im currently using windows 11 on msi gf63 laptop. if i used linux i would use ubuntu,bec it seems like the easiest thing.
i game,i use brave browser,i pirate games and software. i also like that my hoarded pirated binaries of games and software will work even years later on windows without too much effort.
i use an hp printer,and need to be able to use it on linux.
i expect to be able to use the laptop and not think about the os too much,meaning i wont distro hop or try to customize it too much. im fine with the terminal,my goal of using linux is being far from malware.
Direct access to microslop.
LMDE
Or OpenSUSE kalpa
As a first step, see if you can get by by just using FOSS software on Windows. If you can, then you will lose nothing, swapping your “app launcher” is inconsequential if the programs you use are the same.
Wine/Proton are very good when it comes to game support, so you should be alright there. You can always check protondb and winehq to confirm the support status of the game you want.
I recommend a boring and stable distro like LinuxMint. It is based on Ubuntu but even better imho.
This is most important, if OP isn’t using any ‘enterprise’ apps, they should be able to function on FOSS, wine or proton apps.
If switching from Windows or Mac and you want to keep similar UI for easy transition, check out ZorinOS. A friend of mine recently installed Zorin OS Core w/ nvidia drivers and is enjoying it so far.
your chains, your freedom
The best way to go into it is to think of it as learning a new skill. Some things are done differently, some things may require a bit more setup the first time you do them, but once you have your system where you like it, it should be possible to use without thinking about it too much.
Printers generally work fine in Linux. This is one area where Linux does surprisingly well.
For all the games, I’m not sure. They may just work with Wine or Proton, but it is far from guaranteed. I have had good results running even quite old games from the late '90s through platforms like GoG, though.
You lose:
- Your corporate shackles
You gain:
- Limitless bragging rights
Your corporate shackles
i came here to say this, but you did it better. lol
other than that. what do i lose or gain?
You gain the loss of the ability to play League of Legends and Fortnite
You loose battery life if on a laptop. Battery life is not as good as on windows. And Apple laptops have insane battery life. I wish ARM laptops where a thing for Linux.
The spec.s may not be enough for you but I’d be remiss to not point out that MNT Reform does exist, regarding ARM laptops. So, at the very least, there is something (which may be comforting).
I have to input my experience here.
On what basis are you saying your batter life is less on linux? Do you use power profiles? Which distros you tried? And what kind of laptop is it?(processor is H/U/HS? Have dGPU?)
For me battery life is far better on linux than on windows. On linux(Fedora, with KDE), with balanced or power saving mode, doing the most basic stuff(say opened a pdf document and a browser and looking at it, without much interaction) my laptop, with dGPU and H processor takes like 7watts, giving more than 7hrs batter life for my 51Wh battery.
Windows on the other hand, without any tasks, only settings app open, showed less than 2 hours battery remaining at 80% charge. I didn’t test how long it takes to drain that much battery explivitly, but I belive this number is based on power usage in watts. Which tells me it is using more than 20W power. The reviews for my laptop before buying also said they get around 4 hours in medium usage.
I suspect that previously, the time before power profiles daemon, everything is by default in performance mode because it was aiming PCs, but now it goes so low with power saving modes. The 20W in windows is probably bloatware running in background.
Now, recently I came to know you can “remove” pci devices in linux so that power gets disconnected from the dGPU. Now whenever i use without it plugged in, i use it by removing gpu and it runs in 3.6-4.2W at idle(i.e, open pdf without touching anything, or using vim and compiler in a terminal) which gives me 12 hours of battery life atleast! Theese numbers are unimaginable in windows for my gaming laptop.
This is not just one exception, since my only friend who use linux also reported the same behavior. Windows uses wayyy more battery than linux. And he was even comparing power saving mode in windows vs perdormance mode in linux and linus still wins by 3-4 watts.
I wish more people check theese, since I belived “linux has bad battery life” argument beforehand and only when I compare with windows i found i am gaining a lot of battery life on linux
I agree with this in general. But, I’d like to add that well-supported hardware (like a ThinkPad) may do equally well on Linux and perhaps even better.
Compared to windows on the same machine maybe. It won’t be anywhere near a Windows arm or especially Apple arm machine. They’re nuts. Linux still worth the battery hit anyway for many people.
The transition won’t be painless. You’re going to have to learn new things, especially if you’re familiar with the windows file system and how to work within that.
Linux doesn’t use “drive letters” for mount points, so you’ll have to learn that.
Many games through steam or other game managers are just as easy if not easier than in Windows. Some are more challenging.
If you’re tired enough of Windows that you’re willing to push through some discomfort and new learning, then it’s time.
Once you get to know the distro you choose (Ubuntu is fine), you’ll just work, and it won’t get in your way.
I just switched from Win 10 & 11 to Fedora KDE, about 2 weeks ago. Total Linux newbie. Not looking to hack my OS or anything. I’m relatively computer literate, but not at all a programmer. I just want an OS that works and mostly gets out of the way. And obviously doesn’t spam me with ads or steal my data or lock me into a subscription.
