Reminder for Windows 10 users who can't upgrade to Windows 11

The future is now old man!

What's wrong with it?

At least Sober's working.

Not only that but they also detect VMs so if you want to play it you have to dual boot

Lutris is a thing

Official Linux support is silly honestly. It will always be janky.

Windows just works with wine and proton most of the time.

It once played perfectly fine under WINE, then Roblox explicitly blocked it for no good reason.

sober.vinegarhq.org

i have been using mint (cinnamon) too for like a year and a half. every now and then i try another distro and a few more, but i always land back where i started. it even looks pretty with the "sweet dark v40" gtk theme.

I do some e-wasting for a number of big companies and have piles of old laptops. I've taken to giving the laptops to people that need computers and the ones with Linux don't taken. I literally can't give away Linux computers. They can buy their own windows licenses.

Yep, people are so stubborn they would rather risk their entire online presence than learn that penguin hacker thingy with the white text. Also the Water is wet

Mint was so easy to install. I'm pretty new to Linux. Not afraid of having to do things in the terminal, but I don't really know many commands yet. So, I appreciate the graphical managers for updates and drivers. You can definitely tell they really worked to make a polished OS. And I really like Cinnamon. It's a very clean looking DE that has been super easy to transition to from Windows.

Unlike Kubuntu, I didn't have to do any tricks or install anything from github to get stuff from my Steam library to work, everything just worked. And Kubuntu (or perhaps just Wayland) would crash upon waking my PC from sleep and wouldn't recover.

I switched to Linux Mint several months ago. Thanks to Proton, All my Steam games that I bought for Windows run great. (I'm using an nVidia RTX 3060). And any older games like "Deus Ex" or "Giants: Citizen Kabuto" run under Wine, using the default settings.

pop!os reportedly packs in and handles the proprietary nvidia drivers for you, which can be a pain to handle yourself. i haven't tried it nor do i have nvidia but i see it highly recommended a lot.

I too am in a conundrum. I like the idea of Linux a lot, but pretty much all I use my laptop for is a) Excel and b) very rarely games, neither of which make sense to use Linux for.

I'll build a home server at some point and I think that'll be my start.

i heard good things about Bazzite abd Ubuntu/Pop OS with nvidia support

If your system supports windows 11 then dual boot for the games you want windows support for.

Then you have a bare metal option for those games and you can run whatever distro you want along side it.

As someone who has extensively used both Cinnamon and Plasma: I find Plasma a lot less polished, by a huge margin. Not only do settings have unusual defaults and are located in places you wouldn't expect, it also often has desktop-breaking bugs out of nowhere even in stable versions, and this has only gotten worse with Wayland. Even as someone who has been using Arch for years now, I still struggle with getting Plasma to not shit itself every once in a while.

Cinnamon on the other hand does have a lot less features out of the box, but the few things it does, it does them well, and every setting is where a sane person would search for them.

I would not recommend Plasma to a Linux beginner at all. It's the kind of unpolished mess that would make anyone who doesn't care enough about computers to just give up and go back to Windows.

I'd say kde plasma is closest to windows 10 while Linux mints cinnamon covers vista, 7, 8.1 and 11

• Plasma is more resource intensive, and this meme is specifically about machines that are 7-10 years out of date

• Plasma is wayy more buggy in cinnamon (Alteast my experience)

A lot of people will be happy not to have windows update asking to restart the computer anymore.

Considering people kept using Windows XP well after EOL... yup.

¿Por Qué No Los Dos?

That was my thoughts, too. So, now I'm running Mint on my gaming PC and the one hooked up in my living room for streaming. I tried Kubuntu, and liked it, but KDE Wayland was giving me issues. Installing a different desktop environment just introduced more problems, so I went with a different distro with the DE I wanted, which was Mint with Cinnamon. Now, life is good.

I learned of bazzite today and will be trying an install soonish

Maybe they'll drop the fake requirements from 11 so people can actually upgrade to 11 from 10.

question, i have a older computer that i want to switch to linux. It has a 1080. Do i just install linux and it will work, or do i have to go look for drivers, or do i have to use the onboard graphics till i get everything installed? How do i have to imagine it?

Now install drivers to webcam, for example elgato

Potato potato

I love everything about Pop!_OS. Except the name, that I cannot stand.

Well, most people don't have spare computers at home, so they do actually need to decide. It also means that they can't easily try out different operating systems, so even when they're unhappy with their current OS, they'll rarely inform themselves about alternatives.

I think MacOS and Linux are viable OS's whereas Windows is shit and deserves to be nowhere near a computer, maybe a toaster or something idk

You would be right, only if a preference for one OS didn't negatively affect other OSes. If less people used windows, there would be fewer windows-exclusive software. And if that were the case, the likelihood would decrease that my university classes would require windows-exclusive software.

