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2w ago

I've finally started transitioning to Linux from windows

That's pretty much it, after several months, maybe even a year of wanting to take the leap, a couple days ago I finally did it. I just wanted to share this cuz I think it's an absolute win, and I guess just see if anyone has any general advice to keep in mind during the process. I ended up choosing Fedora, right now I'm dual booting while I'm still in the process of finding software alternatives and getting everything set up, but trying to minimize my use of windows as much as possible, and so far I've been loving it. I love this community and I just wanted to thank everyone that has given any advice or suggestions in the past, i'm really excited about this and grateful that I could get to this point.

64 comments

Originally read 'from Linux to Windows' and I was like, 'What?'
- Hey guys, my Dad was always a neck bearded Unix admin so I’ve grown up my whole life on FreeBSD, then moving over to Gentoo during my teen years.
  I’m starting to have thoughts about switching to Windows given that’s what my new job uses, but I couldn’t find any instructions on compiling Windows outside of very outdated releases like 2000. Also, does anyone know if emacs and htop are compatible, as those are my most used applications?
  
  ... but I couldn’t find any instructions on compiling Windows outside of very outdated releases like 2000.
  Damn! I was hoping to do it with Windows 7. Looks like that ship is doomed as well.
- This can happen with people that refuse to learn!
- I almost stopped reading at the first four words, tbh.
- That would be a wild experiment.
- One of my friends did this. No clue how you can go from Arch back to windows... just wow. I found that insane.

The best piece of advice I was given, that I seldom see repeated is this: learn how the filesystem is structured.
It makes everything else easier
- What the shit - this is how I learn 'cd' without parameters takes you home?!?!
  The amount of times my dumb ass has typed "cd ~/." Or something stupid instead of a simple cd... Gaht dang
- I second this. Also, taking time to partition correctly for your purpose, can make disto hopping easier.
  
  I think partitioning was one of the first skills I learned and the one I took most for granted. I had started on Arch cause I wanted to be cool and I liked arduous things, but I just ended up reading on LUKS, TPM, LVM, mdadm, etc. and different ways to set up your partitions. I never really took time to appreciate past me for learning it lol
- This is very good advice

It's not a race, take your time to read and understand what is what and how things are functioning together.
Enjoy your stay, it's going to be your next home, take care of it; make it beautiful, make it efficient, make sure to get rid of all what is irritating you.
Start with the minimum and build from there.
And, FFS, make backups ;)
- And, FFS, make backups ;)
  Here's a good tutorial for an easy to use backup solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W30wzKVwCHo

Always keep a live USB of your distro handy
Don't ignore the terminal, you're doing yourself a major disservice if you do. Terminal is life
The ArchWiki isn't just for Arch users
- Don't be afraid to think for yourself.
  You're just using a computer. It's not that complicated or religious.
- i always do have a distro live USB in my bag at all times. you never know who gets interested in the question "which distro do you use?"
  CC: @bpt11@sh.itjust.works
  
  I used to, but when someone finally got interested, the usb media was so outdated, that I had to download and write a new iso :D

Congrats! Just keep at it, Fedora is stable.
It gets easier with every solved problem!

I made the switch in 2010.
I dual booted for a while, one day I realised that I hadn't booted into windows for 3 months. At that point I reinstalled, no more dual booting. I haven't looked back.
I keep a windows VM, currently has Win10 installed, I haven't had to use it in about 3 years.
My advice is, keep dual booting. One day you'll realise that booting into windows feels like a chore, you haven't done it in months, so why keep it around....

For some of the last really stubborn pieces of software that kept me locked it to at least dual booting windows, I've found running them in bottles is working really well. Bottles has a community preset for Fruity loops Studio, but it wasn't really working. Oh it would run, but with massive input and audio lag, most VSTs just wouldn't work with FL in that install. What does work, is creating a bottle for gaming, and then just installing everything through the "run exe" at the bottle prefix page. After 8 years of dual booting, I finally nuked my windows installs.

its amazing how nice it is now and makes sense for most people. I should have way before this but it was a thing with my wife. still can't get her to take the plunge though.

