…and it went very smoothly. I installed on a spare PC for now, but I could absolutely see this becoming my daily driver. I’m mostly surprised at how snappy and responsive it is, even on 10 year old hardware!

  • shittydwarf@sh.itjust.works
    60·
    13 days ago

    Glad you decided to give it a try. It really shines on older hardware and really shows how much bloat windows actually has. I’ve been using Linux since the 90s, it’s incredible how far it’s come. Show us your socks. Especially in relation to gaming in the last few years, there’s almost no reason to deal with microsoft any longer!

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      58·
      13 days ago

      The bloat is real! I really thought this old PC was just chugging along because of the hardware, but it seems perfectly content to run Linux.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        19·
        13 days ago

        Pop_OS I s a great first “it just works” experience.

        But also, don’t be af aid to be a bit of a distro slut. I’ve been distro hopping lately and it’s very liberating.

        If you want to try another, “it just works” experience, I highly recommend bazzite. It doesn’t exactly work for me because of the immutability, and I run high end hardware in weird configurations, Ill need to hop in and wrench on things from time to time. But I installed it in my exploration last week and found it immensely pleasurable.

        If anyone wants to provide some guidance for how to overcome some of the issues immutability creates (I need specific versions of ollama and rocm), I could really use the help.

        • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
          9·
          13 days ago

          Pop_OS I s a great first “it just works” experience.

          This is my hope. I figure I’ll use this until I find some niche reason to need something else.

          I saw a lot of positive talk about Bazzite too.

          • v01dworks@piefed.socialEnglish
            2·
            13 days ago

            Bazzite looks pretty cool, I’m setting up a computer for my friend’s from my old PC parts and might set up either that or Pop_OS on it

          • sorrybookbroke@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            2·
            13 days ago

            Of course never an issue with just sticking with Pop. It’s a great distro to start with but also a great distro to die with after many years of love.

            Most distro are the same just with different defaults anyhow. Bazzite would be the exception though lol (also a great choice to be clear)

          • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
            2·
            13 days ago

            I’ll give it a shot, but tbh, it’s been a bit of a slog. I’m on the new Z13, the 128gb variant.

            I can’t find an “it just works” variant where both ollama and rocm play nice on the hardware AND the mediatek card works correctly. It’s either I’m able to self host fullsize llms (and do the rest of my ml work) OR I get fully functional wifi.

            I’ve got the whole install process for ollama + rocm + openwebui all set on Ubuntu, but the wifi card is barely getting 20 mbps. But access to rocm (and I assume it will be the same in pytorch) is buttery smooth and I can run medium models in the range of hundreds of tokens per second locally.

            When I throw on bazzite I’m hitting 350 mbps down but it doesn’t seem like it’s got the right rocm/ driver/ kernel/ ollama combo because I’m not even able to get 5 tps.

            • Pencilnoob@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              12 days ago

              It’s worth a try, you should be able to run an Ubuntu image in distrobox to install the ollama tools

        • Pencilnoob@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          13 days ago

          I concur, I went with bazzite for my daily driver and it’s been the best yet, I prefer it over the others I’ve tried: Arch, SteamOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, and OpenSuse.

          It’s got downsides, but I just really like it.

          • themadcodger@kbin.earth
            2·
            13 days ago

            I’m using its non-gaming sister, Bluefin, and same. While I’m pretty decent at the CLI and have laboriously figured out how to make things work in the past, that’s not where I want to put my energy. I like that it just works and I’m not going to mess anything up on the system level. Containerization and rollbacks are fine by me if I don’t have to figure out how to un-bork something.

        • boboliosisjones@feddit.nu
          1·
          12 days ago

          I was on on Pop, but after going to CachyOS I have not looked back. The fact Pop was kind of dated snd the new DE seemingly taking forever to finish made me want to try something else. CachyOS so far has been entirely trouble free and worked better than Pop, which was struggling with stuff like hibernation on my machine

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      39·
      13 days ago

      About 15 years ago, I installed Ubuntu for a few months for fun, but not being able to game on it very easily was a major drawback for me, so I bounced back to windows.

      Now that gaming on Linux seems to have come a long way (and Windows is annoying me way more than it used to), I’m feeling motivated.

      • Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org
        15·
        13 days ago

        I wish you luck with it. I was turned off Linux until recently just because of base functionality. But hey, wifi is working, and my USB HID stuff is all working too. I’m not a hardcore gamer so that doesn’t affect me. If anything, I’ll trade any 3d functions for faster and more efficient 2d and text.

