Linux

I'm a programmer and have switched to NixOS, because I can define all my configurations in code+git repo, which is great. I now have a single repo that has some parts that are shared, and some parts are host-specific (one desktop + 2 laptops, for now), and if I fix some bug (like my Samsung 990 Pro SSDs having Linux issues), I know it'll be permanently fixed, instead of having to re-figure everything out after a reinstallation.

NixOS BTW. We're making it ours.

edit: Steam has been a non-issue, so gaming has been great so far! Not that I've been gaming a ton, but still.

Also, being able to use an LLM to fix stuff for me in my nixcfg repo has been great - I would NOT have been as productive with NixOS had I not have had Codex.

I use Mint and so does my wife.

Two laptops that Win11 doesn't want to support, but we need them both and we don't have the budget to replace them. No problems on mine, but the wife's HP has some issues with closing the lid and I haven't found a good solution to that yet.

Sleep doesn't work because on wakeup the wifi and bluetooth are both dead; bluetooth doesn't matter but the wifi's needed for the internet and the only way to get it back up is to reboot the machine because it insists there's a hardware failure and refuses to accept that there isn't. I've even tried modprobe-ing the network stack but it has to be a full system restart (warm restart, not power cycle).

Hibernate threatens something nasty, can't remember what offhand but I'm not even considering it.

I don't want a lid shut to mean shutdown because shutting the lid shouldn't mean losing work. So I'm left with the only remaining option that shutting the lid does nothing, and the LT stays on, but then if she puts something on top of the LT as she's prone to do, some stuff can end up in a weird state, like taskbar icons following the mouse around even though they haven't been clicked on, and there's no way to stop them doing that without rebooting. I'm not sure how that happens; my hypothesis is that the keyboard and/or trackpad get activated, but no amount of me pressing on the lid in various places reproduces the problem.

Other than that she's had no problem adapting to Linux Mint. Everything's where she expects it. I've had to do some command-line jiggerypokery for various bits and bobs but a bit of DDG-ing finds that easily enough.

Overall I'm damn happy. I'm surprised by how many basic things are faster, just opening and deleting files is fast. For some reason, something as simple as emptying the Recycle Bin in Windows is slow as hell; and I didn't realize how bad it was until daily-ing Mint.

Me and several of my friends have switched recently, with others showing interest or partly switching already.

Been using Linux Mint since the summer. I went to create a letter on my newer Acer laptop on Windows 11 because the HP Beats wouldn't go to Windows 11. Office 365 paywalled me. So I looked up Open and LibreOffice (going to try OnlyOffice soon) and got them both, completed the letter.

Then I thought... Windows is getting so crappy with this insult plus AI & ads... I wonder what Linux looks like these days? I had used it in the early 2000s, mostly Mandrake and Suse, as I recall, on KDE.

I was lucky I happened upon Distrosea, so I played with some there. I almost installed ZorinOS, but decided that dual booting Mint on the Beats laptop was better, because the Software Center has ratings and reviews.

There were a few hiccups with the flash drive, Secure Boot and all that. Ended up having to format the iso in Rufus before putting it on the flash drive with Ventoy, but it worked.

Granted, I don't use my personal laptops that often, the last thing I want to do after being on my work laptop (which is Windows 11, but my coworker runs CachyOS and brings up work stuff in ThinkCast) is get on another laptop, especially where I work evenings.

Since then, I've wanted to put it (or smaller distros) on other older machines in the house for fun, but several of them have some issues... old Dell Dimension 2200 psu capacitors popped, so that was a no go... and the Dell Vostro tower we have is beeping at me, gotta have someone look at that... might be graphics card or mobo needs reseat.

My only surprise is how easy it was.

I'm rocking Bazzite and the only time I wanted Windows was when I got stuck on a boss in Silksong and wanted to use CheatEngine.

i love it, things have been just working lately. it feels like every day something is gonna give but thats just windows trauma

I set up a dual boot Win10/Linux system so I would have the option to use windows when I needed. I have not booted into windows for a while now. The only thing I was using it for was to play some older games I could not figure out how to get running in Wine. I may have to use it for tax software if I can't find something that runs under Linux though.

I haven't missed Windows one bit. There were a few things that were tricky to get right int he beginning and also I had to get used to using some other software for some of the things I used on windows but honestly it's been worth it.

