The Computer Internet

Moving to Linux

Posted on Nov 6, 2024

This is an introductory guide written for my friends moving away from Windows to Linux. My goal is to keep this as nontechnical as I can, but unfortunately there is a learning curve. Just know that I believe in your gumption, and I am here to help in case you run into problems.

A word of solace

By moving away from a proprietary OS, you are entering into a world of possibilities. Most of these possibilities will present themselves as arcane errors where something you expected to work will not, and if you’re lucky you’ll get a short message explaining why. Your north star in these trying times should be: “well, we can always wipe everything and start from scratch.”. This sounds extreme, and it is the most extreme option: usually, there’s a better solution if you have the patience to research the problem and painstakingly try every solution. It is incredibly frustrating to dig through five pages of forum posts from eight years ago, only to discover (yet again) that you haven’t solved the mystery of why Discord suddenly sounds like a telephone from the 19th century (but only after 20 minutes).

The number of times I have personally employed the “wipe everything and start from scratch” approach is innumerable. As time marches forward, the number of times I will employ a scorched earth approach to my computer is innumerable. Do not feel like you have failed, or that you somehow aren’t good enough to use a computer.

A Tour of Operating Systems, Distros, and Desktop Environments

TL;DR

Ubuntu, Mint, and Pop!OS are (in my opinion) functionally equivalent. They are all simple to install, similar to the experience of Windows out of the box, and solutions for Ubuntu will work for them. Ubuntu and Pop!OS do use the GNOME Desktop Environment (DE) by default, which looks a bit like MacOS. Linux Mint (particularly, the Cinnamon version) is most similar to Windows.

A Brief Aside on Terminology

For all intents and purposes, your choice is not going to be “which operating system to choose”. Without going into the spiderwebs of BSD, Linux, and Unix, you’re almost certainly going to go with Linux. There are many vendors who offer Linux with a handful of other software packages, these blobs of software you download are called “distributions” or “distros”. Basically, the Linux kernel (the bit of code that does the talking to your hardware) is present in every distro, and the difference is what other software you get with your download.

The gist is:

  • An operating system is the low level code that deals with hardware.
  • A distro contains an operating system (usually Linux) and other software bundled together.
  • A desktop environment handles the majority of the user experience.

There’s more to it than this, but for the purposes of moving away from Windows this should suffice.

Choosing a Distro

When you start looking to make the switch from Windows, doubtless one of the first articles you’ll read will be titled something akin to “Best Linux Distros [current year]”. They’ll usually have a screenshot of the default Desktop Environment (DE), an AI-generated write-up of the distribution, and perhaps a comment that restates the section header (“Best Linux Distro for Gamers”, “Best Linux Distro for Security”, etc.).

You’ll find that the majority of these distros are based on another distro, Ubuntu, which itself is based on Debian. The reason for this is that Debian is a stable distro; you can be assured that updating your software won’t Except when you upgrade the kernel and your NVIDIA drivers are built for the previous version of the kernel, so your graphics card stops rendering anything. If that happens, you can boot into the previous kernel from the advanced Grub options.

You may also see a distro called Arch Linux be recommended for gaming, or something based on Arch (like Manjaro). The reason for this is because these aren’t stable releases: as soon as an update is available for your software, you can download and run it (so called “rolling releases”). This may mean you get the much needed hot fix to run your game sooner than you would on a distro like Debian, but you also get premium access to any bugs that developers missed. As somebody I know in real life, my recommendation is against rolling release distros for your home computer. This isn’t to say that you can’t or shouldn’t install them and try them out: maybe you’ll have a great time with them! Valve’s Steam Deck, a popular gaming handheld, runs on Arch. My laptop runs Arch and it technically functions.

Installing a Distro

TL;DR: you need to download the Live Environment ISO (usually provided by a download link or a torrent file), load it onto a USB flash drive, and make that flash drive “bootable”. Afterwards, you can plug it into your computer, mash the appropriate key to find your boot menu, and proceed to install it (usually a simple process of clicking through a wizard).

If you look up a guide for “How to install [your chosen Linux distro]” on your favorite long-form video sharing platform, you’ll find a myriad of guides. I can’t detail the steps for every distro here, but here are some helpful links:

The process for both is roughly the same: once you’ve downloaded the ISO file for your Linux distro, plug your USB drive into your computer. Then, open up either Rufus or Balena and select the ISO file, your USB drive, and click start/flash. This will wipe the contents of your USB drive.

I’ll also recommend Ventoy for new computer setups, since it allows you to put multiple OS ISO files on the same USB drive (very handy for dual booting).

Experimenting with Distros

It’s worth noting that you won’t have to wipe your computer to try Linux, or even resize the Windows partition if you’d like to dual boot. The easiest way is to flash the ISO to a bootable USB drive and boot your computer from the USB drive. You won’t be able to save files, but at least you can poke around and try things out.

The least risky way to try Linux (if you don’t trust yourself not to accidentally follow the 15-step process to install it) is to emulate it with a program like VirtualBox or VMWare. If you have Windows Pro installed, you can enable a feature called Hyper-V to do this as well. The basic premise here is that you can emulate a computer with your computer, and install as many operating systems as you like while running them in parallel. This isn’t a great long-term solution (you’re still running Windows underneath everything), but it will give you a chance to do a dry run at the installation process.

Dual Booting

Suppose you want to hang onto windows just a bit longer, and instead want to run two operating systems on the same computer. This is entirely feasible, and the good news is you’ve likely already done the first step: install Windows! Microsoft always wants the boot priority on your computer, so you will have to install it first if you haven’t done so.

The process is pretty straightforward:

  1. Shrink your existing windows installation following this guide. You should give yourself at least 50 GB of space, but the more the better. NOTE that the space taken up by the new partition will be unavailable to Windows, unless you delete the partition.
  2. When installing Linux, if you’re using some flavor of Ubuntu you should see an option labeled “Install alongside Windows” or similar. If not, just point the installer at the empty partition.
  3. Afterwards, when you reboot, you’ll have the option to choose either Linux or Windows. This screen will appear every time you restart your computer.

Do note that using one operating system at once is the easier option, and the one I would recommend to avoid boot related headaches.

Discord, Spotify, and other software you probably have installed on Windows

Depending on the distro you’ve chosen, you might have an App Store to download packages from. This is usually a graphical front end to one or two programs, usually APT and Snap on Ubuntu-based distros.

To be blunt, Discord on Linux ranges from passable to annoying. Unless you also install Chromium, Google’s Chrome browser for Linux, it’s a royal pain to stream anything. Because Discord will not update their client to use an updated library, the sound from your streams will not work (unless you use the web version of Discord through Chromium). Otherwise, the application works passably for chat and voice calls. Right now, I can’t say there’s a convenient way to stream on Linux without using a tool like Helvum to pipe your stream audio into Discord’s microphone input (a bad combination, but otherwise the only way to stream with sound). I haven’t investigated 3rd party clients, as I believe they go against Discord’s TOS (but I haven’t personally checked).

Spotify is comparatively much less annoying. For the most part, it Just Works™ when you install it. I personally haven’t found any major annoyances with the client.

Microsoft Office is now permanently dead to you. Instead, you can use LibreOffice, which might be installed by default depending on your distro. Your keyboard shortcuts might not work, but you’ll still be able to open your files and do most of the same work you were doing before. Or Google Drive, but we’re trying to avoid dependency on massive corporations.