I’ve been a Windows user all my life and had dabbled in the Apple ecosystem for a bit. With the upcoming end of support for Windows 10 in Oct 2025, I figured I’d put myself through a huge challenge of cutting over completely to LInux without a secondary backup drive with Win 10 on it. If I could survive the struggles for a few months, I’d be golden, and if I couldn’t, then I could switch to Windows 10 LTSC and be good until 2029. The intention was to completely force myself in without a backup plan - the only way out would be to install a new Windows OS. I chose Linux Mint after careful consideration, especially considering that there’s tons of resources and help with this distro, and it’s a great onboarding ramp for Windows users. I need the familiarity since I’m in tech full time and just don’t have the energy to hassle with my PC after a long stressful day at work.
I also used this as a good excuse to upgrade my PC a bit, too. 😀
After switching in mid December, I’m happy to report that I’m still alive after 30 days. My computer hasn’t killed me. And I’ve been able to do work and game on my PC without too many hiccups. Marvel Rivals still crashes ever since the Season 1 update. Overwatch works perfect. My other games, on both Steam and GOG, work perfectly fine. But I haven’t been able to test every game out there, but I know I can use Proton DB if needed.
I even edited this screenshot in GIMP after being forged in the fires of Macromedia Fireworks and Photoshop all my life! I even stripped exif data using command line tools! I even installed this cool neofetch thing that I always saw in people screenshots of their PC or whatever, every time I saw someone’s Linux build with their thigh high socks and neofetch on the terminal!
But so far, switching to Linux Mint has been great! I’m excited to deep dive more!
Note:
- I backed up all my data from Windows into a USB drive. I’m slowly bringing all that stuff over to my Linux Mint computer and rebuilding my music, video, photos, etc. Lot of work, but it’s so cool feeling so liberated!
- I may also want help from you Linux nerds from time to time. I’ll make posts/memes begging for help when I get desperate. But so far, almost every issue I’ve had has been resolved via an internet search!
- I pray that I won’t come crawling back to Windows. I don’t expect that to happen with how great my experience has been thus far.
Specs:
- Linux Mint 22
- Ryzen 7 9800x3d
- Thermalright Phantom Spirit
- MSI X670e Carbon WiFi
- Sapphire Nitro+ RX7900 XTX
- Corsair Vegeance 64 GB DDR5-7200
- Gen 5 Crucial T700 (?) M.2 x 2
- Corsair 5000d
- Noctua case fans (Lian Li too problematic on Linux based on all the research I did in advance)
- Seasonic Focus Gold 1000W
Old Specs Everything the same as above apart from:
- Windows 10 Pro
- Intel i7-12700k
- Noctua NH-U12A
- MSI Pro Z690-A
- MSI RTX 3080 Gaming Z Trio
- Samsung Gen 3/4 M.2
- Corsair Vengeance Pro 32 GB DDR4-3600
- Lian Li AL120 case fans
Your striped thigh-highs will be delivered in the mail within a month.
This hit me in the gender
I must have missed that promotion, any chance I could order some?
It is only for people adopting Linux after 2023
If you did it earlier, like me, you’ll have to purchase your socks separately.
Today Valve published a Proton Experimental update that fixed the Marvel Rivals crash for me. Be sure to set it up in game properties / compatibility.
Bro thank you from the bottom of my heart for the type up. I’ve been contemplating this for months and this very may well be the final tipping point for me to make the plunge. I’m in pretty much the same boat, tech savvy but don’t want to deal with shit I dont have to which has been my main reason for not diving in yet. I’ve thought of doing exactly what you described as I do love a little challenge, which I get contradicts what I just typed. Anyway, yeah, thanks again for the post! Will be doing my own switch here in the near future.
Happy to post this! I wish you good luck with your switch!
My approach was of course to backup all my personal files to a large backup drive. I exported as many as configurations for my programs as I could - like for Handbrake and FreeTube as an example. I backed up those configs so that on my Linux OS I could just import them and have all my programs configured the way I wanted. Before I pulled the plug on my windows, I also wrote down every program I used and saved it into a simple list, so that I can hunt for alternatives.
