Transitioning...To Linux!
11/01/2025
This has proven to be a year of big transitions for me. With official support (kind of) ending for Windows 10, I decided to put yet another transition on my plate. Getting away from the Windows ecosystem. This wasn't the only option, mind you. There are ways to extend your security on Windows 10. I'm sure it's possible to de-shitify Windows 11, somehow, and I understand that everyone has a different situation for what they need to do with their computer, so there are reasons to stay on, even if begrudgingly. For me though, enough is enough. It's Linux time! No dual boot, either. Fuck it.
It's something I've been curious about for many, many years. This time, I felt I had the confidence and knowledge to understand what I was doing. Allow me to share with you my plans and experience...
Test Drive and Plan
The first step here was to explore some Distros. You're probably familiar with the fact that Linux comes in many different configurations and flavors. After some research, I decided to give Mint a try. Frequently suggested as a good transition point from Windows, I saw no particular reason or desire to mess with that idea. I spent a few evenings booting into Mint from USB, slowly trying out as many programs as I could to see how I would get back up and running.
A lot of this was pretty easy, for my personal situation. I've been a user of Firefox and Thunderbird for a long time (in the case of Firefox, a very long time) so that was covered, as they come with the Mint installation. Steam seemed to work just fine, for what I could test from a USB boot. Mint comes with a nicely featured media player (called Celluloid) and even a torrent client (Transmission). VSCode has forks and versions available. Discord has a version from them, but I've ended up using a third party one, Vesktop. I'll admit that I'm a pretty lightweight user, overall. I do play video games on PC sometimes, but we'll talk about that separately. The web stuff I do here is almost certainly something that wouldn't be realistically impacted by an OS change.
This is where Mint's nice little Software Manager came in handy. It's a built-in way to get software that you know will work, and it'll get updated through your OS. The comparison makes me gag a little, but I suppose it's true, it's a little bit like an App Store but for desktop programs. I found myself greatly enjoying this aspect of Mint a lot, not having to browse sites and various downloads to get all my (new) software again.
Mint, in general (with the Cinnamon desktop), just feels snappy and responsive to me. It delighted me greatly.
Backing up my personal files wasn't too difficult, as 80% of them already live on another drive separate from the OS one, which I had every intent of letting Linux wipe and partition however it wished to utilize it. Be sure to think about where your files are and what you need to keep precious backups of!
I do highly recommend this method of testing, if you're curious to try out something new. If you're interested in making this switch, have a transition plan for everything you do. It made me feel happy instead of anxious when I decided to commit to the install. Of course, in this, I probably could have been a little more thorough. I simply assumed I would find a substitute video editor (my YouTube projects are very simple), which I eventually did in KDenlive. I also had completely forgotten about image editing, which I have traditionally used Paint.NET for. That's a bit antiquated anyway, so I've been making the switch to GIMP, which is quite powerful.
That's the other part of your plan. You will almost certainly need to adapt to something a little different, somewhere in your computer use. I think you're pretty smart and can figure it out, but it's worth mentioning. That kind of attitude will help out a lot.
Install Day, Little Problems
After watching some anime with a buddy that morning, with courage built up from extended testing, I figured it was time to say sayonara to Windows.
So, you know, of course I managed to break my install process just a bit. Oopsie!
Everything turned out to be fine, mind you, thanks to a few forum threads I glossed over. Skip this next paragraph if you want, I'm only jotting it down in case anyone else has this exact problem.
During the install process, I was asked if I wanted to use Secure Boot (tm), for usage of third-party codecs and drivers. I thought that sounded right for me. THERE ARE MANY OPINIONS ONLINE ABOUT SECURE BOOT FOR LINUX SYSTEMS. I'M JUST SAYING I DECIDED TO DO IT. After I agreed to that, I ended up backing out of the installation to double check on a few things. I found myself unable to boot back into Mint from USB. Uh oh. The file renaming trick outlined in the forum thread above did work, but the Secure Boot option was gone from the installation wizard. This worried me somewhat, but eventually I said screw it and continued with the installation. This would bring up a message in the BIOS later asking me to register Secure Boot with the password I set originally, so everything worked out fine. My BIOS had options for "Windows Secure Boot" and "Other OS Secure Boot", so I've left it on the latter.
...after all that was sorted, I suddenly had no sound. I'm still not exactly sure why this happened, considering it worked from USB Boot. I ended up temporarily reverting the included PipeWire sound system to PulseAudio (this was really fast with the Terminal), but this did nothing. I ended up plugging my speakers into the back of my desktop (where they're supposed to be, admittedly) rather than a front port where they had been working. Go figure.
