*fixed my trashed Ubuntu partition, trying mint

it’s solid dude 🤙

Installed Pop!_os maybe a year ago. It’s been fine.

I couldn’t quite figure out how to make the bg3 mod tools play nice. There’s probably some proton prefix stuff I’d have to do and I gave up before getting too deep.

I bet the next time I want to play a game with mods it’s going to be a bit of a headache.

Other than that, it’s fine. I ran mint for about a year before this, with an interlude of windows 11 that came with the desktop.

I was using Windows 10 LTSC for a bit before Home/Pro editions reached EoL. My past experiences with Linux were all such a significant addition of frustration; I couldn’t justify switching to Linux.

After a string of back-to-back hardware failures, I’m back to using a 10+ year old desktop I built. Ended up trying trying Fedora 42 with KDE and suddenly had none of the issues I had with past Linux attempts. My three biggest complaints before about Linux had been random Bluetooth device incompatibility, Nvidia support being trash, and most Steam games requiring extra commands and constant troubleshooting to get running decently.

I feel like a lot of those issues were from me starting with Arch derivatives on niche laptop hardware that was already beginning to fail. My experience with Fedora has been fantastic. My biggest problems now have been: -KDE discover store is really inconsistent with its packages. I would not expect the average Windows “user”(bought a PC and that’s what it came with) to bother understanding the difference between a flatpak and a native package, and would get really annoyed when stuff is out of date or mis-configured out of the box. I had a better experience using a GUI in Arch with the AUR to install software, ironically enough. -There are a few things, ie Nvidia drivers, non-free codecs, non flatpak Steam, that have inconsistent community documentation on how to install them. These become immediately bad first impressions on people switching from Windows, and I think its important that they are clear to install properly as possible.

Other than that, Fedora is stable and runs great. I’m using a Nvidia GPU and have no issues with it(this time, at least…). A lot of my software was already open source, but I run a few Windows applications, besides Steam games, with Wine; rarely do I have to do any extra configuration. KDE Plasma as a desktop environment has given me the customization and control out of the box that I have been missing from Windows for over a decade, while Fedora has some sane defaults for it that make it accessible to Windows users expecting something a bit more familiar.

There’s always a weird quirk here and there, but I have had my fair share of troubleshooting on Windows before as well. I feel like Linux as a home PC OS is mature enough that people who don’t do much on the PC anyway could find their way around it, while it’s still going to be an annoying learning curve for people who see end user software as a hobby. Entirely usable though.

Obligatory I don’t play games with anti cheat and I don’t use streaming services with DRM. I have a few games with Denuvo, and haven’t had any problems arise that needed me to switch Proton versions that end up triggering install lock outs.

Buddy of mine decided to switch to Debian like a month ago, I warned him it’s Linux but “raw” and warned him of outdated packages an such, he said no worries. Proceeds to AI his way through literally everything, broke numerous packages by going to Trixie Backports for newer drivers and has now installed windows on a spare 500Gb HDD so he can play Fortnite with a chick he met on tinder.

Want to take bets on how long his Debian install lasts?

My steam wrapped for 2023 is fully windows, 2024 has about 40% windows 60% Linux, purely from the moment I switched halfway through the year, and 2025 is fully Linux.

I regret nothing.

Caveats:

• I built a new computer in early 2025, knew I’d be making Linux, went AMD 7900xtx. Worked right out the box flawlessly.
• I started out self hosting stuff and got somewhat comfortable with Linux in those instances, so when I eventually threw endeavouros into my laptop, it all just worked for me. I had a couple of “laptop won’t boot because its battery died mid update” events, which is about a couple more than there ever should’ve been, but it wasn’t too hard to recover the laptop every time, with help from chatgpt
• switched to Bazzite for my new desktop and work framework 13 laptop, but hold endeavouros in my heart with great affection, because it is awesome and Linux is awesome no matter what flavour you pick (restrictions apply, research what you’re getting into when picking a distro, and compare a bit but don’t overstress)
• Linux may or may not radicalize you heavily. The liberating feeling sometimes might make you mad that you put up with all that Apple/Microsoft/Adobe bullshit for all those years. Self-hosting intensifies radicalization. Don’t come blaming me when you find yourself in a shadow war with the Mossad over your email server getting shadowbanned throughout the Chilean Patagonia due to attempting to create an ex-engineers’ farming commune and a regional meshcore network there.

Mostly really good, I feel like I’ve traded a lot of major problems that I can’t do anything about for a few tiny problems that I can actually solve

It’s been amazing. My RAM is singing praises with how much better the OS is at handling memory.

https://lemmy.ca/comment/21276696

I just put an old SSD and Linux on my decade old laptop, and it’s like a whole new computer

ofc, it was probably mostly the hard drive that was the problem to begin with, seeing as it took 10 minutes to boot up and log in, and another five before it would open a web or file browser…

Made the jump to Linux about a month ago. Too much bloat on Win11. With the forthcoming AI bullshit I decided to take the leap and see how much I liked it. I installed mint on an old laptop. I had to test it out and was surprised at how easy it was decided to dual boot my main gaming PC because there are still some games that require anti-cheat that I can’t play on Linux. But Once they figure out how to do that, I’ll be a complete convert. It’s amazing how much faster and smoother. My PC is running fedora.

It’s been a complete mish mash of greatness and tragedies. Not a week goes by without me having a bit of both. Only time I’ve had to boot back into windows was for a bios update that I couldn’t get to work through Linux, but I’ve also had to make a few sacrifices and accept that I can’t have everything good in life on Linux. But the opposite is also true, you can’t have everything good on Windows, so I’m content for now.

It’s been GREAT! All my torrenting related stuff works better than it did on windows 10. I am slowing loading old 2000’s windows PC games on my Mint installation and so far it’s been working well.

My computers are MUCH faster on linux and updates take 20 seconds instead of 15 minutes.

I’ll enjoy it for like a month and then something awful will happen and I’ll say well this is pretty terrible. This month my PC just stopped waking up from sleep. No response from keyboard, mouse inputs. Tried various different devices to wake the PC up, nada. Only returns on reboot. Arch btw

Fantastic! Just switched my main PC to Cachy OS the other day from Linux Mint (previously W10) because I started to find it too restrictive. Tried out Hyprland for a bit and it was a lot of fun but I don’t have the time to fully customise everything, so went to Plasma. I’m saving Hyprland for when I retire.

My laptop is still running Mint Cinnamon (dual boot W11) but I’m contemplating on another OS that’s more friendly to Unity and Unreal game development. Any suggestions? I keep getting burst compiler errors in Unity, even on the latest LTS.

It’s been okay. I’ve swapped from zorin to fedora to Ubuntu and have some ups and downs. A few windows apps. Have to use I’ve been mostly able to get going in bottle with moderate success. I use autodesk fusion and I lament no Linux version and freecad is not my jam but I have a Mac still for that.

Great. Only issue so far has been a specific VPN for work which does not have a Linux installer and no drag and drop replacement for Snagit. But that’s just work stuff, everything on the private side works flawlessly for me.