I actually super appreciate these videos. I’m absolutely convinced at this point that, regardless of compatibility issues, my next system will be Linux, but I have absolutely bounced off of it the last couple times I tried. Being able to see different people’s initial experiences with different distros feels pretty invaluable to me at this point.
At the moment, I only have a laptop and can’t afford either a new system or for my current system to go down, though, so I’ve been hesitant about making any actual changes. That said, my laptop’s about six years old at this point and starting to really struggle, so I know it’s coming in the next year or so.
EDIT: I found an external HDD to work with! I’m setting it up with Cinnamon now and I’ll spend the next couple weeks trying to treat it like my main driver to see if I can handle any quirks that comes with it.
I know it’s not what you’re looking for because it might be overly complicated for someone getting started, but if you ever have the extra hardware (or can run a VM to play around) to give it a go I recommend you look into NixOS.
Nix is very different from other OSs you might have used because you declare your system and it gets built, if you want to install a package you add it to your configuration rebuild the system and now the package is available in the new generation of your system, but the old one is still available and you can select it via boot menu. This sounds overly convoluted, but for someone with a PC that MUST ALWAYS work it’s unbeatable.
You update the system and the new drivers broke the game you’re playing? Select previous generation of the system and carry on until you have time to figure it out. You installed a program and that broke something? Go to the previous generation keep on working and figure it out later.
I’ve never been afraid of updating my system, but since switching to Nix knowing rolling back is not an easy option is nagging at the back of my head constantly.
With all that being said, Nix is hard to get into, and this tip is unlikely to help someone getting started (I really think it’s better to get your toes wet on something more close to what you’re used to to avoid frustration). Nix requires learning a new language (which is very weird and not really that intuitive in certain things) and configuring your entire system with it. But the plus side is that once you’ve done it it’s done, and your entire system uses the same configuration format, and any hack quirks or random fixes you had to apply are there in code so you can’t forget about them when you reinstall the system or migrate to a new machine. This might not be helpful to you, but maybe it is to someone else.
I’ve heard that as well, but at this point I can’t really risk something going wrong and not working at the moment. I am tempted to give it a shot, but I need to at least make sure I have a fallback if something goes wrong.
Yeah if it is a work laptop then your caution is warranted. The thing about linux is, eventually something will go wrong. However, with the slightest inclination and some internet searching skills you can always fix the issue. Windows and Mac like to fight you when you want to tinker with something, but Linux facilitates it.
Try out some live boot disks then. Several flavors of linux will just boot up, and give you the option to install from within the booted OS. I forget which ones lwt you change things and basically treat them like normal, but some will even carry over any made changes right through the install (if you tell it to, anyways).
Then, you’ll just have to identify any critical applications you need and see if they run on linux, or have any viable alternatives that do, or worst case try to run the windows flavor through Wine or proton or so.
If you need stability above all, I’d recommend avoiding the bleeding edge distros or the young ones that are changing a lot. It sounds odd, but I’ve been digging MX Linux a lot, and I’ve tried a good few flavors over the years. It’s based on Debian Stable, so it’s repos won’t be the bleeding edge, but it has that classic Debian “Just Works” going for it. The only bugs I’ve had have been issues from Wayland that also affect other distros.
I actually just spent the better part of this afternoon doing just that! I messed around with Mint and it basically ran perfectly fine. Literally no issues at all (besides some of me not understanding how things worked). All my critical stuff works perfectly well, with the sole exception being a game I run where mods are pretty heavily windows-based. I did find a decent Linux community around that, though, and they seem to be running things pretty well, too.
I know I shouldn’t dual boot with a partition, but that’s what I’m gonna do to see if I can make it a couple weeks without anything major going wrong. I tried the live boot disk, but at the moment all I have is an external HDD and it makes some things insanely slow, so partitioning is the move for now. I’ll drop Windows in a couple weeks, though.
Edit: I’ll probably also try out some other distros once I’ve got Mint set up as well, just to be sure I’m not missing out on something else that will work. For now, I just want easy to use and easy to learn.
Nice! Sound like you’re on the right track, though might want to keep a live cd image on hand in case Windows decides to take over your boot options until you can finally squash it. xP
By what you just told I can’t tell if you have ever tried a live distro with it. I hope you did, or if not, that you pick a distro of your liking and try it with your laptop.
(My PC is about 7 years old and it’s still going as new, so I was shocked reading your comment - I completely forgot Windows/Mac really tax you for “old” hardware)
Think about a linux installation on a removable usb drive or a CD or DVD.
