this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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It feels faster and it seems to use up less storage.

It feels like I no longer have to play tug of war with microsoft with owning my own device.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Awesome move. Welcome to Linux. Mint is a great daily driver. It just works. And when something goes wrong, you have the ability to poke around and see in detail what is happening, and fix it with the help of the excellent Linux community.

Not to mention the clear advantage of Linux not spying on you or serving you ads.

Enjoy your new OS!

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Completely agree. Never once did I think "I wish I was on Windows" since I've been using Mint

[–] meekah 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So I've been using Linux for close to 6 months now and I do have to admit I miss how easy it was to set up VR on PC. I don't think there even is a virtual desktop application for Linux. I tried alvr but I guess something about my network didn't allow the vr goggles to communicate with my PC. But even if that worked, it would still be a matter of luck whether the VR mods I would like to use actually work on Linux. Like I'm sure it would be a hassle to get content manager for assetto corsa to run properly. So I've been considering just putting windows on a small ssd that I can use for VR.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That does seem to be most people's solution at this point, VR is unfortunately not working well on Linux.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's because the two major VR ecosystems are run by companies that are the antithesis of open source.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, maybe Valve will start putting more work into it, but until then I'll just be happy with my 2-d life

[–] meekah 2 points 9 months ago

Fair enough. I can't recommend VR enough though. It's crazy how immersive it is

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Thank you I will!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Do you have any recommendations for RDP?

Right now I run a bunch of windows boxes at home and it's super nice to be able to VPN to home and then RDP into them, the responsiveness is really solid.

I haven't really found a comparable setup with Linux, I tried VNC but the sluggishness was real. I also tried RustDesk, but there were some weird shortcut key issues randomly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Have you tried Remmina? I use it almost every day for my work machine. Works pretty well.

I think I found it by opening the software center and typing in rdp

[–] Dominatorhl2 3 points 9 months ago

@AlecSadler NoMachine works great on Mint/Ubuntu. It's free and the only intuitive RDP out there I've found so far.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

If you wanna go a bit overkill, moonlight + sunshine has one of the lowest latencies out there

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Do you have any recommendations for RDP?

No sorry, maybe someone else has some suggestions.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (4 children)

It feels like I no longer have to play tug of war with microsoft with owning my own device.

It gets real funny when you use Linux for 6 months+ and then install windows in a virtual machine. The amount of shit you have to click no or skip on is astounding.

[–] chrisgestapo 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've been a Windows user since the 90s and only used Linux occasionally. But starting with Windows 10 this thing is becoming more and more difficult to manage. The unlimited amount of popups, changing settings randomly without asking, A/B testing on difficult computers or different accounts on the same Windows installation, some settings only appear after a while or opening/closing the software several times......

It's so painful to deal with. I'll probably switch completely to Linux soon when I have spare time.

[–] FlyingSquid 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What drive's me crazy on my daughter's Windows 10 laptop (Windows is required for her school) is there is a popup asking you to subscribe to OneDrive. It interrupts whatever you're doing and you can only make it go away for a month. Even Apple doesn't do that shit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Oh it’s even worse than that! They try to replace your usual libraries with a one drive folder, which can cause some real fucking problems for users who don’t understand what one drive is

Don’t even get me fucking started at trying to explain sharepoint vs one drive

[–] FlyingSquid 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Adobe does something similar, except you're already paying for an Adobe device anyway. But I remember saving a couple of files in Photoshop when I first took my former job and trying to find them later and being unable to until I realized that you had to tell it not to save in their cloud service because that was the default option.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

“Creative cloud”

Yeah it’s horseshit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I only switched 5 months ago or so, but your comment is exactly the reaction whenever I use or update my wife's windows pc. I used windows for ~30 years now, and was just "used to it" - but after only 5 months away, the bloat experience is unbelievable. Why did/do we put up with that?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Why did/do we put up with that?

It was the vidya games for me.

That's no longer an issue now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I see windows users at work and they have clicked those popups so many times they they do it now without even thinking. But it looks really funny, they are interrupted constantly by Windows or apps wanting something :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

See this topic coming up was fresh for me as I installed windows last night to use USB passthrough for my keyboard. It took me about an hour to get Windows installed and to the desktop.

It was what, like 15 to get to Mint's desktop for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Or even on a high end computer, how long just opong simple apps takes? It kills me every time

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Welcome aboard! :)

Please pay very close attention to how Mint expects you to manage software. I haven't used Mint in a very long time, but they should have new user docs that cover this. This is my advice for any distro (though there are some commonalities) - noobies can save themselves a LOT of headache if they take some time to be sure they understand how that distro expects users to manage software.

