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Sarah J. Frick, Deborah Fletcher, Austin C. Smith, Pirate and chill: The effect of netflix on illegal streaming, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 209, 2023, Pages 334-347, ISSN 0167-2681, doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2023.03… (sciencedirect.com/science/arti…) Abstract: Over 188 million people in the United States use a subscription video streaming service, yet digital piracy remains prevalent and costs the U.S. economy an estimated $29.2 billion annually. This paper investigates the relationship between a movie's availability on Netflix, the largest video subscription service, and intent to illegally stream the movie. We leverage a contract dispute that caused Epix (a cable network company) to move all its movies from Netflix to Hulu, representing a substantial decrease in the legal streaming availability of these movies. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that reducing legal streaming access via the removal of Epix movies from Netflix results in a 20% increase in piracy intent relative to movies that remained on Netflix, as measured by Google search volume. This study contributes to the understanding of the substitution between legal streaming services and movie piracy and has implications for content owners deciding what platform to offer their movie on. Keywords: Piracy; Online streaming; Digital goods; Netflix; Google searches
Sign up for our FREE newsletter! - https://www.compoundeddaily.com/Books we recommend - https://www.howmoneyworkslibrary.com/Listen on Spotify - https://open...
Same. I've never been much of a tv/movie person in general, but netflix in its prime was fantastic. But nowadays there are like 30 different streaming services, every single one is egregiously priced, and everything has their own exclusive libraries. Hell I'm surprised they're not streaming genAI slop "movies" yet at the rate they're all going (or maybe they already are, who knows). Fuck all of that noise.
Spotify did the same thing for me years ago. Went from a hand-maintained local library to Spotify, held on to that for like 10 years, ditched them at the start of this year when they were overwhelmingly supporting fascists with political donations. Switched to Tidal for a bit since it has higher quality and better artist payouts, but today I'm right back to hosting a local library (which is better than ever these days), buying what I can directly from artists to support them rather than subscription fees.
Russia has returned a group of Russian military personnel from territory controlled by Kiev, in exchange for Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers, the Russian Ministry of Defense reported.
Went on a business trip to Scotland a while ago. When I got there I called my wife from the hotel room to ask her if Orinj, our cat, was missing. She said yes & our daughter is looking for her. I said don't bother, here's here in Scotland with me. The dumbarse got into my bag.
The best trick the wealthy 1% have ever pulled off is to convince the politically vocal (and influential) next 20% that one day they could be super wealthy too, and so increases in tax on the current wealthy, are really increases of tax on their future wealth....
By the time the 20% realise the 1% have made sure they'll never get that wealthy a new generation is waiting to be hoodwinked!
Sans eux, la révolution ukrainienne n’aurait jamais triomphé.
En février 2014, des groupes paramilitaires ont affronté la police au coeur de Kiev et ont fait fuir le président Yanoukovitch. Ils ont installé un nouveau gouvernement.
Dans le récit médiatique communément admis, ils ont été présentés comme les héros de la révolution. Ils étaient du bon côté de la barricade.
En fait, il s’agissait de corps francs d’extrême droite, désormais lourdement armés.
Ils s’appellent Secteur Droit, Azov ou Svoboda. Ils ont créé de véritables armées parallèles, largement incontrôlées. A Odessa, en mai 2014, ils ont commis un massacre de masse sans être sanctionnés. 45 personnes brûlées vives. Un massacre passé sous le radar.
Comment a-t-il pu nous échapper ?
Pourquoi les démocraties occidentales n’ont-elles pas fait entendre leur voix ?
Sans doute parce que les milices nationalistes ukrainiennes jouaient les soldats supplétifs dans une guerre beaucoup plus large. La révolution ukrainienne a été soutenue massivement par la diplomatie américaine.
Dans la nouvelle guerre froide Russie-USA, l’Ukraine est un pion décisif dans une stratégie de contention de Poutine.
Pour mieux comprendre le conflit en #Ukraine, vous avez deux options complémentaires :
- Le film "Notre guerre" de BHL... histoire de bien comprendre l'intérêt des néo-libéraux atlantistes dans cette guerre d'abord orchestrée par les États-Unis d'Amérique, dont le peuple ukrainien paie aujourd'hui les conséquences parismatch.com/culture/cinema/…
- Le travail journalistique de fond de Paul MOREIRA qui montre l'ingérence US, en lien avec l'extrême droite ukrainienne video.antopie.org/w/kxZsqMMtC1…
Le Festival de Cannes va afficher son soutien à l’Ukraine avec une programmation spéciale de trois documentaires mardi, jour de la cérémonie d’ouverture, ont annoncé les organisateurs.
The set is now complete. Order your copies today! https://dutchsheets.mybigcommerce.com/Learn more about Give Him Fifteen here:Website: https://www.givehim15...
Der #Guardian dokumentiert im Wortlaut eine winzige Auswahl der hasserfüllten Äußerungen, mit der ausdrücklich für Kriegsverbrechen und Völkermord in #Gaza plädiert wird – nicht nur von #Medien, sondern auch von #Regierung und Vertretern von #Israel.
„Es ist jetzt klar, dass nichts dem Westen genug Scham bereiten wird, um Israel vom geplanten “totalen Sieg" in Gaza abzuhalten. Aber ich habe dies aufgeschrieben, um noch einmal daran zu erinnern, dass wir alle wussten, was kommen würde. Niemand kann Unwissenheit vortäuschen. Niemand kann so tun, als hätte er es nicht gewusst."
In April, the Irish-language rap trio Kneecap performed two sets at Coachella.
As is commonplace at the group’s shows, Kneecap displayed a message stating: “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” and the words “F*ck Israel. Free Palestine”.
Within a week, Kneecap’s US booking agent had dropped them, Fox News had likened the statements to “Nazi Germany”, a handful of summer shows had been cancelled.
Well, this is taking off! Sorry, I'm gonna have to mute this thread and just check back in periodically.
While we're here, @trans_rescue is doing amazing work helping trans people in various countries (including the US now) get to safety. Please follow and boost them! They can always use donations, too, if you are able.
given that they're one of the people there and they're exactly as likely as themselves to be a sex pest, they're not more likely to be a sex pest than all people there, just most people there
2 floors or a little garden would be such a dramatic change for the good
These days George and Washy are going out at night and both need to enter and leave via the front door since the neighbours below trashed the walking space..
So we're always opening and closing the front door the whole night
Not even taking about the worrying if something happens to them.. I just wanna keep them inside (or garden) within a controlled space but with enough room
Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun on Wednesday held individual meetings in east China's Qingdao city with his counterparts from Belarus, Iran, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia.
Die Union signalisiert mit der Absage an Linken-Fraktionschefin Reichinnek für das Geheimdienst-Gremium, dass sie deren Abgeordnete nicht braucht. Sie könnte sich täuschen.
Best wel een aardig stuk. Diversiteit van strategie is super belangrijk! Al deze groepen hebben inderdaad zo hun functie binnen het actiewezen (mooi archaïsch woord is dat toch 😉). Grote groepen fungeren als instap, en de kleinere zorgen ervoor dat het Overtom-venster radicaal naar links wordt getrokken. Zo werkt dat ook in de partijpolitiek. Je ziet dat aan het Gaza-standpunt van GL/PvdA, die door activistische leden naar links is getrokken. Daarom is het ook belangrijk dat er zo meteen ook een radicaal linkse partij in de Kamer (terug) komt, om GL/PvdA links te houden.
NRC, Dorine Booij: *Door nieuwe, radicalere, actiegroepen kan XR zich onderscheiden als de ‘redelijke activisten’*
"Actiegroep Geef Tegengas gaat radicaler te werk dan voorgangers, in een mix van klimaatrebellie en solidariteit met Palestina. Bij sommige acties schuren ze bewust langs de grenzen van de wet. En ze trekken op met andere actiegroepen. „We willen het systeem raken waar het pijn doet.” …"
Activisten: Actiegroep Geef Tegengas gaat radicaler te werk dan voorgangers, in een mix van klimaatrebellie en solidariteit met Palestina. Bij sommige acties schuren ze bewust langs de grenzen van de wet. En ze trekken op met andere actiegroepen.
26ο Αντιρατσιστικό Φεστιβάλ: Δίνει ραντεβού από τις 4-6 Ιουλίου στο Πάρκο Γουδή «Μάθαμε και διαλύσαμε όλες τις λέξεις για να φτιάξουμε μία: Δικαιοσύνη», το φετινό σύνθημα του Φεστιβάλ ethnos.gr/culture/article/3713…
Ahold Delhaize, one of the world's largest food retail chains, is notifying over 2.2 million individuals that their personal, financial, and health information was stolen in a November ransomware attack that impacted its U.S. systems.
Meeting between USB and Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo one of "LOS CINCO" Cuban heroes A meeting was held this morning at the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba between the USB International Department and the National Coordinator of the Cuban Revolutionary …
she sent me ANOTHER message before i had a chance to respond. w*men are strange. don't talk to you for years then if you don't respond within a day they are like why is he ignornig me
Μολις με πηραν τηλεφωνο απο το νοσοκομειο, ο χειρουργος ωρλ που ημουν στη λιστα για εγχειρηση στο διαφραγμα παραιτηθηκε. Ετσι θα πρεπει να ξανακλεισω 1η Ιουλιου ραντεβου για ωρλ για να με επανεξετασει και να μου ξανακλεισει ραντεβου για εγχειρηση.
Εν τω μεταξυ ρωτησα και η κακομοιρα η γραμματεας μου ειπε πως αν (που θα) χρειαστει εγχειρηση θα ξαναμπω στο τελος της λιστας, αναλογα με τη βαρυτητα του περιστατικου, οπως ολοι οι ασθενεις που περιμεναν απο αυτο το γιατρο
Το γραφω για να εχουμε μια εικονα του τι επιπτωσεις εχει η διαλυση των νοσοκομειων
Να και μια φορά που θα συμφωνήσω απολύτως με τα γραφόμενα σε αλλά σόσιαλ για τον Γαρμπή...
Πράγματι αν δεν υπήρχε ο Ελεύθερος Τύπος ειδικα την δεκαετία του 80 στην Αθήνα και οι -οχι πάντα πετυχημένες- μεταφράσεις του με το ψευδώνυμο Αλεξίου, σίγουρα ο ιδεολογικός χώρος της Αναρχίας θα ήταν φτωχότερος ...όπως τώρα δηλαδή. Υπήρξε φάρος μόρφωσης, σημείο συναντήσεων, μέρος για να αφήσεις δωρεάν ή με συμβολική τιμή το φανζίν σου ή το πολιτικό κόμικ σου, το περιοδικό απ την επαρχιακή σου πόλη ακόμα και την ηχογραφημένη σου ντέμο κασέτα με τα επαναστατικά σου τραγούδια (συνήθως πάνκ). Ναι μερικές φορές ηταν μουτζούφλης και τα είχε με όλους και όλα και εμείς οι τότε πιτσιρικάδες τον τσιγκλάγαμε να μας πει και να μάθουμε τις ιδεολογικές διάφορες των Εξαρχείων και του χώρου.
Προσωπικά αν και είχε συμβεί να κάτσω άπειρες ώρες στη ζωοδόχου πηγής, το μικρόβιο του αναρχισμού είχε προλάβει να μου το μεταδώσει ο Αργύρης ο Τσακαλίας, θείος των Ξηρών της 17Ν, ως καθηγητης θρησκευτικών στο Γυμνάσιο...στην "γιάφκα" του στην Τζαβέλλα όταν έγραφε το μανιφέστο των Συνολιστών...
