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The Best way to switch to Linux is to NOT

Okay I know this sounds like click bait but trust me switching over to linux requires you to first master the open source software that you will be replacing your windows/mac counterparts with. Doing it in an unfamiliar OS with no fallback to rely on is tough, frustrating and will turn you off of trying linux. DISCLAIMER: I know that some people cannot switch to linux because open source / Linux software is not good enough yet. But I urge you to keep track of them and when so you can know when they are good enough.

The Solution

So I suggest you keep using windows, switch all your apps to open or closed source software that is available on linux. Learn them, use them and if you are in a pinch and need to use your windows only software it will still be there. Once you are at a point where you never use the windows only software you can then think of switching over to linux.

The Alternatives

So to help you out I'll list my favorites for each use case.

MS Office -> Only Office

  1. Not for folks who use obscure macros and are deep into MS Office
  2. Has Collaboration and integration with almost all popular cloud services..
  3. Has a MS Office like UI and the best compatibility with MS Office.

Adobe Premiere -> Da Vinci Resolve

  1. It is closed source but available on linux
  2. Great UI, competitive features and a free version

Outlook -> Thunderbird

  1. Recently went through massive updates and now has a modern design.
  2. Templates, multi account management, content based filters, html signatures, it is all there.

Epic Games, GOG, PRIME -> Heroic

  1. Easy to use, 1 click install, no hassel
  2. Beautiful UI
  3. Automatically imports all the games you have bought

PDF Editor -> LibreOffice Draw

  1. Suprisingly good for text manipulation, moving around images and alot more.
  2. There might be slight incompatibilities (I haven't noticed anything huge)
  3. But hey, it's free

How do I pick a distro there are so many! NO

So finally after switching all the apps you think you are ready? Do not fall into the rabbit hole of changing your entire OS every two days, you will be in a toxic relationship with it.

I hate updates and my hardware is not that new

  1. Mint - UI looks a bit dated but it is rock solid
  2. Ubuntu - Yes, I know snaps are bad, but you can just ignore them

I have new hardware but I want sane updates

  1. Fedora
  2. Open Suse Tumbleweed

I live on the bleeding edge baby, both hardware and software

  1. Arch ... btw

Anyways what is more important is the DE than the distro for a beginner, trust me. Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, etc. you can try them all in a VM and see which one you like.

SO TLDR: Don't switch to linux! Switch to linux apps.

159 comments

  • I don't understand the difficulty. My kid who used Windows for at least 7 years installed Ubuntu and just started using it. Why is this difficult for people? I helped him boot the computer from a USB stick and that's it.

    Here is the app store, install programs from here.

    Ok.

    • I think some folk want to pretend using Linux is hard so that they can feel more... Uh... Technical for using it.

    • Yup, I think a lot of people just use their web browser for everything, and they can definitely just switch. Outside of work, how many non-techies have set up their email to use a native program? Very few, in my experience.

      I think documents are sometimes the exception, since there's a sizable (perhaps older) group that like to use Word for everything.

    • My mom is 80 years old and I got her on Mint years ago - mostly because I was tired of fixing the mistakes Windows let her make.

      My mom is a walking disaster with computers but she got used to it and now she can't mess up anything, and she doesn't worry about messing up anything anymore too. If she can do it, anyone can do it.

      • I also wonder the future of immutable Linux. Right now it has pain points but maybe someday it will work reliability

    • I switched as a kid too, but that makes it really easy because I never ended up depending on a bunch of proprietary Windows only apps. I never learned stuff like Photoshop and Illustrator and Premiere, not even on pirated versions like most kids do. Photoshop CS2 technically ran under wine but the experience was so miserable I learned GIMP instead. My last Windows was XP.

      The older you get the more "serious" software you have too, like tax stuff, the whole Windows-centered workflow at work. The deeper you are into the ecosystem the worse it is.

      The issue I see over and over and over is not that using Linux in itself is that hard, it's dealbreaker software and hardware. Oh your capture card isn't supported. Your audio mixer's not supported. It sucks. So basically what OP said: you have to switch to Linux friendly software first, then it's basically just swapping the OS and not flipping your entire computing experience over.

      • Yes, hardware support for things like video capture, that is the danger zone. :)

      • Luckily, I don’t depend on Adobe stuff, but knowing some professional photographers, you sort of can’t live without Photoshop. I feel like GIMP has severely stagnated - many of the features are there, but buried, while non-destructive editing integral to a modern workflow seems eons away. (I find this weird, especially considering how good and mostly intuitive a project like Inkscape is - I find a lot of things easier than Illustrator.) I kind of want to learn GPU shaders and GPU compute (I’m mostly a Python guy with up to Calculus II experience, some bezier curve know-how, and more math on the way, for reference, for reference) so I could create a fast open graphics editor as backlash for Adobe’s AI buffoonery, though my project management skills aren’t great at the moment.

    • The thing is alot of people who work really well in the windows environment and have been doing so for a while will now have to face both a new environment and new tools. Then there is the problem of time ... If you are trying to work while also troubleshooting your OS with none of the tools that you know how to troubleshoot with it could be frustrating.

