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Download a new OS // Download the operating system you want to install. Search for Linux distributions for beginners to get some suggestions.
I feel like it's better to actually list/suggest a few beginner distros than to tell people to look it up.
Linux Mint (XFCE desktop) is the best for beginners coming from Windows, in my opinion. Linux enthusiasts will fawn over KDE because of customization, but they ignore that the vast majority of people don't want to spend months tweaking pixels, widgets and animations, they just want to use the computer.
My point is that the site should be recommending a few newbie distros, instead of telling the newbie to search it. Specially because the choice of a distribution isn't that meaningful in the long run, but newbies struggle picking one.
That said I agree Mint would be a good choice. Not sure on Xfce; I'd probably recommend Cinnamon instead, as it looks a bit more modern (even if myself would rather use MATE or Xfce than Cinnamon).
Windows user: I'm thinking about switching to Linux, mind helping me out Linux User?
Linux user: ok, so what you want to do is just figure it out yourself.
Windows user: finds debian and fucks everything up wow Linux is terrible, I'll stick to using Windows 11.
Funny that Debian and Fedora were the only two distros that worked on my laptop. (dual GPU, others booted to black screen after install.) Debian hasn't grenaded itself yet :)
Speaking on that: a lot of people act as if promoting Linux means simply "to get others to install it". And they ignore that the newbie will need help the first days, weeks, even months. Then the newbie gets burned out and switches back to Windows.
That probably explains why some people manage to retain even tech illiterate people using Linux, while others struggle to convince even tech literate ones to switch.
Been on linux for almost half a year now. Don't miss a single bit of windows, thanks to steam proton. Also thanks to microsoft for pushing me over.
Same here. I do not miss all the shit windows did. Things like:
ironically half these things are what people think is the linux ux. Seriously, windows is just terrible, clunky, buggy and full of things you need to be an advanced user to fix.
Mints file explorer when moving large files does leave some meat on the bone for me.
I'm a very recent convert. I downloaded mint a couple months ago after seeing that my entire steam library was rated as highly compatible on protondb. At first I planned to dual boot but I didn't have any reason at all to use windows and finally just took the plunge and made Mint my daily, and sole, driver
As much as people complain about electron (some valid, some not) Linux has benefited quite a bit to the cross platform availability of local applications.
the copilot nonsense really irked me, but it was then they had the gumption to force this absurd recall bullshit on everyone--that's when i said i'm done, no more windows, no more M$
it's obviously a "feature" they sold to senior executive board members so that middle managers could spy on their cubicle drones, but to have the gumption to try and convince the world that this was something we wanted? get fucked microsoft
It’s more than that. They want training data for their LLMs. With enough training data, they can train these models to do office knowledge work themselves, removing the need to employ cubicle drones at all.
I wonder what will win out, the sociopathic need of managers and execs to gaze over heads in cubes like it's their kingdom - e.g. "return to office" mandates that saved no money and made no sense other than to control people - or the sociopathic need of the business to cut costs so low that the stability of the entire company teeters on a house of cards, be it AI or something else.
Switched to Mint recently. So far it's been smoother than I expected, but still had some crazy rough patches. Luckily, helping me through this junk seems to be one of the things AI excels at. I'm set up mostly how I want to be and it's been mostly working well enough so far. Mostly.
Dabbled with Linux over the years but have finally made the jump to using it as my primary OS. I tried a bunch of distros and settled on the elegant simplicity of Mint. Every game has worked just.. fine.
It feels genuinely refreshing to know nothing will change without my consent, I know I will not login one day to find a surprise cortana/copilot/clippy icon in the taskbar or an ad for Avowed waiting for me. I can't believe that is even considered a 'pro', but here we are.
Is it necessary though? Microsoft have already been campaigning pretty hard to get people to switch to Linux. Telling people their perfectly good PCs won't work anymore because the operating system is expiring, and they can't even "upgrade" to Windows 11 is a pretty powerful message.
I feel like eveyone should reccomend Fedora KDE edition, its close enough to Windows for new users and modern enough to not push people away.
Might want to have some people a hit more coherent on which version of Linux so they don't get frustrated. Some people are jumping to distros that I've never heard of and getting annoyed it's not windows. Like yea no kidding Justin Bieber OS isn't getting updates. And your 3k series Nvidia isn't working. Switch to Hanna Montana DE like the rest of us.
I'm going to be migrating to Linux and using Mint. I'm just paranoid about doing something wrong and accidentally walking into a security vulnerability. So I want to set aside time to properly learn things and understand what I'm doing but I'm just busy AF these days...
Take it slow and do it the right way, don't let Lemmy pressure you if you're making slow but steady progress. It's a learning curve for sure
I have four pieces of advice
I usually prefer Debian based systems, but when I finally ditched windows 3 weeks ago, I switched to Manjaro, and I'm loving it. You got this!
Basically don't run random sudo(superuser do, root access) commands you find on the internet without reading what the command does from docs or asking ai.
Leaving windows makes you more secure.
Also don't worry about turning secureboot off. It makes it a lot less annoying and gets rid of a lot of issues. Also also steam doesn't like running on linux and having it's library on windows filesystem you gotta format them both, if your games are on a separate drive.
There you go, the two hurdles i had with linux.
This weekend I want to make a point to finally begin the transition to Linux...
You will be pleasantly surprised almost daily, I hope! There will be a minor learning curve since you are used to windows philosophy and linux is different.
I want mint to be my distro.
As a 15 years old pc user who likes to play games with a 15 years old nvidia graphics card. The only thing that's preventing me from fully migrating to linux is the fact that nvidia doesn't support my gpu anymore, so no proprietary driver, unless, I use a 6 years old kernel version.
The only choice I have for modren distros is the nouveau drivers, which lacks behind alot specially when it comes to gaming.
I now have a dual boot setup running Popos and windows, but still I can't be fully free from Windows, having to reboot every time I feel like playing something.
I hope in the near future I get less broke to buy a new computer or maybe the new nvk drivers will supports my gpu which is unlikely.
Ive been seriously looking into making the switch. After some reading I decided Mint would be the easiest transition and downloaded the ISO to try it out with a USB boot. Im sure its a fluke, but since I have dual monitors the display was messed up and whenever I tried to fix it the entire GUI went away on both monitors and wouldn't recover. I had to force power off the machine and ive been hesitant since then to make the actual switch. Id hate to brick my machine right off the bat, just trying to swap display sources.
Switched to CachyOS a couple months ago and haven't looked back. Everything works right out the box including NVIDIA cards. Recommended it to a coworker to check out and he switched from Windows a month ago.
How can I convince the GF to switch? She only plays The Sims and the occasional hentai game; her Skylake i5 and 1050ti are more than adequate for those tasks. Yet she refuses to try Linux; won't even let me install LTSC to buy some time.
I think she just wants an excuse to buy a new laptop. She's the kind of person who replaces her shower curtain every six months, rather than do the sane thing and simply wash it. I'll never understand such a wasteful mentality.