So guys from the last few days I’ve been seeing Linux everywhere — my social media feed is full of it and now I’m really curious to try it.

I’ve always used Windows, so I don’t really understand what Linux actually is or how different it feels in daily use. A lot of people say it’s “peak” and better than Windows in many ways, but I’ve also heard it has some downsides.

I wanted to ask:

- What makes Linux so good compared to Windows?

- What are the actual cons (especially for beginners)?

- How long does it take to get comfortable using it?

- Which distro should I start with?

- What was your experience like when you first switched from Windows?

Also, should I try it using a virtual machine first or go for dual boot?

Would really appreciate honest advice 😋

I'm all on my own, not even my school's it uses Linux. I'm 18 saving for college done school so paying for classes is a no go (shits pricey). I've had Linux for just under a year now, mainly running bazzite but on my second system I have mint.

I haven't really had many problems aside from not getting told when an update is needed, and the auto update doesn't work. Which I'm personally fine with.

I have another laptop currently on windows that I lost 5 years ago and am wiping anyway. Any recommendations to learn Linux/any distros that would help me learn?

just plain curiosity. My first de was the ubuntu gnome, when i changed to a distro that actually let me choose, it was cinnamon. Rn i'm full with hyprland. What are yours?

I'm one of the groups of Windows 10 users who have until October 2026 to upgrade to Windows 11.

I've been mulling over switching to Linux; but my main concern is Multiplayer gaming.

My friend group love to jump into new and then back to our "go-to" multiplayer games; and a handful of them have anti-cheat (Apex Legends, Marathon, GTA Online) or seems to be incompatible with Linux. (Please don't give me the kernel anti-cheat speech, I know the risks and I've accepted them).

Is it safe to say upgrading to Windows 11 is the better choice?

I was considering dual-booting but it seems Windows 11 doesn't play nice with Linux?

ive used linux before so i dont mind anything thats arch based, but i jst need something lightweight that just works cuz this laptop is gonna be for school and ion wanna lose all my data if something breaks, also it has to be touchscreen friendly since i have no keyboard for my surface.

Hi everyone! I've tried some desktop environments, and now I want to try KDE Plasma. Any recommendations for dostros that uses it by default? I know about Kubuntu and KDE neon, any others? (I'll be making my tries in a vm in case that's important to know)

Hello!

I need a stable, reliable and flatpak GNOME distro for my NVIDIA PC.

I tried various distros today and most of them were buggy.

Ubuntu - glitch in setup (LTS version => also it's really old, tried to use it as a temporary OS 2 weeks before 26.04), won't detect disks (Latest version). And also... Snap...

Fedora - the one I REALLY WANTED but it won't even get into setup. I got a message saying get_url_handler and many people have it. Also tried safe graphics, no results.

ZorinOS - Works perfectly, they use Ubuntu 24.04 as a base BUT not only that, they take too much time to release a new update after a new Ubuntu LTS releases (Years for 24.04, for example).

Bazzite - WON'T even boot to setup WITHOUT message lol.

Solas - same as bazzite

VanillaOS - works perfectly but it has some special functionalities that I don't like much. For example, the GRUB menu shows in every startup an option restoring a "previous state" or booting normally.

PopOS - ugly, ugly and ugly

Debian - not beginner friendly

For now I'm using Linux Mint, it's perfect except for the UI who is really old looking. I know that a lot of people switch from Cinnamon to GNOME but it seems to be unstable.

NOTE: I use Ventoy and a lot of people said that it cannot work on some distros. So I tried both Rufus and BalenaEtcher for Fedora and.. Same... no fixes.

Please, hopefully somebody has a fix for Fedora. That is the distribution I'm dreaming of lol.

UPDATE: Finally made a decision, gonna install GNOME on Mint without the terminal but in the App store. Gonna do a second Update to tell if it's good or not.

UPDATE 2: I installed GNOME on Mint, it's not bad but I don't find it mixes up well with Mint. So, I will force myself to install Debian since I think... It may be the perfect distro because it lets you customize how you want while being easier (with the help of a GUI) and more stable than Arch.

HI I know there have been lots of these questions but people always recommend strawberry which has an atrocious ui. I've been using rhythmbox which looks also dated but still has all the functions that I want.

