I'm migrating to Linux Mint, 99% of steam games work as well as on windows. Those who don't are mostly multiplayer games that insist to have some shitty kernel anticheat.

I'll still keep windows on dual boot when I need it, though.

I also tried Ubuntu 10 years ago and threw it away in anger. Have been using mint for over a year now and game on it regularly. All I really needed to know was: use proton and add 'gamemoderun %command%' into the launch option of the game.

Except for mods on Nier. That was a hassle.

Its actually more annoying on the work computer. Ms office windows apps are kind of great compared to libreoffice, especially with the collaboration options. But Linux is nicer to do dev work on so ¯(ツ)/¯

I'm not a Linux hater (believe it or not), but I'm definitely not an evangelist either, and I think this eternal praise for Linux is just not warranted.

If you want things to "just work" in any capacity, then you're in for a bad time.

Personally, I don't want Windows 11 on my next PC, but I don't have the time or the desire to get into the troubleshooting hell that unfortunately is Linux either.

People say that anything is possible on Linux, but at the same time roast you for even thinking that it's not gonna take enormous amounts of un-learning and self education when coming from Windows.

Linux fanboys who don't see it's faults can be sort of toxic.

I don't doubt that I'll get downvoted for this, but I think there need so be more differing opinions on Linux on here.

Nobara or Bazzite are your best Linux options for gaming. I've been on Nobara for over a year with nothing but good things to say about the distro and its community.

I was in a similar boat and have found modern Linux to be somewhere between Windows XP and Windows 10 in terms of convenience and having it "just work". However, I reckon I've spent less time troubleshooting than I would spend raging at the bullshit Microsoft keeps trying to shove down your throat in Windows. On balance I'm counting it as a win, and I suspect you will too.

AMD or NVidia?

Most games that I play work well on Linux with AMD. Most who have problems seem to have Nvidia. Anti-cheat stuff can be an exception though so best to ensure what you enjoy works.

If you can check hardware compatibility before hand, it helps. An up to date kernel like Fedora, OpenSuse TW or Arch can help. Wine recommends up to date kernel.

Please update this if you fun into the usual brick wall of hand modifying config files or self-compiling some obscure git pull just to make basic things like audio and network work.

Unfortunately brand new hardware has issues more often than not. I had to get a beta build just to get wifi to work on one system I built.

My last experience with Linux was with Ubuntu about 10 years

Dont forget to put on a suit and say thank you once you try a modern Linux distro

Just keep in mind that there are some very different options within the Linux world and different people here will push you towards different options. The two most common and most different options are Bazzite and Mint.

While both of them can definitely work well, in my experience Mint still leaves a lot of new users unsatisfied with it. I'm yet to see any windows user complain about Bazzite, so that's my recommendation.

Either way if you try one and it doesn't live up to your expectations, there's still a chance the other might.

I have Linux up and running and it’s definitely improved, I’ve fixed almost all the issues I’ve had previously. Unfortunately, discord is missing attenuation on Linux. This is a real problem for me and if I could find a solution, I could ditch windows.

Use Bazzite! Works great now even with Nvidia cards. Been able to run anything the same as I did on windows before. Was able to get VR working too pretty quickly by using ALVR

For gaming, I recommend Garuda. It has a preset for gaming in particular with a lot of packages you'll need to install, and a tool to install extra things you may want, like software for controllers and things like that. I think it also has the Nvidia drivers built in (I'm AMD though, so I'm not sure) which isn't always the case. It's also Arch based, so the Arch wiki, which is one of the best Linux information sources, will all work, and it can access the Arch User Repository (AUR) where users upload packages, which may be important. For example, Runescape doesn't work on Linux as is, but there is a package on the AUR for a launcher that works.

And my axe!

Sorry

VS Code (i know it's still MS but I do C# .NET work and rider is too expensive, I don't want a subscription for an IDE)

VSCodium is a thing too if you want to un-Microsoft even further.

https://vscodium.com/

I use it for C# development on Linux and it works well.

getting a password manager

Bitwarden and Keepass are usually the go tos, depending on your use case.

then a new browser

Firefox or if you want to decouple from Mozilla as well, Librewolf works pretty well.

potentially a Google pay replacement

I'm not aware of any open Google Pay replacements other than taking a card with you.

As soon as you get rid of Google on your phone, you get rid of Google Pay.

Btw Rider is now free for non commercial use

Since Mint is based on a stable distro, it'll be running older software that won't support your newer hardware well, and you're experiencing that firsthand.

Try Fedora, Bazzite, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, or anything else that's more bleeding edge – they're still very usable and reliable, it's just that stable distros like Mint and Debian are "stable and reliable" overkill.

Edit: and if you're wondering why this wasn't mentioned to you from the start, the answer is likely that these distros tend to be:

1. Less popular and get fewer mentions and votes, and
2. Are considered riskier in an enterprise context, so stable distros are deemed a safe recommendation since the odds of things going wrong on supported hardware is extremely low.

I've got this move coming up - my plan is to dual boot and slowly wean over.

Game crashes in Linux, try for a fix and if I get frustrated, boot into windows and enjoy the game.

