Those who've switched to Linux in the last year, how is it going?

It’s a breath of fresh air and a real productivity boost. It’s been ages since I’ve been so enthusiastic and passionate about pc’s.

Dropped Mac, iPhone and all US (cloud) services after 20 years in the Apple Universe.

Was using Linux Mint first and just bought a brand new Tuxedo Laptop in November and am using Tuxedo OS now which is a Ubuntu LTS fork with KDE Plasma and Flatpak instead of Snap.

I am really happy with my decision and not looking back. I feel like I have control over my stuff again and my computer is listening to me instead of forcing me to do things in a specific way that Apple deems correct.

My phone is a Graphene OS for now until Postmarket OS or Ubuntu Touch are usuable and I am self hosting everything I need on Proxmox / Podman and I have a TrueNAS Server with a 64TB Raid running.

Vast improvements. No regrets. Still working through a few growing pains, though.

These few month been relatively smooth sailing. Lot of unlearning and recognizing just how limiting windows was in comparison.

I tried helping a friend with windows recently and immediate felt like I was back in the gulag, so yeah I think Im here for good

Love it (CachyOS). For the most part, everything “just works.” I have no plans to go back—not even wishful musings.

There have been a few…let’s call them…stnanks.

• Not all of the sensors were recognized for my motherboard out of the box. The important ones, like basic CPU temp and a few others were fine, but more granular ones, like fan speed, T_junc, T_die, etc. were missing. I like to apply my own fan curves based on various sensor conditions, so this was a sticking point initially.
  • Thankfully, the Arch wiki and a thanklessly maintained dkms module for this specific (problematic) chipset came to my rescue. Pretty easy to get set up.
• A small number of very specific games and mods don’t work on Linux. If you exclusively play competitive online games, there’s a good chance you are going to be out of luck.
  • I have friends that play League, but I’m not willing to give up Linux just for that one game. Plenty of other multiplayer games out there that work just fine.
• Audio routing is both easier and more difficult.
  • There’s great GUIs to manage audio connections.
  • Trying to get automatic connections going, like with VoiceMeeter, is a lot more technical and involves learning Lua and Pipewire/Wireplumber. Not impossible, and audio tends to work just fine otherwise, but if you want a specific custom setup, it will take some effort.

Overall, I wouldn’t trade what I have for Microsoft any day of the week. I’m done being their product.

Honestly it worked so well I often forget I’m a new user

Switched from w11 to bazzite for personal use (still have to use windows for work) and it’s been great. Wish there were a few pieces of software with native Linux support so I could switch for work too.

Linux is amazing using it for one year now.
File explorer tabs is the best thing.
Steam proton games works great.
Updating software is no longer a nightmare.
Big thanks to the Linux community. :)

Feels great!

like a breath of fresh air.

Nobara has been great. I fucked it up once and had to do a full resinstall. I also tried Mint and Bazzite but ended up going back to Nobara. Only had to go boot into Windows a few times to use some old programs but pretty much everything else has been perfect for me.

Doing great. Learned alot about Linux. I’m not that good at working with coding or so, but I love the help I can get from the Linux community. I’m on Fedora, because I liked their homepage, and because I had to start somewhere😁

amazing, best thing I’ve done (although I’m not a fan of bazzite) but besides bazzite, the best thing. never looking back.

It just works… nothing bothering me, no annoying bullshit. it all just works as expected

I switched over a decade ago. It was great. Since then Windows has only gotten worse and Linux and its desktops have only gotten better. It’s wild to me people still need to ask this.

I switched about a year ago. It’s going great. The only problem with my computer was because my RAM broke, but that would’ve still happened on Windows.

Switched from w10 to arch on my home, mostly gaming, pc. It feels nice, and i like their rolling update model. But i had s lot of experience with Ubuntu before, currently have it on my working laptop

Working nice, no real problems. I am using Fedora. Still forced to use a virtual windows machine (actually a docker image) to make python exe for windows and to use excel (via winapps).

Only thing I didn’t get to is to set a good backup strategy yo be able to easily restore previous state if anything broke. It’s possible but ask for too much time to do it properly. Which there was an alternative to macrium reflects for windows.
I know there is time machine but my sub volumes are not named the way time machine is expecting.
It would be nice to have an easy app setting it all up!

Switched from macOS a year ago due to end life support, got the hang of the system after distro hopping for a while
Now I use Manjaro on a handheld 😝 never using macOS or Windows again

works great. I’m struggling to even think of anything negative to say. KDE connect doesn’t work as well as I want between my laptop and PC? I really wish I could install something similar on my phone.

Had dualboot for years but gaming on Linux finally got good enough to just… never boot Windows again. I need to delete it, it’s sitting there for a year now without booting.
Switched from Endeavour to Cachy and I’m very happy with it. Everything just worked without configuring anything (and I have nvidia!).
Didn’t switch on my notebook yet, which I mostly use for browser and chat on the sofa, mainly because I have quite a history with touchpad issues (also, it’s a M1 Mac, might need to give Asahi a bit more time).

