From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Don't switch based on hype.
Put your chosen distro on a USB pen and boot from that. Try to do the activities you usually do, see if it works for you.
If you feel comfortable, make the switch. If you have any doubts, get a second disk and install Linux in it so you can have a fall back plan.
For games it's really great unless that game you're looking for has kernel-level anticheat. You can check ProtonDB for Steam games, Lutris for other platforms. If you prefer single-player games mostly like me, you won't have much of a problem.
For music, there are software like Ardour and LMMS. For video editing, you can check KDEnlive.
Before switching, I suggest you to try at least a couple different distros on a virtual machine, better if you have a separate laptop to try things. PopOS is great. You can also check Linux Mint, Bazzite and openSUSE Leap.
Reaper, the daw mentioned in the post, also runs fine on Linux.
Be prepared to ditch a few apps when switching to Linux! Most games work great, but those sneaky, spyware-heavy ones? Not so much. (/me looks at GTA Online & League.)
People have already mentioned ProtonDB for games. Another website you can use for alternative versions of software is https://osalt.com/
Upon switching, what should I expect to change?
Many things are very similar on Linux compared to Windows (e.g. Browsing, Steam). One big difference is that people prefer using package managers to install software (instead of downloading and installing it manually).
I’m considering Pop!_OS seeing as its praised for its compatibility and easy switching.
Pop!_OS is a nice distro and it should work well for you if you like the UI. There also many other good distros if you want to play around a bit. You can easily test them using a Live ISO.
What’s the situation with gaming look like? I know gaming on Linux has been a HIGHLY discussed topic for a while, is it easy to play any (non triple-A) steam game? I’m nowhere near involved in computer science, I’d just consider myself more stubborn than most end-users so I can persevere through some basic problems.
I'd say that you can expect almost all games to work. The main exception are games with anti-cheat that decide not to support Linux. In my case, there has only been one game in the last two years that didn't work (War Thunder crashes a lot more than on Windows). Playing AAA games is generally not an issue. You can check https://www.protondb.com/ for specific games.
Many things are very similar on Linux compared to Windows (e.g. Browsing, Steam). One big difference is that people prefer using package managers to install software (instead of downloading and installing it manually).
This. Especially for drivers, always use the package manager of your distro and do not attempt to manually install Nvidia drivers you downloaded from their website.
Never assume Linux works like Windows. You'll be confused.
You also do not have to use Pop because it is generally praised for its easiness. There are a few other good and easy to use distros out there, like Fedora, Mint or openSUSE.
There are also a few DEs out there, with the two most popular ones being KDE Plasma and GNOME
If you want to use KDE, I recommend you try out Fedora's new KDE version.
While not all, you also should know a few very commonly used commands to use in the terminal and maybe some basic troubleshooting skills. You don't need to be using the terminal all the time, if at all. Some common stuff is pretty much doable with a GUI nowadays and you'll probably be installing your applications through the DEs builtin software center. Pop uses a customized GNOME, so you'll be using the GNOME Software Center. KDE has Discover.
Since you do game, I suggest you check out ProtonDB. This is a database of rankings of games that work with Proton (Wine) and some even natively. If you play games from Epic, GOG and/or Amazon Prime, you should check out the Heroic Games Launcher. For any other games, check out Lutris. Do note that you might have a bad or good time depending on your GPU vendor. AMD generally works out of the box while NVIDIA might not work as nice as an AMD GPU out of the box. But I think Pop has the option to install the proprietaty NVIDIA drivers during installation, so make sure to select that if you have one. Nouveau isn't as good as the proprietary drivers.
Regarding your other software, I don't know whether Reaper will work with Wine. If you don't mind switching to an alternative, we have Kdenlive and GIMP or Krita.
Reaper supports Linux natively.
I think you should try dual booting or try Linux in a virtual box just to check that you can do your work on Linux and if you can't then you know the answer.
I think PopOS is a good option for gaming since ypu can get it with NVIDIA drivers included if you need them but I'd reccommend looking at Bazzite as well:
Generally I'd say: Be prepared to keep an open mind, while you can use Linux like any other OS in most cases nowadays don't get stuck on wanting to have everything, every workflow exactly like it is on Windoge. Try new things, tinker, it's fun!
Your computer to run faster? 😁
I'm not that much of a gamer, but ask your favorite search engine for winedb and protondb for details about game compatibility.
For gaming and browsing, you should have a very similar if not the exact same experience on Linux save for a few cases.
Most browser stuff just works, no real issues with anything in browser in my experience over the last 2 years or so since I switched. Only thing I've noticed is some streaming platforms dont allow you to stream in full HD like Hulu for whatever reason, likely piracy concerns. I'm sure theres other minor things too that I may have missed over the years but nothing that really made a difference.
For gaming, aside from multiplayer games with anticheat, its been great. I haven't had any issues with playing games in my library. Proton is fantastic for steam games and from what I've heard, lutris is great as well.
