My week with Linux: I'm dumping Windows for Ubuntu to see how it goes

[USAFRet]

I think any system running Windows should not be called a Personal Computer (PC) because Windows makes us do things their way, not our way. We need a different term, such as Microsoft Computer (MC).

I think we need a law requiring computers (sold to consumers at least) to support the use of more than one operating system,

They already do.

And instead of multiboot it might be enough if the consumer only needs to make a one-time choice of OS.

You mean Windows/Linux/Apple preinstalled, and the user chooses at first start up?

 

[jackt]

ubuntu is the worst distro today, i'd start with debian or mint...

 

[nrdwka]

well, unless there is working solution to install MS office 2021 or newer, it is hard to switch to Linux for work 🙁

 

[Cliff3.141592653589793238]

Using UEFI Secure Boot BIOS is just asking Microsoft permission to boot your PC it neither makes it more secure or safe.

 

[Cliff3.141592653589793238]

This is an example of the major hurdles from Linux becoming remotely mainstream... Adding a repository? I can only imagine my poor parents trying to figure out what the heck that even is or why they would need it, let alone how to do it. There are other things like that that you kind of get used to when you adopt Linux as an advanced user, but for your average user they would be non-starters.

That's why you do it for them and get Linux set up for auto updates. They only bug you every for years after that!

 

[DaRAGingLunatic]

Here's what it's like to live with Linux as my desktop OS.

My week with Linux: I'm dumping Windows for Ubuntu to see how it goes : Read more

Im super interested in this. A couple weeks ago i ventured too far in my generative ai exploration and experimentation quests and installed way too many things, ended up downloading a dodgy copy of Nim and well, end result i got hacked. Lost 16 TB of data after i initiated purge protocol. Thought i lost my business work files but luckily onedrive saved me, which is funny because i was trying to get rid of onedrive and switch to google drive when all this happened. Thankfully there is a 30 day windows to undelete things from onedrive recycle bin before it gets permanently discarded. After doing 3 reinstalls of windows for various reasons, and not to mention setting up 3 virtual machine windows installs that i have had to discard because of my n00bness in that area, and couldn’t get the configs right which is totally my mistakes. I have decided to give Fedora workstation a try. It’s decent, but i’m testing out too many things and some require things that are installed with ubuntu but aren’t with fedora. Many crashes and hangs. I love windows 11 but i hate the removal of options. And windows 11 doesn’t crash often at all for me. I might try arch, i might try ubuntu, i might try linux mint. Might just have them all installed and see what i like best. I might also just keep trying to trudge on with windows. I’m looking for the best software developer experience with jetbrains ide’s, to work with the bevy game engine, and also to work with ai.
Also right now, with windows, i am super paranoid about security, what processes are running, third party extensions, web browser exploitation, people remoting in. The use of code-tunnel exe.

 

[JamesJones44]

Linux is niche system for fanatics.....

No one tell this guy that Linux powers 70+% of the Smart Phones on the market, 60+% of the IoT space and 90+% of the Cloud space.

 

[bit_user]

And now with dnf its much closer to the convenience of apt instead of the rpm nightmares from years ago.

The SuSE equivalent of that is zypper. It's pretty good. You sometimes face conflict-resolution prompts, where it can sometimes be tricky to figure out what it's actually stuck on, but it's very apt-like, on the whole. Still RPM, underneath. I often run the rpm command to run queries, even though I never use it to directly install or remove packages.

 

[bit_user]

Why would I use Wayland when X11 still works if you kick it hard enough? 😀

I'm not trying to take sides, but the fact is that most of the Linux world is finally crossing over to Wayland. Even Raspberry Pi OS. Once X11 ceases to have critical mass, packages will begin deprecating their X11 support and you'll probably find you have no realistic alternative but to go along.

Personally, I have few gripes with X11. It's served me well. I'm also keenly aware of some of its limitations and where people have had to make workarounds, but we've gotten along fine. I just see the writing on the wall...