Might be a rocky year, but the dual boot will likely take the stress off!

I've seen a lot of fedora-based distros pushed for gaming (mint is Debian based), apparently these can work better. Still looking into it, but no definitive answers there yet!

With newer hardware you need to run a bleeding edge distro, at least until Debian 13 releases (a lot of distros use Debian as a base)

Never heard of this before. They may recommend it, but not require.

You can dual boot or use a virtual machine. Both are pretty easy to setup.

I had a class that "required" Windows, I did just fine with Linux. YMMV.

Ardamax Keylogger takes screenshots too, should they change the name?

I've been Linux only since 2016, after a decade of "trying " to move over. I do still have a partition for the increasingly rare event that I need something MS, which so far has been one class in my University that required a lockdown browser for a test.

Mint is easy to use too if you don't want to fiddle around with various packages.

"Whoopsie, turns out we lied and recall was enabled from the start and just pretended to be off" 😄🤷‍♂️

😎 Me having set only security updates in my windows, after it tried to install the 24H2 update.

Yeah, this is just the thin end of the wedge.

Although I suppose you could call windows itself the thin end of the wedge, this is a slightly wider part.

This is good. There are probably some edge cases for this. I work in IT for some companies using industrial automation. Being able to roll back and watch what people do when errors or problems occur is a good feature. Similarly on high value servers I would like this as well.

Being able to turn it on is better than having to apply policies to disable. I don't see this as a big problem anymore.

They will eventually change the default to "on."

Good thing I have no friends to interact with then! Take that, Microsoft!

Zoom was already everywhere in the business world before the pandemic.

Seems like Skype was only for personal users who were not very techy and wanted to make free calls overseas.

Zoom was so bad, too. It was so unreliable, it was missing basic features, the UI was unfriendly.
They've improved on each of these things slightly since then.
But it's a testament to how bad Skype was that Zoom was found to be preferable.

Or the windows phone too

It's the only way to be sure Microsoft won't sneakily turn it back on.

Damn Small Linux is very lightweight and comes with browser and PDF viewer preloaded. It doesn't have a GUI software installer though, so you will have to use the terminal if you need to install stuff.

I see you have only two different answers so far. which is just not playing the game. i'll give you another two; there are at least 15 "best lightweight linux distro". For your use, I'd pick any one at random, try it out on a bootable usb.

Personslly, I'd try stock debian and choose LXQT for a lightweight desktop.

puppylinux also deserves a mention, I always have a bootble PL usb lying around somewhere. Its reliable , fast for a usb, very good potato-compatibility, has loads of useful programmes and utilitiea already in there. I've never actually installed it permanently though. Scared of making a commitment to slackware that I don't understand.

I'd avoid Damn Small and Tiny Core though - unless you really need them. Cool as they are they are well out of mainstream.

FSM

Finite-state machine?

Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Forgetting Sarah Marshall?

I installed MX Linux on an old tablet/ laptop with 2GB RAM AND 30GB storage. Works very well except for the webcam, but that's because the hardware is made so that only windows can use it correctly.

You could try Linux Mint XFCE edition. Comes with a more lightweight desktop environment.

Q4OS is another good potion

Thank you for this, valuable info right there.

You do bring a good point. Every doctor will havemy phone number on file and recall will screen shot that. I cant do anything to stop that. Same with every other piece of data.

At least my doctor won't have screen shot of everything, web page, picture, word doc, friends lists, political news, I view on screen.

Someone will have vital information stolen from a recall hack on a 3rd party

My data being in the hands of a 3rd party at all is arguably a larger risk than said 3rd party running Windows. No single individual can control what OS any particular 3rd party runs, and if you hand data over to a 3rd party, at some point you have to trust them. If you don't trust them, find someone you can trust.

Don't make everyone else's choice of OS my problem.

You can install key and screen loggers if you want. Could even setup offsite backup and rclone it all wherever you want.

For now. Plus, lots of companies still use Windows "Professional" SKUs.

Thankfully my work laptop runs W11 Enterprise, but still...

Yeah, this can be an unpopular opinion on Lemmy, because there’s a giant Linux circlejerk. But the unfortunate reality is that changing to Linux does have some major stumbling blocks. The “switching is so easy, just do it” crowd totally glosses over it, but that’s kind of rhetoric doesn’t help long term adoption. Because if some new user has only heard “switching is so easy” and immediately runs into issues, they’ll be more likely to go “well if it’s super easy and I can’t figure it out, I guess it’s just not for me” and abandon things.

There’s also a very vocal (and toxic) part of the Linux community that basically just screams “RTFM” at every newbie question. New users shouldn’t be expected to dig into a 350 page technical document just to learn the basics of their new OS.

Bullshit like what? That most stuff just does as advertised?

Yeah, there will be technical issues here and there, but are you really going to claim widows doesn't have technical issues?

I've been doing Linux desktop for over 25 years now and every time I look at windows it's always because of some bullshit technical issue and I always have to wonder why people pay for that shit

Collection of personal data is arguably worth money to them though, for advertising and whatever else they're doing.