You might say, "just use wine," or "just use a windows VM." Wine doesn't always work with all software, and using a windows VM would undermine one of my main reasons for using Linux, which is privacy.

It is therefore in my best interest that people stop using windows. It's not a vendetta, it's not activism, it's democracy.

Uh oh, prepare to be downvoted to oblivion for such a balanced take (j/k... I hope).

This just objectively isn't true. The XP EOL date actually forced users hands. There WAS refresh cycle in 2014, the only reason it didn't turn in to the uprising it is seemingly turned into, is because Microsoft kinda got lucky, and this refresh cycle purged Pentim 4-s and Celeron M-s and Pentium D-s, and old Athlons, all of which were ewaste from new.

What are these Manjaro controversies?

Which Desktop did you settle on as a favorite?

Fuck it man, I'll take it, you can still spin that up with Linux and run a bunch of microservices on it. Not a great form factor for a server, but guess what, if these China tariffs take off, you're gonna be so glad you have a 10 year old machine to have around for extra compute power, since buying new compute will be obscenely costly. (Assuming you're in the USA of course, if you're in Europe you'll be fine)

Install Linux if you still want use your old computer

Download the Windows 11 ISO and tick an option to mitigate the new requirements in Rufus. That's all you have to do. Or download the Windows 10 IoT iso from massgrave. Supported until 2030-something.

Whatever you pick, first test it by running it from a USB drive first.

Mint is fine, Kubuntu is also great.

I switched from Win10 to Mint, and am quite happy. You can get a lot of stuff done through GUI, so you can put off learning how to use the terminal a little. If you are worried about using it, I can recommend using ChatGPT. Helped me troubleshoot a lot of issues and learning a few tricks.

First step: Decide on the so-called desktop environment. A shortlist is provided below. For a new user, this should be decisive when choosing between beginner-friendly distros.

Before going over to the next (and final) step, we need to set the stage for our contenders:

• Versions of Linux Mint. Linux Mint has (rightfully so) become the face of Linux for beginners. Stand out feature would be how crazy popular it is; it's a joy to look up your problem through a search engine and find solutions for it.
• Images of uBlue. Where Linux Mint tries to smooth the rough edges of the "traditional Linux model" as nicely as possible, uBlue's images can be referred to as revolutionary by comparison. The model strikes some (re)semblance to what you might know from your phone or chromebook. These images aren't even close to reaching their full potential, but have already garnered/amassed a wide audience for how they (at least attempt to) solve some of Desktop Linux' long-standing issues. Note that finding solutions for your problems might not be as straightforward. However, documentation is decent and they've been very helpful on Discord.

Final step: Pick the distro corresponding to your preferred desktop environment. The list found below (ordered alphabetically) isn't trying to be exhaustive on desktop environments.

• Cinnamon; Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition. This is their flagship and probably what people mean when referring to Linux Mint.
• GNOME; Bazzite's GNOME. If you don't intend to game, then consider Bluefin instead.
• KDE Plasma; Bazzite's KDE Plasma. If you don't intend to game, then consider Aurora instead.
• MATE; Linux Mint MATE Edition.
• Xfce; Linux Mint Xfce Edition.

Mint is the best to start tbh.

And you could stay in mint for years and barely have to use bash, and when you do there is a well stocked forum, so it is sometimes even easier than windows to troubleshoot.

Such a decisive question. I wouldn't say there's necessarily a "best". Mint is an EXCELLENT choice. So too would be Fedora (Fedora KDE edition I'd recommend for most) or OpenSuSe Tumbleweed.

Just pick what looks decent to you and give it a shot.

RIP your inbox lol. Like others have said though whatever you choose test it out booting off a USB first, fwiw I'd vote try FedoraKDE, but more importantly I'll add this:

Whatever you choose it will be different and it will be an adjustment in some capacity, and that's ok! And don't be scared of the terminal, always keep back ups just in case but you really can't fuck up tooooo bad unless you're using sudo and then just be real careful. Watch a few youtube videos on something like "linux terminal basics" or "bash basics" and follow along like you're taking a class, it'll really help you get familiar with it. It's a great thing to know how to use, these days if I know how to do it through the terminal I usually will instead of puttering through a gui honestly.

mint is good, pop!os is also good, i use and recommend endeavouros as arch-but-easy. tbh just about any popular distro these days is prolly gonna do fine for the average user.

