after trip-digit linux installs in the past year or so, here’s my list for a seamless transition for people escaping windows/macOS who need to get work done:
1) don’t tailor linux to your hardware, do it the other way around. get hardware that works OOB. no nvidia. no latest hardware. no weird realtek chipsets in budget deal-of-the week e-waste, no gaming (i.e. nvidia) laptops.
that don’t mean breaking the bank, a thinkpad with 8th gen or newer CPU can be had for $100ish; add $50 or so to expand RAM and storage and that covers like 90% of use cases. a competent all AMD desktop a gen or two behind current tech that can game almost anything can be easily assembled for less than $400.
fedora and adjacent forums are littered with cries for help about stuff breaking or not working at all; 90% of those are nvidia related. can you make it work - absolutely. is that something you’re willing to dick around on a deadline - hell nah.
2) no theming. no icons, no fonts, no plymouth screens, nada. as few extensions/plugins as you can, run it as close to stock as possible. shit’s gonna break, this is a work device, you can’t afford downtime because the single dev maintaining the thingy hasn’t updated it for the newest Gnome of Plasma. Gnome don’t feel like macOS? you’ll get used to it; muscle memory is a removed but it’s a tameable one.
an additional moment, especially if you’re on a laptop, is to make the thing as fungible as possible. that’s an easily breakable/losable thief-magnet, you want a setup that can be reproduced with as little fuss as possible so you can be operational again.
3) don’t dual/triple/whatever boot. that’s an advanced scenario, it’s gonna break eventually and if that’s a device you depend on for work or education, you don’t want any of that. run it as a single OS occupying the whole disk; encryption on a mobile device is mandatory. if you absolutely need multiple OS, a 2nd device is stupid cheap and it compartmentalises your shit, i.e. one for work, one for private/gaming, etc.
4) no weird distros. no arches, no gentoos, no immutable thisisthefuture shit. when it becomes mainstream, we’ll switch. until such time, middle of the road - fedora for newest hardware, mint for ancient stuff, ubuntu for everything else. a lot of people made sure they’re operational OOB, it’s less likely stuff will break and if it does, there’s an army of folks who asked and answered whatever’s bothering you.
5) no weird DEs. wayland only, gnome for laptops and tablets, plasma for desktops, there is no third option. you’re transitioning from an infinitely polished UI and the best tech that money can buy, you want the closest possible experience and the widest used environment, worked on by the largest dev community aware of the widest possible usability issues, working towards fixing/implementing them. you’re already relearning shit, invest that time wisely.
6) separate your system stuff from your applications as much as possible. purge all user-facing apps, like firefox and media players and such from the system’s package manager (apt or dnf) and reinstall them from flatpak. that was a headache a few years ago, nowadays almost everything works OOB on wayland. the apps include everything they need to work, the setup is easy to maintain and recreate, upgrades are better (no reboots necessary) and all your settings and data are in one place.
this covered 90% use cases of 90% of the users I’ve dealt with. naturally, edge cases are gonna have a bad time - you want to ollama this and that and rock bleeding edge hardware and have a normal desktop experience? it’s gonna hurt. you need mac-like power management and days away from power? doable but that needs work.
remember, this is a work device. for the same reason you don’t decide to “upgrade” the suspension on the car that’s supposed to get you to work the morning of, you don’t mess with what’s likely the only device you need for work/education.
greybeards dunking on you because you’re not a “real” linuxer? enamoured with the spicy screenshots from linuxporn? get a $20 thinkpad and go wild - arch it, sway it, have the scrolling text on boot, rice it till it bursts. but leave your workhorse be.
I don’t know man, I run Linux on all my stuff and I am lazy as shit.
I run Arch on my desktop with a 3090 and xfce (forced xorg) and have had no issues.
I run Opensuse on my laptop that gets really great battery life and isn’t even listed in the Wikis. This is my primary work laptop
I dual boot Asahi on a MBP.