GNU Linux needs someone to guide the hand and find common ground within the FOSS tribes.

Not to spark another flame war, but with increasing amounts of the GNU toolchain getting Rust-written equivalents, we might not have to keep calling it GNU/Linux for long!
; )

I think I seem to recall hearing about some GNU-free distro, in fact.

 

[bit_user]

Many crashes and hangs.

My experience on Linux has been basically crash-free, for probably a decade now. That said, I don't use rolling-release distros. If you don't mind being a little behind the latest and greatest (some might say bleeding edge) of everything, and value stability, then steer clear of those rolling distros.

That said, I know people who use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and have very few issues with it, if any.

BTW, I also don't game on Linux and have only used Nvidia for any AI stuff.

 

[blppt]

I'm not trying to take sides, but the fact is that most of the Linux world is finally crossing over to Wayland. Even Raspberry Pi OS. Once X11 ceases to have critical mass, packages will begin deprecating their X11 support and you'll probably find you have no realistic alternative but to go along.

Wayland downright pisses me off. How friggin hard would it have been to install a basic screensaver? No, we don't use CRTs anymore, but we do have OLEDs, and I'm used to having at the very least a screen blanker without turning the screen off. Windows, MacOS, X11 *nix all have it.

These are the ridiculous compromises sometimes which dissuade people from leaving Windows. Wayland is the default in both 25.04 Ubuntu and Fedora 41+, and X.Org may be gone completely some day.

I understand there is a problem with locking the screen with a screensaver in Wayland due to the way it is written, but again, that just reinforces my previous point.

 

[mitch074]

I think you just have to upgrade to 25.04 and then install some kubntu metapackages. I certainly wouldn't reinstall from scratch, unless you wanted to do that for other reasons.

It would require him to install 24.10 first then 25.04 - it's a bit long having to do it twice (it's possible to do a straight update by messing with the repo files but I don't recommend it), when doing a reinstall without squashing the /home directory is a fair bit faster and safer.

 

[TerryLaze]

No one tell this guy that Linux powers 70+% of the Smart Phones on the market, 60+% of the IoT space and 90+% of the Cloud space.

Cloud has nothing to do with end users though, people aren't using the computers that power the cloud, people are just using the cloud.
Smartphones and IoT you just press icons, that's not really using an OS either, that's using a menu.
Maybe with the new android having a desktop mode but I doubt many will use that.
https://www.theverge.com/news/660509/android-desktop-mode-16-beta-demo

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Honestly for most just use Ubuntu, it's Debian and pretty much everything supports it. This makes it super easy for newcomers to get direction and troubleshoot. Wine64 / winetricks and dxvk get you very close to the same level of operation.

I second that because of two reasons. Ubuntu has the largest community and you can easily search for problems you might have and fix them without getting help from the community.

Linux Statistics 2025 - TrueList

Read on to discover the most relevant Linux statistics and learn about its user demographics, market share and adoption, usage data, and more!

truelist.co

 

[abq]

No one tell this guy that Linux powers 70+% of the Smart Phones on the market, 60+% of the IoT space and 90+% of the Cloud space.

He was talking about Desktop Linux. This whole article and thread is only about Desktop Linux in case you haven’t noticed. And he’s right.

I’m quite interested how the author will cope after his experiment. There’s a strong incentive to portray windows as bad (gets more clicks). So at the end of the experiment, I predict he will say something along the lines of "after the initial hurdles it’s actually great, the switch is permanent" but will still have another machine that runs Windows.

Desktop Linux is still a niche in 2025 and will continue to be for some time. Most Desktop Linux users who switched will go back to Windows. The only way to make the switch to Linux permanently is - quite ironically - to force users to use it (e.g. govt agencies, etc.).
I say this as a long time Linux and BSD user. Linux quite useful for some things - and sometimes the only way to get a niche program running. But on your main work/home/gaming PC it’s still an absolute disaster for the average user.

