Been using linux fulltime for about a year (again), dove headfirst back in when i got back to being a semiprofesional IT-muppet again.
But would like to join the challenge as of this date to follow the rules and make it fair.
Distro of choice is Gentoo as i like to fiddle around with stuff and learn as I go.
edit: First post as well as I mostly lurk and watch people play around with cool stuff.
Soā¦ Iām a year into this and donāt see any reason to go back 
Still running openSUSE and Iāll probably keep with that for a long while!
I had some thoughts about my experience over the past year written down. But all in all, it really didnāt change too much from my day to day use on Windows. And thatās a good thing!
As I write thisā¦ I do realise that for work I really canāt switch over, due to the depencence on MS Office and Adobe. And yes, I know that there are applications which can do parts, but not nearly as well or not with proper compatibility 
But first letās poke @SgtAwesomesauce about this milestone 
Congrats!
Glad to hear youāre enjoying it 
Reading your experiences have been fun, made me chuckle at all the things that worked out of the box for you that I had to stumble over back in the day.
I bestoweth upon ye, the Badge of Honor.
This combined with undated howtos is really one of the major problems with Linux these days. You have a problem, you google, find a fix, apply this through compiling the source/converting rpm to deb or vice versa, and writing a script or two. Unknowing this was what people did five ten years ago, these days they do
$ sudo apt install libthatfixesyourproblem
A secondary problem to this is when youāre still running the same install you did five years ago and have a couple of those fixes. They work. Until they donāt. Because the script you wrote used a lib or software that isnāt supported any longer. If you figure out whatās wrong you have to undo the fix before you can do it the new way.
But at least itās not the Windows āDownload this dll from this Russian site and put it in windows32.ā or the Mac āInstall this app and then it works. It only costs $25.ā
Things have changed a lot since I first tried Linux back in '01! 
Just something like not having to go through a whole installation through terminal. Or the enormous ease of well managed repos nowadays.
Linux has come a long way since those days!
And because it has, especially on the gaming front, the transition was quite easy.
Though I do need to give props to LUG; the Linux User Group org in Star Citizen which creates runners for the game and generally takes a day or two to get fixes around. That has been my largest saviour on the gaming side.
And a friend of mine helping along to keep Genshin Impact running for my spouse. They both play it, but he has years of gaming (and development) on Linux. Which greatly benefits my options to make sure the game runs for her through all the weird graphical shit and anti-cheat they use
Iāll get some snacks in celebration!
So, wiped out windows again.
Realised I hadnāt played DCS World in about a year, one of the few things holding me on Windows for VR/Head tracking support.
Ubuntu 24.04 (what a noob!) this time, no dual boot, just seeing how things are in total normie mode.
So far not bad. Linux still has the issue of various application file requestors being totally network unaware, whilst others allow loading from CIFS share with no particular rhyme or reason, but it is what it is I guess. Most noticeable example last night being that steam will pop up a file requestor and not be able to load backups from CIFS share.
So I had to copy a few hundred gig off my NAS to my downloads folder to then restore into steam instead of restoring directly from the NAS. yay.
Sure, I could fix it by sharing the volumes out as NFS and mounting them that way but this really isnāt something I should need to do in 2025. I gave it a pass in the early 2000s but seriouslyā¦ this needs to be fixed.
I donāt know this was the exact scenario you encountered, but Ubuntu snaps have some hard restrictions on where application data can be accessed. There are assumed to be eminent reasons for this (I guess). If your application (e.g. steam itself) is distributed as a snap this will occur with them, but it is not necessarily down to the application but how itās sandboxed.
Iām not suggesting to change your setup (itās not worth fighting the distribution, leaks always come in from the top), just to be aware - there usually is a rhyme. (flatpaks are easier to override, but wonāt be your defaults)
ive almost hit 3/4 of the year using linux full time instead of win10. i did pop over to my win10 install to get it ready for battlefield 6, because i know im going to play that game once it comes out, and that it wont play nicely on linux for a long while.
Bout half way there!
Itās been more than year since I swapped. It turns out that my initial experience of everything being FAR easier than expected would hold true for essentially forever. There was a small adjustment period where I had to realize that Itās ok to drop software and move on to a different solution rather than tinker with a single program forever. Discord is a good example, it was an endless bucket of teeny inconveniences for a few months before I found the ultimate solution, just stop using the official discord client.
Did struggle with some issues waking from sleep, black screens, and crashes when using OBS. This doesnāt seem to be a linux issue, Nvidiaās software team is doing a pretty terrible job overall.