Πολλά πράγματα έχουν αλλάξει σίγουρα. Παρόλα αυτά σε σύγκριση με το παρελθόν όλα (εκτός της δέσμευσης στον αγώνα) είναι παραπάνω τώρα. Εκδόσεις, ομάδες, αναλύσεις, χώροι (που το κράτος επιτίθεται με μανία) όπου μπορεί να πάει οποιοασδήποτε για να μάθει ή να προσφέρει πράγματα, πληθώρα έμπειρων συντροφισσών που μοιράζονται πράγματα, μουσικές, αυτομορφώσεις και μαθήματα και εκδηλώσεις· τα πάντα. Αυτό που χάθηκε είναι η ουσιαστική επαφή. Η όλο και μεγαλύτερη ψηφιοποίηση της κοινωνικής ζωής έχει αφήσει όλα τα παραπάνω άμαζα και εν τέλει αδιάφορα γιατί οι πολλοί θεωρούν ότι κάνοντας ένα σχόλιο σε κάποιο σόσιαλ αλλάζουν πράγματα και συνειδήσεις· @@ριές. Πιστεύω πως το κύριο πρόβλημα είναι ο ψηφιακός αναλφαβητισμός μας, ακόμα και των ψηφιακά ιθαγενών ή μάλλον, κυρίως αυτών.
The FBI connected this wallet to an earlier Ramp account registered using a UK driver's license in the name "Kai Logan West." That driver's license was also associated with a #Coinbase account, registered by West but under his "Kyle Northern" alias.
Both the Ramp and Coinbase accounts used West's personal #email address, the FBI says.
Protests today in #PaloAlto and #NewYork blockaded buildings and disrupted a developer conference, demanding Palantir, owned by tech-fascist Peter Thiel, cut ties with ICE.
Six people were arrested in New York City in protests over the firm’s alleged work building a massive new surveillance apparatus for President Donald Trump
Hannah Thomas, the Greens candidate at the 2025 federal election in the seat of Grayndler, was one of several protesters smashed by police this morning outside a local arms manufacturer.
It's unclear at this stage when NSW police will announce that they've investigated the incident and cleared themselves of responsibility.
'... earlier in the month, a leak exposed a letter sent to the organisers of Glastonbury in which a number of music industry heavyweights ask the festival to “question the wisdom of continuing to have [Kneecap] on the lineup”. The letter was signed by top agents from major live music agencies.'
The letter seems to have gone down the memory hole?
Order Head Cage Here: http://bit.ly/PigDestroyerHCDigital Downloads / Stream: http://smarturl.it/PigDestroyerHCSubscribe to Relapse Records Channel: http://y...
541 likes, 39 comments - jewsagainstfash on June 26, 2025: "Sharing an alert from Antifascist Alerts Naarm telegram (subscribe to those legends if you haven't yet)
Looks like this particular lineup isn't that sketchy, which is what old mate means wh…
An impressionist painting is more beautiful than a photograph of the same scene because the painting expresses much more than just physical reality.
These are some impressionist paintings of the American artist Fredric Michael Wood. It is said he often used family members, especially his daughters, as subjects.
BOOKS about Claude Monet:[1] MAD ENCHANTMENT: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King --- https://bit.ly/2XhFkpE[2] CLAUDE MONET M...
July 25 - The International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners (#j25antifa) List of Antifascist Prisoners #j25antifa Artwork, Flyers, Posters Take Action! العربية Bahasa Indonesia 中文 Deutsch English Español Français Ελληνικά Italiano 日本語 Ku…
I wrote something for Overland about it back in 2017:
'In 2014, the 25 July was nominated as ‘International Day of Solidarity with Jock Palfreeman’. In 2015, thanks largely to the efforts of New York City Antifa, this became an ‘International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners’, which in 2017 is publicising Jock’s case as well as those of antifascist prisoners in Belarus, Russia and Sweden.'
PS. Jock was released from prison in Bulgaria a few years ago.
It’s been almost ten years since 21-year-old Australian Jock Palfreeman found himself alone one night in Sofia, Bulgaria, confronted by a group of fascist football hooligans he’d witnessed attack two Roma men.
' ... an impatience with details, which puts a prize on approximation, a desperate craving for ‘respectability’ which leads to conformism, and all of that supported by a lazy authoritarianism and a diffident attitude to knowledge and things of the spirit because, where everyone is ‘tolerably’ ignorant, and things are ‘harmlessly’ uncertain, what passes for tolerance — but is in fact indifference — spreads around a sense of comfort.'
I’ve recently begun reading Never Give In: Three Italian antifascist exiles in Australia, 1924-1956 by V. G. Venturini (Search Foundation, 2007); the three being Francesco Fantin, Omero Schia…
"The Albanese government's support for the illegal bombing of Iran was a choice between US President Donald Trump & international law. They chose Trump, & shockingly did so for no other reason than the hope it would mean Aukus goes ahead."
“War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice.”
"War creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice." ~ C. S. Lewis
Missile shipment blocked at Brescia airport. The fight against arms trafficking in Italian airports continues Rome, 25/06/2025, 14:20 Thanks to the USB strike call, the shipment of weapons due to transit through the civilian airport in Montichiari, B…
TalieVision's growing "Documentary Films" playlist currently contains a list of almost 140 pro-White & White-friendly documentary films by such legendary filmmakers as Dennis Wise, Frederick Toben, Byron Jost, and more.
TalieVision is television for a Whiter future. It's a growing archive of almost 600 pro-White and White-friendly (mostly) full-length videos, featuring news, interviews, speeches, lectures, documentary films, concerts & other live performances, movies, and much more.
The #Genocide in #Gaza, or the End of the #Arab World palestinechronicle.substack.co… @palestine #gazagenocide #genocidecomplicity #Palestine #FreePalestine "Edward Said, in a measured and exacting essay, recounted a pivotal moment: watching the signing of the Oslo Accords in New York, seated beside Mahmoud Darwish. Hearing Arafat, he thought he was listening to Rabin. He wrote that the shame was so deep he wished the earth would swallow him. He understood then: a threshold had been crossed.
Today, that threshold has become the norm. Gaza is no longer a diplomatic issue. It is a fault line: between memory and amnesia, morality and management, sovereignty and servitude.
The official Arab order has not faltered. It has abdicated. It no longer represents. It disables, surveils, and disciplines. It no longer thinks. It replicates.
This is not a crisis. It is a strategy. This is not a defeat. It is a doctrine: do not disturb the order. Preserve the flows. Silence the pain.
Palestine does not resist to exist. It resists to prevent the erasure of truth.
Gaza stands. Because if it falls, everything falls with it.
And those who abandon it today will answer. Not before a court, but before history."
📢 A committee representing influential families in #gaza on Thursday rejected ISR Crime Minister Netanyahu's accusation that some aid entering the war-torn Palestinian territory was being looted by "KHamas"
"Gaza's tribal leaders affirmed that all aid is fully secured under their direct supervision and is being distributed exclusively through international agencies," the committee representing influential families said.
An explosive Israeli investigative report published Friday confirms that Israeli occupation forces have been deliberately killing Palestinian civilians gathering at humanitarian aid centers in Gaza without justification.
The Haaretz newspaper [..] revealed that military commanders gave orders last month to open fire on unarmed Palestinian crowds under the pretext of “dispersing” them—even though they posed no threat.
Watan-An explosive Israeli investigative report published Friday confirms that Israeli occupation forces have been deliberately killing Palestinian civilians gathering at humanitarian aid centers in G
There have been shocking admissions in a report from Israeli newspaper Haaretz, quoting Israeli soldiers and officers saying they’d been given orders to shoot unarmed Palestinians who were seeking aid in order to disperse crowds.
The Israeli military and the GHF, which operates the aid distribution programme, have either denied or downplayed the fact that there are Palestinians getting killed while seeking aid.
There have been shocking admissions in a report from Israeli newspaper Haaretz, quoting Israeli soldiers and officers saying they’d been given orders to shoo...
You have been ransomed with a price. Receive spiritual sight and courage by Holy Spirit so that you will never again be enslaved. Don’t be destroyed for lack of knowledge of your great salvation.
Haaretz - IDF officers and soldiers say they were ordered to fire at unarmed crowds near food distribution sites in Gaza, even when no threat was present. is.gd/jQ9Lv2
Wannabe "progressives" and Western - only in name - democracies ruled by clowns elected with 25% of the vote plus 50% abstentions, feel they have the legitimacy to overthrow something that has the support of 80% of the people. Because they know better...... Fucking clowns
Sheikh Qassem: The central goal of 'Israel' and America is to destroy any independent and supportive resistance force in our region and any movement seeking to liberate Palestine. english.alahednews.news/fastne…
Alahednews - Fastnews - Sheikh Qassem: The central goal of ‘Israel’ and America is to destroy any independent and supportive resistance force in our region and any ...
Tucker Carlson's recent interview with Ted Cruz surprised many with his strong critique of the U.S.-Israeli alliance. But Carlson's "woke right" view has a long history in conservative politics and should not be mistaken for Palestine solidarity. mondoweiss.net/2025/06/how-to-…
Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Ted Cruz surprised many with his strong critique of the U.S.-Israeli alliance. But Carlson’s “woke right” view has a long history in conservative politics and should not be mistaken for Palestine solidarity.
if you can detect it it's not really omertà, now Is it. Short of some real obvious and extremely rare cases when some fuck gets gunned down in the middle of the town square and non of the 150+ people present sees a damn thing, that is 🤣
because nobody tells me what I must and mustn't do, and I never said it's a good idea to live in Europe. It's only a good idea for ME given MY particular circumstances and needs. You do you.
ESA’s Living Planet Symposium came to a close today, concluding a week of networking, discussions and meeting of curious, scientific minds.
Today, one of the focal points was thermal imaging instruments, which are critical for monitoring land-surface temperature – and will be carried on upcoming missions such as the upcoming Copernicus Land Surface Temperature Mission. ESA’s Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission celebrated passing its 15-year milestone in orbit – the mission has helped improve weather and climate models. Three new contracts were signed for ESA’s InCubed programme, which is central to the agency’s efforts to turn promising concepts into successful Earth observation services, strengthening Europe’s position in this rapidly evolving sector.
Tiranı koruyan silahlar değil, onu destekleyen ve bütün ülkenin ona kul olmasını sağlayan üç beş kişidir. Başta inanması zor gelse de bu harfiyen doğrudur. Bu beş altı kişi her zaman tiranın gözüne girer, ona yaklaşır ve bizzat tiranın kendisi onları zulümlerinin ortağı, zevküsefalarının yareni, pis ahlaksızlıklarının pezevengi, yağmalarının yardakçısı olmaya davet eder. Bu altı kişi, reislerini öyle iyi idare ederler ki tiran, topluma yalnızca kendi kötülüğüyle değil onların aracılığıyla da zulmeder. Bu altı kişinin altında da saygın yerlere getirip beslediği altı bin kişi bulunur. Cimriliklerini yahut zalimliklerini gözetmeleri, emirlerini vaktinde yerine getirmeleri, dört bir yanında kötülük etmeleri için bu altı bin kişiyi eyaletlerin yahut mali işlerin başına getirirler. Böylece bu kişiler, yalnızca onların himayesi altındayken varlıklarını sürdürebilir yahut kanunlardan ve cezalardan muaf tutulabilir.
Pues lo de comer sola el día de Navidad, ni tan mal. Con mi perrito,mis gatitos y una buena peli. Como si la Navidad fuese importante. 😁😁 #lagrimasdefacha #familialaquetengoaquicolgada
If your library is on steam, then there's nothing to worry about! Works natively on Linux. If your library is on other platforms, I'd honestly think twice about switching full time. Dual booting might be a better option. My library is split amongst multiple platforms and I decided that it wasn't working well enough for me. Steam games will work great though!
Many distros are easy enough to install and navigate as a newbie. My go to for years now has been Linux Mint! It's based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.
oh that's cool. nope, whole library is on windows on one PC right now.
