and what if any do you miss from windows?
Pros it’s not windows.
Cons its Linux.
You will curse it and praise it in the same breath for the rest of your life.
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Linux Pro’s - I don’t even notice anymore after decades of use. I think it’s great. I guess i could say that it’s nice that it won’t try very hard to protect you from yourself.
Linux’s Cons - CAD software still sucks which means i’m never going into a career based on design or 3d printing. Also, I guess I could say it won’t try very hard to protect you from yourself.
So, there is some aggravation (not really a con) in terms of package management systems.
You have MANY options not limited to your standard repo tools like yum, pacman, apt, etc. You also have 3rd party ones like flatpak and snap. You could also throw in the AppImage format to that. Arch has the AUR on top of that which usually means you’re running paru or yay. And then you have things like brew and crates which you might run into.
Working in any of these is straightforward, the problem comes from having to manage them all independently of one another at the same time. Pacman will update standard repo, but not AUR. Paru will update standard repo and AUR, but that doesn’t help with flatpak/snap. Then docker/pods/lxc are in their own little world while you get those handled.
In the end, the more complex you build a system the more complex it is to manage, but it still is an aggravation. I’d still take it over the one-size fits all approach Microsoft has, though.
might I recommend topgrade to you in these trying times?
Windows has better accessability features than linux does. Itsn ot talked about much but ive been in meetings with people with disabilities, survivors of accidents, etc… and Windows is the only real option. If you are blind there are standard programs that they use.
Its the one area i think linux could use real work. A couple of places ive put in pull requests to help out from time to time.
Otherwise linux is generally better ;)
If you have bleeding edge hardware then Linux driver support is usually a pain in the ass. On windows there’s one, maybe 2 Windows versions. And manufacturers typically make drivers for windows first.
Got older hardware? It’s probably gonna work great on Linux.
Pros:
- Trustable.
- Free.
- The user is in control.
- has many UI.
Cons:
- Still has a bad error message style. I blame GNOME for this. If GNOME follow macOS’s error message style, we won’t have this problem.
- Still has an annoying app installation way. This is why I use AppImage.
I am sorry if my English is bad.
Pros: Freedom
Cons: Needs to be creative to use favorite apps which don’t have Linux version.
Linux is how home computing was supposed to be.
I use windows at work, I have local admin which removed a lot of friction for a more technical user.
But the difference between my home machines (18 years Linux) and my work machine is friction. Windows makes things hard, it is always a few extra clicks or a stupid reg key change.
E.g. recently wanted my full right click menu back on win11, no nice setting option. Go edit this unnamed registry key, it seemed so janky in a modern os.
I’m a long time Mint user, jumped around a fair few distros but mint works well for me. It is so polished compared to windows, it seems crazy it is the free one.
Linux’s only objective is to get better.
Any commercial OS has the sole objective to make money for its owner.
Which in turn means it has to eventually get worse. It’s the natural progression of capitalist ideals.
There’s only so much value you can squeeze out of a product before you have to start reducing quality to make more gains.
I can’t think of a single thing I miss. I use Windows for work and it’s a relief every evening when I can switch to my Linux desktop.
Linux Cons:
- there is always some minor thing that doesn’t work quite right, or it takes a lot of searching to find a fix. However this is true on Windows too
- on a fast moving distro things can randomly break here and there, but usually are fixed fast
- some games and apps won’t work. Usually when they’re trying to do something invasive. Be prepared to find an alternative (or dual boot)
- some hardware doesn’t work because the vendor doesn’t provide drivers and no open source version exists. If they are actively blocking foss versions, they’re a good candidate for the never buy list
- no Copilot (/s)
- if you want things to “just work” and you don’t care about personalizing anything and you don’t care about your privacy, you may happier on Windows or Mac because you can just take it to a shop and have them fix it. There are just more resources for an OS that commands 80% of the desktop market
Linux Pros:
- my computer is mine and I can control everything
- I can customize things much more than on Windows
- I can upgrade when I’m ready and opt out of any shenanigans
- Everything I care about works. I switched to open source for photo editing. There was a learning curve, though
- software development, even with Microsoft tools (!), is just much nicer on Linux. You don’t need WSL when it’s already your OS
Workarounds:
- I choose to not buy unsupported hardware
- I choose to not buy unsupported software and games
- I put vendors hostile to freedom on my never buy list (e.g. Adobe)
- I have access to a Windows PC if I need it. But I have not needed it in the last year or so I’ve been full time on Linux
Not saying going full time Linux was necessarily easy (I gave up Adobe Lightroom and I can’t play some AAA games) but I have no regrets. It was actually easier than I had feared.
It’s like diet and exercise: it’s not easy to change but you’ll feel a lot better in the end.
Pros :
- Reliable, I have nothing to fix and no unusual behaviors or settings on Cachyos. If I set something up the setting won’t change on its own.
- Private, no telemetry. No NVIDIA service sending all the apps I launch to HQ.
- No forced software. I can choose to remove most components I dont like and replace them.
- Gaming works as well or better than Windows once its setup.
- I can revert to a previous image of my system right at boot. Very reassuring to know it’s easy to revert to a previous state/version of my system.