I recommend Linux Mint with the default Gnome/Cinnamon desktop. I think it's the most "Windows-like" (You can add other desktops later on without having to reinstall anything. KDE Plasma is really nice). The installer found all my hardware for me and set it up, including my network printer. It installed my nVidia drivers (even gave me a choice of several with a 'Recommended' one at the top).

The LibreOffice suite is already included, which should take care of your productivity needs. (It recognizes and can read/write MS-Office documents). Thunderbird will take care of your email needs.

There's also a utility called TimeShift, which works like Windows System Restore. Since you'll be making a lot of changes the first month or so, it's a great way to undo any screw-ups. Make sure you create a Restore Point before you do any serious fiddling. Even if you make your system unbootable, you can boot from a Linux Mint flash drive and run TimeShift that way, too.

Gaming is awesome. Steam has a native linux client, which uses a version of Wine called Proton, which has all the settings needed to run your games. Basically, everything I bought on Steam under Windows, runs in Linux. (NOLF 1 was the only game I couldn't get to completely work. No music, I think the game uses DirectPlay for music, which no games seem to use anymore).

Try downloading and installing Tiny11.

If you have the budget Siemens NX CAD CAM FEA runs on Linux (Redhat and SUSE, also works on OpenSUSE). However the GUI version is NX 12 or prior releases, newer versions are headless...maybe that will change with Linux Desktop gaining percentage steadily

Whatever version of Windows that allows group policy changes will let you turn off all the annoying stuff, that'd probably be your best bet for now.

I'm currently using Ardour on Arch with some packages from the pro-audio group, but I wouldn't exactly call my setup "professional"

If you like Kubuntu because of apt and KDE, don't be afraid of going Debian with KDE next time.

You can just use a graphical file manager in Linux like you might have been used to in Windows. When I open mine I see my windows partition and my USB drive listed on the left side.

I know Mint has one that I use all the time, but I’m not familiar with what’s in Ubuntu out of the box.

There may be an easier way to access the external drive, It depends on what you are bar is for difficult. Are we talking about a NAS or an external USB drive?

What's your current method for connecting to it?

You can get the LTSC ISOs directly from Microsoft, and activate with https://massgrave.dev/

is this not what the steam deck os will eventually offer? cause I can see myself using that on my desktop eventually

If they can get a version that just runs all Windows programs (not just games) out of the box without user modification then great. I'd consider that to be an actual Windows replacement.

If all you're running is a browser and some light office suite use then great, Linux can do that now. Otherwise what people saying "just switch to Linux" are really saying is "stop using your PC".

Bazzite is probably fine

the first two can be, but i don't recommend trisquel to those coming from windows

They're certainly somewhat more exotic choices.

Bazzite is currently seeing a hype wave, because it's strongly inspired by what the Steam Deck does. But that also means, it's somewhat built like an OS for a console (or in fact like Android), in that it's a transactional/atomic distribution.
This means, you can't easily make changes to the OS itself, only to the applications you install and of course your personal files.
It certainly makes it more difficult to break, but it's still a relatively new thing in the Linux world and particularly you might still run into some limitations when trying to use it as a full-fledged desktop (depending on what you're looking to do with your PC).

Garuda Linux is based on Arch Linux, which is what we refer to as "bleeding edge" (as opposed to "cutting edge"), because you get the newest version of all the software on your PC just a few days after it got released by the respective developers. Sometimes, those newest versions will have bugs.
You'll find folks who'll tell you they've been running Arch since they were two years old and never had a problem, but ultimately, why risk it?

And yeah, Trisquel is also getting basically a hard no from me. It's a distribution for purists. For people who want nothing to do with the corporate world, who'd rather not be able to do something than rely on proprietary software.
If you're coming from Windows, the chances of you even really knowing what that means are basically non-existent, so I doubt it's what you want...

I'm on Mint 22 with current laptop hardware (Intel/Nvidia) and it's been completely plug and play, even for gaming.

I absolutely love Mint.

Mint is on kernel 6.8 what are you talking about(Alteast mainline Mint not LMDE)

Mount the partition in Linux and migrate it all?

I personally thought I'd miss parts of windows, but the consistent bombardment of bing search results when I wanted to search my computer for a filename, application or just fucking anything drove me to curbstomp all my windows installs.

That and the ever changing settings menus, having to delve through shit sandwiches to end up in an antiquated but familiar window to change a setting was a fucking nightmare.

Honestly, if there was a bit more KISS happening within windows I'd probably have not moved OS - but Microsoft's never ending desire to change what really worked for so many years drove me to where I am.

You do you, I'm not here to convince anyone to migrate OS, but having some level of semblance and control - for me is such a relief. Probably some of the ASD + ADHD coming through but I'm sure there are many typical folks that feel the same way.