I should mention now that those two things were the biggest initial hurdles for me, but it's the kind of problem, and problem solving, you should be aware of. I suppose it's somewhat of a meme, but indeed, you will likely find yourself browsing through a forum thread, reddit post, or other documentation for something. Even if it's your own curiosity. For example, Vesktop has some differences depending on if you install the .deb package from the site, vs your Software Manager as a Flatpak.
Video Games
That same mode of thinking applies to video games. I recommend checking ProtonDB regularly, which will show you other folks Distros and setups to help you with your own if you have some kind of issue.
Now, for my particular situation, playing and installing games has been pretty reasonable. I don't play a lot of newer games that often. The newest and most demanding in my repertoire is the still fairly modest Guilty Gear Strive. I've been regularly playing Team Fortress 2 and Megabonk since before the Mint switch, both of which have native Linux versions. TF2 still has some interesting quirks going on with it, which you might not expect. For me, it'll actually crash if it doesn't start in a windowed mode.
Uma Musume, which I very rarely play on Desktop, has an amount of Security somewhere, it doesn't like playing nice without Proton. I had to troubleshoot 4 or 5 versions to get the game working as it did on Windows.
From what I've gathered, the emergence of the Steam Deck (which runs a custom Linux distro) and Proton (which is actually developed by Valve themselves) has been a boost for gaming on Linux systems. In that for compatibility has improved, and developers have a renewed focus on wishing for Deck/Linux compatibility. But these things have not been a catch-all solution.
Keep in mind, I have a lower-spec machine, and your experiences could vary for the better, depending on your Distro such. I have an old GTX 1060 and a four core CPU and 16 gigs of RAM.
If you're like my boys and you need, say, Apex Legends, you might be out of luck. Do some research on your favorite games, and, frankly, good luck!
My gaming needs are more or less met here. I've become pretty casual over the years, but I'd imagine a lot of my audience may not be in that camp. Some other games I tried that were pretty much "out of the box" included Under Night In Birth II: Sys Celes and Sonic Adventure DX.
I want to comment on the emulation scene for Linux, but I haven't done a suite of testing for that just yet beyond Mega Man 2 on NES, something that would probably run on my watch if I tried. Taking a look at good old Emulation Wiki for something like my beloved DuckStation, things seem rather promising. Many emulators seem to have Linux versions, even the impressive RPCS3 has one, which is crazy to me.
Why Did I Do All This?
I know I have more or less mentioned nothing but problems and cautions here. I do that in the name of well, my own honesty, and as encouragement for you to give Linux a try. You'll have a few problems, but again, I think you're pretty smart and can navigate those. So what's the payoff for all this?
- Your computer.
- Fast and snappy experience.
- Terminal actually is fast and powerful.
It may seem a little funny, but it's true. The feeling of being completely off the Windows world at home is good. Linux has given me something I didn't know I wanted or needed. The feeling that this is MY computer. Tweaking the Cinnamon desktop the way I want, adding cute little things like that clock. Going through the Software Manager and choosing exactly what I want. And I'm at the very shallow end of how customizable Linux can be. It's a whole universe of stuff to explore, and it's super cool.
Without all the Windows bloat and zillions of processes always running, I've found that just generally using the computer has become much more enjoyable. It boots up in like, two seconds, and doesn't randomly do stuff without you asking or knowing about it. This is refreshing. Tinkering with stuff is fast and easy, changes can be reversed with relative ease. There's a stability here (well, until you reach video games, kinda) that I'm growing fond of.
While I only ever used Windows PowerShell for things like yt-dlp, the Linux Terminal has been much more friendly and useful to me. Being able to install things with a command or two (be careful pasting commands though!) and watching it work is great. It's another part of what makes Linux feel fast and customizable. Sometimes I shut duwn with Terminal commands, or do other random things (like make the directory and file for this page!) with the Terminal just to watch it faithfully obey me.
So yes, I would absolutely encourage anyone who's frustrated with the Windows shit-uation to at least give it a try. There's a handy dandy site that lets you try out different Distros on Virtual Machines. If you make a bootable USB drive, you can try whatever you want on your own hardware. Heck, dual boot if you want, it seems like that's what most people do. I was personally ready to adjust for a clean break, but you should do what's right for you. Someone had to encourage me to try, and I'm very glad they did. So now, I do the same for you. Go find a Distro you might like and see how it works.
- Jane