Again an association is made between butt plugs and Arch users. I wonder if moving forward showing a collection of butt plugs will become the next “I use Arch, btw”.

Thanks for pointing that out! It has since been fixed.

What is a reliable yet affordable option to get started?

Unfortunately, good affordable hardware on which Linux is properly supported is hard to get by. I’m personally fond of vendors like (in alphabetical order) Framework, NovaCustom, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo. But other vendors like ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are known to sell devices that do a considerable job at supporting Linux; consider to check the compatibility/support for their devices through resources like linux-hardware.org.

Are my concerns based in reality or is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues?

Regarding video types; I don’t think you should have any problems regarding those; on some distros it might not be supported by default, but that should be solvable with a single command. Relying on flatpaks^[1] instead is another viable solution and is enabled by default on a lot of distros. Moving on to word document templates; I suppose the suite of cloud-based services found in Microsoft 365 should work regardless. As for the question if the templates would work on LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE and the like; I simply don’t know. On to familiarity of OS and using it for business purposes; most distros that are friendlier towards newer users have been setup with sane defaults. Therefore, I don’t think there’s a lot that could go wrong as long as you’re interacting with a GUI. When interacting with a command-line interface, note that information found on the internet is often times outdated. Therefore, if you’re hesitant or unsure; consider interacting with the community for some help. We’re all in this together!

is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues?

You should be totally fine aside from some software that’s known to not support Linux at all.

What else might I need to know to use Linux comfortably from the get go?

Ask yourself the following questions:

• To what degree are you interested to learn how it all works and to experience what Linux offers?
  • If you see it primarily as a means to an end, then pick a distro that does an excellent job at accommodating your workflow without requiring you to relearn more than necessary.
  • If instead, interest in Linux itself is the main driving force behind the switch, then please be mindful that the Linux rabbit hole is very real.

Is it going to take a lot of time and effort to get Linux running how I need it to?

Somewhat related to the previous question*. Like, there are distros out there that I can install for my grandfather and he wouldn’t even notice the difference. But even some (relatively) mainstream-distros can be daunting for so-called power users of Windows. E.g. I would argue I was your average Windows-user; play games, browse the internet, email, write documents, video-editing, run software required for my studies etc. It took me about two weeks before I was ‘comfortable’ on Linux. And even then, some of the software I used for e.g. video-editing just didn’t want to play nice^[2].

So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.

If you want freedom and control over your devices, there’s simply no viable alternative.

1. Software management on Linux -at least on the surface- is closer to Android/iOS than to Windows. You should rarely (if at all) feel the need to find software through your browser. Instead, you should interact with so-called package managers. This can be achieved through either a command-line interface or a storefront with a GUI that behaves like those found on Android/iOS etc. Coming back to Flatpak; this is an (upcoming) universal (read: (mostly) distro-agnostic) package manager that tries to solve a lot of problems that traditional package managers have had. There’s still a lot of ongoing work for it to achieve its design-goals to the fullest, but even in its current iteration it works excellent and therefore it’s unsurprising to find it enabled by default on a significant chunk of the Linux landscape. Software that are packaged using this technology are referred to as flatpaks (or flatpak if singular).

2. In retrospect, this seems to be primarily rooted in the fact that my machine isn’t that powerful in the first place. On Windows, it managed because it was better optimized for it. Unfortunately, on Linux, this was not the case.

A lot of programs I work with very often are Windows-exclusive, and alternatives supporting Linux are rare.

Consider mentioning the programs you work with. On a general note, Wine can be used to make Windows-software work on Linux. Bottles can be used to that effect as a front-end. Furthermore, for a more sophisticated solution; consider taking a look at CodeWeavers.

Thanks everyone for your replies, I’m really interested in KDE Plasma now.

I agree that KDE Plasma should satiate your desire for customizing the look and feel of your system. But, note that KDE Plasma isn’t properly supported on Linux Mint. Therefore, consider switching to a Distro in which it is; e.g. the KDE Flavors/Spins of Fedora, openSUSE or Ubuntu.

