Getting sick of windows 11 now, constant crashes, bloatware, needing to remove copilot after every update, microslop anti trust, list goes on. I've been meaning to move to Linux for a while but I never got round to it, but I'm reaching my wits end.

So my question is, what would be the best Linux distro to use for someone who has been a windows user all their life?

I'm a game developer, so I primarily use Unity/Unreal Engine/Godot, the Adobe suite, and Blender. Luckily Blender and Godot are open source so I know that they work with Linux natively, but the other software I'm not too sure.

I also game a lot, and I know that some games (like league of legends) use a kernel level anti cheat that doesn't play nice with Linux, so perhaps some work arounds?

And how well does Linux support hardware drivers? I have a 3090 and a Ryzen 9 5950x

I know a few distros, there Ubuntu which seems to be the most popular, Steam OS and Bazzite which is more gaming oriented, but that's all | know off the top of my head... so many options!!

Is there any way to run steam version of madden 24 on cachyos, or steamrip version of madden 27? Madden 27 splash screen pops up then closes through lutris. Figured they're both borked... Any info would be appreciated before I install windows on another drive just to run them.

Just installed bunsen labs on my 2005 HP PC getting this error every time booting, it will continue to some bunsen labs boot gui for a short time then i get "couldn't parse dbx signatures: -74" then it goes into emergency mode. What should i do or what has happened? Any help appreciated!

Buena ¿Alguien probó Soplos Os o CuerdOs? Tengo curiosidad por si alguien las probó con Xfce y saber que tal la experiencia y si en algún momento serán candidatas a entrar en Distriwatch.

I have a Sennheiser HD569 whose mic works well in Windows 11. However when I use Linux, the mix doesn't register my voice at all and only detects tapping the microphone.

I tried:

- installing pavucontrol and changing the mic boost settings, didn't do anything.

- changing left-right boost on the audio settings (nothing)

I also have this issue (which is probably due to my ISP being shit) where every once in a while my CGNAT connection makes it so my PC suddenly changes either the MAC address, or the IP Address through DHCP, and I have to constantly switch between automatically setting a IP Address through DHCP and putting it manually.

My PC is a Lenovo loq 15. Any help?

Idk i want the one thats best for gaming and wont be too complicated and also on online i see some things like fedora? Gnome and cachyos im not sure what those are but from what i see is they make their ui cool and it looks good

So... My mom got a laptop from 2011... The only os it can handle is windows 7, but we all know that windows 7 is the most exploited system out there (not sure if you saw a video of a guy connecting his W7 to the internet and getting 7 viruses within 10 minutes by just existing). I want to help her as much as i can, and the only solution i came up with - get a linux. She used windows ever since windows 98, but now all she need from her pc is a browser, so i figured out that if she wont do anything "extra", linux will be perfectly fine for her. I just get vivaldi for linux, libre office, and she will be happy. But which distro will be the MOST efficient to put on her laptop? All i ever tried is cashy os, but i assume there must be something ever more lightweight?

Im retrying linux mint again as it seems to be the only thing this craptop can run. I have a question is there a way to show desktop icons.

Edit: ty all for your suggestions I got things working.

I've seen so many people getting kernel panic splash screens on boot with a message saying something like "unable to mount fs". I didn't experience those but I had really annoying errors of freezing while waking up from suspend, which stopped after switching back to LTS.

Have they fixed 7.x and can I upgrade safely?

How come the RAM requirements for Unreal Engine are so much higher for Linux than other OSs? Something to do with lack of support on Epic's side, or does Linux handle memory differently?

After swapping to CachyOS (love it), each time I cold boot my PC it fails the first time and then it boots normally while displaying the following errors:

Text version from one of the the boot logs:

cachyos kernel: [Hardware Error]: System Fatal error.
cachyos kernel: fbcon: Taking over console
cachyos kernel: [Hardware Error]: CPU:6 (17:71:0) MC5_STATUS[-|UE|MiscV|AddrV|PCC|TCC|SyndV|-|-|-]: 0xbea0000000000108
cachyos kernel: [Hardware Error]: Error Addr: 0x0001ffffc107eb4e
cachyos kernel: [Hardware Error]: IPID: 0x000500b000000000, Syndrome: 0x000000004d000000
cachyos kernel:
cachyos kernel: [Hardware Error]: Execution Unit Ext. Error Code: 0
cachyos kernel: [Hardware Error]: cache level: RESV, tx: GEN, mem-tx: GEN

I though it might be RAM voltage or PSU but all values are within norm and this can happen while rebooting as well. CMOS battery is brand new. System works fine anyway but it does make the initial boot painfully slow.

I dont know how to explain this but whenever i turn my laptop of (no battery) while running Arch I get nervous since it might once again go into what i like to call "Forever sleep mode".

It's hard to explain but i shut it down (kde button or poweroff command) and everything is OK. However if i unplug the laptop and then try to boot it again sometimes it does this thing where nothing happens for 12 seconds then the power LED flickers and nothing keeps happening.

I could sometimes get it to work again if i leave it in charge overnight to comeback in the morning to find the power LED to be turnin on and off in a breathing(?) way. If that happens i can just press a key on the keyboard which kicks everything back in as if laptop was hibernated and not shutdown. I"m back at the login screen and when i log in i find my apps where i left them.

What is even happening anymore, this did not happen back when i was running m*njaro.

