There is a reason PDFs exist.
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Thatās true, and thatās what I am now doing. But if we want to collaborate on a document, you might run into the same issue. Iām not saying you have to use it, just that when I hit a snag, OnlyOffice was the thing that worked for me. 
I save it as PDF with embedded .odt so it breaks less. The file is bigger though. It is in the same export as pdf Window. I also do enable some of the ISO things except the one that complains a lot.
Iāve pretty much went Linux full time in August of 2022. Both Linux Mint and Debian (unstable). I even got my mom to switch over to Linux full time as well as her daily driver.
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In my experience, mothers tend to be quite easy to transition to Linux and seem to find it very satisfying. (By the way, love you, Mum! 
) Sheās been using it for seven years now ā sheās still going strong and even handles updates herself, so no need for unattended ones.
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Same here! My mum has been daily driving Linux for longer than I have 
She doesnāt use her laptop much, so both her old and current one ran Linux to get it to run longer (with less resource use). Was easier to get her to switch, because she only use it for mail and the occasional text document.
While I stuck around with Windows for longer because of gaming.
just do it. find your alternatives, and just do it!
Linux User since 2000
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Has to learn some basic linux staff when managing my vps from cloud. This could be tough for non tech savvy. Anyway, you can find answers from Google and forums if you had problem with linux.
its a bit early, but ill be officially starting the linux challenge on the 1st of the new year. @SgtAwesomesauce if you have some sort of list for folks who are on the challenge, go ahead and add me to it.
first day of the new year, and the official start of my 1 year linux challenge.
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Good luck, and if you are up for it documenting your journey would be amazing. What went well, what frustrations you hit, and what turns out to be a complete cluster fuck.
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The list your asking about is your post in this forum thread! Congrats on the start of your journey!
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im already jotting down what has, or hasnt worked (yet)
Hi yāall, making my first post here on the forum.
I made the switch to Linux only from dual booting Windows a little over a year ago, and I have to say that it has been a mostly pleasant journey. The final niggles after switching were HDMI 2.1, HDR (or rather the lackluster support for it), Secure Boot and Nvidia drivers occasionally breaking on Linux Mint as well as Fedora. As a casual Linux user, Iād say the only total potential showstoppers for the average PC user are as follows:
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The HDR support needs to improve still on more beginner friendly distros like Linux Mint. It needs to be plug and play without any gotchas or caveats. It needs to just work.
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The way to make Nvidia drivers work at least on Fedora with the whole signing the drivers with mokutil and generally doing things in the terminal is simply unacceptable. Nobodyās kid or parents or anyone who in general just wants to use their PC is going to bother with any of that nonsense even if the guide for it is good. I was fine with it since Iām somewhat Linux literate and in general comfortable with the terminal, but the average user doesnāt want to read any guides just to install some drivers. Another big problem is that I remember 2 or 3 times when my PC stopped booting with Linux Mint or Fedora and I suspect the reason was that either the Nvidia drivers were broken or the drivers somehow because unsigned after an update. Uninstalling and reinstalling fixed this, but something like this is not feasible to fix for the average user.
Now, I do realize that Secure Boot is not strictly speaking necessary to use and that Coreboot will probably fix this issue to some degree, but itās one of those things in Linux that just feels to me like itās still unfinished and the industry in general needs another 5 years so that Coreboot becomes more common in devices.
- One of the reasons I switched over from Linux Mint to Fedora was the broken audio with my somewhat new (at the time) hardware. I moved up from AM4 to AM5 and I could not get the microphone to work even though I tried a lot of things with my limited knowledge (at the time), some guides and even asked for help on the Linux Mint forums : https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?p=2420364#p2420364
My audio setup is a bit untypical since I had 2.1 speakers, headphones as well as a mic and all of it was using analog connections, but this is the kind of showstopper that would make a non-committed user switch back to Windows. Fedora fixed this issue with it using Pipewire instead of Pulseaudio (or at least I think that is what fixed it?), but the Fulla Schiit also made the set up much simpler when it arrived and I assume it wouldāve probably worked fine on Mint as well with it. The typical user probably has some gamer USB headphones that work just fine without any shenanigans.
