This time it's really going to happen, I just know it!

When my elderly, and tech illiterate family ask how to switch from Windows; I’m sorry but I’m not telling them to use Linux because they’re going to harass me nonstop for tech support.
At best this will be the year of macOS, because there’s a store I can send them to for all their questions.

This is going to be my Year of Linux, finally taking the plunge. Nothing special, just a used laptop running Mint to replace a Chromebook (who's hardware has finally failed). Gonna try to replace my gaming PC next year once I've got more of a handle on the different distros and have played around with them (and more money).

These threads are always hilarious. People are not switching to any kind of desktop. They are moving away from PCs entirely. There is an entire population who only use a phone as their computer.
- Android is Linux. Still a win LOL
- I truly yearn for the day i can just plug in a phone into a dock and use it as a PC honestly.
  
  They arent the strongest phone out there, but the PinePhone (and Pro) can do exactly that. I am heavily considering one for a second phone to play with
  
  Samsung Dex?

Remember folks, it doesn't have to be the year, it only has to be your year.
Mine was about 19 years ago. I'm no genius, and I haven't regretted it once. Linux has come a long way since then, while windows is deep in the enshittification trenches now, and has been for years. Your YOTLD can start today if you want it to. Tired of being actively abused by your OS? We've been here all along.
And if you are happy where you are, that's fine too.
- Modern installers definitely make it easier than ever before. WiFi even tends to work immediately.
- Nah, this is the year of Linux on desktop for everyone. The old Mayans foretold so.

Lain is what prompted me to switch to Linux! Watching a character who doesn't yet understand computers fuck around with a computer really inspired me to fuck around with my computer

I see Lain, I upvote. Because, no matter where they are, people are connected.

20 years and counting its been Linux desktop for me. There really hasn't been a good alternative yet.

why doesn't everybody understand that it's ALWAYS the year of the linux desktop, you just haven't been invited yet, that's the only problem.

They thought it was a great idea to remove the feature to unlock the taskbar and move it to the top or side of your screen in windows 11. I don't care if it was a design choice, it was a fucking stupid one.
- I can't believe this is still impossible. Surely engineers at Microsoft are suffering from this too? But I guess they really want to push the search bar and ai features that don't fit on a vertical taskbar.
  
  Edge really said "There can be only one!"
  
  I don't even want it vertical. I just want it up top. 🤣
- This right here drove me to dual boot Manjaro. I can't be the only person who has stacked monitors instead of side-by-side monitors. The UI is an abomination and the telemetry even moreso.
  Linux is not turn key, and as a significantly PC gaming user it has limitations. I still have not set up modding yet, and whether Vortex mod manager will work or not is still unclear. I can't get more than 60Hz out of my monitor on HDMI, which is required if I want 175Hz and 10bit color due to DisplayPort 1.4 limitations. Sleep causes my motherboard to permanently display a "CPU unknown" QLED Code. Instructions on simple tasks like creating a permanent drive mount at boot are confusing because there are steps that seem to be just assumed by everyone writing them. Etc.
  I am working my way through these, but still find myself in Windows 11 most of the time because unfortunately it just works. Software is natively written for it, there is no searching for how to get peripherals or programs to work. I say this as a lifelong tech nerd who started on Windows 3.1 and DOS, and who's job involves working with Linux based equipment. This shouldn't be as hard as it has been to transition, but it is.
  
  there is a new in dev version of the vortex mod manager that does work under linux available under https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMods.App ... it's not complete yet, but it works for cyberpunk for me, check it out!
  
  Honestly your situation is kind of a worst case scenario.
  At this point Linux works really well if all you want to do is browse the web and play (single player) games.
  It also works pretty well if you're an expert who understands the system in and out and can comfortably edit any config file on their drive to achieve what they want.
  But if you're a Windows power user whose used to being able to set up all kinds of niche functionality its a rough experience when all of your knowledge is now suddenly useless and there's a different set of things that are easy or hard to do.
  Its actually kind of a similar experience going the other way. For example there are some things that Linux users are used to being able to script that can't really be accomplished on Windows except via autohotkey, which from a Linux user's perspective just seems incredibly dumb.
- This shit drives me bonkers lol. I have to use windows for work but use CachyOS outside of work on all my PCs minus my mac mini.
  Aka every other fucking PC in my life I have the bar up top lol
- Who uses Windows like that? The UI gets all screwed up anyway

