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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I can confirm that the ultra-low-maintenance variant can work as well: Years ago, a dear friend of mine needed a replacement for her antique Windows laptop, to write reports for her job training as a psychotherapist. She had two jobs, no money, a little daughter, and zero time to bother with computers.
I gave her a Thinkpad X220 with Debian on it. I got zero support requests from her. That was 2016, and she is still using it.
Oh my, I hope she knows how to sed the release name in /etc/apt, or else it's very out of date by now...
Well, I was saying ultra-low maintenance, and most of the time, we both had much more important things to do (apart from navigating a pandemic). For example, going ice skating or trampoline jumping with her kid. And she is also not the type of person who likes yearly breaking UI changes. But as you remind me, I'll get her another dist upgrade and browser update, so that online banking continues to work for her. That's what you have friends for :-)
I had to do some math when you said pandemic and THAT WAS 6 YEARS AGO?!
Wait is this how you get up to date when your system is past long term support? Had trouble updating once and couldn't find an answer.
Didn't properly backup my data and lost a couple years of work doing a fresh install (school work and personal projects). Would not recommend doing backups drunk. Would recommend backing up your data regularly.
Wait is this how you get up to date when your system is past long term support?
Pretty much! You just modify the apt sources, and upgrade incrementing by each stable release until you reach current stable. Each upgrade guide has a section that points you to the guide for the previous version if your version doesn't match.
Would not recommend doing backups drunk.
:D in my experience, there's a certain amount of drink-inspired overconfidence that can be helpful, but it's very easy to go over. I need more testing to find the exact line - it might also wrap around again if you drink more. More investigation needed :)
Didn't properly backup my data and lost a couple years of work doing a fresh install (school work and personal projects).
Always put /home on a separate partition.
Would not recommend doing backups drunk.
I would not use the root password when drunk.
I started setting /home on a separate disk, and my life is so much easier since then. While I keep regular backups, it's been infinitely easier to move to a different distro if I feel like it without worrying about losing data.
In 2017 I bought a used laptop released 2011 and put mint cinnamon on it. About a year later my niece threw it off the table and keyboard and touchscreen broke. I shelfed it for a year before I bought a USB mouse and keyboard. Booted it up, used it a bit, updated, everything just worked. I don't use that machine anymore since a year, as last year I bought a "new" used laptop released 2018. I recently booted the older laptop just to see and it works just fine. It hasn't been updated in a long time.
The newer machine runs debian 12 gnome and also doesn't get updated regularly (as I don't have WiFi). Both machines are as fast as on the first day. I never had any stability problem with both machines (except maybe the table stability, where former laptop fell from).
It does become insecure, so it's not recommended. But old Linux installations don't stop working just bevause of age. What becomes too out-dated eventually is web browsers.
Also, hardware requirements for Linux are much lower. My own main PC is from 2009 and works like a charm with new Debian. The one before lasted about ten years, it had a Pentium II like CPU.
i've changed for linux mint cuz my computer simply can't run windows 11
no, it can.. but they won't allow it because of all their dogshit background spyware crap. zero reason, other then microshits spyware. glad you made the best decision and dumped their stupid ass
Excuse me, it's microslop. ;)
Mint, then LMDE for me but i did it sooner, rather then being forced to upgrade to W11 later. I was on W10 about 2.5 years ago now.
Is Linux any better for gamers these days? Not being able to use most of my software and games has always kept me back.
It seems to run most games. Kernel level anti cheat games are the exception.
I'm not even on a gaming distro. Using Linux Mint Debian Edition.
Most games will run just fine through Steam and Proton or Heroic Launcher.
I'm going to hop to something else (pikaOS) eventually, but most of my concerns with Linux seem to have been largely fixed.
How approachable is the switch for laymen? I used to be pretty big into PC building, running RedHat, etc. Then I got old and even navigating gmail makes me angry.
Depends on what you need from your computer. If it's just web browsing and some light "office-like" tasks, it's very easy, especially if you've interacted with a computer before. If you need some specialized hardware support or rely on some complicated proprietary app (looking at you Adobe), it can get complicated quickly.