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Anti-cheat. I know this is greatly improved from what it used to be and I didnāt have to abandon any games that I still wanted to play, but all games need to work. Hopefully Valve will use their prominence and platform to pressure things to work.
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Certain companies or entities (Looking at you, Proton!) do not have their software officially available as first party in Flathub, Snap or whatever store Linux distros happen to use. Again, it comes back to people not wanting to use the terminal. No average user is going to go on Protonās site and download the packages themselves, and even I find it a little tedious to manually update the software from their site. The store fragmentation in general is a problem on Linux that needs to be addressed somehow, but I donāt have the technical knowledge knowledge to judge what would be the correct course. For the average user it just needs to be like Androidās play store.
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The HDMI 2.1 on Linux situation. Good lord, I shouldnāt have to buy a special cable to make HDMI 2.1 with 4k 120 Hz VRR working with an AMD GPU or buy a Nvidia GPU. This thing most definitely needs fixing, but it is unfortunately up to the HDMI consortium, I suppose.
Iām happy how my setup works currently on Fedora 41, but Iāll probably be switching back to Linux Mint at the latest next year once LM 23 comes out if it has proper Wayland and HDR support. It has been a mostly fun and long road with many new things learned on the way. Maybe Iāll even try to install Arch at some point just as a learning experience.
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Welcome to the forums!
Yeahā¦ Itās a driver issue. User space already got it covered and it has even better potential of being configurable and user friendly than how Mac / Windows does it. I believe KDE has some really good ideas here. Oh and yeah, you need to switch to wayland but Mint doesnāt do default wayland yet.
Linus Torvalds had something to say about this very issue about a decade ago. I believe the exact choice words were:
Unfortunately, Nvidia hates everything that isnāt their own āsuperiorā driver stack so the community need to drag them kicking and screaming into the 2020s so Nvidia users can more easily enjoy stuff like Zink.
As for Audio, I know a ton of sound technicians that swear by pipewire these days. Drivers are a separate issue, but as long as you have a mixer supported by Linuxā¦ Shit just works. Invest in a USB mixer with known good Linux support if you want better than just easy playback. Itās like a $150 investment and if you are doing any kind of serious audio editing and/or mixing, itās a worthy investment.
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Anti-cheat and Open Source will never go 100% together - FOSS says āDo whatever the heck you want with your computerā and Anti-cheat follows a philosophy of āYou are not allowed to do whatever the heck you want with your computerā. Kinda hard to find a middle ground then.
Not to mention AC is effectively a white hat root kitā¦
First, HDMI 2.1 requires an HDMI 2.1 cable, an HDMI 2.1 monitor and an HDMI 2.1 GPU/APU to work. Itās just how 2.1 was designed.
Second, HDMI 2.1 is a closed standard that explicitly forbids open source implementations by design of the HDMI consortium, so yeah, we can definitely wish for it working, but thatās like wishing for Nintendo not charging $90 for their games, or wish for Trump to stop wrecking the world economyā¦ Linux community can do very little to resolve this on their own, unfortunately. Workaround is to use latest DP standards instead.
All in all, most of the stuff left to conquer on Linux is either in the political realm (HDMI 2.1, Anti Cheat) or legacy switchovers (to wayland, pipewire, systemd). It does suck we are not further along, but where we are is pretty amazing already TBH. 
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Iāll be blunt and someone is probably gonna whack me for it, but:
Mint is just not the place you want to be if you want the latest stuff. They lag behind even the LTS distro itās based on, thatās not where you get the latest toys.
HDR support is still fairly new in Wayland and basically non-existent in X11.
