Curious on the experiences of those recently migrating to Linux from Windows 10, Intel-based MacOS, etc. How is it being on Linux? Anything surprise or frustrate you?
I switched to Nobara a couple months ago. My computer is a lot snappier. Overall its great. Some minor difficulties but no show stoppers.
Signal desktop gives me an error that it is keeping credentials in plaintext which is fucked, I tried to get it to not do that but havnt been able to figure out how. (there are tutorials for ubuntu/gnome, but I havnt figured out how to translate those to fedora/kde…
I just started using crow-translate which is amazing, but keep getting a screenshot error message. Something with wayland maybe? again when I search there is a lot of shit about ubuntu/gnome but that doesnt really help.
Switched over almost a year ago, aside from a few hiccups, it’s been awesome. Gaming has been smooth, setup jellyfin, and have been developing my media library. I love to tinker around and what not, and it’s been a fun experience (especially when you figure out that one issue thats been vexing you for some time).
I went to Fedora in March of 2025. I never looked back. Definitely some frustration with video drivers and hardware issues (bad Samsung monitor), but nothing I haven’t been able to work around.
Most importantly, my computer runs great, my games run great, I have more control than ever, and I will never go back to Microslop. Their pivot to “AI EVERYTHING!!!” has been abhorrent, and I refuse to cooperate.
Switched to arch 1 year ago or so. At first I customized my experience a lot and really enjoyed it. Now I have a stable experience, just game and do some dev work on and off. Really like it.
It’s so stable. I’ve never reinstalled in a decade of use, except only due to hardware failure and when installing on new computers. Love Arch.
As things currently stand, I’m happy with my setups. I’m using Kubuntu at work and on my gaming/general purpose PC at home, and Mint on my server. There’s a part of me that wants to hop the server across to Kubuntu as well, just because it’s what I’m more familiar with now, but I don’t really touch the server that much, and it’s currently working without any issues, so I figure I’m better off leaving it well alone.
In terms of work; 99% of what I use my PC for is stuff that LibreOffice is fine for, so it’s solid. That’ll change in the next few months, as the company shifts from local MS Office to O365, so I’ve set up WinBoat in preparation. Not massively happy about how much RAM Windows is going to chew up, so once it goes live I’ll do more research into running O365 as FireFox webapps. Again, not ideal, but until MS gives us a Linux-native port of O365, it’s the best I can do.
Gaming-wise, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well it works - once it’s set up. My gaming PC is my partner’s old machine, so it’s specced with an Nvidia GTX 1060 - a GPU that still has a surprising amount of utility. The drivers have given me some issues, but all in all, it’s great. Coupled with Sunshine, I can happily play lower spec or older games on my MacBook through Moonlight while sitting on the sofa, or I can stream to my Apple TV. Red Dead Redemption 2 looks wonderful, even streamed across the network.
My only real white whale is Apple Music. I’ve had an AM account since the day it launched in the UK, and use it every day on my GrapheneOS phone, so it’s a ballache that my only options for it on Linux are:
- Web App, which doesn’t support lossless
- Cider, also doesn’t support lossless
- WinBoat, which is still quite buggy and eats up the system’s resources
- Waydroid, which works, but again can be quite buggy
But overall, I’m happy with the move. The shift from macOS to macOS/Linux isn’t as tricky as from Windows, perhaps, because a lot of the terminal-based stuff is pretty similar, but it’s nice to know that my computer isn’t at the whim of a cabal of bastards. I have tried Asahi on my MacBook (and the M1 mini I now use as my Home Assistant machine), but ultimately the drawbacks are still slightly too great for me to go all-in on it.
I switched to Bazzite and I’m really liking it.
I have had a few issues with old SDR software that didn’t work.
All in all, I’m very happy with the change and have absolutely no plan to return.
I think it was two years or so for me now, but honestly, it’s going great. I’ve got alternatives for the windows only apps I used to use, and my games run smoothly.
Every time I have to use a windows computer for some reason, I’m reminded of why I stopped using that OS…
I need them to decide on Wayland or x and make the damn switch. I’m tired of switching servers for apps.
I’m happy! It Just Works. Windows 11 -> Linux.
- I have had ONE WiFi problem that was my computer’s fault the whole year; as opposed to half the times I open the computer.
- One video game didn’t Just Work, I had to tinker, but I got it working smoothly with mods.
- A bit of trouble with flash drives initially because they were not formatted to something compatible with Linux. Once I learned that I managed to shuffle data around and format it to be compatible with MacOS, Linux, and my Windows VM. But Linux actually saved me and let me get an old flash drive working that did not work at all. Love reformatting on my distro, it’s easier and more visual than when I tried to do it on Mac or Windows.
For the future regarding Flash drives. The different filesystems used by Mac and Windows (APFS and NTFS) can be used on Linux.
