telling the newbie to search it. Specially because the choice of a distribution isn't that meaningful in the long run, but newbies struggle picking one.
That said I agree Mint would be a good choice. Not sure on Xfce; I'd probably recommend Cinnamon instead, as it looks a bit more modern (even if myself would rather use MATE or Xfce than Cinnamon).
Windows user: I'm thinking about switching to Linux, mind helping me out Linux User?
Linux user: ok, so what you want to do is just figure it out yourself.
Windows user: finds debian and fucks everything up wow Linux is terrible, I'll stick to using Windows 11.
Speaking on that: a lot of people act as if promoting Linux means simply "to get others to install it". And they ignore that the newbie will need help the first days, weeks, even months. Then the newbie gets burned out and switches back to Windows.
That probably explains why some people manage to retain even tech illiterate people using Linux, while others struggle to convince even tech literate ones to switch.
Yeah, I agree. Especially since there's SO much information out there that'll come up if they try to search, and lots of it isn't good, and tons of it is conflicting with each other. It's best to make it as easy and simple as possible. Like just suggest Mint or something.
the copilot nonsense really irked me, but it was then they had the gumption to force this absurd recall bullshit on everyone--that's when i said i'm done, no more windows, no more M$
it's obviously a "feature" they sold to senior executive board members so that middle managers could spy on their cubicle drones, but to have the gumption to try and convince the world that this was something we wanted? get fucked microsoft
It’s more than that. They want training data for their LLMs. With enough training data, they can train these models to do office knowledge work themselves, removing the need to employ cubicle drones at all.
I wonder what will win out, the sociopathic need of managers and execs to gaze over heads in cubes like it's their kingdom - e.g. "return to office" mandates that saved no money and made no sense other than to control people - or the sociopathic need of the business to cut costs so low that the stability of the entire company teeters on a house of cards, be it AI or something else.
That's what free software advocates have been telling everyone for decades. When you use proprietary software licensed to you, you have no agency in what becomes of it, they can force you to accept changes that you don't agree with, violate your privacy, take what you thought you owned from you.
People give up freedom for convenience and treat those that don't as crazy misguided idealists, thinking they're fools for using less convenient and sometimes powerful fools for pointless principles only they care about... Meanwhile, if everyone was just a tiny bit like the crazy idealists, these companies wouldn't be able to abuse their position because a modicum of resistance from everyone would be an overwhelming force for them.
Some will say it's dumb being idealist about computer software, but aside from computer software being serious fucking business, the practices of these companies are what birthed disposable, unrepairable electronics, privacy erosion, robber AIs and so on. Do you think a tech industry dominated by free software supporters would have allowed the rise of people like Bezos, Zuckerberg or Musk?
Dabbled with Linux over the years but have finally made the jump to using it as my primary OS. I tried a bunch of distros and settled on the elegant simplicity of Mint. Every game has worked just.. fine.
It feels genuinely refreshing to know nothing will change without my consent, I know I will not login one day to find a surprise cortana/copilot/clippy icon in the taskbar or an ad for Avowed waiting for me. I can't believe that is even considered a 'pro', but here we are.
I feel like eveyone should reccomend Fedora KDE edition, its close enough to Windows for new users and modern enough to not push people away.
People have their gripes over the "big corporation" side of this but I also daily drive fedora KDE and I love it. My only complaint is 2 things.
Wireless shuts off after long periods of sleep. Suck if I'm torrenting my Linux isos.
Very rarely it'll freeze up and I need to hard restart.
Both of which could be a me issue. But besides that it's a beautiful, easily and highly customizable system. Highly reccomend as well.
I also have issue number 2 with fedora KDE (kinoite). It's happened like 3 times in the past several months
As a 15 years old pc user who likes to play games with a 15 years old nvidia graphics card. The only thing that's preventing me from fully migrating to linux is the fact that nvidia doesn't support my gpu anymore, so no proprietary driver, unless, I use a 6 years old kernel version.
The only choice I have for modren distros is the nouveau drivers, which lacks behind alot specially when it comes to gaming.
I now have a dual boot setup running Popos and windows, but still I can't be fully free from Windows, having to reboot every time I feel like playing something.
