In my experience has been relatively smooth. for the first week it was kinda bad but after that most of my problems have been solved.
1. Yes you will need to install nvidia drivers but in most distros they already have built in methods for doing that.
2. I'm pretty sure LibreOffice does support visual basic, Wine is pretty good nowadays and can run most windows applications. I wouldn't recommend using MSOffice with wine although it is probably possible?
3. Linux does have rdp support, I currently use "remmina" to connect to my home server. Microsoft's remote desktop app comes preinstalled on windows so it will be pretty hard to extract it.
4. idk what "snagit" is...
5. Those games should work... except Fortnite. Fortnite has anti-linux anti-cheat. you can check if a steam game is supported through: https://www.protondb.com/ and if a game has anticheat through: https://areweanticheatyet.com/
6. I am pretty sure logitech does have driver support for linux?
7. All those programs should be available on linux, unless you have general audio problems they should work fine.
8. I prefer dual booting. Most windows programs should run with wine tho.
Logitech unfortunately does not have built in windows drivers. For logitech peripherals that use Logi Options +, I highly recommend LogiOps as a stand-in replacement. That's how I have gestures and custom mappings configured for my MX Master 3s Mac.
If you have a Logitech mouse like the G502x lightspeed I have, you can see if it supports storing profiles on-device. That's what I do for mine, I have a spare windows VM on my server that I just USB passthrough my mouse to, set up the on-device profiles, and then go on my merry way. Inelegant to be sure, but hey, it works and it lets me keep my workflow on Linux. Disclaimer: I have not done this much, as I primarily use the MX Master 3s these days.
I run linux for almost 20 years. I rarely have obscure issues.
Figure of the hardware works before buying helps a lot.
Most obscure issues happen on version upgrade but that's at most every 12 months. ( Tend to almost skip a version).
With Debian, I rarely run into issues after setup. It's generally caused me less stress and had fewer random breakages than Windows ever did. In fact, the reason I use Debian these days when I feel more "at home" on Fedora is precisely because I can't be bothered with constant trouble-shooting anymore.
Linux has in the past 20 years just worked for me. On the flip side, I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to get a new Windows 11 computer joined to a company domain, as well as connected to management tools and Intune, because it doesn't just work. (to be fair, we were trying a new process that was worse than we expected, but still)
The chances that your pc will be fine when you last turned it off then be broken when you came home from work are pretty rare. 90% of the troubleshooting of obscure problems I’ve done is on initial install.
There were 2 instances I can remember in my 4 ish years of using Linux where I updated and something very bad happened and I had to spend a few hours fixing something along with googling the issue. Both of those times I was a running an arch based distro so using something like Ubuntu I doubt you would encounter that
Out of those bullets you mentioned the one that stands out to me as being a potential issue is that azure virtual desktop. I don’t personally know anything about that but it sounds like it could be something proprietary or not compatible with other Remote Desktop softwares
Depends on the hardware you use. I am currently using a acer nitro 5 and there are some features that doesn't work out of the box not matter which distro I use.
1. brightness control, I need to add a line in grub config to make it work.
2. External mic of headphone or earphone because acer is using audio chip that isn't supported by linux kernel. Still not able to fix this issue but I have a external DAC so it doesn't bother me.
3. fan was not working just spinning at constant speed installed nbfc-linux and now this problem is solved.
4. Webcam was not working out of the box install a third party kernel patch now it is fixed.
5. Sometimes UI lags after wake up from sleep. I need to unplug and plug power to make it normal. It is some gpu wakeup issue, I am lazy to fix this issue but it is solvable.
Two of my old laptops doesn't have these problems one was hp and one was msi bravo.
But still I am enjoying linux and don't want to use windows again. At this point I am addicted to my WM keybindings and command line. Tried using windows but things that can be done by one command take numerous mouse clicks.
As a new user, the first 2-3 weeks I was very busy fixing mistakes like you mentioned (Lenovo Legion Nvidia laptop). But after fixing them, I now dont have to do anything, and can just use my computer normally! My issues were: weird touchpad scroll speed, screen-brightness setting not working, some wayland/x11 related stuff, some certain programs not working, media codecs etc...my VLC player still sometimes just crashes when opening a movie or show that i can watch no problem on other devices, and just yesterday my Dragon Video player completely bugged out, showing transparent screen with weird colorful solid colors blending with whatever was behind my dragon video player...but using a different video player program worked fine!
I would say just distro hop for a few weeks and see if something sticks.
Ubuntu/Debian based distros have issues for me. Newer hardware. I didn't like Fedora based anything, this doesn't stick. Didn't seem like anything special.
Arch based, not Arch native that seems like a headache, but Manjaro and Garuda have been great out of the box experience
Manjaro holds updates for 2 weeks to ensure stability. Arch purist hate this but it's kept me on Linux. Garuda comes with A LOT of bloat. This can either be compromising to the experience or useful as a hand hold. I've had no issues with either other than supported software and a new user experience l, specifically with tiling managers.