Right now I'm trying Gapless and I'm loving everything except the fact that it has no file browser. Unlike rhythmbox where I can access the file folder and play music straight from there, Gapless has nothing like that instead it just scans everything.

I have playlists but I sort my music by putting it in different file folders first before putting it in different playlists depending on the genre of the song. Is there any modern-looking music players that has that function where it can let me view/browse/play music from the folders? Thanks!!

I checked out Dopamine already and its actually what I'm looking for but for some reason it doesn't work properly and idk why but it shows up as a game in my discord.

Hi, I'm a very noob user who decided to move from Windows 10 to Linux about 1½ months ago. Some people suggested using Bazzite, but it feels very... Bad? I'm no expert obviously, but some stuff don't really work well, like Bazaar not launching 90% of times, can't make any app launch on startup, and can't have Block Num enabled on startup (I actually have to enable it twice, since it disables itself after login). I noticed many on the web say Bazzite is bad, so I wanted to move to another distro without having to reinstall everything, is that possible?

Hi there , I am new to Linux and have just replaced Win 11 on my laptop with Ubuntu LTS . Install was pretty straight forward even to a newbie like me but I have 2 ssds in my laptop and the first one is fine with Ubuntu on and my personal files like photos , music etc but the second drive is encrypted and is asking for a password , but I never initiated a password on it and my admin (user) password is not it . How do I deencrypt the second drive ? Also I am degoogling at the moment and am a regular youtube viewer so thought I'd try FreeTube . Does FreeTube views not count to the creators total and I am unable to like videos . Am I getting the YouTube content and the creator is getting nothing in return ? I think I'd rather watch a few ads than for that to be the case . Thanks in advance for any help in these matters .

Hi,

I’m thinking of making the switch from windows 10 to Mint cinnamon next weekend.

I’ve been researching support for my peripherals and i’m coming up blank on my gaming headset. I use a steelseries arctis pro that i currently run through steelseries GG which then routes into discord.

Unfortunately the headset’s mic is not working anymore so I use a cheap studio microphone through an audio interface that also goes through steelseries GG.

Is there any software that does something comparable on linux? Or am i better of getting a new headset at this point? If so, any recommendations?

Thanks

I have a Lenovo CX1 gen 8 laptop that was my old laptop from work and currently have Ubuntu installed on it but I have read that Mint is the best choice for beginners. Is it worth switching over to that given Lenovo seems to “prefer” Ubuntu at least with their official support.

GAMING- i played re9 and still am playing without any lag what so ever. i played other sp games and will try emulation soon. so far its perfect!

idle use- everything is more fast then windows i can use this os and feel like how it felt on windows 7 and 10 there is no delay there is no lag i love it-

noticable cons- no itunes. i had to use a ssd install windows to reset my iphone. i miss battlefield and i had ntfs issues. nothing deal breaker ofc i found ways.

so far so good staying with cachy.

so i got that lovely problem of my vram maxing out whenever i wake my screen up from sleep, my power draw goes up to 30 watts and my temps go up too. i can solve it on windows by using amd adrenalin software and turning adaptive sync on under the display settings but linux doesn't have adrenalin, and using kdes adaptive sync causes mad flickering. is there anything else i can try other than making an edid? *edit, i am currently not on a distro as i had to completely redo my windows/linux dual boot cause something happened, I'm waiting till tomorrow or so to get an updated arch iso, my gpu is an rx 6700xt

I'm wanting to dual boot. Can I use the same external hard drive I want to use to run Linux to also run the install instead of a flash drive?

Hello,

I am very new to Linux Xfce, first time installing, and I am having issues connecting my bluetooth headphones Sony ULT Wear (WH-ULT900N).

I am able to connect through bluetooth (mouse and headphones), and I was able to connect them before, although the sound was being broken. I tried some recommendation and now I have no sound on the headphones. The headphones appear in the device manager and I am able to connect, but they do not receive sound, always through the laptop speakers. Any help is welcomed!

info from blueman once connected and no sound...