For the most part it’s great, I’m just a bit sad I haven’t been able to get a couple of my vsts working in reaper. Other than that, no complaints at all. It boots faster, feels less bloated, and I can still play every game I’ve cared about so far.

Perfectly ! Switched to Zorin for my gf laptop who couldn’t handle Windows anymore, decided to do it on my main PC as well and now am trying to revive an old mini-pc with the Lite version. Everything is fine, except for a short list of games (with anticheat like Vanguard or thing like this).

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Going great! Loaded up Fedora on my HP laptop which has given it a new lease on life. Only downside is that it won’t just boot straight into the OS, otherwise GRUB freezes (not dual booting, secure boot is off), so I have to spam F9 on startup and select linux to boot into, then it works fine.

Started self-hosting some things on an old desktop I had lying around, and am planning on moving from iPhone to Graphene with my next phone

Switched the laptop to Linux Mint about 6 months ago. After a month of no problems with that, bit the bullet and installed it on my main Gaming PC. I don’t play anything that needs anti cheat and everything else has worked fine. Got VR streaming wireless to the Meta Quest 3 working and Sunshine/Moonlight setup to the Steam Deck for couch gaming.

I am a nerd though and have been using Linux from a server perspective for years. I still don’t know if it’s ready to suggest it to someone that is less technical, but it’s certainly getting there.

Kind of funky?

I run into a lot of weirdo problems that have been difficult to figure out, some of which I haven’t solved and just decided to live with for now.

I do a lot of game dev stuff and that’s been a funky space to operate in because a lot of software I use is either not available on Linux or its there but has big quirks that you don’t get warnings about. I’ve generally found alternatives but there are a few spaces where a single app or two absolutely dominate the space and they tend to be extremely proprietary and Windows/Mac only, especially as you start treading into the higher end fidelity stuff.

The other big hiccup I’ve ran into is collaborative stuff. A lot of other people are locked into certain formats or services which either don’t support Linux at all or its such a barebones support that it makes it frustrating to use. The people you collab with often don’t even know of these hiccups so they’re usually baffled on why you’d recommend switching to anything else and tend to blame the issues on Linux rather than the software.

Now I’m not particularly Linux savvy so this could be just normal stumbling blocks on the way to figuring it out, and I am slowly figuring things out, but it has been a funky journey.

80% of tools and tasks take about 20% more effort to get set up how I’d like them, which is fine - and even usually better because I can customize it more.
However 20% of tools and tasks take 8,000% more effort to even work correctly, and I give up on half of them.

So far so good! Bazzite on my gaming PC has been flawless. My Rocket League rankings have improved because the game runs slightly smoother; higher framerate equals better personal performance. Been playing a bunch of Blue Prince also, though that one doesn’t exactly need a lot of CPU.

I don’t know why it took me so long to switch bit I’m never going back to Microslop

A load of good experiences, but for the folks scared to answer your bad experience please do so as well. That way we many people can help you along 🙂

Switched to Linux around the time Windows 11 was first announced to be a mandatory update, and all the bullshit about security.

I started out with Ubuntu, now I’ve been using Bazzite for over a year.

The programs I use, Gimp, Krita, Blender3D, Audacity, OBS, all have Linux native versions, and are generally part of the FOSS community anyway. Well, except for Audacity right now…

So my artistic work hasn’t been hindered in the least.

Games are a slightly different story. I switched from an nVidia GTX 1060 6GB to an Intel Arc A770. Overall a significant upgrade, but there are issues. Some I had with Blender3D not recognising the card (something that was largely solved by switching distro). Other problems still persist, specifically with Intel Arc, Linux, and UE5.

UE5 is an absolute hateable bitch and some combination of Linux and Intel Arc provides no end of trouble. I still can’t get certain games to run (i.e. Oblivion Remastered).

I did it in December. I had tried to run dual-boot many times in the last decade, but always ended up back at Windows (gaming was part of this). This time, I do not think I will going back.

I chose Pop OS because of support for Nvidia GPUs and out-of-the-box flatpak integration. It was a bit frustrating at first because the new Cosmic DE is rather buggy. But I switched to KDE and things are smooth now. If I could go back, I’d probably install Kubuntu (or maybe Fedora KDE)

Some things that have frustrated me:
- Getting RDP to work took some struggles, and KDE is very laggy through RDP. Instead I make RDP boot into XFCE.
- Updated my graphics drivers and all my games stopped working. Turns out this was because I had to accordingly update Flatpak stuff so that the container and my system would be synchronized.
- The game I currently play most (Elden Ring Nightreign) has some brief moments of intense stuttering. I think this is because of EAC— I did not have the problem in Windows. But this is bearable. Also, screen-sharing in Discord seems to cause much more performance degradation than on Windows.
- Zoom on Linux isn’t as good as Zoom on Windows (lacking features, a bit buggy).
- I don’t like (/know how to use Libreoffice). Not really a big problem because I mostly use LaTeX.
- Thunderbird doesn’t play super great with Microsoft Exchange, even though support has been added. I miss the outlook app (I mostly use outlook.com now).