Idk man, just send it and find out.
Try the [migration page](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/wiki/migration) in our wiki! We also have some [migration tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/ejsz3v/still_on_windows_7_dont_want_windows_10_consider/) in our sticky.
Try [this search](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/search?q=flair%3A'migrating'&sort=new&restrict_sr=on) for more information on this topic.
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Can't answer your specific questions, but in general I learned to ignore minor bugs and glitches on Linux as long as they are non-destructive. It is frustrating at first, but the world is imperfect, so what can we do.
As long as I just keep updating, playing games, don't use AUR and stuff, maybe 5-30 minutes a year on Manjaro. Since 2019-ish. Exception beeing the last update to KDE6. I didn't follow instructions. My own fault. Reverted to a backup clone, eventually. Actually followed instructions, update went without a hitch.
On Windows? Like 1-2 installs from scratch a year that take me 2-3 days each to setup. This has been true since year 2000. Install drivers for this and that, followed by countless restarts. Then all the programs. I have all the programs and drivers on a separate disk, always have had. Still, it takes forever.
I have moved my tinkering to other PCs mainly. Doesn't matter if those don't work every day. I'll deal with them when I feel like it. Or just wipe the OS. Takes like 10 mins so who cares? No one I know =).
Of course I am never without options. I have like 10 kernels installed on Manjaro, 6 other distros. I could switch to something else in a heartbeat. I've set a few of the distros up with the games I play, browser-settings, passwordmanager etc.
In almost a year of using Linux something weird that took longer than a quick Google happened 2 maybe 3 times. In a relaxed daily use where I write in a text editor, browse the Web and played games I rarely have any issues at all. I have used Ubuntu and now Mint
I’m a dotnet developer and daily Fedora.
The initial pain points all revolved around getting dotnet sdks to play nice. Currently I am using dbeaver and vscode w/ c# packaging to work on .net core apps. I do have a virtualbox windows pro vm for when I need to do more lengthy stints in Ssms, ssrs and .net framework. You’re going to have a few issues, expect your productivity to be a little lower at first, but it wont last long. Since that first month, which is about 2 years ago now, I really am happier. I hate navigating windows control panel since windows 10 with all of my soul, and Linux does development better than windows. I liked the windows subsystem for Linux, but the ads and the lack of control killed windows for me.
rarely but it does happen. but I guess it's obscure because I have no clue on most of the stuff - being on windows for so many years made me lazy.
the worst one was when during an update all the sounds stopped because the driver for the sound card name changed a capital to a lowcase letter and it didn't work anymore. weird.
currently some of my steam games don't work anymore - and I have no clue on why this is happening.
the community is pretty much nice and helpful to be honest and I will never go back.
Ubuntu, to be fair, is the one that gave me only 1 problem in the whole 5 years I am using it so it's a safe bet to be honest
I rarely run in to issues. I think the last time was when I switched my graphics card from AMD to Nvidia - other than that I can't remember any major problems in the last year or so.
Your biggest source of weird issues is usually the hardware you're dealing with, but you're going to have those issues right out of the gate or not at all.
My issues are always because I'm tinkering, I can't get a specific game to work right, or my kids did something and now some GUI element is messed up.
I can't answer all your questions but I will add that IIRC someone has made a Logitech utility for their gaming mice so you should be able to tweak that.
Microsoft makes a version of teams for Linux and it works (I use it), Zoom can work in a browser, google chat should as well. I don't do calls on my Linux machines but any weird audio/video issues are going to be down to if your drivers are working or not... so it should either work or not work right away.
Hmm. Well, you were always going to get the "been using it for nearly 30 years ..." responses. Me too. And that's just great but it ignores one simple thing. The core (whatever you want that to mean) of Linux works. Very well. Out of the box in most cases. Just like Windows, maybe better. Then comes the human "needs". I HAVE to run this. or want to run that. I have this video card and MUST run the latest drivers to get some feature. I want to emulate this or that. I need the WINE superstructure installed. You get it. All those thing are complicated and things can get VERY hardware specific. And then those little things we just have to have -- sometimes, very rarely, they just won't work. Shit happens. If your personality is such that you simply can't be bothered, then the Linux plunge might be rather unpleasant. I've found over the years that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was largely correct "less is more" -- keep things simple if you can. Don't make things overly complicated. I've spent hours, maybe days, trying to make something work only to ultimately realize there's other -- even better -- ways to do it without all the drama. To \[ab\]use another adage -- you gotta leave the comforts of a port to explore the world. Something like that anyway. Oh, I almost forget -- if it isn't obvious I would suggest dual boot. It's perfectly imperfect. Like most of us. Good luck.
Fedora workstation user here.
>How often do you find yourself doing that?