Lessons learned when switching:
Some things I didn't expect just work differently on Linux and it took time to figure out those differences. For instance, a change to a network interface config on Windows usually takes effect when you hit the "OK" button. Linux requires toggling the interface for that change to take effect. That one took me a couple of frustrating hours to figure out. There are lots of other examples like this so keep it in mind if things aren't working as you expect.
Trying to do absolutely everything on Linux right away was a mistake. I started switching back to Windows for quick tasks and then learning how to do those tasks on Linux when I could spend a few minutes figuring them out. Over time I spent more and more time running Linux and one day realized I hadn't started Windows in months.
In addition to (or instead of) dual booting, create a virtual machine to allow you to use what you need in either OS without rebooting.
Lastly, if you find that you're spending a lot of time fixing OS problems don't be afraid to try something else. Haven't spent much time with Fedora, but I use Mint daily because I don't have to fuss with the OS much. Others in my household have more problems with Windows 11.
- For instance, a change to a network interface config on Windows usually takes effect when you hit the “OK” button. Linux requires toggling the interface for that change to take effect.
  That’s not a Linux thing so much as a your particular Linux distribution thing. Different Linuxes can have vastly different user interfaces for various things. Some distributions even go out of their way to be more similar to Windows.
  
  Hmm, every distro I've tried (and I've tried a few) required a interface bounce. Maybe I just missed the ones that don't.

Welcome. Sounds like you're going to be very happy here. Fedora is a great choice. I love what they're doing with atomic desktops.

Before you know it, it will be over a decade post-Windows like me. This week I have been trying to get a Linux phone to a satisfactory state to leave the mobile duopoly behind…

I won't deny, it's refreshing to see posts like these, and I've seen a few of them around the web. Perhaps we're really going to slowly see some positive change in the tech world.
Good luck, @bpt11@sh.itjust.works and welcome to the community!

If you play PC games (and already familiar with Fedora), check out Bazzite. The whole immutable thing is an adjustment, but I really like it.
Though not really an adjustment from Windows, more of an adjustment if you're coming from another Linux distro.
- definitely on board with bazzite for gaming computer. it seems to do well with everything else I throw at it also
  
  I've been running it on my main PC (framework laptop) for I dunno 6 months now? And it's been great.
  Distrobox is dope, and "rpm-ostree" is super useful.
  Aside from that, it's incredibly stable. And games pretty much just work.
  I've seen people say that "it's not for tech people, but good for newbies," and I have to disagree. Just because it works most of the time without having to tinker (but you can if you want) doesn't mean it's for noobs... That's how your PC is supposed to function.
- I would warn against using an atomic distro for newbies that want a bit more than Internet surfing and gaming.
  Handling such distros well requires specialized knowledge around them in particular, and not all common Linux solutions will fit.
  
  All of Linux requires specialized knowledge. Immutable just takes different knowledge.
  The real kicker with that is just that you can't always just follow instructions you find online. Usually you can, as long as you're doing them in a Distrobox, though.
  I went with immutable as a newbie, and I think it's great. It feels like getting in on the ground floor of the future.
- Ban-test
  
  You good.

Keep a cloud-synced notebook of bugs, ideas, and fixes. That way, you can help people in the future or know how to do things for yourself if you ever need to reinstall. I have notes for fixing things like my keyboard layout on GDM/SDDM or how to set up certain software in a privileged podman container.
- Yeah i keep a nextcloud synced Obsidian vault and I have a entry for fresh installing my popos system with a list of all the software I install and from where with an Obsidian link to a note of each individual software if it needs more info, like config settings of rapid photo Downloader so that my photos are always imported and named the same or how to add the repository for tabby so that it updates along with all the stuff when I do apt update

