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I only moved to it because it's free (as in beer, not as in speech, but it is also free as in speech), but it turns out a lot of distros are just better than Windows and Mac OS now. When I switched from Windows 7 to Windows 10 it wasn't quite there yet, but it's fully transformed from the OS for nerds to the OS for anyone:

  • Quicker and easier to install even without the "try before you buy" mode Ubuntu-based distros provide
  • Loads faster
  • Basically the same UI - you won't need the command line unless you're trying to make advanced changes
  • Customisation of every element is nearly unlimited - you could easily change the start button to shrek's face, for example
  • Programs of all types are easier to find, install, and uninstall
  • Programs generally load faster and run more smoothly
  • Windows games generally run more smoothly and occasionally even at slightly higher framerates
  • No ads or bloatware or background data collection getting in your way and sucking up your resources
  • Can't run modern Call of Duty games (unfortunately many older ones do work)

Anyone who can follow half a page of simple step by step instructions is qualified to install it (the most complex part is flashing an .iso to a usb (a program does it for you)), and everyone who has used a computer is qualified to use it. At its simplest, with distros like Mint and Pop!, for the casual user it's the same experience as the mainstream OS's - or rather the experience they expect before the system throws the inbuilt bloat at them. When you get more specialised, especially on gaming distributions like SteamOS or Bazzite, it's a much better experience even for advanced users, as various utilities are preinstalled and preconfigured, minimising your time setting up. You can go up or downstream to find a distro with as much or as little as you need and then add as much or as little as you want to get your ideal computing experience.
There's also Arch, which we will only be acknowledging.

I thought that switching to Linux would be as big a jump as when I moved from Mac to Windows, but moving to Mint, trying Ubuntu and Kubuntu, then settling on Bazzite has just been a series of small, shuffling steps. Recreating a similar setup to what I had in Windows has been as trivial as it was time consuming to do originally, while still providing the option for much finer tuning - On Bazzite I had to install a grand total of 4 programs to recreate my software setup because the included utilities covered so many things I'd had to find programs to do in Windows.

As far as I can tell there's only one real downside, and it's one that only really matters to advanced users: if you tell Linux to do something stupid or that would break the OS, where Windows will do its best to stop you and Mac will ask where you learnt those words, Linux will simply ask for the password and then gleefully snap it's own neck. It doesn't matter if you meant to or not, you will have to reinstall and reconfigure it.
But like I said at the start, that's real easy, so it's not much of a downside.
The less real downside is that some specific games and applications won't work even with the translation layers, but you can always dual boot for that one thing.

You can switch because you hate corporations, or closed source software, or spending money, or for opsec, or because you're a big fucking nerd (Arch btw), or any of the traditional reasons for using Linux, but the main reason to switch over is because it's simply the superior product. The power of Windows and the simplicity of Mac OS, without sacrificing any of Linux's extensive customisation. I don't know how long ago it truly overtook the competition, but it definitely has done.
Just download Mint and give it a try - if you need something more specific you'll know and can explore further, but for most people it has everything you'll want ready to go.
Also if you don't switch you're a fucking liberal.

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[-] SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 7 points 5 days ago

How's Mint for gaming? The only downside I've read about it is it's wonky with nvidia drivers, I have an old gpu that doesn't get updates anymore am I good?

[-] ProfessorOwl_PhD@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago

Works great, I think there's an extra step or two to setting it up for Nvidia, but I didn't have any trouble running Darktide, Cyberpunk, or Expedition 33 just as well as they ran on Windows. Darktide actually runs significantly better. Steam games need telling to use Proton in the compatibility settings, and Lutris can do most others.

[-] Evilphd666@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago

I have a full AMD system and its great. Need to get Core Ctrl

and append it to the runtime on Steam, but the card runs cooler and better. No adrenakine softwre but it doesn't seem necessary.

There are older loaders that have puny screens - I built my machine for 4K gaming. It just wasn't thought of. But 8/10 no issue and runs great. Steam is doing a good job with Proton.

[-] tombruzzo@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago

It's fine if you do everything through Steam or a launcher like Lutris for GOG and Epic games. I just put Mint on my big rig and have Nvidia card, Doom 2016 did crash on me, which could be a driver problem, but it has been alright otherwise.

