this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2024
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Thinking about making the switch and need some advice. (lemmy.ca)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hi all,

As the title states, I'm interested in making the switch from Windows to Linux. I know absolutely nothing about Linux, other than that fact that there are distros that exist under Linux, and Linux itself isn't an OS, or so I think.

I have 2 laptops and my main home office PC, which I use for my job and gaming.

My plan is to switch one of my laptops to a Linux distro, and test it out. This laptops only purpose is web browsing, so I figure getting Linux set up to do something as simple as opening a browser is something I am capable of.

Down the road, once I've sort of learned on this laptop, I may work my way up to using other distros and dual booting my main PC. Who knows, maybe I'll even switch over completely prior to Windows 11 rolling out.

I've heard getting games to work with Linux can sometimes be a hassle, and can require some fiddling, so I won't be doing gaming on a Linux distro until I feel quite comfortable.

So with the above context, I'm looking for recommendations on a distro I should use, any guides that any of you may have found helpful, and generally any insight on things I may need to be aware of.

I am fairly tech savvy (probably not compared to most of you), and am not afraid of tinkering with things until they work. Any help would be muchly appreciated, and if this isn't the correct place to post, please let me know and point me in the right direction.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (11 children)

Gaming on Linux is getting a ton better, but still requires a lot of knowledge and patience

Start with Ubuntu, mostly because it has a big enough user base and following that there are millions of articles about every problem you could have.

Start using ChatGPT whenever you encounter a problem as it’s really good at debugging and interpreting error messages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Finally, a use for ChatGPT.

Thank you friend, I appreciate the wisdom. The laptop I’m using is a Lenovo T470, so performance is poor at best. Is this going to cause issues with Ubuntu? I’d reckon no more so than Windows, but again, I’m fairly clueless here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You have a Thinkpad? As far as i have heard their linux compatibility is fairly good. An yes, ubuntu won't have more problems than windows with low power devices. My old 4GB ram, 1.4GHz 4 core laptop ran linux mint fine.

Ps: linux mint is a ubuntu fork, and has a desktop interface that looks a lot like windows (example: in the bottom left there is the linux mint logo that you can click to open the start menu like on win 7).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Awesome. Excited to try it out. Maybe I'll give it a go tomorrow and see if I can get it figured out.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I have a T460 running Debian 12 with Cinnamon on it, which is Linux Mint's desktop environment. It runs perfect, never have any issues, I just have to be patient every now and then.

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