Finally migrated from Windows to Linux. For anyone wondering, what is the state of Linux as your primary OS for home PC\laptop in 2023.
I’ve finalised my Archlinux installation yesterday, I dropped of Linux more than 10 years ago and experience in 2023 in comparison is awesome and beyond even wildest dreams back then:
- For average user looking for more out of the box experience I would suggest something Arch based (people in comments suggest EndeavourOS, please do your research). Archlinux installation took me quite some time
- Almost everything works out of the box, by just installing corresponding package
- KDE Plasma environment is fast and beautiful
- Pipewire audio server (Jack\Pulseaudio replacement) works great
- Wayland window server is not there yet, especially if you have Nvidia with proprietary drivers and want to use VR. Waking up, session restoration and other scenarios have issues. Use X11.
- Wine is great!
- Music making - Bitwig Studio DAW has linux native version, yabridge allow you to use windows VSTs, which are easily installed via wine
- Gaming works out of the box with Steam for majority of titles, some games have native linux version. Performance is great. In worst case windows game might loose 5-15% in performance. Was not case for my titles
- Gaming outside steam is fine too. Use Wine, Lutris, Proton
- VR is a mixed bag. Not everything is there (Desktop view, sound control and mirroring, camera, motions smooth, lighthouses do not wake up os go to sleep. I use my phone to turn them on/off). But if its not the problem for you, quite some titles work. Tried: native HF Alyx, Lab, windows: Beat Saber and Boneworks. For me it’s a surprise, I did not count on it. Performance is great.
So overall my experience is great. Eventually I’m going to get rid of WIndows on other computers and laptops at howe. I can finally wave goodbye to Windows, with lots of ads and bloatware. Alway glad to help with answers regarding installation while my memory and history logs are fresh. ^^
especially if you have Nvidia
This is something that needs to be highlighted over and over again: Don’t buy nvidia if there’s ever a chance of running anything but Windows.
Mmh. If you like Machine Learning / AI / Stable Diffusion you’re kinda screwed. Hope AMD ups their game regarding this.
I wouldn’t recommend Arch to Linux beginners, though. It’ll take quite a bit of tinkering to get to work and you have to develop a pretty detailed understanding of the whole thing. Which is absolutely fine, of course, if this is what you want to do. But if you just want something that works with minimal hassle, try Mint.
Yes, I find this obsession with Arch on Lemmy very weird. It’s certainly not a distro for beginners. Ubuntu (let the hate flow), Mint, Fedora, and many others would be better choices.
If it is what you like, fair enough but I feel that it is encouraged around here as a default for both beginners and advanced users, which is bizarre. It’s too complex for beginners and not optimisable enough for very advanced users. I don’t hate it but I hate to see it become the standard.
I find Mint to be the most obvious choice for beginners who don’t use Lemmy.
Anecdotally, Mint broke file permissions and then the mounting points for my home server setup. And I find Cinnamon to be quite ugly imho.
I tried Fedora and Debian and much prefer those two vs Mint. Also, KDE is incredibly beautiful on the Steam Deck.
P.S. Fedora and Debian work with secure boot OOTB. Helpful for a laptop install. I know you can make it work with Arch and Mint as well, and there’s issues+opinions with secure boot, but I just wanted something to work. I am not as adept with linux and the guides assumed a particular level of experience with it.
I installed Mint in my Windows user moms computer she loves it.(on windows it was unusably slow) It is a drop in replacement for beginners who want to use linux almost exactly the same way they have used windows. Fedora is good(and my fave) and not too unintuitive for beginners aswell but if someone wants to switch to linux but “keep using windows” Mint is the answer, not to mention all the extra software preinstalled to make stuff work out of the box.
From my personal experience Arch is several months ahead of other distros and depending on the package and sometimes has everything you need already included for gaming.
I believe this is due to the Steam Deck.
However for ease of use, I agree there are other better distros. Fedora is only 2ish months behind arch in terms of graphics drivers and Ubuntu… has the latest proton from steam and lutris since proton isn’t installed from the local app stores.
