It seems like the more interested I get in Linux, the less appealing it becomes. The community seems to have no fucking clue what they’re talking about, because everyone is just constantly talking over each other and contradicting themselves! I have spent so much time reading about Linux and distros and such to prepare for my eventual switch, but after all that I’m starting to question if I even want to make the switch. Here’s a few of the things I have read over and over, that confuse me to no end:
- It doesn’t matter what distro you use, but also you absolutely should not use that one!! Use that one it’s much better trust me!
- Gaming is good on Linux now, but also it’s super shit and you should keep windows if you want to game
- Sure you can use Nvidia cards, but also no you can’t because nothing will work with them
- Just dual boot if you’re not sure, but also no don’t dual boot because windows will erase your shit if you do
- Trust me bro Linux is super easy to learn, also here’s 14 different specific terms you’ll have to Google, but even then you’ll barely understand them
- Everything will work out of the box, but also you can’t use that thing with that other thing without configuring that other thing first but that’ll break that thing which needed that thing […]
I’m slightly exaggerating and I may get downvoted but I needed to vent. It honestly sometimes seems like Linux diehards are intentionally hiding some of its major pitfalls in order to “convert” more people to their side.
I know windows sucks and that’s why I want to switch, but at least when you have a windows question there’s a concrete answer, not a bunch of nerds yelling out incoherent technobabble-sounding answers that all contradict each other.
And for fucks sake please type the whole words when speaking to beginners. How am I supposed to know what a DE, a VM, a CLI, a WM, PM, or all that other stuff is?
Linux is the “least welcoming, yet most aggressively butthurt that no one is joining it” community I’ve seen in a while.
Alright rant over, you may yell at me now.
Is your version of Windows a Pro? Find out in Settings -> System -> About. If so, you can install the Optional Feature (under Apps, Windows Features in 10 or System -> Optional Featues -> More Windows Features on 11) called Hyper-V.
If you do not have Pro, then install VirtualBox. Either one will let you create a Virtual Machine (VM), which lets you test drive anything as an operating system running as an app in an operating system (Xzibit meme here). From here, I would strongly recommend the mainstream linuxes, which are typically in the “just works” category and support Secure Boot out of the box, which lets you install it alongside Windows. These are:
Ubuntu Linux (preferably Kubuntu for the best Windows-like interface or Lubuntu if your computer is not very powerful)
Ubuntu is old reliable. A lot of Linux users are salty because a major corpo (Canonical) runs Ubuntu, and they’ve made design choices in the past and present that a bunch of Linux users are salty over (particularly by explicitly not supporting the now popular flatpak app format in favor of their own snap format), but reality is, Ubuntu works on just about everything I’ve ever put it on with the least amount (read: none) of dicking around to get it working. Ubuntu and its base, Debian, are very well supported and extremely stable. Most programs with a deb installer are designed for one or the other. Note that unlike Debian, Ubuntu is a bit newer with stuff, but still a bit behind compared to the frontier option below. This is the tradeoff for stability. Less cutting edge.
If flatpak support is more important to you, Linux Mint is a good interim between Ubuntu and Debian. It’s community run, has a very Windows-like simple desktop design, and supports Flatpak natively. However, Mint is behind on the latest shift in Linux backend systems, known as the great Wayland migration, among other things. They’re still working on it.
Fedora Linux (also preferred the KDE Spin, see above)
This is the bleeding edge Linux, maintained by another major corpo, RedHat. A lot of Linux users are salty about Fedora because RedHat is proprietary, and they recently killed off CentOS, a source code clone of RedHat a lot of people relied on, by buying it up and changing it from a clone to a testbed, probably to try and force users onto buying RedHat Enterprise Linux. However, Fedora is very up to date on the latest Linux tech, but is packaged in a very good “least pain to install and run every day” manner. They have very good support, due to being a cutting edge testbed for RedHat Enterprise, and anything that has an rpm package is probably for Fedora or RedHat. They also support flatpak natively, which makes it more likely whatever you want is going to be here. In addition, Fedora runs Wayland (the new, better performant graphics backend), which means it’s already future proofed. In addition, Fedora really really hates anything that isn’t 100 percent Vegan GPL FOSS, so if you want hardware accelerated video encoding for example, or support for anything that is even remotely proprietary, it means diving into a wiki to figure out how to install rpm-fusion and “flip” several packages to get that support.
Any other Linux you use will make you jump hoops to get Secure Boot working. I also know that there will be 12,000,000,000 replies of people saying Secure Boot is evil Microsoft conspiracy and stuff and you shouldn’t use it, but you need it for Windows dual boot, and platform security is something that people ignore until it becomes a problem, at which having it in the first place would have prevented the issue, as it’s too late after the fact to address it.
Once you’ve checked out the Linux of your choice in a VM, next is to get a USB stick and use Rufus to make a live boot stick, to see if it works on your PC. From the live stick, you can also install the linux on it.
Note that in many cases, if you’re not using the Linuxes above, you may have to disable Secure Boot, then do some linux magic (it’s different for every linux, which means googling or wiki searching, which is why I am not recommending everyone’s favorite distro, Arch, which is like a pro race car driver telling a person who’s never driven a car before “it’s easy to drive a stock car” or “it’s easy to drive an F1 car”) after installation to get it enabled.
As for Windows eating the boot loader in dual boot configuration, this should not happen if you have UEFI, which every computer since Windows 8 is configured to boot with and uses Secure Boot, unless you changed that yourself in the bios or installed on ancient (pre-2012) hardware. What happens is when a boot loader is updated, either in Windows or Linux, it will establish itself as the King of Boot and be the first one to boot. Both boot loaders are still there in the EFI boot partition, but you may occasionally have to go into your UEFI Firmware Settings and change the boot order to your preference.
The reason I am pushing KDE versions is that both the mainest stream Linuxes push GNOME as their default desktop environment (DE). GNOME is nice, but it’s been trying to reinvent the wheel for a solid decade now with a completely unique interface, and coming off Windows, KDE is lighter weight on the system resource-wise and feels more familiar, with the bottom taskbar and start menu on the bottom left layout (you can still move it to another side if you’re one of those people).
The reason I have not recommended Pop!_OS is that they run LTS Ubuntu (which is older but supported for years version), they use a GNOME-like interface, and most importantly, they do not support Secure Boot at all.
From there, have fun. Linux is like a kit car, it’s made of lots of custom parts somehow working together in chaotic harmony.
This was a very detailed, very well put together summary. Thank you!
Solid take. I also use Fedora for all your main points. Just talking someone looking to graduate from mint to try Fedora 40 kde.
And for both the KDE and GNOME desktop environments (DE) it is easy to add your own customization. The ArcMenu and Dash to Panel extensions gives you the bottom taskbar and start menu on the bottom left layout in GNOME and making either GNOME or KDE look like MacOS Big Sur is just a search and a tutorial away.