After several months of experimenting with different distros, I just yesterday made the full-time switch to Linux Mint. I'm pretty happy with it so far, I'm just wondering why I hadn't done it sooner.
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I didn't have the patience to try out a few, but luckily Fedora has met my needs without annoying me as much as windows did. Though I am feeling a bit of an itch to try out some of the others, but am currently just chilling in this local minimum of effort and not regretting going from windows to Fedora one bit.
I'm in an interesting place. I dual boot Windows 10 and Pop OS. Windows 11 requires Secure Boot enabled and Pop OS doesn't support it. I'd dump Windows entirely but I still need it for school. Not sure if I should switch distros or just keep using Windows 10 until I graduate.
When I was in school, I wanted a Linux machine (since my school stuff was mostly linux and I wanted to be able to work locally instead of having to ssh in to school machines) but wasn't comfortable doing it on my main PC, so I bought a cheap laptop and inatalled linux on that. Had the extra bonus of being smaller and lighter than my gaming laptop that was my main PC at the time, too.
Your options will probably be a bit more expensive (and apologies for suggesting a solution that involves throwing money at it if you aren't in a position to get even a relatively cheap one) since it's running windows and needs the hardware for that, including TPM if your school stuff requires win 11 (though if you can get away with win 10 or 7, you could probably get a cheaper machine). Though on the other hand, your tasks might not require a GPU, which can save a lot right there.
Then you can truly isolate your personal stuff from winsows, especially if you set your LAN up to never let the windows machine know that the linux machine even exists.
I also use this with consoles to play games I'd like to try but they have DRM or anticheat that I don't want on my PC. Also kinda doing it with work, though the laptop belongs to them.
Windows 8 is what pushed me to Linux. Linux is better than ever. Proton is just amazing.
I've been a Windows user since 95. I tried a few times to move to Linux, but basic user unfriendly problems always brought me back to Windows. Now there's no option to go back. Linux Mint has had some bumps, but I'm properly motivated to jump over those hurdles now. I've become a proud Linux user this last week. Finally free of Microsoft's gravity.
Welcome brother or sister or nb thing inbetween! This is the way!
Sibling is the word you want lol
I finally dumped Windows for KDE Neon on my desktop and my Surface about 5 months ago now. Never looked back.
Which surface do you use? And what features are missing still?
It's the Laptop Studio 1, and strangely enough, it's about flawless! The Surface kernel drivers are really good, and my model just so happens to have full support. The only gotcha is that howdy (Windows Hello style unlock using IR camera) doesn't really work with KDE Plasma. The touchscreen will also pick up your palm as regular touch input, but a good palm glove solves that.
I hope this doesn't mean the enshitifcaiton of Linux as we start to cater for people who don't want to learn.... We watched it with Microsoft products, though they also had a profitable reason to nerf their software.
Windows was developed by a huge corporation for profit, and that drives enshittification, because eventually they have all the users they think they can get, so instead they start trying to milk those users for more $$$.
Linux is developed by a bunch of nerds who are doing it as a hobby, or because they weren’t happy with the other options. This type of group does not leas to enshittification.
That's the beauty of Linux- there are so many distros to choose from.
Something for everyone.
And if enough people don't like the existing options, you are always free to fork what exists and make something that fits your needs better.
Being simple to use out of the box is NOT a bad thing on its own. We are simply used to seeing the proprietary profit-driven version, which is the path to enshittification. When something works great out of the box but you still own your machine and have access to any damn thing you want that's hidden from view by default, that is just a good product.
I've been an engineer in electronics and software for over 20 years. I have a masters in software engineering. I currently work on C and C++ code every day for embedded systems, including one that's embedded linux. The terminal is my comfort zone. Screens full of super-legible monospaced text please my eyes.
I run Linux Mint Cinnamon (btw) on every computer of mine, even my work machine, and I don't care who knows it!
I recommend it to anybody of any skill level who will listen.
It doesn't have to. KDE is a great example here. Out of the box, it's extremely simple to use, as well as familiar in look and feel to Windows. But if you want to - it gives you a lot of customization options. So it doesn't seem to lose out on anything due to being simplified by default.
And frankly, a lot of Unix software could use a similar approach. I know it's not that simple, but it helps the users greatly - particularly new ones, but experienced ones too. Perhaps this wave of Windows refugees will in some way lead to progress in this area.