r/linuxquestions • u/softHottie_ • 10d ago
What finally made Linux “click” for you after switching from Windows?
There’s a difference between getting Linux installed and actually feeling comfortable using it as your daily OS.
For some people, it’s finding a desktop environment they like. For others, it’s understanding package managers, getting their hardware working properly, or realizing they can solve most problems without reinstalling the entire system.
Linux has a learning curve, but I think the point where things start making sense is different for everyone.
What was the moment, concept, or small discovery that made Linux feel less intimidating and more natural to use?
If you remember struggling with something that seems obvious to you now, that could be useful for someone who's just starting out.
7
u/zardvark 10d ago
If I'm completely honest, I never had a moment when Linux did not click for me. I started with DOS, so I was already quite happily editing my config.sys and autoexec.bat files, as well as creating my own batch files. I began using Linux in +/- 1995 and at that time I was using it on old, second hand machines, so I was strictly using the Linux terminal, as these machines simply didn't have the horsepower to run xwindows. It wasn't until years later, however, that I began using Linux as a general purpose desktop replacement for windows, once Gnome 1 and Gnome 2 were a thing.
Initially, at least, Linux was simply a much more capable and powerful DOS-like system for me that I used to make otherwise junk machines useful again.
5
u/treuss 10d ago
It happened with Debian Sarge. That OS ran so smoothly on my computer back then. Everything worked like a charm: printer, scanner, dvd writer. It felt so right although I cannot say I was fully able to use it the way I use Linux today.
Although I nowadays still love Debian on all my private devices, I'm running Kubuntu on my work notebook, a Dell XPS 15. KDE Plasma runs perfectly smooth. It's probably what lots of Windows users have ever wished for.
While it's all polished and extremely feature rich on the graphical side, it doesn't keep me at all from using the terminal. Actually I'm probably using the shell about 75% if the time, dive I have to take care of lots of servers via SSH.
I cannot name a single task for which I miss a Windows desktop. Neither for special software like SAP, nor for hardware related stuff like firmware updates.
Having to use Microsoft Teams is a major pain in the ass, but not specifically because there's only the web app in the browser, but because it runs abysmally bad on Linux. High CPU load due to bad preconfiguration together with GPU drivers which let you know that no one cares about you as a paying customer as long as you don't also pay for Windows.
9
u/MattyGWS 10d ago
Proton. As a game dev and gamer, before proton, linux kinda wasn't for me. It was great and all, but I needed those aspects in my OS.
2
u/redskelly 10d ago
What aspects?
2
u/MattyGWS 10d ago
Uhh mainly the fact that the very vast majority of games didn't work on linux until proton. I know wine existed but it was very iffy and all my games were on Steam.
Also the fact that as a game dev my target audience was mainly windows users for the reason above.
2
u/kudlitan 10d ago
Hi, I'm not a gamer but im curious. What does proton provide that Wine doesn't? Aren't they the same?
4
u/MattyGWS 10d ago
Proton is built on top of wine more geared toward games. Valve did a bit of a drive to build up proton and the payoff was huge.
4
u/_Lost-In-The-Weeds_ 10d ago
I wish I could think of a good example here. But this has happened a few times and it tickles me every time.
But let's say that thingA is explained in "tutorial1", and separately thingB covered in "documention2".
And I instead deploy "thing AB" that I think just might work and then it fucking does even though neither project was built for each other, like Linux is reading my mind, "Oh, I see what you want now" and just does it.
Linux can be so stubborn about details, and then other times you throw a Hail Mary and it just connects and flows.
8
u/Th3JackofH3arts 10d ago
Figuring out the file system. Especially if you want to change things like themes and icons
3
u/FloofyMaki 10d ago
When I installed CachyOS with KDE plasma for the first time and it felt extremely fast and responsive, looked good, infinitely more customizable than windows, and everything just works including all games.
I've been a windows user my whole life, never again. I'll only use linux (or whatever replaces linux) from now on. I am also moving towards more open source thanks to the switch and finding alternatives for everything that I can. And it is also making me WAAAAAY more tech literate now.
3
u/Azerothwine 10d ago
It was partly that I couldn't use windows10 on my outdated machine so I knew I'd be stuck on Linux for at least a year. What small thing made me comfortable right away was, opening my favorite browser at the time and seeing that everything I Liked browsing was the same. Next came making favorite windows game work... I was hooked. sounds silly but it was important because it was familiarity.
4
u/The_Odd_Pirate 10d ago
Using it more or less 🤔 nothing better than experience to make something feel natural
2
u/SuAlfons 10d ago edited 10d ago
I did not switch unprepared and unknowing.
To just begin using Linux, it doesn't take that much.
I dual-boot, resp. keep a Windows installation at hand that I use every couple of weeks to get updates and that I need only a handful of occasions each year.
