For the PC in my living room I told you about, I just run the steam flatpack and it’s able to run my entire steam library using proton. Setting up proton on steam is very easy and as long as you don’t play the absolute latest games, you’ll do just fine.
Everyone’s been waiting for the os to come out. Even if it does come out in the next 2 - 4 months your going to want to wait 6 - 12 months before considering it as a daily os for a home user. It’s going to have a shit load of fixes / patches to go thru before becoming stable! And since your not a linux user already this would not be a distro to learn on. Pop os / linux mint / ubuntu would be 3 distros I’d recommend to you to try out first. They are a lot more stable and have a huge user base that can help out with issues and are beginer friendly.
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Aside setting up fstab mounts, a good chunk of distros already have or can support browsing and using SMB shares straight from the GUI filemanager, or just need additional packages to enable it (namely, gnome’s Nautilus and KDE Dolphin)
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Wait really? That’s so cool!
I think what I’ll end up doing is experimenting with Linux on my laptop. And in the end, it might just be my laptop. I do play a lot of modern multiplayer games, though I still need to check with Proton to see what their rating is.
Either way
Fuck Apple.
Really this drive to move away from Windows is based in how many updates have been forced upon me recently. I use a debloater tool, and being caught in the arms race of getting rid of telemetry garbage while Dave Windows keeps serving up more isn’t in my best interest.
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Jumping in the deep end like you seem to be, I would only consider having both - either dual boot if single machine, or different machines that can both perform what you need.
Use linux for as much as you can, and when you inevitably hit some snag, go over to windows, complete what you needed to complete and when you have time, figure out how to get the same result on linux.
You get the learning experience without the stress when encountering show-stopping problems.
Also, obligatory fuck apple.
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Not going to happen. There will be major hoops and hurdles depending on what you want to do. That being said, it’s not impossible.
Ive tried linux very casually in the past a few times and always gave it up within a few days because I was a gamer. This was long before Proton and Wine was a ton of fiddling around to get various games working.
I just got a new laptop 2 days ago just for some office type work and when setting it up I was too fed up with Microsoft and its Windows 11 Home S version that came installed. I couldnt figure out how to make a local account on the machine, even with tricks posted online like disable network connections and such. I think the “S” version really doesnt let you or maybe just one of the newest updates did away with things even more. Anyway, I was sick of it and so since it was an office only machine I decided I would seriously try Linux out. I did some research around for the “most windows like and easiest to use” linux. lol. There are a lot of them, but the one that caught my eye the most was Elementary OS and Zorin OS. I tested Elementary first as it had a bigger name, it was cool I guess but didnt actually install it. I then tried Zorin and immediately thought that this was it. So I installed that and been using it yesterday and today for some work and so far it has been great.
I did have a couple minor annoyances, like the emoji keyboard has ctrl+; mapped as how to get into emoji mode, and this takes precedence over any app running. So that meant in excel (excuse me, LibreOffice) I couldn’t enter todays date with a hotkey. I had to disable the emoji keyboard mapping and then it started working. ctrl+shift+: is still broken in excel though for a hotkey to enter the current time and I cant figure out where this is mapped to in the OS as it seems to do nothing. I could only work around this one by changing the hotkey in excel to ctrl+shift+" instead. So minor annoyances like that, and that are probably specific to Zorin and its pre-installed things like the emoji keyboard.
But anyway, loving it so far. It looks like Windows 7 in its stock config which is awesome, and comes pre installed with Firefox and LibreOffice. It even has the “home” folder and the sidebar and folders in it are exactly like Windows, so the transition is very easy here. It is built on top of Ubuntu LTS, which means app support is basically the best you can get as well since Ubuntu is so popular. I havent tried to install Steam yet as this is for office work, but I suppose it should work perfectly fine being effectively a skin on Ubuntu. I noticed they have a “pro” version for $45 that comes with themes that make it look exactly like Windows 11 or Mac OS, and come pre installed with video editing and modeling software. Not sure if Ill pay for the Pro version as I dont do those programs, and I have no interest in looking like the puke that is Windows 11.
Figured Id share my experience with Linux the past 2 days as you wanted an easy transition and I feel like I found that in Zorin OS.
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Elementary (not being developed anymore, I don’t think), Zorin and even Mint are the easiest transitions for regular, everyday use (not gaming) from Windows. Zorin makes it even easier (which is why they ask for donations, and is entirely fair to do so with as much work as they put into it) in a lot of ways, so their advertising is entirely on point for that. 