I’ve been a Windows user all my life and had dabbled in the Apple ecosystem for a bit. With the upcoming end of support for Windows 10 in Oct 2025, I figured I’d put myself through a huge challenge of cutting over completely to LInux without a secondary backup drive with Win 10 on it. If I could survive the struggles for a few months, I’d be golden, and if I couldn’t, then I could switch to Windows 10 LTSC and be good until 2029. The intention was to completely force myself in without a backup plan - the only way out would be to install a new Windows OS. I chose Linux Mint after careful consideration, especially considering that there’s tons of resources and help with this distro, and it’s a great onboarding ramp for Windows users. I need the familiarity since I’m in tech full time and just don’t have the energy to hassle with my PC after a long stressful day at work.
I also used this as a good excuse to upgrade my PC a bit, too. 😀
After switching in mid December, I’m happy to report that I’m still alive after 30 days. My computer hasn’t killed me. And I’ve been able to do work and game on my PC without too many hiccups. Marvel Rivals still crashes ever since the Season 1 update. Overwatch works perfect. My other games, on both Steam and GOG, work perfectly fine. But I haven’t been able to test every game out there, but I know I can use Proton DB if needed.
I even edited this screenshot in GIMP after being forged in the fires of Macromedia Fireworks and Photoshop all my life! I even stripped exif data using command line tools! I even installed this cool neofetch thing that I always saw in people screenshots of their PC or whatever, every time I saw someone’s Linux build with their thigh high socks and neofetch on the terminal!
But so far, switching to Linux Mint has been great! I’m excited to deep dive more!
Note:
- I backed up all my data from Windows into a USB drive. I’m slowly bringing all that stuff over to my Linux Mint computer and rebuilding my music, video, photos, etc. Lot of work, but it’s so cool feeling so liberated!
- I may also want help from you Linux nerds from time to time. I’ll make posts/memes begging for help when I get desperate. But so far, almost every issue I’ve had has been resolved via an internet search!
- I pray that I won’t come crawling back to Windows. I don’t expect that to happen with how great my experience has been thus far.
Specs:
- Linux Mint 22
- Ryzen 7 9800x3d
- Thermalright Phantom Spirit
- MSI X670e Carbon WiFi
- Sapphire Nitro+ RX7900 XTX
- Corsair Vegeance 64 GB DDR5-7200
- Gen 5 Crucial T700 (?) M.2 x 2
- Corsair 5000d
- Noctua case fans (Lian Li too problematic on Linux based on all the research I did in advance)
- Seasonic Focus Gold 1000W
Old Specs Everything the same as above apart from:
- Windows 10 Pro
- Intel i7-12700k
- Noctua NH-U12A
- MSI Pro Z690-A
- MSI RTX 3080 Gaming Z Trio
- Samsung Gen 3/4 M.2
- Corsair Vengeance Pro 32 GB DDR4-3600
- Lian Li AL120 case fans
“You” nerds? It’s “we” nerds now, nerd.
I figured I’d put myself through a huge challenge of cutting over completely to LInux without a secondary backup drive with Win 10 on it.
Exactly how I did it coming up on a year ago. Still going strong!
I don’t think you can jump to Linux. Don’t you have to strut there wearing sexy tights?
9800x3d gang say wooooo
Today Valve published a Proton Experimental update that fixed the Marvel Rivals crash for me. Be sure to set it up in game properties / compatibility.
You are a certified penguin now
Y’all really choose hard mode for switching over. Having Windows on a partition sure is nice when a software requires it and wine doesn’t support it.
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You can pay $30/year to continue using Windows 10, you know.
But honestly, give 11 a chance. It has really good HDR support (so much better than 10’s, and Linux’s HDR support can’t even compare, it’s so bad). Furthermore, the taskbar issues can be fixed by installing StartAllBack. Lastly, Microsoft is considering recalling Recall after all the backlash it got. So you still don’t have to worry about that anytime soon.
Point I’m making is that if you have an HDR display, there’s still plenty of good reasons to dual boot.
Thanks for your input.
I won’t give 11 a chance due to the privacy and security concerns.
I’m also not the target customer for HDR. I’m photosensitive and bright lights are a migraine trigger. To put it in perspective, I can’t drive at night anymore due to modern headlights - I’ll end up vomiting and then possibly bedridden for a couple days. I generally have my monitors, depending on model of course, no higher than 30% brightness at all times.
Pro tip, if you’ve not found it already - there’s a package for gimp called “photogimp” that makes it use the photoshop interface instead of- it makes it so much easier to use! Highly recommend.
I’m thinking of doing the jump this weekend but I’m scurred. I don’t want to spend hours debugging an OS like I did over a decade ago. Any reassuring words?
One of us
I’m sorry to tell you that you are also a nerd now that you’ve installed linux
I’ve been running Mint about a week now, same story and similar hardware. I came from substantially older hardware than you did.
As I understand it, Mint started using a much better kernel with version 22, so hardware support so far has been perfect.
Also having a great experience so far. Biggest challenge has been finding replacements for done utilities but I’ve had good luck there too so far.
Bro thank you from the bottom of my heart for the type up. I’ve been contemplating this for months and this very may well be the final tipping point for me to make the plunge. I’m in pretty much the same boat, tech savvy but don’t want to deal with shit I dont have to which has been my main reason for not diving in yet. I’ve thought of doing exactly what you described as I do love a little challenge, which I get contradicts what I just typed. Anyway, yeah, thanks again for the post! Will be doing my own switch here in the near future.
Have you tried Krita? It’s made for digital art, but I find that the UI is pretty similar to Photoshop, so I like it for image editing
