After more than a decade in the Windows world, I’m finally taking the step into the Linux world, specifically considering Ubuntu or Fedora. I’m looking for advice on making this transition as seamless as possible, with a focus on improving my coding experience and ensuring a smooth gaming setup.
What are the key things I should take into account for a good transition? Any must-have tools, software, or tweaks? Additionally, I’m keen on maintaining a good gaming experience – any tips for optimizing gaming performance on these distros?
Your insights, recommendations, and personal experiences would be immensely helpful as I embark on this exciting journey. Thanks in advance for your guidance!
I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu as much. It has a bad reputation on forcing users it’s own, corporate stuff down their throats.
A great newcomer-distro is Mint. It is very user friendly and just as capable as other distros. Especially as a long-term windows user you may find it familiar and very sanely configured.
Otherwise, Fedora, may it be the “normal” version or it’s immutable variant, is also a good choice. But, both are a tiny bit more advanced than Mint. Mint is the king in that regard.
The Gnome desktop is very different than everything you’ve encountered, you may like or dislike it. There are also other desktops available if you’re interested.
I’d say, start with Mint to get everything familiar, and then switch to Fedora Silverblue. SB is my favourite distro, since it’s very flexible and ultra-low maintenance :)
Just install Steam (and maybe Lutris) and you’re done. You don’t need anything else. Your AMD GPU driver should be pre-installed, or the Nvidia one is easily installable too, usually at the start wizard. Otherwise, you don’t need anything else.
All the stuff on “gaming distros” is not needed or individually installable.
If you’re on Fedora or Ubuntu (Gnome by default) the Extension Manager is great. I’d recommend checking that out and looking for extensions like GS-Connect or so, they’re great.
Otherwise, just scroll through the Software Center and see if there’s something that exites you. Everything else essential is already installed.
Of course, inform yourself first a bit on how to use Linux. Stuff like using the software center to install stuff instead of hunting the web for .exe-equivalents, alternative programs, and so on. Otherwise, if you’ve already done that, here are a few advices from my side.
If you like your setup, don’t change it. If you feel good on Mint, stay on it. Don’t distrohop. Most distros are the same.
You could check out Distrobox later in your journey. It allows you to create integrated containers, which is super useful when programming or when a software isn’t available for your distro.
Don’t overcomplicate everything. Most mainstream or beginner distros are sanely preconfigured, especially Mint and Fedora. They work out of the box.
If you settle on Gnome (especially Fedora), use the default workflow how it is intended.
And don’t use “pro” distros like Arch or NixOS at first. They may be good, but not for a starter.
Thanks for the helpful information. I tried Ubuntu just a couple of weeks ago and I have to be honest, I got tired/afraid? too quickly, I used it for about 4 hours then I went back to Windows. I know I was not ready enough for the change, that’s the reason why I want to be better prepared this time. Regarding my daily usage of the software it is not something that is not available for Linux, I use MS Office (Libreoffice), I use the Jetbrains products since I want to get back to learning to code (again) and that is also available for Linux, I might be concerned about gaming on Linux since I have no idea of how to get it working there, I have read about lutrius, Wine, Proton but I barely know how to get it working or what is required for gaming. I want a good looking distro as well and I know that they are highly customizable but I just don’t want to break everything in my first week.
Here I found out that there is an Ubuntu “variation” Kubuntu that I had no idea it even existed. I like Fedora because I think that it is beautiful but I am afraid that due to the constant updates it can be a bad decision as my first distro.
Don’t worry about looks that much. You can change everything by either theming the DE (icon themes, extensions, etc.) or by installing another DE. But partly, you’re right. Installing another desktop can be messy.
That’s why I specifically recommended Mint first and Silverblue second.
Cinnamon (Mint’s DE) is also themeable and highly customizable and gives you a great entry in “How Linux works”.
And then, after you got familiar with Linux a bit, go to Silverblue if you like.
On SB, you can always rebase without reinstalling.
What does that mean? SB is image based/ immutable. It works completely different.
There’s basically “your stuff” (cat pictures, coding stuff, etc.) and “the OS” (desktop, pre-installed software, and so on), similar to Android.
Therefore, you can easily swap out the OS-part with something else.
If you use SB (Gnome) you can rebase to Kinoite (KDE) with one command and one reboot in 5 minutes and keep all your stuff while having a clean “reinstall” and the ability to always revert any changes.
Therefore, you prevent distrohopping and just hop desktops instead.
Also, don’t worry about the “constant updates”. Fedora and Ubuntu have the same release schedule and don’t bring out many updates in between.
It’s only a problem when you use a rolling release like Tumbleweed and have bad internet, like myself.
I only update my Fedora (normal) every 2-4 weeks and my Silverblue updates itself without me noticing. The updates there just get staged and I boot into a fresh OS every restart.
If OP has games they want to play from Epic and GOG, Heroic Games Launcher is a good addition.
Being a long time Windows user for desktop, I switched to Ubuntu as I found it to have great resources for beginners.
I tried Mint Cinnamon, but the desktop UI is too much like the Windows UI for my taste.