I have mint running on my laptop now.
Pro tip for anyone who wants to try Linux and maybe attempt to set up dual boot with Windows:
TURN OFF BITLOCKER ENCRYPTION IN WINDOWS FIRST.
IF you don't, here's what happened to me:
Mint live USB instance booted easily at first. I started the install process and selected dual boot. Mint setup then proceeded to prompt me to enroll a MACHINE OWNER KEY... And then realized that bitlocker encryption would prevent it from setting up dual boot.
It said, to paraphrase, "exit mint setup, log back into Windows, disable bitlocker, then you can come back and install"
Well that was a fucking lie because YOU CANNOT GET BACK INTO MINT!
WHY? Because mint FORGOT the MOK!
When you try to get back into mint from the boot selection menu, it says
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Found
the upshot is that you computer will never let mint live USB session ever boot again UNLESS you disable secure boot in BIOS and rename grub to mmx64.efi in the ISO image.
And if you DO those things chances are mint will never present you with the option to detect and set up dual boot with you extant windows instance ever again.
I went ahead and nuked my windows 11 instance on my laptop because it was being a bitch and clearly was never going to be a good neighbor to mint. I have no major regrets because mint is nice and I like it. It just didn't turn out how I would've ideally intended. But one way or another Windows 11 HAD TO GO. So, in the broad sense, I wanted to switch to mint... And I have! All good.
- That is a blessing in disguise. Congratulations on cleansing your laptop of that horrible operating system. I did so last month and my only regret is that I didn't do it sooner.

Let's all love Linux

2025 lets gooooooo (the year needs at least one win)

Honest question, how would my life improve if more people switched to Linux? God bless all the maintainers that have made it simple enough for an idiot like me to understand it
Most things work right out of the box and those that don't I could do less with anyway, Linux is perfect
- Less corporate shitfuckery all around. Right now Windows pretty much has a monopoly on the desktop, which is why they have completely stopped caring about users. Once Linux gets above ten percent market share or so, they'll take notice. And then whine about "communism" or some bullshit.
  
  Cool, they'll take notice but I'm not going back and neither are a lot of people I'm sure. Not going back
- linux would gain more support, more developers, and more market share, making it more universal. All of these are going to be beneficial to everybody.
  
  Already got lots of support and universality hat more do you need? X4 is native on Linux

Can we stop with this? It was an over hyped slogan and we can give it a rest. People are slowly switching to Linux and that's good enough
- The slogan is a complete meme at this point. A meme that indicates it's the year of the linux desktop!
  
  Yeah, it just comes off sarcastic to me, which apparently means people think Linux is not popular enough to talk about or something. I don't know, it just rubs me the wrong way.
- I'm mostly of that opinion also :D

You don't seem to understand
- But I'm an honest man.

I am mid switch, but it's not been smooth or easy. I chose Manjaro and maybe I chose poorly. I am a lifelong techie, and have used Ubuntu and Mint in short stints in the past, but the transition is rough.
I didn't attempt the switch before because I primarily played Destiny 2 and Bungie hates Linux. The enshittification of Destiny drove me away, and in theory the games I am playing now should work. I have had mixed results however.
I play Darktide and Vermintide 2 and heavily use their modding scenes to make them fully playable. Vortex mod manager is a huge bonus for this, and I still haven't been able to set this up.
My Elgato equipment has community support, but has a bunch of steps to get working that I haven't spent the time to fully research or attempt.
I still haven't set up an automatic mount point for my shared NTFS drive to load on boot, both because I don't have a good grasp on the fstab and because Windows does a chkdisk every time I mount it in Linux. Dual access storage still seems iffy as of 2025.
I am going to keep trying, because I hate Microsoft right now more than I dislike the learning curve and limitations. Not sure if that is enough to make this the year of the Linux desktop though.
- One thing about Linux: don't let people bully you over which distro you use. This isn't a competition, use what feels most natural to you. If Manjaro is too steep of a curve, start somewhere else. Not everyone needs to be running arch. If you want to use arch but want it easier, I had an easier time with endeavor os than with manjaro, but ymmv. If I were you, I'd use the easiest distro out there: mint. If you are a big gamer, PopOS has a lot of gaming support right out of the box, but these days if you are primarily on Steam then you shouldn't hit too many issues in any distro.
  I am also mid transition, but haven't booted windows in over a year. I tried dual-access storage, and I think your best bet is to keep the two systems separate. There are ways to make it work, but they are not beginner friendly imo.
  As for mods, it is really hit or miss. And kernel level anticheat is a blocker in Linux, so any games that require it will not be playable. But what I do is have a single-drive windows machine that has the software that doesn't have Linux support installed, and boot into it when I need it. But I've actually found linux-friendly replacements for all the stuff I personally use, and will probably never touch the windows system again.
- Manjaro isn't the best choice if you value ease of use and stability.
  