Regarding 4; I suppose you’re looking for the ArcMenu extension if you wish to continue using GNOME as your Desktop Environment (will be abbreviated to DE from here on). Though GNOME’s workflow is considerably different to Windows’. Therefore, you might be interested into looking elsewhere unless you’re actually interested to continue GNOME. FWIW, GNOME is one of the most popular and most polished DEs out there, but it’s very opinionated; which rub some folk the wrong way. I personally like it, but others might differ on this. Lastly, GNOME is NOT particularly known to be light. Therefore, if you’re not happy with how it runs; e.g. frame skips with animations or just high RAM usage overall, then perhaps consider Xfce or Lxqt. If you’re not discontent about the performance on GNOME, then you could also consider KDE or Cinnamon as those might ‘feel’ more ‘modern’ than the aforementioned Xfce and Lxqt.

Regarding 5; Ubuntu gets a lot of hate due to:

• how they’re forcing Snaps (their in-house universal package manager; therefore a direct competitor to Flatpak) onto its users. So much so that even attempting to install some packages through apt will result in the Snap being installed instead; which is basically unprecedented within the Linux landscape.
• some mishaps in the past resulted in very bad PR; especially to those that are privacy-conscious and/or F(L)OSS-advocates.

You’d have to get to your own conclusions though. It’s probably still the most used distro and therefore you might expect some QoL-features are only found within. If you’re inconclusive, just try it out and consider reporting back to us on how it went. Regarding old hardware; the DE is the most important factor anyways.

Silverblue + distrobox is enough for me.

Aight. Hope to meet you next time your hand and fingers start tingling and itching 😜.

I don’t know if it even works, but have you considered relying on their Stealth protocol? While its absence on Linux _{(and Windows)} means that you might not even be able to make use of it in the first place, I’m still interested to know if it makes any difference.

I super appreciate all of the tips!

It has been my pleasure 😊!

I thought I was good installing Bazzite with a fresh install using an ISO, made sure to pick the NVIDIA option… it just failed to load the drivers, and showed a gray screen switching to open drivers.

Very strange. Consider reporting this as a bug on their Github or ask assistance on their discord server.

I played with NixOS in a VM. I have sooooo much to learn… so I think I will just install the package manager, and gorge on the cake I get to keep.

NixOS, while excellent at what it offers, is indeed very different from almost anything else. I wish you the best of luck if you wish to conquer it, but I’ve personally put it on my backlog; I hope to return to it eventually, but not now. Perhaps consider using Fleek, which would be Nix-made-easy. Obviously, it isn’t as powerful, but perhaps a new user doesn’t need that much power in the first place 😉.

You may be happy, or perhaps dismayed, to learn that I finally installed Bazzite on my desktop.

Well played! Welcome to the cool kids club! I’ve actually used Bazzite myself for a short while a couple of months ago. It felt like a holiday destination with lots of cool stuff, but it was more opinionated than what I’m comfortable with. So I returned back home (read: custom uBlue image) afterwards, where I am in command for what’s found inside and where I am free to do whatever I will. Though, I did pick up some of the things I liked from Bazzite 😜, so it was not for naught 😉.

I did a bit tonne of sampling, with BlendOS and Vanilla, trying things out, but Fedora wins.

Very interesting! I’ve got my own reasons for preferring Fedora *cough* _security *cough*, but I’m very interested to know your findings! I’d have to admit that Vanilla OS’ upcoming 2.0 Orchid update is very tempting though.

I have Fedora Silverblue on a usb in case Bazzite does not like my computer,

Hmm…, perhaps consider the following:

1. Rebase back to Silverblue with rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/39/x86_64/silverblue (assuming you’re already on Fedora 39).
2. After you’ve booted into Silverblue, pin the Silverblue-deployment with sudo ostree admin pin 0.
3. While still in the Silverblue-deployment, rollback to Bazzite with rpm-ostree rollback.
4. Reboot, and you should notice that you have one additional entry in the GRUB-menu. That’s the Silverblue-deployment where you can always fall back on; just in case*.

The above steps do assume that you haven’t pinned any prior Silverblue-deployments; as you don’t necessarily need multiple Silverblue-deployments 😅. Furthermore, they assume no additional steps involving Nvidia; but that’s mostly because I don’t have any experience dealing with that (thankfully).

I swear I will just jump onto the NIXOS (or guix) bandwagon if I ever decide to switch again.

FWIW, you can install both Nix and Guix on Silverblue.

I have something like 70 AUR packages installed and it’s very seldom I have problems.

I’m glad to hear that you’re able to dodge problems more often than not. But even if you wouldn’t have any problems at all, it’s undeniable that the model of Manjaro + AUR is fundamentally broken. No amount of copium, Stockholm-syndrome or masochism would change that.

There isn’t any significant difference in AUR compatibility between Manjaro, Arch or any other Arch based distro. I believe this to be an often misunderstood issue.

