In a surprising turn of events, Microsoft has reversed its decision to enforce the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 requirement for installing Windows 11. This policy, recently defended just a week ago, sparked widespread frustration as millions of otherwise capable systems were arbitrarily deemed incompatible, leaving many users feeling alienated. This backpedaling showcases yet again […]
Many people are going to say Linux. It’s probably annoying to hear, but its just the truth at this point. It probably seems daunting to switch over, but let me give you a very brief suggestion from a beginner on how to smooth over the transition.
Load up youtube and watch a few videos reviewing linux distributions for beginners just to see what’s recommended. My personal recommendation is to stick with a distro that uses KDE Plasma as the desktop environment since it will be very familiar coming from Windows. Once you decide what looks best for you…
Check and see if your computer has an available SATA port on the motherboard. If it does, grab yourself a SATA SSD and put your choice of a Linux distribution on it. Once Linux is up and running, set your BIOS to boot into Linux by default. Use Linux for everything you can and slowly migrate your workflow over to the new OS. Keep Windows as it is on its original drive and boot into it whenever you encounter something that doesn’t work or you haven’t set up on Linux yet. Don’t stress about rushing through this part. You have almost a year before Win10 is unsupported. Take your time and enjoy the process.
Over time, your Linux OS will become very useful for you as you uncover more ways to use it instead of Windows and Windows will be reserved for those infrequent edge cases where your needs are not met by Linux. This decouples you from the Microsoft ecosystem, making their enshittification less impactful on your life. I followed this exact path and I’m now a near full-time Linux user with Nobara as my chosen distribution and I could not be happier. I love my PC again.
The only thing I use Windows for now is sim racing games, as I haven’t yet dedicated time to find out how to get the expensive sim racing peripherals I own working on Linux yet. Apparently it’s possible and some people have had great success with it. This is something I will be actively working on over the coming year. Everything else I own runs perfect on Linux. I run a home studio so that means a lot of audio peripherals and specialized software. For 95% of my use case, Nobara just works.
The transition will take some work, but in the end if you can get yourself away from dependence on Windows, the options and freedom available to you expand like crazy. Its worth it just to show Microsoft that no, they no longer have a stranglehold on desktop PC users. The more we engage with non-mainstream options, the more the mainstream has to behave itself.
I’m actually doing what you are suggesting for about a month or so now, and i’m also on Nobara!
Today i booted windows for the first time in 2 weeks, just to change the date format as kde wasn’t booting for some weird ansi character problem in the date. Apparently I changed the time on the motherboard and broke something.
That said, i’ve been playing games with basically 0 issues so far (many indies, rdr2 and a copule others) and doing what i usually did on windows.
Yeah, I’d never recommend cold turkey-ing it. That’s a recipe for dissatisfaction I think. A gradual transition is easy and there’s so much less pressure when things go awry.
I tried switching about a decade ago, when gaming wasn’t really possible. I ended up just not using it. Recently, after proton, I tried to dual boot again, to slowly transition. I chose to install them on the same drive on different partitions, and this worked fine until I booted into Windows one time and it updated and nuked the boot partition. I just swore off Windows at that point because Linux was now handling everything I needed. Anything I wanted with Windows I could live without, and it’s been fantastic since.
I was on Fedora then, and I’m on Garuda now. Both are good, but a few things with Fedora annoyed me (they were done for a reason but I didn’t like it). Garuda has been great. I’ve had zero complaints.
Many people are going to say Linux. It’s probably annoying to hear, but its just the truth at this point. It probably seems daunting to switch over, but let me give you a very brief suggestion from a beginner on how to smooth over the transition.
Load up youtube and watch a few videos reviewing linux distributions for beginners just to see what’s recommended. My personal recommendation is to stick with a distro that uses KDE Plasma as the desktop environment since it will be very familiar coming from Windows. Once you decide what looks best for you…
Check and see if your computer has an available SATA port on the motherboard. If it does, grab yourself a SATA SSD and put your choice of a Linux distribution on it. Once Linux is up and running, set your BIOS to boot into Linux by default. Use Linux for everything you can and slowly migrate your workflow over to the new OS. Keep Windows as it is on its original drive and boot into it whenever you encounter something that doesn’t work or you haven’t set up on Linux yet. Don’t stress about rushing through this part. You have almost a year before Win10 is unsupported. Take your time and enjoy the process.
Over time, your Linux OS will become very useful for you as you uncover more ways to use it instead of Windows and Windows will be reserved for those infrequent edge cases where your needs are not met by Linux. This decouples you from the Microsoft ecosystem, making their enshittification less impactful on your life. I followed this exact path and I’m now a near full-time Linux user with Nobara as my chosen distribution and I could not be happier. I love my PC again.
The only thing I use Windows for now is sim racing games, as I haven’t yet dedicated time to find out how to get the expensive sim racing peripherals I own working on Linux yet. Apparently it’s possible and some people have had great success with it. This is something I will be actively working on over the coming year. Everything else I own runs perfect on Linux. I run a home studio so that means a lot of audio peripherals and specialized software. For 95% of my use case, Nobara just works.
The transition will take some work, but in the end if you can get yourself away from dependence on Windows, the options and freedom available to you expand like crazy. Its worth it just to show Microsoft that no, they no longer have a stranglehold on desktop PC users. The more we engage with non-mainstream options, the more the mainstream has to behave itself.
I’m actually doing what you are suggesting for about a month or so now, and i’m also on Nobara!
Today i booted windows for the first time in 2 weeks, just to change the date format as kde wasn’t booting for some weird ansi character problem in the date. Apparently I changed the time on the motherboard and broke something.
That said, i’ve been playing games with basically 0 issues so far (many indies, rdr2 and a copule others) and doing what i usually did on windows.
Hot damn, that’s awesome. Glad you’re enjoying it! Nobara is great!
Did the same thing. Finally settled on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but Nobara looks good too.
It’s hard to cold turkey jump to Linux, transitioning to Linux should be the default recommendation.
Yeah, I’d never recommend cold turkey-ing it. That’s a recipe for dissatisfaction I think. A gradual transition is easy and there’s so much less pressure when things go awry.
I still have windows for VR. Maybe there’s a solution, but VR is enough of a hassle. I’m glad I’ve still got the windows drive around in that sense
I tried switching about a decade ago, when gaming wasn’t really possible. I ended up just not using it. Recently, after proton, I tried to dual boot again, to slowly transition. I chose to install them on the same drive on different partitions, and this worked fine until I booted into Windows one time and it updated and nuked the boot partition. I just swore off Windows at that point because Linux was now handling everything I needed. Anything I wanted with Windows I could live without, and it’s been fantastic since.
I was on Fedora then, and I’m on Garuda now. Both are good, but a few things with Fedora annoyed me (they were done for a reason but I didn’t like it). Garuda has been great. I’ve had zero complaints.
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Not sure why someone downvoted you, so have an upvote. The peripherals thing for gaming is a tough one for sure.
Thanks. Some people are Linux super fans. They don’t like to admit there’s a bad use case for it.
I take no pleasure in pointing out the deficiency. Wish I had the expertise to help fix it.
The community is definitely working hard on getting peripherals working. I’m kind of amazed by how much better things have gotten in the last 5 years.
It really depends on your hardware. With an AMD video card, it works blissfully.