I was thinking about trying out dual booting to get a feel for it. my understanding was that many programs wont work with linux or require complicated fixes to get them running. so id hate to be left downstream without a paddle, so to speak
For testing try the live USB sticks Just flash them to an empty stick with programs like etcher, then power dowb and select the stick in your bios (usually reachable by hammering f1, f2 or Del while starting
(Remember that performance will be much better when installing it for real compared tusing running it from a stick though)
Dual boot will work and is not that hard to setup, but you should back up all your data before trying it.
Also when dual booting to avoid duplicates etc I have all my documents and stuff on a USB stick, so I don't have a version in my win and a version iny linux. Cloud works as well
They mean other platforms like GOG or Epic, not stuff like consoles.
Steam games mostly work, with some exceptions. You can check out ProtonDB to see more precisely what games work, which ones straight up don't, and which ones need a fix. ProtonDB will usually also tell you what that fix is, which is handy.
But most of the time, you can just hit play and not worry about it.
A note on dualbooting. Linux uses different filesystems from windows. It can access windows NTFS partitions, but it's not a smooth experience.
A common pitfall is trying use your game library while it is still on a windows filesystem, from linux. Since you can see the folders, and even add them in steam, it'll seem like it should work. But you'll run into issues actually running the games. It's technically possible, but not worth the hassle.
Generally you really want to either format your storage and redownload your games, or if you have the space, copy them over to a fully supported file system.
thank you for that tip. I currently run all my games and docs from external HDs. (my pc itself only has a small amount of SSD storage used only for booting etc, and i dont know how to install a new hard drive yet...) I would have definitely tried to just plug in my HD and tried to run it through steam lol
Depends which programs. Also, it's very possible that there are open source alternatives
But if you are dead set on using exactly the same program, appdb.winehq.org/ is a database of if and how to make them run on Linux. Wine's core focus is games, but many programs are covered there too
One thing to keep in mind is that dual booting can work to highlight what you’re missing because generally all of the games that run on Linux will run on Windows, but the reverse is not true. It becomes easy to just default to windows so you don’t have to reboot to play something that doesn’t work in Linux and that can undermine the attempt to switch the OS.
Very few programs require anything complicated to get them working. A lot of productivity programs don't support Linux though, like anything from Adobe, but there are usually alternatives, and if not can often be run in a VM. This probably doesn't matter for you though, since you don't seem to be particularly technical (not an insult). You probably know what programs you need that may not work. If there's nothing like that then you'll be fine.
Yeah, anything Adobe won't work, but there are plenty of PDF viewers that do. Also, yes, Steam, VLC, and Firefox all work perfectly fine on Linux. You shouldn't have any issues.
If your library is on other platform like gog, epic, amazon or off platform .exe you can use heroic launcher and for most stuff it works just as well.
For some games there is a little more learning curve because you have to translate custom steam configurations found on protondb to do the same thing in heroic but overall you actually have way more control then steam.
The only reason “id think twice” is if you play lots of games with anticheat which does not work on every distro (like arch btw).
Yes, ez one (if you have installed operating systems before and know how to paste an error passage into google ) -4hours and your done start to finish. (Given you have standard hardware and don't want to set up something crazy like dual boot with raid and nas)
Moderate complexity if you have never done anything like that, plan 2-6 evenings to get it fully working with everything you need
Also: consider your scopes. For most cases Linux will just work, you just have to get used to some different interfaces.
BUT: some things will not run under linux no matter how hard you try --> google if stuff you can't live without will work
(for me I still have a dual boot windows for playing league of legends and running my vive wireless adapter, as those will not run under Linux.
For games use protonDB
I may be oldschool, but for people not comfortable around terminals I would suggest Debian KDE as it never breaks and the transition from windows is easy. You can do everything from GUI (clicky button interfaces)
For the installation of steam you might need a terminal, but there are good guides online (and you really dont need to be a wizard for that) from where you can just copy paste (when searching just add your distro e.g. "install steam Debian", and once you've got that running you can just run every game from within steam.
Since Steam has done a lot of work with proton, most games just run under Linux. In steam: Install-->play
For nearly all games not directly running, you can just force them to run with proton. It will say: "Game not compatible" in steam, you just click the gear icon on the right to open settings, go to "compatibilty" and tick "force use of compatibility layer" and select the newest proton from the drop down
The button where steam previously said "not compatible" magically turns into the blue "install" button we all know and love. And nearly all games run with only minor inconveniences (like showing keyboard hotkeys even when playing with a gamepad) or no issues at all.
You need to be aware that some games using kernel level anticheat (e.g. league of legends, valorant) can not and will never run on Linux, if the developers of the games don't add the possibility.
EDIT: for programs not related to gaming its often easier to use an alternative, if the program is not available for Linux. Most times its also more privacy foccused, open source and free
I was you 18 months ago. It's certainly achievable, even with a crazy busy schedule. Highly recommended that you go for it.
Here are the unpopular opinions that attract downvotes: * adopting Linux is painful. Stuff breaks. Stuff doesnt work. You will be battling uphill, but hopefully you'll find it worthwhile in the end. * moving to Linux permanently wouldn't have been possible for me without AI. Now you can ask AI and it will almost always solve the problem for you. In the old days, you'd just have forum posts saying "just compile the driver and do a 10 step process with terminal that you need to figure out from the wiki....noob". But now, these previously system breaking problems are now easily solvable without spending the whole weekend on a single issue. * don't let go of Windows to start with. Put Linux on a secondary machine. Do not dual boot, you will break your installation and won't be able to troubleshoot it and will have to do a full wipe (along with the time and data loss that comes with that). * Don't get caught up in the distro wars. Pick Linux Mint, or a similar very beginner friendly distro. I prefer KDE desktop so I would recommend something else..... But don't go for anything with even moderate difficulty. * Check protondB.com for the games you play. Some don't work on Linux (e.g. Apex Legends).
Yeah, this. In fact, going with hardware that's too-too new can lead to a different problem on Linux.
OP, if you're buying hardware, it's worth web searching to make sure people have tried it on Linux and are having good experiences with it. Since most manufacturers only care if their stuff works on Windows, it can take a little while for Linux devs to write drivers and get them shipped in Linux distros.
Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don't have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.
AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn't Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt. You shouldn't really need to do much if you can get through the install anyways.
I am really curious what "system breaking problems" you have? My latest laptop over the last 2+ years has been so uneventful and boring. Never used a command line on it, but don't forget when you see people share command line fixes, it is because it is the easiest way to directly share information. Not the only way to do something. My desktop has had a few hiccups over the last 5, but that is what I get for running Arch on it.
I'm glad it worked smoothly for you and it sometimes is a smooth effortless experience for some people; but if you want to "convert" people then you've got to be honest about the fact that people commonly face difficulties. I've commented about my Linux issues before and I can paste the comment again here to give an example:
One of the first issues I had problems with was figuring out what was wrong with Street Fighter 6 giving ultra low frame rates in multiplayer, but working fine in single player. It needed disabling of split lock protections in the CPU.
A recent update in OpenSUSE made the computer fail to boot half the time and made the image on the right half of the screen garbled. I rolled back to before the update and am using it without updating for a few weeks to see if the GPU driver problem gets ironed out (AMD GPU).
I installed VMware Horizon for my job's remote work login and it fucked up my Steam big picture mode and controller detection. I didn't bother trying to figure that out and just uninstalled VMware remote desktop.
I managed to install my printer driver, but manually finding the correct RPM file to install would not be tolerable for normies. Update: I'm using CachyOS now and the Brother website says Arch plainly isn't supported. When I install the driver from AUR that's specific to my printer, then it doesnt print and just spews out endless blank pages.
I still can't get my Dualshock 3 controller to pair via Bluetooth despite instructions on the OpenSUSE wiki. I've stopped trying to troubleshoot that and use my 8BitDo controller instead.
I still can't find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.
Figuring out how to edit fstab to automount my secondary drives is not a process normies would be able to execute. I still can't figure out how to use this to auto-mount my Synology NAS.
Plasma added monitor brightness controls to software and these seem to have disappeared for me now, and I can't figure out why. It reappears intermittently, but then disappears when it feels like.
My KDE Plasma task bar widgets for monitoring CPU/GPU temp worked till I reinstalled OpenSUSE, and I can't figure out why they've decided to not work on this fresh install. System monitor can see the temperature sensors just fine still. Update: this seems to have fixed itself (maybe through am update?).
Flatpak Steam app wouldn't pick up controllers for some reason. Minor issue, but unnecessary jankiness.
My laptop fingerprint reader plainly isn't supported.
Trying to set up dual boot kept destroying (I.e. making unbootable) either the Linux install or the Windows install. I have up eventually as I couldn't figure out how to fix GRUB from the command line.
I've been trying to find a solution for keeping a downloaded synchronised copy of my online storage (Mailbox.org). Can't figure out rsync. I get an error with Celeste and it doesn't sync after the initial file install. Having a 2 way sync for online storage could be considered a pretty basic requirement these days and something Mailbox can easily suggest an app for in Windows.
People do not tolerate this amount of jankiness. And this doesn't include the discomfort with relearning minor design differences between OS's when switching. Linux is a bit of a battle with relearning and troubleshooting things that would never be problematic on Windows. I know we all love Linux, but allow people to be honest rather than being dismissive. I had over 2 decades of experience with Windows and it had its quirks and problems, but my preexisting familiarity with it made it much easier to use and troubleshoot.
Sure I know I'm a noob and not doing this right. But that's the point.....can someone with limited knowleddge still work this OS?
I agree that computers can have issues. But none of these are linux only. Windows does all this stupid shit too. My printer wont work with windows, only linux (how the hell this can be true is beyond me). Bluetooth drops in windows, works fine in linux. The latest nvidia update on windows broke all games making it black screen until I used some regedit fixes. A windows update broke my firmware on a video card for a while, almost got RMA'd. I could go on, talk about Jankiness. I don't use windows as my main computer due to it being so all over the place. I say this as a MSDN dev and windows server and azure dev and support person. I remote entirely from Linux, I need to have an OS that works.
My point is windows does this shit too.
But: That is your issues are a long list that seems to have a repeating theme: OpenSuse.
You don't need to edit FSTAB to add a drive, there is a gui for that, for whatever that's worth.
I have not had any of these issues on the 5 or so linux computers I use daily. I have had a few upgrades in Arch cause me to update grub or roll back, but that is about it.
Over the last two years I have found Fedora KDE has been amazingly easy to use and update.
I still can’t find a horizontal page scrolling PDF app.
That one has me curious: what is that? (I mean by definition - scroll - that can't be a thing, lol) But I am sure it is, got examples?
OpenSUSE is what helped me get past even more basic problems with getting my PC up and running, that's why I stuck with it because I couldn't even get this far on other distros. I'm on CachyOS now and can manage better now that I've learnt to troubleshoot some of the main issues.
Horizontal page scrolling. I want to be able to read massive documents by scrolling through side-by-side pages rather than scrolling up/down.
Okular can be set to do that, but it doesnt have a scroll bar, which you might not like. Firefox can do that as well, but I concede that browser PDF viewers are not ideal.
Stuff breaks? What breaks? I don't have stuff that breaks. Windows has been far more breaky to me over the last decade than Linux has ever been. What have you been doing? This may have been true 20 years ago, but not today.
I've been trying to adapt to Linux Mint/Cinnamon as my daily driver and yes, stuff breaks. My sata and nvme connected drives kept disappearing every time I started my computer so I had to learn about mounting and auto mount (they are just there on Windows). My game and program installs on Bottles and Lutris kept going "missing" and losing their .exe's. I downloaded 70gb of Guild Wars 2 files at least 8 times because I thought each time I had fixed the "files missing" problem only to have them disappear on reboot. I still didn't figure out what was happening and am only able to play now because I found out how to use the provider portal on Steam. I can't make launcher short cuts from the actual executable, I have to go to the desktop and do it and when I do, it won't let me drag it to my panel for some reason. When I thought I had found a solution, I reactivated some launcher applets and ended up with three different instances of my panel launcher icons and still no ability to add new ones. My systems connected to the same ethernet used to show up in my network panel and I was able to access my shared folders and media files but they all stopped showing up a few days ago and I had to learn all about Samba share and minimum and maximum server protocols and still am trying to find a solution.