  There's the rub. Every distro has vocal supporters and detractors, and appears simultaneously good or "dog shit". Determining who is accurate is a crapshoot, and there apparently is no right answer. Manjaro was attractive because of built-in automatic snapshots for recovery when I inevitably break my installation. There was also previously a well reviewed gaming focused Manjaro fork, though I stuck with the main fork.
  Mint had just as vocal of detractors saying it was unstable. Same with Ubuntu and I dislike the company focus anyway. Arch is Arch, and Manjaro is an Arch fork anyway. It's the same problem someone looking at starting One Piece or Bleach or Naruto have: there is too much and even the fans appear to hate it more than anyone else, lol.
  I don't want to distro hop, that doesn't interest me at my current stage. I want long term (at least a year) in between reinstallations. More self hosting is lined up for the future, so desktop is dipping my toes in the water as my server is piecemealed together.
- stupid. Manjaro is dog shit
- I still haven’t set up an automatic mount point for my shared NTFS drive to load on boot, both because I don’t have a good grasp on the fstab and because Windows does a chkdisk every time I mount it in Linux. Dual access storage still seems iffy as of 2025.
  i've been fine mounting my C drive under linux using ntfs3g under arch linux (similar enough to manjaro) though this was prior to ntfs being natively supported in the kernel, so that may have different consequences, realistically i would advise you to use a network storage for inter device compat since you can run samba or something, which is well integrated into linux and windows (though it's a little fucky in linux, it does work, and it works reliably) It makes life so much easier. Either that or use an external drive that you intend to be intercompat, not running NTFS, but using ext4 or something. That's another decent option.
  My best advice to you going forward is be thoughtful about the devices and software you spend time and money on, it's really easy when you're in the windows environment to just use whatever exists, but on linux you do have to spend a bit more time thinking about it, but that's just the nature of the beast.
  
  Thank you for the insight, that is actually useful information for me. I currently have a 4tb nvme with a small (250gb) C drive and the rest as an E drive (Program installs and Games) for Windows, the same general setup with a second 4tb nvme for Linux, and a 3rd separate SATA SSD that acts as my "home" drive with Documents/Pictures/Downloads /etc. I planned and sharing that third drive between Windows and Linux so I don't require duplicating data.
  A home server/NAS is also in the works, and I'll be looking into Samba. It's just been a bit enlightening finding out all the unicorns and rainbows on the Linux side of the fence are equines of indeterminate parentage with paper cones glued to their foreheads and RGB light strips soldered together with a "trust me" sticker on them.
  Microsoft is still a ghetto, and Apple is a WASP country club where the HOA president lives next door and is "retired". Computers are both at an all-time high for choice and in some of the worst states it's been in.

As the old Mayans foretold.

If only the Linux desktop stopped getting offended when it’s not treated like a server and has to shut down. “Wait, you had audio settings that I was supposed to remember? Cool story bro…”
- I had this TV box that came with windows on it. After booting I had to turn up the volume and click away a noise warning.
  With Linux no more trouble 🐧
  
  What are you talking about? Didn't you know that only Linux has technical problems?
- What distro 😳
  
  If you would like to address an audio issue, I'll gladly hijack the thread.
  Linux mint, occasionally my audio starts crackling. Only fix is to open terminal and run pulseaudio -k.
  Happens maybe twice a day with my system.
  
  I find people complaining about every distro. The thing is, every operating system sucks. The good thing about Linux is how that becomes your fault.

Linux would be cool but the games I primarily play ate only on windows and doesn't play well in VMs, and dual booting just isn't worth the hassle.
- Chicken and egg. Can’t have the gamers without games and games without the gamers. Valve and the steam deck might have changed that. Even if small, if that portion of 0.0x percent of the market buy games and it is enough to offset the developing costs to port the game, companies will do it since it will make business sense.
- What games do you primarily play?
  
  Mabinogi is the biggest one holding me back, some one posted a link with some potential fixes so im gonna give some of those a go later/
- what's "ate"? edit: oh it's just a type for "are" isn't it
  i would recommend getting an extra ssd, installing a beginner friendly distro (mint or pop for instance) and just boot it up occasionally, see what works, what doesn't. i got into linux like this, gradually, over years
  
  Oh I didn't even see that typo.
  But yeah I've tried this and I just found my self booting less and less into Linux, to me it made more sense to just keep my PC on once I'm done playing, or alt tab out and work on other stuff with the game running in the background.
  However this old MMO is getting a unreal update sometime in the next few years so I'll probably give it a try again and see if it's able to run once that comes around.
- Sounds like you need to play better games then
  
  Probably but I like what I like so it's whatever at the end of the day for me.

It won’t happen until the Windows UI becomes more troublesome than the Linux UI. We still have a ways to go.
I’ve yet to see a Linux version that can prevent the boot partition from clogging up with old kernel files. Grandma ain’t cleaning that shit up.
- I mean, Grandma ain't cleaning up the myriad of shit windows leaves clogging drives either... I see the real problem is going to be the average $12/hr geek squad agent isn't going to be able to fix it for Grandma no matter how eager she is to pay $199.
- Almost every Linux system auto clears old kernels.
  Let's get you to bed grandma
  
  They are supposed to, for sure.

I bet the users make the chocolate taste terrible