I agree with the sentiment of your post being doing go balls out on a work machine but it’s not nearly as bad or unstable as you make it sound
I can’t tell if you’re serious, but if so - you’re the literal opposite of a noob transitioning and making their first steps. if you’re like any of the things you mentioned - arch, nvidia, xfce, let alone all of them combined - is something a noob should even entertain of doing, then I don’t know what to tell you.
the post is aimed at people a) transitioning and subsequently b) doing actual work, based on a bunch of people I’ve converted over. the input of dudes like you, while welcome, is in no way indicative of the path they should be taking.
90% of those are nvidia related.
I’m not a Fedora user (Debian and Mint are my go to) but I don’t have a similar impression. Also, my own NVIDIA GPU has always worked OOB (even without installing its proprietary drivers, it just works better after installing them) and still is, but it’s also considered old being a 970.
Imho, a simpler advice would be along the line of what you mentioned already. Something like: don’t rush for the latest/greatest hardware. Often, new stuff will lack support.
- no theming. no icons, no fonts, no plymouth screens, nada. as few extensions/plugins as you can, run it as close to stock as possible.
I agree with the idea of not wasting time but configuring the theme/look (which is part of the OOB experience, on Mint and Debian at least) can be essential to work in decent conditions.
As a matter of fact, theming is one of the technical reasons why I switched to Linux from Mac. The ability to have the text as large as I wanted it to be: getting older, one slowly realizes that small thin light-greyish designer cherished fonts lose a lot of their appeal in favor of those non-fancy but larger and bolder dark fonts that are more easy to read :p
So, I would object that theming can be a very legit, like 100% legit part of the process of turning a Linux machine into a usable working machine one will be able to work on for hours (like tweaking the keyboard layout would be for anyone, like me, writing in more than one language). And that is not even mentioning people with disabilities.
- don’t dual/triple/whatever boot.
Unless one has too, sure. Try running any recent edition of Photoshop in Wine and do real paid work…
My own solution was to keep a dedicated machine for anything like that: Photoshop and video. Note that for video one may decide to let go of FCP or Premiere and switch to DaVinci Resolve, instead.
- separate your system stuff from your applications as much as possible. purge all user-facing apps, like firefox and media players and such from the system’s package manager (apt or dnf) and reinstall them from flatpak
Why would that be a good idea?
I mean, I do my best to avoid all those third-party installer (like Flatpak) because they are not as well integrated to the system as the native installer is (in my case it is ‘apt’), and because they also waste much more disk space for the reason that, like you said:
the apps include everything they need to work,
Which, sometimes/often, means a real lot of extra stuff.
the setup is easy to maintain and recreate
That’s the exact reason why I use the native installer and not those third-party ones. That and the faultless integration with the system (menus, themes and stuff like that).
And in the odd case I would have to reinstall Linux (an even stranger need on a work machine, since that machine I would not tweak it beyond what I deem necessary for me to be able to, well, work on it and therefore it would be rock stable), even in that case I would need to reinstall it, I find it so quick to reinstall all my apps by typing a single line: “sudo apt install app1 app2 app3 app9999”, no matter how many apps.
I am keeping such a list in a text file, I update every time I start using a new app, just in case one of those days I truly am forced to reinstall my system. So, I know it would only be a matter to copy-paste said command line in a new shell. Not pretty but real easy and quick ;)
Flatpak (…) upgrades are better (no reboots necessary)
Once again, I’m not a Fedora user but does Fedora really need to reboot after updating a bunch of apps? I have hard time imagining that.
Sorry if my comments sounds critical, it’s not my intention. But while I was reading your post I was very surprised how affirmative you were on certain decisions/choices and how much my own personal experience was different.
greybeards dunking on you because you’re not a “real” linuxer?
And if you’re wondering, nope, I am not one of those ‘real user’ either even though my beard would be grey, if not plain white now… if I had one. I come from 35+ years (happily) using Apple hardware and software for work and for personal stuff ;)
Edit: clarifications.
downtime because the single dev maintaining the thingy hasn’t updated it for the newest Gnome of Plasma.
is this really that bad? I remember seeing a Win7 theme for KDE, and I really want to install something like that on a spare laptop. will it break something with each update from the distro?
is this really that bad?