I'm a musician/artist and Linux has been a bad experience for me with music production unfortunately. Between most VSTs not working for me even with yabridge, things would crash, not work at all or would load but then crash in the middle of production. I actually used Reaper and was running PopOS, (great daw BTW, good choice) and while Reaper itself was great, most things, even native Linux VST didn't work for me. I hope your experience is better than mine but I ended up building a 3rd machine just for music production running Windows 10 with no internet access. I also had Windows only VSTs that I spent a considerable amount of money on so that was also another big thing for me.
Aside from music production, other creative workflows like photo editing have been good with Krita. I've heard good things about kdenlive, and davinci resolve Ive heard is good on Linux as well. Ive used davinci resolve myself on windows and its a good video editing software IMO.
The popshop kinda sucks. I went to kubuntu recently just for ease of use and not being so tied in to PopOS's weird system. I wasn't able to do simple things like change the file manager without it breaking a ton of shit, even after editing configs. If you dont need to mess around with stuff like that, PopOS is good.
All in all, I'm glad I switched from Windows.
I'm not a musician but I recently stumbled across https://linuxmusicians.com/ which seems like a decent forum for people that are determined to make it work.
I think the biggest culture shock for a lot of people is "fewer surprises, more options." On my machine at least, updates don't run automatically -- I might get a notification that "updates are available" but that's it, I still have to say "okay, now is a good time to update", it won't surprise me with them.
Similarly, if I want to set a hotkey for like "take a screenshot of the current application", I can do that! But the downside is that it might not be set up by default, I have to go to settings -> hotkeys or something similar.
Linux "gets out of your way" and lets you solve problems, but that also means it's not always going to solve them for you. It's getting better at this over time -- if lots of people have the same problem, the solution might get merged "upstream", but a lot of things are still "well, how do YOU want it to work?".
Some times you may need to install a few extra stuff to get a game to run properly, other times you may see a few visual glitches like a pop-up menu not rendering properly, but you're unlikely to find any game that just can't run on Linux unless the devs intentionally don't want people to play it on Linux.
Check protondb for general compatibility of any games you play.
No matter what distro you choose, expect a learning curve. Depending on your usage it can be minor or significant. You may find a simple task doesn't work as you expect in Linux and it's time consuming to figure it out. If you run Windows in a virtual machine on Linux or set up a dual boot system you can switch back and get the task done easily, and figure out how things work at your leisure.
When I first switched I went back to Windows a couple of times a week for simple tasks that I didn't know how to complete in Linux. (It usually was an issue with figuring out a new application and rarely had anything to do with the OS itself.) After a couple of months I found I was wasn't using Windows much, and in less than a year I was able to delete the Windows partition.
I'm using areweanticheatyet.com more than ProtonDB to check if games are working as most issues I've encountered are due to anticheat not working on Linux. Apart from these most games just works without much tinkering.
I'm excited you're giving Linux a try! There are a ton of excellent ressources online for learning about Linux, how to make it your own (a practice commonly called 'ricing'), or fix errors you may encounter. These are explored further in the links below :)
Picking a distro. What I hear is that, unless you have some problematic hardware it doesn't really matter what you pick. So if it feels overwhelming, don't stress too much over if it's the "right one", you can always try different ones out. Having said that, my impression is, many coming from Windows seem to be happy with 'Mint'. Likewise 'Bazzite' seems popular as of late. But 'Pop_Os!', 'Debian' or 'Fedora', are also all perfectly valid choices. Personally I've liked using Endeavour OS with KDE, for quite a while.
Software. There's so much cool software out there, so maybe search around for which can solve your needs. I like browsing Flathub.org or blogs, such as, Phoronix to discover new software. There might also be a discovery feature in the distro itself. Both Firefox (and its derivatives such as LibreWolf) and Chromium (along with its derivatives: Chrome, Brave, etc.) runs well. Even the much smaller project: LadyBird, does so. I have no experience with music production software on Linux, so cannot comment on that.
Games. Might depend on which types of games you play. But to me it seems Steam (using Proton/Wine), Heroic Games Launcher, and Lutris, works great. The steamdb as others mention is also a super ressource!
If you made it this far through my wall of text, I'm delighted by your curiousity. Two Linux "introductory videos" I'd like to share are respectively from Nick@thelinuxEXP Linux isn't (just) better, it's also more FUN! and Brodie Robertson's Linux Resources Every New Linux User Needs Odysee YouTube
probably a lifetime of trouble shooting and asking the internet if there’s a linux equivalent of insert name software available.
Don't switch your OS first switch your apps to cross platform apps first that work on both Linux and Windows for all your major tasks. Then after you feel good about it then switch to Linux and switch everything no dual boot for at least 6 months or you will switch at the slightest roadblock vs just troubleshooting like you would do if you ran into a roadblock on windows.