        • salacious_coaster@infosec.pubEnglish
          8·
          13 days ago

          Same. I’ve been saying for years that basic functionality is keeping people from switching to Linux, and nobody wanted to listen. It’s definitely gotten better, but still not rock solid.

      • DarkSirrush@lemmy.ca
        51·
        13 days ago

        Man, I did the same thing 15 years ago, and between gaming and Ubuntu itself being honestly fairly user hostile at that point (regardless of what the cult said) , it turned me off of trying Linux again for a looong while

        • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          12 days ago

          There’s been a lot of progress in 15 years. This would be a good time to give it another go. Mint is stupid easy to install along side windows.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
        4·
        13 days ago

        Do you have an Nvidia graphics card or why did you pick one of the few distributions that doesn’t ship the latest Radeon and Intel drivers?

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
            2·
            13 days ago

            Wishing you luck and that Nvidia and their legacy drivers don’t fuck you over. Should you experience weird problems, not necessarily related to graphics output but maybe broken power management or so, it’s most likely the fault of Nvidia. Just saying, in case something like that happens and you feel the need to shout at Linux.

            • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
              2·
              13 days ago

              Thanks, at least that gives me a place to start if something acts up. I haven’t had any issues yet, but I also haven’t tried any games on it.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
    23·
    13 days ago

    I find this funny because I’ve been aware of, and even using, Linux for a lot longer than I have been using Lemmy (or Lemmy or even ActivityPub has even existed). Are many people really becoming more aware of Linux because they are moving from Reddit to Lemmy and then noticing people talking about Linux here?

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      34·
      13 days ago

      I’ve always been aware of it, but I guess I just needed the extra push. Being on Lemmy has been like having one of those Civ missionaries in my base spamming “spread religion” for 2 years, and I think they’ve successfully converted me.

      • apftwb@lemmy.world
        3·
        11 days ago

        I swear Lemmy just turns everyone in a variation of the same person. Its bizarre. We all subconsciously end up watching the same YouTube channels and read the same books.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        2·
        12 days ago

        I hate them, wish I could go all Mao on their asses. But yeah, Linux rocks. Heard great things about Pop. Looking forward for your meme posts asking for help here.

        • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
          1·
          11 days ago

          I subscribed to a bunch of Linux communities today with that in mind, but I haven’t drilled down to figure out which are the most active or are open to random questions.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
            2·
            11 days ago

            If you make a meme out of it, this is one of the most helpful and active. Otherwise the others are good too, some perhaps not as active.

    • jqubed@lemmy.world
      19·
      13 days ago

      I’ve known about Linux since the late ’90s; I haven’t been around any significant concentration of people talking about it and how to use it until I joined Lemmy.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
      16·
      13 days ago

      The open source nature of Lemmy attracts the same people who are also attracted by the open source nature of Linux.

      Lemmy is a bit of an echo chamber because of that.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zipEnglish
      10·
      13 days ago

      I was generally planning on switching once windows 10 died but being on Lemmy helped convince me to not only switch earlier, but also I just dove right in with arch. I’d say it was like 2/3 Lemmy and 1/3 Proton that made me switch not because I felt I needed to but because I was actually excited to

  • v01dworks@piefed.socialEnglish
    18·
    12 days ago

    I mostly use Linux but I dual-boot windows just for VR and every time I have to use windows it feels sluggish in comparison

      • v01dworks@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        12 days ago

        ALVR is so frustratingly close to working for me with the Quest 2 on Linux

        Some games actually work flawlessly with it for me now, but recently I wanted to get back into Into The Radius 2 since they updated it a lot, and because it only supports a specific VR framework that I can’t seem to get my system to use, the game itself doesn’t connect to my headset, so I had to boot back into windows for that

    • rapchee@lemmy.world
      4·
      12 days ago

      i do the same thing but i think it’s kind of on us - when you only boot windows once in a while it tries to do a bunch of things (updates, scanning everything for more data on your advertisement profile, virus scan, etc) at the same time
      it was similar when i was running linux less frequently, i was annoyed like
      ugh again bunch of updates, kernel update as well ugh now i have to reboot too

      • v01dworks@piefed.socialEnglish
        2·
        11 days ago

        Yeah, it’s a little of both, but at least if I don’t use Linux for a while I don’t feel the same problem happening usually

        In my experience, if I don’t touch my gaming PC for a month or two and then go boot up Linux it means I just have a long update, but I can also opt to ignore it and deal with it later. On Windows, I don’t really have that choice as much, and updating is extra annoying because it reboots itself multiple times so I have to babysit it otherwise it boots back into Linux after a few seconds on the bootloader

  • salacious_coaster@infosec.pubEnglish
    18·
    13 days ago

    What distro/DE? I was also surprised with the snappiness! You use Windows/Mac on modern hardware for so long and think it’s the best it can be, but nope!