As someone who slightly customize his Linux DE, I would say that the real but potential issue when using some non-official theming (or very niche ones) is that one does indeed risk having issues after a major system update, thing breaking off or just plain not working anymore. It’s no 100% certain, but the risk is real. And that is something that, on a work machine at least, is never an option (the machine is supposed to be available and work in a predictable and reliable manner, hence why I’m so madly in love with Debian plus it’s so well optimized :)). On a personal machine? Well, that’s up to anyone to decide what their priorities are.
Luckily one is not required to use extreme theming. Personally, I limit myself to whatever is provided with my version of Linux in order to change font size, colors/theme, wallpaper, cursor appearance and so on. So, everything is easier to see for my old eyes.
It works very well and since it’s part of the distribution I know it will not break after an update. The downside is that it’s often much more limited than what some other dude may have done somewhere on their own machine and then decided to share online. I don’t mind it ;)
Nice list, thanks for sharing your experience.
no weird distros. no arches, no gentoos, no immutable thisisthefuture shit. (…) fedora for newest hardware, mint for ancient stuff, ubuntu for everything else
Do you have an opinion on opensuse?
separate your system stuff from your applications as much as possible. purge all user-facing apps, like firefox and media players and such from the system’s package manager (apt or dnf) and reinstall them from flatpak. that was a headache a few years ago, nowadays almost everything works OOB on wayland. the apps include everything they need to work, the setup is easy to maintain and recreate, upgrades are better (no reboots necessary) and all your settings and data are in one place.
Not sure I get this. When did you need reboots for upgrading user-facing apps?
Where are those settings and data for flatpaks? Is there no separation between default settings (systemwide) and user-defined (in $HOME)?
Does flatpak work well on Ubuntu and is it easy to get rid of snap?
this is not a “which distro is better”, this is which is appropriate for a noob. you want something that has a lot of attention devoted to preventing issues and that when you search “distro + problem” you get a solution, or close to it. it’s way more likely you’ll succeed with ubuntu than with opensuse.
once you’re an intermediate user and don’t need the kiddie wheels no more, you’re free to wander further, replace DEs, rice, switch distros, whatevers. but a noob will have his hands full with the transition and doesn’t need the extra baggage.
a user doesn’t discern user-facing and system apps, to them it’s a notification asking for a “software update” and that shit pops up daily. the mess that’s Gnome software, a horrid creation that’s OOB configured to prompt for reboots for every tiny little thing, because it updates system shit along with apps, is the number one complaint generator for converts; they’re used to a couple of those per annum (macOS) or per month (windows).
flatpak apps settings are in ~/.var/app and as such easy to include into backups.
I myself have been using linux for 15 years and disagree with what you’ve said.
- Learn how to install and update on Endeavor and you won’t have to worry about much - it just works, on any hardware.
Fedora always breaks on me, whether it be nvidia or amd. I used to love Fedora but found it breaks far more than otherwise.
The Linux vernal is designed to work on up to current gen hardware. If anything the current gen nvidia stuff is rough (40 series). I’ve had no issues with 30 series or 7000 series amd GPUs.
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Why? Nothing wrong with using extensions. They’re usually updated within a week if Gnome or KDE breaks them. With gnome I’ve had 10+ extensions with 0 issues across multiple computers.
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Not true. My dual boot has never broken on multiple computers. Whether is be Debian, Ubuntu, fedora, or arch.
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Also not great advice. I found Endeavor OS, which is Arch to run the best. PopOS was the only other one that just worked.
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This I do agree with; hyprland, i3, etc take a long time to fine tune. While tiling managers do help with productivity, setting them up takes a while.
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Flatpaks should not replace system packages. They tend to be updated much slower and scaling can be weird on them.