Arch is several months ahead of other distros
Source for that? It’s one of those weird, wild affirmations that go around regarding Arch. Ahead in terms of what? Integrating the most up-to-date kernel or something?
Is it because of the rolling release model? But it’s not the only one to have rolling releases.
This comes from personal testing of games. There was a DX11 bug intel igpus where UE4 games crash instantly on boot. I was able to work around this by forcing dx12 in arch, but when I moved to fedora it wasn’t working, that was until about 2 months later after an update. Since I don’t know exactly how far behind fedora is in terms of graphics drivers I said it in ambiguous terms.
I had to help a friend install the VMware kernel modules, since VMware is weird and VirtualBox sucks for virtualising Windows. I had to guide him through it step by step, making sure his commands were exact.
He’s only started using the terminal properly. Hell no, I’m not going to recommend Arch to him.
It’s because it’s bleeding edge, extremely well documented and extremely popular. Bleeding edge is exciting and you’re gonna end up on the arch wiki anyway regardless of distro, so you may as well go to the source.
Do mind though it doesn’t mean it’s easy, like at all, and I fundamentally agree, there’s a million better choices for first timers.
There is a certain kind of beginner I would recommend Arch to, those rare folks who really do learn best from the bottom up. Candidates must also see “computers” as a hobby, and have separate hardware from their daily driver they’re installing/learning Linux on.
I started with Arch too! Thinking in drop it only if is for Artix or ParabolaOS
Arch is the one of the last things I’d recommend for an out of the box experience.
I’d recommend Fedora with Gnome if people are coming from iOS and KDE if people come from Windows.
It’s also one of the last things I’d recommend to someone migrating from Windows to Linux lol it has a fairly high learning curve
Anecdotal, but I jumped straight into EndeavorOS from Windows 10 with very little knowledge about Linux before hand and it’s been a very “it just works” out of the box experience for me.
Granted I just use my PC mainly for gaming, but outside of a few issues that were my own fault for not reading/doing any research before wiping my Windows install, its been an incredibly smooth experience.
While I agree that overall it can be a smooth experience I’d say for the majority of people who are just coming to Linux I woukd rather recommend Linux Mint. Especially when someone doesn’t know what they’re doing at all yet.
Arch and its derivatives are cool dor tinkerers but realistically speaking if you’re looking for stuff that works out of the box without hassle it’s much much better to stick to distros like Linux Mint, Fedora, Pop_OS!, and similiar. Need the latest stuff? Flatpack or Fedora should be good, or Debian sid if you want a rolling release (tho realistically you won’t really need a rolling release over semi-rolling if you’re still a noob). Sure the AUR is cool but it’s a bit overrated in the sense that unless you’re actively looking for stuff on it 99% of the time you’re using it because something isn’t in the official repos and that’s not good, while distros like Linux Mint have large repos with pretty much everything you need already without a real need for the AUR.
I ran Debian Sid on my primary computer for a few years, and it broke hard several times, requiring things like booting into recovery and package dependency untangling to fix. It was years ago, so they might have better safeguards against that now, but there’s no way I’d recommend that to a new Linux Desktop user.
That’s because you shouldn’t recommend rolling releases at all to new users. I just put it there for completion sake
don’t recommend manjaro. instead - vanilla arch or endeavour os
Noob question here. Why so many ppl is against Manjaro? As someone who just tried many distros , Manjaro was the one that just worked for me without errors, untill I was bored to try something else.
https://manjarno.pages.dev/ (kinda ironic that the original manjarno site is dead)
I think it’s mostly do with the carelessness of the devs. They’ve let their certificates expire multiple times (and suggested their users put their clocks back as a workaround) and DDOSed the AUR a couple of times by accident. To be fair, I haven’t heard of any foul ups in a long time so maybe they’re being more careful now.
Now proceed to update Arch like a rolling distro. For a newbie, Ubuntu or Ubuntu based easy distros are better. I have a whole guide on Linux/Windows computing.