You won’t install Linux directly in your hard drive or whatever but in a removable device.
With it you can boot your laptop in it and use it almost as if it was actually installed on your laptop. It will let you check for hardware compatibility and that sort of thing. Also it won’t be as smooth as if it was actually installed on your laptop but for the looks of it even that way you would notice a huge difference with whatever you have installed on your laptop right now.
There are many linux flavors to test, and maybe people around here can give you better examples, but at the tip of my tongue right now there’s ubuntu or fedora, which have great hardware support by default.
I appreciate the advice! All my looking around so far has me thinking Mint or Bazzite, but I think Mint will end up being what I go with so I actually learn how to troubleshoot in case I need to move to something else in the future.
I’ll look for a free drive and try and test this afternoon!
I would if I could handle significant downtime on my computer. I absolutely cannot have my only device not working for some elements of my life at the moment, so I’m hesitant to just swap and hope. Someone else recommended testing live distros, though, so I may try that for a couple weeks just to see if anything goes wrong.
If you have space in your laptop for a second SSD you could dual boot. That would let you switch without worrying about losing your Windows setup.
And if you go the dual-boot route, make sure you have selarate drives for the OS’s. Windows updates like to destroy the Linux bootloader when they’re on the same drive
I unfortunately don’t have the money for a second SSD at the moment. I considered partitioning my drive, but I only have 500GB and it feels like that would be a pretty big issue if I don’t figure things out quickly enough.
I advise against dual booting from one drive anyhow. Not because it doesn’t work just fine in concept, but because windows literally nukes the boot data randomly sometimes. It’s fucking insane but it’s a real thing that happens. Seems like something you can only call malware but instead we call it windows.
Yeah, don’t partition your drive just to dual boot Linux. While Bazzite has an install option for only patching the bootloader when Windows breaks it, having to run it after most Windows updates is still not something you should sign up for
I actually super appreciate these videos. I’m absolutely convinced at this point that, regardless of compatibility issues, my next system will be Linux, but I have absolutely bounced off of it the last couple times I tried. Being able to see different people’s initial experiences with different distros feels pretty invaluable to me at this point.
At the moment, I only have a laptop and can’t afford either a new system or for my current system to go down, though, so I’ve been hesitant about making any actual changes. That said, my laptop’s about six years old at this point and starting to really struggle, so I know it’s coming in the next year or so.
EDIT: I found an external HDD to work with! I’m setting it up with Cinnamon now and I’ll spend the next couple weeks trying to treat it like my main driver to see if I can handle any quirks that comes with it.
I know it’s not what you’re looking for because it might be overly complicated for someone getting started, but if you ever have the extra hardware (or can run a VM to play around) to give it a go I recommend you look into NixOS.
Nix is very different from other OSs you might have used because you declare your system and it gets built, if you want to install a package you add it to your configuration rebuild the system and now the package is available in the new generation of your system, but the old one is still available and you can select it via boot menu. This sounds overly convoluted, but for someone with a PC that MUST ALWAYS work it’s unbeatable.
You update the system and the new drivers broke the game you’re playing? Select previous generation of the system and carry on until you have time to figure it out. You installed a program and that broke something? Go to the previous generation keep on working and figure it out later.
I’ve never been afraid of updating my system, but since switching to Nix knowing rolling back is not an easy option is nagging at the back of my head constantly.
With all that being said, Nix is hard to get into, and this tip is unlikely to help someone getting started (I really think it’s better to get your toes wet on something more close to what you’re used to to avoid frustration). Nix requires learning a new language (which is very weird and not really that intuitive in certain things) and configuring your entire system with it. But the plus side is that once you’ve done it it’s done, and your entire system uses the same configuration format, and any hack quirks or random fixes you had to apply are there in code so you can’t forget about them when you reinstall the system or migrate to a new machine. This might not be helpful to you, but maybe it is to someone else.
Putting linux on that thing will give it several more years. The performance gap between windows and linux just keeps growing.
I’ve heard that as well, but at this point I can’t really risk something going wrong and not working at the moment. I am tempted to give it a shot, but I need to at least make sure I have a fallback if something goes wrong.
Yeah if it is a work laptop then your caution is warranted. The thing about linux is, eventually something will go wrong. However, with the slightest inclination and some internet searching skills you can always fix the issue. Windows and Mac like to fight you when you want to tinker with something, but Linux facilitates it.