Cinnamon has only gotten very rudimentary Wayland support and is basically still only X11 for regular users. So if you want HDR on Mint, youāre gonna be waiting for a long while.
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Fedora can also be a beginner distro, its the least breaking one, IMHO. Iāve been daily drivering it since about 2019 when I stopped distrohopping.
If I am not mistaken, the Quadros work better with Linux, but you pay a premium Yes Nvidia sucks for desktop but if you want you can try to buy either AMD for desktop or get thosee more expensive enterprise cards.
My last card was GTX970 and I still have an Nvidia laptop. Its a pain but people put up to it especially if you are interested in AI/LLM/ImageGen. AMD is behind in those but it works.
Dont forget Intelās Battlemage is also a thing. I hope they release a B770 but the B580 seem more adequate for reasonable image resolution and framerates.
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My post was maybe a little bit of a direct flown of thought type of thing and maybe I should clarify a bit. The reason I was talking about Mint was because thatās basically what Iād recommend for the average Linux beginner, and I know that Mint doesnāt have the latest stuff. The thing is, for a beginner, installing Mint I feel is a more easy experience. Thereās no need to muck around with drivers since thereās a driver manager if you use Nvidia and thereās no need to install any additional codecs to make certain video formats play. Yes, I know that Fedora follows the FOSS only in the install ISO philosophy and thatās why it is like that but the average user doesnāt care. He or she just wants stuff to work out of the box. This is why Iād say the year of the Linux desktop is not yet this year or maybe even not the next LTS cycle of Ubuntu / Debian. All the features that are available on Windows are not available in a plug and play fashion in the Linux ecosystem.
I know that power users or enthusiasts like the people on this forum can and want to work around these issues like I have done even with my more limited knowledge. I was just pointing out things from the point of view of people I know in real life and how theyād probably react to these issues cropping up when switching to Linux.
Regarding the HDMI 2.1 thing, I was referring to a situation like mine where you have a OLED TV as a monitor with HDMI ports only and you happen to have a AMD GPU, like a novice Linux user should maybe have still even to this day. In that scenario, you have no choice but to buy a specific CableMatters HDMI 2.1 ā DP 1.4 cable to have 120 Hz VRR on Linux. I know thereās one cable that works since itās referred to online in a bunch of Reddit forums, but itās ridiculous that you have to do that. I have no idea how or why it works, but apparently it does.
I agree that Fedora can be a beginner distro, but only with maybe some help from someone who knows their way around Linux even a little bit or the user themself has a willingness to read guides online and learn a little. Iām definitely optimistic about Linux on desktop even with all my gripes. In my own humble opinion weāre like 3 - 5 years away from Linux being a ready to use OS for the non-technically savvy gamer Iād say. Unless of course Valve pulls a rabbit out of their hat and SteamOS has all of this technical stuff under the hood fixed on release regardless of hardware.
Right but the solution to that is not blaming Linux, itās blaming the people that are actually responsible for this fuckup, i.e. the HDMI consortium and their bullshit.
HDMI should have died years ago, in every technical aspect it is worse then DisplayPort. And still it is ubiquitous. Why? Because people keep using what theyāve always been using and TV manufacturerās arenāt building DP into their TVs, which is understandable in a way because TV peripherals are all HDMI.
Point being: The only reason HDMI is even alive is because it is already everywhere and we canāt get rid of it, and to the normie there is no reason why that should change. You could tell a normie why going from SCART/Composite to HDMI was a good idea, but you canāt explain to them in a fashion where they would care why HDMI needs to fuckin die already.
Normies donāt care about about being screwed backwards, they care about convenience, and HDMI is convenient because itās everywhere.
While I agree with you it should also be noted that you can enable a stripped down version of RPM Fusion that contains only the Nvidia driver in the Fedora installer. You still need to install the package afterwards AFAIK (although I donāt know if it shows up in GNOME Software or Discover), but at least the repo is there.
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