Finally decided to switch fully from windows to linux. Here we go!

Hello tek syndicate army,
I am a computer engineering student that just finished his second year and I have decided to try and use linux as my one and only OS.

After half a year of trial using a virtual machine running ubuntu and installing lubuntu on a old pentium4, I am going to format my PC, that is running windows 7 atm, and install Debian (Gnome).

During the last half year I had a class that required me to use Linux and learned the "job" of a OS and all the things that are involved. That and watching tek syndicate linux projects made me very interested in trying to go full linux, today will be the first of hopefully many days to come.

Currently running some backups, will check in later. First challenge will be to get League of Legends and Dota 2 to run, wish me luck.

Those of you using linux, what were the difficulties on the transition? What can I do to make it smoother?

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Good Luck dude, I'm going to be giving Mint a go this evening when I finish work.

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Welcome to the future.....now get over to the 1 year challenge thread and sign up. lol

You do know that it is perfectly acceptable to reverse the roles and run Windows in a VM on top of Linux if that will help you with the transition, and while you won't be able to run Windows games without hardware pass through you should be able to run most anything that doesn't require direct hardware access.

Good luck...

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Yeah I have been doing some reading, besides some games all the software I use has an alternative on linux. And I don't have a second graphics card to be able to play using a VM. But if I find it too hard I will set a windows VM up.

My only advice is if you stay on Linux but want the Windows compatibly then do the research on what hardware works for pass through and over time and the availability of funds work towards that goal, there is a lot of help right here on the Tek to get you over the bumps in the road of hardware pass through.

But like I said just running Windows in a VM is about as easy as it gets and does offer a little Vaseline for the transition if you have to have that connectivity.....

I am not expecting the change to hit me very hard, since I have had contact with linux for over a year now (forgot I used minix in a class during the first semester of my second year of studies when I wrote the first post) but always resorted to windows when I had a problem with linux now that will have to change.

PS: My final project for the class in which I used minix was Puzzle Bubble (the game) both singleplayer and 1v1.

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There weren't any difficulties really, I am very interested in learning linux inside and out so whatever problem I've ran into I took it easily and focused on solving it.

To make it go smoother I'd suggest that you do not think of it like windows or make comparisons to windows, because it is not windows and if you keep thinking things such as 'Well, windows does it this way why isn't it working?' you're going to have a hard time. Another factor is keeping an open mind about it, you will run into issues so I'd suggest you best attempt to have a similar mindset to that of which I described for what I did

Which distro are you considering?

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Just finished installing Debian with gnome environment. Already had some contact with ubuntu.

^ What @100557662 said. I can't remember what kind of difficulties I had when I fully switched over to linux roughly 2 years ago, but the biggest hallelujah moment came when I started fixing the problems I ran into and learning new ways of accomplishing tasks, instead of just rebooting back to windows to get some shit done. Since that switch I've learned more than during the ~ 8 years I dual booted before I jumped. But I still consider myself a noob, I'm a casual user lol.

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I have a love affair going with Mint and KDE. I started in dos so linux really didnt feel like that much of a stretch. Terminal is awesome and kde has the eyecandy.

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Ah very nice, Debian is one that I highly recommend. That's good you've already had some contact with ubuntu, since Ubuntu is based off Debian you'll have some experience with apt and whatnot so it shouldn't be too bad

If Linux is the future, then the future is going to be great (although I'll lose my wizardry status)

OP, there really aren't any complications per say. I would recommend Linux Mint for new and even elite users. It's very flexible in that regard. I would however try as many distros as possible. Learn at least two to three different package managers, and learn how to interpret code to an extent... although with Mint it is unnecessary.

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lol....no way will that happen, once you master wizardry you'll always have it to fall back on.

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Would really like to say that I did not encounter problems, but infact I did.
Can't seem to set up a wired connection, but a wireless one works fine.
I have a strange setup of 3 routers + 2 switches at home and I really don't think they are setup ok, but they worked when I used windows 7. If I try to connect directly to the router with a ethernet cable it recognizes in 1 or 2 seconds, but when I put a switch in the middle it does not even recognize that the cable is connected.
Will try to look at this with more detail tomorrow, at least I could pinpoint where the problem was today.
Good night to you guys if that is the case, see you all tomorrow.

if your wireless works, run lspci -vv in terminal and respond here with the results. focus on the networking ones.

Hmm I wish you chose Fedora X P. But you made a fine choice for getting your feet wet.
Best of luck with your transition I can almost guarantee you will love it.

I will be doing computer science so I will have a similar requirement.

the moment I ran the command the cable was not connected to the port

this is the ethernet controller we were looking for: Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)

try installing firmware-realtek here is the relevant web link for the package: https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/firmware-realtek

If that does not solve it, try the following forum links of people who solved it:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/realtek-8111e-gigabit-lan-not-working-4175417055/

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=104167

after installing the package firmware-realtek and reboting the system I it automatically connected a wired connection, the speed is very slow but I think it is just problems with the isp because I access through wireless both from pc and android and the speed is very slow. Thanks for the help.