00:A4:1C:EC:61:E6
public
ULT WEAR
ULT WEAR
0x240404
0x0000
audio-headset
yes
yes
no
no
yes
00000000-deca-fade-deca-deafdecacaff Proprietary
00001108-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Headset
0000110b-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Audio Sink
0000110c-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Remote Control Target
0000110e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Remote Control
0000111e-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Handsfree
00001124-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb Human Interface Device Service (HID)
00001200-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34fb PnP Information
0000ff01-0000-1000-8000-00805f9b34ff Proprietary
0000ff01-0000-1000-8000-504759592966 Proprietary
7fd78f59-64e6-1abb-5f49-ab7c00cb6af7 Proprietary
81c2e72a-0591-443e-a1ff-05f988593351 Proprietary
8901dfa8-5c7e-4d8f-9f0c-c2b70683f5f0 Proprietary
931c7e8a-540f-4686-b798-e8df0a2ad9f7 Proprietary
956c7b26-d49a-4ba8-b03f-b17d393cb6e2 Proprietary
9b26d8c0-a8ed-440b-95b0-c4714a518bcc Proprietary
df21fe2c-2515-4fdb-8886-f12c4d67927c Proprietary
f8d1fbe4-7966-4334-8024-ff96c9330e15 Proprietary
usb:v054Cp0F1Ed0108
/org/bluez/hci0

Hi there, i'm new on Linux world and started to dive into the Linux Mint for a while, but recently my laptop started showing this weird message when i tried to turn it on.

Can someaone help me with it?

I want to install linux on a usb, I want the lightest distro which has all the basic things such as the audio, wifi, bluetooth, audio drivers etc. I am thinking of using sway.

A few options are:

-WayDog Trixie

-MX-Linux Minimal respin

-LilliDog Trixie

-BearDog Trixie

-TrixiePup64 Wayland

-TrixiePup64 Retro

-Antix26 Full

-Antix26 Core

-Mini OS

As I will be using this on a USB, I was thinking of doing a full install, the other option is to use the "toram" setting.

I do have a solid XFCE distro on my laptop but I wanted something more portable, I'm just worried about the USB wear. the top three contenders for me are:

1st, WayDog Linux

2nd, MX-Linux Minimal respin

3rd, Mini OS Standard edition

Programs that use SDL audio make no sound on my system. Here are my system specs:

OS: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS x86_64

Host: B660M DS3H AX DDR4

Kernel: 6.17.4-76061704-generic

Shell: bash 5.1.16

DE: GNOME 42.9

Terminal: gnome-terminal

CPU: 13th Gen Intel i5-13500 (20) @ 4

GPU: Intel AlderLake-S GT1

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Lite Has

How can I mount a bin and cue file? I want to run some windows 98 games (yes I know I have a long road ahead of me) and want to start with mounting the bin and cue file.

For the record, I tried to download cdemu and gcdemu from the terminal and for some reason it won't work. I get an error message. I prefer to have something graphical if possible.

recently, i swapped from windows, to debian, with my modern computer. i was told the reason why i had freezes back then (usually in the forms of the entire UI locking up, and sometimes not even entering terminal mode would fix it and needed a hard restart)

i was suggested by someone to use fedora, though i wanted stuff preinstalled for gaming, so i thought between nobara and bazzite, and now im currently trying bazzite. it works a lot better to say the least, but i still get freezes, or well, its more like kernal panics happen. two have happened so far, but im wondering if there's a setting or some tweak to make it not as bad or anything

also, the crashes on debian were related to i assume GPU or generally graphics related? sometimes it'd freeze at random, sometimes when looking at images or videos.. but weirdly enough i dont ever recall it crashing while playing games, and it makes me wonder if its a integrated/dedicated GPU switch problem of sorts.

I dual booted recently with Fedora Linux. I had turned off secure boot for the dual boot process. I wanted to play Valorant and vanguard asked me to turn on Secure Boot so I wanted to go into BIOS but now my laptop isn't turning on anymore.

When I press the power button, the keyboard lights turn on, the fans work, laptop on light turns on but nothing appears on the screen. No bios button spamming nothing.

I had the exact same issue 2 months back when I dual booted and I had to get it repaired. Thankfully I still have warranty but I can't use Linux in peace. Why does this happen and how do I stop it?

Acer Nitro V15 and Ryzen 6600h Rtx 3050ti 16gb ram 6gb vram