That approach I think was great for me since I spent a lot of time planning and carefully backing everything up.
It’s been very smooth for me with minor hiccups when I first cutover to Linux Mint, but I’m damn happy with how well things have gone.
Take your time to methodically prepare and I’m sure you’ll do well when you’re ready to commit.
You have the option of trying without installing. Lots of Linux distros can run straight from DVD or USB without having to be installed. This way you can rest assure that it will either work for you once installed or you can just eject the media without altering or touching anything on your drive.
I’m thinking of doing the jump this weekend but I’m scurred. I don’t want to spend hours debugging an OS like I did over a decade ago. Any reassuring words?
A direct hop is usually not the best way to move into the Linux world. The best way I’ve heard (and wished I did myself) is slowly start migrating to programs that will be available and you’ll be using, while still on Windows. Get used to how new things work and if an emergency comes up, you can fall back to your tried and true tools. Then, just keep migrating apps until most of what you use is open source stuff, or stuff widely available. (Spotify, Discord, Zoom, etc.) Once you have your workflow worked out, you’ve found substitutes for things you can’t get on Linux, then is a good time to take the plunge.
Going cold turkey is going to be really rough. I had Fedora on a side piece laptop for years before my first try on my workstation and it was a disaster. Less than a week later I had to go back to Windows. But, now I’m familiar with the tools I use and I’ve been a full convert for a few months now and it’s been great.
You can do it! Just…take it slow.
Gabba gabba we accept you, one of us! One of us!
Welcome to the club! One bit of advice: Be not afraid of the terminal. Learn to use it, it’s a powerful tool and very useful. I recommend going to youtube and following along with a “bash basics” or “linux terminal basics” type video or two as if it were a class, it’ll help familiarize you with some of the more commonly used tools to navigate your system and stuff.
Woah now there buddy. This fellar just starting down the long trail of Linux and you are already trying to shanghai them to terminal land?
Yes.
“You” nerds? It’s “we” nerds now, nerd.
One of us! One of us!
Pro tip, if you’ve not found it already - there’s a package for gimp called “photogimp” that makes it use the photoshop interface instead of- it makes it so much easier to use! Highly recommend.
Just installed this and tried it out. THANK YOU. It immediately cured most of the things that drive me nuts about GIMP!
Glad I could help :) It made my life a whole lot easier when I found it so I wanted to share the love.
Can verify that photogimp is brilliant. As well as the interface it also creates photoshop like keyboard shortcuts too. There are one or two things not quite right but on the whole its a life saver.
Rip it’s not in the aur
It’s an addon that requires copying files to a specific dot file folder in your home dir, so it’s not the kinda thing that would be in AUR. I just came back to this thread to thank the commenter you responded to because photogimp improved my experience a lot! Check out the install instructions here:
https://github.com/Diolinux/PhotoGIMP?tab=readme-ov-file#-how-to-install-others
Protip.once you have it setup make a snapshot or backup. You will be trying stupid shit out and breaking the system as you explore.
Always great advice. I set up Time Shift to take daily and weekly snapshots. Is that all I need or is there a “backup” thing I need to engage.
My history of this in Windows was System Restore, but that was always hit or miss for me back in the Windows XP days. Although I was a teen so I probably didn’t know fully well what I was doing.
You probably already know this, but just to be clear; Timeshift (by default) only backs up your system, but not your data, documents photos etc . Basically everything outside your Home directory.
You can probably tell Timeshift to also backup your home directory, or install a separate backup app for that.
Thank you, that’s an important distinction. I figured it was just for settings and not my data, naturally just to reduce the size of snapshots. I’ll look into separate backup solutions, especially as this year I’m going to be looking into either a NAS type of solution, or if I want to try to learn how to roll my own on-prem Nextcloud and begin educating myself in basic networking and things like that.
I’d recommend something like Borg or Vorta(a GUI-frontend for Borg). It’s packaged as a flatpack, if not in the Mint repos, and it’s been what I use. Offers de-duplication with compression, so once you’ve done the inital backup, it only snapshots what files have changed between backups.