My second piece of unasked for advice - Mint-specific forums will be much more useful for any support questions you have than general Linux forums during the time when you are getting your feet wet. There are a lot of things that are the same between distros, but enough differences to make distro-specific advice valuable for new folks.

I wish you nothing but success!

[–] agent_flounder 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

And if you can't find an answer for a mint problem on a mint forum you might find an answer on an Ubuntu forum. In other words, add Linux mint to your search first and if that fails try Ubuntu instead. At least that has worked well for me over the last decade plus.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Is Mint the distro that comes bundled with IRC access from the desktop? I remember that being useful when I was starting

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It could be, but I haven't used it in at least a decade, so I can't say. Agree though - it's good to be plugged right into the support channels for a distro. I do remember that Mint always put a huge focus on being sure that noobies knew where to get help, and were aware of how things "worked" as much as they needed to be. I hope/assume this ethos has continued.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Yeah I remember asking this sort of meandering question about how Firefox was only showing blank pages, and someone shot back with "update your system clock" and it worked!??? 🤯 After that, I was like, guys magic is real because I just met a wizard

[–] deadlock 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

As a long-time Mint user, I can confirm that Hexchat was (and is) configured to auto-join the Linux Mint IRC channel.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I didn't know this an opened it just now. Can confirm.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Actually a really cool idea.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I run Mint on my main PC. The final push was the near daily prodding to subscribe to 365 or use OneDrive or some shit. It's annoying at best and coercive at worst when the system changes my settings without permission.

For the trouble I've had on Linux, it's far less annoying, and it keeps getting better while Windows seems hell bent on getting worse. Thanks to Steam Deck all my games work with minimal tweaking. Works hard. Plays hard. Isn't annoying. It's hard not to love when it feels like it's my computer again.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

This October will mark my 30th year on Linux (got started with Red Hat 0.9 aka Halloween). I've always been able to say that Linux "works hard" but it took nearly thirty years for me to comfortably be able to say that Linux "plays hard".

[–] doingthestuff 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'm still running Windows 10 on my main PC because I have ~40 niche software needs and I haven't had time to research Linux alternatives. But I'm running Linux on a number of the other machines I manage.

Speaking of which, is there a free software you'd recommend for video capture on Linux?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago

OBS Studio has a Linux version. Or do you have more specific needs?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There is only 1 windows specific program that stopped me from moving over to Linux sooner but I just got it to work in Linux.
I could not get it to work with wine but luckily I found another way to run it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

@Gamers_Mate @doingthestuff if it is a software & not a game then shame cause VMs have been around since many decades, then again, you also can make a VM with GPU passthrough so even games are not a problem, unless it is an app like Pokemon Go that doesn't run on Virtualized hardware

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago

Welcome to real freedom from big tech. :)

[–] fidodo 6 points 9 months ago

It feels that way because it is

[–] shadowintheday2 2 points 9 months ago

After the initial learning curve when starting in Linux to solving advanced problemas that may or may not occur (will depend on Nvidia/exotic hardware/DE updates), you find it's easier to solve these because there are questions and answers in the internet, than finding another way to remove Edge, Cortana and restore the look and feel of windows 7 after every major update in windows

[–] Brujones 1 points 7 months ago

I came here to say pretty much the same thing, but found your post instead. I just made the jump this week. I'm running a Legion 5 Pro with 2 SSD's, so I left Win11 on its drive and installed Mint on the other. They seem to be playing well together - no conflicts so far.

I'm pumped on how simple it actually was! I wish I'd have done it sooner...MS has been really irritating me lately so I finally went for it. Loving it so far!

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Welcome! My main piece of advice to you is use your package manager and don't just download software from your browser like you would on Windows. Installing software with a command line package manager is the superior way to do it—nothing to do with being a leet hackerman/woman using the terminal, it is just an easier way to keep all your software centrally up to date without having to individually update each one separately, and it's faster to do in the terminal rather than bother with the bloat and slowness of a GUI. Generally, Windows teaches you a lot of bad computer habits you should try to unlearn. I think installing software from the web is the biggest Windows-based mistake I made when new to Linux.

I think more generally learn to use the command line, a lot of things they have guis for (eg burning an iso, mounting or formatting a drive, version control guis, etc) are completely doable from the command line and it's faster and more reliable to just use Unix commands for these things than to rely on a potentially buggy or slow gui program.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

I don't disagree with you, but the standard GUI based update manager in Mint works really well, especially for new users.