I’ve been wanting to take the leap, too. I’ve got Linux installed on my gaming laptop and I’ve been trying games one by one to see if they work. Next step is dual booting on my desktop and only switching to Windows when I absolutely can’t make something work. My biggest concern is that I have a bunch of games installed on various drives that are all Windows (NTFS?) formatted and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to run them on Linux. I really don’t want to have to reinstall all of them.
- You will probably have to reinstall all of them under Wine or Proton or whatever. I don't think it can import existing installations.
- Linux can read and write to NTFS drives just fine. Just make sure you're using the newer native (in-kernel) driver, ntfs3. The older user-mode driver, ntfs-3g, still works but has much worse performance, which I guess should be a concern if you're going to run games off of it (ntfs-3g is fine for casual use)
  
  Also, make sure you have backups. I don't care how stable NTFS drivers are I don't fucking trust them for daily use, especially writes.
  I recommend copying files off of NTFS and onto ext4 if you're able. If you can't, try to keep operations to read only.
  I've lost too many drives due to stupid issues (sometimes me making an error, sometimes the driver not working properly).
  Backup:
  3 different locations
  2 different media formats
  1 offsite
- You can read NTFS drives; I still have shared drives from my Windows install despite barely using Windows at all.
  You can generally import steam libraries, and then steam can do the proton work.
  And you can sometimes run other programmes in Linux from the windows install - i.e. it can have it's own Wine prefix in Linux and use the installed files on the NTFS. But this doesn't always work - if the programme's or game's installer makes significant system changes or installs other software then they won't exist in the Wine prefix and the game may not work. It's better to install windows games fresh so everything is installed into the wine prefix.
  And Lutris is well set up with scripts for installing a wide range of games from their installers; it will avoid problems reinstalling games fresh.
- ntfs drives do work in linux, but there may be some issues sometimes. i switched alnost 2 years ago and i have distrohopped a bit. fedora and nobara had intermittent issues with the ntfs drive, it suddenly became unmountable and it takes some fighting to get it back. in mint, the drive constantly corrupts files and entire folders, and the only way to delete those is to boot into windows and delete them there.
  
  There is a linux NTFS fix package, I forget the proper name, it tries to clean up the filesystem like windows would
- My biggest concern is that I have a bunch of games installed on various drives that are all Windows (NTFS?) formatted and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to run them on Linux.
  I'd check https://www.protondb.com/ and if they your favorite ones are native/gold/platinum then... move on. I'd initially NOT erase my drives and, assuming you have either patience and/or a fast connection, just let it re-download and install overnight, then enjoy. If need be bring the saves back (but again via Steam, should just work) and only once that's done, erase the Windows partitions. This is a no risk process. Honestly some games will not work but IMHO this isn't the question. The question rather is... will you have more playable games than time left, if so, then considering moving even without 100% coverage.

I did the switch a few months ago and I did it cold turkey. Turning off secureboot and reformating my steam library drive solved all the issues I had. I also reccomend using timeshift or .tar and a bash script to make backups of your os when it's stable, that way you can experiment in peace.

I did the same thing about a year ago, going to fedora (KDE) from windows. I've booted into windows about 5 times in the last year or so

Post-Snowden and post-Windows, I also started with Fedora, and, well, it honestly didn't go all that well (this of course was my experience! If you like Fedora and it works for you, then 👍! Not here to dis the distro!). Actually, I think it had more to do with GNOME than with Fedora, so it depends on which desktop environment you're using; when I switched DE to Cinnamon all my problems seemed to vanish into thin air. And from there, I just went straight to Mint and have been happy as a clam ever since and never looked back.
In my experience, running Windows as a VM inside Mint was overall much better than dual booting, which can really get to be a pain after a while (and also I think that the Windows partition will sometimes overwrite the Linux part so be careful!); it sounds hard, but it isn't—if old and senile Erinaceus can do it, you can too! Always happy to provide recommendations.
EDIT: Also (and again not to step on anyone's toes), I never had good luck using Wine; this is perhaps because I was trying to run Photoshop and other heavy, Adobe-type things in it (this was before Creative Cloud). Other programs might work differently with it, but in every case for me, a VM has worked better. I don't play games (I know, boring), but I sometimes wonder if it wasn't for people's dependence on Adobe products that Windows might finally start losing a lot of market share and eventually end up on the rubbish heap where it belongs.