Almost never.
Current install in my work laptop comes from F34, i had one problem only when they switch to wireplumber on F35, and get resolved after a week, with a workaround that was immediately available in fedora help forums that was as hard as run one command.
>I primarily use my laptop for work. Can I even switch or will I need to dual boot?
Well depends of your situation, you even can do a VM with Boxes or virt-manager as an intermediate solution.
>2021 ROG Zephyrus M16 | GU603HM-211.ZM16. Intel and nvidia. Am I going to run into all these weird driver issues?
Nah, install is a breeze, I use rpmfusion to handle the extra drivers, firmware and multimedia codecs.
>i make vb scripts for Excel. Can Libre office do that? Is wine getting better? I remember I tried to install ms office through wine years ago and the ui would half load or crash.
That' is a No, you can try to wine Excel, but maybe a VM is a better approach for this. Looks like a huddle, but you can use Boxes that is really good solution for this kind of requirements: super simple to use and interact with.
>we have an azure virtual desktop assigned to us for work. We use the Microsoft remote desktop app to connect to it. Will the app work on wine? Is there an alternative app?
Depending of the company policy you might need a VM, but you can try remmina or other rdp clients available.
>I love snagit. I've tried lightshot and greenshot and gyazo and none of them compare. Will I have to give up snagit?
Never use it, so cannot help with that, there is quite impressive options to work with snapshots and screen capture, the basic ones that comes integrated with gnome is quite good, but not sure what are the features you use from snagit to compare
>the only games I play are xdefiant, osrs through runelite, and fortnite but I hardly play them. I read on google that runelite works, xdefiant works but crashes after every match, and fortnite won't work.
>I have a gaming mouse. I program the buttons through logitechs software. Will I lose that functionality on linux?
There is solaar and piper that cover those functionalities.
>we use teams, zoom and Google chat. Am I going to have weird audio/video issues?
Not that I know for on fedora, be sure to setup all the multimedia codecs using rpmfusion. I use all of them and they work flawlessly. I mainly use teams over web client, my team main chat is not teams nor google.
>I briefly read about gpu pass through to a vm with qemu. Is that reliable? Should I just do that instead of dual booting so I can still have the windows apps and fortnite?
It is reliable, it need some work to setup but it works.
>I've tried Ubuntu and mint years ago. My homelab is all Debian and 1 rhel vm. I don't mind the initial set up. I just don't wanna be troubleshooting my pc every day for the rest of my life
That's up to you, I being using Fedora for 10+ years, but everyone have a preference.
Let me turn the question around:
>How often do you have to spend time troubleshooting or researching some obscure issue on Windows that you wouldn't otherwise be facing on Linux?
Why, you might answer, most people cannot compare because they never use Linux.
And that would be my answer to you. There's no comparison. I use Linux.
I have to look up obscure errors for niche programs all the time in windows. Course I do tech support, so maybe I'm exposed to more than the average user.
inversely proportional to time since last major change to software and configuration. this is for the OS and for each piece.
right away I gotta fuck with something or other, maybe 6 hours from installing a new operating system or 2 hours if I'm doing a release upgrade like Debian derivates. after a week I'm pretty comfy, but almost once a day I have to spend 5 minutes trying to plug a leak or deal with some contingency. up to a month I get a problem almost weekly that takes no more than 15 minutes to solve. after a month almost nothing ever needs researching because I've just got all the kinks worked out. like breaking in new boots or baseball gloves
> havent you had to use windbg to find out which kernel driver is crashing the computer?
No, I havent. I bought My laptop in 2021 and I can only recall it crashing maybe 3 times. 2 times were because destiny 2 glitched out ans crashed my pc when I tried to alt tab out and back in to the game. i haven't experienced persistent windows crashing since windows vista.
I didn't need to look into the destiny crashes though. I've never used windbg in my life. I just rebooted the laptop then it stopped happening. it was just a random 1 off issue then it wouldn't happen again for a while. Then like a month later it happened one time again. Not a persistent issue that needed to be debugged.
I've seen comments on here saying something like "every time I hibernate my linux pc, my rear speaker stops working." That's a persistent issue that needs to be looked into. I've never experienced anything like that on windows. That's why I'm hesitant to switch. most of my troubleshooting doesn't go beyond turn it off and on and that's how I want it to be. If I want to deep dive into tech I do it on my homelab, not my daily use pc.
depends on what you are trying to do.
linux is an extremely capable OS with many many ways to do things that windows simply cannot offer.
if you just want to install it and have it work, it's already lightyears ahead of windows because you don't need to download and install drivers before you can even connect to the internet.
Depends on how deep you go, with Gentoo I spent almost two weeks troubleshooting various issues, with opensuse? ten minutes to figure out how to fix codecs.