Lastly, ppl on this forum are not representative of the average user so they have absolutely no insight into what the avg user wants or needs.

Also lol @ this part of the article:

only 71 percent of them run Windows

 

[gamerk316]

I think the experience he's having with the docking station highlights exactly why most people get scared off Linux in very short order. As he noted:

Meanwhile, on Windows, when you install a driver, you don't need to go to the command prompt, run a script, say "yes" to about half a dozen system updates, create a new password for installing the driver and then reboot and enter that password again. This is a totally confusing and ridiculous process.

For 99% of users, if the solution is not "Download an installer, double click, hit OK and install", then it's too complicated.

 

[qxp]

well, unless there is working solution to install MS office 2021 or newer, it is hard to switch to Linux for work 🙁

Try LibreOffice, packages in Debian, Ubuntu and other distros.

 

[TerryLaze]

For 99% of users, if the solution is not "Download an installer, double click, hit OK and install", then it's too complicated.

Even that is too much, for some years now pretty much any mainstream device you plug into windows "just works" windows installs drivers automatically as soon as you connect them/it boots up with new hardware.
Win11 even lets me turn off the rgb on my mouse with their own drivers, on win10 my alternatives where installing the Gb sized driver from the mouse maker or black electrical tape.
Although I recently installed bazzite and that also had no issue with any of my hardware and didn't need any driver downloads (from my side at least)

The only drivers users still download are gpu drivers because they always want to be as up to date as possible for their games.

 

[gamerk316]

The only drivers users still download are gpu drivers because they always want to be as up to date as possible for their games.

Unless your still on a 4xxx class card and really don't want to chance an upgrade :/

But yeah, realistically most things just work when you insert them now. That's what users expect.

 

[das_stig]

In an ideal world, Windows 11 should be the last version as we know it now ... 😲 yes that shocked you.

What we should have is Microsoft creating a secure open source Linux, that the user can use as easy as WinX, links, shares, drives, networking, live updating without reboots etc etc everything that normally make people abandon Linux but with a WinX subsystem to support legacy apps, as Microsoft should be able to do this better than anybody else?, to give users/business time to migrate to native Linux versions and remember, they already have Linux running on various stuff, so have the experience.

Now you say but "Microsoft make money from Windows", true but the amount compared to everything else they do is miniscule. Office, hosting and services.

Take Office for example, if they dropped having to develop for Windows, how much money, resources, time can the pour into other things.

I hear the "Microsoft would control..." voices, but they wouldn't as Linux can never be fully owned by anybody, as that breaks compatibility which is the whole point.

Yes a radical idea, but so was computers in the home in the 70s until common in the 80s ??

 

[Mindstab Thrull]

One thing I would recommend when setting up a new PC in general is visiting ninite.com . A lot of commonly-used software such as browsers, Discord and more are available there with a simple installer - you basically select your options, download the installer, and then it downloads and installs the most recent version of the software you selected for you. It should still work for Linux as well. That might make initial installing easier for you.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

I can see that this is beginning to wander into areas not mentioned in the article. Please keep all comments centered on the article and do not wander into other areas or this conversation will be closed down.

 

[Lamarr the Strelok]

I've preferred linux over windows for years now. I'm lucky that I don't have to deal with office type software.As I understand it, Libre will be working fine as a ms replacement then ms will do something that screws up the compatibility for Libre users.If you have an office with linux and Libre office, that office will quit functioning pretty quick.
Correct me if I'm wrong because the only office apps I'm familiar with is a pdf reader.

 

[Grobe]

If you have an office with linux and Libre office, that office will quit functioning pretty quick.

Please elaborate. I've used Libre Office since, well long ago - never had any issue that wasn't my own fault.

 

[USAFRet]

If you have an office with linux and Libre office, that office will quit functioning pretty quick.

The only reason I use MS Office at home is because I get a multi PC license cheap from my employer.
If not for that, Libre.