[-] trompete@hexbear.net 5 points 5 days ago

I'm pretty sure 10xx cards are still on the supported proprietary driver now. Distros also ship a legacy drivers for older hardware, and a very long time ago I used that, and it was fine, not sure now. The Nvidia situation for games is fine, in fact the OpenGL/Vulkan support (which is what games care about) was always a strong point about these. The performance is a bit worse than Windows, probably because Nvidia just patches special performance optimizations into their Windows drivers for specific games, but otherwise both drivers share a codebase.

The problem with Nvidia is that they're slow to support changes to the graphics stack on Linux, both on the kernel and Wayland (userspace) side. This doesn't affect games very much, it's more of a problem with other software. Mint Cinnamon also (I think) still uses X11 and not Wayland, and is generally a conservative/stable Linux distro, so it would be less affected by Nvidia's slowness to respond to new developments.

One thing that people make a big deal of, for very little reason honestly, is that you need to install these drivers, unlike pretty much any other driver. Mint afaik has a button somewhere that you need to just click and it'll do all that for you, that's literally it. On Debian you have to change one text file and type like three commands into the terminal, which might have given some people PTSD. What sometimes also seems to go wrong here is that people go to nvidia's website and download the driver from there. You don't want to do that.

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[-] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

It seems like maybe your a fan of the cutomization so if you havent yet you should check out plymouth for a custom splash screen. Here is a github with a bunch of custom themes for it: https://github.com/adi1090x/plymouth-themes

Edit: If you don't know what a splash screen is it's like the screen your computer displays during boot up.

I use this one personally.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adi1090x/files/master/plymouth-themes/previews/9.gif

[-] Edie@hexbear.net 4 points 5 days ago

If it weren't for the fact that my desktop starts up so dang fast, is would lobe to install Plymouth. Its really cool. I even started making a theme based on some lore from a vtuber I like (context)

[-] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 5 days ago

Mine starts really fast too, but it still displays for a few seconds you just have to make sure the grub settings are right so that anything else being displayed is replaced by it to maximize the time its there. Also maybe just something for my laptop, but i get regular updates from the manufacturer for the bios that gnome automatically downloads, and during the restart updates it displays the splash screen with a little progress percentage above it. So if you ever do restarts to apply updates it would display then too.

[-] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 1 points 5 days ago

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

[-] Taster_Of_Treats@hexbear.net 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Fedora workstation with Gnome is my OS and DE of choice. Bazzite just wasn't production ready when I tried it, but that was like 5+ years ago. If you don't want to use a Red Hat product, any other distribution with GNOME version/spin will do.

My favorite part is the full partition encryption feature. Makes me feel safer from feds, at least when the computer is turned off.

Fedora can also boot from former sub-major updates and keeps the last 5 or so available in case your hardware support gets borked somehow.

[-] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 5 days ago

I know it would be a pain to like redo your setup for it but what i do is i have 2 partitions. One for using the computer day-to-day and one for storage. Things like important documents, stuff im working on long term, etc all go in the 2nd partition and it stays unmounted and encrypted unless I'm actually using something that's stored there. It's a good way to make sure you aren't leaving all your stuff unencrypted just so you can check an email. Then when you need it you mount it, type the password, do what you need to do, and unmount it again.

[-] techpeakedin1991@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Just in case you don't know: this is fine to protect against some random person, but this doesn't stop someone who gets access to your computer from installing a virus on your main partition (and thus gaining access to the encrypted partition next time you unlock it).

Edit: Though come to think of it, you'd also need secure boot enabled to add any security from encrypting the partition your software is on

[-] Xiisadaddy@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 5 days ago

I do this on top of encrypting the main drive, and also have a system, and admin bios password, and use secure boot. Aswell as having it bios disabled to boot from any usb/sd card device. I'm sure somone with access, and skill could eventually get in but the evil maid is gonna atleast need to try a bit harder.

[-] techpeakedin1991@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

Oh yeah your setup's good. I just feel I should mention it for anyone not aware.

[-] Taster_Of_Treats@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago

Gotta do a clean install again someday.

[-] HexReplyBot@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago

A Reddit link was detected in your post. Here are links to the same location on alternative frontends that protect your privacy.

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this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2025
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