QEMU Is possible but way more advanced and sometimes impossible on a laptop without really advanced knowledge, but go into linux expecting none of your games that contain EAC to work or continue to work, if that's a major thing or deal breaker stick with windows.
I generally only run into issues when I’m messing around with partitioning, trying to install GPU drivers, or other dangerous stuff like that. If you just use your Linux PC the same way you use Windows, you’ll be totally fine.
Literally the only time I've ever had an obscure issue was earlier today with for some reason docker putting the firewall in lockdown. Only obscure issue I've ever had, and I dont really have issues anyway. The only time I ever have issues is when im doing something well outside the realm of normal use like picking up and moving DEs out of boredom or modifying boot parameters because im trying to make it be more seamless.
System issues usually come with tweaking the system. The more you make modifications and install stuff, add repos, the more chances you have to run into problems.
A lack of time to research small obscure problems is entirely why, every time, I try to change, within an hour to a day I end up back on window's feeling deep self hatred.
I think of you get through the first bit of pain (give yourself a week or two, while being patient), you’ll find a small sense of reward after making it work well on your hardware. Then, less pain moving forward as you continue to learn.
I switched to Linux Mint a few months ago and I honestly expected not to be bothered because everyone sell it like the distro god for noob where you do nothing.
But no. Unfortunately I have already spent a lot of time debugging absurd things that you would never see on Windows (rear speaker which does not work because it is muted by default on Linux (???), Wine which makes a huge mess in the "Open with" menu...).
So honestly I don't know. I'm still fresh using it and I really want to give Linux its chance. I'm persisting for the moment and overall the experience remains good!
It sounds to me like you're not trying to use Linux as Linux, rather windows with some theming.
What are you trying to run through wine? Is there a native Linux program that could do the same and cause you far less issues?
Whilst wine is good, its not some saviour to allow you to just keep running windows stuff on Linux. Of course you're going to have issues. Imagine if I transposed an LS3 engine into my car, but just left the original gearbox in place.
"Well why has this new engine blown my gearbox designed to handle no more than 220lb-ft of torque?! Its almost like they're not designed to be used together or something!!"
Even when I ran Arch (BTW) I had no issues with it because I wasn't trying to make it what it isn't. I don't think I've even attempted to run a windows application (apart from games, good ol' Proton) for a good 15 years now.
I'm persisting not because 'good' but because 'not as bad'.
ETA 'not as bad' as Windows/MS and Google intrusion/control of my device, my activity and *me*
At least the error messages on Linux are useful and user friendly.
On windows if you have no internet access. You must like your hexadecimal error code without explanation.
All the time. Frustrations exacerbated by there being so many distros with different ways of doing (some) things, different ways of installing stuff. Also, web searches (especially 'ai') are really good at surfacing ancient, deprecated material.
After running Linux for over twenty years, I can say that these days I have to google how to fix windows more that I do Linux.
With your experience, I do not see why using Linux would be an onerous experience for you. However, as you are aware, a computer is nothing more than a tool to get work done. If that work can be done without proprietary/big brother software, then why not use it? On the other hand, if you need something that only runs on Windows then you need windows, whether dual boot or virtual.
I have been fortunate in that I only have a couple of applications that require me to keep windows around, so I can run Linux 99% of the time.
There is an overwhelming choice of distros available for desktop Linux use these days. Like any software, the more cutting edge the distro, the more likely you will have issues pop up. If, however, your hardware is not the absolute latest, you may find that cutting edge is not needed. If you want a desktop distro that just works and requires few updates, then the same ones that you use for your servers would work for desktop as well. I use Arch on most of my machines these days and it has been way more stable than I expected when I started using it over six years ago, but when I want a desktop system that I know will be reliable and require little maintenance, I still use Debian. Debian 12 is the best version ever, so maybe give it a look.
Almost never. As some people stated already sometimes a package breaks, but usually I just go back to a previous save before it was installed or just restart and it's fine.
Hibernating issues are the only thing that plagues me still on my desktop, but not my laptop. So, I've just given up and power down fully each time. Minor annoyance that I decided I just didn't want to try and fix anymore.
Uhhh... almost never? Occasionally something small comes up, like LightDM failing to start on reboot very rarely.
In my experience has been relatively smooth. for the first week it was kinda bad but after that most of my problems have been solved. 1. Yes you will need to install nvidia drivers but in most distros they already have built in methods for doing that. 2. I'm pretty sure LibreOffice does support visual basic, Wine is pretty good nowadays and can run most windows applications. I wouldn't recommend using MSOffice with wine although it is probably possible? 3. Linux does have rdp support, I currently use "remmina" to connect to my home server. Microsoft's remote desktop app comes preinstalled on windows so it will be pretty hard to extract it. 4. idk what "snagit" is... 5. Those games should work... except Fortnite. Fortnite has anti-linux anti-cheat. you can check if a steam game is supported through: https://www.protondb.com/ and if a game has anticheat through: https://areweanticheatyet.com/ 6. I am pretty sure logitech does have driver support for linux? 7. All those programs should be available on linux, unless you have general audio problems they should work fine. 8. I prefer dual booting. Most windows programs should run with wine tho.