I'm happy! It Just Works. Windows 11 -> Linux.

• I have had ONE WiFi problem that was my computer's fault the whole year; as opposed to half the times I open the computer.
• One video game didn't Just Work, I had to tinker, but I got it working smoothly with mods.
• A bit of trouble with flash drives initially because they were not formatted to something compatible with Linux. Once I learned that I managed to shuffle data around and format it to be compatible with MacOS, Linux, and my Windows VM. But Linux actually saved me and let me get an old flash drive working that did not work at all. Love reformatting on my distro, it's easier and more visual than when I tried to do it on Mac or Windows.

I switched to Bazzite and I'm really liking it.

I have had a few issues with old SDR software that didn't work.

All in all, I'm very happy with the change and have absolutely no plan to return.

Switched Jan of 2025. Already used 99% open source stuff on Windows, so the conversion was nearly painless.

I tried Debian at first, which didn't support my bleeding edge new hardware. So I tried LMDE... which also (unsurprisingly) didn't support new stuff either. It wasn't until I landed on regular Linux Mint that things hit a good stride.

I still mourn the loss of Winamp though... :(

Went with Linux Mint back in July, set up a dual boot in case I'd need Windows for anything. Figured something or other wouldn't work through wine or some such. Never have booted back to Windows since.

I think the only issue I've had is that my 8BitDo controller won't work via Bluetooth, but it works fine via USB. (Other Bluetooth devices have been fine, not that I have many.)

Switched to Bazzite coming up on 4 years ago, and haven't looked back

Not needed windows once. Tho I do have to use it on the job

I've been dual booting Windows and Linux (Ubuntu) for a while, and sadly I'm back on Windows after a month and a half of exclusively using Linux. The reason? Ethernet. I need to assign a static IP to a dev board with Ethernet, and while it works fairly easily on Windows, it just doesn't work on Linux, saying it's unavailable in the nmcli output.

Of course, Windows is worse than before. It hasn't fixed the bug where it never updates the system time, forcing me to manually press sync on every boot. And it hasn't fixed the newer bug where my laptop display needs to go down to 768p to display 300Hz, making me to go down to 60Hz to use the full 1080p resolution. All the while Microsoft pushes things nobody wants.

I need them to decide on Wayland or x and make the damn switch. I'm tired of switching servers for apps.

It's great. My only issue is my computer had issues with sleep mode. So, I just disabled it.

On Linux I would need to disable online only accounts, copilot, one drive, recall, bing search, edge, edge again, privacy settings, edge yet again...

Linux is great. Honestly it came a long way over the years.

I went to Fedora in March of 2025. I never looked back. Definitely some frustration with video drivers and hardware issues (bad Samsung monitor), but nothing I haven't been able to work around.

Most importantly, my computer runs great, my games run great, I have more control than ever, and I will never go back to Microslop. Their pivot to "AI EVERYTHING!!!" has been abhorrent, and I refuse to cooperate.

Was about 2 years ago, but going great. I chose Mint at the time, occasionally eye other distros but I can’t be arsed to switch my perfectly fine desktop. It’ll just be longer before I get HDR support nbd. I installed openSUSE on my old work Thinkpad to try KDE. It’s fine but so far not really better, just different.

It's going great. A bit of a learning curve at the start, but nothing difficult. I had a few minor issues along the way, but it's all worth it, because I no longer get bothered by all the annoyances of Windows. My device is now managed, updated, etc by me instead of big tech that doesn't serve my interests, feels much better.

after a terrible time trying to work through a USB/motherboard/speaker/microphone combo issue, it’s been good. working on Bazzite as i have intel/nvidia gear and my pc primarily is for gaming. getting games to run has been as easy as it was on windows.

I switched to Nobara a couple months ago. My computer is a lot snappier. Overall its great. Some minor difficulties but no show stoppers.

Signal desktop gives me an error that it is keeping credentials in plaintext which is fucked, I tried to get it to not do that but havnt been able to figure out how. (there are tutorials for ubuntu/gnome, but I havnt figured out how to translate those to fedora/kde...

I just started using crow-translate which is amazing, but keep getting a screenshot error message. Something with wayland maybe? again when I search there is a lot of shit about ubuntu/gnome but that doesnt really help.