I did end up moving from Kubuntu over to Manjaro pretty soon after I posted originally. thinking about popping over to raw Arch, just to mess around a bit. My wife did express interest in moving to Manjaro after using my PC for a few days, which is as big of an endorsement for swapping as can be given. Sheās not into tech stuff at all and wasnāt even near technology until she hit High School. (Thereās a whole story with hyper-conservative luddite cult that weāll sidestep for now.) If she can hop on and complete all of her tasks without a single issue, anyone can.
I am now 3 or 4 months in to primarily, not entirely, using Linux Mint. One shortfall has been because of work, school, and life commitments, my physical time on the computer has significantly decreased. Throughout this chapter I have kept my school laptop as Windows 11 for now because of ease of use, yes I know that is not entirely in the spirit of a 1 year Linux challenge, but I did not want to sacrifice any education time due to tech issues with only 2 semesters left.
That being said. Linux Mint largely has been good, many things just work and I hardly notice the difference from Windows. Many games work without issue, most programs work or have an easy alternative, and it is just plan stable and easy.
Issues I have had so far include the following:
I am hopeful to finish out this 1 year challenge, and over time to either find more solutions to these issues so far. But I also have taken an interest in figuring out if there is a realistic way to de-bloat Windows and turn it into something more appealing.
Today marks the start of my year of the Linux desktop.
Iāve been a Linux user since Ubuntu 16(?). Dabbling in it on and off. Iāve used Ubuntu, Debian and Arch but never fully committed. Gaming and CAD were the culprits of me always keeping Windows on a machine. I have a full time Linux server/HTPC running since 2020, but thatās not my main PC.
As of today the long line of Windows 98 SE ā XP ā 7 ā 10 gets broken. I went with Bazzite, cause Cachy wouldnāt install. Letās go immutable, baby!
I reserve the right to distro-hop if I find Bazzite too restrictive. Wish me luck!
Well, I am already a bit on my way with this
However, I had very little Linux experience before jumping into it from Windows 10. Basically some RedHat at school 20 years ago. So far I have not regretted a single second, and Iāve not missed anything I used to have on Windows. If anything, I yearn to get home from work now so I can get away from the Windows 11 machines weāre shackled with there. All my favorite games still work just fine, even the newest ones that I was interested in trying. I donāt think this will be much of a challenge at all.
Iāve got 2x8tb local storage set up in the btrfs raid you see with md which took a while to suss out but very happy with that, overall tinkering with a little more behind the scenes stuff has not been something I really need for what I do, but Iāve also got a VM set up to try out different distros now and then but so far CachyOS really has checked all the boxes for me and no other distro has really had something so killer that I also couldnāt just get without installing a different distro.
I can still do my CAD and 3D printing stuff just fine, game just fine, Iāve done some very basic video editing with Davinci Resolve for work just fine, loving it.
@Oaken I havenāt really opted in, but I completed it a couple of days ago. Hereās an obligatory Fastfetch - 369 days old Cachy OS Plasma, Breeze with custom Kanagawa colorscheme. Had some issues a couple of times, but this was THE most pleasurable computer use I had since Windows NT (Yeah, Iām 40). In couple of weekends, Iām putting debian on wifeās pcs and weāll be a Windows-free home.
I know Linux is not as user friendly but I am thankful more people take the step and dare to try it. If you are willing to put in some research and learning how things work you can already come a long way without understand all the details.
I would argue that itās on par or easier to start to learn linux than windows today. Problem with people switching is getting rid of / changing 40+ year old habbits / way of thinking!
When you do, you wonāt go back for a few reasons.
sudo pacman -SyuSo, now almost 3 months later, did you end up switching?
As a tip for anybody anxious to switch, keep your manjaro install and install arch separate with itās own boot partition. It can be handy to look at configurations manjaro does on some stuff.
powerlevel10k & ttf-meslo-nerd-font-powerlevel10k from the AUR for example. 
I still havenāt gotten around to Arch diving. I was already pretty sure that once I moved over I wouldnāt go back, but life got busy. I had a few people in my friend circle move from Win10 to CachyOS so Iāve spent a lot of time helping them with a lot of very basic stuff.
9 months in now and I donāt dual-boot my laptops anymore. Still have a single PC as a backblaze loophole, but I almost never access it directly. My Legion Go still has Windows, but thatās mainly because I donāt use it enough to justify spending hours getting it re-installed and re-installing games.