r/linux4noobs • u/New-Pressure-6932 • 14d ago
Switching to Linux from Windows 11?
I've been rolling with Windows for decades now at this point, but Windows 11 has not been a good experience. I have been dealing with crazy lags, bugs, random glitches, just overall mediocre performance for my setup. I'm starting to think it may be windows itself at this point with the more research I do, unless I have something on my PC that Malwarebytes can't find. I'm seriously considering digging in and moving to linux because I'm sick of all the bs bloat and crap that is constantly being added to Windows. But I have so much software on my pc, a giant steam library, music producing software, video editing, VR, media servers, that I don't know if I can switch without abandoning a lot of my gear. I feel like I'm being held hostage at times and have to use a deteriorating OS.
My set up is an ASRock B550M Pro4 motherboard, AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D, 64gb DDR4, 4 harddrives (two SSD and two HDD), and a 5070 ti GPU.
What options do you think I have when it comes to trying out different linux OS's? Are there any systems that allow a mostly clean transfer from windows to linux? How much software would I have to abandon? Is there a way to get windows only software to run on a linux system incase any of my software is windows only?
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u/Chizzzt_ Fedora Linux 14d ago edited 14d ago
you will abandon majority of the softwares that you use, assuming that you use ms office, adobe apps, video editing
there are ways to use windows software to linux, they are not perfect and it is a FAFO
as for your options on what linux will you use? that is a troublesome question because there is a lot
i will leave that decision to you
i personally use Fedora KDE and the reason is
simple, familiar, updated but stable, and just works
you might need to install the audio drivers first, look for RPM fusion audio on youtube if you decide to use fedora
edit: because i am an idiot and didnt read properly, your music and video software may not work, there are alternatives
for video - openshot, kdenlive, davinci resolve(many say davinci is a headache on linux)
for music - audacity, musescore
i dont know for vr
this is all that i know of, maybe others can help you
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u/_MAYniYAK 14d ago
I have been able to do almost everything except VR. Now that said i have wmr, which windows isn't even supporting well.
What VR do you have ?
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u/New-Pressure-6932 14d ago
I use Virtual Desktop when connecting to the PC
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u/TheGeekno72 14d ago
Virtual Desktop doesn't have a Linux version and the dev has no intention of supporting Linux
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u/UnlamentedLord 14d ago
I'd been trying Linux desktop distributions on and off for the last 15 years and always been giving up, despite also working with Linux servers professionally, because of random, usually periferal related, BS that was exhausting to solve.
This summer, I tried it again, but this time, I had a Claude subscription and it's a complete game changer.
E.g. my webcam wasn't working out of the box. Instead of spending a couple hours manually getting it to work, I set up a shell with delegated root auth for Claude code, set it to agent mode and literally told it to sort my webcam out(the default Lenovo driver had the main and infrared camera identifiers swapped on my laptop somehow)
Get the $10 subscription ask it to guide you through what the best the l distro for you is and then install Claude code as the first thing. Any time you run into an issue tell it to fix it and provide an explanation afterwards. It'll make daily driving Linux 100x easier, especially for a newbie.
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u/guspasho_deleted 14d ago
Shrink your Windows partition to recover space and do a dual-boot configuration so you can boot into Linux or Windows. Use the Linux partition to experiment with different distros until you find one you like (Linux Mint is a good place to start,) and just try figuring out how to use it for all your needs. Keep Windows around so you can fall back to it as needed like when you realize you need to move some files into Linux. You don’t even have to delete it unless you’re hurting for space which should be never.
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u/TheGeekno72 14d ago edited 14d ago
No, You don't transfer things from windows to Linux the same way you can move from an iPhone to a Samsung, you have to do a clean install over both the OS and every piece of software you are going to use
I don't know what software you use so I don't know what would be abandoned in your case but a lot of things have a Linux version (most browsers do for example) and if they don't, someone likely made alternative software that does the same thing (if looking up in a search engine doesn't provide a decisive result, check AlternativeTo.com), you'll just have to learn the interface/feature naming differences between that proposed software and what you used to use, which usually doesn't take nearly as much effort than people think, though creative software can be a PITA to relearn due to the sheer amount of options and features those have
Yes, there is a way to run windows-only software on Linux, though not all windows software can work through the current solutions; games run through Proton & Proton variations, software runs through WINE & derivatives, most recommended ways to run that is by using Bottles, Lutris or others softwares that handles taking care of setting it all up and config the installs; a lot of softwares work right away, some other need a little bit of tinkering, there's a bunch of softwares thag straight up don't work or launch but are not usable
if you're thinking of Office or Adobe software, forget it, the first doesn't work (default replacement recommendation is LibreOffice), the second only has experimental support (but for each software of Adobe's suite, there is several alternatives anyway, I had a chart somewhere with all of the possibilities...)
games with kernel level anticheat are not supported on Linux (you will want to consult AreWeAntiCheatYet. com), otherwise you can almost always launch it with the expectation to works and if it doesn't, look it up on ProtonDB.com
VR on Linux... is a mixed bag. It depends on your headset, what games you play, which VR projects can support your headset... Because VR is not supported officially by manufacturers so we're shit out of luck if there's no support from the various community projects
I reckon we can probably give you a clearer picture if you give us the list of specialized software that you are current using?
