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.
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It’s not a race, take your time to read and understand what is what and how things are functioning together.
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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.
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Start with the minimum and build from there.
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And, FFS, make backups ;)
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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.
definitely on board with bazzite for gaming computer. it seems to do well with everything else I throw at it also
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.
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…
Cool. In a little over a month, I hit 3 years.
The best piece of advice I was given, that I seldom see repeated is this: learn how the filesystem is structured.
It makes everything else easier
I second this. Also, taking time to partition correctly for your purpose, can make disto hopping easier.
This is very good advice
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.
All I have to say is: welcome, good luck and have fun.
Originally read ‘from Linux to Windows’ and I was like, ‘What?’
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?
This can happen with people that refuse to learn!
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.
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’s not a Linux thing so much as a your particular Linux distribution thing. Different Linuxes can have vastly different user interfaces for various things. Some distributions even go out of their way to be more similar to Windows.
Hmm, every distro I’ve tried (and I’ve tried a few) required a interface bounce. Maybe I just missed the ones that don’t.
Congrats! Just keep at it, Fedora is stable.
It gets easier with every solved problem!
My advice having made the move (but with a fair bit of linux tinkering before hand):
- Don’t rush to delete Windows; you’re doing the right thing keeping it about while you adjust to a new OS and in case there are some things you just can’t do in Linux
- If you want to understand your OS and enjoy tinkering / learning, think about using a virtual machine to play with a linux system to get used to it. As you’re on Fedora, you can install KVM and Virt-Manager, make a virtual machine and inside it install another Linux OS which you can practice with. It can even be Fedora - and this can let you make changes in a disposable environment before you do them for real in your whole OS or just to see “what happens if”. I’ve even built an Arch system within a VM just so I can understand more of how linux works
- Back up your home folder before making really big changes - this is where everything that belongs to you is kept, and even contains all your personal config files. Back up and restoring the Home folder can make things much faster to fix if you accidentally mess things up
Keep a cloud-synced notebook of bugs, ideas, and fixes. That way, you can help people in the future or know how to do things for yourself if you ever need to reinstall. I have notes for fixing things like my keyboard layout on GDM/SDDM or how to set up certain software in a privileged
podmancontainer.Yeah i keep a nextcloud synced Obsidian vault and I have a entry for fresh installing my popos system with a list of all the software I install and from where with an Obsidian link to a note of each individual software if it needs more info, like config settings of rapid photo Downloader so that my photos are always imported and named the same or how to add the repository for tabby so that it updates along with all the stuff when I do apt update
I’ve been wanting to take the leap, too. I’ve got Linux installed on my gaming laptop and I’ve been trying games one by one to see if they work. Next step is dual booting on my desktop and only switching to Windows when I absolutely can’t make something work. My biggest concern is that I have a bunch of games installed on various drives that are all Windows (NTFS?) formatted and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to run them on Linux. I really don’t want to have to reinstall all of them.
You can read NTFS drives; I still have shared drives from my Windows install despite barely using Windows at all.
You can generally import steam libraries, and then steam can do the proton work.
And you can sometimes run other programmes in Linux from the windows install - i.e. it can have it’s own Wine prefix in Linux and use the installed files on the NTFS. But this doesn’t always work - if the programme’s or game’s installer makes significant system changes or installs other software then they won’t exist in the Wine prefix and the game may not work. It’s better to install windows games fresh so everything is installed into the wine prefix.
And Lutris is well set up with scripts for installing a wide range of games from their installers; it will avoid problems reinstalling games fresh.
You will probably have to reinstall all of them under Wine or Proton or whatever. I don’t think it can import existing installations.
My biggest concern is that I have a bunch of games installed on various drives that are all Windows (NTFS?) formatted and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to run them on Linux.
I’d check https://www.protondb.com/ and if they your favorite ones are native/gold/platinum then… move on. I’d initially NOT erase my drives and, assuming you have either patience and/or a fast connection, just let it re-download and install overnight, then enjoy. If need be bring the saves back (but again via Steam, should just work) and only once that’s done, erase the Windows partitions. This is a no risk process. Honestly some games will not work but IMHO this isn’t the question. The question rather is… will you have more playable games than time left, if so, then considering moving even without 100% coverage.
Linux can read and write to NTFS drives just fine. Just make sure you’re using the newer native (in-kernel) driver, ntfs3. The older user-mode driver, ntfs-3g, still works but has much worse performance, which I guess should be a concern if you’re going to run games off of it (ntfs-3g is fine for casual use)
Also, make sure you have backups. I don’t care how stable NTFS drivers are I don’t fucking trust them for daily use, especially writes.
I recommend copying files off of NTFS and onto ext4 if you’re able. If you can’t, try to keep operations to read only.
I’ve lost too many drives due to stupid issues (sometimes me making an error, sometimes the driver not working properly).
Backup:
- 3 different locations
- 2 different media formats
- 1 offsite
ntfs drives do work in linux, but there may be some issues sometimes. i switched alnost 2 years ago and i have distrohopped a bit. fedora and nobara had intermittent issues with the ntfs drive, it suddenly became unmountable and it takes some fighting to get it back. in mint, the drive constantly corrupts files and entire folders, and the only way to delete those is to boot into windows and delete them there.
I did this a few months ago. I haven’t found replacements for everything, but I’ve found that it’s really come down to my not actually using those things very much in the first place, so I haven’t had to do the work.
When I look, I find something that works. What are you still looking for?
I find the array of installation options a little overwhelming or intimidating sometimes. If I can just do the equivalent of apt-get, that’s, of course, easy enough. But sometimes things are just realeased as tar balls, and I have to go and look up WTF I’m supposed to do each time. Nothing comes up often enough for me to internalize it.
I do find myself chafing against just the fundamental differences of the *nix environment from the DOS-based heritage of Windows. And I find it difficult to get help with certain things sometimes because the installed user/developer base isn’t super interested in supporting different modes of interaction (“just use the terminal, it’s so much faster [for me]” is a common refrain that makes me want to get stabby). But 99% of the time, it’s been smooth sailing.
At this stage, if you have drivers for everything, and there’s nothing mission critical that’s still tied to Windows, the best advice I can give you is to copy your important files over from your Windows partition, and then dump it. If you have a 2nd computer, leave that one running Windows for now. The duel booting can make it tempting to just reboot into Windows “just for this one thing”, and stay there until you next have to restart.
Bash is always there, and bash scripts and snippets are precise. Describing gui manipulations when the GUI keeps changing is also quite hard… what if the person you are interacting with has a 2-yo system and you have the bleeding edge? Even knowing which menu the settings are in can be frustrating for the helper.
Windows users (e.g. me at work) get grumpy when Microsoft starts changing the menu structure after keeping it consistent for 20 years and start thinking of powershell scripts to create consistency between our engineering workstations.