This sounds like a good idea, but I think the problem here is that a lot of popular software runs great on Linux but is very clunky and ugly on other systems (looking at you, LibreOffice). So keep that in mind if you try out FOSS on Windows as a sneak peek.
Elementary OS is beautiful, polished and easy. Maybe also check out Ubuntu Studio Edition since you do a good deal of editing? I like Pop! as well and have it on a couple of systems, but it’s nothing extremely special over others, it’s just very well-curated with regard to features and updates. They’ve tweaked a bit of stuff that’s sloppy in the main Ubuntu.
The best thing to do really is learn as you go, but definitely put some real effort into reading about the basics. The file system and the settings are both to look at first.
For good customization of your desktop if you enjoy that, go with KDE/Plasma.
You can also change later if you learn enough that you’d like to go to a more bare base system. Personally I’m on Kubuntu on my main machine but that’s only because it’s a pretty new laptop - or was when I got it - and raw Debian didn’t have the drivers yet for some of it. I’m sure by now it’s all supported and I eventually want to set aside a day to reformat and go to raw Debian. It’s my favorite distro and in the most recent version they did away with their draconic restrictions of drivers so it’s quite more accessible now.
But for a very easy and comfortable, eye-pleasing start, I’d really suggest something like ElementaryOS. It’s possibly the most beautiful looking one I’ve seen, and just jump right in and start kind of setup.
That’s my contribution to suggestions for you. Hope you make the journey easily. Linux really is phenomenal and a massive change from the disease-infested world of Windows.
This is a weird one, but read up on folder structures. If you’ve used MacOS at all then the logic is very similar. However if you’re coming from a pure windows background then it can get confusing figuring out where everything gets put when you install applications or need to make changes to config files.
The Pop desktop environment and search works well the vast majority of the time but it’s handy to know how to find you’re way around when you hit a roadblock.
I've been on pop!_os consistently for.. 3 and a bit years now? some distro hopping before then
What you should expect to change.. well other than the obvious like the UI and such.. chances are you'll need a decent bit of different software than on windows, im assuming you looked into alternatives for the software you use, or if it simply just runs, so im not gonna list a bunch of stuff here :3.
Tech support online is mostly gonna be through terminal commands, which actually makes it way less painless imo since you can just copy-paste stuff instead of navigating though a bunch of interfaces.
Installing apps is different since you'll often find multiple packages for the same thing, and have to decide between .deb or flatpak etc.
All of that seems like fairly obvious stuff you'd find along the way to the process of looking into switching to linux tbh, but I can't think of much that'd be a major shock otherwise lol
In terms of gaming, I've had no major issues :3.. some minor ones that were easy enough to troubleshoot did occur tho. Generally just checking out protonDB to see what people are saying in terms of compatibility is good, but basically 90% of what doesn't run now are games with kernel level anti-cheats
Music production is the only reason I still have a Windows installation on dual boot. My Ableton install and stack of VSTs is holding me back.
You definitely can do music production on Linux though. Bitwig is good and works natively.
I'm in the same boat as you, with decades of projects I want to be able to open.
However, OP mentioned Reaper, which has a native Linux version! So as long as they're not using a load of VSTs, and the ones they do play nicely with Linux, it could work out for them
The only way is to give it a go and find out though
Things that I would tell to younger me before I switched to GNU/Linux:
Let's talk about disadvantages now:
Changing anything, including an operating system, is intimidating. You will think you will never get used to the new system, software, its way of installing apps etc. But you will, quite fast.
Some Windows apps may not work, or work bad. It didn't happen to me, but I am quite sure it might happen. So you better make some tests of Windows apps on Linux before.
If you choose automatic partitioning when installing the distro, it might do it in an inconvenient way. Let's say you have 960 GB SSD. Choosing automatic partitioning might allocate only 25 GB for system, and the rest (900 GB) for home partition. And it's very frustrating, because apps install (using sudo apt install 'app') in system partition, not home. So always use manual partitioning and put a lot of size for system (/). It can be intimidating, but you find tutorials online.
That's all I can think of. Enjoy your journey in Linux world!
expect pain and start of a new hobby.
I would suggest searching what Linux alts exist for your productivity and install those on Windows. If that hurts your ability to work (in particular paid work) then you won't have a good time switching over. If you still want to move at least try and get a new hard drive and install linux there. If you don't like linux then you can swap back to your old windows drive.
LLMs are useful when dealing with linux. Linux works different so there is learning curve esp if you want to get most out of it.
PopOS is a decent choice, however COSMIC is in late alpha with that being said it does work overall. I would not advise 22.04 at this point.
You can install classic GNOME also.
I hope you don't care about functional HDR support, nor having access to the Nvidia Control Panel or Nvidia App (So no 3D Settings, no Shadowplay, no RTX HDR). Two major reasons why I'm sticking with Windows for now.