I finally nuked Windows
I finally nuked Windows
I have been daily driving a dual booted laptop for the past two years. After a year of distro hopping I settled with fedora + kde and never looked back. I really liked the auto nvidia driver config and it made everything so pleasant to work. Since the last 8 or 9 months I decided to do gaming using bottles and proton ge. I cannot afford to buy games and bottles is a God send at that. Now I realized that I had not logged into my windows partition in over 6 months. So I logged in to check and it told me it needs to download 8 gigs of updates. That sent me into rage and so clean installed everything to be fedora. I have 250 gb of storage locked in limbo because of windows( I have a 512 gb ssd so it was a lot) and today after everything was setup, the os took only around 20gb minus the games. Never felt happier.
I am happy for you. Windows really is a piece of shit lately, and given how easy it is to switch to Linux nowadays, it is pretty amazing to me that more people haven't done it.
15I know. Plus it's OUR operating system.
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ONE OF US!
ONE OF US!
8I have a new motherboard, RAM, and CPU to install and I think I will just take that as a good time to leave Windows behind. My Steam Deck convinced me it's viable.
8I'm in the same spot. I just need to look into my "must have" items for work before I switch. Windows is increasingly terrible, and the Steam Deck I got a month ago has proven to me that Linux is good for games now, too.
I'm tempted to try Linux again, finally, after some failed experiments in the mid 00s. I'm so sick of Microsoft's shit sandwich, between bloat and spyware.
3
I haven't "nuked" Windows yet, but I have resized the drive it currently resides on. Instead of taking up the whole 1TB, it now only takes up 256GB, which means I can no longer play on it.
7You are basically me a few months back. Just give it enough time and Microsoft will get on your nerves.
BTW, do you know Microsoft tries to decrypt and index all your data on one drive using the info it already knows about you and on win11 all your documents pictures etc folders are on one drive? Food for thought.
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I’m proud of you! I recently bought a new laptop and it came with Windows 11. I heard all sorts of crap about it but I wanted to see for myself.
So many basic settings changes (that I’d use fairly often) went from 1-2 clicks to 3-5. They tried so hard to make it look like a mobile OS that they lowered its usability for anyone who doesn’t just use it as an express lane to Google Chrome.
Anyways rocking Ubuntu with Wayland and am happier to troubleshoot little bugs every now and then than put up with spyware.
6Exactly. I would rather have to work a little and full control rather than non being able to work on problems they shove on me because I have no control
4
There are a few things missing from my Linux distros of choice that I really need in a computer experience, so I'm waiting til M$ ends support for Win10 before switching. Hopefully by that time the four things I use my computer for the most will be more practically achievable.
4What do you need?
1Three(-ish) things, and I apologize in advance for the length.
TL;DR Version
- NAS management via LAN
- Non-Steam PC gaming, preferably via offline installers
- A less-shitty GUI client for ProtonVPN
Full Explanation
- Being able to connect to my NAS through my local area network—I can do like that on Windows, but a few months ago I switched over to Pop!_OS and couldn't for the life of me get it to work. At one point, it worked for like FIVE MINUTES (not exaggerating) and then suddenly stopped for no (apparent) reason. I have an Emby server and I like to be able to just copy and paste new files from my computer to the NAS without the use of a direct connection. (I say direct because they're all connected my router through Ethernet.)
- Gaming without using Steam—I mainly save backup installers on my external HDD and then install them when I want to play them. I use Playnite as a launcher. Unfortunately, Playnite is not available on Linux; my only other options would be GameHub or Lutris, neither one of which in my past experience is nearly as polished as Playnite has proven to be. Additionally, sure the development of Proton for Steam and SteamDeck has boosted development of other avenues like Wine or Lutris's methods and stuff, but it's not quite as reliable as I would hope compared to the former. On top of that, when I last tried Pop!_OS a few months ago, I installed the GOG version of Dragon Age: Origins, first straight-up through the backup installer, and then via Lutris. Neither even got to the launch screen due to Windows-based dependencies, which is surprising considering the WineDB page for the game listed the GOG version as Platinum. Yeah, that was bullshit; clearly it's outdated.
- A less-shitty-in-general GUI client for ProtonVPN for Linux—I use ProtonVPN quite a lot, and despite them claiming on their website that their Linux GUI client is "full-featured", it is hardly even a semblance of that. It doesn't launch on boot-up (despite I believe having a setting for that), doesn't have profiles, and doesn't have port-forwarding. The Windows GUI client has all of these and then some.
Edit:
I forgot to mention a critical fact: I have an Nvidia GPU.
I don't know if it's changed much, but a few months ago when I attempted the switch, I had a nightmare with the Nvidia drivers. I don't remember what the version numbers were, but there were two of them, one of which was ended with like .35 or something. Anyway, I upgraded to one, my monitor wouldn't display anything but a black screen; I upgraded to the other, my screen would flicker incessantly; if I downgraded, it would flicker incessantly but worse.
3
Linux has been my main system since 2016. Still haven't nuked windows because I need it for removing DRM with calibre from ebooks. That is literally the only reason anymore.
Sadly I have to use it for work because Altium doesn't run on linux, but it's always nice to come home to a system that isn't a buggy piece of shit like win11 😅
4I thought Calibre was available for Linux. It isn't?
2Yeahhhh it's like made for Linux
1@Templa @JustEnoughDucks Yup, it's on Linux.
-1
I've been windows-free for about 8 months as well. I'm a more casual gamer so i haven't had to venture out of steam proton yet (but i've got bottles on hand to experiment anyway) A few of the games i tend to return to every few years will definitely need bottles.
I built a beefy system, and I was initially planning on running windows (or one of the de-microsofted builds) on a vm with pass-through GPU (shunting my linux over to the on-cpu gpu when im running it) but so far i've had no need to continue setting that up. I proactively placed all my steam games on an ntfs filesystem just in case i do in the future.
Either way, i'm glad to have the flexibility to make windows work without dual boot, but so far it looks like i was being overly cautious. Probably cant play some games with anti-cheat right now... but i so rarely play those types of game.
2I also have thought that in case I need a windows install later on I can just create a vm with network access cut off.
2
I you like Fedora, you might want to look at Nobara. Super optimized for gaming and AV work.
1I would advise against Nobara. Why?
- Only one maintainer. If he quits the project, it will leave many many users without maintenance updates
- Slow updates. Maintaining a distro is a lot of work, and especially major updates can take many many months.
- Very insecure. It disables SELinux for example.
- Many tweaks that might make the OS less reliable.
- And much more... I absolutely respect GE's work, but for one person, it's just impossible/ hard to keep it secure and well working.
What else would I recommend? Bazzite (if you use your PC only for gaming) or the various other images from universal-blue.org
Why?
- They also come with QoL changes by default, just like Nobara
- They are actually secure because they maintain themselves automatically without any input. If a update comes from Fedora, it takes less than a few hours to also land on uBlue
- It's reproducible. Every Bazzite install for example is the exact same. If one user has a bug due to a modification from Bazzite, the dev will have it too and can just fix it easily.
- And much more.
6Well it works perfectly to me. I dont need updates every 24h , I just wants all codecs preinstalled for Davinci and Reaper, and games to work out of the box, and I get all that with Nobara. If the dev abandon it I'll switch to something else but its currently up to date with fedora and well maintained.
3
I didn't know about no bara until today. Maybe I will check it out. But i am really comfortable in fedora now, so if something borks, I will check it.
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