I hope in the near future I get less broke to buy a new computer or maybe the new nvk drivers will supports my gpu which is unlikely.
Ive been seriously looking into making the switch. After some reading I decided Mint would be the easiest transition and downloaded the ISO to try it out with a USB boot. Im sure its a fluke, but since I have dual monitors the display was messed up and whenever I tried to fix it the entire GUI went away on both monitors and wouldn't recover. I had to force power off the machine and ive been hesitant since then to make the actual switch. Id hate to brick my machine right off the bat, just trying to swap display sources.
I’ve heard that happen with mint before. Try a bit more modern distro like fedora or openSUSE maybe?
Been on linux for almost half a year now. Don't miss a single bit of windows, thanks to steam proton. Also thanks to microsoft for pushing me over.
Same here. I do not miss all the shit windows did. Things like:
ironically half these things are what people think is the linux ux. Seriously, windows is just terrible, clunky, buggy and full of things you need to be an advanced user to fix.
I'm a very recent convert. I downloaded mint a couple months ago after seeing that my entire steam library was rated as highly compatible on protondb. At first I planned to dual boot but I didn't have any reason at all to use windows and finally just took the plunge and made Mint my daily, and sole, driver
I'm going to be migrating to Linux and using Mint. I'm just paranoid about doing something wrong and accidentally walking into a security vulnerability. So I want to set aside time to properly learn things and understand what I'm doing but I'm just busy AF these days...
Take it slow and do it the right way, don't let Lemmy pressure you if you're making slow but steady progress. It's a learning curve for sure
I have four pieces of advice
I usually prefer Debian based systems, but when I finally ditched windows 3 weeks ago, I switched to Manjaro, and I'm loving it. You got this!
Is it necessary though? Microsoft have already been campaigning pretty hard to get people to switch to Linux. Telling people their perfectly good PCs won't work anymore because the operating system is expiring, and they can't even "upgrade" to Windows 11 is a pretty powerful message.
With no Adobe CC on Linux, I'm stuck on W10 for the foreseeable future. Otherwise I'd have already switched.
As you can't ditch it for alternatives, I suggest:
You'd be probably drown in a question of what Linux distro to choose, considering there's stuff like AV Linux or Pop_OS being recomended for media design. But you'd easily hop from one to another as you go, so it's better to install something as simple as Mint first, and try Adobe workarounds there before moving next.
If you have specific hardware, I'd say that Wacom-like graphic tablets work like they should (tried several pieces, adapted some touchscreen devices, nearly out-of-the-box on modern Linux), but for something else, like controllers that need to talk to your programms in some special way, you'd better google their compatibility or try it yourself. Making a passthru of inputs to VM or taking it's inputs by Wine wouldn't usually be a problem, problems start when this piece needs a specific Win\Mac-only driver, and they can, especially if they are old, have a temper of a feral ghoul. I know that there are a lot of linuxoids creating in different kinds of media, so I'm pretty sure there are some answers on the web, at least for the same manufacturer, series or kind of hardware.
How can I convince the GF to switch? She only plays The Sims and the occasional hentai game; her Skylake i5 and 1050ti are more than adequate for those tasks. Yet she refuses to try Linux; won't even let me install LTSC to buy some time.
I think she just wants an excuse to buy a new laptop. She's the kind of person who replaces her shower curtain every six months, rather than do the sane thing and simply wash it. I'll never understand such a wasteful mentality.
My laptop is about 7 years old now, I think I will do this actually, thanks for the tip comrade
I am trying Linux but it's not going well. I still might stick with it but it's more because of Windows getting worse than Linux being better. Right now it's come down to an evaluation of which things I want to not be able to do anymore because Linux doesn't support everything I currently do or the alternative is ass or will require an inordinate amount of research to get set back up.
This weekend I want to make a point to finally begin the transition to Linux...
Switched to Mint recently. So far it's been smoother than I expected, but still had some crazy rough patches. Luckily, helping me through this junk seems to be one of the things AI excels at. I'm set up mostly how I want to be and it's been mostly working well enough so far. Mostly.