I’m a big Linux advocate these days and my best advice is to set realistic expectations. If your intent is to recreate your Windows experience exactly, you’ll always be left disappointed. There’s simply nothing better than OneNote at what it does, but I migrated my note taking habits over to Obsidian and I’m perfectly happy there now. Turns out I didn’t need 90% of OneNote’s immense functionality.
At the end of the day though, Linux is FOSS: it’s made by people, for people, to solve the computing problems people have. There are a variety of solutions out there. Reexamine your workflows and be open to fitting new solutions to them, there are just SO MANY choices out there for how to handle most problems.
Aside from that, there’s always going to be a small learning curve. People tend to view that as simply a hassle that takes time to overcome and while that’s not entirely wrong, it very much undercuts the real value of learning how to operate and maintain the OS that you most likely use every day, all day. It’s extremely hard to accurately describe the value of investing that time and having an OS that isn’t bloated with corporate nonsense and fighting you to dictate your workflows into their intended patterns so they can agitate you with ads and paid services at every step. There’s a reason we all come out sounding like zealots and while I acknowledge it can feel a little cult-ish, who you gonna trust? Your online nerd community or a corporation who has shown time and time again that they do not value you as an individual user?
Well said. I switched to Mint on my laptop recently and just the serenity of not being pestered by the OS constantly fills me with contentment. Also, the fan was running constantly due to Windows background processes before and now it is silent unless I’m doing heavy work. Feels good.
Your comment nailed it. I just switched a couple of weeks back and it really wasn’t awful. There is a bit of a learning curve, mostly around setting up your system the way you want it, but there are so many good text and video tutorials available.
Now I have a system that just works, has improved my laptop’s battery life by over 20% (the fan is no longer cranking the whole time it’s on), and actually has greater functionality than when I was on Windows without all the shit I don’t want.
Pasting my comment here from another on this thread.
I’ve been using Cachy OS and Marvel Rivals, Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Crusader Kings 3, and UFO 50 have all worked out of the box including multiplayer. Turmoil and Helldivers 2 required a “tweak” which was switching back from Cachy’s version of Proton to the default Steam one. (Turmoil had minor graphical glitches and Helldivers 2 wouldn’t work on multiplayer until I did that.)
Linux gaming is worlds better than it has been in ages.
As someone who has used linux since 2009, I remember the days when linux “gaming” was super tux cart and some clone of minesweeper, that’s it. Linux has gotten SO much better in regards to gaming and will only continue to do so.
Uplink, Neverwinter Nights, and a few other games had native clients circa 2002-3. Wolfenstein and CS worked via opengl and wine. World of Warcraft, doom 1 & 2, StarCraft 1 (I never played 2)
Sometimes it was a pain getting games to work, for sure. And it’s 1000% better than it used to be! But there were lots of games available even back then, if you knew where to look.
A lot of the advice out there is anecdotal - ask a dozen people, get a dozen answers.
For my part, I installed plain Arch on a custom built system. I use the Nvidia proprietary drivers for my 3080 and I’ve had no issues with drivers or gaming. If you’re talking retro, RetroArch or other assorted emulators have you covered no prob. If you’re talking modern stuff, Elden Ring works online with its Easy Anti-Cheat and I play a ton of Trackmania which chains Uplay launcher (ugh) and have even managed to install mods with Openplanet which is a Windows only mod manager. One time my friend was telling me about an old Windows 3.1 pinball game. I downloaded it from abandonware (https://www.myabandonware.com/game/3-d-ultra-pinball-creep-night-3fh) and just launched the installer with WINE, it even placed a shortcut for it on my app launcher (kinda hated that actually 😅). I feel like that worked more flawlessly than it would have on Windows 11. Most games simply launch with Proton, however sometimes you do get weird issues that may involve trying some different versions of Proton. Dark Souls III for example still gets angry at anything beyond 8.X or whatever.
I think a lot of people look at the troubleshooting you have to do in Linux and dread it as an utter failstate of the system. Not true. In Windows when your system is hosed you’re likely down for a reinstall or patiently waiting for Microsoft to do their part and patch it. On Linux, when something goes wrong you pop the hood and take a look. You don’t HAVE to do it, you GET to do it.
Moral of the story is, your best bet is to try a dual boot if you can and give it a go yourself. I suspect the issues a lot of people are having is because they get too carried away with customizations and system configs. I try to keep most things basic unless I have a really good reason to alter them.
I don’t want to talk about other peoples experiences when it comes to games and graphics drivers on linux. I can just mention my own experiences with it. As a disclaimer I have used linux for years, just not as my main desktop.
Graphics drivers I have not had any issue with, they’ve been pretty plug and play. Games I’ve found can be a bit hit and miss, most will just work fine right away through proton or wine while others can require a bit of tweaking and troubleshooting to get running properly. I have yet to run into a game that just would not run at all however, but that could also just be that the games that wouldn’t run are ones that didn’t interest me already.
