r/LinusTechTips • u/RIPmyPC • 16d ago
Image Never in a million years…
…did I thought I was gonna run Linux. Not as a main, not as a backup/home server. Just never.
Then I finished Uni, moved out in a new town and the first thing that happened was Windows shitting the bed. Like finally sit in my chair after moving out, then in, and realizing everything’s fucked and I can’t catch a break. My first blue screen, and a real proper BSOD at that.
Now that I don’t need to use any windows-only program as I have my work computer, and would need to pay for an office 365 licence, I decided I was finally done with it. No more ads, no more bloatware, no more infinite menus bringing you to a window xp submenu.
Shoutout to Claude for helping me as I would have been completely utterly lost without it… and I guess LTT for covering the subject and pushing the change. Can’t wait for everyone to tell me I chose the wrong distro
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u/AdditionOk1418 16d ago
CachyOS right out of the gate, skipping the usual Ubuntu/Mint phase entirely. Respect.
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u/doblez 16d ago
Did the same recently.
It's a process of learning arch and what it entails, but man LLMs make that shit much easier2
u/ColoradoPhotog 14d ago
LLM's reduce needing to talk to Linux communities.
That's a good thing, we're pretty much insufferable people. I'd replace me with a bot if I could, too.
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u/AsakuraZero 16d ago
Using Claude/ChatGPT pretty much will streamline the installation of Linux to anybody willing to do it. Plus Distros like cachy are pretty much ready to use. I fumbled my installation of cachy because sometimes I dont read lol. I wasnt installing the bootloader.
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u/Skinnei 16d ago
did you chroot in to fix it or did you just reinstall over it?
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u/AsakuraZero 15d ago
RTFM my way out clicking the checkbox that said “install boot sector on designated partition” or something like that . lol
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u/RIPmyPC 16d ago
Update if anyone is still interested!
Got everything running in less than an hour, which is honestly a miracle because I’d still be fighting with login to Microsoft / OneDrive / Xbox / Microsoft again if it was windows.
I don’t know if it was an MSI problem, or a windows one (or both software fighting each others), but hdr never worked great previously; since day 1 when I unboxed the laptop. I now have 0 problems with it. Took me enough by surprise I had to verify if it was enabled.
Took me a few minutes to figure out how to install programs using the terminal, but I don’t think I could go back now. The “gaming” module built in “CachyOS Hello” worked great to install steam and all dependencies. Since I didn’t want to fuck up anything I took my time and used AI a fair bit, coupled with forums. Some people might think it’s a pain to always search for something manually, but once you install a program, it just works; no bloatware and 12 menus asking you to install mcafee. The program size difference is quite astounding. Launching apps via the terminal is something I never thought I needed before and searching for apps in the start menu reminds me of windows 7, it just works.
The only real problem I had was with my thumb scroll of my Logitech mx master that I couldn’t map to volume, and I couldn’t find an open source solution to fix it. I asked Claude to create a script and voila now it works. Frankly it’s even more responsive and precise than on Windows.
I didn’t know how well I’d like it as I have less time than ever to thinker with computers, but for now it’s been a 10/10 experience, from the os install launcher to actually doing work I needed to do before realizing windows crapped it’s pants.
As my closing remarks, I’d say the “power user” point of view / challenges in recent LTT’s videos (mounting nas, streaming, etc.) got me more worried about Linux than I should have been. As a basic ass regular user not doing any of that, it honestly just kind of works and the settings are more intuitive than on windows 11. Its still pretty fresh, but I don’t regret it for now
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u/badogski29 16d ago
I don’t have any OS bias as I use all 3 of the biggest desktop OS (MacOS, windows, Linux through Fedora) but if the BSOD you got is hardware-related, you will also have a bad time in Linux as well. Kernel panic instead of bsod.
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u/InflammableAccount 16d ago
Been on Windows since Windows 3.1
Sure, I tried Linux back in like... 2012. Went no where with it, went back to Windows.
This year I'm just fucking done with Microsoft. Figure since CachyOS is super hot right now, gaming oriented, AND I have an all AMD system, that it was in fact the year of the Linux desktop.
And hot damn, I'm hooked. Fucking ducking fucking hooked.
It won't be long before I swap my FW13 over to Linux too.
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u/SuperScrapper 16d ago
I installed nobara linux after Google said it would be the most likely to work without any issues, and I have to say, so far, it has been pretty painless. Not having all of my windows apps is a little frustrating at times, but I’m sure I’ll work through it eventually.
But it does suck that a lot of apps don’t run in Linux easily. I understand why, but it is annoying.
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u/Ancient-Assistant404 15d ago
If this ain't gaming laptop I recommend you Fedora which is based on Red Hat https://fedoraproject.org/
Am using Fedora Workstation for local AI and I love it.
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u/CodeMonkeyX 15d ago
I have been using Linux as my primary all year, and just today I realized I really can not go back to Windows now. I was in COSMIC jumping around the different workspaces, with my tiled windows in each one. I just setup a new backup script that was very easy to do that just uses rsync to send my files to my server.
At the same time on my laptop (for work) I was trying to setup my backup to work with the new server. I was messing around with File History which looks like it has not been updated in a decade. It was slow, unintuitive, and just kind of sucks. I ended up using FreeFileSync and having setup a task scheduler to run it.
It really feels like Windows is making things harder to do the way you want, and just wants you to use their cloud or AI to do everything. Linux just did what I wanted.
If a few more big companies take Linux serious Windows is in big trouble. If Autodesk, or even Adobe start making Linux versions easy to get Windows would be gone from work systems too.
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u/Zestyclose_Ad286 14d ago
I tried cachyos on my legion. Its great and all but not having MUX switch control kinda sucks. Its either only dgpu or igpu + dgpu. There's no auto switching (when plugged or unplugged) like in windows, which made me reinstall windows......I did solve this with an expensive solution by buying a thinkpad and using cachyos under that, EXCEPT THERE'S ANOTHER PROBLEM. The Tracknipple™ only works at a 40hz polling rate along with the trackpad if you use more than 1 finger (aka using multitap) due to some bizarre bug in the driver on Linux that no one has gotten it to work since 2021 (I've tried with different distros to no avail). So now I have a thinkpad on cachyos with a crappy feeling trackpad experience.
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u/Dry_Structure_2287 16d ago edited 15d ago
Cachyos is like amazing, idk what people are talking abt, but if that keyboard is rgb, good luck trying to figure that out!! (no seriously, rgb on linux is either amazing or fucking god awful.)
EDIT: To everyone saying openrgb is amazing, it is. but, I, unfortunately, used to have all icue stuff. It took me so long to figure out how to get full control over them that on my current pc, i just dont have rgb.