That’s pretty much it, after several months, maybe even a year of wanting to take the leap, a couple days ago I finally did it. I just wanted to share this cuz I think it’s an absolute win, and I guess just see if anyone has any general advice to keep in mind during the process. I ended up choosing Fedora, right now I’m dual booting while I’m still in the process of finding software alternatives and getting everything set up, but trying to minimize my use of windows as much as possible, and so far I’ve been loving it. I love this community and I just wanted to thank everyone that has given any advice or suggestions in the past, i’m really excited about this and grateful that I could get to this point.

  • Alas Poor Erinaceus@lemmy.mlEnglish
    2·
    3 minutes ago

    Post-Snowden and post-Windows, I also started with Fedora, and, well, it honestly didn’t go all that well (this of course was my experience! If you like Fedora and it works for you, then 👍! Not here to dis the distro!). Actually, I think it had more to do with GNOME than with Fedora, so it depends on which desktop environment you’re using; when I switched DE to Cinnamon all my problems seemed to vanish into thin air. And from there, I just went straight to Mint and have been happy as a clam ever since and never looked back.

    In my experience, running Windows as a VM inside Mint was overall much better than dual booting, which can really get to be a pain after a while (and also I think that the Windows partition will sometimes overwrite the Linux part so be careful!); it sounds hard, but it isn’t—if old and senile Erinaceus can do it, you can too! Always happy to provide recommendations.

    EDIT: Also (and again not to step on anyone’s toes), I never had good luck using Wine; this is perhaps because I was trying to run Photoshop and other heavy, Adobe-type things in it (this was before Creative Cloud). Other programs might work differently with it, but in every case for me, a VM has worked better. I don’t play games (I know, boring), but I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t for people’s dependence on Adobe products that Windows might finally start losing a lot of market share and eventually end up on the rubbish heap where it belongs.

  • absGeekNZ@lemmy.nzEnglish
    3·
    1 hour ago

    I made the switch in 2010.

    I dual booted for a while, one day I realised that I hadn’t booted into windows for 3 months. At that point I reinstalled, no more dual booting. I haven’t looked back.

    I keep a windows VM, currently has Win10 installed, I haven’t had to use it in about 3 years.

    My advice is, keep dual booting. One day you’ll realise that booting into windows feels like a chore, you haven’t done it in months, so why keep it around…

  • endeavor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    2·
    1 hour ago

    I did the switch a few months ago and I did it cold turkey. Turning off secureboot and reformating my steam library drive solved all the issues I had. I also reccomend using timeshift or .tar and a bash script to make backups of your os when it’s stable, that way you can experiment in peace.

  • PushButton@lemmy.world
    13·
    5 hours ago

    • It’s not a race, take your time to read and understand what is what and how things are functioning together.

    • Enjoy your stay, it’s going to be your next home, take care of it; make it beautiful, make it efficient, make sure to get rid of all what is irritating you.

    • Start with the minimum and build from there.

    • And, FFS, make backups ;)

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    4·
    5 hours ago

    If you play PC games (and already familiar with Fedora), check out Bazzite. The whole immutable thing is an adjustment, but I really like it.

    Though not really an adjustment from Windows, more of an adjustment if you’re coming from another Linux distro.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
      1·
      2 hours ago

      I would warn against using an atomic distro for newbies that want a bit more than Internet surfing and gaming.

      Handling such distros well requires specialized knowledge around them in particular, and not all common Linux solutions will fit.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        2·
        5 hours ago

        I’ve been running it on my main PC (framework laptop) for I dunno 6 months now? And it’s been great.

        Distrobox is dope, and “rpm-ostree” is super useful.

        Aside from that, it’s incredibly stable. And games pretty much just work.

        I’ve seen people say that “it’s not for tech people, but good for newbies,” and I have to disagree. Just because it works most of the time without having to tinker (but you can if you want) doesn’t mean it’s for noobs… That’s how your PC is supposed to function.

  • toastal@lemmy.ml
    2·
    5 hours ago

    Before you know it, it will be over a decade post-Windows like me. This week I have been trying to get a Linux phone to a satisfactory state to leave the mobile duopoly behind…

    • JustARegularNerd@aussie.zoneEnglish
      26·
      10 hours ago

      Hey guys, my Dad was always a neck bearded Unix admin so I’ve grown up my whole life on FreeBSD, then moving over to Gentoo during my teen years.

      I’m starting to have thoughts about switching to Windows given that’s what my new job uses, but I couldn’t find any instructions on compiling Windows outside of very outdated releases like 2000. Also, does anyone know if emacs and htop are compatible, as those are my most used applications?

  • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
    81·
    8 hours ago

    its amazing how nice it is now and makes sense for most people. I should have way before this but it was a thing with my wife. still can’t get her to take the plunge though.

  • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    7 hours ago

    Lessons learned when switching:

    Some things I didn’t expect just work differently on Linux and it took time to figure out those differences. For instance, a change to a network interface config on Windows usually takes effect when you hit the “OK” button. Linux requires toggling the interface for that change to take effect. That one took me a couple of frustrating hours to figure out. There are lots of other examples like this so keep it in mind if things aren’t working as you expect.

    Trying to do absolutely everything on Linux right away was a mistake. I started switching back to Windows for quick tasks and then learning how to do those tasks on Linux when I could spend a few minutes figuring them out. Over time I spent more and more time running Linux and one day realized I hadn’t started Windows in months.

    In addition to (or instead of) dual booting, create a virtual machine to allow you to use what you need in either OS without rebooting.

    Lastly, if you find that you’re spending a lot of time fixing OS problems don’t be afraid to try something else. Haven’t spent much time with Fedora, but I use Mint daily because I don’t have to fuss with the OS much. Others in my household have more problems with Windows 11.

  • Hule@lemmy.world
    14·
    11 hours ago

    Congrats! Just keep at it, Fedora is stable.

    It gets easier with every solved problem!