So far: Fedora and Plasma have been wonderful. But…
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Computer feels slightly slower. I’m surprised by this.
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Fedora or Mint…“it just works” isn’t exactly true based on my experience. “Most stuff mostly works okay” is more like it.
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I had a service keep crashing upon boot: xwaylandvideobridge. Trying to read people’s reports and diagnose was frustrating. I ended up removing it (which I had to look up and figure out how to do). Not sure if I broke anything or not, but it seems like things are working.
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Boot time is definitely slower compared to Win11. Not slow, just slower. Like 35 seconds. I tried to figure this one out using stuff like “systemd-analyze” but that was also annoying / frustrating. Trying to interpret the output and then trying to interpret what the tech people are saying in the forums. Plus my specific output I was getting from those programs didn’t look right or make logical sense (like it was adding up a bunch of processes as 11 seconds, but then saying each of those processes itself took 11 seconds, which I guess is possible if they are running simultaneously, but not sure).
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Weird stuff with youtube / video codecs. Firefox would glitch/hang/freeze playing youtube, especially if god forbid you try and do something radical like scroll back in a video. I seriously thought my video card was self-immolating. I finally just figured this out after much suffering. I think there was something about cisco h.whatever codecs, which I installed. But those are apparently terrible. Then I followed this not newbie-friendly fix after trying to figure out how to remove the Cisco ones: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/Multimedia?highlight=(\bCategoryHowto\b). Not sure why this kind of stuff doesn’t work out of the box. Having one of the biggest websites glitch using one of the biggest browsers is…not…great.
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HP printer: finally, some good news! I have an HP laser printer and had to print some stuff off last night (a PDF and Word doc). Plugged in the printer, it recognized it correctly, I added printer, it added itself smoothly. Then ctrl-p worked flawlessly.
Hey, first of all welcome. Now, I’ve never used Fedora, but I wanted to give you some answers to your points:
- Computer feels slightly slower. I’m surprised by this.
I’m also surprised by this, KDE is very snappy so it shouldn’t feel like that. I have a gut feeling from this and some other things that you might have an Nvidia card, if so which driver are you using? I know the community shits on the proprietary drivers (with reason) but they provide the best experience (except when they don’t).
- Fedora or Mint…“it just works” isn’t exactly true based on my experience. “Most stuff mostly works okay” is more like it.
That’s true, but that’s also true for Windows. One thing we forget is the amount of knowledge we have acquired from years of just using the system. To me, every time I have to use Windows it’s a chore, nothing works out of the box, everything needs some tweaks, I can’t do anything, everything is complicated obtuse and weird. But to you it’s not, because you’re used to it, and since most stuff works and the ones that don’t you are familiar with troubleshooting it feels as if everything works. I feel the same thing happens to us on the Linux side, we say everything works because to us it does (but also you’ve had some issues I have never experienced before).
- I had a service keep crashing upon boot: xwaylandvideobridge.
That is apparently needed to share your screen on certain apps like Discord. From what I read there are reports of people saying this crashes for them and it has to do with them running out of VRAM (which would also account for your computer feeling slower). And apparently there’s a bug in newer Nvidia drivers where there’s a memory leak that could cause this. If you’re using Nvidia proprietary drivers check the version z maybe trying to update to the latest or downgrade to 550 or before it fixes this.
- Boot time is definitely slower compared to Win11.
This is because Windows hasn’t powered off in a while, it hibernates. Even when you ask it to power off it doesn’t, this is a known pain point for Linux because Windows doesn’t close NTFS drives properly unless it powers off completely, so you are locked out of your shared drives.
I never tried to use systemd-analyze, but my guess would be that they’re counting the time from when the service starts until it’s done, and most of that time is waiting for hardware or other services, so if you have one service that takes 11 second and 5 services that take 0.1 seconds but depends on your first service they would all say 11 seconds. If you send me the output I can try to read the docs and see what I can come up with, a quick look told me that you can also run
systemd-analyze critical-chain <unit>to get a dependency list which might give you more insight on all those that took 11 seconds.- Weird stuff with youtube / video codecs.
Never had that issue, never heard of Cisco codecs either. You’re correct that this is not newbie friendly, it’s related to why GPU drivers are an issue in some distros. Apparently from the link that you send that is a description on how to switch from an open source implementation to one that depends on the proprietary Nvidia drivers. This is the sort of thing your distro should do automatically when you switch to a proprietary drivers for the GPU, and why I like to recommend certain distros that (at least back when I started) took care to do these things when you selected the proprietary driver.
HP printer
Yeah, all of my printers have been HP, the most I had to do was install a package for HP (hplip I think it was called) and they have all worked flawlessly.
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You would lose all the worthless proprietary software that you’re hoarding for no reason.
As someone with MSI gf72 who switched last year with similar use cases and zero prior experience with Linux:
I installed EndeavourOS after reading some recommendations here since its supposed to work good for games and daily use. It’s Arch so I approached it as a challenge but It turned out to be quite effortless from the start. I dual booted it for a few months without issues until Windows update broke my bootloader. After that I did a clean Linux install and never looked back. It’s been rock solid ever since.