I was using Linux when I was in school from 2000-2008. Used Linux for a while during the Windows Vista period then switched to Windows 7 and eventually Windows 10. But I always had a dual-boot scenario on my PC. Now with Win 11, I didn't want that malware on my system. Plus now Steam and Proton can allow me to play my games like it was nothing so I went full Linux. Never been happier. Kubuntu is working awesome for me. Though I might switch to Endeavour OS at some point. I'm not sure yet. I'm so used to Debian, I don't know if I want to learn a whole new software management system.

It’s going well. I started selfhosting most of my services on a debian machine. TV doesnt have internet anymore, it’s hooked to a fedora mini pc that i use to play media. I’ve installed Asahi fedora on my M1 Pro macbook and it’s flawless.

Dont miss anything. The only thing that pisses me off is when i work on a document on nextcloud (using onlyoffice) it doesnt look nice on MS office. So for work stuff i have to sometimes log into ms office account and use their cloud to work on a presentation or something.

I also kind of have to keep the OSX installation for some photography stuff although when i have the time ill look for linux alternatives. Mainly i need something to edit fujifilm raw photos with

I switched to Fedora Workstation 41 a year agoish, and am currently running 43 KDE!

I really like being able to theme my desktop to my liking, esp with KDE, my current theme is using the Catppuccin Macchiato colours (with "Mauve" accent, i.e. purple) and window decorations (solely because they were the only one available with big, colourful buttons. The rest had tiny icons that were hard to differentiate) + a cool black hole splash screen I found that has a date too! I am using the Bibata Modern Ice cursor and Papirus icon pack.

I also like having loads of additional software to pick from. LibreOffice works really well on Linux, Lutris and Prism Launcher are great for the games I play, Okular is nice (though by now someone has told me it existed on Windows, damn!), and there are just some simple tasks where the Linux-native apps that are simply perfect (see KAlarm, Dolphin and Nautilus file managers both having actually useable search that doesn't require a third-party app like Everything on Windows, Elisa music player)

I had no issues with software incompatibility, all of the ones I use either had a (better) Linux alternative or had native Linux support (like Steam, Firefox, OBS Studio). The only thing that I am unable to do on Linux is a) (Re)install Windows for friends and family (weird, I know, but the Installation Assistant is not compatible with Linux. Technically I think you can use CLI tools to write the ISO to flash drive, but I couldn't get that to work. If I had the time I probably would been able to figure it out...) b) Access files from an iPhone, but that's more an iPhone stupid problem than anything. I use an Android phone now, and I have full access to its file system just by plugging it in, and c) Playing Minecraft Bedrock (hmm, I wonder who owns Mojang and how they could benefit from this...) but I have set up a MC Java server with GeyserMC+Floodgate and now my little brother (who plays on an iPad) can play Minecraft with me, which is awesome! There's a bit of lag due to the translation layer, but nothing major.

Switched to arch 1 year ago or so. At first I customized my experience a lot and really enjoyed it. Now I have a stable experience, just game and do some dev work on and off. Really like it.

Switched to Mint a few months ago on my Desktop. I discovered a few issues during my time with it such as waking itself from suspend mode or the headphone jack in my front header not getting picked up, but both issues were fixed with just a bit of searching.

Overall it's a great feeling to be able to just do what I want with my computer and not worry about big corpa messing with me, even if I do expect that things may need to be patched up here and there.

I have a dual boot PC with mint and the nvidia drivers crashed the GUI on boot. I haven't resurrected mint yet.

My Surface Book 3 with kubuntu is great but I have to turn it off, sleep will burn up the battery.

Bought a new gaming PC with an AMD GPU and went straight for Bazzite almost a year ago. It was pretty damn painless and straightforward. Especially the only thing I use it for are singleplayer or indie multiplayer games. Almost everything worked out if the box.

A lot of sim racing stuff worked surprisingly well.

It was a pain to learn how to install Assetto Corsa with its mods, needs a specific version of proton with specific windows libraries installed, but once I figured that all out it runs great.

It was also a pain when I bought a Chinese handbrake for sim racing, but thanks to the Sim Racing On Linux discord, a member wrote a custom driver for it for me and another member that bought it. Unfortunately, I can't exactly install custom kernel drivers on Bazzite, so I ended up switching to CachyOS and have been enjoying that so far. It was a bit of a pain to switch as it requires more tinkering, but I got to a place where it was running nicely fairly quickly.