Finally migrated from Windows to Linux. For anyone wondering, what is the state of Linux as your primary OS for home PC\laptop in 2023.

I’ve finalised my Archlinux installation yesterday, I dropped of Linux more than 10 years ago and experience in 2023 in comparison is awesome and beyond even wildest dreams back then:

  • For average user looking for more out of the box experience I would suggest something Arch based (people in comments suggest EndeavourOS, please do your research). Archlinux installation took me quite some time
  • Almost everything works out of the box, by just installing corresponding package
  • KDE Plasma environment is fast and beautiful
  • Pipewire audio server (Jack\Pulseaudio replacement) works great
  • Wayland window server is not there yet, especially if you have Nvidia with proprietary drivers and want to use VR. Waking up, session restoration and other scenarios have issues. Use X11.
  • Wine is great!
  • Music making - Bitwig Studio DAW has linux native version, yabridge allow you to use windows VSTs, which are easily installed via wine
  • Gaming works out of the box with Steam for majority of titles, some games have native linux version. Performance is great. In worst case windows game might loose 5-15% in performance. Was not case for my titles
  • Gaming outside steam is fine too. Use Wine, Lutris, Proton
  • VR is a mixed bag. Not everything is there (Desktop view, sound control and mirroring, camera, motions smooth, lighthouses do not wake up os go to sleep. I use my phone to turn them on/off). But if its not the problem for you, quite some titles work. Tried: native HF Alyx, Lab, windows: Beat Saber and Boneworks. For me it’s a surprise, I did not count on it. Performance is great.

So overall my experience is great. Eventually I’m going to get rid of WIndows on other computers and laptops at howe. I can finally wave goodbye to Windows, with lots of ads and bloatware. Alway glad to help with answers regarding installation while my memory and history logs are fresh. ^^

  • Caveman@lemmy.world
    402·
    2 years ago

    Arch is the one of the last things I’d recommend for an out of the box experience.

    I’d recommend Fedora with Gnome if people are coming from iOS and KDE if people come from Windows.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
      14·
      2 years ago

      It’s also one of the last things I’d recommend to someone migrating from Windows to Linux lol it has a fairly high learning curve

      • EuroNutellaMan@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        While I agree that overall it can be a smooth experience I’d say for the majority of people who are just coming to Linux I woukd rather recommend Linux Mint. Especially when someone doesn’t know what they’re doing at all yet.

        Arch and its derivatives are cool dor tinkerers but realistically speaking if you’re looking for stuff that works out of the box without hassle it’s much much better to stick to distros like Linux Mint, Fedora, Pop_OS!, and similiar. Need the latest stuff? Flatpack or Fedora should be good, or Debian sid if you want a rolling release (tho realistically you won’t really need a rolling release over semi-rolling if you’re still a noob). Sure the AUR is cool but it’s a bit overrated in the sense that unless you’re actively looking for stuff on it 99% of the time you’re using it because something isn’t in the official repos and that’s not good, while distros like Linux Mint have large repos with pretty much everything you need already without a real need for the AUR.

    • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
      5·
      2 years ago

      I hope people will take my post with a grain of salt and do their own research anyway.

    • Oolee@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Noob question here. Why so many ppl is against Manjaro? As someone who just tried many distros , Manjaro was the one that just worked for me without errors, untill I was bored to try something else.

      • MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml
        1·
        2 years ago

        I think it’s mostly do with the carelessness of the devs. They’ve let their certificates expire multiple times (and suggested their users put their clocks back as a workaround) and DDOSed the AUR a couple of times by accident. To be fair, I haven’t heard of any foul ups in a long time so maybe they’re being more careful now.

    • Fredol@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      I don’t like the questionnaire nor its recommendations when I think about it in the pov of someone who hasn’t used Linux ever.

  • Presi300@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    2 years ago

    I agree with most of your statements, though not with all of them.

    I’d say use X11, only if you’re on nvidia and you’ve got 1 monitor or monitors with the same resolution and refresh rates and are ok with having to disable the X11 compositor and having no animations while playing games… You also have to be ok with tearing while gaming too… It’s a lot, and the next version of plasma, plasma 6 is supposed to fix all the jankiness with kde on wayland, as afaik GNOME on wayland is stable on nvidia, I’m on AMD so I can’t confirm though…

    EndeavorOS is great, though I’d also suggest trying out nobara (or fedora if you’re not gaming… or recording).

    I’m really surprised that you managed to get VR working at all, didn’t know that worked at all on linux.

    • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      2 years ago

      I have Nvidia and 1 monitor, so did not run into mentioned issues. Wayland on KDE did not work well for me, also https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers have some blockers for me. Gnome on Wayland as far as I understood does not work with DRM, so no chance to run VR. Also though I used Gnome before it does not appeal to me today. Plasma on the other hand was exactly what I was looking for, plus it’s actively maintained and updated. Looking forward to see Plasma 6.