- More lightweight system, I use way less RAM on idle than on Windows. That’s more RAM to use for actual useful stuff like gaming.
- it’s free. Doesn’t require an account to use.
- it’s secure. Much less risk running a linux system than windows. You are a harder target and also a less attractive one for hackers.
Cons :
- I can’t play games with kernel level anticheats.
- I sometimes have to spend 10mn when installing a new game to set it up on proton.
- You are still expected by most people to handle their proprietary files coming from Microslop. You have to be able to sign PDF files and return office files.
- HDR support is not really good for games and it often is difficult to have working.
Overall, having switched 4 months ago, I have no regrets and honestly it was a great upgrade for me. Beside the money lost on a game like BF6 I’m very happy to be on linux.
I was really annoyed by my W10 setup anyway. I constantly had settings that would change on their own. I often had bad days where you feel the system struggling even though nothing changed. It was very frustrating. Linux solved that. I dont have bad days on my system. It runs exactly as I left it when it was shutdown. And this expected stability is very comfortable for users.
Highly recommend the switch to cachyos for all Windows gamers. And even for non-gamers it’s a very functional and reliable operating system.
Less mentioned downside - digital rights management is significantly degraded in linux. Most commercial streaming apps/sites will work but but only at SD or 720p.
Yeah Cachy is the bomb.
Is cachyos much better than garuda? I’ve been on garuda for a few years now and dont know much about cachyos other than its another arch based distro.
I never tried Garuda so I can’t help with the comparison.
Is Garuda debian based ?
Cachyos is the first time I touched an Arch based distro and I was very impressed by how stable and “fresh” it feels. I guess Arch deserves its good reputation.
I have been updating my cachyos like two times each week which is a quite high update rate and the only problem I had was this :
Steam stored his cache by default on my home partition and filled the disk completely. I then updated with pacman without noticing I had no space left and the process failed. The system wouldn’t boot which was scary. I took a bit of time to think about it and remembered that I can revert the system with BTRFS snapshot. So I checked the cachyos wiki on how to revert and in 2mn i was back to the exact state before my failed update. It broke once because of Steam and the system was very easy to fix.
A beginners could learn to use snapshots easily in the GUI for it and I think would succeed in restoring the system. Would the same be true if a Windows didn’t boot ? Honestly I don’t think so.
I even was able to setup in the GUI for how many snapshots I want to keep so i constantly have around 30 snaps ready to recover my system up to a month and a half ago.
Garuda is another easy arch like endeavor/cachy. I believe they even both provide kernel images with the cachy patches. But they aren’t the default. The really big negative with garuda is their default theme choice and setup. Endeavor/Cachy provide a much more vanilla setup out of the box. Making them a bit less problematic over all.
No gaming distro outperforms any other distro by any measurable means a user would notice.
Actually depending on tasks it can be up to a 25℅ boost. Though in gaming tasks it tends to be a 2 to 5% boost. Which while more moderate can still be felt. Where catchy excels is it’s CPU optimization. So if you’re CPU bottlenecked it can make a big difference. That said garuda and endeavor both give you the option of installing a cachy patched kernel.
Pro: You own your computer.
Con: You own your computer (and you have to work on maintaining it).
I’m mostly joking. Generally if you have a problem with Linux, you can get help on it. The myth that there are more Windows users, so therefore it’s easier to get help with Windows is problematic for a few reasons. One, the number of Windows users who are actually passionate about it are comparable to the number of passionate Linux users, or Mac users. I’m not sure which one leads the others in power users who are happy to help, but I feel like it’s Linux. Nobody has Linux because of the computer they bought (or, almost nobody). Windows and Mac have a lot of users who just use the computer they bought with the software that came with it. Virtually no one has Linux who didn’t choose it, and they chose it for reason that are important to them, and it’s in their best interests to help you learn it, too.
The other myth is the command line. Windows, Mac, and Linux all have a command line/terminal. It’s not needed on any of them, but on all of them, there are a couple things you can do that are not easy to do in the GUI.
Honestly if you have Windows, get a live distro and run it. You can run it inside Windows. The performance won’t be the same as running it on bare metal, but you can see how it handles your hardware. For most distros you shouldn’t have a problem.
(Disclosure: I’m a happy Mac user. I’ve used Linux off and on (mostly off though) for over 20 years. My favourites have been Red Hat (when it was a home OS; it’s called Fedora now) and Ubuntu. I prefer the GNOME interface. I’m comfortable with the command line. I understand that macOS is UNIX, and I also understand that it’s not and why it’s not.)
Windows is a hot steaming pile, so I won’t get into that. You really should set you bar higher.
Pros: everything except super cutting edge hardware runs painlessly, right out the box. You can get software for pretty much anything, and it will be free. You can keep using super old hardware until it physically dies. No ads, hardly any telemetry or tracking, no AI junk.
Cons: each program looks and acts different, and might be super opionated and janky. But that’s the situation with Windows anyways. No customer support for private end users, and if you dare ask about your problem online, elite users will berate you and get on your case with arcane commands.
Bottom line: if you feel comfortable with a computer and won’t get scared if the icons and menus look different, try it out.