In any case there will be some pain as you get accustomed to the new OS. But overall it's not as bad as it used to be.
I use Photoshop for my side gig, but I stopped at the last version before their criminal subscription bullshit.
I'll have to look into it.
See if you can get by with a combination of Krita and GIMP. The former especially has improved a lot lately and is now a fairly professional tool.
New-ish versions of Photoshop are very difficult to run in WINE (which allows you to run some Windows apps natively - it's the thing that powers all recent linux gaming advances). The best you can do is run it in a VM with a window passthru, like so: https://github.com/winapps-org/winapps
I've tried Krita and GIMP, but my brain, man . . .
I'm using PS CS5, which was released in 2010. After a quick look, it looks like it runs in Wine!
I tried recently. As a pure no command line user, I could do everything I wanted after some time understanding how to use lutris. As a gamer I went with nobara and it was great. Still back on windows to use my driving wheel, flightsticks and VR. For now at least as I hope with more people making the switch , drivers will work better.
It's weird your flight sticks don't work in Linux. I have used several (I play a lot of DCS) and they have worked out of the box for me.
If you prepare an installation USB stick, so-called "Live-USB", and select in the BIOS that it should boot from that, then you can test-drive Linux before you install it.
There is more details involved, like you may need to turn off Secure Boot in the BIOS, but yeah, point is, you don't have to commit to Linux to try it.
Standard installations should work well for laymen. And in general, Linux user interfaces are a lot calmer, change less often, and are not attention-hogging and shock-full with dark patterns like Windows UIs.
Seeing my old parents struggling with Windows 11, I believe Linux is a lot friendlier also to elderly people, if they manage to get used to it while they can learn easily.
Finding suitable software for Linux is like moving from a boring suburb which has only a road to Walmart to a lovely small village with lots of woodland and hiking paths. You will need to find and explore new ways, but you will find them, and you will enjoy them.
More concretely spoken, Debian, as an example, has over 30,000 software packages. Some are really pleasant to use, like GNOME's simple-scan. Some are stunning beautiful, like the astronomy app named Orrery, if I remember the name correctly. You can literally spend years exploring them. Or look into the Arch Wiki list of applications for a tasteful choice.
The Steam Deck has been a lightning rod of getting gaming compatibility into the mainstream. The Proton compatibility layer works for most Steam games and the Proton DB will tell you the level of compatibility for a given game on Linux, https://www.protondb.com/ . Additionally, a number of other compatibility layers and ported front ends for GOG, Epic and various others are available and functioning (I can't list them all as I only use Steam, but I'm all in on Fedora and have yet to find a game that won't run). VR is working now on Linux (I have an Oculus Quest 2 I was given a couple years ago and it works flawlessly), as are most game pads. You can go with something like Bazzite which has a number of gaming specific compatibility tools built in, and it's immutable so it's a deliberate effort to break the thing. The only real limitations for software is anything Adobe (but there open source apps to fill that gap, GIMP is among the biggest) and ~~MS Office~~ M365 Copilot, which you can just use the Libre Office suite or if compatibility is a concern due to macros or addins, OnlyOffice is a decent alternative.
I just recently switched from Windows to Linux and for me the gaming experience has been fantastic. Games have been running way smoother. You do lose access to some games that require a kernel level anti cheat, but it's been worth it for me. If you're curious, you can check out the ProtonDB website to check if the games you play are Linux compatible.
I've been using Linux exclusively for the past few years, even VR games work fine since a while.
Tbh I just buy games and assume it works. It's gotten that good. Really only a handful of big games like Call of Duty or Battlefield don't support Linux and so I just ignore them on Steam.
Same. I don't even check if a game works before buying it now. That said, I also don't buy crap from EA, which seems to be one of the largest offenders.
Valve has put a lot of work into it, so unless you want to play hypercompetitive shooters (which ban Linux as a scapegoat for how hacker infested they are), most games will just work. Installing Steam should just set things up automagically for Steam games.
If there's a game you're actively curious about, you can look it up on https://www.protondb.com/ to see what other people say about how well it works.