      When it comes to VR - I was very surprised, it was something I did not expect to work at all. My setup for reference: I have Nvidia proprietary drivers, SteamVR Beta and Valve Index. I had problems with sound (cracking, quality and etc), but using sof-firmware helped to choose proper output channel on Nvidia GPU via Pro profile and it just started working.

      • monkinto@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        Gnome before it does not appeal to me today. Plasma on the other hand was exactly what I was looking for, plus it’s actively maintained and updated.

        Very confused by this statement, are you implying Gnome isn’t actively maintained and updated or am I missing something?

        • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
          1·
          2 years ago

          No, I just said it’s not appealing to me today as it did before, when I used it, years ago. I’m not implying anythings here, personal taste. I chose plasma.

  • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
    8·
    2 years ago

    That sounds fantastic. Long term Linux user here. I hope you like the world of Linux and Free Software.

    migrated […] to Linux 10

    I don’t think there is a Linux 10. Arch has installer version numbers like 2023.09.01 After that it’s a ‘rolling release’ that means there are no version numbers, it changes continuously and is constantly updated.

    Archlinux installation took me quite some time

    That is correct. Arch Linux isn’t recommended as a beginners distro. YMMV. If you managed to do it: Nice. You shouldn’t have. But you’re probably fine, now that it works and you’ve probably learned more in the process than lots of other people have in the first few weeks.

    Music making

    Make sure to also check out the free software for music making. “LMMS”, “Ardour” and similar.

    Gaming works out of the box with Steam

    That’s also my observation. Steam works fine. And Proton is awesome. Also, check out a few of the free games from your package repository. I like “0 A.D.”, “Supertuxkart”, “Super Tux Party”, “Supertux”, “Slingshot”, “Mindustry”, “Minetest”, “Performous”, “Sauerbraten”, “Hedgewars”, “X-Moto” Just to name a few. There are hundreds more.

    • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
      71·
      2 years ago

      Thanks for the updates, there was a typo when it comes to Linux10 ^^, I’m quite good at making them

      • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
        4·
        2 years ago

        I can relate to that 😂😂

        You made different choices than me. I run Debian and the Gnome desktop on my main machine. But Arch and KDE are awesome, too. It’s more a matter of personal preferences and maybe less so what you’re trying to do with it. I think the vast amount of possibilities and choices to make is a big hurdle for new users. I always tell people it doesn’t really matter. Just pick something. The desktop environment you find attractive and a distribution with a nice and helpful community. Doesn’t really matter what you end up with, there are many excellent ones.

        • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
          4·
          2 years ago

          True, I’ve chosen Arch only because I used it before and it left good impressions. Plus philosophy - “make of it whatever you want\need” appeals to me. As long as distro is supported well, it all comes to your needs and taste.

          • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
            3·
            2 years ago

            Good choice. Arch has a big community and there are lots of resources out there. If you can handle it, you’re unlikely to get disappointed.

  • Ænima@lemm.ee
    7·
    2 years ago

    I recently found an Android app on F-Droid called “Linux Command Library” and for the first time I’m not as intimidated to try Linux for my main driver/gaming rig. Previously, I had always fucked my installs up by facing an issue I wanted to fix, and using any info online to do so, even if I had no idea what the command was actually doing. Almost always I end up fucking everything up and needing to reinstall.

    I’ve been saving posts and comments regarding Linux info for the last month on Lemmy and cannot wait to take the plunge and finally rid myself of Microsoft!

    • icedterminal@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      2 years ago

      Try using virtual machines. You can do this entirely free. Install then take a snapshot. You can learn about the OS in a safety net. If you fuck up too badly, roll back to the snapshot and try again.

      • Ænima@lemm.ee
        1·
        2 years ago

        Thanks for the tip. I like to live hard and fast! But this really is an idea I hadn’t considered and I use VMs at work all the time…with Windows.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      2·
      2 years ago

      There was a good suggestion about usimg VMs, but if you want the bare metal expwrience use something like OpenSUSE Leap, slowroll, or Tumbleweed. if you wreck your system trying sruff,you just reboot and choose an earlier snapshot.

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
          1·
          2 years ago

          Honestly it is great, i have run the same install since 2017 without having to reinstall. the filesystem is btrfs, it is configured to take a pre and poat snapshot whenever you enter any of the Yast2 GUI GTK apps for system changes, or use zypper cli etc. You can add remove software or make manual changes and break your system. Reboot, go into advanced option scroll through the time stamped snapshots and select the one you want to boot with. it will be read only, but if it is back to the state you want, drop to command line and issue “sudo snapper rollback” that will set current readonly snapshot as your default writable boot snapshot. you can also manually generate a snapahot at any time using the yast fileaystems. They take up little space or time because it is only saving the delta differeneces.

  • KindaABigDyl@programming.dev
    92·
    2 years ago

    Personally, Ardour > Bitwig. Couldn’t ever figure out how to do anything in Bitwig. Very complicated an unintuitive.