I’m a big Linux advocate these days and my best advice is to set realistic expectations. If your intent is to recreate your Windows experience exactly, you’ll always be left disappointed. There’s simply nothing better than OneNote at what it does, but I migrated my note taking habits over to Obsidian and I’m perfectly happy there now. Turns out I didn’t need 90% of OneNote’s immense functionality.
At the end of the day though, Linux is FOSS: it’s made by people, for people, to solve the computing problems people have. There are a variety of solutions out there. Reexamine your workflows and be open to fitting new solutions to them, there are just SO MANY choices out there for how to handle most problems.
Aside from that, there’s always going to be a small learning curve. People tend to view that as simply a hassle that takes time to overcome and while that’s not entirely wrong, it very much undercuts the real value of learning how to operate and maintain the OS that you most likely use every day, all day. It’s extremely hard to accurately describe the value of investing that time and having an OS that isn’t bloated with corporate nonsense and fighting you to dictate your workflows into their intended patterns so they can agitate you with ads and paid services at every step. There’s a reason we all come out sounding like zealots and while I acknowledge it can feel a little cult-ish, who you gonna trust? Your online nerd community or a corporation who has shown time and time again that they do not value you as an individual user?
Well said. I switched to Mint on my laptop recently and just the serenity of not being pestered by the OS constantly fills me with contentment. Also, the fan was running constantly due to Windows background processes before and now it is silent unless I’m doing heavy work. Feels good.
Your comment nailed it. I just switched a couple of weeks back and it really wasn’t awful. There is a bit of a learning curve, mostly around setting up your system the way you want it, but there are so many good text and video tutorials available.
Now I have a system that just works, has improved my laptop’s battery life by over 20% (the fan is no longer cranking the whole time it’s on), and actually has greater functionality than when I was on Windows without all the shit I don’t want.
My main concern is for my hobbies, like games and such. I’ve heard that games can have a bit of difficulty running on Linux, and graphics drivers too.
Pasting my comment here from another on this thread.
I’ve been using Cachy OS and Marvel Rivals, Deep Rock Galactic, Deep Rock Galactic Survivor, Crusader Kings 3, and UFO 50 have all worked out of the box including multiplayer. Turmoil and Helldivers 2 required a “tweak” which was switching back from Cachy’s version of Proton to the default Steam one. (Turmoil had minor graphical glitches and Helldivers 2 wouldn’t work on multiplayer until I did that.)
Linux gaming is worlds better than it has been in ages.
As someone who has used linux since 2009, I remember the days when linux “gaming” was super tux cart and some clone of minesweeper, that’s it. Linux has gotten SO much better in regards to gaming and will only continue to do so.
Linux user since 1998, checking in.
Uplink, Neverwinter Nights, and a few other games had native clients circa 2002-3. Wolfenstein and CS worked via opengl and wine. World of Warcraft, doom 1 & 2, StarCraft 1 (I never played 2)
Sometimes it was a pain getting games to work, for sure. And it’s 1000% better than it used to be! But there were lots of games available even back then, if you knew where to look.
A lot of the advice out there is anecdotal - ask a dozen people, get a dozen answers.
For my part, I installed plain Arch on a custom built system. I use the Nvidia proprietary drivers for my 3080 and I’ve had no issues with drivers or gaming. If you’re talking retro, RetroArch or other assorted emulators have you covered no prob. If you’re talking modern stuff, Elden Ring works online with its Easy Anti-Cheat and I play a ton of Trackmania which chains Uplay launcher (ugh) and have even managed to install mods with Openplanet which is a Windows only mod manager. One time my friend was telling me about an old Windows 3.1 pinball game. I downloaded it from abandonware (https://www.myabandonware.com/game/3-d-ultra-pinball-creep-night-3fh) and just launched the installer with WINE, it even placed a shortcut for it on my app launcher (kinda hated that actually 😅). I feel like that worked more flawlessly than it would have on Windows 11. Most games simply launch with Proton, however sometimes you do get weird issues that may involve trying some different versions of Proton. Dark Souls III for example still gets angry at anything beyond 8.X or whatever.
I think a lot of people look at the troubleshooting you have to do in Linux and dread it as an utter failstate of the system. Not true. In Windows when your system is hosed you’re likely down for a reinstall or patiently waiting for Microsoft to do their part and patch it. On Linux, when something goes wrong you pop the hood and take a look. You don’t HAVE to do it, you GET to do it.
Moral of the story is, your best bet is to try a dual boot if you can and give it a go yourself. I suspect the issues a lot of people are having is because they get too carried away with customizations and system configs. I try to keep most things basic unless I have a really good reason to alter them.
I don’t want to talk about other peoples experiences when it comes to games and graphics drivers on linux. I can just mention my own experiences with it. As a disclaimer I have used linux for years, just not as my main desktop.
Graphics drivers I have not had any issue with, they’ve been pretty plug and play. Games I’ve found can be a bit hit and miss, most will just work fine right away through proton or wine while others can require a bit of tweaking and troubleshooting to get running properly. I have yet to run into a game that just would not run at all however, but that could also just be that the games that wouldn’t run are ones that didn’t interest me already.