APFS support is sometimes built in, but if not can be installed by following the guide here(github). Note that this will require building from source, which can be scary if you haven’t done it before, but is pretty easy if a bit tedious. This repo in particular has a good guide.
For NTFS support, you can install the read-only
ntfspackage, or the read-writentfs-3gpackage. This utilizes the FUSE so you’ll need the ‘fuse’ tools as well.For the older Apple HFS+ filesystem you’ll need
hfsprogs. This is available from the AUR on Arch based distros, or in the Bookworm repo for Debian distros. For other distributions you may need to compile from source which you can find from the Debian package page.I default to exFAT for flash drives. Every OS can use it out of the box, so it is the obvious choice.
This is the logical choice on newly formatted drives regarding interoperability, but you really should use f2fs or another Copy on Write filesystem for your flash drives if it’s an option.
Hey thank you for the good information; I starred your comment! This is the stuff I like seeing on programming.dev.
And I have built from source before—but considering how un-knowledgeable I feel compared to the average poster here, probably a good thing you included that reassurance that it’s not so hard, since I feel just barely technical enough to be able to build from source. It’s also friendly to drive-by readers at my level of expertise/knowledge or lower who have not built from source yet.
Switched to Bazzite coming up on 4 years ago, and haven’t looked back
I haven’t missed Windows one bit. There were a few things that were tricky to get right int he beginning and also I had to get used to using some other software for some of the things I used on windows but honestly it’s been worth it.
I switched to Fedora Workstation 41 a year agoish, and am currently running 43 KDE!
I really like being able to theme my desktop to my liking, esp with KDE, my current theme is using the Catppuccin Macchiato colours (with “Mauve” accent, i.e. purple) and window decorations (solely because they were the only one available with big, colourful buttons. The rest had tiny icons that were hard to differentiate) + a cool black hole splash screen I found that has a date too! I am using the Bibata Modern Ice cursor and Papirus icon pack.
I also like having loads of additional software to pick from. LibreOffice works really well on Linux, Lutris and Prism Launcher are great for the games I play, Okular is nice (though by now someone has told me it existed on Windows, damn!), and there are just some simple tasks where the Linux-native apps that are simply perfect (see KAlarm, Dolphin and Nautilus file managers both having actually useable search that doesn’t require a third-party app like Everything on Windows, Elisa music player)
I had no issues with software incompatibility, all of the ones I use either had a (better) Linux alternative or had native Linux support (like Steam, Firefox, OBS Studio). The only thing that I am unable to do on Linux is a) (Re)install Windows for friends and family (weird, I know, but the Installation Assistant is not compatible with Linux. Technically I think you can use CLI tools to write the ISO to flash drive, but I couldn’t get that to work. If I had the time I probably would been able to figure it out…) b) Access files from an iPhone, but that’s more an iPhone stupid problem than anything. I use an Android phone now, and I have full access to its file system just by plugging it in, and c) Playing Minecraft Bedrock (hmm, I wonder who owns Mojang and how they could benefit from this…) but I have set up a MC Java server with GeyserMC+Floodgate and now my little brother (who plays on an iPad) can play Minecraft with me, which is awesome! There’s a bit of lag due to the translation layer, but nothing major.
I would like to add more.
I really like being able to just install, update, and remove programs using the “dnf” and “flatpak” commands, it is super nice and simple! I have accidentally removed an audio driver once, but after reinstallation it worked again.
KDE Connect and Localsend are both super awesome, no more words need to be said
I got into self-hosting as well, setting up Radicale, Immich, Forgejo, Nextcloud, Vikunja, and the aforementioned Minecraft server. They work quite well for my use case.
Removing myself from Window’s incessant adverts and Microsoft’s tracking feels like a breath of fresh air
The printer just works
The fact that you can just change from GNOME to KDE Plasma to whatever else without reinstalling the OS is kind of insane to me. You can even install multiple at once and switch between them!
The OS actually lets you do the things you want to do (the power of sudo is in my hands!)
You’re able to install it without signing into an account and without an internet connection, as it should.
The fact that there are no incessant advertising and marketing and all this other crap for no cost! I applaud everyone who develops these super cool software, technologies, and operating systems, and if you can, donate to projects that help you a lot!
My only surprise is how easy it was.
I’m rocking Bazzite and the only time I wanted Windows was when I got stuck on a boss in Silksong and wanted to use CheatEngine.
Cheat Engine is a thing on Linux!
Game Conqueror is bundled for a lot of distros but PINCE is my favorite.
I couldn’t get Game Conqueror working on Bazzite. PINCE worked, but I couldn’t use any existing CE configs, and saving my own didn’t work the next time I loaded the game either. That could maybe just be a Silksong thing but I’ve never had that issue before.
Not a dealbreaker for Linux, but it was the one time I remember thinking “this is a lot easier on Windows”
