This might just be the push I need to switch to Linux desktop.
About a month ago Windows 11 started forcing ads for apps and services I didn’t need. Immediately installed a popular Linux distribution to have some peace of mind. There’s every flavor of desktop out there. I picked one for work and games (pop_os). It’s out of my way most of the time and it’s not trying to sell me anything. I recommend it, specially, if you’re someone that doesn’t fiddle with settings too much, it just work.
I spent the last ~10 days “playing” with many distros, including testing some current games, and I am literally right now backing up my files and about to reformat my main PC to linux (full drive, no dual). This is after only having experience with copy-paste Raspberry PI guides for my pi-hole.
Don’t totally believe “oh it’s so easy, nothing to configure” - those people are lying, especially if you’ve not used Linux before. But several flavors of Ubuntu are quite pleasant, and I appear to have found a home with PopOS. I can’t find anything that “doesn’t work”, and the worst fixes were just quick searches for help. PopOS won due to nvidia compatibility and a nice, snappy desktop. It also was the fastest in overall reformat cycle time. My wife’s computer is still Windows, if I do have any microsoft emergencies.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is rather easy.
But anyway, no mainstream user-friendly Linux distribution is that hard to use if you can read and think.
So when people say that they can’t manage one on their desktop - they also usually can’t manage Windows on their desktop, they just think they can.
Congrats on picking an awesome distro! :) Pop is really nice, and I’m really excited to see what they do with their desktop environment. I feel like we’re spoiled for choice right now on Linux.
There are always things to configure, just like on Windows. I think some people kind of forget that they had to learn to configure things on Windows at one point. xD
Ok wow… did I jinx myself with this post. Immediately after posting here, I began the install/config phase of a fresh reformat. Encountered a weirdness that the system couldn’t sleep/suspend - immediately woke up. 8 hours later… After installing 5 different distros to confirm it was ALL linux versions (even debian)…
I spent the entire day, 8 hours, searching and referencing and troubleshooting. FINALLY one very random corner of the internet, on an ARCH-LINUX forum, a small comment mentioned that my Gigabyte B550 “had a problem” with sleep. SO THEN I had to start cross-referencing those words (couldn’t “use” the Arch guide, since I was on Pop), and my dude/dudette… I was up to 1am.
Ultimately, I had to COMBINE the “solutions” of FOUR different results, across 2017-2020 (none actually on Ubuntu 22.04) to get the fix to work. Like one taught me the script, but the locations were wrong, one taught me the service I needed, but it was outdated, and then another taught how to fix a service, etc etc, cascading solutions.
SO at close to 2AM - after documenting my own guide, another raw metal install of PopOS, wrote my script & service… and… “it just works!” (pun intended). It works. It sleeps. Have to disable the Gigabyte B550M “GPP0 and GPP8” device, which are bridges to the NVMe drives.
Funny enough though, as much as this is “yup, thats Linux!” I feel like it’s not fair, and not Linux’s fault. This is a random, and really unlucky, issue with my specific board. I am typing this to you, while on my new PopOS install, and sleep/suspend still works.
What a ride!
It’s “easy” - but that is very subjective, depending on how much you’ve down outside “turning Windows on”. You DO need to make sure your router allows assigning a DNS ip address. Some ISP-supplied units are rather locked down.
I recommend a “kit” from somewhere like CanaKit (amazon has them), to make sure you get the parts you need. It can run on smaller/cheaper kits, but I say get a Pi3 or 4 variant.
Then following the link above, there is great documentation on install. Install “Putty” on windows, which will log into your Pi and allow remote command line, and then the entire process is copy-paste from guides.
After you finish, you may feel “oh that was easy!” - but there’s still some stuff to learn and get used to along the way.
It’s stupid easy. Flash DietPi to the SD card, select pi hole from the package list, then point your router to the IP for DNS.
Of course, it should be plugged directly into your router, so a zero won’t work without an ethernet hat.
There are some games that just will not work even under proton, or that have functional restrictions. It’s way fewer games than it used to be, but it’s still not an absolutely perfect solution. I would love to make Linux my gaming OS instead of my “getting shit done” OS like it currently is, I’ve been advocating for it for a few decades at this point and it’s almost there, but it’s not to a point yet where I can unreservedly recommend it to gamers. If you aren’t a gamer I’d say it’s already good enough for anything you need.
Do it. With proton the last argument for me to use windows is gone (gaming).
Can you run Adobe software via proton? As soon as that works I’ll be on Linux.
Look at your usecase, if it really requires adobe suite, you are out of luck i’m afraid. Perhaps you could research running a VM or wine, but I havent tried any of that myself.
If you conclude that you dont need features exclusive to adobe you might be able to find a foss alternative.
No, but there are better alternatives to adobe that don’t hog your ram harder then triple a games
Well, it’s not GONE. There are still plenty of games that won’t run well on Linux, or they won’t allow online multiplayer because their anti-cheat software is restricted to Windows. But that number is getting smaller every day.
I’m still on windows because I multibox my main game and the tools to do it don’t work, alt tab is a goddamn mess, minimize window on focus loss is a fucking nightmare, and multiple instances of proton just chew up system resources until the game starts lagging so hard I need to quit every client and try again.
it’s an edge case but that’s quite a lot to deal with when windows just works.
Meh. I don’t play multiplayer games at all other than FFXIV and that I haven’t played in over a year. The only thing that would deter me is some visual novels I play are windows only but I could probably just run them in a virtual machine as they’re not demanding.
Thats why I specified that, for me, that was enough to switch. I agree that proton isnt there yet and 100% compatibility, and we will probably never get to that. But there are enough games on the market for me to do 90% of my gaming on Linux these days.