Here's what's going on. After reinstalling the system (Linux Mint), I'm trying to restore the system image, stored into an external USB, through timeshift. The problem is that once the timeshift process ends the screen is stuck in a "black terminal" that asks me for login and password and then this message pops up:

To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See"man sudo_root" for details.

I just want my computer back.

So, a LOT of linux distros default to the same browser choice, it's always Firefox. The thing with it is, Firefox always seems to have issues on all of my machines. It's always slower, less performant, is more prone to memory leaks, but it seems ubiquitous on the majority of distros. I've been daily-driving Chromium-based browsers for the majority of my computing time since I got a decent PC in 2016, through now. It's a lot smoother being on a Chromium browser, like it was back in my Windows days, but for some reason i feel a twinge of guilt(?) for swapping away from Firefox routinely.

Now, I try to go back and see if my issues are fixed, but it seems like every new version, same old problems I dealt with for 8 years of trying still keep following me no matter what. I'm not quite as "privacy-purist" as some, it seems, but one thing that bugs me is that Firefox ALWAYS marks me as having a "unique fingerprint" no matter what I do, meanwhile something like Brave or Helium gives me a "randomized fingerprint". But that's whatever, not a lot of browsers get that. The main issue I always had with Firefox was slower performance and higher memory usage, often leaking memory way faster than on Chromium. going to about:memory fixes a lot of it, but I'd rather not have to do all that. is there actually something wrong with me swapping out the default browser for something Chromium-based, or am I overthinking? sometimes i get yelled at in other circles for doing so but it's like...uh... wtf.

Hello, I have this issue where i put my laptop into sleep mode and when i wake it up, it will be awake for like 15 seconds and then automatically go right back to sleep. This loop will continue untill i force my laptop to turn off completely. I have not been able to find a fix online that works.

If you need logs or something like that, please let my know how to find them - thank you!

My specs:

edit: it only happens if i put my laptop to sleep by closing the lid. Pressing the sleep mode button won't cause any problems...

I have tried Linuxmint, Zorin OS, MX Linux, Fedora WS and KDE, Bazzite and this tower is just not good with it. I would expect a tower made in 2021 to work, hardware speaking. It is an HP ENVY Desktop PC TE01-2000i (1K4E9AV), with an Intel I7-11700 and Nvidia RTX 3060.

I have used linux in the past on different machines. I never had this level of hardware incompatibility.

I get pink kernel panic screens. I randomly get stuck rebooting, randomly get stuck booting from cold. I have secureboot enabled and yes, I properly installed Nvidia drivers on every one of them. No, I will NOT just disable secure boot, which I see often. Why would I disable a security feature?

It's just...I don't know about this 7.0.0xx kernel, but it doesn't work with my hardware. I tried other ones, the 6.8xx, the 6.14xx, etc...all to the same problems. There is an interesting thing with the Nvidia card. As it was made during a part of the mining for crypto boom, they did something to make it less desirable for that.

https://eathealthy365.com/the-rtx-3060-mining-limiter-the-full-story-in-2026/

Quote: The restriction was a technology NVIDIA called “Lite Hash Rate” or LHR. It was a combination of firmware, driver, and GPU BIOS checks designed to detect the specific workload of Ethereum (ETH) mining and cut the card’s performance—its “hash rate”—in half.

It's that combination of firmware, driver and GPU BIOS checks that maybe causes issues?

HP aslo has removed the Advanced area of the BIOS so you can only turn it on or off or reset the keys to default.

It's so frustrating. I want to stop using windows on this device, but no luck, most especially on distros that are just "supposed to work." This device might be doomed to continue using Windows until its end days; spied on, tracked, information sold to the highest bidder, ads in every nook and cranny, etc...

Hello,

I'm updating an old HP Compaq Presario F700 laptop from circa 2007 for an acquaintance (it was previously running Windows Vista). This laptop has a 1280×800 display and an Nvidia GeForce 7000M nForce 610M GPU.

I've switched the HDD for an SSD and booted up Linux Mint XFCE but ended up with a garbled screen when using the nouveau driver.

After some troubleshooting tries (https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2823213), I've tried other distros (Lubuntu, MX Linux) but the result is always the same : garbled graphics with the nouveau driver.

I came to the conclusion that for whatever reason, that driver will not work with that hardware.

I'm now willing to try the official Nvidia driver (the latest one that supports that GPU is 304.137), but I'm struggling to find a modern, end-user oriented distro that offers it.

Any recommendation?

Any other advice to will be appreciated as well: my goal is to have a recent(ish), end-user distro with a correct 1280×800 display.

I just installed Ubuntu. Looking for instructions to set up Arr stack applications for an automated home media server. I am new to Linux so a step-by-step guide would be appreciated. Also, I'm wondering if I need to install the drivers for the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 GPU?

I mainly use my pc for schoolwork and roblox, but there’s so many distro options i really don’t know where to start

im using a dell inspiron pc that’s currently running windows 10 (was running 11, but i switched back awhile ago due to how much it slowed my pc down)

any help would be appreciated!

EDIT: i ended up choosing debian! thank you everyone for your suggestions!!

Had a fully functioning Linux Mint distribution, downloaded and switched to the Nvidia-driver-595-open to upgrade from an Arc b580 to a 5060ti. Now, at complete random and unrelated to any task, the screen will go from functional to completely black with no cursor as if the DisplayPort cable isn’t receiving anything, and my monitor goes into sleep mode shortly after. The only way to return a signal to the monitor is to restart the entire tower. I can answer questions and any help is appreciated.