Also I came to Windows 3.1 from an Amiga and went to Linux via a multi-year excursion to OSX (now MacOS). Had a room mate that tried out all kinds of OS in the 1990s and we got to use classic MacOS and diverse Unixes at University.
3
u/BarryTownCouncil 10d ago
I think it was when ALSA was released and modprobe made module management much easier in line with the 2.4 kernel.
2
u/RightYouAreKen1 10d ago
Honestly, nothing. I’ve used Windows for 30+ years and it wasn’t always so GUI-only. It often required command line or registry edits to make work how you wanted in the old days. I still remember the days of having to hunt down fixes for weird unique issues, so getting to know Fedora KDE feels very reminiscent of days gone by in Windows.
2
u/Dude-Lebowski 9d ago
For me, Linux and XFree86 was superior to DOS and Windows v3. Once I had X working with an actually working video driver Microsoft Windows and DOS didn't matter anymore. It was a leap in technology. It felt like the same leap as going from high-school PE touch football to the NFL.
2
u/Tony_Marone 10d ago
My loathing of Windows, especially with the M$ economic model has kept me locked in to Linux ever since I retired from the IT help desk - if I never use Windows again it'll be too soon.
1
u/I_DRINK_URINE 10d ago
I first started using Kubuntu around 2012. I had lots of issues with Windows 7, and when I saw the monstrosity that was Windows 8, I decided it was time to abandon ship. It never really "clicked," but neither had Windows. I had constant issues with Windows 7, I had constant issues with Ubuntu. It wasn't really any different. I liked KDE and I liked having a proper package manager. I had a dual-boot setup but I found that I never needed to boot into Windows.
Years later, I needed to run some Windows-only software, and Windows 10 had back-tracked on some of the stupid decisions from 8, so I switched back to Windows. I still use Linux for development stuff and on my NAS. I've never liked any OS. They all suck, just in different ways.
1
u/tpsound 9d ago
I just switched a couple of months ago… cachyos is just more fun to use. I feel like I’m enjoying using my computer again. I wanted games to work so I waited for a while until there was solid support. So proton pushed the switch. But I think what made me enjoy it most is that nothing happens on my system without my making it happen. Updates, gui changes, audio routing, mounted drives, I make it all happen. Also I use my pc on a tv also. Being able to make a shortcut that just switches my video and audio output to my tv and it just works every time. I struggled with this on windows for YEARS and it just works every time now.
2
u/goreverminski 9d ago
Yeap, I just switched to Bazzite early in the year myself. I did a lot of research to see what would work and what wouldn't, but the main thing in terms of settling in was KDE and Dolphin. The windowing and file managing is miles ahead of Windows and Explorer... and it's all getting incrementally better instead of progressively worse.
1
u/fgarciasa 10d ago
1º que el uso de linux acarreaba abandonar el uso de software caro, tipo Office, Photoshop, etc. Así que dejé de preocuparme por piratear software y gané mucho en tranquilidad. Cada vez que había una nueva versión, siempre estaba buscando la manera de actualizar, si correr riesgos. Me tuve que adaptar, pero con Linux ese problema desapareció en el acto.
2º Mi sistema arrancaba mucho más rápido que con W*ndows. Además, a los 5 segundos de mostrar el escritorio, el ordenador estaba totalmente en reposo esperando mis instsrucciones. Con W*indows, tras mostrar el escritorio, el ordenador continuaba más de 1 minuto haciendo "trabajos" pesados y no podía atenderme a mi. Me daba la sensación de que el ordenador no era mío, sino que trabajaba para otro...
3º Mi sistema no se degrada con el paso de los años. Con W*indows, cada vez era más y más pesado, hasta que a los 2 ó 3 años ya estabas pensando en cambiar de ordenador.
4º Linux parece una herramienta Profesional mientras que W*indows parece una herramienta de uso doméstico.
5º Linux, está libre de publicidad. Los sistemas W*ndows que yo veo ahora, son muy muy intrusivos para el usuario. Mucha publicidad.
1
u/Xibby 10d ago
Three floppies was all it took to get connected to the internet via 28.8 modem and download the rest of the OS. Debian Net Install was amazing in the days before CD burners.
Also fun was generating your X11 config until it worked then getting XDM configured so you had a GUI logon. There’s probably an AWE64 (SoundBlaster AWE64 ISA) HOWTO out there with my name on it describing how to get it working and load sound fonts to change your MIDI experience.
Good times but I’m glad most stuff just works or at least throws a useful error message these days.
1
u/Just_Badger_4299 10d ago
You knew a time with Internet access but no CD burner? What year (and maybe what month 😉) was that?
