this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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Thinking about making the switch and need some advice. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 weeks ago by TJDetweiler@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.world
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Hi all,

As the title states, I'm interested in making the switch from Windows to Linux. I know absolutely nothing about Linux, other than that fact that there are distros that exist under Linux, and Linux itself isn't an OS, or so I think.

I have 2 laptops and my main home office PC, which I use for my job and gaming.

My plan is to switch one of my laptops to a Linux distro, and test it out. This laptops only purpose is web browsing, so I figure getting Linux set up to do something as simple as opening a browser is something I am capable of.

Down the road, once I've sort of learned on this laptop, I may work my way up to using other distros and dual booting my main PC. Who knows, maybe I'll even switch over completely prior to Windows 11 rolling out.

I've heard getting games to work with Linux can sometimes be a hassle, and can require some fiddling, so I won't be doing gaming on a Linux distro until I feel quite comfortable.

So with the above context, I'm looking for recommendations on a distro I should use, any guides that any of you may have found helpful, and generally any insight on things I may need to be aware of.

I am fairly tech savvy (probably not compared to most of you), and am not afraid of tinkering with things until they work. Any help would be muchly appreciated, and if this isn't the correct place to post, please let me know and point me in the right direction.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 weeks ago

Stay on the beaten path and it is hard to go wrong. I would start with Linux Mint and then play around with it for a while. Make sure you break your Windows habits like downloading software from the web. That's bad practice and will cause issues. You want to install software from the software store which on Linux Mint shows both native packages and flatpaks. Sometimes the software you are looking for is not verified on Linux Mint so you need to go into settings and turn on show unverified apps. (I'm not sure why the Linux Mint team does this)

Keep in mind Windows 10 reaches EOL in one year. Don't be afraid to use Windows 11 if you need Windows.