    Ardour is also unintuitive but 1) I did eventually figure it out and 2) it’s at least free

    • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
      71·
      2 years ago

      I’m coming from Ableton Live, which I’ve used for a very long time and got used to, Bitwig turned out to be similar (I think I’ve seen that company was created with people from Ableton), so it works for me. But it’s better to try everything first of course.

  • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
    6·
    2 years ago

    I see you’re using KDE (I love it too), have you had a look at KDE Connect? It’s an app to connect your phone seamlessly with KDE, and it’s one of the things Linux does way better than Windows

    • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      2 years ago

      I did, though I do not have a use case for that. It looks like a great solution if you have a scenario.

    • Fatcat560@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      2 years ago

      I love KDE Connect! And it’s even available for Windows users. Great piece of software that can do so many things. I’ve used it on many occasions to quickly get a link or something like that from my PC, having the ability to share your clipboard is amazing.

      It’s also been my main “share the password manager file” application for the longest time before someone else on Lemmy recommended Syncthing. But KDE Connect is still fantastic!

      • Jumuta@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        2 years ago

        I love the wii remote mouse thing in Connect, it’s really nice when I want to interact with my computer, but am too lazy to get out of my bed to do so

  • pathief@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 years ago

    Does Archlinux take some time to set up but then is as easy to maintain as Manjaro or does the struggle never end?

    Always wanted to try out Arch but feel intimidated by all the people telling me not to :P

    • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
      51·
      2 years ago

      When you set it up - it just works. For me installation took 4-6 of hours (I had to read all the topics), until I had bare bones operating system with desktop env. Just follow wiki installation guide (precisely! I made couple of mistakes, because was not paying attention) and you will be fine.

      Rare problems during update I had 10 years ago seems to be even rarer today, just check out feed https://archlinux.org/ before update, or after. You can always rollback any package with pacman using local cache. Lots of solutions are easy to find on the internet.

    • Kualk@lemm.ee
      41·
      2 years ago

      Install Manjaro on VM, see how they did it. Then install Arch with the same packages. It is best if you have life example. That’s how I matched my 1st Arch.

      These days there’s archinstall script on standard Arch install image. It supports LUKS 2 disc encryption and BTRFS root. If you save your configuration and load it, then retry attempts take no time. Saving configuration is best done to a separate USB stick.

      As far as maintenance. It is near zero cost. Check website for warnings then

       pacman -Syu

      While officially yay is not supported, it is a great tool to keep AUR packages up to date. These days it updates system prior to running AUR updates.

      Manjaro breaks more often than Arch, but as a 1st time OS is great.

  • MartinXYZ@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    2 years ago

    For gaming, I would add Heroic Games Launcher for Epic Games ang GoG titles. Otherwise a great summary. Welcome back to Linux! I made the switch a couple of years ago and have not had Windows installed on any of my computers since.

  • ᦓρɾιƚҽ@lemmy.ml
    4·
    2 years ago

    I recommend ZorinOS for new-new people.

    I settled on EndeavourOS.

    NixOS is tempting me, but ultimately I don’t believe it would be an improvement for me rn. All I do is yay from time to time to update my system. It just works.

    Honorary mentions to Fedora and OpenSUSE, which I used, but they demanded more input from me. On EndeavourOS everything just works, so I enjoy it the most.

    • Chobbes@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 years ago

      NixOS is great and you’d probably see benefits from using it even if your usage is fairly simple to be honest (and potentially some challenges as well, haha). If nothing else easy rollbacks are a win on the rare occasion when a system update borks something. That said, there is a learning curve, and if what you currently have is working for you and you don’t want to switch… Then you don’t have to switch :).

  • Oikio@lemmy.worldOP
    4·
    2 years ago

    There are quite some comments and to clarify all misunderstanding regarding Arch vs something else or any other debates in this thread, I would like to add this comment.

    I do not recommend Arch based distro over Debian based or anything else. Topic is about using Linux at its current state, I assume that most of distros will be more or less similar when it comes to statements of the post. In my case it was Archlinux distro, because I had prior experience and it’s philosophy is appealing to me. Like rolling release, configure yourself, install only necessary for you things and etc.

    I do not recommend to use Arch itself for a new user. I hope from the post it was clear, that new user should not care much about mentioned topics, like Pipewire vs Pulseaudio or Wayland VS X. One can use more high order distros or even different base, like Linux Mint. Which I also used long time ago and was quite happy about.

    I do not say that KDE is better or worse than Gnome or whatever. For me it’s just a preference, like possibility to have more control over UI and looks and to avoid some blockers, like DRM on Wayland. You can have them all on your machine, beauty of Linux.

    And please do your own research on the topic and do take everything with grain of salt. There are a lots of great distros, desktop environments and other things. And there are tons of good and bad advices, navigating through which sometimes is not so easy.

    And I would like to underline that there are not so many up to date objectivly better things when it comes to software, pick what you need and like.