Yes, Windows breaks stuff too, but Linux is NOT a perfect product that works flawlessly for everyone and [@cRazi_man@europe.pub is right. All of their points are things I've been struggling with and would warn a Linux noob about. I personally would rather trust those random forum posts than LLM summaries (and have solved some issues that way) but otherwise I agree with each of their bullet points.
Yes mounting is different, but that is not a Linux issue. Same as when you boot into windows, but an EXT formatted drive will not appear AND it will never mount. Windows helpful choice is "unknown" and offer to format. These are just OS differences, not breakages.
Cinnamon might be part of your problem with shortcuts.....
Yeah SMB shares can be tricky. I have issues with them in Windows as well, not linux specifically.
I am not saying linux is perfect. All computers rely on a person being able to deal with them. I just find it much more stable then windows ever was. You add bottles and Lutris into the mix, and now it is a third party software issue: just like plenty of software in windows as well.
I think there's a difference in personal interpretation of what a "Linux issue" is, here. It sounds like you might be interpreting "Linux issue" as problems with the software itself, or its capabilities, features and processes etc. Personally, I am using "issues with Linux" to mean the entire user experience from start up to using the GUI and whether or not I can do the things I want and need to do on a daily basis easily and intuitively. Certainly, Linux as a software plays into it, but the things you are brushing off as 3rd party incompatibilities are absolutely part of the Linux experience in my opinion. I'm not trying to throw blame, but when introducing new people to Linux it's best to acknowledge there may be some tinkering and adaptation needed to get things working as they should.
when introducing new people to Linux it’s best to acknowledge there may be some tinkering and adaptation needed to get things working as they should.
Depends on what "should" means. My printer for example will not work with windows. It works fine with linux. So.... that really is a printer driver issue. No matter which one it works with.
As for the OS out of the box, everything works on a fresh install of either - although linux is far more loaded with ready to go software, and windows requires you to add it. And any of the software you add to either can cause breakages, that is computing.
I noticed over the years that Linux works fairly well for people who did not start with windows first. Both have learning curves, but habits are habits.
I am going to take my linux laptop for an example: 2 years. No tinkering. There is nothing to do, it just works.
My other laptop (windows): damn thing need tinkering all the time: turn off this, regedit that, just to get the nagware and crap out. Won't allow remote desktop with the license, needs drivers to be updated, software that came with it is bloatware garbage.
I've been tinkering with my Linux machine for the past 8 months or so, and having random issues like the ones I listed and more besides that I've already solved. Meanwhile my old Windows 7 machine has been working flawlessly for about 8 years, no regedits or crap software issues. I think I had a driver issue with my mouse a couple years ago that I clicked a button and it fixed it. My laptop running Windows 7 also has been working flawlessly since about 2014 beyond prompting me to format media that I connect to it, but I press a button and that goes away. Recently I've been having compatibility issues with software because it's such an old OS but as you said, that's a 3rd party software issue, not a problem with Windows 7.
Glad your Linux experience is so smooth though. Must be nice!
Two desktops and three laptops, they all work great. My biggest ongoing issue, and it is fair to say it is a problem, is VR. I have not tried recently, but that is one area that was smooth to set up in windows and I havent had luck in Linux.
This is a pointless conversation man. There are clearly plenty of Linux zealots on Lemmy. Noobs like me have had a hard time with Linux. I've never understood the argument that "my experience was different, so your experience is invalid". Once someone learns about something, they forget what it's like to have no knowledge of the thing.
The Linux community was reacting like this when Linus (from LTT) installed PopOS and tried to install Steam and it somehow wiped his desktop environment. Shit happens in Linux and the noob experience is brushed aside, while touting "the year of Linux". I really don't get it.
I agree with your overall point, as a long time Linux, Windows and Mac poweruser who has shepherded many into a new OS in the past. People who don't like to explore new/different technologies as a hobby get quite comfortable with whatever they're used to and the way that it works and then quickly lose empathy for those that are earlier in their journeys.
Just to clarify on the Linus Pop!_OS thing, he didn't read the prompt that said he was about to uninstall his desktop environment and then typed in "yes I understand this can break my system" or something like that, which had been added as a prompt to keep people from not reading the warning. Anyways people got mad that he did that because he literally ignored the warning and *the meaning of the words he had to type* that had been added to idiot proof the thing.
AI? Look, I helped a friend fix a new install. It wasn’t Linux fault, it was a setting in the bios that needed to be changed. But the AI had them trying all sorts of things that were unrelated, and was never going to help. Use with a grain of salt.
I have the same experience but sometimes it was even worse; Sometimes the AI would confidently recommend doing things that might lead to breakage. Personally I recommend against using AI to learn Linux. It's just not worth it and will only give new users a false impression of how things work on Linux. People are much better off reading documentation (actual documentation, not SEO slop on random websites) or asking for help in forums.
I just switched and, yeah, the learning curve can be tough. This month I've learned two dozen abbreviations just because I've had to install, fix things, and customize. No way the average users would want to go through that.
The results can be cool though. Terminal opens as a matrix window and then neofetches an ascii art image of my face. Makes it all worth it haha. Also, fuck Microsoft.
Yes. Steam is available on Linux, pretty easy to install and it comes with a compatibility layer (Proton) which works quite well.
Linux is a bit different than Windows. But I'd say just using it is about as complicated as using Windows. You'll just have to try and see whether you like it. And if it's hard or easy for you to relearn a few things. I mean if you're in the Browser and Steam all day, those will be the same applications and also look and work the same way. Other than that you could face some issues with gaming hardware and you have to fiddle with things, or everything works out of the box. You can't tell beforehand.
Consider your library: most games will be able to run fine on Linux. However, if you predominantly play online multiplayer games which require anticheat you should check compatibility on ProtonDB.
Second, consider your hardware: if your GPU is AMD you're good to go. Nvidia might have issues (not sure if this has been resolved since I last had to look into it).
Finally, choose a distro: I'd recommend Ubuntu or anything Ubuntu-based. There's a lot of mixed answers in the Linux community and definitely a ton of hate for Ubuntu. However, as someone who has been running Linux for nearly a decade at this point, there are a few key points:
Ubuntu is debian based, so it's extremely stable(but not as slow to update)
Ubuntu is very beginner friendly, and you won't need to touch the terminal if you don't want to
Everyone hates on snaps, but for you I don't think you'll run into an issue with it.
Personally, I steer towards debian based distros for my devices as well because I'd rather spend time messing with the software I'm running or other things NOT debugging why my config is suddenly shitting the bed
Distro: short for distribution. Linux is not an operating system. It's a piece of technology (specifically something called a kernel) you can use to create an OS. Those Linux based OSs are referred to as distros. We are usually not calling them "Versions" because the Linux Kernel is also frequently seeing updates and that would just cause confusion.
Debian and Ubuntu: Popular distros. Ubuntu tends to be a bit more user friendly than Debian and was the default recommendation for new user for a long time. In recent years its popularity among enthusiasts declined because of a series of unpopular decisions, mainly the adaptation of something called snaps which is not completely open source and takes a bit more time to launch apps than alternatives. Debian on the other hand really values stability. Updates arrive less frequently than on other distros but undergo really rigorose testing.
Not necessarily. Both have their drawbacks. It takes longer for new hardware to be supported on Debian and setting up a Nvidia grafics card is more complicated
The other commenter covered the terminology so to your point about being on Nvidia:
I know we don't like Reddit but here. Seems to be YMMV and you'll never know if you don't try. Also possible that the things that are buggy aren't things you use/care about
Oh boi, for gaming Ubuntu and it's family is... Iffy at best. You tend to end up with weird problems cause of the older software frequently. Not a problem till it VERY much is.
Modern gaming basically requires you to be really close to cutting edge if you want remotely reliable performance and timely bug fixes. Which you just do not and will never get on Ubuntu.
It's why valve choose arch for steam OS. It's why cachyOS exists. It's why the big popular alterative is fedora based.
Tho suggesting bazzite is iffy with how fedora likes to break things with dumb changes.
FWIW I run Ubuntu and do some gaming. Haven't hit any issues, and I've run multiple AAA games on release (TLOU, Indiana Jones, Hogwarts Legacy, GoW 2018) as well as other, lighter, titles like Cities Skylines 2, Asetto Corsa, Project Cars, American Truck Simulator
I'm sure there are bugs that I haven't experienced, and my system is probably newer/higher performance than the average person + i chose parts with Linux in mind. But based on my experience, I wouldn't tell someone to jump into a less user friendly distro because of problems I myself haven't run into. Much better to try one, see if you hit an issue, then jump rather than doing the hard one up front
There's tons of youtube videos / tutorials on how to create a live usb of a distro, such as linux mint. This will allow you to boot into linux and play around without installing anything and get a feel for linux. It's nowhere as tech wizardry as you think.
And if all your games are on steam and don't have anti cheat things, they'll probably just all work with proton (linux compatibility tool in steam).
Linux is way easier than it was even 10 years ago and many games run better on Linux than they do on Windows. There’s gaming distros but I’m not sure what the benefit is other than the built-in NVIDIA drivers. I just game on Fedora. You need to enable Proton stuff in the settings and you’re off.
Unless the Steamdeck flew under your radar you should know that you can absolutly play games on Linux. Most of the exceptions are big online games with crazy anti-cheats (yeah in that case no luck).
As for hope : migrating to another OS (be it Linux, MacOS or whatever) can be disorienting at first, wich tend to repel some people (it's like learning how to use a pc for the first time), that's actually the most important thing to keep in mind for everything to go smoothly, you don't need to be a tech wizzard, just to be patient.
As long as you don't rush things, don't expect everything to behave as somekind of windows clone and learn how it works a bit you should be fine.
Before you try anything I'd also suggest you check if all the software you are using are available on Linux and if not what alternative you can use : alternativeto.net can help. To check if the games you play work you can also go to protondb.com. Preparing as much as you can before install is a huge plus, and it's really not that hard.
As an exemple I've helped a curious friend who wanted to try Linux, they're the most tech illiterate person I've ever known..like even worse than some old people. It took them two hard month to be fully acclimated, like as fine as they were doing on windows if not better. Never even asked me for help ever since. (My eyes still bleed when I see how they're using their pc but they clearly have no issue doing whatever they're doing) So if they can I'm sure anyone can.
I'm not sure what you mean by flew under my radar but I don't really even know what steamdeck is. some kind of handheld console? how's it relevant here?
It's because it's quite popular so alot of people know it exists, but yes it's a handheld console made by steam and it's using linux, it's basicly a Linux console.
It’s been a big factor in Linux now having extremely strong support for windows games, as it runs Steam on Linux, uses PC hardware to play PC games, and it’s built/supported by Valve who did a lot of the heavy lifting on improving the existing Linux windows compatibility layer to where it is now. What that means for you is basically anything in Steam will run well in Linux even if it’s not a native Linux game (which most aren’t).
Otherwise, Proton’s the name of Valve/Steam’s compatibility layer project, and you can look up game-specific user reports on playability here: protondb.com/
The two distros I recommend for beginners, these helped me start using Linux:
1) Kubuntu
Kubuntu uses the KDE Plasma desktop environment, which is the closest experience to Windows 10 imo. Very good for easing you in. Plus, it's based on Ubuntu - the most commonly used distro. So if you have issues, just google "(problem) Ubuntu" and you'll find a fix.
2) Pop!_OS
Pop!_OS is preconfigured for gaming. If you have anything Nvidia in your PC, just start with this one. Nvidia doesn't play nice with Linux, and the company that develops Pop!_OS has a specific version with Nvidia drivers. Driver configuration can be annoying, you don't have to worry about it with Pop!_OS.
