It’s not like that shits gonna make your computer explode the day they end support lol

Got a new laptop about a month ago. Put Fedora Bluefin on it immediately. Couple other computers/server have been running Debian flavors for year or two.

My main desktop is still Windows, but I literally never use it, especially since getting the laptop. I’ll switch it over when I get time.

I’m still tied to windows for three apps. I’ve found a Linux replacement for one, I just haven’t done the work to convert the database.

Another one I’m trying to run it’s Android version in a waydroid docker, but I’m hitting walls, no time to dig deeper.

And the last one has no replacement, and it’s too delicate to try emulating, I don’t want to nuke the shared database it’s attached to, it’s not worth the headache. So I keep a Windows VM around for the once a month I need to use that program for 🤷‍♂️

I’m purposely being vague about the programs, they are very identifying, but trust me there’s no alternatives.

Even with all that, I’m not looking back, win11 sucks.

My laptop still works perfectly well so if Microsoft don’t want to support it any more then I’ll bung Linux on it. I’ve already got my Mint stick ready, just need to get round to it.

So many perfectly working older computers are going to be headed to the landfill as e-waste. That’s the horrible part.

What a waste tech dollars just to play some stupid game.

Nope, will probably avoid 11 as long as I can though. I have an Mvidia card (drivers are notoriously troublesome on Linux). And I need professional design software for work (as in, industry standard: Adobe or Affinity).

But I put 11 on my laptop to try it and I hate it. So many terrible UI changes, UX noticeably worse. Like they changed stuff just to say they changed stuff.

I considered going Linux for personal use and development, and then using another machine or dual boot for Mac for design software. But i learned about the Nvidia issues after I upgraded my card :/ and swapping to Mac’s walled garden after avoiding it for decades is… a sign of how bad W11 feels to use.

I switched a year ago and I love it. All my old games run better on linux than windows at this point. Proton is fucking amazing.

Windows is a weapons contractor that is entangled in the domestic markets. Linux is not. Windows is spyware and anti consumer. It is time to at least be familar with Linux. Try it on a old laptop or something. Linux is free.

Swapped to Arch Linux! I wouldn’t say it’s been a bug free swap but it’s been extremely doable and everything I needed to work worked like a charm. Gaming was uninterrupted and nothing hasn’t worked yet.

I need to figure out how to connect my stupid printer but I couldn’t do that on windows either, which is sad cause I thought printers were gonna be easier on Linux but I guess this brother model is a pain in the ass or something. Oh and connecting to network drives while on a VPN. That’s my list of pending problems and I’ve been on Linux for two months. Not bad really.

Already prepared everything for the jump. Switched MS Office for LibreOffice, and Outlook for Betterbird. Tested install, configuration and access to backups in a VM. Next vacation I take I’ll go for it. Mint is my choice of Distro, because of Steam/Gaming reasons. With the US being antagonistic, if not outright hostile, right now, and Microsoft having their disgusting Copilot AI Analysis Fingers in everything, it’s the rational choice I think.

Considering I’m unemployed and job hunting, and Windows says I can’t upgrade my current (old) PC, and I regularly play Warzone with friends? No, probably not any time soon.

Maybe if I get a job with a six digit salary in a city with a reasonable cost of living (or remote) so I can jump out of debt before 6 months? But I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve been on 11 since before it was officially released. Honestly never had any issues with it, but I’m interested in hearing what sort of issues anyone else might have had? Are we talking about privacy concerns, bugs or performance issues?

How to give it a go:

• Get a 256GB SSD and install it on your computer alongside the existing drives.
• Install a gaming-oriented Linux distro such as Pop!OS, Bazzite, SteamOS or similar, on that drive (don’t let it touch any other drive - those things generally have an install mode were you just tell it “install in this drive” which will ignore all other drives)
• Unless your machine is 10 years old or older, during boot you can press a key (generally F8) and the BIOS will pop-up a boot menu that lets you choose which OS you want start booting (do it again at a later date if you want to change it back). If your machine is old you might actually have to go into the BIOS and change the boot EFI (or if even older, boot drive) it boots from in the boot section of the BIOS.
• Use launchers such as Steam and a Lutris since they come with per-game install scripts that make sure Proton/Wine is properly configured, so that for most game you don’t have to do any tweaking at all for them to run - it’s just install and launch. In my experience you still have to tweak about 1 game in every 10.
• If it all works fine and you’re satisfied with it, get a bigger SSD and install it alongside the rest. Make one big partition in it and mount you home directory there (at this point you will have to go down to the CLI to copy over your home directory). You’ll need this drive because of all the space you’ll be using for games, especially modern ones and launchers like Steam and Lutris will install the games in your home directory so having that in it’s own partition is the easiest way to add storage space for games.

As long as you give a dedicated drive to Linux and (if on an old machine before EFI) do not let it install a boot sector anywhere else but that drive, the risk exposure is limited to having spent 20 or 30 bucks on a 256GB SSD and then it turns out Linux is still not good enough for you.

When NOT to do it:

• If you don’t know what a BIOS is or that you can press a key at the start of boot to get into it.
• If you don’t know how to install a new drive on your machine (or even what kind of drive format it takes) and don’t have somebody who can do it for you.
• If you don’t actually have the free slot for the new drive (for example, notebooks generally only have 2 slots, sometimes only 1).

Steam OS, Batocera, Bazzite, Linux Mint… so many great distros for gaming alone.

Already upgraded to Linux Mint - https://lemmy.world/post/24365609

It’s been going great! Everything works as I expected. I now have full confidence that I will never switch back to Windows. It really does feel liberating having an OS that doesn’t track me.