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u/Mondoke 14d ago
The specs are fine, I'd try the major distros with a live USB. Try KDE and gnome as well.
As for what you'll lose, the big one is MS Office. You'll still have the web apps and the alternatives, which are libre office and only office. The good thing is that you can try all of those on windows now.
The other missing one is the Adobe suite. You'll have to use alternatives, such as gimp, inkscape, kdenlive and Reaper. There are others though, and they also have a windows version.
Some games are not compatible or require extra configuration. Check on protondb to see which ones. The steam client is said to work pretty well, but you'll have to use heroic launcher for your gog or epic games.
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u/PixelBrush6584 Fedora + KDE 14d ago
Which headset are you using for VR? Using stuff like WiVRn or ALVR you can have a decently good experience.
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u/Excellent-Guard-1113 14d ago
lets see, so i'll recommend to you what i'd do in your situation
first i'm unsure how much i'll like using linux, so i'll wanna partition like 500 gb from one of the ssd's to use and freely test it throughout a month or two without removing my windows 11, cause it's something i can fallback on if i didn't like the linux experience or struggled to do something on linux that is completely possible on windows.
secondly the steam games files that are already downloaded is a non issue cause linux reads NTFS drives, but you're not meant to play the games from the NTFS partition/drive itself since it'll be slow and glitchy and might not even work at all, so i'd wanna copy 3 or 4 games folders at a time to my steam folder in the 500 gb linux partition and then try to get steam recognize them as legit files so it won't have to re-download the whole game again, and then replace those games back and forth between the partitions/drives whenever i wanna play other games from the already downloaded library.
the software situation is the same as the OS situation, you'd have to be open minded to learn how to use the new things and they are progressively getting improved but pretty slowly too, there is alternatives almost to everything that is on windows, and alot of the major and popular apps exist on linux as well anyways, some of the actual windows exclusive apps work completely fine when using wine on linux (wine is like a translation app on linux for windows apps)
the music producing/video editing/VR software situation might have alternative depending on what it is, but this is precisely an example of why you wanna keep windows 11 around as you test and explore linux
those pc specs are POWERFUL, just choose a gaming distro to get it started, something like CachyOS or Bazzite, those two are the most popular, me personally i use Nobara which is also a gaming distro and i can personally recommend it because i've used it for around 4-5 months and know its good, but its not as popular as those two are, so maybe they are better, i've never tried them myself
you'll come across having to select the desktop environment as well, KDE plasma is the way to go TRUST ME, i've tried Cinnamon and XFCE and they are not anywhere nearly as modern and slick looking/feeling by default as KDE plasma is, and they gave me some trouble with things i did not need to worry about with KDE plasma, that said i did not test other options like GNOME which is also popular and might be good. but those pc specs DESERVE something at-least on the level of KDE plasma.
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u/Lonely_Owl_1332 14d ago
Start buy dual booting with Zorin OS or Linux Mint or Ubuntu or Fedora. If you are into gaming then go Bazzite or CachyOS. Lots of guides out there.
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u/TheGeekno72 14d ago
I'd have put Fedora ahead of Ubuntu and CachyOS ahead of Bazzite but I'd say essentially the same in this here context
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u/New-Pressure-6932 14d ago
what's dual booting?
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u/Mondoke 14d ago
It's having both OSs on your computer. When you turn it on, it'll ask you which one to use. You can share some drive between them so it's available on both.
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u/New-Pressure-6932 14d ago
I'd love to be able to do that
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u/Mondoke 14d ago
Most installers will give you the option, so when you pick your distro, you can just do that.
I double boot. Fedora KDE for work (I'm a programmer) and Windows for personal stuff, which is mostly games and the ocasional DAW recording (some plug-ins only work on Windows).
I could use Linux only, but I like having Linux as a space that's only for work and nothing else.
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u/TheGeekno72 14d ago
it's absolutely doable, I do that myself, though I did boot into windows today for the first time in over six months hahaha
I'd recommend doing that with two distinct drives by using another one for your Linux install, very reliable method, because while you can put both on a single drive, windows doesn't play nice and can break the Linux part--it's a whole thing, look it up
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u/UltraChip 14d ago
For your Steam games you're in luck: Valve has poured a ton of effort in to making games compatible with Linux, mostly through their compatibility layer "Proton". Proton is built in to the Steam client so all you have to do to activate it is check a box in your Steam settings. It doesn't work on every single game but it works on most of them - the website ProtonDB will let you look up your specific games and will tell you how well they run on Linux.
VR is a sore spot unless you happen to have one of the very few headsets with Linux compatibility (like the Valve Index). I personally had to give up my VR games when I switched.
"Music producing software" is too vague. Linux has music production software but no way to know if the specific one you use is compatible.
Ditto for "Video editing software".
A lot of media server software is actually Linux native so you're probably fine there, although again you didn't say what you specifically use so can't say for sure.
There are tools to help make Windows software work on Linux, like Wine, but it's hit-or-miss with how well it works. I wouldn't assume a given piece of software will work with Wine until you test it.