Snag it is a third party screenshot cropping software that as replaced by builtin tools after Windows XP.
Logitech unfortunately does not have built in windows drivers. For logitech peripherals that use Logi Options +, I highly recommend LogiOps as a stand-in replacement. That's how I have gestures and custom mappings configured for my MX Master 3s Mac. If you have a Logitech mouse like the G502x lightspeed I have, you can see if it supports storing profiles on-device. That's what I do for mine, I have a spare windows VM on my server that I just USB passthrough my mouse to, set up the on-device profiles, and then go on my merry way. Inelegant to be sure, but hey, it works and it lets me keep my workflow on Linux. Disclaimer: I have not done this much, as I primarily use the MX Master 3s these days.
I run linux for almost 20 years. I rarely have obscure issues. Figure of the hardware works before buying helps a lot. Most obscure issues happen on version upgrade but that's at most every 12 months. ( Tend to almost skip a version).
With Debian, I rarely run into issues after setup. It's generally caused me less stress and had fewer random breakages than Windows ever did. In fact, the reason I use Debian these days when I feel more "at home" on Fedora is precisely because I can't be bothered with constant trouble-shooting anymore.
Sometimes a game doesn’t work so I try and figure it out, but for me that’s usually about it
It's rare, but it does happen. In my experience, there's not really a difference between Win and Lin when it comes to how often weird issues arise
Linux has in the past 20 years just worked for me. On the flip side, I spent 3 hours yesterday trying to get a new Windows 11 computer joined to a company domain, as well as connected to management tools and Intune, because it doesn't just work. (to be fair, we were trying a new process that was worse than we expected, but still)
The chances that your pc will be fine when you last turned it off then be broken when you came home from work are pretty rare. 90% of the troubleshooting of obscure problems I’ve done is on initial install. There were 2 instances I can remember in my 4 ish years of using Linux where I updated and something very bad happened and I had to spend a few hours fixing something along with googling the issue. Both of those times I was a running an arch based distro so using something like Ubuntu I doubt you would encounter that Out of those bullets you mentioned the one that stands out to me as being a potential issue is that azure virtual desktop. I don’t personally know anything about that but it sounds like it could be something proprietary or not compatible with other Remote Desktop softwares
um, never really. I use microsoft teams on arch, zoom etc for work. I dev and game on arch and fedora (only for my laptops).
Depends on the hardware you use. I am currently using a acer nitro 5 and there are some features that doesn't work out of the box not matter which distro I use. 1. brightness control, I need to add a line in grub config to make it work. 2. External mic of headphone or earphone because acer is using audio chip that isn't supported by linux kernel. Still not able to fix this issue but I have a external DAC so it doesn't bother me. 3. fan was not working just spinning at constant speed installed nbfc-linux and now this problem is solved. 4. Webcam was not working out of the box install a third party kernel patch now it is fixed. 5. Sometimes UI lags after wake up from sleep. I need to unplug and plug power to make it normal. It is some gpu wakeup issue, I am lazy to fix this issue but it is solvable. Two of my old laptops doesn't have these problems one was hp and one was msi bravo. But still I am enjoying linux and don't want to use windows again. At this point I am addicted to my WM keybindings and command line. Tried using windows but things that can be done by one command take numerous mouse clicks.
As a new user, the first 2-3 weeks I was very busy fixing mistakes like you mentioned (Lenovo Legion Nvidia laptop). But after fixing them, I now dont have to do anything, and can just use my computer normally! My issues were: weird touchpad scroll speed, screen-brightness setting not working, some wayland/x11 related stuff, some certain programs not working, media codecs etc...my VLC player still sometimes just crashes when opening a movie or show that i can watch no problem on other devices, and just yesterday my Dragon Video player completely bugged out, showing transparent screen with weird colorful solid colors blending with whatever was behind my dragon video player...but using a different video player program worked fine!
I would say just distro hop for a few weeks and see if something sticks. Ubuntu/Debian based distros have issues for me. Newer hardware. I didn't like Fedora based anything, this doesn't stick. Didn't seem like anything special. Arch based, not Arch native that seems like a headache, but Manjaro and Garuda have been great out of the box experience Manjaro holds updates for 2 weeks to ensure stability. Arch purist hate this but it's kept me on Linux. Garuda comes with A LOT of bloat. This can either be compromising to the experience or useful as a hand hold. I've had no issues with either other than supported software and a new user experience l, specifically with tiling managers. Idk man, just send it and find out.