    • 90% of people who say they cant switch really mean they don’t want to. It’s really not about application availability, capability, or otherwise. It’s about it not being the same as what they have always done. NOTE: 97% of statistics are made up anyway.

  • I keep trying to explain how Linux advocacy gets the challenges of mainstream Linux usage wrong and, while I appreciate the fresh take here, I'm afraid that's still the case.

    Effectively this guide is: lightly compromise your Windows experience for a while until you're ready, followed by "here's a bunch of alien concepts you don't know or care about and actively disprove the idea that it's all about the app alternatives."

    I understand why this doesn't read that way to the "community", but parse it as an outsider for a moment. What's a snap? Why are they bad? Why would I hate updates? Aren't updates automatic as they are in Windows? Why would I ever pick the hardware-incompatible distros? What's the tradeoff supposed to be, does that imply there is a downside to Mint over Ubuntu? It sure feels like I need to think about this picking a distro thing a lot more than the headline suggested. Also, what's a DE and how is that different to a distro? Did they just say I need a virtual machine to test these DE things before I can find one that works? WTF is that about?

    Look, I keep trying to articulate the key misunderstanding and it's genuinely hard. I think the best way to put it is that all these "switch to Linux, it's fun!" guides are all trying to onboard users to a world of fun tinkering as a hobby. And that's great, it IS fun to tinker as a hobby, to some people. But that's not the reason people use Windows.

    If you're on Windows and mildly frustrated about whatever MS is doing that week, the thing you want is a one button install that does everything for you, works first time and requires zero tinkering in the first place. App substitutes are whatever, UI changes and different choices in different DEs are trivial to adapt to (honestly, it's all mostly Windows-like or Mac-like, clearly normies don't particularly struggle with that). But if you're out there introducing even a hint of arguments about multiple technical choices, competing standards for app packages or VMs being used to test out different desktop environments you're kinda missing the point of what's keeping the average user from stepping away from their mainstream commercial OS.

    In fairness, this isn't the guide's fault, it's all intrinsic to the Linux desktop ecosystem. It IS more cumbersome and convoluted from that perspective. If you ask me, the real advice I would have for a Windows user that wants to consider swapping would be: get a device that comes with a dedicated Linux setup out of the box. Seriously, go get a Steam Deck, go get a System76 laptop, a Raspberry Pi or whatever else you can find out there that has some flavor of Linux built specifically for it and use that for a bit. That bypasses 100% of this crap and just works out of the box, the way Android or ChromeOS work out of the box. You'll get to know whether that's for you much quicker, more organically and with much less of a hassle that way... at the cost of needing new hardware. But hey, on the plus side, new hardware!

    • If you're on Windows and mildly frustrated about whatever MS is doing that week, the thing you want is a one button install that does everything for you, works first time and requires zero tinkering in the first place.

      This is the reason my 77 year old father in law switched. It seemed like every couple of weeks, he was calling me because Microsoft changed something. And it confused him, and he thought he broke something. I got so frustrated that I asked if he was open to trying Linux. After having him try some distros on Live USB, he went with Pop.

      Haven't heard from him other than the occasional question about how to do something new.

      • I genuinely think Linux misses a beat by not having a widely available distro that is a) very closely tied to specific hardware and b) mostly focused on web browsing and media watching. It's kinda nuts and a knock on Linux devs that Google is running away with that segment through both Android and ChromeOS. My parents aren't on Windows anymore but for convenience purposes the device that does that for them is a Samsung tablet.

  • Fuck all that.

    Install Linux, any flavor. Install virtualbox, and set up a Windows VM. Go ahead and install any of your windows bullshit on that VM. That's your crutch, your failsafe: a windows instance that you don't have to leave Linux to access.

    Save snapshots before and after any changes, so if/when it goes to shit, you can roll it back to where it was still working.

  • I would say: "Don't switch to Linux. Just start with Linux and never use Windows or Mac in the first place"

    Don't have to get used to something if you've never used something else.

  • Remember, annotating PDF is fine but editing PDF is not fine. .doc or .odt files are supposed to be edited. PDF files are supposed to be printed or filled (fill the blanks). If you require editing a pdf, someone in the process is making a mistake.

  • I get what you're trying to say but I disagree with this. Software can be a barrier to switching OS but it very much depends on the individual user's needs - it's not as easy as substituting open source for closed, and is only part of the difference anyway. For example, I use Outlook at work; Thunderbird is great but it is in no way a substitute for Outlook. Similarly, I use Microsoft Office 365 at work; OnlyOffice is in no way a substitute for an individual user (it can be for a whole business or for personal use, but not if you're tied in to an organisation or employer using Office). If you're tied into those platforms with work, then for occasional use you can just use the online versions of Microsoft Office in Linux via a web browser. And if you need to work from home or do more, then realistically you need to have Windows and access to the full suite installed locally.