Don’t you think that Manjaro’s model of holding back packages conflicts with the AUR that primarily targets Arch which (by design) doesn’t hold back packages? And, if you agree that it conflicts, don’t you think that this actually is a very significant difference as two distinct programs/binaries/software/whatever might rely on two different versions of the same dependency? It’s like a schoolbook example of what dependency hell is*.

When you install an AUR package it will work now, on the current state of the distro (current package versions). Later, as you upgrade packages, AUR packages will gradually start failing to work. This is the same on any Arch distro and it depends on how often you upgrade. If anything, by delaying packages by 2 weeks Manjaro will also delay potential incompatibility.

Fam, with all due respect, I’d like to invite you to educate yourself on this matter. Because, apologies for saying this, there’s just an awful lot of misinformation, conflation and confusion present in this paragraph.

TLDR is that all AUR packages will break eventually and have to be reinstalled periodically, on any distro.

I agree that packages everywhere on all distros may break at some point; that’s just how software is. Though, nothing condones taking on a defeatist stance towards package breakage.

I don’t even think it should be avoided at all times. Just approach it through an Arch-container, Distrobox can streamline that process, and everything should be gucci.

I looked into distrobox and checks all the boxes but there is the issue of my lack of storage space(currently only 130 GB left out of 240)

It can definitely fill up space if you’re not careful. Just ensure that only the minimal amount of containers and their respective images are on the system.

I would assume one container each for Ubuntu and Arch should suffice for most people. Sure; this will likely take up to 10 GB of extra storage in total (eventually), but foregoing this solution means that you’d likely have to settle for Arch (because of the AUR) or something like Gentoo (because no other distro does compiling and building from source like Gentoo does).

If you feel particularly adventurous, you could also consider Nix and/or NixOS; though you’d have to ensure that said packages are available as a nixpkg. Nix can also be installed on Fedora; consider Determinate Systems’ installer for that*.

Thank you for responding!

I need a distro which is package-agnostic since i use a lot of old ooen source academic software and they alternate between being only supported on RHEL or Ubuntu

Perhaps you should look into container solutions like e.g. Distrobox. You can basically install/run any package; just ensure usage of the correct container environment.

Fedora 39 is great except when i need to build the above mentioned software from source and i spend 2 hrs failing to match the dependencies from Ubuntu

If you’re otherwise content with Fedora, then perhaps consider installing the aforementioned Distrobox; which happens to be found within Fedora’s repos and thus one sudo dnf install distrobox away from being installed on your machine.

Also want to improvey laptop’s battery life, but i think i can’t get it much better than in Fedora

I’d argue that Fedora is not best for battery life, though. Minimalist distros tend to be a lot better at this. Installing auto-cpufreq in Fedora Silverblue on my AMD-powered laptop did come with significant improvements, so perhaps you could prolong your battery life by utilizing it or similar programs; think of TLP, thermald etc to name a few.

Thank you for your feedback! I am learning a lot.

Glad to be of use 😜!

This is the first time I have run into issues where I was not tempted to abandon ship and go back to what works. I actually care about this system and want it to succeed. I think this is a super cool path forward.

I wholeheartedly agree!

GoboLinux

Wow, I almost forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me!

One problem I had is that I was trying to download an image for linux mint, because it gives me access to PPAs without needing to use SNAP due to Ubuntu, but I could not get an image to download, no matter what combination of linux + mint + version I used. I finally realized I could search podman, now I can go forward!

Good job learning about podman search! I’m sure you’ll manage 😉!

Manjaro’s advertising as compatible with mainline AUR

I’ve honestly never used Manjaro nor do I ever intend to, however this page suggests otherwise. Would you be so kind to point me out where I can find said advertising?

I’m saddened by how the once great Elementary OS has fallen from grace. I hope they will be able to bounce back to former glory and beyond, but I’m skeptical at best…

I don’t understand how people break it.

It’s probably related to installing packages through the AUR, even though it’s known to be unsupported on Manjaro specifically due to their policy of holding back packages.

“compile pretty much every command your distro has in exchange for a measly half a second faster boot times!”

I don’t deny the existence of people with such motivations, but I’d argue the sheer amount of freedom that Gentoo allows is its defining feature. And for that, even though I don’t use it on my main device, I’d argue it’s actually one of the primary contenders for best distro.

Yup, it’s absolutely lovely. Did you experiment with a custom home directory for your distrobox yet?