Both of these distros will work for gaming out of the box pretty much (provided you use AMD products). Steam's Proton tool is insanely useful, and it's not too hard to figure out how to tweak games that are still having issues after it works its magic.
Basically, your choice boils down to:
Kubuntu - an easier time with the PC side of things
Pop!_OS - an easier time with the gaming side of things
As for being a tech wizard, don't worry about it. If you know how to look up your problems, there's always some guy on a forum with some commands you can copy/paste into the terminal and fix everything.
I started with popOS but now recommend bazzite if you mainly use your machine for gaming, I just setup a pc for someone and gave them bazzite and now I see them on steam playing games and no complaints. bazzite or maybe fedora, the issues I had with PopOS was just apps being outdated in the app store, like darktable came out with an update and like a month passed and the update still wasnt showing in the app store so I had to use the appimage from the darktable site
See, I haven't had any issues with Pop!_OS, but I also don't use apps outside of Steam and LibreOffice much. To add to your point, I will say that for how much they hype up the Pop! Shop, it kinda works terribly.
I haven't tried Bazzite, but Fedora-based distros are starting to pique my interest.
yeah I started with popOS, used it for about a year, then tried Fedora for a week but figured if Im moving distro to get the latest and dive deeper might as well go with Arch, that lasted like two months with hyprland then decided to try bazzite and its been solid, everything I need is just there already, shortcuts working just like windows so its easy to transition from work laptop to personal, screen shots, lock, mounting network shares etc
I have a relatively easy and nice setup on PopOS currently and I don't want you switch just because I don't want to lose my files and setup.
Is there a process you recommend to transfer UI, etc. to another distro as an experiment? I know how to transfer my video files, for example, just don't know how or if other programs can transfer easily between distros.
I think there are ways to just mount your home directly that has your files but I haven't done that, not sure if it had to be setup separate from the beginning or something, I keep my files on a local nas so its easier for me to just wipe my desktop
even my parents and grandparents are on bazzite which massively reduced my family tech support work, but it seems like fedora is indeed being fedora again and discussions are for dropping 32 bit which would be troubling for gamers still.
Honestly that's kind of the dream (I already have raspi theater plans).
It's sad how much technology has changed since what we thought it was gonna be in the 80s. we HAVE the capacity to do all those things, but we get locked out of modifying our own devices!
If a computer is a car, then Linux(the Kernal) is the chassis. Mint (the distro) is the motor, and Cinnamon (the desktop environment) is the fancy interior.
KDE plasma is a fancy interior that works with tons of different motors.
Cinnamon is designed for mint and works best with it.
DISCLAIMER: All of this is analogy and isn't technically correct in a pedantic sense, but it works well enough for me. I'm sorry if my analogy isn't exactly accurate.
I'd say Linux (the kernel) is the motor/engine and Mint (the distro) is the chassis. The chassis defines the shape of the vehicle and its size class, for instance.
The desktop environment is all the stuff like the taskbar, the settings menus, the application launcher, the login screen, that kind of thing. It’s the system level user interface.
You choose which one by which distro you download. Linux mint uses cinnamon, Ubuntu and fedora use gnome. There are “flavors” of Ubuntu and fedora that use KDE. That’s why I suggested ventoy: you can download a few different ones and boot into them without making a new thumb drive.
If you don’t feel like bothering with any of that, just use Linux mint. It’s good.
Okay, so the Linux ecosystem is more modular than Windows. Windows is synonymous with its Graphical User Interface (GUI) for reasons I'll get into later.
With Linux, there are several GUIs available to choose from. These tend to fall into two main categories: Tiling Window Managers, and Desktop Environments.
Tiling Window Managers have minimal on-screen UI elements, usually they're meant to be used with keyboard combos with little usage of the mouse. A major feature is everything that is running is visible on the screen, when you open a new window, another window divides in half to give it room, "tiling" the screen. Some examples of TWMs include i3 and Awesome.
Desktop Environments are going to be more familiar to newcomers from Windows or MacOS. They're made more for mouse control, several have what you would recognize as a taskbar, start menu and system tray. Windows can be stacked on top of each other like papers on a desktop, exactly like MS Windows does. Some more closely resemble MacOS though none behave exactly the same way. Some examples of DEs include Gnome, KDE, MATE, and Cinnamon.
Cinnamon is a DE made by the Linux Mint development community, and the default/flagship DE for Linux Mint. It is designed to be familiar and easy to use for Windows users. KDE's Plasma DE is similar in many ways to Mint although it's based on different tech; KDE is based on qt, Cinnamon is a distant fork of Gnome and based on GTK. Some are designed to be more minimal so they take up less system resources, like xfce and LXDE, others are trying mostly to resemble MacOS, like ElementaryOS' Pantheon DE. Then there's Gnome, which I goddamn hate.
For a beginner, the choice of DE is going to present most of the differences you'll notice when trying out distros. It can be instructive to try, say, Kubuntu and Fedora KDE. Both ship with the KDE Plasma desktop, but the underlying OSes are different. Then try out, say, Fedora Workstation (with the Gnome desktop) and Fedora KDE. That exercise will give you a good understanding of distro vs DE.
Edit to add: It's kind of like launchers on Android. You can go in the Google Play store and install a different launcher on your phone, you can make a Samsung Galaxy look like a Google Pixel. Linux DEs work the same way, you can install KDE or Cinnamon the same way you'd install a normal app, you can have multiple and switch between them. It's not a great idea but you can.
All of those are Linux Mint, they use pretty much the same core tools under the hood, but the desktop environments change how you engage with them. Mostly the way things look, the way you organize programs on your screen, and the default apps (like which text editor it comes with by default). This can change your experience a lot, I think Cinnamon looks nice and is smooth, while MATE and XFCE are more lightweight and might be better for older computers or if you don't like something about Cinnamon.
Now, those are all somewhat similar, they have a program start menu in the bottom left, a taskbar on the bottom, the basics are familiar. There are some (not officially supported by Mint) which are more different, like GNOME (Ubuntu's desktop default) which has a different app launcher instead of a start menu and a different way of switching between programs. Then, as others mentioned, some people choose to not even install a pre-designed Desktop Environment and only install some of the more core components of a DE, like the Window Manager. People who really love the keyboard might use a tiling window manager, these tend to make you think "wow, this person's a hacker", where they'll rapidly switch between programs using keyboard controls, with the window manager automatically shifting and dividing new windows so that they tile together to fill the screen. Loosely speaking, the opposite of a tiling window manager is a floating window manager, where windows just float and you move them around with your mouse, just like Windows (well, apart from the tiling options in more recent Windows versions when you can drag a window into the corner and it tiles to fill the screen.) I think the "best of both worlds" midpoint is a dynamic WM? I'm not sure. hyprland is an example of that.
TL;DR: Try installing some on virtual box, by all means try Linux mint cinnamon but also try Ubuntu and Fedora KDE.
Linux has some jargon and since you want to learn I'll give you a quick rundown of how a variation of Linux is composed.
"Kernel" is what makes Linux Linux. It's a way of interacting with the hardware.
A "distribution" or "distro" is a one of the many flavors of Linux.
They are usually "based" on a common foundation like Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Nix and whatever. These also work like an onion where Mint is based on Ubuntu which in turn is based on Debian, all of which use some version of the Linux kernel.
A that's just a base will just get you a terminal (also called a shell or console) and is very useful to make a server for example.
What most people think of as an OS is the user interface (i.e. clickable shit). The terminology in Linux for that is "desktop environment" (DE).
You'll see a lot of distributions mix and watch between a base and a desktop environment such as Fedora with KDE, Ubuntu (Ubuntu with Gnome), Kubuntu (Ubuntu with KDE), Bazzite (Fedora silverblue base with either gnome, KDE or deck DE).
You mentioned Cinnamon. Cinnamon is a desktop environment for Mint so a Linux Mint Cinnamon contains the code of the following:
Linux kernel, Debian, Ubuntu and Mint as a base and Cinnamon to interact with it by using a mouse and keyboard.
There are currently three bases that are really popular right now, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch. In the DE there are currently two that are most advanced, namely KDE and Gnome but Cinnamon is not far behind.
In all honestly, none of this matters all too much, just install a couple of popular distros on a virtual machine like Virtual Bok and do a vibe check.
Take a couple of these, install some programs and fuck around with the settings for a bit, install themes and whatever or watch a quick YouTube video on it: * Ubuntu (gets hate for being corporate but is solid, uses Gnome) * Linux mint Cinnamon * Fedora KDE * EndavourOS (an arch based distro that's supposedly easy, haven't tried it) * Bazzite (weird way to install programs through the package manager but hard to fuck up beyond repair) * Something with the Xfce DE just to see the "lightweight" look.
This is what I did. I narrowed down the distros I was looking at to about 5 that I thought might meet my needs, and made a live usb for each one, then used it as I would my regular system for a couple days. Anything that didn't work right got eliminated, and I picked the one I liked best out of the ones where everything worked.
Lots of good advice here. I’ll add a bit about dual booting.
1) the problem with dual booting is when you use the same physical hard drive. Windows doesn’t play nice sometimes on the same drive. Just do yourself a favor and buy a second ssd. Then you can break linux six ways to Sunday and always have a windows backup. (And if you want to be extra safe - you can just unplug your windows drive during Linux install and you can’t f up and pick the wrong drive by accident)
2) dual booting is nice just in case something doesn’t work - you can easily switch back to windows.
3) dual booting sucks because there’s very few things that don’t work in Linux - it just requires a little elbow grease to figure out. But having a windows partition right there leads to many people giving up way too early with fixing their issues.
My recommendation is always to have more than one drive in your computer. It’s YOUR computer. Regardless of what you pick as your “main” OS, you always have another spot to screw around in. Distro hop, extra storage, set up a hiveos miner, whatever. Its flexibility and screwing around with other things helps you understand what’s YOUR computer vs what is Microsoft’s OS.
I say unplug the windows drive always, even if you don't fuck up your Linux install may nuke your windows boot partition and it's massive PITA to get it back
Yes, first time when I installed Nobara, then second time when I installed Fedora. Both times windows was in another drive, both times I picked the right drive. I asked around and people recommend unplugging your windows drive, I agree.
I'm gonna have to figure out how to install another SSD I guess... hope my motherboard is compatible with whatever is on the Market. I bought it all in asia and apparently the motherboard is an issue
There is a way built into windows to deploy and use Linux from inside windows.
It's not the most pure experience, but it's a way to make sure you have something like a feel for how some parts work before jumping in any deeper.
A bootable USB stick is another way to try before you commit. Only reason I might suggest starting with trying it the other way first is in case you run into issues connecting to the Internet or something you won't feel totally lost. Having to keep rebooting back into windows if you have a problem can be frustrating, so getting a little familiarity with a safety line can help feel more confident.
Issues with a USB boot are increasingly uncommon, as an aside. Biggest issue is likely to be that USB is slow, so things might take a few moments longer to start.
From there, you should be pretty comfortable doing basic stuff after a little playing around. Not deep mastery, but a sense of "here are my settings", "my files go here", "here's how I fiddle with wifi", "here's how I change my desktop stuff". At that point a dual boot should work out, since you'll be able to use the system to find out how to do new things with the system, and also use it for whatever, in a general sense.
If it's working out, you should find yourself popping back into windows less and less.
Install Windows Subsystem for Linux with the command, wsl --install. Use a Bash terminal on your Windows machine run by your preferred Linux distribution - Ubuntu, Debian, SUSE, Kali, Fedora, Pengwin, Alpine, and more are available.
What I'll say is, I've got no comp sci degree, and when I started, I had no idea how the terminal worked. But... My mindset was the following:
1) I really don't like windows, I'm not going back 2) I don't like paying others to "do it for me", I want to do it myself 3) I want the freedom to be able to change anything to make the machine fit me, even if that means I need to learn things along the way.
