Edit2: Writing this from Pop_Os! I had experience with Mint for my Self hosting rig and wanted to see other pastures. Decided to rearrange my three drives, two of them are still Windows, another I emptied and dedicated to Pop OS. That way I still have easy fallback to Windows if I need to do something fast and then I'll know what I have to add to Linux over time.
First things first, I've setup auto-back up. For now it's google drive because it's the easy one. I have to figure how to self host Nextcloud and then use this as a backup storage.
Steam is installed and to be fair, I'm happy with the native linux games. Still going to take a look at Lutris and co out of curiosity.
I mostly miss MusicBee right now. Any recommendation for the most solid music player? Also, what's a good movie player? I used MPV, I need something capable to deal with 3440x1440 resolution and stretch properly.
Also, I wanted to install Bitwarden and the first thing that showed up is Snap Store. I remember hearing about Canonical in a bad way so should I stay clear from that?
Hey!
Today is the day. I finally got fed up with Windows booting up with an advert that I already had yesterday and had clicked on "remind me in three days" reluctantly. I'm finally tired of killing Telemetry.
Now that gaming is less important for me, I feel like now is a good time to switch mainly to Linux. I might keep a small spare drive with a Windows/Steam partition for the occasional incompatible game.
I've just started transferring my precious files to an external drive and I'm preparing for my Exodus.
Still unsure about the distro I'll choose, I would like to avoid distro hoping. But now I made up my mind, I'm leaving windows for the foreseable future.
I started self-hosting three months ago as a way to trialing Linux with the added bonus of being useful and my server is still up and alive so I'm confident I can use Linux without breaking it.
Any welcoming tips?
I'm a bit anxious about the big change, but also relieved I won't have to put up with the bloat/adverts.
Edit: Two hours in and so many kind and useful comments. Thanks for the welcome party! You're all a bunch of good humans :)
The only thing that is stopping a Windows user from becoming an average Linux user is the package manager. Just ask Duckduckgo about "(Your distro name here) package manager cheat sheet", memorize it, and thats it.
The next step would be installing a minimal installation of your distro -- which is (also) really easy as well. All you have to do is to install (either Xorg or sway or Hyprland) with the --install-recommends flag (or similar), edit a specific file (.bash_profile) inside your home directory (cd ~), add the binary file of your chosen package (same name as its package name -- sway or Hyprland, etc.) and thats it.
Friendly reminder that this is a "very short resumée" of what you have to do. But it will (definitely) get you sorted.
I disagree with the minimal install, especially for new users. It's probably easier to get going when everything you need is installed and configured. Once you know the tools and what you want, then go for the customization.
I've been using Linux for over 20 years and I still prefer a full install (EndeavourOS is my choice). I'd just rather spend my time doing anything else than manually installing every package.