Good things:
- I enjoy no longer being on Windows 11. From Explorer freezing randomly, to idling at like 16GB of RAM, to search not working unless I used task manager to end explorer.exe, I had enough.
- I very much enjoy being able to update everything through terminal in a few clicks.
- I like being in control of my own hardware again.

I’ve no regrets. I just wish I could also make the switch on my laptop. However, for whatever reason, my trackpad becomes intermittently sluggish on Ubuntu/Pop (I’ve tried both). None of the solutions online (XPS 9510) seem to work. If I ever purchase another laptop, I will be sure to get one with better Linux support.

Been pretty good. swapped over to Bazzite, which does just about everything I need for a daily driver. Only real annoyance is my VPN. I haven’t been able to successfully connect through the openvpn configs that PIA provides, so I’ve been setting it up through terminal every time I log in. I think if I really sat down I could set it up to autologin, but it only “costs” me like 30 seconds and sometimes I like to connect to a server that allows port forwarding instead of a non-PF closer server. I also like getting to make the choice of which server I connect to vs autologging in to the lowest latency server.

I still have to use Windows 11 for work though, and holy shit do I prefer running two commands in terminal when I login to dealing with all the dumb fuckin bloat that OS has when I go home.

Pretty good for me with Mint. Mostly audio annoyances and window manager annoyances. I hated cinnamon because it leaks memory like mad and needs to be restarted often. Now I’m using Mate, but it seems to have a lot of annoying quirks of its own.

Also I found that the compositor really messes with the performance of gaming, so I needed to turn it off which was a bit of a pain to figure out.

Other than that, everything has been fine, but I used to use Linux a lot 20 years ago so the transition wasn’t too bad for me.

Have it running on my private machines for quite a while now, but moved my parents over to Mint a year ago. They like it. The Laptops (even though old) run like a charm and my dad (clicking everywhere he sees “yes” or “ok") finally has a machine running for a year without the need for a cleanup every 3 to 6 months

Had a few minor snags and used a few distros I didn’t care for but I’m all good on Linux mint

Almost perfect, the only issue I have is some of the games I want to play not working so I still need to dual boot windows.

Its been 8-10 months I think. I haven’t had any major problems that weren’t caused or complicated by my own ignorance of Linux as a whole. I’ve learned a lot. I have gotten every game I wanted to play so far to run, one way or another. I set up my own home lab server for streaming and cloud storage complete with a VPN to allow remote access. I have also set up a Windows VM for some stubborn software that my partner uses from time to time (I honestly thought this would be harder than it was.) I also am in the process of indoctrinating several coworkers. I’m currently running 1 PC with Bazzite, 1 with fedora KDE, 2 with Mint, and a server running Ubuntu server and using casaOS as an interface.

I’ve really enjoyed the learning curve. My future plans were to change my server from CasaOS to something else, and to build a new gaming PC and try CachyOS, but that might get put to the side while hardware prices cool off a bit.

Its about 2 years with Linux on my laptop and about 1 year full time on all my devices, besides my work laptop with runs w11.

I run KDE neon on both.
I distro hopped around from Ubuntu, fedora, mint, KDE, pop but ended up with KDE again. I feel like it does not matter anymore what de or distro I use. I need my browser and a terminal and my tools, then i can work.

Its nice having a reminder every time I am working with windows that I did the correct choice.

There are some bugs, but at least tgjey are mine now.

Only thing I miss, is ableton. I did not dabble in it with wine or winboat too much, but that’s the only thing I miss.

But worth it. I stand behind the idiology and got a few other people around me to switch

I already switched from Windows to Mint a couple of years ago and liked it a lot. Never distro-hopped, though. Now I got curious and installed ublue Aurora on a laptop. This experience is both very smooth (flatpak) and strange (distrobox) and I’m not sure I already fully understand immutable distros. But I keep on using it, get more experienced and I certainly will never go back to Windows.

Im not sure if its been a year or a bit over but not much fuss for me but I use zorin which uses ubuntu lte on older laptops. still looking to goof with benzite and I am far enough along with appimage to do it but im a slow mover.

It’s been about two months, smooth sailing so far. No regrets. Running EndeavourOS with KDE Plasma, blender, reaper, steam and GoG, discord and a web app to use whatsapp. Have not missed windows one bit. I’m slowly learning more as I go, but so far the much boogified Arch has been easy to get going with Endeavour, and I haven’t run into any unmanageable problems so far.

I simply adore that the only programs on my PC are ones that I want on it.

I switches to Pop!OS on my laptop that I didt use so much until now and its been solid and reliable for 99% of everything ive needed to do. Later switched my desktop to Bazzite and its been a wonderful experience. I did have a little bit of stuttering on beefier games but I mostly play middle graphics games and those were a non issue. Maybe 1-2 games I have wont run? Intel and nvidia is probably more of the reason.

I havent even looked back at windows at this point

I started usung mint on my home desktop in April 2025, completely wiping windows. Was a fun experience and here in 2026 I got the confidence to daily drive Linux on my work computer as well.

I’m using omarchy and loving it. It has been a great learning process and I feel like using my own computer is fun again. There are a lot of great programs on Linux as well.