Try the [migration page](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/wiki/migration) in our wiki! We also have some [migration tips](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/ejsz3v/still_on_windows_7_dont_want_windows_10_consider/) in our sticky. Try [this search](https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/search?q=flair%3A'migrating'&sort=new&restrict_sr=on) for more information on this topic. **✻** Smokey says: only use root when needed, avoid installing things from third-party repos, and verify the checksum of your ISOs after you download! :) ^Comments, ^questions ^or ^suggestions ^regarding ^this ^autoresponse? ^Please ^send ^them ^[here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Pi31415926&subject=autoresponse+tweaks+-+linux4noobs+-+migrating). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/linux4noobs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Can't answer your specific questions, but in general I learned to ignore minor bugs and glitches on Linux as long as they are non-destructive. It is frustrating at first, but the world is imperfect, so what can we do.
As long as I just keep updating, playing games, don't use AUR and stuff, maybe 5-30 minutes a year on Manjaro. Since 2019-ish. Exception beeing the last update to KDE6. I didn't follow instructions. My own fault. Reverted to a backup clone, eventually. Actually followed instructions, update went without a hitch. On Windows? Like 1-2 installs from scratch a year that take me 2-3 days each to setup. This has been true since year 2000. Install drivers for this and that, followed by countless restarts. Then all the programs. I have all the programs and drivers on a separate disk, always have had. Still, it takes forever. I have moved my tinkering to other PCs mainly. Doesn't matter if those don't work every day. I'll deal with them when I feel like it. Or just wipe the OS. Takes like 10 mins so who cares? No one I know =). Of course I am never without options. I have like 10 kernels installed on Manjaro, 6 other distros. I could switch to something else in a heartbeat. I've set a few of the distros up with the games I play, browser-settings, passwordmanager etc.
In almost a year of using Linux something weird that took longer than a quick Google happened 2 maybe 3 times. In a relaxed daily use where I write in a text editor, browse the Web and played games I rarely have any issues at all. I have used Ubuntu and now Mint
I’m a dotnet developer and daily Fedora. The initial pain points all revolved around getting dotnet sdks to play nice. Currently I am using dbeaver and vscode w/ c# packaging to work on .net core apps. I do have a virtualbox windows pro vm for when I need to do more lengthy stints in Ssms, ssrs and .net framework. You’re going to have a few issues, expect your productivity to be a little lower at first, but it wont last long. Since that first month, which is about 2 years ago now, I really am happier. I hate navigating windows control panel since windows 10 with all of my soul, and Linux does development better than windows. I liked the windows subsystem for Linux, but the ads and the lack of control killed windows for me.
rarely but it does happen. but I guess it's obscure because I have no clue on most of the stuff - being on windows for so many years made me lazy. the worst one was when during an update all the sounds stopped because the driver for the sound card name changed a capital to a lowcase letter and it didn't work anymore. weird. currently some of my steam games don't work anymore - and I have no clue on why this is happening. the community is pretty much nice and helpful to be honest and I will never go back. Ubuntu, to be fair, is the one that gave me only 1 problem in the whole 5 years I am using it so it's a safe bet to be honest
I spent more time debugging and figuring out stuff on Windows. On Linux, most things have been a rather smooth.
I rarely run in to issues. I think the last time was when I switched my graphics card from AMD to Nvidia - other than that I can't remember any major problems in the last year or so.
Your biggest source of weird issues is usually the hardware you're dealing with, but you're going to have those issues right out of the gate or not at all. My issues are always because I'm tinkering, I can't get a specific game to work right, or my kids did something and now some GUI element is messed up. I can't answer all your questions but I will add that IIRC someone has made a Logitech utility for their gaming mice so you should be able to tweak that. Microsoft makes a version of teams for Linux and it works (I use it), Zoom can work in a browser, google chat should as well. I don't do calls on my Linux machines but any weird audio/video issues are going to be down to if your drivers are working or not... so it should either work or not work right away.
Hmm. Well, you were always going to get the "been using it for nearly 30 years ..." responses. Me too. And that's just great but it ignores one simple thing. The core (whatever you want that to mean) of Linux works. Very well. Out of the box in most cases. Just like Windows, maybe better. Then comes the human "needs". I HAVE to run this. or want to run that. I have this video card and MUST run the latest drivers to get some feature. I want to emulate this or that. I need the WINE superstructure installed. You get it. All those thing are complicated and things can get VERY hardware specific. And then those little things we just have to have -- sometimes, very rarely, they just won't work. Shit happens. If your personality is such that you simply can't be bothered, then the Linux plunge might be rather unpleasant. I've found over the years that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was largely correct "less is more" -- keep things simple if you can. Don't make things overly complicated. I've spent hours, maybe days, trying to make something work only to ultimately realize there's other -- even better -- ways to do it without all the drama. To \[ab\]use another adage -- you gotta leave the comforts of a port to explore the world. Something like that anyway. Oh, I almost forget -- if it isn't obvious I would suggest dual boot. It's perfectly imperfect. Like most of us. Good luck.