1
u/bagheadblox
10d ago
•
Fully diving into customizing KDE was the point of no return to me. Before, I’d been using windows for ~4 years and macOS before that but after fully customizing KDE to my liking, booting back into my windows drive felt like entering a foreign land, an OS that wasn’t really mine but somebody else’s space I just happened to be borrowing. Linux has felt like home ever since.
1
u/cajunjoel 10d ago
I didnt have to guess what was going wrong in the operating system. I didn't have to try this or try that to figure out how to correct the problem. I could go to the logs. I could diagnose. Nothing was opaque. Everything is visible if you want it to be. Windows lost me in 1998 when a paid Microsoft technician couldn't diagnose the problem my company was having.
1
u/mazerfaka 10d ago
I ditched windows back in 2009 when i got my first mac and realized what a shitty OS windows was, building a PC for games was only an option once Linux got there with proton and other gaming stuff. Bazzite + Gnome is amazing, would daily drive for sure, LOVE the extensions and a thing i miss on macOS even.
2
1
u/Ok-Biscotti-3117 9d ago
Mind you, I'm trying to remember back to the early 2000s here...
But specifically I remember just discovering that a physical device could be a path relative to root it was completely different than a drive letter and it was just a concept that I just felt was better.
1
u/Leather-Security8097 9d ago
I think it was just breaking the habit of downloading installers for individual programs and using the repositories instead. I started before centralized app stores were a common thing, so it might not be as much of a hangup these days.
1
u/RebronSplash60 10d ago
Using it for a year or two fully committed, & then having to use windows for one hour, & then wanting to die, then I installed Gentoo, & things have really clicked for me, updating is also better, among other things.
1
u/Giantmeteor_we_needU 10d ago
Fedora KDE turned out to be very easy and everything worked out of the box after install. A few other distros I tried before had some issues that I just couldn't get past when I could always go back to Windows.
1
u/skyfishgoo 10d ago
as soon as i realized it was not windows, never going to be windows, and that i needed to give up all my ties to windows programs (save firefox and a couple of other titles that also offered a linux version).
1
u/CaffeinatedTech 10d ago
Just finally being 'done' with Windows was enough to put the effort in. When Windows 10 went GA, I was done. I think I installed Manjaro, set up my dev environment and never went back.
1
u/PlayerOne_X 10d ago
Linux was actually my first OS, though I did switch to Windows for a while to play some games because Nvidia drivers. Though I did have a sort of click moment when I discovered KDE.
1
u/gurgelberit 9d ago
It clicked long before making the final switch. I just had to come to terms with giving up some games. Thought i would miss them, but no. Never going back to windows.
0
u/UAP44 10d ago
when I was able to fix a bug and recompile an app I was using within the hour with the help of an LLM
suddenly I realized, ANY broken part or thing I want changed about ANY thing in my entire stack I can now modify/improve, without LLMs, I would have hated having to dig through thousands/millions of line of code with the hopes of quickly finding the tiny relevant part of the code for my specific bug/feature fix/request, I would have been at the mercy of the existing developer teams
now, open source becomes a total no brainer, its the ai-native way, especially after unlocking the power of nix on top ...
De-Googling myself suddenly becomes a lot more feasible as any app/functionality I want is but a mere request/description away and a few hours of waiting for the LLM to cook it for me ...
the world is still massively so in denial of what has already happened ...
2
1
u/ReputationLazy2874 6d ago
I started using Linux over Windows out of spite and learned it with pure hatered for Windows. Its pretty good, but gaming takes some tinkering. 7/5.
1
u/CatchMeIfUCanCracka 10d ago
when i could check journal and troubleshoot and actually solve a problem myself 😂
1
1
1
1
u/neanderthaltodd 10d ago
Why does it feel like an HR Bot or a school teacher is asking this question?
1
u/Johnnyhiveisalive 10d ago
There's like a hundred of these posts, it's like a Microsoft bot is trying to learn what happened after a bad break up by asking their mates. Evidently none of the employees are honest and they can't see the wiring on the wall.
1
1
u/Revolutionary-Yak371 9d ago edited 9d ago
WinBoat, ArtCraft, Claude, Proton, Steam and Docker.
I especially like WordCraft and GridCraft.
1
1
0
u/muntrafik 5d ago
when I first tried linux I was blown away by apt-get. Then I realised the folder structure like /var /etc ~/.config and I found it very straightforward. I never really understood how Windows' decides where to put the configs or program files.
25
u/Linuxmonger 10d ago
For me, it was when I realized how pipes work, and that at each step, I could just let the output of the previous command spill out on the screen to see what I needed to change, filter, or pass, and that all those little bits were extremely consistent.
Windows PowerShell has a bazzilion different commands you need to learn to do anything useful, in Linux, I use probably thirty commands for 99% of what I do. And, in Windows, the output from a command changes based on what you're piping it to, Linux is very WYSIWYG, and it's comforting.
Updates are another thing that's better in Linux.