After more than a decade in the Windows world, I’m finally taking the step into the Linux world, specifically considering Ubuntu or Fedora. I’m looking for advice on making this transition as seamless as possible, with a focus on improving my coding experience and ensuring a smooth gaming setup.
What are the key things I should take into account for a good transition? Any must-have tools, software, or tweaks? Additionally, I’m keen on maintaining a good gaming experience – any tips for optimizing gaming performance on these distros?
Your insights, recommendations, and personal experiences would be immensely helpful as I embark on this exciting journey. Thanks in advance for your guidance!
I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu as much. It has a bad reputation on forcing users it’s own, corporate stuff down their throats.
A great newcomer-distro is Mint. It is very user friendly and just as capable as other distros. Especially as a long-term windows user you may find it familiar and very sanely configured.
Otherwise, Fedora, may it be the “normal” version or it’s immutable variant, is also a good choice. But, both are a tiny bit more advanced than Mint. Mint is the king in that regard.
The Gnome desktop is very different than everything you’ve encountered, you may like or dislike it. There are also other desktops available if you’re interested.
I’d say, start with Mint to get everything familiar, and then switch to Fedora Silverblue. SB is my favourite distro, since it’s very flexible and ultra-low maintenance :)
and ensuring a smooth gaming setup.
Just install Steam (and maybe Lutris) and you’re done. You don’t need anything else. Your AMD GPU driver should be pre-installed, or the Nvidia one is easily installable too, usually at the start wizard. Otherwise, you don’t need anything else.
All the stuff on “gaming distros” is not needed or individually installable.
Any must-have tools, software, or tweaks?
If you’re on Fedora or Ubuntu (Gnome by default) the Extension Manager is great. I’d recommend checking that out and looking for extensions like GS-Connect or so, they’re great.
Otherwise, just scroll through the Software Center and see if there’s something that exites you. Everything else essential is already installed.
Your insights, recommendations, and personal experiences would be immensely helpful as I embark on this exciting journey. Thanks in advance for your guidance!
Of course, inform yourself first a bit on how to use Linux. Stuff like using the software center to install stuff instead of hunting the web for .exe-equivalents, alternative programs, and so on. Otherwise, if you’ve already done that, here are a few advices from my side.
If you like your setup, don’t change it. If you feel good on Mint, stay on it. Don’t distrohop. Most distros are the same.
You could check out Distrobox later in your journey. It allows you to create integrated containers, which is super useful when programming or when a software isn’t available for your distro.
Don’t overcomplicate everything. Most mainstream or beginner distros are sanely preconfigured, especially Mint and Fedora. They work out of the box.
If you settle on Gnome (especially Fedora), use the default workflow how it is intended.
And don’t use “pro” distros like Arch or NixOS at first. They may be good, but not for a starter.
Just install Steam (and maybe Lutris) and you’re done.
If OP has games they want to play from Epic and GOG, Heroic Games Launcher is a good addition.
Thanks for the helpful information. I tried Ubuntu just a couple of weeks ago and I have to be honest, I got tired/afraid? too quickly, I used it for about 4 hours then I went back to Windows. I know I was not ready enough for the change, that’s the reason why I want to be better prepared this time. Regarding my daily usage of the software it is not something that is not available for Linux, I use MS Office (Libreoffice), I use the Jetbrains products since I want to get back to learning to code (again) and that is also available for Linux, I might be concerned about gaming on Linux since I have no idea of how to get it working there, I have read about lutrius, Wine, Proton but I barely know how to get it working or what is required for gaming. I want a good looking distro as well and I know that they are highly customizable but I just don’t want to break everything in my first week.
Here I found out that there is an Ubuntu “variation” Kubuntu that I had no idea it even existed. I like Fedora because I think that it is beautiful but I am afraid that due to the constant updates it can be a bad decision as my first distro.
I want a good looking distro as well and I know that they are highly customizable I like Fedora because I think that it is beautiful
Don’t worry about looks that much. You can change everything by either theming the DE (icon themes, extensions, etc.) or by installing another DE. But partly, you’re right. Installing another desktop can be messy.
That’s why I specifically recommended Mint first and Silverblue second.
Cinnamon (Mint’s DE) is also themeable and highly customizable and gives you a great entry in “How Linux works”.
And then, after you got familiar with Linux a bit, go to Silverblue if you like.
On SB, you can always rebase without reinstalling.
What does that mean? SB is image based/ immutable. It works completely different.
There’s basically “your stuff” (cat pictures, coding stuff, etc.) and “the OS” (desktop, pre-installed software, and so on), similar to Android.Therefore, you can easily swap out the OS-part with something else.
If you use SB (Gnome) you can rebase to Kinoite (KDE) with one command and one reboot in 5 minutes and keep all your stuff while having a clean “reinstall” and the ability to always revert any changes.Therefore, you prevent distrohopping and just hop desktops instead.
Also, don’t worry about the “constant updates”. Fedora and Ubuntu have the same release schedule and don’t bring out many updates in between.
It’s only a problem when you use a rolling release like Tumbleweed and have bad internet, like myself.