I have yet to find a game which doesn’t run either in Bottles or Lutris. Some installers have their quirks but it’s manageable. I only play single player games though.
HP driver for Linux runs my printer without any fiddling from my side.
I don’t get into Command Line much but it’s awesome - installing packages and updating the whole system with a simple command feels like magic. It’s actually much less hassle than Windows.
Depends really on the games and software you require.
For games, check:
- https://www.protondb.com/ - people post their experiences with games if they work or not.
- https://areweanticheatyet.com/ - lists of anticheat enabled games which work or not.
- https://appdb.winehq.org/ - wine’s appdb has games and general applications listed, with some info on how they work or not. Some info is absolutely ancient at this point.
In general, indies and singleplayer games generally work fine. Battlefield/Fortnite/etc hugely popular multiplayer stuff with kernel-level anticheats generally doesn’t.
I’ve only ever set up few printers to work on linux, and they’ve been bigger office printers. And they’ve all worked with minimal effort. Absolutely no idea about home printers.
edit: as for windows software support, generally win-apps run on wine. Some really well, some with issues, and then some just dont. Afaik eg. ancient versions of Photoshop run, more recent ones don’t.
I run a windows version of a music software (renoise) because my effects/instruments have only windows versions. It works, but performance isn’t quite as good as it was on actual windows.
I’ve only ever set up few printers to work on linux, and they’ve been bigger office printers. And they’ve all worked with minimal effort. Absolutely no idea about home printers.
Most (all?) printers and scanners released in past decade and some supports driverless printing and scanning. As long as you have printing related systems installed on your computer, most printers should be just plug and play. Especially those that are connected over network.
Absolutely no idea about home printers.
I have 2, a samsung and a canon :3 both work OOTB. Can’t speak on HP printers, but chances are OP can find that with a web search of the model
CUPS just works
All the homies love CUPS
I’ve been able to use my brother laser printer with Linux, not quite out of the box, by it’s an older model, I think newer ones are more plug and play
Samsung is now HP I reckon. Mine laser one works just fine, too.
how do you run it? with wine? does it run good ?
The daw/music software? Just wine. used wine to install the app & vst plugins, then just using the “start menu” shortcut for the app to run it. I did have to use winetricks to install dxvk on the prefix (without it, some plugin ui’s did not work properly), but after that it works fine.
as for “does it run good” - well enough for me. Some of the guitar/bass amps and instruments I use seem to use noticeably more cpu than on windows
i never play any online games only pirated ones. i do have fitgirl call of duty tho,would that work?
would you recommend i get linux?
I don’t know, I don’t play cod. See the links from previous replies for that.
as for should you get linux, only you can answer that once you’ve done the research
i suppose i can try running it there. i think it should work bec it would be striped of drm
Probably. I run Fitgirl GTA V with wine
Wine works well for me on Manjaro. Once it’s installed and run for the first time, it’s been seamless. I think every now and then you might find a game that requires an additional patch to run.
You’re running games through wine and not Proton?
Ciao, first of all, there are games that use kernel-level anti-cheat software that will not work. The good news is that many companies, seeing the growth of the Linux market, are taking remedial action. For example, EA recently announced that it will adapt its anti-cheat software for Linux. For pirated games, you can install fit-girl with bottles and use bottles to run the games as well. Technically, they should work even after years, because bottles creates a container with all the dependencies it needs to run and is isolated from the rest of the OS. It probably won’t be easy to learn how to use Linux tools right away, but it’s mostly a matter of habit, so first of all, be patient if some things don’t work right away. If you have problems, you can always ask the community. For simpler problems, AI can also be useful.
Most printers with networking capability work well these days. Some even entirely without drivers (thanks to Apple for once). HP should be fine if it’s relatively new. Older printers can be a major pain in the ass.
Scanners access is now also finally easy with AirScan (again thanks Apple, and I don’t say this often), so some devices might just magically work. More likely you’ll need to edit a line or two in a SANE config file somewhere or deal with the horrible web interface of CUPS to configure the printer, but with the right device, there’s finally no hunting for drivers on obscure web archives of Chinese manufacturer pages anymore.
im currently using windows 11 on msi gf63 laptop. if i used linux i would use ubuntu,bec it seems like the easiest thing.
Ubuntu is popular but I wouldn’t necessarily say easiest. Something like Linux Mint would probably be simpler.
i game,i use brave browser,i pirate games and software. i also like that my hoarded pirated binaries of games and software will work even years later on windows without too much effort.
My child, you’ve come home.
i use an hp printer,and need to be able to use it on linux.
Stop using HP printers. That being said if it was made in the last 5 years it’ll probably work on Linux out of the box.
i expect to be able to use the laptop and not think about the os too much,meaning i wont distro hop or try to customize it too much. im fine with the terminal,my goal of using linux is being far from malware.
I’m a big fan of immutable distros like Bazzite and Bluefin. They’re so stable they’re almost boring. As far as malware goes I would say standard rules apply: scan random binaries before execution, run normal operations as non-root/unprivileged users, patch regularly.