If you're the type of person where this general philosophy, you're going to crush it.
But if you're more along the lines of "I just use this computer as a tool to do the things I want, I just need the computer out of the way, and working consistently so I can get on with my actual goals", you probably will hate it. Becuase all your troubleshooting experiences will be "why doesn't this thing just work, like it does on Windows?"
You don't need a high level of technical skill. You can learn everything you need to get started in a few minutes of tutorials or walk throughs. The rest you learn as you go.
Bear in mind no every linux user has memorized every terminal command and the whole file structure. Lots of people are just casual users who learn what they need.
One of the things I wish someone had told me at the start of using linux is that initially your desktop environment will effect how you feel about linux more than the distribution or specific architecture of the OS.
The good news is they're all free. Try a few things and see what you like. IMO Fedora is a great, beginner friendly Gnome or KDE experience. Mint has an excellent Cinnamon and XFCE desktop either of which will feel somewhat familiar to a windows user. Mint will also run on just about anything.
Also, it's not binary. You can dual boot. If there's something you need windows for you can use it. Over time you'll eventually find that you don't really need windows anymore.
One thing I'll say is that for a lot of distros these days you shouldn't really need to use the terminal much if ever. That being said don't be scared of the terminal. It's just another way to tell the computer what to do. It takes some learning but if you want to learn things with the terminal you might eventually find it easier/faster than using the mouse for some things. Go through some tutorials and you'll probably find out that the terminal is not that actually all that scary.
Most distros allow you to try them out before you install them. You can run them from a USB stick to let you try a few out before you settle on one. You won't be able to install any programs this way but you'll at least be able to get an idea of the interface and see if there are any you like more than others. Even still you can dual boot your PC with Windows + Linux and switch back and forth whenever you need. It's not an all or nothing ordeal. I still have windows 10 on my machine but I rarely use it now.
Gaming on Linux is better than it's ever been thanks to Steam coming with proton out of the box. protondb.com is your friend for figuring out what games you can run. That being said there are occasionally some rough edges that I have run into personally. I can run most games I want just fine but occasionally I have some issues. I'm just telling you this so you know it's not like a flawless experience. Then again I've also spent plenty of time trying to get games running on my windows PC in the past too so...
My recommendation for a first Linux OS is Ubuntu because in general it's the most popular and has the most support.
If you don't know what a command does you can read the manual running the "man" command. Run "man" followed by the command you want to read about. It also works for some system files too!
Also if you fix something like a driver issue for a game that took a lot of research. WRITE IT DOWN. It WILL come in handy in the future.
As others have said, it's possible to play most steam games, but not all. You have to decide if you like those games more than you dislike MS and Goo. I find there's so many great games out there that I'll never get to all of them, so I'm ok with dropping some bangers that usually want too much access to my system.
Here's a useful resource if you need to understand slightly technical linux foundations linuxjourney.com/ It might not be necessary but it does help to have a foundational understanding, and honestly, the command line is awesome, powerful, and one of my favorite things about linux. Beyond having a basic understanding (and maybe having one of the books the site recommends on hand), before going to an LLM as others have suggested, have official sources of various components bookmarked and go there first. There's so much BS out there now, I actually like the fact that I can read technical documentation, test it out, and know if it's true.
one other tip: I'd recommend some kind of personal knowledge management (PKM) system to take notes. Linux gives you a lot of freedom-- that's what's great about it-- it can be complex and have a learning curve at times. It's absolutely worth it though. It's a totally different paradigm than windows. After a while you can really start crafting the whole system to your needs as an individual. I'm 3 years in and was using my first setup that whole time, i didn't realize how customized I had made it until trying to set it up exactly on a new workstation. Now I'm writing a script so to automate my setup (os settings, program installs, configs) by running a single command. Then I can really start experimenting.
Everybody's different and with a little basic knowledge, everyone's setup can be tweaked to their individual needs a little better than other "user friendly/polished" operating systems. I hope you find as much joy and freedom in it as I do.
I use Obsidian. Stores everything in markdown and has a nice sql-query-like plugin, dataview, that I've built a nice workflow around. Obsidian isn't FOSS, which has become more important for me, so I'm looking to migrate over to markdown oxide in helix. If I were starting from scratch I might try logseq or similar. Whatever you choose, I think it's helpful that it's stored in a portable format like md so you can change programs if you need.
That's a big question, but I'll try my best to answer without getting too deep in the weeds.
I'll probably sound like a fanatic, but I use my PKMS for notes, logs, journaling, project and task management, snippets, and documentation. They all have their own structure and flow. It's a Gall's Law kind of situation where I started simple and it worked, so it was extended and slowly evolved to reach it's current complexity.
The beauty of PKMS over a notepad is the loose set of basic features (Wiki-links, tags, templates, etc) that be used in a personalized way to quickly capture, organize, and retrieve info that works best for you and no one else.
As a simple, but detailed example, in the context of learning linux, i might make a "linux" note and dump info there. I put everything in my own words unless I use md quotes (> quoted text) and I add useful links that I also bookmarked in my browser. When the "linux" page gets bloated, I migrate clusters of info into new notes, wiki-linked in the "linux" note. For example a "distros," note which might have some high level comparisons. I favor making new notes over md headers so it's easier to find and open notes by name (a "quick switcher" hotkey as it's called in obsidian). When I settle on a distro I might make a note for it to contain wiki-links of default components EG "apt (package manager)," "gnome (desktop environment)," "x (windowing system)" and dump relevant notes there. If I try wayland, I'd make a "wayland" note but also a "windowing system" note that both wiki-links "x (window system)" and "wayland," and is wiki-linked in each of those notes.
It could get very meticulous, and some folks setup is too much for me, and I'm sure mine is too much for others, but start simple, experiment, find what works, and add to it. In the beginning I had dedicated time just to developing my PKMS. The important thing is quickly recording and retrieving info.
Sometime i do have crazy scrawlings where i just need a notepad to dump info during a deep dive. That would be loosely zettelkasten style with a time-stamped name, sometime with a few extra works for context/search. Sections could be extracted into their own note later. The note itself could be linked to more organized, related notes.
As a more complex, but shorter example, to show how similar tools can be used in a different manner: I'll make a note for a command line program, for example, cat. I have a CLI template with a Useful Flags (options) section. Kind of like a personalized tldr. I'll also have specific notes for complex snippets (AKA one-liners. Real note example: "list-and-sum-all-audio-file-durations") and if it uses cat, i'll tag it #cmd/cat. The CLI template also has a Snippets section that uses dataview to automatically list, in this case, all notes with the #cmd/cat tag. I also have a "command line programs" note that uses a dataview query to list all notes that used the CLI template. Also, a Snippets note using dataview to list all pages created with the snippets template.
There are tools specifically for snippets and personalized tldr, and I may migrate to those eventually-- especially after I have my install script up and running with linked configs-- but the simple tools in PKMSs are really adaptable and make it easy to customize and integrate. Plus it's all md files in a folder, so it's easy to sync and access on multiple machines, including mobile.
I hope that's not TMI. Starting linux can feel overwhelming and I don't want to add to that. Quiet the contrary. I started my PKMS right before my last, permanent switch linux and I think it helped it stick, and 3+ years later I still use [my PKMS] all the time. As I said before, the simple tools that turn a notepad into a PKMS can add a personalized structure to the insane scrawings, making it quick and easy to navigate, find, edit, and add info. You just have to start simple and take your time. I hope that helps. Good luck with the switch!
The only games in my library that don't work are entirely the publisher's fault for blacklisting Linux in their anticheat, and it's very few games even then.
Linux folks used to be much worse about gatekeeping, but even 20+ years ago when I was first starting out, there were always decent folks among the techie dumbfucks.
Maybe the decent folks have moved to derivative OSes? So the techie absolutists stayed at Debian/Arch/RHEL, while the commons folks have gone to Linux Mint/Cachy OS/Fedora?
There are around three Linux families to choose a derivative Linux OS from, some are more obscure ones and then some really obscure ones. Choose one of the Linux family OSes and choose the most popular derivative of that one. So for example Aurora is a derivative of Fedora, which is a derivative of RHEL (derivative-(in)ception).
The reasons to choose derative OSes and not one of the basic main three is that:
The Linux derative OSes have bells and whistles build on top of the parent OS. This is especially true for the extremely bare bones Arch Linux, that will throw you back into 1985.
And this is most important... community support! You will at some point have issues and a forum where developers and experienced users can help you out are a godsend. Derivatives tend to have better community support than the bare bone ones. I've experienced this with the Arch Linux community. I'm not sure if Debian or RHEL communities would haved fared better, but to me this community felt like having a conversation with a real life Sheldon Cooper. I am really thankful for the excellent expert level help I did get there, but I will not go there back again. And I don't know if I even can, because the last time I was there, I got banned for a third time. I've had great experiences on the Ubuntu, Linux Mint and Manjaro communities. Other communities from less popular Linux OSes have been too small in my experience to get help on time.
For Debian, the most popular one right now is Linux Mint, a derivative of Ubuntu (derivative-(in)ception). It used to be Ubuntu, but Ubuntu tends to take big moves and risks that don't always pay off. Linux Mint I consider to be the safe option for beginners. Debian is known for stability.
For Redhat it's Fedora. I haven't used it that much. Redhat is known for good security.
For Arch it's Endeavour OS and recently Cachy OS. It used to be Manjaro, but they fumbled a lot on security issues. Arch is known for having the best documentation, and the largest amount of software available, especially made by fellow users, and if I may add myself, having the best package manager.
I still use Manjaro myself, because I don't feel enough need to switch to a new one, and I like the community there.
"I want to copy my root, home, and boot partition contents into a bigger drive I formatted with in terminal. Let's boot from it and see what breaks."
::: spoiler spoiler /etc/fstab partition UUIDs needed to be fixed by hand. GRUB config needed to be updated to launch straight into bash and I needed to remount the root directly as R/W because GRUB was trying to protect me from myself. :::
A lot of people here have already given good advice. I shall add my experience, recommendation and some tips (may incidentally repeat some of them).
If you play some games with kernel level anti-cheat (like Rainbow Six Siege, Apex, Valorant, LoL, Fortnite, Battlefield games, Destiny 2 among others), you will have to stick to dual-boot. Check on ProtonDB for compatibility of games. I have 500+ games on Steam and pretty much everything I've played has worked so far. In terms of other software you use, make sure you have alternatives that work on Linux.
For Photoshop, there's Krita/GIMP.
For Video editing, there's Kdenlive, DaVinci Resolve, etc.
For browsing and office apps, there's LibreWolf and LibreOffice.
If you happen to have any software that you don't have a good alternative or that only runs on Windows, then you'll have to stick to dual booting.
If you do end up dual booting, DO NOT use your external HDD in NTFS to run games on linux. It will work for a while, but you'll constantly have to 'chkdsk' or check disk on Windows every time your HDD is found corrupted. Also, NTFS is Windows' proprietary filesystem. So, I've heard that using ntfs-fix (chkdsk equivalent on linux) might cause data loss. Not sure how far it's true, but be cautious of using that too. But otherwise, I believe that just reading files from NTFS drive usually is not a problem.
If you are NOT dual booting however, you won't have to face this mess. You can backup the data on your HDD somewhere, format it in 'ext4' filesystem for Linux-only use ('Exfat' if you want to share any data with others on Windows/Mac) and restore all your files back to this HDD in ext4. Hope you have extra HDD with enough free space to move your files while you convert disks to ext4. You can also probably use cloud services for backup.
I've used Ubuntu, Mint, Arch and Fedora.
