Technology

Most distro’s have a live bootable install. You download a .iso and burn it to a flash drive. Plug it in and boot from it, doesn’t touch or change anything with your current Windows install.

This lets you try out the OS before fully installing it. Give it a whirl.

I personally recommend Fedora KDE. https://fedoraproject.org/kde/

I did what Lawnman23 mentioned, downloaded the latest Mint release and flashed it on an usb stick. booted into Linux Mint, and all my hardware did function right away from the start. Including my old printer, all my usb devices, bluetooth devices and no problems with my Nvidia graphics card. After that i installed linux mint next to my windows as a dual boot. I installed it on different SSD drive tho. Linux Mint is now the OS i always use, i got all my programs and games working on Linux, and now am deleting Windows from my pc.

I’ve used Windows since i was a kid

substitute "Windows" with "computer". If you have any history of resolving "this doesn't work for me" on your own (as opposed to waiting for someone else do to it for you), you will be fine. Just be sure not to jump into unknown when you have urgent important things to do :)

Before Windows 11, I told people to switch to Linux because open source software is better for the soul. Now, I tell people because the user experience is just better. I used XP/Vista/7 throughout my childhood, and modern Linux desktop environments really do feel closer to that experience than Windows 11. I use Win11 for work, and I can confidently say that it has the worst settings menu I've ever used.

If you know the basics of using a desktop computer, most things won't feel that weird or foreign to you. The hardest part will probably be learning Linux-compatible alternatives for apps that only work on Windows. What kind of programs do you typically use on your Windows system?

You've got a very relatable situation. Switching to Linux can be a gradual thing. -Keep your windows main, and get a flash drive boot

• make a folder on you C:/ or D:/ to store your Linux user files (like downloads and documents). This keeps your windows files more separate from your Linux files. It also let's you keep files across boots. You can delete the Linux folder if you don't want to keep it around.
• Open up Firefox, and have a browse of your favourite sites. See about logging in and getting your account logged in.
• what's it like? Is it different to windows? Is the vibe different?
• try installing your favourite app or game.
• get curious!
• too much? Your windows is still right there.

Baby steps! And remember, you don't need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step :)

Win10 isn't all bad, in fact many folks treat that as a decent os. The real issues is having win11 taking hours (from 8pm to 3 am real funny) to upgrade just to find out that copilot has the whole filesystem now. No privacy or sandbox mode. No nothing. A thousands different copilot buttons.

I keep my win10 machine as is because i have a lot of my stuff there, a lot really. But in the end, I have no issue in having a mini laptop with linux. It's the most low end device i can think of and i freed some space. But, if you're used to windows that much, 10 is still valid.

I don't think the women dancing on lingerie phenomenon is ongoing. They make more money selling your data on free videos than they'd make after the money they'd spend programming it

Its Kind of insane to think about that you have to put so much effort into deshittifying windows 11. At that point its probably easier to switch to Linux (if you dont have anything that forces you to use win 11)

If you play on a machine that is not connected to internet, then by all means there is no reason to switch. But of you are connected to the internet, then those system pose security risks and you would be better off having an up to date system. If Win 10 wasn't EOL then maybe the advice to upgrade to Win10 would be solid.

Microsoft dominance in businesses is part of what's making me think all businesses are in cahoots with each other to make sure the only businesses that are successful are ones that take power away from the public.

Try onlyoffice and slowly try to shift to libreoffice with open document formats. Or just skip that part and move everyone to the web versions of office. Also if you guys are on office 2010, the last time I ran it via wine, it worked completely fine.

Did you try OnlyOffice? I heard it has good compatibility with Microsoft Office's files, it's available on almost every OS, and looks easy to use. However, I'm not sure if you can create very complex documents like with Office.

This is the same thing that keeps my parents on windows. I do agree it’s not libre offices fault

Nice!!! But I feel those entry distros could do a lot more to be more user friendly, there are many edge cases where you still need to use a terminal and have some understanding of the OS. We need a truly GUI only distro with more wizards, and automatic repair so more people flee to Gnu/Linux

Hell yeah brother

Nice, that's sick. I'm soft modding my Wii atm and it also feels good.

At this point, if you have hardware, Linux is a good choice. New or old. The older it is might change which distro, but still a good choice.

Bazzite's excellent, just be aware going in that it's an immutible distro and some stuff may be different than you're used to.

Bazzite is amazing, nearly bulletproof even?

I had a few times where it booted to the grub emergency shell, but it literally just fixed itself. Just reboot and it uses the other A/B slot. And the next update attempt just fixes whatever the problem was. That's only happened twice in the last 5 months since I switched. Most longtime Linux users should be very familiar with the grub emergency shell, but I've never been on a distro where it just fixes itself. I don't ever have to think or worry about updates, it's just a reliable daily driver. It's sick.

As people have said, Bazzite is immutable. You can install system packages/libraries if you absolutely need to, but you really should run your custom stuff in a Distrobox instead. Distrobox is preinstalled, supports graphical apps automatically, and most of the time you won't even notice it's not your real OS.

I think Bazzite is more stable and usable than Windows now. I'm tempted to switch my parents to it, it's been much more fault tolerant than Windows 11.

I mean, it's a lot of work to make security updates for a browser on an operating system that doesn't get security updates anymore. Why spend money fixing the weapons on a sinking ship?