Try out some live boot disks then. Several flavors of linux will just boot up, and give you the option to install from within the booted OS. I forget which ones lwt you change things and basically treat them like normal, but some will even carry over any made changes right through the install (if you tell it to, anyways).
Then, you’ll just have to identify any critical applications you need and see if they run on linux, or have any viable alternatives that do, or worst case try to run the windows flavor through Wine or proton or so.
If you need stability above all, I’d recommend avoiding the bleeding edge distros or the young ones that are changing a lot. It sounds odd, but I’ve been digging MX Linux a lot, and I’ve tried a good few flavors over the years. It’s based on Debian Stable, so it’s repos won’t be the bleeding edge, but it has that classic Debian “Just Works” going for it. The only bugs I’ve had have been issues from Wayland that also affect other distros.
I actually just spent the better part of this afternoon doing just that! I messed around with Mint and it basically ran perfectly fine. Literally no issues at all (besides some of me not understanding how things worked). All my critical stuff works perfectly well, with the sole exception being a game I run where mods are pretty heavily windows-based. I did find a decent Linux community around that, though, and they seem to be running things pretty well, too.
I know I shouldn’t dual boot with a partition, but that’s what I’m gonna do to see if I can make it a couple weeks without anything major going wrong. I tried the live boot disk, but at the moment all I have is an external HDD and it makes some things insanely slow, so partitioning is the move for now. I’ll drop Windows in a couple weeks, though.
Edit: I’ll probably also try out some other distros once I’ve got Mint set up as well, just to be sure I’m not missing out on something else that will work. For now, I just want easy to use and easy to learn.
Nice! Sound like you’re on the right track, though might want to keep a live cd image on hand in case Windows decides to take over your boot options until you can finally squash it. xP
By what you just told I can’t tell if you have ever tried a live distro with it. I hope you did, or if not, that you pick a distro of your liking and try it with your laptop.
(My PC is about 7 years old and it’s still going as new, so I was shocked reading your comment - I completely forgot Windows/Mac really tax you for “old” hardware)
I’ve got a laptop from 2012 that still works like new lmao. Not a chance that would be the case under Windows
A live distro? I’m not actually sure what that is. I’ll do a bit of looking around about it, though!
Think about a linux installation on a removable usb drive or a CD or DVD.
You won’t install Linux directly in your hard drive or whatever but in a removable device.
With it you can boot your laptop in it and use it almost as if it was actually installed on your laptop. It will let you check for hardware compatibility and that sort of thing. Also it won’t be as smooth as if it was actually installed on your laptop but for the looks of it even that way you would notice a huge difference with whatever you have installed on your laptop right now.
There are many linux flavors to test, and maybe people around here can give you better examples, but at the tip of my tongue right now there’s ubuntu or fedora, which have great hardware support by default.
I appreciate the advice! All my looking around so far has me thinking Mint or Bazzite, but I think Mint will end up being what I go with so I actually learn how to troubleshoot in case I need to move to something else in the future.
I’ll look for a free drive and try and test this afternoon!
Just install Linux today. Don’t wait.
I would if I could handle significant downtime on my computer. I absolutely cannot have my only device not working for some elements of my life at the moment, so I’m hesitant to just swap and hope. Someone else recommended testing live distros, though, so I may try that for a couple weeks just to see if anything goes wrong.
If you have space in your laptop for a second SSD you could dual boot. That would let you switch without worrying about losing your Windows setup.
And if you go the dual-boot route, make sure you have selarate drives for the OS’s. Windows updates like to destroy the Linux bootloader when they’re on the same drive
I unfortunately don’t have the money for a second SSD at the moment. I considered partitioning my drive, but I only have 500GB and it feels like that would be a pretty big issue if I don’t figure things out quickly enough.
I advise against dual booting from one drive anyhow. Not because it doesn’t work just fine in concept, but because windows literally nukes the boot data randomly sometimes. It’s fucking insane but it’s a real thing that happens. Seems like something you can only call malware but instead we call it windows.
Yeah, don’t partition your drive just to dual boot Linux. While Bazzite has an install option for only patching the bootloader when Windows breaks it, having to run it after most Windows updates is still not something you should sign up for
You don’t need a second drive to dual boot. Although some atomic distros don’t like to share.
I would really advise against dual booting Windows on a single drive.
I have to admit that the last time I did it was with windows …vista?
Why isn’t it advisable?
Windows loves to fuck up boot partitions.