I've been distro hopping recently after ditching Windows about a year ago. Spent some time in mint, then fedora, and recently the 'gaming' distros. I have to say cachy is very nice and set up to succeed with a gui and nice welcome screen for people that don't want to get into command line stuff. It's really snappy and I haven't had any issues yet. I hate to be one to jump on a bandwagon but if it works, it works. The only games that haven't worked for me on Linux are the anti cheat ones like Madden. Good luck
Gotta love Linux newbies talking about their first experiences and they've already tried 3 distros that I have barely on my radar. A few months in, I hardly knew what SystemD was and this guy's already on a distro that explicitly removes it.
While I just land a recent Debian stable on my laptop, install cargo for new Rust apps (for things like jujutsu), and Guix package manager (for stuff like kakoune or vis), and call it a day.
Well, after 25 years the pursuit of agressive distro-overoptimization becomes a bit boring. But who am I to criticize what other people spend their free time with?
For beginners I recommend Mint. It just works and it has the most compatible software.
What do you mean it has the most compatible software? How does its software differ from that available in other distros?
Made the switch after hearing alarming news about how shitty windows 11 is, I was scared to do it but it was my new year resolution. "What do you meeeaaan you're stopping updates for windows 10 basically forcing us to switch to an inferior ai filled spyware-like poduct???" I'm pretty n00b when it comes to complex tech, but thanks to the guidance of a dear computer savvy individual I found the install of endeavour the distro I use simple, it takes some getting used to but I don't miss windows at all and the vague sense of nerdy superiority that comes with the switch is kind of fun. I'm like; so brave Stoked to see others feel the same
I rocked a dual-boot with Windows 11 and Linux Mint for a year and some change before going 100% to Linux. I miss nothing, the machine works faster, and I feel less stressed and more secure about daily driver laptop.
Looked around at a few other distros...nope, still love Mint. 10/10, would do it all over again.
One interesting about those articles is that each author will favor and recommend a different distro, so newbies won't go all to the same place and clog a project's resources, but will be more fairly distributed among many ones. Also, that way, there won't be a big distro monopolizing things.
Maybe people will even learn that the fragmentation isn't a weakness of linux, but one of its strengths
Maybe people will even learn that the fragmentation isn't a weakness of linux, but one of its strengths
Maybe but its also super off putting to people looking on from the outside and wju do we need 500 flavours of Debian based distros when interested developers perhaps would be better tasked working om a few projects to inwprove things
Maybe but its also super off putting to people looking on from the outside and wju do we need 500 flavours of Debian based distros when interested developers perhaps would be better tasked working om a few projects to inwprove things
maybe those newbies would not have a single 'linux' to look at at if that was not for that fragmentation that seem to be so much of an issue...
The people working for free to make Linux what it is are doing it on the simple idea they have been promised: their freedom (and right) to make Linux what they want Linux to be. Not to make it what some group of users or some manager want them to make it.
It's many flavours, like you called it, is in the Linux DNA like freedom is ;)
Edit: rephrasing (it's early around here, not slept much ;)
I did so at the start of 2025. It was meant mostly as an experiment, to see what I needed before switching permanently. But I kinda just kept going. I think I've booted windows like 2 or 3 times across the year to get something off of it or to run test something that didn't work on Linux. I'm kinda considering to just wipe it, or wipe it and install it on a separate partition so it can't mess with shit anymore. Maybe put it on an old disk in my spare parts PC (if that is possible with the TPM bullshit) to isolate it further.
Can't; I dumped Windows 8 for Linux.
Your work laptop ? I guess you work somewhere where corporate policy isn't dictated and you're able to do that.
I am not the article author. But I am doing mainly signal processing and embedded development, and most places I worked for in the last 25 years either have switched to Linux (and pay better because it's more productive), or allow a development machine or VM with Linux. (Granted, in one company, I wrecked the department head's nerves with using git instead of MS Team Foundation Server and ~~MS source forge~~ MS Visual Source Safe, but now it's ten years later and even they offer a Linux platform product now, since Microsoft pulled Windows CE for not being able to compete with Linux.)