I did this a few months ago. I haven't found replacements for everything, but I've found that it's really come down to my not actually using those things very much in the first place, so I haven't had to do the work.
When I look, I find something that works. What are you still looking for?
I find the array of installation options a little overwhelming or intimidating sometimes. If I can just do the equivalent of apt-get, that's, of course, easy enough. But sometimes things are just realeased as tar balls, and I have to go and look up WTF I'm supposed to do each time. Nothing comes up often enough for me to internalize it.
I do find myself chafing against just the fundamental differences of the *nix environment from the DOS-based heritage of Windows. And I find it difficult to get help with certain things sometimes because the installed user/developer base isn't super interested in supporting different modes of interaction ("just use the terminal, it's so much faster [for me]" is a common refrain that makes me want to get stabby). But 99% of the time, it's been smooth sailing.
At this stage, if you have drivers for everything, and there's nothing mission critical that's still tied to Windows, the best advice I can give you is to copy your important files over from your Windows partition, and then dump it. If you have a 2nd computer, leave that one running Windows for now. The duel booting can make it tempting to just reboot into Windows "just for this one thing", and stay there until you next have to restart.
- Bash is always there, and bash scripts and snippets are precise. Describing gui manipulations when the GUI keeps changing is also quite hard... what if the person you are interacting with has a 2-yo system and you have the bleeding edge? Even knowing which menu the settings are in can be frustrating for the helper.
  Windows users (e.g. me at work) get grumpy when Microsoft starts changing the menu structure after keeping it consistent for 20 years and start thinking of powershell scripts to create consistency between our engineering workstations.

I switched aid after windows 10 was launched. It was kind of tough in the beginning, but after a couple years any and all concerns about this or that not working or how to do something on Linux had disappeared.
Nowadays the os feels like a powerful tool that can do anything I need, and never gets in the way. It's truly a pleasure to use.
So I guess id say that there is light at the end of the tunnel, even if the transition seems hard at times.

My advice having made the move (but with a fair bit of linux tinkering before hand):
Don't rush to delete Windows; you're doing the right thing keeping it about while you adjust to a new OS and in case there are some things you just can't do in Linux
If you want to understand your OS and enjoy tinkering / learning, think about using a virtual machine to play with a linux system to get used to it. As you're on Fedora, you can install KVM and Virt-Manager, make a virtual machine and inside it install another Linux OS which you can practice with. It can even be Fedora - and this can let you make changes in a disposable environment before you do them for real in your whole OS or just to see "what happens if". I've even built an Arch system within a VM just so I can understand more of how linux works
Back up your home folder before making really big changes - this is where everything that belongs to you is kept, and even contains all your personal config files. Back up and restoring the Home folder can make things much faster to fix if you accidentally mess things up
- Having made a switch almost two years ago now, I strongly support all three pieces of advice

All I have to say is: welcome, good luck and have fun.

Cool. In a little over a month, I hit 3 years.

good on you! I just recently did the same thing as you (cos of some work apps that only work with windows right now)
small question, did you go with silverblue or workstation?
I went with silverblue and it's a bit annoying looking up guides/forums posts because they all use dnf 😭
- That's what Distrobox is for. It's super useful.
  Have you looked at any of the Universal Blue OSs based off of Silverblue? You can rebase to them extremely easily and try them out with no risk.
  https://universal-blue.org/
  
  I haven't, this is cool 👀👀

Welcome!
Don't be afraid to experiment relentlessly. Even if you break your OS, that's just more experience fixing or reinstalling it. Also back up your important files locally and remotely.

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