I made the full switch to linux about a month ago for my home pc. I haven’t used windows at home since. I did set up a dual-drive dual-boot initially but haven’t booted into windows since.
I installed Ubuntu as it seemed to be a distro that just works well with my hardware.
I found a replacement for most all apps I use. The only ones that would not work are AutoCAD and Autodesk Fusion. There are alternatives such as librecad and openscad, but I have been using AutoCAD going on 30 years, and I am pretty good with Fusion.
So, I set up a virtual machine to run windows in order to use those 2 programs. It seems to work pretty well. I have used AutoCAD quite a bit in VM, and I haven’t had any issues. I have only used Fusion a bit, but I don’t think I will have any problems there either. It seems to run well.
Gaming, so far, works quite well, thanks to Steam and Proton.
Some weird things I have found:
-
Middle click to paste. Maybe it’s because I have used windows for so long, but I seem to middle click a lot for navigation. In gnome it defaults to paste. Strange. There is a setting to disable that, but it seems a lot of apps still use it. The code editor I really like – Kate, still does it and I can’t seem to find how to shut that off. Also, middle click only seems to navigate in a browser. I have gotten used to scrolling.
-
If you open a context window, you can’t do anything else until you close it. It’s hard to describe - but, for instance, if you select a file, hit f2 to rename it, it brings up a little mini menu for renaming. You can’t do anything else on the computer until you dismiss that box. Usually, clicking outside of it will dismiss it. I thought my computer locked up the first time. There are other dialogs like that as well. I am getting used to it, but it’s still jarring when the pc stops responding and I have to remember why.
-
All the different ways to get software! There is an app store in the desktop menu, not everything is in it, and sometimes a differing version. Then there is snap, flatpak, appimage, apt-get (terminal), it’s a lot to take in for a newcomer.
-
Unknown terminal commands. I knew I would be using terminal a lot, and most sites tell you what each step is doing. But some sites don’t tell you what is happening when you type stuff in, and that seems problematic to me.
-
Sleep doesn’t work, it locks up the pc. I don’t know how to start to diagnose that. I shut it down at the end of the night instead. It boots up with in about 10 seconds.
I tweaked the desktop to get it to align more with the default gnome desktop, and so far I really enjoy using it! No real issues to speak of, no crashes
If you are tired of Microsoft (or Apple), tired of adds in your desktop environment, tired of analytics (spyware…) sending info back home, tired of Microsoft sun-setting OS’s – maybe give linux a try!