Breaking Windows to let the penguin in...

Long time Windows user here. I’ve been a M$ sysadmin at a large healthcare conglomerate for 20+ years. It’s all M$ products that I work with.

Anyway…I’ve dabbled here and there with Linux, ran it in VM’s or dual booted, but I’ve always gone back to my comfort zone of Windows.

I’ve “recently” (last 6 months") tied Kubuntu and I did like it, but really hated Snap, so about 3 weeks ago I jumped to Mint. Now I know that both distros are Linux training wheels, but I have to say that I’m really impressed! I forget how fast and responsive Linux is without all the bloat that you get with Windows. The main detractor of sticking with Linux before was gaming, but with Lutris now filling in that gap, there’s nothing holding me back.

For the first time, I would really recommend Linux to friends and (selective) family.

Long story short, after 25+ years of using Windows almost exclusively, I’ve finally made the jump and just blew away my entire M$ partition and I don’t feel bad in the least.

I’m sure I’ll be hanging around this sub for a long time, and I’ll make a jump to a more traditional distro like Debian or Suse. but for now, I’m really impressed with how far Linux has come.

<p>

Edit- Wow, thank you for all the love and support! I’m very happy to hear that I"m in good company with Mint. <p>

I love all the great suggestions too for Vbox alts and game launcher. Gotta love this community. <3

jlarex,

Good choice with Mint, I think its the best distro for people transitioning from Windows.

geoma,

Snap is not good. Flatpak is.

jackpot,
@jackpot@lemmy.ml avatar

next theyll find out about coreboot and framework laptops lol

MangoKangaroo,

Welcome to the party! Never let anyone get you down for using a “beginner” distro; it’s perfectly valid to want a system that just works. :)

johannes,

I know plenty of Linux professionals who are no beginners, but still prefer mint :)

MangoKangaroo,

Shoot, I’d probably be one of them if not for my need to have Wayland and slightly newer libraries for my A770.

palordrolap,

The latest Mint (21.3) does have experimental Wayland support. Definitely worth keeping an eye on.

MangoKangaroo,

I’m watching Cinnamon’s Wayland rollout with great interest. No Pipewire sharing yet (among other things), but I’m excited for the future.

elucubra,

I installed my first distro, slackware, from diskettes in the 90s, so Im not exactly a newbie. I now use Mint ( just works but you can get under the hood fine), with both a dual boot windows and a VM for when I don’t want to reboot, since I use a few programs that are windows only. The setup works fine for me. That said I’m playing with NixOS. Definitely not for the masses, but awesome.

Ephera,

Well, it’s not like more advanced distros are built to not work. Rather, they work better for different focus points.
So, I would encourage people, especially those with a techy background, to take a look around eventually, but yeah, your conclusion to that journey may as well be that Mint was nice, actually.

MangoKangaroo,

Well, “just works” in the Todd Howard interpretation. ;)

agr8lemon,

Thanks! It’s great to read in there that even some of the seasoned Linux folks use Mint!

haui_lemmy,

I use linux for a couple years as a server and for 6-9 months as a daily. Am also a sysadmin.

Mint works great but is very simple. Ubuntu works good as well but the proprietary snap store is shit imo Switched to debian & kde yesterday and am already fully set up. Not without any hickups but a great experience so far. Maybe try a second hard drive to switch out and install debian if you’re feeling like it. Its pretty cool.

dingus,

They are intro distros, sure, but don’t ever think that you have to move to anything else if you don’t want to. Mint is probably the best Linux distro there is if your goal is ease of use, support, and “it just works”. I’d say that’s more than enough for what people want in an OS. I recommend it to anyone looking to hop into Linux, be it temporarily or permanently. People jump into other distros for specific use cases or because they feel like fucking around with something…but that’s absolutely not required or necessary to be a Linux user or advocate.

atzanteol,

Now I know that both distros are Linux training wheels

They’re both good distros with a lot of functionality. No need to denigrate them because they’re easy to use.

possiblylinux127,

Linux mint is amazing. I’ve used Linux for many years and it’s still nice. I do wish Linux mint had a more free software install option but that’s a minor complaint.

Dariusmiles2123,

I’m happy for you as it’s always nice to make that first big jump.

You won’t regret it. At least, I haven’t!

NegativeLookBehind,
@NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social avatar

You’re making Bill Gates cry you jerk

agr8lemon,

And that always makes me laugh. I’ve made a good living for myself trying to keep his servers functional lol.

BlanK0,

Welcome aboard! 🐧

If you decide later to test other distros I would highly recommend using a virtual machine in virtualbox. Saves the hassle when it comes to testing distros 👍

possiblylinux127,

Or if he is only Linux he could just use KVM.

BlanK0,

KVM is indeed a much better hypervisor, but it does require some setup with the terminal.

Since he is a beginner I decided to recommend virtualbox since it just works after installing. But if he doesn’t mind setting up things via terminal then KVM is definitely the way.

possiblylinux127,

It requires zero terminal knowledge. You just install virtual manager and reboot

d3Xt3r,

@agr8lemon The other person mentioned virt-manager, but there’s a much more easier app: Gnome Boxes. It uses the same backend (libvirt/KVM) but it’s much more easier to use - in fact, I’d say that it’s even more easier to use than VirtualBox. For starters, Boxes automatically detects OS ISOs on your drive and allows you to just click on them directly to install it - or you can even choose to download and install a distro directly from within Boxes. Also, when you consider the post-setup phase: there’s no need to install any guest modules/drivers because it’s already built-into Linux distros.

makeuseof.com/…/gnome-boxes-easy-way-set-virtual-…

agr8lemon,

Great tip! I’m going to install it today

heygooberman,
@heygooberman@lemmy.today avatar

Welcome, friend! Glad you decided to try out and stick with Mint. That’s the distro I used as my daily driver for at least 1.5 years. When you have a chance, do try out some of the other Linux distros, especially Arch!

absGeekNZ,
@absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz avatar

I have been using various distros since 2008; I use Mint as my daily driver.

Stability is the biggest factor for me, I want a OS to get out of my way and let me get on with what I’m doing.

h3ndrik,

👍

I think you’re fine with choosing Mint or whatever distribution you like.

lemmyreader,

Welcome to the Penguin party ! 🐧 And thanks for sharing your story.

Vilian,

really hated Snap

lol, a true linux user indeed

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