I only update my Fedora (normal) every 2-4 weeks and my Silverblue updates itself without me noticing. The updates there just get staged and I boot into a fresh OS every restart.
Being a long time Windows user for desktop, I switched to Ubuntu as I found it to have great resources for beginners.
I tried Mint Cinnamon, but the desktop UI is too much like the Windows UI for my taste.
The buggest hurdle is usually software. Make a list of all the applications you use on a daily basis. If they all have a linux version that’s great, otherwise I’d suggest finding alternatives that work on linux (or at least work okay through WINE) before you switch your OS. Ideally you would swap out all your software for linux-compatible ones before you even switch away from Windows to get a feel for everything and minimise the amount of things you have to learn all at once.
After that choosing a linux distro is honestly not as life-defining as you’d think. Don’t feel like you have to stick with the first distro you choose, as chances are you won’t pick the right one for you until you know a little more. I’d recommend setting up a USB drive with Ventoy and filling it full of distro images so you can get a feel for how they work without too much fuss.
For reference, my personal journey started with Ubuntu, then Kubuntu (uses the KDE desktop which I much prefer, instead of GNOME), then I hopped over to Arch-based distros with Manjaro (finally got me away from the very clunky and annoying PPA system that Ubuntu and derivatives have), then EndeavourOS when I realised Manjaro is honestly just a hot mess (the devs have screwed up several times. A more vanilla Arch distro like EndeavourOS works way better for the AUR too).
It would be helpful if you posted your machine’s specs.
It’s a laptop. -Ryzen 5 4500u -Nvidia 1650 ti -16gb ram -512 ssd
It is HP but I am not sure if that matters too much.
I’d dual boot. Get one drive for Windows, and another for a Debian distro like Ubuntu. If you’re new to Linux then there’s a good chance you could mess up and accidentally kill your display by updating drivers manually or something. By having another OS that you know on hand, you always have something to fall back on while you figure out what you just did.
Does having dual boot work completely fine without any quirks to look out for on disk management? For example, if I install both OSs on the same drive, or even if I install them on separate drives, can I access a non-system drive from both OSs? Is there any caveat of dual OS on disk drive management?
I’ve got two physically different drives. Can’t say I’ve ever installed two OS’s on the same disk.
My Linux system can modify my windows drive without any problems, but my windows OS can’t even see my Linux drive. I’m thinking that this might be because windows can’t read ext4 formatting.
If you use two physically separate drives, you can set boot order in your bios, so it’s like having two completely different machines. Over the years I boot to windows less and less, only really keeping it around for FPS games that need anti-cheat software, and for VR stuff.
The must-have tool for your setup is Steam.
If you have an NVIDIA card, the drivers will not be installed by default, so you’ll need to install them with your distro’s software center for peak graphics performance.
Otherwise, no real tips other than don’t forget to run your distro’s update/upgrade tools every once in a while. The nice thing about linux is you can start out with next to nothing and install tools as you need them. If you don’t need them, don’t install them.
If you are coming from Windows, the GNOME interface of Ubuntu might be a bit confusing. It is probably easier to use KDE plasma, which will look and feel more familiar. Try Kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with KDE.
#1 start by switching to all foss software on windows, try to use only software that is also available on Linux.
#2 keep windows around and dual boot, if you make an effort to get things working in Linux before rebooting into Windows, eventually you’ll use windows less and less.
Absolutely #1.
The biggest mistake people make is trying to get their Windows products running under WINE and whatnot. It’s an absolute headache.
If you run Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and VLC on Windows for a while, the jump to Ubuntu is seamless.
I disagree with #2. You should make the switch with your next PC purchase. Keep your old PC around instead of dual-booting. People often conclude that Linux is difficult because Windows does not play nice with it.
Make sure your new PC is Linux-friendly. The biggest red flag is an “Nvidia” sticker. Go AMD or Intel graphics. Trust me. Also, make sure the Wifi chipset is well supported. The rest will usually just work. Buy it, wipe it, and install linux-only from day 1. You can always reinstall Windows if you give up.
That is a good point, I usually don’t think of anything that involves purchasing 😹
Use mint instead of ubuntu and set up timeshift as soon as you get a distro installed. Its a simple automatic backup tool with a gui.
I’m no help on gaming and idk what tools you’ll need but for general advice, I’d say go fedora, enable all the repos and flatpack, keep backups, and don’t be scared of the terminal (it’ll become your best friend if you use it right) just be cautious with sudo and su.
I recently moved from Windows 11 to Ubuntu and I have happy with it. I had everything I needed synced with OneDrive but because it does not provide a native client for Linux, I changed to pCloud and I am happy with it. If you use OneDrive (or another cloud provider that does not provide a satisfactory client), rclone does a really good job to fill that space. I used it to download all my file from OneDrive.
Pop_OS seems to be a popular distro for gamers (never tried it, could be wrong). I just use Heroic Games Launcher (don’t install via Snap, use Flatpak), works great.
I am trying fedora kinoite because i like the name, it is imutable which means you can’t fuck your system as easily, has an app store, is customizable and looks good.