- Had faced a lot of issues with Ubuntu back in the day, and Snap Steam is a mess. So, avoid it. - Mint is easy to use, removes snap from Ubuntu and just uses apt, has a great Desktop Environment called Cinnamon, and I'd usually recommend this to someone new, but I wanted to shift from X-11 to Wayland for security reasons and HDR support among others. If Wayland worked well with Mint, I'd still be using it today, but that was the only reason I moved away from it. - While Arch is nice, it's certainly not for someone new. - That leaves us with Fedora KDE, which would be my recommendation. It has good security features like SE-Linux out of the box. The reason I suggest KDE over Gnome is so that you might have an easier transition from Windows to Linux. Once you have a hang of this, you can later use a pen drive to load other distro with other DE like Gnome, XFCE, Cinnamon, Cosmic, etc and test them out by live booting.
Speaking of pendrives, make sure to always have one with Ventoy installed and the distribution you're using. This will be handy if you want to troubleshoot your system anytime. And I say Ventoy over others because it makes loading distro easier. You can just drag and drop the ISO files instead of having to burn with Balena Etcher or Rufus everytime.
Rufus is great, but if you're moving out of Windows, you don't need it.
And I have seen a lot of people have trouble with using Balena Etcher. So, avoid it.
Turn off Secure Boot in BIOS. (And maybe also fast boot).
- And if your disk is on RAID instead of AHCI, you might have trouble installing. So, you might want to set your SATA configuration to AHCI mode in BIOS if you face issues.
If you end up choosing Fedora, you may want to follow this.
Fedora only comes with FOSS by default. So, you'll have to install Nvidia driver and proprietary multimedia Codecs separately by including RPMFusion repo. - You can download the free and non-free repo files from the RPM-Fusion site(Graphical Setup) and install them through the Software Center. After adding the repo, you might have to enable them in the Settings of Discover Software Center. Enable all of them except those containing the words 'testing', 'Test', 'Source', 'Debug' and 'google chrome'.
After that, it's just a few lines you type in the terminal (Konsole by default) for installing driver and codecs. Make sure to update the system and restart first before doing these.
Steam is also included in the non-free repo. You may install it by typing:
sudo dnf install steam
Other than these, most applications can now be installed directly from the store as a Flatpak. You can select them in the store between Flatpaks, Fedora managed Flatpaks and Fedora Linux app for a particular one.
- For flatpak apps, you'll see a tick next to the developer if they are verified. So, you can look out for that if necessary. - Make sure 'Flathub' repo is enabled in the Settings of Discover Software Center for the Flatpak apps to appear.
NOTE: Every time the video driver updates, you will have to do a follow-on update for flatpak runtimes. You might see a bunch of 'Application platform' and 'Freedesktop' stuff which you'll have to install. If you fail to do this, you might suddenly find flatpak applications not working properly.
Troubleshooting tips:
If Steam doesn't launch the first time, type:
__GL_CONSTANT_FRAME_RATE_HINT=3 steam
If your system is frozen, try switching to TTY by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F3) and going back to GUI by pressing (Ctrl+Alt+F2)*. *Could be F1 in some cases.
To check what errors you got during the recent boot,
journalctl -b 0 -p err
Apart from the driver installation and some troubleshooting, you generally won't have to use the terminal if you're averse to it.
In terms of deGoogling, I'd recommend the following:
Buy a pixel and install Graphene OS.
Switch to - Tuta/Proton Mail for email, - Proton/Tresorit Drive for storage, - Mullvad (or i, proton) VPN or (Rethink DNS for firewall) I am not sure if you can use both Rethink and VPN at the same time. I assume there is a way.
Can't forget Zen Browser for best productivity browser. Also Ungoogled Chromium
OP if you want to use AI locally but privately then use Ollama with Open Web UI
Also HuggingChat is an AI Chatbot that can do all kinds of stuff with the 1-tap community extensions, models, and assistants avilable. Website is free with an account. Use as a web app for it to be even better experience
When you are more advanced learn distrobox to add apps only available on other distros natively to your laptop
If you have any questions feel free to ask me whenever
While Zen and ungoogled chromium are fine, I'd suggest to stay away from Brave for any serious purposes 'cause you never know what shady things they might be doing. Case in point, they had previously been changing regular URLs to include affiliate links on their own. They also have that crypto bloat.
Well, it's just 4-5 lines that you're going to have to type and it's just a one-time thing. Surely, it's not that intimidating.
Bazzite seems to be based on Fedora Kinoite, an atomic desktop. Now, I haven't used atomic desktops. Although I wanted to, I ended up not doing that for the following reason.
From what I understand, you can't easily alter the base image of the system and everything else is a flatpak. This seems fine, but if you end up having to install an application for which there is no Flatpak, how would a non-tech savvy user do that? Still have to use the terminal at that point, I'd bet.
Case in point, even the other day, I came across this application called 'syncplay' for which there's no flatpak alternative and thankfully, Fedora repo had it.
I also hear that if you end up installing apps this way(Layering as it's called?), the update times become slower. You may shed some light on this.
Also, while it may not be as good as a snapshot system of the atomic desktops, the regular Fedora nonetheless shows the last two kernel installations on every boot so you could revert back to one if an update goes wrong.
I also have to mention that I always have my important files backed up on HDD or cloud that in the worst case scenario of losing my files on any update, (which hasn't happened so far btw), I can always restore them. In case of Steam games, it shouldn't be a problem if you have a fast internet connection. You should download them back in no-time. That is another reason I can still live without having to use a stable atomic desktop.
New users find the terminal very intimidating, I've seen that come up time and again. It's kind of the whole point of Bazzite.
If you're already learning terminal to install software though, at that point you can use a distrobox, install whatever you want in it, and then export the application to your usual application menu. It'll launch the container in the background when you start the application, and shut it down automatically too. It's a little slower than a usual launch but it's still just a stripped down container so it's fine.
I tried two distros in the past week after your recommendation - Bazzite and Nobara. Bazzite is just like you say and all's good most of the time and I'm getting used to an atomic distro too. The only problem I seem to be having is that my GPU Freezes very often even while just browsing and I have to force-restart to recover.
journalctl shows me this error. [drm:nv_drm_gem_alloc_nvkms_memory_ioctl [nvidia_drm]] ERROR [nvidia-drm] [GPU ID ....] Failed to allocate NVKMS memory for GEM object
I don't know if this is because Bazzite uses a slightly older Nvidia (open) driver(570.64) and kernel(6.14.6) or because of something else.
However, I don't have this issue on Nobara and it uses the latest 6.15.4 and Nvidia (proprietary? akmod) driver (570.153). Correlation is not probably causation, but this might be one thing to consider.
And I've had issues with nvidia-open drivers in the past, but surely a lot of them seem to have gone now.
I believe if you tell the downloader you have a Nvidia 10-series card then it'll give you proprietary drivers that still work on newer cards. I have a 10-series and haven't had these issued fwiw.
Thanks. The downloader gives me an option to rebase, which I find easier to use. It shows me an option to download from ostree-unverified-registry, but I chose to do it from ostree-image-signed:docker instead. Don't know why the signed image is not shown on the downloader by default. That said, after switching to nvidia from nvidia-open, the driver version still remains the same. Let's see if I get freezes again in the upcoming days.
Also, there are two applications that I use outside of flatpak - a firewall(Safing Portmaster) and another password manager, for which I have to install using the rpm installer. The password manager has no problem installing using the rpm-ostree install <name.rpm> command. However, Portmaster installs, but won't work because of the following error which I found from journalctl.
<br />Jul 05 16:28:23 bazzite systemd[1]: Started portmaster.service - Portmaster by Safing.
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5786]: Error: failed to exec lock: open /opt/safing/portmaster/core-lock.pid: read-only file system
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite portmaster-start[5860]: Error: please set the data directory using --data=/path/to/data/dir
Jul 05 16:28:29 bazzite systemd[1]: portmaster.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Someone has supposedly a work in-progress script to make this work, but I don't think I'm qualified to scrutinize if doing this brings down the security of the system in any way.
And I don't know if many other rpm installers have the same trouble installing in atomic distros because it's a read-only file system. For now, I'll have to live without my favorite firewall.
Okay, I keep getting the same freeze again with the proprietary nvidia driver too. My suspicion is now heavily on Secureboot being enabled. Some Arch people kept warning me about this back in the day.
I'm going to use Bazzite without it and probably rebase again to open driver if there is no more freezes.
Unfortunately, even with secureboot disabled, I kept getting freezes. Got 3 freezes and I felt done with this. Replaced Bazzite with Nobara again.
Nvidia driver worked for a while. But, after I temporarily switched back to another atomic distro I'm dual booting on a completely separate drive(which requires secure boot for nvidia driver to work and it did work), Nobara stopped loading nvidia driver despite clearing all secure boot keys and installing the default one in UEFI/BIOS and turning off SecureBoot.
Apparently, the efi also has to be modified again. I didn't bother doing it and reinstalled Nobara again since that will reset the efi anyway. Now, the driver is working again. I swear to any seemingly non-existent higher power that I'll never use any distro that requires secure boot. Lol. I'm gonna reinstall Arch on my second drive now.
That said, I'd probably recommend Bazzite to anyone not having Nvidia GPU and it's a pretty impressive project. It even comes with Wallpaper Engine baked in. My friend and I were having a hard time making it work on their system. We were trying some solutions we found on github and some C++ file didn't have a particular header or something. Took a while to get it work and it was kinda messy later on too with the plasma shell crashing cause of it. Having additions like this would surely make life easier for regular users who would not want to deal with that mess.
Being intimidated by the terminal is fine, but the sooner you learn it, the better. Terminal is your friend, not your enemy. Take baby steps if you need to, but you're really doing yourself a disservice by staying away from the terminal.
This isn't how you get non-tech gamers to* switch to Linux and honestly, this attitude needs to die. Do you want Windows to always dominate? Because this is how you get Windows to always dominate.
People are afraid of the terminal because Windows has a shitty, unfriendly terminal. One of the things that brought me back to Linux was the cool-looking terminals. They make me feel like I'm Hackerman.
Linux isn't just a different operating system. It's a paradigm shift. Windows is always going to dominate as long as people are trapped in a Windows mindset.
Not so much help but hope: I got rid of Windows 11 and switched fully to Linux Mint a few weeks ago. I had no idea what I was doing but I tested things on USB and also on a very old laptop I had laying around before I made it my daily driver.
I'm not particularly a tech person. I own a small creative business and have a toddler, but I figured out what I needed to quickly. I don't game and didnt use Winsows exclusive software so have no opinions about that.
What I didn't expect: to actually be genuinely interested in my computer again for the first time since I was a teenager (which was not recent...). I love customizing my desktop. I love discovering new open source software. I'm learning more than I expected and it's just a totally different relationship with the tech I use every day, in a nice way. And no more BS ads / bloat when I'm just trying to exist on my computer.
If you want real gaming performance then arch all the way with archinstall. Trust, it's insanely good and you can get double of what you get on windows in terms of performance. Boot times are also insane. I have used so many distros and I can tell you that arch is king for performance.
If you really wanna learn how to tinker and become tech savvy you can always try manually installing arch or get an easier distro and learn from there.
I agree. Arch has been my current favorite distribution for several years now, but it's almost impossible to maintain without having to drop into the shell occasionally. I have EndeavourOS installed on my wife's laptop and she's been happily using it for nearly a year; bauh helps with software installs, but I still generally drop into a shell for the full -Syu upgrades, and you have to use the shell at least once just to install bauh as it's not a core package.
You might be able to avoid the shell to use bauh if you use the AppImage; I haven't tried that. bauh can apparently do system upgrades, but I haven't tried that yet and I need to see how it handles news; Arch is fairly cavalier about pushing out breaking changes that require extra user steps which need to be discovered by reading the news posts.
I agree that Arch isn't the best "first linux" distribution.
