I guess this is yet another “you should switch to linux now that windows is trash” post.

I switched about 6 months ago, and I’m now mostly/completely comfortable with linux. It seems daunting at first, but here’s the thing they don’t tell you: you learn little by little and by doing.

Don’t get bogged down in the “customization” or the amount of “distros” or the “desktop environments” before you even get started. It’s confusing, blurry and makes it seem weirder than it is.

Just pick Zorin OS - it’s very close to what you were used to on Mac or Windows, the aesthetics are professional and immaculate. It has everything to get you started through GUI software, but these days I’m starting to use the terminal commands more and more. It’s modern - It came with CUDA 13, which is the latest version of Nvidia’s package for all things related to running AI on your computer. Just to give you an idea of what’s included in it out of the box.

You’ll get your bearings in just 2 days and then wonder why you didn’t switch sooner.

My little trick for zorin os: get gnome extensions (I think it comes with it) and install ArcMenu in it. Then you get extra customization of the start menu with a huge number of templates to pick from.

Do not connect to the internet during installation, and pick “install proprietary drivers” just to be safe. Once it’s installed connect to internet, open terminal and run sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade to do the updates yourself.

When I installed debian on an old laptop, I could feel the difference: some stuff that I had out of the box on zorin was just not there. I could easily install it, but that’s the thing: for a beginner who is not even acquainted with the system, that’s too much to ask for. They don’t even know the utilities that exist.

With LLMs, you will find a solution to all your problems. It’s what I do these days, there’s no shame in admitting it regardless of what some might think about it. If I find a problem or something I want to fix/do on linux, I just ask deepseek about it. Either in agentic so that it can run diagnostics commands on my computer and tell me the exact problem, or on web if it’s just for a refresher or I want to dig deeper with Expert mode.

You need to exercise some common sense and pay attention to what the LLM tells you, but you learn that way by just doing. I went from “how tf does lutris work what’s a wine prefix” to “let’s make my own systemd service so that this script I coded [with deepseek help obviously duh] to make sure my screenshots folder doesn’t keep growing eternally always watches in the background and keeps folder size to 100 screenshots”

And that’s perfectly normal. At first we all need some assistance to learn the ropes, but eventually you just start remembering and doing stuff yourself. You get a sense of what’s the best way to resolve your problem by yourself.

I cannot overstate just how much LLMs have facilitated the switch from Windows, even if sometimes they still get hung up on some stuff.

I keep a Notes folder with an ‘undo_changes.txt’ file so I always know exactly what I changed manually on the system and how to undo it if needed. Just to keep an eye on things. Deepseek writes it for me.

If you’re not sure about moving and you have an old laptop, I would recommend installing a distro on there first. If you mess something up and it dies, you can just reinstall from scratch (as long as you don’t keep anything too valuable on it). On windows 8 (yes it’s old) my laptop was always running the fans at max speed and overheating even when idle. On debian, I use barely 600MB of ram when idle, and the fans have never once gone up to max speed.

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If you need some of the advantages of Linux, stuff I like is:

• very good if you’re technical and like tinkering. You can see some of my scripts in [email protected], this is the kind of stuff that’s just difficult to pull off on Windows because it hard blocks you.
• using package managers to install and update software. Instead of having to google for software and downloading shady installers you just do “sudo apt install X”. Then “sudo apt upgrade” when there are updates to install.
• Takes up minimal disk space. Adding new packages is barely a few megabytes of data.
• Command line becomes comfortable and is much deeper than Windows’. Agentic AI can make full use of it, and so can you. For example there’s qalc, a calculator for the command line. I use it more than the graphical one because it’s just easier and more comfortable to stay on keyboard the entire time. And since agents can run shell commands, my agent can now run qalc to do accurate math and conversions.
• Lots of stuff is integrated that you don’t have on Windows. Gnome disk’s utility can burn a live boot USB. On Windows you need to google for rufus or balena etcher, download, install, then you can use it. It’s hard to convey but it’s just way more comfortable. You get to the good stuff immediately.
• Sure, customization is a part of it. You can very easily try different desktop environments or login screens without losing any data - you just install from the package manager then select it as your default login manager/desktop environment. you can switch back any time, and most login screens will allow you to select the desktop environment before logging in.
• Almost all the software is open-source, which is nice. Open-source doesn’t mean worse. Last I used LibreOffice (then called OpenOffice) decades ago, it looked terrible and took forever to load. They’ve done a lot of work on this front and on zorin at least it looks really good and sleek. The upside of open-source imo is that it doesn’t ask you for payments or has intrusive pop-up ads or anything (like reminding you to get a Premium Subscription for 20% off until June 12 or something). It also allows for more open software in general, for example there’s Komikku, which allows you to just download manga from scan websites for free. It’s in the app store for everyone to find and grab. I don’t even think it has a Windows version.