Windows 11 vs Linux? (Newbie to Linux)

Assuming you have a regular tower computer.

Buy and Install this thingy


Clean the Win11 Disk leave only what you need to use and it does not work on something else.

SSDs are very inexpensive these days.


Buy one install your choice and you can always boot in a minute or two to the OS of your choice.

There are different other way to arrange and install means to keep two disk in and which one to boot from. Google for Double Boot computer and you will many solutions.

I'd suggest buying a used and/or inexpensive computer such as a laptop to use as a Linux lab, to see if you can make your preferred software work before making any further commitments. The fact that some software is Windows-only and that WINE and/or VMs can be somewhat difficult to implement would be your biggest stumbling blocks. Most of my compute PCs are Linux because it's generally more stable and most compute apps are faster on it. Our Distributed Computing community in particular has quite a bit of Linux experience, and might be able to smooth out some bumps in the road during your attempt to switch. You'll get the best assistance here with Linux Mint and/or Debian derivatives like it that use the apt package manager, imo.

As suggested above, Wine isn't a panacea. If you're married to a long list of Windows native apps and games, you're better off sticking with Windows.

Many games work fairly well, because Valve is constantly trying to improve the UX for Steam Deck. All gamers on Linux benefit from their hard work.

WineHQ has an AppDB where you can check what compatibility looks like. For Photoshop, it looks like some mixed results:

I switched to Linux in 2018 and Linux Mint (21) is my primary OS.

Learning curve:
This is a difficult one to answer in my case because I flirted with Linux since around 1999 and made a fresh effort after the release of Windows 10 (and saw the "Microsoft account" direction that it was going in, amongst other things). Therefore my experience consists of on-and-off attempts with Linux (mostly off, timewise) over the years.

Familiarity:
For me, two important things are the same in most Linux desktop environments and Windows: Windows+R and Windows+E keyboard combinations.

In Windows, my primary apps were the same ones I am using in Linux (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice).

Interoperability:
WINE won't be more efficient at running Windows apps than Windows is. For example, I run an obsolete version of Mozilla Sunbird and my calendars take about twice the time to load through WINE than natively in Windows.

The apps that I can't run natively in Linux I just run in a virtual machine. As my work is very Windows-centric I actually have four Windows VMs (2k, XP, 7, 10) but my Windows 7 one gets 99% of my VM use.

A bit more of my history with Linux since 2018:
I started with Lubuntu 18.04 LTS, then when that was getting close to its end of support date I started looking for an alternative. All the Ubuntu flavours had issues that I wasn't happy with, I tried Debian for a bit but that was worse, then I tried Linux Mint and found that it was a lot more polished / ready for use / "just worked" than the others I had tried.

First steps, my advice:
Install some virtual machine software (I use Oracle Virtualbox), do a Linux install in a VM. This will allow you to play with Linux while having Windows immediately to hand to (for example) look up information. Some people here have reported weird issues with Linux Mint 22 and went back to 21, I personally haven't felt the need to try 22. 21 is supported until 2027 IIRC so I'll probably start experimenting again next year.

One particular piece of advice I would give is this - unless the very latest version of a particular piece of software is essential, stick with the version that the Linux distro comes with. Example - LibreOffice: On Windows my thought would be "why on earth would I use an older version if a newer (and I believe to be stable) version is available?", and on Windows changing versions is easy. Linux's updating system is different, so for example Mint 21 comes with LibreOffice 7.3.x (whatever the latest security patch is). I don't *need* the latest version, and trust me, trying to get the latest version can result in way more trouble than it's worth. On this point, even after my migration to Linux, I had a VM in Linux that ran Linux so that if I was doing any experiments on Linux, they would be done in the VM rather than potentially breaking my Linux setup.

I keep a journal of new things I've done in Linux so I don't have to look up how to do such-and-such on the Internet again.

I dual-boot these days. My gaming is done almost exclusively on Windows 11, plus one or two apps that need to hit hardware directly (e.g. data recovery software), and Windows is installed on a separate SSD to Linux.

I wish I was diligent enough to keep a journal of my Linux escapades. I keep imagining that I will remember what I did, and of course I don't. I do keep some notes, but they're typically incomplete.

crashtech said:

I wish I was diligent enough to keep a journal of my Linux escapades. I keep imagining that I will remember what I did, and of course I don't. I do keep some notes, but they're typically incomplete.

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It's not particularly verbose, two recent entries were:

---
13/10/2024 exFAT format

mkfs.exfat /dev/sdX1


01/04/2024 current cpu clock speed stuff

To get a single read-out on all CPU threads:

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep Hz


To actively monitor the clock speed of all CPU threads:

watch -n1 "grep Hz /proc/cpuinfo"
---

I often include a URL of where I got information from but I also keep the most essential bit from that page in the journal.

There's no chance on the planet that I would remember that watch command!

The ones I want better notes on are when I have to go through contortions to get an app working, sometimes having to build from source, etc., where the first several attempts may fail and some little change finally makes it work. Next day on the next machine I am like, "how did I do that again?"

mikeymikec said:

One particular piece of advice I would give is this - unless the very latest version of a particular piece of software is essential, stick with the version that the Linux distro comes with. Example - LibreOffice: On Windows my thought would be "why on earth would I use an older version if a newer (and I believe to be stable) version is available?", and on Windows changing versions is easy. Linux's updating system is different, so for example Mint 21 comes with LibreOffice 7.3.x (whatever the latest security patch is). I don't *need* the latest version, and trust me, trying to get the latest version can result in way more trouble than it's worth. On this point, even after my migration to Linux, I had a VM in Linux that ran Linux so that if I was doing any experiments on Linux, they would be done in the VM rather than potentially breaking my Linux setup.

Click to expand...

That is excellent advice. Have you tried Timeshift for saving status before changes and use the rollback if there are issues. I've used it a few times to recover from my tinkering..

pcgeek11 said:

That is excellent advice. Have you tried Timeshift for saving status before changes and use the rollback if there are issues. I've used it a few times to recover from my tinkering..

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I've got Timeshift set up but I've never needed it.

Well, technically I could do with Timeshift to correct an issue that recently came up in the newest version of Veracrypt, but I have no idea when I need to roll it back to or what other issues might arise from doing so! I use Veracrypt regularly but not so regularly that I would know what date the update was installed.

ascendant said:

being a college student that's a physics major

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I would verify that it's possible to switch to Linux in that case. There's been enough stories with testing software that only runs on Windows that if you aren't willing to dual boot you should just stick it out.

I have a nephew who went through his entire Computer Science? Engineering? degree at Michigan Tech on Linux.

As far as Mint goes, aside from specific software it should be fine. I started moving our whole home to mostly Mint in 2022. Nowadays the kids laptop is strictly Mint, the three desktops are Mint/Windows LTSC, and Mint is the first option. The only thing Windows is used for is some games, but even then it's not usually because they don't work, it's more that I didn't have time to babysit an install in Lutris.

Be ready to use alternative programs if needed, but more and more software is coming Linux native.

As for ease, my wife and 3 kids (1st grade–5th grade at the time) all made the switch easily.