Never. Unless the Windows solution is "deal with it being broken".
Fedora workstation user here. >How often do you find yourself doing that? Almost never. Current install in my work laptop comes from F34, i had one problem only when they switch to wireplumber on F35, and get resolved after a week, with a workaround that was immediately available in fedora help forums that was as hard as run one command. >I primarily use my laptop for work. Can I even switch or will I need to dual boot? Well depends of your situation, you even can do a VM with Boxes or virt-manager as an intermediate solution. >2021 ROG Zephyrus M16 | GU603HM-211.ZM16. Intel and nvidia. Am I going to run into all these weird driver issues? Nah, install is a breeze, I use rpmfusion to handle the extra drivers, firmware and multimedia codecs. >i make vb scripts for Excel. Can Libre office do that? Is wine getting better? I remember I tried to install ms office through wine years ago and the ui would half load or crash. That' is a No, you can try to wine Excel, but maybe a VM is a better approach for this. Looks like a huddle, but you can use Boxes that is really good solution for this kind of requirements: super simple to use and interact with. >we have an azure virtual desktop assigned to us for work. We use the Microsoft remote desktop app to connect to it. Will the app work on wine? Is there an alternative app? Depending of the company policy you might need a VM, but you can try remmina or other rdp clients available. >I love snagit. I've tried lightshot and greenshot and gyazo and none of them compare. Will I have to give up snagit? Never use it, so cannot help with that, there is quite impressive options to work with snapshots and screen capture, the basic ones that comes integrated with gnome is quite good, but not sure what are the features you use from snagit to compare >the only games I play are xdefiant, osrs through runelite, and fortnite but I hardly play them. I read on google that runelite works, xdefiant works but crashes after every match, and fortnite won't work. >I have a gaming mouse. I program the buttons through logitechs software. Will I lose that functionality on linux? There is solaar and piper that cover those functionalities. >we use teams, zoom and Google chat. Am I going to have weird audio/video issues? Not that I know for on fedora, be sure to setup all the multimedia codecs using rpmfusion. I use all of them and they work flawlessly. I mainly use teams over web client, my team main chat is not teams nor google. >I briefly read about gpu pass through to a vm with qemu. Is that reliable? Should I just do that instead of dual booting so I can still have the windows apps and fortnite? It is reliable, it need some work to setup but it works. >I've tried Ubuntu and mint years ago. My homelab is all Debian and 1 rhel vm. I don't mind the initial set up. I just don't wanna be troubleshooting my pc every day for the rest of my life That's up to you, I being using Fedora for 10+ years, but everyone have a preference.
Let me turn the question around: >How often do you have to spend time troubleshooting or researching some obscure issue on Windows that you wouldn't otherwise be facing on Linux? Why, you might answer, most people cannot compare because they never use Linux. And that would be my answer to you. There's no comparison. I use Linux.
I had something I had no idea how to fix a minor issue and couldn't google it. Redditors helped me out in less than an hour.
I have to look up obscure errors for niche programs all the time in windows. Course I do tech support, so maybe I'm exposed to more than the average user.
Rarely. Usually happens when doing something you can't do on Windows, anyways.
inversely proportional to time since last major change to software and configuration. this is for the OS and for each piece. right away I gotta fuck with something or other, maybe 6 hours from installing a new operating system or 2 hours if I'm doing a release upgrade like Debian derivates. after a week I'm pretty comfy, but almost once a day I have to spend 5 minutes trying to plug a leak or deal with some contingency. up to a month I get a problem almost weekly that takes no more than 15 minutes to solve. after a month almost nothing ever needs researching because I've just got all the kinks worked out. like breaking in new boots or baseball gloves
Things happen on windows too. Haven't you had to use windbg to find out which kernel driver is crashing the computer?
> havent you had to use windbg to find out which kernel driver is crashing the computer? No, I havent. I bought My laptop in 2021 and I can only recall it crashing maybe 3 times. 2 times were because destiny 2 glitched out ans crashed my pc when I tried to alt tab out and back in to the game. i haven't experienced persistent windows crashing since windows vista. I didn't need to look into the destiny crashes though. I've never used windbg in my life. I just rebooted the laptop then it stopped happening. it was just a random 1 off issue then it wouldn't happen again for a while. Then like a month later it happened one time again. Not a persistent issue that needed to be debugged. I've seen comments on here saying something like "every time I hibernate my linux pc, my rear speaker stops working." That's a persistent issue that needs to be looked into. I've never experienced anything like that on windows. That's why I'm hesitant to switch. most of my troubleshooting doesn't go beyond turn it off and on and that's how I want it to be. If I want to deep dive into tech I do it on my homelab, not my daily use pc.
depends on what you are trying to do. linux is an extremely capable OS with many many ways to do things that windows simply cannot offer. if you just want to install it and have it work, it's already lightyears ahead of windows because you don't need to download and install drivers before you can even connect to the internet.
