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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I switched aid after windows 10 was launched. It was kind of tough in the beginning, but after a couple years any and all concerns about this or that not working or how to do something on Linux had disappeared.
Nowadays the os feels like a powerful tool that can do anything I need, and never gets in the way. It’s truly a pleasure to use.
So I guess id say that there is light at the end of the tunnel, even if the transition seems hard at times.
- Always keep a live USB of your distro handy
- Don’t ignore the terminal, you’re doing yourself a major disservice if you do. Terminal is life
- The ArchWiki isn’t just for Arch users
Don’t be afraid to think for yourself.
You’re just using a computer. It’s not that complicated or religious.
i always do have a distro live USB in my bag at all times. you never know who gets interested in the question “which distro do you use?”
I did the same thing about a year ago, going to fedora (KDE) from windows. I’ve booted into windows about 5 times in the last year or so
Welcome!
Don’t be afraid to experiment relentlessly. Even if you break your OS, that’s just more experience fixing or reinstalling it. Also back up your important files locally and remotely.
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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 ;)
And, FFS, make backups ;)
Here’s a good tutorial for an easy to use backup solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W30wzKVwCHo
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For some of the last really stubborn pieces of software that kept me locked it to at least dual booting windows, I’ve found running them in bottles is working really well. Bottles has a community preset for Fruity loops Studio, but it wasn’t really working. Oh it would run, but with massive input and audio lag, most VSTs just wouldn’t work with FL in that install. What does work, is creating a bottle for gaming, and then just installing everything through the “run exe” at the bottle prefix page. After 8 years of dual booting, I finally nuked my windows installs.
Welcome. Sounds like you’re going to be very happy here. Fedora is a great choice. I love what they’re doing with atomic desktops.
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.
I think partitioning was one of the first skills I learned and the one I took most for granted. I had started on Arch cause I wanted to be cool and I liked arduous things, but I just ended up reading on LUKS, TPM, LVM, mdadm, etc. and different ways to set up your partitions. I never really took time to appreciate past me for learning it lol
This is very good advice
I made the switch in 2010.
I dual booted for a while, one day I realised that I hadn’t booted into windows for 3 months. At that point I reinstalled, no more dual booting. I haven’t looked back.
I keep a windows VM, currently has Win10 installed, I haven’t had to use it in about 3 years.
My advice is, keep dual booting. One day you’ll realise that booting into windows feels like a chore, you haven’t done it in months, so why keep it around…
Originally read ‘from Linux to Windows’ and I was like, ‘What?’
One of my friends did this. No clue how you can go from Arch back to windows… just wow. I found that insane.
That would be a wild experiment.
I almost stopped reading at the first four words, tbh.
This can happen with people that refuse to learn!
I did the switch a few months ago and I did it cold turkey. Turning off secureboot and reformating my steam library drive solved all the issues I had. I also reccomend using timeshift or .tar and a bash script to make backups of your os when it’s stable, that way you can experiment in peace.
Congrats! Just keep at it, Fedora is stable.
It gets easier with every solved problem!
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.
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.
Ban-test
You good.
I would warn against using an atomic distro for newbies that want a bit more than Internet surfing and gaming.
Handling such distros well requires specialized knowledge around them in particular, and not all common Linux solutions will fit.
All of Linux requires specialized knowledge. Immutable just takes different knowledge.
The real kicker with that is just that you can’t always just follow instructions you find online. Usually you can, as long as you’re doing them in a Distrobox, though.
I went with immutable as a newbie, and I think it’s great. It feels like getting in on the ground floor of the future.
Yeah, essentially that. But most advice on Linux is for non-immutable distros, so it’s better to start with the classic and then choose what you see fit.
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.