    But software does not preclude switching to Linux; for example I dual boot between Windows and Linux on my home PC. I have an M.2 drive for Windows and another M.2 drive for Linux. I rarely use Windows at all now, but when I do it's if for some reason I need to be doing work related stuff from home or rarely if I can't get a game working in Linux. In Linux I can do all my web browsing, social media, video streaming, music listening, even gaming and I know I'm doing so privately and securely.

    I'd say the best way to switch to Linux is to switch to Linux. New users do not have to be "all in" - they can dual boot between Linux and Windows (or MacOS and Linux), and then have a low level of risk to try out the OS. It can even be beneficial in itself as they can compartmentalise work and free time by OS. And if they don't want to dual boot, then just try it out by virtualisation.

  • Is it people that want to switch away from Windows or switch to Linux?

    In my case it was the former, having spent a lot of time on FreeBSD so in 2007 I bought a Macbook Pro running OSX 10.3. This gave me most of what I wanted and when I needed something Windows (XP) specific I installed a VM running under Parallels, then Virtual Box. I was able to run most of the open source software at that time such as Open Office, Firefox, Thunderbird in preference to the Apple supplied apps.

  • Never had issue with this. For my work I've always used Blender 3D, Gimp, and Krita. The one thing that used to hold me back from using Linux was my Steam game library, but then Valve introduced Proton and all my reasons to stay on Windows evaporated.

    Been a happy Linux user for a few years now.

  • So I suggest you keep using windows, switch all your apps to open or closed source software that is available on linux. Learn them, use them and if you are in a pinch and need to use your windows only software it will still be there. Once you are at a point where you never use the windows only software you can then think of switching over to linux.

    This is what I did in the 2000s. At one point I used all open-source software and my Windows was themed like GNOME. One sunny day Wine got fixed for Warcraft TFT. And then I switched to Ubuntu 5.04. With that said, today with the current hardware and software, lots more is palatable to run in a Windows VM. My wife has used MS Office and Adobe software in VMware Player for a decade now. Recently switched her to virt-manager. It's just damn reassuring to know you can run pretty much all non-graphics intensive Windows workloads on demand. Even interfacing with pretty much any USB hardware, which is important for dealing with various arcane hardware.

  • I just dive head first and use Arch btw if games or softwares I play/use refused to run Linux I just stop playing/using it and find alternatives, I yet to find any softwares that doesn't have open source alternative

  • I did that for about a year while I was waiting for a game to be supported on linux. I agree, is the best procedure.

  • Yeah I originally trying to daily Linux for like the past 10 years but kept falling back to Windows, mainly due to the app compatibility.

    A lot of people suggested dual booting but I found that it messed up disrupted my workflow, and Level 2 hypervisors were too slow to be practical

    What finally made Linux stick for me was Proxmox.. it let daily Linux and still have the option to quickly spin up a Windows VM with a GPU if I needed something urgently, without the hassle of rebooting.

    So now, six months later, I’m dailying Arch and also self-hosting a bunch of stuff on Debian, and I haven’t looked back.

    I think it's about convenience.

    Tags for federation: @acceptablehumor #infosec

  • Libreoffice draw is really bad.

    Instead, you either need

    • masterpdf, paid but I guess worth it
    • a mix of: Firefox PDF editor (drawing, inserting images, text annotations), Pdf arranger (bundling PDFs, removing pages, reordering), GIMP (redacting, compressing), Okular (viewing, marking, drawing, bookmarks)
    • stirlingPDF, in a local Docker/Podman container, used in the browser

    There is no free tool that does all the needed things. StirlingPDF is really close though and I am working on good desktop integration.

    • I hate it when someone sends me a PDF form and tells me I can complete it using Acrobat (or whatever it's called this week). Last one I successfully completed with the Firefox PDF ed.

      • There are already a billion different online form generators and people are still using PDF for this. PDFs are just meant for publishing, I don't know what derangement causes people to ask for gif,video and form support for PDF.

  • This is how switched, though I’d recommend properly platform agnostic software (Windows, Mac, and Linux support) since if you don’t find Linux proper works for your workflow, you could switch to a Mac.

    Another thing which helped me was switching my Laptop first before my Desktop since if I had problems (which I did) I could loose my laptop and not worry about data loss.

    As of now, I am 2 year with Linux on my laptop and 6 months on my desktop with no noticeable difference between my Windows experience and Linux.

  • I semi-agree. I did that, switching to Inkscape, Firefox, and LibreOffice in the weeks before I realized I should just make the switch. What actually helped me get the experience though was running various distros in VirtualBox, which I’d done in various forms since 2017 or so starting with Ubuntu 16.04, then going through each subsequent version up to 20.04, trying (and ultimately using as a main VM) Debian Buster, Bullseye and Bookworm (Testing at the time). In the final few weeks of daily-driving Windows, I did some VM distrohopping with Arch and NixOS before ultimately choosing Debian Bookworm Testing for my first bare metal install on my main device (it was originally intended as a test to see how I would do things if I did transition to Linux before it just turned into my main distro. On an unrelated note, I had installed Debian on an old Fujitsu Lifebook before then.). That Testing install has survived to the present day and is currently on Trixie.

159 comments