That excitement is real π Switching can be refreshing, but I always tell people to try it on a spare drive first. The best OS is the one that actually fits your workflow.
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Switched to linux this year and I would NEVER go back to windows.
Me when my friend started talking about how he wanted to buy a steam machine as his first entry into pc gaming, and considered installing linux on his laptop cause windows ran like ass on it.
sauce
I don't know the context of the pic, but that's Elizabeth Olsen.
that particular combination of face expression and the top-down yellow lighting being the first thing I see when I open lemmy, I got jumpscared.
I got something else. It seems that psychotic looking conventionally attractive women are my thing.
I can fix her.
Me after years in IT and decades of Linux:
If you need help, bother somebody else
I use Mac btw (more to the point, I use whatever you do not use).
That picture is so unsettling and idk why
Mouth to face ratio, and eye to face ratio. It hits a kind of uncanny valley
Because it is a perfect 50% cute and 50% scary af
That's an analog horror face without the filter
Because you never had someone look at you like that IRL.
Are they sitting on the loo??
I mentioned to my dad how much windows 11 sucks to use and he agreed that he can't stand it
So naturally, I told him about Linux, which he literally had never heard of before. I told him I'll show him how to restore one of his old laptops with it, and he can go from there. Knowing him, I can't wait to see "how cool" he thinks it is that he can just "fix" his own computer
And I've already converted my wife, instead of buying a new MacBook cause hers is showing it's age. She keeps her Mac for backup, but the main computer is Linux Mint. She's even started to understand the terminal a little, even though she doesn't really have to
Slowly converting family and friends, simply because computers are expensive and windows sucks so hard now
You're doing the Lord's work. And by "the Lord" I mean Tux the penguin.
Blessed be His webby feet and adorable flippers.
Is there a program or way to check what parts are covered by Linux? I have an old laptop I want to try Linux on beforehand.
For some hardware you might have to install drivers or firmware yourself. Not all are included in all Linux distributions for complex reason.
As another person had suggested, test with a live image first before installing it to an SSD/HDD, however Linux is very well maintained by the community and even if there arenβt native drivers from your hardwares manufacturer, for example Corsair Keyboard Drivers, there usually is Open Sourced alternatives for these things like CKB-Next.
I say this to everyone, once you get a grasp on BASH (Bourne Again Shell) and package managers & repositories (edit: and the filesystem structure) youβll essentially be able to use any Linux distro, it just comes down to the nitty gritty of things.
edit: and the filesystem structure
This is what I've definitely struggled the most with mint so far. It's extremely difficult to find anything and I've needed to manually search for the file paths multiple times already, since I always manage to do something I need them for, and I haven't gotten locate to work etc... Though this is probably just me being stoopid since I never find anything on windows either lmao
I'd say that downloading drivers from the manufacturer is the absolute outlier and things working better with integrated open source drivers out of the box is the norm.
Try before you ~~buy~~ download proprietary cruft.
Yes. In general - it's called live cd. Some distros ship with that in their installed image. {K,X,}ubuntu come to mind. Mint might do as well. You can boot into it and look around, see if basic stuff - network, audio, etc - works.
And you can do this with a USB, it doesn't need to be a CD/DVD.
Internally: "YESYESYESYESYESYESYES"
Externally: "Cool, let me know if you need any help"
"my friend recommended I use Ubuntu"
me (screaming internally, about canonical, about snaps, about bloat): "That... that's good. Good choice."
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Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Itβs gonna be so much fun! We can do each others hair and talk about our favourite distros!
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If only there were a distro as lazy as using an Android device.
Every time I mention this, someone comes along and mentions one or another distro, and then the caveats that keep it from being as lazy as using an Android device.
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