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
      26·
      13 days ago

      After watching videos about different distros until my brain went numb, I went with Pop!_OS. It seemed like a really polished and noob-friendly option, which has felt true so far.

      • NeedyPlatter@lemmy.caEnglish
        15·
        13 days ago

        I also switched to Pop!_OS a couple days ago. I’ve only used Windows all my life and this distro made everything so easy. The Pop Store is a lifesaver.

            • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
              14·
              13 days ago

              I love how much you can customize whatever you want. I saw some cool setups while watching videos about distros, and I think I could get unhealthily obsessed with that if I let myself.

          • NeedyPlatter@lemmy.caEnglish
            3·
            13 days ago

            I’ve only used Apple computer a handful of times, but there is a lot of elements to Pop!_OS that remind of Mac. Particularly the tiny loading circle your mouse creates after opening a window reminds me of the similar that used to come up on my elementary school old Macs.

            • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.worldOPEnglish
              8·
              13 days ago

              I just really love the persistent top bar, the floating dock, and the way you mount apps to install. It all feels so natural for some reason.

              Oh, and the search bar for finding apps/files. I’m glad Pop OS uses that too.

          • NeedyPlatter@lemmy.caEnglish
            1·
            13 days ago

            I’ve only used Apple computer a handful of times, but there is a lot of elements to Pop!_OS that remind of Mac. Particularly the tiny loading circle your mouse creates after opening a window reminds me of the similar that used to come up on my elementary school old Macs.

  • Deflated0ne@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    12 days ago

    My biggest hangup (so far) is modding games.

    Nexus is built for Windows. CDPR’s RedMod is too.

    It’s probably not that big a deal. I’m just shit at all this stuff. I’m not a coder. I don’t even know what the fuck sudo means. But I have a very loose grasp on using it. With a moderate amount of help from the internet. Usually.

    • JunglisticFunkateer@lemmy.world
      17·
      12 days ago

      Nexus is building a new version of its app, and the new one has Linux support (native app).

      It’s not yet a full replacement, and at the moment only supports a few select games, but eventually it’ll expand to the full catalogue.

    • Statick@programming.dev
      7·
      12 days ago

      Closest comparison I can give of it is… It’s like clicking “Yes” when the User Account Control (UAC) popup appears on Windows when you’re installing stuff. That’s you, as an admin, confirming you want to perform whatever action is being performed.

      sudo ... is perform an action/command as an admin.

      As for the mods. A lot of the time it’s a matter of taking the files you downloaded, and dropping them in the game directory (or a directory within the game directory).

      Once you do it manually once, you’ll see it’s pretty straight forward and you don’t really need the mod managers.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        2·
        11 days ago

        “I heard them say we’ve reached Morrowind. I’m sure they’ll let us go.”

        Morrowind will always be wonderful to return to. I miss all the imaginative player house mods. OpenMW has been so AWESOME.

        Also:

        YoU wOuLdN’t StEaL a LiMeWaRe pLatTeR

    • ExhibiCat@lemmynsfw.com
      1·
      11 days ago

      I just game on windows to be honest. For that it’s not bad. I do a ton of VR and the Linux support for that is minimal anyway.

  • whosepoopisonmybutt@sh.itjust.works
    16·
    13 days ago

    This weekend, I gave my girlfriend’s dad a nice computer with Linux mint installed. I put a shortcut to windows 11 setup to run in virtualbox, in case there were things that he felt he needed windows for (to spare him the frustration of needing to tinker too much if he didn’t want to).

    Down with Microsoft spyware.

    • Ms. ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zipEnglish
      6·
      13 days ago

      A few months ago my roommate asked if I could zhuzh up their old laptop. It was old enough I was still able to open it up, add some ram, switch to a tb SSD, better network card. I slapped mint on their too. Their first experience with Linux and after showing them some really basic terminal commands I’ve never had them ask for help since. It just works