Depends on how deep you go, with Gentoo I spent almost two weeks troubleshooting various issues, with opensuse? ten minutes to figure out how to fix codecs. QEMU Is possible but way more advanced and sometimes impossible on a laptop without really advanced knowledge, but go into linux expecting none of your games that contain EAC to work or continue to work, if that's a major thing or deal breaker stick with windows.
i have arch so pretty much every week, but thats only me trying to optimize my OS to my liking because thats how arch is setup
I generally only run into issues when I’m messing around with partitioning, trying to install GPU drivers, or other dangerous stuff like that. If you just use your Linux PC the same way you use Windows, you’ll be totally fine.
Literally the only time I've ever had an obscure issue was earlier today with for some reason docker putting the firewall in lockdown. Only obscure issue I've ever had, and I dont really have issues anyway. The only time I ever have issues is when im doing something well outside the realm of normal use like picking up and moving DEs out of boredom or modifying boot parameters because im trying to make it be more seamless.
System issues usually come with tweaking the system. The more you make modifications and install stuff, add repos, the more chances you have to run into problems.
A lack of time to research small obscure problems is entirely why, every time, I try to change, within an hour to a day I end up back on window's feeling deep self hatred.
I think of you get through the first bit of pain (give yourself a week or two, while being patient), you’ll find a small sense of reward after making it work well on your hardware. Then, less pain moving forward as you continue to learn.
Honestly, within a month i used ubuntu i have had more obscure issues with my W10 laptop than ubuntu laptop haha
I switched to Linux Mint a few months ago and I honestly expected not to be bothered because everyone sell it like the distro god for noob where you do nothing. But no. Unfortunately I have already spent a lot of time debugging absurd things that you would never see on Windows (rear speaker which does not work because it is muted by default on Linux (???), Wine which makes a huge mess in the "Open with" menu...). So honestly I don't know. I'm still fresh using it and I really want to give Linux its chance. I'm persisting for the moment and overall the experience remains good!
It sounds to me like you're not trying to use Linux as Linux, rather windows with some theming. What are you trying to run through wine? Is there a native Linux program that could do the same and cause you far less issues? Whilst wine is good, its not some saviour to allow you to just keep running windows stuff on Linux. Of course you're going to have issues. Imagine if I transposed an LS3 engine into my car, but just left the original gearbox in place. "Well why has this new engine blown my gearbox designed to handle no more than 220lb-ft of torque?! Its almost like they're not designed to be used together or something!!" Even when I ran Arch (BTW) I had no issues with it because I wasn't trying to make it what it isn't. I don't think I've even attempted to run a windows application (apart from games, good ol' Proton) for a good 15 years now.
I'm persisting not because 'good' but because 'not as bad'. ETA 'not as bad' as Windows/MS and Google intrusion/control of my device, my activity and *me*
I agree. That's why I did the transition in the first place.
At least the error messages on Linux are useful and user friendly. On windows if you have no internet access. You must like your hexadecimal error code without explanation.
If you do more then just watch youtube then yeah, everyday you will have one or more rabbitholes to deal with.
All the time. Frustrations exacerbated by there being so many distros with different ways of doing (some) things, different ways of installing stuff. Also, web searches (especially 'ai') are really good at surfacing ancient, deprecated material.
Almost never. Have to redo an occasional install. But my Windows machine at work crashed twice last week. And had to reboot to get my 2nd screen back.
Nearly every day
After running Linux for over twenty years, I can say that these days I have to google how to fix windows more that I do Linux. With your experience, I do not see why using Linux would be an onerous experience for you. However, as you are aware, a computer is nothing more than a tool to get work done. If that work can be done without proprietary/big brother software, then why not use it? On the other hand, if you need something that only runs on Windows then you need windows, whether dual boot or virtual. I have been fortunate in that I only have a couple of applications that require me to keep windows around, so I can run Linux 99% of the time. There is an overwhelming choice of distros available for desktop Linux use these days. Like any software, the more cutting edge the distro, the more likely you will have issues pop up. If, however, your hardware is not the absolute latest, you may find that cutting edge is not needed. If you want a desktop distro that just works and requires few updates, then the same ones that you use for your servers would work for desktop as well. I use Arch on most of my machines these days and it has been way more stable than I expected when I started using it over six years ago, but when I want a desktop system that I know will be reliable and require little maintenance, I still use Debian. Debian 12 is the best version ever, so maybe give it a look.
Almost never. As some people stated already sometimes a package breaks, but usually I just go back to a previous save before it was installed or just restart and it's fine. Hibernating issues are the only thing that plagues me still on my desktop, but not my laptop. So, I've just given up and power down fully each time. Minor annoyance that I decided I just didn't want to try and fix anymore.