Graphical user interface for managing your Linux applications. Supports AppImage, Debian and Arch packages (including AUR), Flatpak, Snap and native Web applications - vinifmor/bauh
There is hope lots of YouTube channels, articles by bloggers such as Its Foss, and guides to Linux all over
Especially for Linux Mint (Similar to Windows), Pop!_OS (Similar to MacOS), and Bazzite (Gaming-Productivity Distro, Similar to SteamOS)
The latter 2 work out of the box for gaming if that's your thing
You got this. Learn little by little each day and engage with community as much as you can. Maybe join some Voyager for Lemmy, Bluesky, Discord, etc communities
I'd say try Kubuntu. It's like Ubuntu but with KDE (Windows-like user interface) instead of GNOME (shitty Mac clone turned tablet like interface). It's well-supported and is easy to use. Also supports new technologies like HDR which Mint is lacking. Though you can install KDE on pretty much any distro (Mint included) but it's a good starting place.
Note to fellow Linux veterans: Yes, I know snaps suck but it is not something new users need concearn themselves with. Kubuntu is a great distro except for snaps which aren't going to affect OP's use-case (or most use-cases. Also sorry for shitting on GNOME so much. If you like it that's cool, I just don't think we should be recomending it to people coming from Windows.
Garuda is actually my daily driver these days, and I quite enjoy it. It does mostly just work, and I also like their desktop theming. The GUI installer is great for easy hardware detection and setup. But, that's coming from a more experienced old tinkerer who was initially looking for some lazy troubleshooting with NVIDIA graphics on a new gaming laptop, and liked the distro enough to end up switching over.
I wouldn't necessarily recommend any rolling release to someone completely new to Linux. The devs have done a pretty good job at making some things more user friendly, but we are talking about Arch with some extra tools bolted on. You'd better be prepared for things to break occasionally, and to need to do some tinkering around under the hood.
On the plus side, you ARE dealing with Arch with all the info resources/user community built up around that, plus the Garuda community tends to be pretty helpful from what I've seen. You are going to periodically need to figure out how to fix stuff, however--and better to be aware of that going in. Some people are going to be more fine with the idea than others, but it is liable to provide a steeper learning curve for someone just getting started with Linux.
I agree with everything you said. If someone is new and wants to have a rock solid experience, then it might make sense to get a long term support version of the distribution that's chosen. It's a trade-off of shiny new upgrades for almost guaranteed stability.
I have 15 years of experience and do free infinite troubleshooting on matrix, feel free to add me. I recommend you go with aurora, because it is immutable, kde based, and well documented.
immutable means the base system is read only and updates are applied ontop of it, meaning you can easily roll back an update that went bad, and the apps are separate from the core operating system and thus can never break them (unless you try really hard).
kde is a desktop environment, it is most similar to windows and the rate of development dwarfs almost everything else, please whatever you do for your first system use kde.
aurora is a slightly modified fedora and fedora is one of the most commonly used options, the reason not to use base fedora is that aurora includes some QoL features, for example because of issues with patents twitch doesn't work on fedora but does on aurora.
I started on Mint and liked it so much that I never distro-hopped. Every now and then I think about trying an immutable distro. But then I remember how much learning I had switching from Windows to Mint and I get scared of losing so much time to learn about Aurora. What would your say to me?
Not who you asked, jumping in until they reply: Windows and most GNU/Linux distros are much further apart than most GNU/Linux distros are to each other. Unless you're doing a lot of manual meddling or using hacky tools, the biggest change between Mint (Ubuntu/Debian-based) and a Fedora-based distro, in my experience, was that apt is replaced by dnf, so if you install apps from the command line instead of a prettier software manager (I did lots of programming so this was normal for me) then the names of programs and libraries were a bit different. I'd also make a list of things you've installed (VPN software, chat apps, etc.) and look them up in the Fedora packages site or their own website and make sure they're all available. I would assume they would be, Fedora is popular enough.
The desktop environment (Cinnamon vs. KDE) will be an initial change, but they're both familiar enough with a program menu, task bar, like how Mint lets you carry over some of that same basic surface-level intuition that Windows taught.
That the worst linux distro would be vastly better than windows (not that mint is the worst, that'd be manjaro)
honestly it isn't much to learn but the returns are very diminished if you're already on a linux distro, I mostly make this recommendation if you're just starting out, if you're perfectly happy there isn't much need to switch, but more up to date software, kde over cinnamon, and immutability are huge advantages for many people.
like, just for an idea of why kde is better for beginners, the kde text editor alone gets more code changes than all of cinnamon combined per month, and by a lot. Kde is always rapidly improving.
basically on aurora you just use discover for all software and updates and don't even need the cli, it's pretty easy to learn honestly, and if something goes wrong that a simple google can't fix feel free to message me I do free infinite linux troubleshooting.
here's a copypasted post I made on mint and beginners "A lot of people are going to recommend you mint, I honestly think mint is an outdated suggestion for beginners, I think immutability is extremely important for someone who is just starting out, as well as starting on KDE since it’s by far the most developed DE that isn’t gnome and their… design decisions are unfortunate for people coming from windows.
I don’t think we should be recommending mint to beginners anymore, if mint makes an immutable, up to date KDE distro, that’ll change, but until then, I think bazzite is objectively a better starting place for beginners.
The mere fact that bazzite and other immutables generate a new system for you on update and let you switch between and rollback automatically is enough for me to say it’s better, but it also has more up to date software, and tons of guides (fedora is one of the most popular distros, and bazzite is essentially identical except with some QoL upgrades).
How common is the story of “I was new to linux and completely broke it”? that’s not a good user experience for someone who’s just starting, it’s intimidating, scary, and I just don’t think it’s the best in the modern era. There’s something to be said about learning from these mistakes, but bazzite essentially makes these mistakes impossible.
Furthermore because of the way bazzite works, package management is completely graphical and requires essentially no intervention on the users part, flathub and immutability pair excellently for this reason.
Cinnamon (the default mint environment) doesn’t and won’t support HDR, the security/performance improvements from wayland, mixed refresh rate displays, mixed DPI displays, fractional scaling, and many other things for a very very long time if at all. I don’t understand the usecase for cinnamon tbh, xfce is great if you need performance but don’t want to make major sacrifices, lxqt is great if you need A LOT of performance, cinnamon isn’t particularly performant and just a strictly worse version of kde in my eyes from the perspective of a beginner, anyway.
I have 15 years of linux experience and am willing to infinitely troubleshoot if you add me on matrix."
you are going to be fine! linux has better compat than windows now unless you use a ton of proprietary, locked software. your average linux distro can do steam gaming pretty well, and there are distros like bazzite and garuda and popos that do some or all of the configuration for you (based on your hardware and usage).
This is the book that got me on the train. I have so many tech books but they all started with this. I'm a terminal afficianado now; this got me started. Anyway, good luck and I hope you have a good time.
I just want to add that the drm modeset is enabled by default ever since the 560 drivers. You only need to do that for the older ones, if I'm right.
Previously, you also had to disable nouveau yourself and Nvidia driver installation used to be a headache. Things have gotten better over the ages. I'm sure this multi-monitor issue will also be fixed soon as well.
As others have mentioned, use Mint. Since you game, some games won’t run on Linux because of their anticheat, and to that I decided to use a dual boot system. I gave 500gb to windows, the rest to Linux. Anything that won’t run on Linux (some early access games, COD, Tarkov) goes on the windows partition. 500gb doesn’t seem like much when COD takes about 1/2 of that, but everything else I’ve played runs fine on Linux.
I also like the smaller partition because it makes me be choose what I leave installed, and if I’m not playing, I just uninstall whatever game needs to go
Absolutely. I likewise moved to Linux more out of frustration with Windows than any of my own tech ability. It needn't be a concerted effort either. I had it on a separate SSD (for a more stable dual-boot) and dabbled for a couple of years until I found myself gradually booting into Linux instead of Windows more and more.
Yep, if you have the means, I recommend having two SSDs until you feel confident using one of them full-time. The only downside is that if your computer is so small/cheap/old like mine was all those years ago and doesn't have enough cables to keep both drives plugged in, switching between them can be annoying for a while.
I started using Zorin OS just to get out of Windows. Ngl I work in IT and the last thing I wanna do when I'm off work is to go home and do more tech-related stuff, so I just picked it for ease of use. Happy with it though!
Honestly there is nothing to learn, unless you pick arch which is annoying to install, otherwise everything is pretty simple and for the most part just works.
Just remember to turn steam play on for all titles in Steam -> Settings -> Compatibility.
As others have said, Mint is a great starting option. It looks familiar when coming from Windows, and almost everything works without having to touch a terminal.
AAA games with anti-cheat may not work, but just about everything else will. Check Proton DB for each game's compatibility. You can add non-Steam games to Steam to take advantage of Proton. Lutris can also work for some Windows games.
If you want to try Linux distributions to see what they're like before committing, VirtualBox or other virtual machine programs can give you a risk-free preview.
Another option is a live preview. Install Linux Mint on a USB using Rufus or a similar program, then boot your computer from the USB. So long as you don't access your computer's hard drive (under devices on the left of the file manager) or run the installer, no changes should be made from your computer. You can simply reboot and remove the USB to go back to your usual OS.
If you are going to dual-boot, install Windows first. Windows has a habit of overriding or deleting Linux if it's installed second. If you just want to shrink your Windows partition to allow room for Linux, shrink it from Windows. Linux can move "unmovable" Windows files resulting in Windows not booting.
Always have a backup of everything you are not prepared to lose before you play with installing operating systems (and make sure it's disconnected from that computer). Data loss from software issues is rare, but mistakes are difficult (sometimes impossible) to reverse, particularly as a beginner.
You have received tons of useful responses, so I will not add more, except to tell you that the change is extremely worth it, easier than it seems and extremely entertaining.
I personally use Kubuntu (I love the KDE environment) and sometimes play Steam games by using Proton.
thanks! right now the primary obstacle is arranging adequate backup before maling my first attempt.
I have a laptop with Win 11 for troubleshooting so I'm not worried about that. and I have most of my stuff on externals, so there's not much to backup. I just gotta figure out a good way to back up my C drive and a plan for reverting if necessary!
oh yea? I'm wondering if the program I already have will work. ever heard of a program called Macrium reflect? I installed it and never used it lol. adventure time
I've only heard recommendations for Macrium Reflect, but I've never used it myself. Never heard anything bad about it either, should be good if it's what you are most comfortable with.
A 51-year-old Jewish man with a Hebrew neck tattoo was arrested after crucifying a Christian pastor in Arizona and placing a crown of thorns on his head.
Adam Christopher Sheafe admitted to planning the ritualistic killing of 14 Christian leaders across 10 states.
Obsessed with the Old Testament and militantly opposed to the New, Sheafe says his actions were part of a mission he called “Operation First Commandment.”
He was caught en route to crucify two Catholic priests in Sedona. #minds
June 27, 2025 @ 08:38 Good morning family & friends❣️ Bright and sunny and, depending on which weather guesser you believe, today's high is in the upper 80s to low 90s 🤷♀️. Either way, low humidity so will likely keep the house opened up and fans on. Pete has agreed to take me to Ollie's shortly, before it gets busy, as I need a rug and they are 25% off according to an email I got. (And not to brag or anything but I'm a 3-star general in Ollie's Army!) I haven't been anywhere since Monday night, and I figure if I could travel 25 miles away for an MRI at nearly midnight, endure all that was involved there, travel home well after midnight and not get to bed until after 02:00, then I can go to Ollie's in my same city for a rug. Then I can sleep the rest of the day if I need to, but we'll see how it goes. And I know that Pete won't let me carry anything or do any big shopping. Feeling pretty good this morning, which is currently the best time of day for me, with no (or very mild) symptoms so YAY for that! Even my Casey & Gwen can't argue with that logic right? (If you don't see me around for a while, that means that they did argue with that logic hahaha!) Anyway have a fantastic Friday and I will see you later...I hope 😜!
The house has 2 living parts and is of the man himself
toomanypancakes
in reply to Lojcs • • •