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Looking to make the switch - Advice? (feddit.uk)

submitted 1 day ago by FarrellPerks@feddit.uk to c/linux@programming.dev

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Afternoon all.

I'm looking to make the switch away from Windows, and I wondered if people had any advice, distro suggestions and so on.

My main use cases for my PC are Gaming, Writing and Image editing. Things I'd love to have working are all my games, Epic, Steam, GoG and Game pass. I already use OpenOffice so I'm probably fine with that. And I currently use Photoshop, so a good alternative for that would be good. Finally Spotify, Discord and VPNs etc

Any and all help and suggestions would be welcomed, thanks in advance.

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[–] the16bitgamer@programming.dev 7 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Step 1) Find a Distro which you are comfortable with using. Over the years I've tried Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch, and I've settled on Linux Mint since it's familiar to me, but also easy to use and lots of forums with trouble shooting since it's based on Ubuntu/Debian. Arch is my close second if you want the bleeding edge and are OK with stability.

Step 2) Find the right UI. Most distro's default desktop environments are good, but I found Cinnamon and KDE Plasma to be perfect for me. If you are looking for a more Mac like experience Gnome is a good starting point too. Though you can customize any distro to look like any OS with enough time and effort.

Step 3) Software.

Games is a solved problem these days. Steam works natively and Proton is good enough for lie 99% of your games. You just need to enable it and you will be good to go. If you are playing non steam games, Heroic is a simple application which works, though if you are installing anything more complicated, i.e. a CD game Lutris is your friend. Not sure about gamepass as the Microsoft store is Windows exclusive.

Office Software: LibreOffice is installed by default on all OS's and is based off of OpenOffice, but it's actually still in development.

Photoshop: Yeah this is going to be your make or break it situation. Photoshop has no real substitute in linux. GIMP isn't bad, but is only good for image manipulation not creation. Kirta is more of an art studio rather than Photoshop. What I personally do is a lot of work. Affinity Photo is a close second place for Photoshop but it's Mac/Windows only. Good News, with Proton you can run it. Bad News it's a pain in the rear to do so. I strongly suggest Bottles and the ElementalWarrior build of Wine to get it working there are some guides on how to do it. But again it's a pain in the rear.

In some regards how I get around Windows Limitation is just have a virtual machine with windows on it to run when I need it. Doesn't need much power and I use it when I need it. I..e backing up my iPhone or sending music files to it.

[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

don't worry about it too much. The only cost of switching again is time if you find that you don't like one in practice

[–] the16bitgamer@programming.dev 1 points 18 hours ago

Yup, my tower still has my Windows 10 drive in it. If I need it it's there, but for the most part I don't need it.